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      A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers

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      Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.View image in fullscreenTP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.View image in fullscreenPrior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.” More

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      Wisconsin high court allows congressional maps in win for Republicans

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      The liberal-controlled Wisconsin supreme court on Friday rejected a Democratic lawsuit that sought to throw out the battleground state’s congressional maps, marking a victory for Republicans who argued against the court taking up the case.The decision not to hear the congressional challenge comes after the court in December ordered new legislative maps, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled state legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed maps drawn by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Evers signed those into law on 19 February and urged the court to take up the congressional map challenge.The Elias Law Group, which filed the congressional challenge on behalf of Democratic voters, said the court’s decision on the legislative maps opened the door to them revisiting the other maps.But the court declined to take up the case.The court faced a tight deadline to act. Wisconsin’s elections commission has said district boundaries must be set by mid-March to meet deadlines for elections officials and candidates. Candidates can start circulating nomination papers on 15 April for the 13 August primary.In the legislative maps ruling, the state supreme court said the earlier conservative-controlled court had been wrong in 2021 to say that maps drawn that year should have as little change as possible from the maps that had been in place at the time. The lawsuit argued that decision warranted replacing the congressional district maps that were drawn under the “least change” requirement.Six of the state’s eight congressional seats are held by Republicans. In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.Only two of the state’s current congressional districts are seen as competitive.Western Wisconsin’s third district is represented by the Republican US congressman Derrick Van Orden, who won an open seat in 2022 after the longtime Democratic representative Ron Kind retired.And south-eastern Wisconsin’s first district, held by the Republican congressman Bryan Steil since 2019, was made more competitive under the latest maps but still favors the GOP.Both seats have been targeted by national Democrats.The current congressional maps in Wisconsin were drawn by Evers and approved by the state supreme court. The US supreme court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect. More

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      Wisconsin’s extreme gerrymandering era ends as new maps come into force

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      For more than a decade, an anti-democratic reality has loomed over Wisconsin: elections for the state legislature don’t matter.Since 2012, no matter how voters throughout one of America’s most competitive states cast their ballots, Republicans have been guaranteed to hold control of the state legislature. That’s because for more than a decade Republicans drew districts lines that are so distorted in their favor, they cemented their control. The dominance was underscored in 2022 when Tony Evers, a Democrat, won re-election with 51.2% of the vote. Republicans still held 65% of the seats in the 99-person state assembly.As of 19 February, that era is over.In a 4-3 decision in December, the Wisconsin supreme court struck down the state legislative maps, ruling that the many non-contiguous districts in the plan violated a state constitutional requirement for contiguity. It invited the legislature, governor and various other parties to submit proposals for a new map and warned it would draw its own if lawmakers and the governor could not agree on a plan.Last week, after a lot of wrangling, the Republican-led legislature passed new maps that were drawn by Evers. The new plan dramatically reshapes politics in Wisconsin, giving Democrats a chance to win control of the assembly this year. They could also possibly win control of the state senate in 2026, giving them complete control of state government. (State senate districts in Wisconsin are composed of three assembly districts).“In its simplest form it means we don’t know which party is gonna control the state assembly after the November election. That hasn’t been true for over a decade,” said John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette law school in Milwaukee, who has closely studied the maps.The new assembly map undoes the severe gerrymandering of the last decade in a few ways. Republicans had cracked concentrations of Democratic votes in places such as Sheboygan into multiple districts, diluting their vote. The new map undoes that cracking, keeping all of Sheboygan in one district.Republicans took a similar approach in Green Bay. They attached Democratic-leaning areas on the outskirts of the city to more conservative areas, creating two solidly Republican districts. The new lines create two highly competitive districts there.The new map also dramatically reconfigures the south-central portion of the state, adding five additional safe Democratic districts. “It’s just to me a pretty remarkable change,” Johnson said.Democrats were skeptical when Republicans chose to enact the maps drawn by Evers at the last minute, with some wondering why lawmakers who had used every maneuever possible to stay in power would suddenly agree to adopt Democratic maps. But in choosing Evers’ maps, Republicans may have chosen the best of the available options for them. It pairs fewer incumbents in districts than did other proposals, Johnson noted. And unlike some of the other plans, it allows Republicans to keep a majority in the state senate this year, giving them the ability to hold on to control of a chamber until the end of Evers’ second term in 2026.The map is also still biased towards Republicans. In a hypothetical, perfectly tied election in the state assembly, Republicans would still be expected to gain 6% extra seats, according to Planscore, a website that uses mathematical metrics to evaluate electoral maps. Under the previous plan, Republicans would have received a 15% extra seat boost in a hypothetically tied election.And while the map puts control of the assembly up for grabs, it doesn’t create more individually competitive districts, Johnson noted.“It raises the Democratic floor, and lowers the Republican ceiling, but it’s not a map that was drawn to maximize the number of closely contested seats around the state,” Johnson said. “Now those competitive districts are far more consequential than they were under the old maps.“You can tell this is a map drawn by Democrats,” he added. More

