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Lisa Needham

Wisconsin Supreme Court Reminds Us Why Judicial Elections Are Vital

As abortion-rights wins feel few and far between, it’s great to see the Wisconsin Supreme Court strike down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban. Getting there has been a long process, one that required Wisconsin Democrats to make a significant, long-range commitment to winning judicial races. Oh, and also to beat back the deep pockets of the far-right billionaire Elon Musk.

In 1973, after the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion, many states, including Wisconsin, kept their old abortion bans on the books. Known as “trigger laws,” they lived on like a zombie, ready to shamble back to life if Roe v. Wade was reversed. After Dobbs v. Jackson was decided in June 2022, Wisconsin’s ancient ban was technically back in effect—but only technically since the state’s Democratic leadership promised not to enforce the law. They argued that newer, more lenient abortion laws superseded it.

Enter the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The fight over whether the 1849 ban would hold was a proxy fight for abortion access more broadly—and a fight for abortion access more broadly was always going to end up on the doorstep of a state court that had flipped control over the previous several years.

Wednesday’s 4-3 decision strikes down the ban and declares abortion legal in the state. This victory for reproductive care was possible only because of the multiyear efforts that Wisconsin Democrats and abortion activists put in. In 2023, Janet Protasiewicz trounced Daniel Kelly, a former justice on the court, to win a seat on the state Supreme Court. If you want to know what Kelly is like, just know that he went on to become a “Stop the Steal” lawyer.

Fast-forward to 2025, when liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced she would not be running for reelection, and whoever won her seat would determine the balance of the court, given its 4-3 liberal majority. This made it one of the most important judicial races in the country, and in strolled Musk, thinking he could buy the race.

That very much did not work. Liberal candidate Susan Crawford beat the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel, by 10 percentage points, showing that heart and grit and organizing could beat back Musk’s torrent of cash. Better still, Crawford had previously represented Planned Parenthood in an abortion-related case, so to the right wing, she was basically Satan.

For decades, state judicial races were a pretty sleepy affair. But after the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in 2009, three justices were ousted by a very well-funded, well-organized recall effort. Since then, state judicial races have gotten much more expensive and much more partisan. The Crawford-Schimel race was the most expensive state judicial race ever, with spending hitting $100 million.

It’s not great that state courts have become an expensive partisan battleground, but paying attention to them and committing to election support is more important than ever. Control of a state’s highest court can make the difference on LGBTQ+ issues, abortion access, election redistricting, and so on.

As Trump judges have ravaged the federal courts, and as the U.S. Supreme Court has continued to take a hacksaw to the Constitution, state courts remain a place where—sometimes—justice can still be served.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Not A Joke! Retired Justice Kennedy Praises Supreme Court's 'Independence'

Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is very concerned about what is happening with the courts, you guys. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why do you ask?

Kennedy’s remarks came during his Thursday speech at a forum titled “Global Risks to the Justice System—A Warning to America.” He was one of several speakers, including judges from countries where authoritarian crackdowns threatened the independence of the judiciary.

The bravery of those judges most definitely did not rub off on Kennedy, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In the face of repeated and ongoing attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump and his administration, the best Kennedy could do was praise judicial independence, as if that exists on the nation’s highest court any longer.

“Judges decide issues which have political consequences, but they don’t decide in a political way,” Kennedy claimed. “We have to honor the fact that judicial independence does not mean judges are put on the bench so they can do as they like—they're put on the bench so they can do as they must.”

Come on, Tony. Your cute little deal with Donald Trump in 2018, where you personally lobbied him to choose your former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed you, was step two in Trump’s transformation of the court into a conservative grievance machine, following on the heels of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation the previous year.

You were perfectly aware that opposition to abortion was one of Trump’s litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees—he even campaigned on it. You were also perfectly aware that many of his lower court picks during his first term openly held anti-LGBTQ+ views. Trump explicitly chose judges because they would rule “as they like” instead of ruling “as they must.”

Indeed, when judges do rule as they must, and Donald Trump doesn’t like it, he attacks them personally. He called for Judge James A. Boasberg to be impeached after he blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants.

At least 11 judges have had their families threatened with violence after they ruled against the Trump administration. Many of the threats occurred over at Elon Musk’s Nazi bar, X, where Musk himself amplified some of them. High-profile Trump supporter Laura Loomer shared a photo of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, alleging that she was helping undocumented gang members and calling for Boasberg and his daughter to be arrested and his entire family to be deported. James Boasberg was born in California to U.S. citizens, so the deportation demand is equal parts chilling and weird.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour faced both a bomb threat and a swatting incident after he ruled Trump’s birthright citizenship order was unconstitutional. During his speech, Kennedy fretted that “Judges must have protection for themselves and their families. Our families are often included in threats” without ever acknowledging who is whipping up those threats.

Congressional Republicans have attacked judges on every front. They’ve called for the impeachment of judges who block Trump’s illegal actions. The Senate tried to get a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill restricting lower courts from issuing preliminary injunctions against the government unless the plaintiff posted a bond equal to whatever the government said were its costs and damages from not being able to do illegal things right away.

Whenever conservatives want to both-sides the threats to the judiciary, they have literally one example: At a 2020 rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer called out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Roberts immediately issued a statement quoting Schumer and saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

But when Trump relentlessly attacks the judiciary, including routinely defying court orders, and elected officials call for judges to be impeached, the best Roberts could come up with was, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

This is equally as mealy-mouthed as Kennedy’s comments that the judiciary should stand for the rule of law and “we must always say no to tyranny and yes to truth.” Notably absent is any mention of who is attacking the rule of law. Notably absent is any mention that the rule of law went out the window when the conservative majority granted Trump immunity. Notably absent is any mention of who is saying yes to tyranny and no to truth.

Kennedy doesn’t deserve praise or a cookie for these vague statements. If he genuinely cared about attacks on the rule of law, he would need to challenge his former colleagues. He would need to challenge Trump, the man he cut a deal with to get Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment. He would need to say that the threats of violence against judges only occur when they rule against the administration. He would need to call out the ceaseless attempts by GOP elected officials to knee-cap the courts.

Kennedy is not going to do any of those things, but he’s probably going to continue to make a lot of high-minded speeches. Feel free to ignore him until he tells the truth.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Instead Of Facing Federal Probes, Musk Can Now Hide Behind Trump

Winning the 2024 election didn’t just return Donald Trump to power. It also allowed him to dodge multiple criminal cases. And while his unofficial vice president, Elon Musk, didn’t need a Trump win to stay out of jail—at least under any existing charges—the victory likely freed Musk and his companies from regulatory oversight. That’s an exceedingly lucky break for Musk, currently being scrutinized by multiple government agencies for everything from his inflated claims about self-driving Tesla cars to his SpaceX rocket launches polluting wetlands to his purchase of social media platform X—just to name a few.

To be perfectly fair, Trump’s victory means a far friendlier atmosphere for all greedy billionaires who hate regulations, not just Musk personally. But Musk is the one sitting next to Trump at Thanksgiving and the one who threw roughly $260 million at Trump’s campaign while fawning over him on X and in person.

So which pesky investigations and regulations is Musk probably free of now that his bestie is headed to the White House?

For starters, perhaps he’ll get out from under the alphabet soup of agencies looking into Tesla’s so-called full self-driving system, or FSD. Musk has promised a vision of a completely autonomous hands-free Tesla since 2013. It’s not a vision that has ever come true. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has twice required Tesla to recall FSD because of the system’s bad habit of ignoring traffic laws, including being programmed to run stop signs at slow speeds. In October, the agency opened another inquiry after the company reported four crashes, one of which killed a pedestrian, when FSD was used in low-visibility conditions like fog.

The issue isn’t just that FSD is unsafe. It’s also that Tesla hoovered up cash by selling a product that basically doesn’t exist. Tesla owners filed a class-action lawsuit in 2022 alleging the company defrauded them by charging $15,000 for an FSD package that didn’t result in a Tesla being able to drive itself successfully. Tesla’s defense? Full self-driving is merely an aspirational goal, so a failure to provide it isn’t a deliberate fraud—just bad luck. Perhaps that’s the same excuse Tesla would have trotted out in response to the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into whether the company committed wire fraud by deceiving consumers about FSD’s capabilities and securities fraud by deceiving investors.

Trump named former reality show star and former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) to head the Department of Transportation, of which NHTSA is a part, and tapped one of his impeachment defense attorneys, Pam Bondi, to head the DOJ after Matt Gaetz’s nomination flamed out. There’s no reason to think either of these people will grow a spine and continue investigating “first buddy” Elon Musk or Tesla.

Trump’s election also probably gives SpaceX breathing room. Musk’s private space company, which receives literal billions in government money, hasn’t been terribly interested in following government rules.

In September, the Environmental Protection Agency fined SpaceX $148,378 for dumping industrial wastewater and pollutants into wetlands near its Texas launch site. The company paid that fine, albeit with some whining about how it was “disappointing” to pay when it disagreed with the allegations, but it’s planning on challenging the recent $633,000 fine from the Federal Aviation Administration. The regulatory agency proposed the fine after two launches in 2023 where the company allegedly didn’t get FAA approval for launch procedure changes and didn’t follow license requirements.

This isn’t SpaceX’s first run-in with the FAA. The aerospace company paid a $175,000 fine in October 2023 over not submitting required safety data to the agency before a 2022 launch of Starlink satellites. After an April 2023 launch where one of the company’s rockets blew up shortly after takeoff, sending debris over South Texas, the FAA required the agency to make dozens of changes before another launch.

Like the NHTSA, the FAA is part of the Transportation Department. Sean Duffy’s past as an airline industry lobbyist doesn’t inspire confidence that he’ll take a hard line against SpaceX.

And as far as whether the EPA will continue to pose any problems for Musk? Under Trump, that agency will be run by former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), whose primary qualification seems to be hating EPA regulations. He’s voted against replacing lead water pipes and cleaning up brownfields and sees his mission at the EPA as pursuing “energy dominance.” Again, not exactly someone who will bring the hammer down on Musk or his companies.

Musk is also in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the possibility he delayed disclosing his acquisition of Twitter stock in 2022. Investors must disclose when they accumulate five percent of a publicly traded company, a requirement that ostensible super-genius Musk says he misunderstood somehow. Under President Joe Biden, current SEC chair Gary Gensler has aggressively pursued enforcement efforts, a trend in no way expected to continue under whoever Trump picks.

Lightning round! Musk tried hard to violate a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission by giving “Twitter Files” writers improper access to user data, but he was thwarted by Twitter employees who actually followed the order. He’s faced numerous unfair labor practices claims and been investigated multiple times by the National Labor Relations Board, so he’s suing to have the board declared unconstitutional. He lost out on $885 million in government subsidies after the Federal Communications Commission found that Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, couldn’t meet the speed metrics for the government’s rural broadband program.

Luckily for the multibillionaire, the incoming head of the FCC is a pal of Musk’s who thinks it is “regulatory harassment” to require Starlink to meet program requirements.