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      Wisconsin ethics panel calls for felony charges against Trump fundraising group

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes continue in Wisconsin, where the state’s ethics commission has recommended felony charges against Trump’s Save America Joint Fundraising Committee for its alleged role in a plot to bypass campaign finance limits.Trump is already facing 91 felony charges in criminal cases across multiple states related to his political and business dealings. The newest allegations in Wisconsin were first reported on Friday by the news site WisPolitics.The bipartisan ethics commission, which oversees the enforcement of campaign finance and lobbying laws in the state, recommended the charges in connection with a fundraising effort to target the Republican state assembly speaker, Robin Vos, during a 2022 primary challenge.Vos, who is the longest-serving assembly speaker in the state’s history, has been a consistent target of Trump and his allies since refusing to aid Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Trump personally urged Vos to decertify the Wisconsin election results and, when the speaker said he could not do it under the state’s constitution, released a statement accusing Vos of “working hard to cover up election corruption”.The commission alleges Adam Steen, Vos’s primary challenger, coordinated with state Republican party chapters to evade Wisconsin’s $1,000 limit on individual campaign donations by having individuals funnel earmarked donations through the county parties, which face no limits on campaign spending. The commission found the effort generated more than $40,000 to benefit Vos’s primary opponent.The state representative Janel Brandtjen, a vocal proponent of Trump’s election lies in the Wisconsin legislature, was also implicated in the alleged scheme. Brandtjen allegedly helped coordinate donations earmarked for Steen’s campaign from the Save America committee into multiple Republican party county chapters.Vos survived the primary attempt, but barely. Steen, who earned Trump’s endorsement, lost by a mere 260 votes.Election-denying activists have most recently backed a campaign to recall Vos, which is still gathering petition signatures and has drawn the attention of national figures in the Maga movement, including the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell. Lindell headlined an event and has promoted the effort on social media, writing that Vos had “blocked our efforts to secure our elections” in a post on the social media site X (formerly Twitter).skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ethics commission also investigated a $4,000 donation by Lindell to a county party, but did not charge him, citing insufficient evidence the funds were directed to Vos’s primary challenger. More

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      Wisconsin adopts new legislative maps, giving Democrats chance to win state