Musk will also have the advantage of helming a newly invented entity, the cringily titled Department of Government Efficiency (aka DOGE—ugh), that can put his rivals under a microscope. DOGE’s co-head, fellow tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, has already said he’ll examine a government loan to Rivian, a competing electric vehicle manufacturer, calling the loan “a political shot across the bow at Elon Musk and Tesla.” Though DOGE is not an actual department—you need Congress to create one of those—and cannot slash spending directly, Musk could still suggest to Trump that government funding of fiber optic cables in rural areas be gutted. This would leave satellite services like Starlink as the only option for some rural consumers—an option either those consumers or the government would then have to pay for.

Until Trump was elected in 2016, it was impossible to imagine giving billionaires like Musk so much opportunity to use the levers of government to openly and directly benefit themselves. Now that Trump has won a second term in office, Musk is just one of many oligarchs looking forward to an extremely lucrative four years. It’s lucky for them—but terrible for the rest of us.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trashing Constitution, Trump Says He'll Order End To Birthright Citizenship

After running on a promise to end birthright citizenship, a victorious Donald Trump says he is planning on ending it on day one of his presidency. It’s a tall order given that the text of the 14th Amendment explicitly guarantees it to all people born on U.S. soil, but everyone knows Trump isn’t remotely interested in whether something is unconstitutional.

To anyone not enraptured by a racist fantasy of deporting millions of people, the first sentence of the 14th Amendment is extremely clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” If you were born here, regardless of your parents' citizenship status, you’re a citizen.

It’s a practice Trump hates and one he repeatedly lies about, claiming only America has it. That’s been repeatedly debunked, as some three dozen other countries bestow it, including Canada and Mexico. However, even if we were the only country with it, that wouldn’t negate its constitutionality, necessity, or importance.

The 14th was among the Reconstruction Amendments enacted after the Civil War. It guaranteed citizenship to formerly enslaved people, overturning the shameful Dred Scott decision from 1857. In that notorious ruling, the Supreme Court held that a “free Negro” whose ancestors had been brought to this country and then sold into slavery was not a citizen of the United States.

Granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people wasn’t just the right thing to do—it was a necessity in order for the country to move on in unison after the Civil War. Otherwise, former slaveholding states would have remained able to define “citizen” in such a way that would exclude Black people.

The issue these days, of course, is whether that guarantee was limited to the descendants of formerly enslaved people or includes anyone born here, regardless of parentage. For years, lawyer John Eastman has been pushing the idea that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means that the 14th Amendment was not intended to grant automatic citizenship to children of noncitizens because those noncitizens were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

This thought process led Eastman to declare that Vice President Kamala Harris may not be a citizen if her parents were only here with temporary permission under student visas. These days, Eastman is better known as a vociferous proponent of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He is also one of the architects of the fake elector scheme, for which he now faces criminal charges in Arizona and Georgia and disbarment in California. Yeah, that’s definitely the person you want determining who gets to be a citizen.

Trump is currently running around saying that he can end birthright citizenship via an executive order, a stance he’s pushed since 2018. Anyone who made it through high school civics probably knows that an executive order can’t overrule the Constitution, making that plan a bit dicey. Even getting the incoming GOP-led House and Senate to sign on to a bill doesn’t change the Constitution: That takes 38 of the 50 states ratifying an amendment.

Another problem Trump faces is that the Supreme Court already ruled over 100 years ago that a child born to Chinese citizens residing in the country at the time of his birth was a citizen. Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, though, who knows whether that long-standing precedent would hold any sway. It’s easy to imagine the conservative majority buying Fifth Circuit Judge James C. Ho’s brand new argument that undocumented people should be considered “invading aliens” and that birthright citizenship “obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion.”

There’s no precedent or support for this idea; it’s basically something Ho made up out of whole cloth after Trump won the election last month. Ho had previously been an enthusiastic supporter of birthright citizenship, but now that he’s perpetually auditioning for a future Supreme Court seat, he had to figure out a way to align himself with Trump.

None of this means anyone should rest easy and assume the dismantling of birthright citizenship won’t come to some degree of fruition. Eternally ghoulish Trump adviser Stephen Miller has proposed refusing to issue citizenship documents such as passports and social security numbers to children born here but whose parents are not citizens. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Trump went a step further and said he’d just deport children who are citizens along with their undocumented parents because “I don’t want to be breaking up families.”

Speaking of families, Trump critics have pointed out that his children Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Barron were all born to mothers who were not citizens at the time of their births and speculated that Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship would apply to them. That’s a nope, because Trump’s plan would still grant birthright citizenship to children when one of two parents is a citizen. How convenient.

Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship on his first day in office, which likely means the effort will be as chaotic as the Muslim travel ban he threw together a few days after his inauguration in 2017 and was ultimately struck down by the courts. The law will likely catch up with him again, but not before he does some serious damage.

Xenophobia is Trump’s most deeply held principle, and he’ll do anything to indulge it—no matter the consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Behind Donald Trump's New Crypto Scheme: Is This His Shadiest Grift Yet?

While it has been a treat to see the value of shares in Trump Media drop off a cliff, what is much less fun is thinking about how much the whole enterprise distorts democracy.

Before Trump, it would have been impossible to imagine a former president helming a publicly traded company while running for office again. However, the Trump presidency shattered every norm as Trump used his office to line his pockets.

A second Trump presidency will be worse, without a doubt, particularly because the federal courts, now stuffed with Trump appointees, are happily weakening the meager guardrails that remain.

While the name “Trump Media” connotes some sort of multi-faceted media empire, it’s really just Truth Social, Trump’s hard-right social media network. Truth Social is, to put it bluntly, not terribly popular. Its audience keeps plummeting, and even Trump has returned to posting on X, a rival platform with an audience nearly 100 times that of Truth Social. The stock was comically overvalued, pegged at $7 billion despite Truth Social posting millions of dollars of losses and having nearly no revenue.

None of that seems to matter to die-hard Trump fans, who poured money into the stock with what one stock analyst called a “quasi-religious fervor.” They’re happy to excuse the losses, making statements like “I did it more as a statement to President Trump and to show support at the time,” said Teri Lynn Roberson to ABC News. “I wasn't really looking to make a lot of money,” said Roberson, who bought five shares of the company after it went public in March.

That’s probably the best attitude, given that top executives at Trump Media started selling off their shares as soon as possible, eating huge losses in their quest to get out from under the failing stock. Trump still owns his shares, representing roughly 57% of the company. Until Sept. 19, Trump could not sell shares, as he and other company insiders were in a six-month lock-up period. Toward the end of the lock-up period, Trump said he wouldn’t be selling his shares, a statement that goosed the stock price a bit at the time.

In a typical company, this might be seen as a vote of confidence from the founder, a willingness to risk their own fortunes. But Trump has far darker reasons to hold on to his stock. If Trump wins the election, the chances that investors will pony up and buy Trump Media stock increases. People could buy access to the president by throwing money at his company, which he would be running from the White House.

As Abdallah Fayyad explained at Vox, it is easy to imagine someone who has maxed out their campaign contributions deciding to show support for Trump by investing in Trump Media instead. This is, of course, not speculation.

During Trump’s first term, millions of dollars poured into his hotel in Washington, D.C., with Republicans pretending that they were just staying there because it was the most convenient location. However, they’ve barely stayed in that hotel since it changed hands and became a Waldorf Astoria in 2022.

And why would they? It’s no longer a way to show Trump their support by helping him profit financially. Trump has shifted his focus as well, instead selling access to Mar-a-Lago to the tune of $1 million per membership.

Trump Media is an ethical nightmare, but at least it’s a publicly traded company, which comes with transparency and oversight. Trump’s push into the crypto market, on the other hand, is opaque and unregulated—the perfect vehicle for a corrupt former president to get spectacularly more corrupt if he’s elected again.

The crypto project, with the uninspired name of World Liberty Financial, serves as a way for Trump to give all his failsons—now including Barron, who is the “visionary” behind the project—a fake job that still comes with real money. The fact that all of Trump’s adult sons—none of whom have worked in the financial sector—are heading the project is one way to tell that this crypto effort will just be another unserious grift.

— (@)

Additionally, no one seems to actually know what this crypto company will do, even after a two-hour livestream launching the effort. Even Trump doesn’t seem quite sure. When trying to explain it, here’s what he came up with: “Crypto is one of those things we have to do… Whether we like it or not, I have to do it… It's crypto, it's AI, it's some of the other things,” he said in an interview on X. Got it.

Where some of Trump’s other ventures, like Trump steaks, Trump bottled water, and Trump vodka, might have appealed to the masses if they were any good, Trump’s relatively newfound affinity for crypto is wholly tied to that financial sector’s affinity for right-wing politics. It’s also a way for him to court the crypto vote and contrast himself with the Biden-Harris administration, which has cracked down on crypto scams and prosecuted people like Sam Bankman-Fried for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars.

The crypto sector has spent over $100 million during the 2024 election cycle thus far, hoping to usher in an era of less oversight and fewer consumer protections. Trump is the superior political choice if you want less regulation of the financial markets.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court have already seriously dented the Securities and Exchange Commission's ability to address violations by ruling that they must conduct full-fledged jury trials rather than use an in-house administrative process. Those same conservatives also just struck down the Chevron doctrine, which required courts to defer to agency interpretations of statutes.

Under Biden, the current head of the SEC, Gary Gensler, has called the crypto sector “rife with fraud and hucksters and grifters.” If Trump wins in 2024, he could weaken the SEC without legislation or court action simply by installing people who won’t impose fines or pursue scammy crypto companies. That’s not just a giveaway to the crypto bros Trump is courting, though. It would also be a move that lines Trump’s pockets with unregulated crypto cash while in the White House.

Ordinary people can see the obvious problems here. Trump shouldn’t have private business interests while in the White House, period, but all of that went out the window in his first administration. Trump certainly shouldn’t have a private business in a regulated industry like securities when he would have the power to weaken regulations over his own business.

But Trump fans love giving Trump’s businesses money and increasing his personal bottom line. They understand very well that Trump looks favorably at their efforts to funnel him cash. If he wins in November and his nonsense crypto project stays afloat until he takes office in 2025, conservatives—and hucksters and grifters—will have a very easy way to buy off the president with no fear of oversight.

The only way to stop this is to ensure Trump doesn’t win. Of course, he’ll still continue to hawk whatever products will help him fleece his supporters, but at least he won’t be able to do it from the Oval Office.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Blue States Stepping Up Defense Against Republican Abortion Bans

It's tough to remain optimistic about abortion access right now, particularly in the face of such extremes from anti-abortion politicians and activists.

Take, for example, the Idaho Republican Party's refusal to include language in its platform that would allow abortion to save a pregnant person's life. Or the fact that Republicans are floating the idea that if they take the House back in November, they'll pass a federal abortion ban. Or the discussion over whether pregnant women should be allowed to travel to another state to obtain an abortion.