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      The Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, has signed into law a pair of new state legislative maps, undoing a Republican gerrymander that has shaped Wisconsin politics for more than a decade and giving Democrats a chance at winning control of the state in future elections.“It’s a new day for Wisconsin,” said Evers at a press conference on Monday to cheers from a room of anti-gerrymandering activists.His signature likely marks the end of a protracted fight over Wisconsin’s legislative lines and greatly reduces the Republican bias baked into the current maps. Republicans have enjoyed unchallenged control over the state assembly and senate for more than a decade because of legislative maps they drew to ensure that they would have large majorities in both chambers even in years Democrats won the majority of votes statewide.The new maps are the result of a December ruling from the Wisconsin supreme court that the current state assembly and senate maps are unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to adopt new legislative maps before the 2024 election. Evers, lawmakers in both parties and multiple outside groups submitted revised maps to the court for consideration. After consultants hired by the court to review them said that the maps drawn by the Republican lawmakers maintained their partisan gerrymander and “do not deserve further consideration,” Republicans lawmakers decided to adopt the maps Evers had proposed – which give them a slight edge at maintaining their majorities – rather than roll the dice on court-drawn maps that could benefit Democrats even more.“We kind of have a gun to our head,” said Republican state senator Duey Stroebel during the senate debate over the bill on 13 February.Republican lawmakers had done everything they could to avoid this outcome, even threatening to impeach supreme court justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose election in April 2023 created a liberal majority on the court. They dropped the threats only after a panel of former Wisconsin supreme court judges recommended against pursuing impeachment.View image in fullscreenEvers signed the bill despite pressure from powerful Democrats in the state to veto it. When the bill made its way through the legislature, Democratic lawmakers opposed it nearly uniformly, citing concerns about a line in the bill that leaves the current maps in place for recalls and special elections ahead of the November general election. And they have expressed concerns about possible future legal challenges to the legislative maps and general distrust of the Republican legislators who agreed to the law’s passage.“If you believe that WI Republicans are planning to run on Gov. Evers’ maps in November, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you,” wrote Democratic state senator LaTonya Johnson on the social media site X.But it’s not clear exactly what those legal challenges would look like.“I am extremely skeptical of this idea that there is a good basis for challenging the law, really on any grounds,” said Quinn Yeargain, a legal scholar who focuses on state constitutional law. “I’m as much of a partisan Democrat and progressive as anybody else is, but being intellectually honest about what’s going on here is also important.”Evers had previously said he would sign these maps into law, and stood by his word.“I did spend a lot of time talking to the folks who had differences of opinion,” said Evers, of legislative Democrats who opposed the bill. “But I felt at the end of the day this is the right thing to do for the people of the state of Wisconsin.”The maps were heralded by anti-gerrymandering activists in Wisconsin as a win.“We’re in the business of fair maps,” said Nick Ramos, the executive director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and an organizer with the group Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition. “And Governor Evers’ maps are good – like, really good. They’re going to do a lot for the state.” More

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      Wisconsin senate adopts new legislative maps that could undo gerrymandering

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      Wisconsin lawmakers voted on Tuesday to adopt legislative maps drawn by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers – inching the state closer to undoing the extreme gerrymander that has ensured Republican control of the state for more than a decade.The pair of votes in the Republican-dominated state assembly and state senate are a sign that the years-long battle over Wisconsin’s legislative maps may be finally drawing to a close, giving Democrats a chance to win control of the state legislature in upcoming elections for the first time since 2012.The vote is the result of a December ruling from the Wisconsin supreme court that the current state assembly and senate maps are unconstitutional, ordering the state to adopt new legislative maps before the 2024 election – and setting a mid-March deadline. Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the governor and multiple third party groups submitted revised maps to the court for consideration, and in a 1 February report, consultants hired by the court to review them said that the GOP-drawn maps maintained the partisan gerrymander and “do not deserve further consideration”. The maps submitted by Democrats retained a Republican advantage, the consultants found, but to a much-reduced degree.Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly voted against the bill after a failed attempt send it back to committee for review, alleging that because the bill would not go into effect until fall 2024, it was designed to protect Republicans like assembly speaker Robin Vos, who is currently facing a recall attempt.“We should let the supreme court continue to do its job to put in place a fair map in just a couple weeks,” said Democratic senator Mark Spreitzer.The maps still need to be signed by Evers to go into effect. Evers previously signaled he would sign the legislation if it comes to his desk. A Marquette University researcher, John Johnson, found that Evers’ maps still give Republicans a slight edge at retaining their legislative majorities, but by a much narrower margin than the current maps.By accepting Evers’ maps, Republicans avoid rolling the dice on a court-drawn map that could be less favorable to them.“The court will likely pick one of the other three maps,” said the Republican senator Devin LeMahieu. “We’re going to end this sham litigation and pass the governor’s map.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis fight was set in motion when liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz won an April 2023 state supreme court race, giving liberals a majority on the court for the first time in more than a decade. Protasiewicz had telegraphed her views of the Republican gerrymander during the election, calling the maps “rigged”. Republican legislators spent months threatening to impeach her if she didn’t recuse herself from the case, but dropped the issue after consulting with former Wisconsin supreme court justices who recommended against pursuing impeachment.Wisconsin’s current legislative maps, drawn by Republicans, are among the most gerrymandered in the country. The GOP in Wisconsin has strong majorities in both houses of the state legislature, holding nearly twice as many seats as Democrats in the assembly and senate even though statewide races are often decided by razor-thin margins. These new maps will erase much of that partisan advantage. More