However, some states are moving to increase abortion access for patients and provide protection against prosecution if people are charged with what the texts of anti-abortion laws call "aiding and abetting," or with obtaining an abortion.

New York was one of the first states to take action, passing six bills designed to protect access once it became clear with the leak of the Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that Roe would be overturned.

The state also issued millions of dollars in grants, including $25 million earmarked for an abortion provider support fund that will help increase provider capacity, allowing those providers to serve more patients. In announcing the $25 million grant, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said that anecdotal evidence already pointed to an uptick in the number of patients from both Ohio and Pennsylvania coming to New York. More can be expected as bans in other states go into effect, she said; Ohio now has a six-week ban on the books.

Minnesota is also taking steps to protect abortion access. The state's Democratic governor, Tim Walz, signed an executive order requiring state agencies to protect people who provide or obtain abortions. Further, the executive order states that Minnesota will not assist other states that try to impose criminal or civil liability on someone seeking an abortion in Minnesota.

Earlier this month, a state district court judge overturned several of Minnesota's existing abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period and an "informed consent" requirement. The ruling also means that medication abortions can be offered by a variety of health care providers rather than just by doctors.

Advocates in Minneapolis are pushing the city to budget $800,000 to help fund groups that provide abortion funding and related support. It's vital for Minnesota to increase capacity because it is surrounded by states in which legislators are taking steps to ban or severely limit abortion.

Wisconsin has an 1849 abortion ban still on the books, and anti-abortion politicians argue that it is now in effect in the state. The state's attorney general has gone to court to argue that a 1985 law supersedes the earlier law.

Abortion is now fully banned in South Dakota, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Late last year, California announced it would be a so-called sanctuary state for those in other states seeking abortions. This is especially necessary given that California is surrounded by states with legislatures controlled by anti-abortion politicians such as Arizona, where Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich is pushing to have a Civil War-era abortion ban go into effect.

Clinics in California are hiring additional personnel and expanding hours to make abortion more available. Providers are also coordinating with abortion funds to help provide for ancillary costs, like travel and lodging. Hospitals are working to serve people with high-risk pregnancies who are forced to leave their states to receive care. A UCLA study predicts the state will see an additional 10,600 out-of-state patients seeking abortion care yearly.

Bans and severe restrictions are moving quickly toward enactment in Republican-controlled states. Eight states now have complete bans — Wyoming, South Dakota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama — and a New York Times tracker lists Tennessee and Idaho as states in which bans are expected soon.

As these restrictions move across the landscape, it will be ever more necessary for states that uphold abortion rights to continue to provide access for those in need.

State Bans Force Americans To Seek Abortion Meds Overseas

Right-wing legislators continue to push abortion bans early in pregnancy after the U.S. Supreme Court in January refused to enjoin or overturn S.B. 8, Texas' six-week abortion ban.

Concurrently, conservatives are also putting forward legislation seeking to ban or highly restrict access to medication abortion.

With this, people are beginning to look to providers outside the United States to access abortion pills.

Abortion access has plummeted in Texas after the state passed a ban on the procedure at six weeks that includes an enforcement mechanism allowing anyone anywhere to sue someone who "aids or abets" another person in obtaining after the prescribed time period.

In August 2021, there were over 5,400 abortions in the state, but that number dropped to 2,200, a decrease of 60%, in September 2021.

Although Texas has said it will release more statewide data monthly, as of early February 2022, only the September 2021 numbers were available.

At the same time that Texas made in-person abortion nearly impossible to access, the state also moved to cut off access to medication abortion pills. A law passed in December 2021 makes it a criminal offense resulting in possible fines of up to $10,000 and the threat of jail time for anyone who prescribes medication abortion pills remotely, through the mail or via telemedicine.

Even though Texas is attacking abortion access on all fronts, people in the state still need abortions. Seven surrounding states have seen a huge uptick in the number of Texans — an average of 1,400 per month — obtaining abortions in at least 34 clinics outside of the state.

Other people appear to be turning to providers outside of the United States for medication abortion pills. Aid Access, an international nonprofit that assists people in obtaining medication abortions, saw requests from Texas jump from a daily average of 10.8 per day to 137.7 per day immediately after S.B. 8 passed.

Aid Access, along with similar groups, such as Plan C Pills, use non-U.S. prescribers and providers to get abortion pills to people in states that have blocked access to medication abortion. This could become more widespread as more states pass restrictive abortion bans, some of which include restrictions on telehealth prescribing and mailing of abortion pills.

For example, on Jan. 1 of this year, Alabama began barring the use of telehealth for medication abortions, forcing people who are unable to travel to a clinic for the pills to seek a source outside the state. South Dakota is also pushing for an in-person requirement for people to obtain the pills. In South Dakota, that's especially problematic because the state has only one abortion provider, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls. A person living across the state from that city would have to drive for nearly five hours one way just to obtain a prescription for the medication.

Access to abortion is about to decrease in other places as well. Florida just banned all abortions after 15 weeks, and Idaho looks set to pass a six-week ban soon. If Texas is any guide, that will lead to a sharp decrease in abortions in those states, but an increase in the number of people obtaining the procedure outside of those states.

However, accessing abortion pills via non-U.S. providers is not necessarily without legal risk. Plan C Pills has a section on its website that details a possible issue, which is that a person could be prosecuted for obtaining abortion pills in a state where those pills are restricted. But it says the risk of prosecution is rare: Plan C Pills notes that in the last 20 years, 24 people have been prosecuted for self-managing abortions during a period in which around 100,000 people have self-managed abortions.

The website Repro Legal Healthline also provides information on possible legal risks. At this point, the site notes that it isn't aware of any case in which a person was arrested or investigated solely for ordering abortion pills online. That said, it states that there are at least four cases in which a person who ordered abortion pills online was later criminally charged for self-managing their abortion, and the fact that they had ordered medication abortion pills online was used against them.

The necessity of accessing abortion pills from prescribers and pharmacies outside the United States will likely only continue to increase as states continue to pass bans and tighten access to medication abortion. The number of self-managed abortions will likely continue to rise, as will the number of people seeking abortions in states that are preserving access.

As Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder, president, and CEO of the abortion provider Whole Woman's Health, put it, "The same amount of people still need abortions as they did before they started all these bans."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Radical New Hampshire Republicans Seek To Kill Reproductive Healthcare

New Hampshire has long had a history of supporting abortion rights, but that's changed. Now, clinics that provide abortion in the state are being denied funding, and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu — who claimed to be "pro-choice" when he ran for re-election in 2018 — signed into law the first abortion ban in the state's history last month.

The move to undermine funding for clinics that provide abortions began last year, when New Hampshire's Executive Council, which must approve all state contracts, added an audit provision for clinics that receive money from the state's family planning program. The council alleged, despite much evidence proving otherwise, that state funds were being used for abortions at places like Planned Parenthood, which is illegal in New Hampshire.

There was no question the imposition of an audit provision was designed to delay — or strip — funding to the clinics. The timing of the audit provision requirement ensured that clinics would not receive money before the start of the next fiscal year. At the time, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services warned the Republican-controlled Executive Council that non-abortion care like breast cancer screenings would be severely disrupted by cutting off these funds.

Even though all the clinics have undergone audit proceedings, the Executive Council denied them funding in September, December, and again earlier this week.

In September, while the audits were still in process, the Council refused to approve contracts for clinics despite the state's Health and Human Services Commissioner, Lori Shibinette, saying all state providers were in compliance and none of them used public funds for abortions.

In December, the audits were complete and confirmed no commingling of funds. Indeed, Shibinette explained to the Council that the audit found the state "doesn't even pay enough to fund their regular family planning," much less subsidizing any abortion services. However, the audits did find other minor financial issues, but nothing related to using government funds for abortion.

The clinics then addressed these audit issues and corrected all problems, which the state confirmed. Still, it didn't matter. Earlier this week, the Executive Council voted yet again to deny funding. David Wheeler, who has led the charge against funding the clinics, said there wasn't enough evidence that state money wasn't being used to fund abortions even with an audit. When Shibinette asked Wheeler and the other Republicans on the Executive Council what information would be sufficient to satisfy them, they had no answer.

As Republicans on the Executive Council strangle clinic funding, other anti-choice Republicans in the state have rammed through new laws that restrict access to abortion. Republicans attached the abortion bills to the state budget, which required Sununu to agree to the bills or veto the entire budget mid-pandemic.

As of Jan. 1, 2022, the state has its first gestational ban ever, which bars abortions after 24 weeks and has no exceptions for the pregnant person's health.

Now, providers who perform an abortion after the 24-week mark could face both civil and criminal penalties, including being charged with a felony. If married to the mother, a father can also obtain monetary damages if the pregnant person has an abortion after 24 weeks.

There's also an ultrasound requirement. If people seek abortions in the early stages of their pregnancies, ultrasounds are internal, not external. This means pregnant people have to undergo vaginal penetration with a camera and, if they are uninsured, pay around $400 for the process.

Republicans, who control both legislative chambers in the state, aren't stopping with a 24-week abortion ban or an ultrasound requirement. They've drafted new bills, including a so-called "heartbeat" ban, which functions as a six-week ban on abortion. Another law Republicans are pushing would allow biological fathers to ask a court to prohibit their partners from having abortions.

What all this shows is that abortion access is precarious even in states where there has been a historic commitment to ensuring that abortions remain legal and accessible. If abortion opponents continue to control New Hampshire's Legislature and governorship, the state will likely pass even more laws restricting access.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

The Supreme Court Abortion Case That Nobody Is Discussing Now

When it comes to abortion cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, all eyes have been on Texas and Mississippi. However, a Kentucky case that has largely flown under the radar represents yet another attack on abortion rights.

In 2018, Kentucky passed a law banning the dilation and extraction method of performing an abortion. That method is the most common procedure for second-trimester abortions, in part because, as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists explains, it is "medically preferred because it results in the fewest complications ... compared to alternative procedures."

Both the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, an abortion provider in the state. During the lower court proceedings, the Kentucky attorney general's office took no position on the law, saying only that it was not the entity that could enforce the ban. The office then moved to be dismissed from the case, and that was granted.

When the case was at the trial court, Andy Beshear, a Democrat who is now the governor of Kentucky, was the attorney general. Now, though, the attorney general for the state is a conservative Republican, Daniel Cameron. As legal counsel to then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Cameron helped shepherd conservative judges through the confirmation process. He also made then-President Donald Trump's 2020 list of potential Supreme Court nominees, despite his actual legal experience being relatively slim.

Cameron has made no secret of being anti-choice, backing a "pro-life constitutional amendment" for the state. He also joined an amicus brief supporting Mississippi's 15-week previability abortion ban, which the Supreme Court will hear on Dec. 1.

Cameron's case, which will be heard on Tuesday, isn't strictly an abortion case. Rather, Cameron is arguing simply that his is the office that has the power to defend a state law — even if his office previously agreed to be dismissed.

No other state entity wants to defend the law because Beshear has blocked previous anti-choice moves by Cameron.