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      Republican lawmaker who voted against impeaching Mayorkas to retire

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      A Republican congressman who broke with his party colleagues and refused to vote to impeach Democratic homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is retiring from his elected office, he announced Saturday.The announcement from Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher that he won’t run for a fifth term means his time spearheading the US House’s pushback against the Chinese government will come to an end in early 2025.Gallagher’s refusal to impeach Mayorkas drew anger from his fellow Republicans, who have been looking to oust Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary as a way to punish the president over his administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border crisis.A House impeachment vote Tuesday fell just one vote short. Gallagher was one of three Republicans who opposed impeachment.His fellow Republicans surrounded him on the House floor in an attempt to change his mind, but he refused to switch his vote.Record numbers of people have been arriving at the southern border as they flee countries around the globe. Many claim asylum and end up in US cities that are ill-prepared to provide for them while they await court proceedings. The issue is a potent line of attack for Donald Trump as he works toward retaking the presidency from Biden in November’s elections.Gallagher wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion column published after the vote that impeachment wouldn’t stop migrants from crossing the border and would set a precedent that could be used against future Republican administrations. But the impeachment vote’s failure was a major setback for Republicans.Party officials in Wisconsin in recent days mulled whether Gallagher should face a primary challenger.Gallagher did not mention the impeachment vote in a statement announcing his retirement, saying only that he doesn’t want to grow old in Washington.“Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old,” Gallagher said. “And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election.”He told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the backlash over the impeachment vote did not play a role in his decision.“I feel, honestly, like people get it, and they can accept the fact that they don’t have to agree with you 100%,” he told the newspaper, adding later in the interview: “The news cycle is so short that I just don’t think that stuff lasts.”Gallagher, a former Marine who grew up in Green Bay, has represented north-eastern Wisconsin in Congress since 2017. He spent last year leading a new House committee dedicated to countering China.During the committee’s first hearing, he framed the competition between the US and China as “an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”.Tensions between the US and China have been high for years. Both sides enacted tariffs on imports during Trump’s presidency. Beijing’s opaque response to Covid-19, aggression toward Taiwan and the discovery of a possible spy balloon floating across the US only intensified lawmakers’ intent to do more to block China’s government.Gallagher was one of the highest-profile Republicans considering a run for the US Senate this year against incumbent Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin. But he abandoned the idea in June, saying he wanted to focus on China during his fourth term in Congress.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Harris Begins a Reproductive Rights Tour on 51st Anniversary of Roe

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      The administration’s task force on reproductive rights also announced what officials said were new steps to help Americans get contraceptives and abortions under an emergency care law.Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Wisconsin on Monday morning to host an event in support of abortion rights while President Biden brings together a task force on reproductive health care in Washington.Both events are designed to call attention to the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, and to announce new steps that Mr. Biden’s administration has taken to support abortion access since the court struck it down in 2022.“Even as Americans — from Ohio to Kentucky to Michigan to Kansas to California — have resoundingly rejected attempts to limit reproductive freedom, Republican elected officials continue to push for a national ban and devastating new restrictions across the country,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “On this day and every day, Vice President Harris and I are fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom.”Ms. Harris, who has become the administration’s most vocal defender of abortion rights, chose Wisconsin as the backdrop for the first in a series of abortion rights events her office has planned around the country through the spring. Kirsten Allen, the vice president’s press secretary, said that Ms. Harris’s office had planned several more stops, over the next two to three months, in “states that have enshrined protections, restricted access and states that continue to threaten access, causing chaos and confusion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More