At the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill that would have granted Cameron greater authority over abortion clinics. Beshear vetoed it. At the start of 2021, the legislature passed a similar bill, and Beshear vetoed it again, but the veto was overridden. The legislation allows Cameron to directly seek both criminal and civil penalties against abortion providers, even though Cameron's office doesn't directly regulate other sorts of health care. In fact, Cameron can now seek those penalties even if the agency regulating health care in the state, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, disagrees.

Against this backdrop, Cameron is asking the Supreme Court to allow him to intervene to defend the dilation and extraction ban, despite the fact he is the only entity in the state that wants to defend it. If the Supreme Court lets him, he'll get to attempt to revive that ban. Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit upheld a similar ban passed in Texas.

Trump was able to put six judges on the Sixth Circuit during his term, so that circuit may be amenable to such a ban as well.

In the end, Cameron's maneuvers are part and parcel of a full-court press from anti-abortion activists. The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks the passage of abortion restrictions, found that over 1,800 anti-choice bills have been introduced thus far in 2021, and 105 restrictions have been passed. With a Supreme Court that appears receptive to anti-abortion laws, Cameron may get his way.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Republicans Push Texas-Style Abortion Bans Across Country

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Last week, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a Texas law that is the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. With that green light, other states are lining up to pass similar laws, and at this time, there isn't much way to stop them.

Anti-choice legislators in four states — Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, and South Dakota — have already stated they will follow Texas's lead. They're planning on introducing bills that will mirror both the restrictive nature of Texas's law — a ban on abortion at six weeks — and the unique enforcement mechanism, which allows any citizen to sue someone who aids or abets an abortion. Several other states, including Nebraska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Ohio, will likely be considering similar laws.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis, the anti-abortion GOP governor, said his state would "look more significantly" at the Texas law and that he found it "interesting." In South Carolina, Larry Grooms, a GOP state senator, said the state would "move to pass legislation that would mirror what Texas did."

Jason Rapert, a GOP state senator in Arkansas who is mounting a lieutenant governor bid in that state for 2022, immediately posted a model bill from his organization, the National Organization of Christian Lawmakers. Rapert has stated he will file a Texas-style bill in his state immediately.

Rapert's Twitter feed makes clear that some legislators pushing bills that functionally outlaw abortion no longer feel tethered to whether those bills are good law under existing Supreme Court precedent. Instead, Rapert tweets about how the left has an "unrelenting demand for the innocent sacrifices of unborn children" and repeatedly refers to abortion as a "demonic force."

One day after the Texas law took effect, GOP Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota tweeted her office would "immediately review the new TX law and current South Dakota laws to make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books in SD."

Noem's tweet is emblematic of the approach being taken by many abortion-hostile states. There's no discussion of what the voters might want. There's no belief that the existing restrictive laws might be enough — even in a state like South Dakota with only one clinic that offers abortions only twice per month. Rather, there's a rush toward imitating the Texas law simply because it is the most restrictive that has yet succeeded.

The states that have announced their intentions to replicate the law so swiftly may be taken by the notion that since the Texas law offloads enforcement from the state to private citizens, it insulates the state from lawsuits. States likeSouth Carolina and Arkansas just saw courts block their highly restrictive abortion laws. However, if they took those laws and "piggybacked" the Texas enforcement scheme onto them, a court might have to let the law stand, given that the Supreme Court did so in Texas.

There exists a chance that the Texas law will be overturned once it is completely litigated, as what happened at the Supreme Court was only that the court refused to block the law from taking effect. Indeed, some anti-abortion groups have stated they will continue to focus on the Mississippi 15-week pre-viability ban that the Supreme Court is set to hear this term. However, all that really means is that anti-abortion activists have more than one opportunity to utterly undo Roe v. Wade.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Biden HHS Nominee Becerra Expected To Restore Reproductive Rights

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Xavier Becerra, currently California's attorney general, to be his head of Health and Human Services. While much of Becerra's work at HHS will focus on the pandemic, his nomination represents an opportunity to restore reproductive health and abortion rights.

Much of the discussion of the future of abortion is focused on the Supreme Court, thanks to the 6-3 majority of hardline anti-abortion justices. However, there are regulatory steps that Becerra would be able to take that can help increase access to abortion, even as Roe v. Wade is attacked in the courts.

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Aborted Stem Cells Produced Trump's 'Miracle Cure' For Covid-19

When Donald Trump went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment for the coronavirus, he benefited from a treatment that's not yet available to the public.

The antibody treatment from Regeneron, which Trump is now claiming "cured" him without evidence, has yet to be approved by the Federal Drug Administration. It's also derived from stem cell research.

That might be unremarkable but for the fact that Trump's administration has done everything it can to block research that relies on stem cells and fetal tissue. Trump's anti-abortion evangelical base is deeply opposed to research that relies on either of these because they have a tenuous connection to abortion.

Regeneron's embryonic stem cell line was cultured from fetal tissue from an abortion. Fetal tissue research uses material that would otherwise be discarded and is obtained with the consent of people who have abortions.

Just last month, a group of 94 anti-abortion legislators thanked Trump for "his efforts to support pro-life policies" and requested that he "end taxpayer funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)." The group's press release said there was no proof of a "single patient's life being saved through embryonic stem cell treatments."

Similarly, James Sherley, who works for the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute, said any fetal tissue research is unethical if it "even in a small part contribut[es] to motivating elective abortions."

In 2018, a workshop at the National Institutes of Health concluded that fetal tissue research was the "gold standard" for many critical studies. In response, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, said federal officials who promised fetal tissue research would continue were "out of step with the President's pro-life agenda" and that fetal tissue research "involve[d] harvesting the body parts of unborn children from induced abortion."

Dannenfelser and other anti-abortion activists prevailed. The administration created a Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board composed mostly of people who have publicly opposed fetal tissue and embryonic stem cell research. The board voted to reject 13 of 14 applications.

This extremely restrictive view is shared by Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. She's on record calling for doctors to be prosecuted for discarding unused or frozen embryos.

At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, an NIH researcher appealed to top officials to use fetal tissue to research potential coronavirus treatments. There's no record that he was ever allowed to do so. The researcher worked at the same laboratory, the Rocky Mountain Lab, where in 2018 the Trump administration put a halt to HIV research that would have used fetal tissue. The ban on fetal tissue research also hamstrings vital Alzheimer's and cancer research.

Even as he promises that hundreds of thousands of doses of Regeneron will be available, Trump has continued to rail against abortion, tweeting that Democrats are "fully in favor of (very) LATE TERM ABORTION, right up until the time of birth, and beyond—which would be execution." Last month, he went after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, saying that Northam, a Democrat, "is in favor of executing babies after birth."

Democrats do not favor abortion up until the moment of birth, nor do they favor executing babies.

It seems Trump is comfortable discarding his high-profile antipathy toward stem cell and fetal tissue research when it benefits him.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Trump Court Nominee Would Jail Doctors Who Provide Reproductive Services To Women

It's well known that Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, is anti-abortion. However, her views on other reproductive health issues, including fertilization and embryos, go far beyond merely opposing abortion. Indeed, she once signed onto a full-page ad that called for prosecuting doctors not just for performing abortions, but for discarding unused or frozen embryos.

During her 2017 confirmation hearings for her seat on the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Barrett gave the same type of vague, noncommittal answer that has become the hallmark of conservative judicial nominees: "All nominees are united in their belief that what they think about a precedent should not bear on how they decide cases."

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While Nominating Biden In Virtual Rollcall, Democrats Showcase America’s Beauty

The 2020 Democratic convention's roll call vote for its presidential nominee was an entirely new experience. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, states got to nominate Vice President Joe Biden from their home turf, and it was an opportunity to see the best of the country.

In what was termed the "Roll Call Across America," people from Alabama to Puerto Rico to Washington and, of course, Delaware. cast their votes for Joe Biden.

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Despite Pro-Choice Ruling, Supreme Court Still Threatens Abortion Rights

On Monday, abortion rights yet again narrowly survived another trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the majority holding that Louisiana's law requiring physicians to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the court, but his concurrence makes clear he still supports making abortions very difficult to get.

Louisiana's admitting privilege law was nearly the exact same restriction Texas had enacted in 2013. That law was the subject of a case, Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, that the court decided four years ago.

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Anti-Abortion Politics Blocks Research On COVID-19 Vaccine

Donald Trump is angling for a cure to the coronavirus outbreak, but thanks to his hardline anti-abortion stance, he’s not interested enough to allow government researchers to use fetal tissue to help fight the virus.

Fetal tissue is obtained with the consent of people who have abortions, making it a frequent target of anti-abortion politicians.

A government immunologist at a National Institutes of Health laboratory has been asking the NIH to lift the ban on fetal tissue research during the pandemic. The Trump administration imposed that ban last year, despite the fact that fetal tissue research is vital.

Trump is very eager to show the world that the United States has a vaccine for the coronavirus. He reportedly tried to get a German company to make a vaccine for America only, an effort the German government wholeheartedly rejected.

On Thursday, he did a press conference where he bragged about a potential vaccine, a claim the FDA had to immediately rebut, noting that it hasn’t approved the drug for that use.

But the one thing he won’t do, apparently, is allow a promising line of research to continue because it relies on fetal tissue.

Researchers who spoke to the Washington Post explained that nongovernmental scientists have made significant strides using fetal tissue in research on coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. Those researchers have offered to work with the NIH to infect to run experiments on potential treatments.

However, none of that can happen because one of Trump’s key goals is appeasing anti-abortion hardliners. That was evident from his choice of Mike Pence as his running mate, and together he and Pence have decimated abortion access, including barring Title X federal funds going to any organization that even discusses abortion with patients.

High-profile anti-abortion groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List have gotten unprecedented access to the White House to push a radical anti-abortion agenda. This underpins the recent campaign by Trump and Republican lawmakers to promote lies about later abortions being akin to “infanticide,” along with the recent flurry of “abortion survivor protection” bills meant to threaten doctors who perform the procedure.

In actuality, fetal tissue research is highly regulated. The National Institutes of Health provides guidance on how fetal tissue may be obtained and used. There are federal laws that specifically prohibit acquiring or transferring any fetal tissue for profit. Anyone that supplies fetal tissue has to show that informed consent was obtained when the tissue is collected.

Using fetal tissue a new idea. Researchers have used it since the 1930s and fetal tissue led to developing a polio vaccine. It’s also been used to test the efficacy of the German measles vaccine.

In an ironic twist, fetal tissue is also used to help understand fetal development, and may ultimately result in a decrease in miscarriages. Fetal tissue has been used in research to help treat immune system mismatches between the mother and fetus, detect genetic and metabolic diseases in the fetus, and to help develop techniques to treat hypertension and heart disease in mothers.

However, in June of last year, the Health and Human Services Department abruptly ended the ability of scientists to use fetal tissue in medical research. Those researchers were looking into diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s — diseases that affect millions of Americans.

Now, Trump’s anti-abortion obsession is blocking research into a cure for a deadly pandemic.

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The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
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