Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold a hearing on Tuesday to present recently obtained evidence, the panel said in a statement.

The hearing will be held at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT), the committee said on Monday. Details on witnesses or the topic were not immediately provided.

Congress is on recess until early July before the upcoming July 4 Independence Day holiday, and the panel had not been expected to hold further hearings until next month.

The committee has held five hearings on the deadly attack last year when former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed Congress as it sought to formalize Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over the Republican in the 2020 presidential election.

Panel chairman Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said the panel would hold additional hearings after the first five. “Those hearings have spurred an influx of new information that the committee and our investigators are working to assess,” he said on Thursday.

Many of Trump’s fellow Republicans have testified as the committee laid out what it said was Trump’s seven-part plan to overturn the election. Multiple aides or officials close to Trump, however, have refused to cooperate.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — During Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris asked the judge if he thought women’s privacy rights extended to choosing to have an abortion. Kavanaugh declined to answer.

With Justice Kavanaugh now part of the court majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and the senator now the vice president, Harris is warning that the court’s decision could trigger some of the same far-reaching privacy limitations she warned of during those hearings.

Taking to the issue with a passion linked both to her personal and professional background, Harris has spent recent weeks sounding the alarm that upending Roe could create precedent for new restrictions on everything from contraception and in vitro fertilization to gay marriage and the right to vote.

Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to validate such concerns, writing in a concurring opinion to the larger ruling on Roe that the high court “should reconsider” past decisions on access to contraception and same-sex marriage.

Harris has been a leading Biden administration voice on abortion rights since early May, when a leaked draft opinion previewed Roe v. Wade’s nullification. She was flying to Illinois for a maternal health event when the final decision was announced last week, and read it while still in the air — quickly shifting the focus of her planned remarks to the ruling.

The decision “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same sex marriage, the right to interracial message,” Harris told her audience Friday at a suburban YMCA, adding that it would spark a “health care crisis.”

Becoming a leading voice on abortion access could be a better fit for Harris after President Joe Biden tasked her with overseeing other thorny issues that haven’t gone well: immigration and expanding voting rights. Sweeping legislation on both issues has stalled in Congress, prompting some advocates to say the vice president and the White House should’ve done more.

Harris symbolically presiding over the Senate didn’t stop Republicans from blocking efforts to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law before the court’s ruling overturning it. But Democrats are hoping anger around the issue will energize their base for the November midterm elections, when the party faces steep headwinds.

Getting straight to the politics of the matter after the ruling was announced, Harris said, “You have the power to elect leaders who will defend and protect your rights. With your vote, you can act. And you have the final word.”

After a Texas law effectively banned abortion in the state in the fall, Harris met providers and patients, which her office believes is the first time abortion providers have visited the White House. She stressed then that gender discrimination persists, saying that “women’s full participation in our nation” was still only a goal, not a reality.

After the draft Supreme Court opinion leaked, the vice president convened a virtual discussion with doctors and nurses providing abortion care in states with strict restrictions and met with Democratic attorneys general from states supportive of reproductive rights.

Biden has also forcefully defended abortion rights and warned that other rights are now at risk. But as a observant Catholic, he hasn’t always had a strong record on the issue.

Harris, the first female vice president and California’s former top prosecutor, brings unique personal perspective and legal expertise to the issue.

“Seeing women fight on behalf of other women is just very true to the core of who she is,” said Jacqueline Ayers, senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She added that Harris has framed the issue to underscore “the disparity that it creates on Black and brown communities, and for people who are living with low income.”

Ayers said the high court’s action has allowed the vice president to highlight how she’s used her office to listen to women and advocate for improving their health care — perhaps even in ways Biden can’t.

“It’s not necessarily a wedge, it’s just a continuation of someone who has really staked their career around the issues that are key and drivers for them,” Ayers said of differences between Harris and Biden.

Rev. John Dorhauer, the general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, attended a recent virtual meeting on abortion rights that Harris hosted, and suggested she’s been less afraid than some top Democrats to advocate forcefully on the issue.

“To hear that from one of the highest offices in the land is incredibly encouraging,” Dorhauer said.

But some abortion opponents argue that Harris has hurt her cause by equating abortion access with other, more routine medical care.

“She has become emblematic of the abortion absolutism on the other side,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which advocates for women who oppose abortion in politics.

As a senator, Harris introduced legislation to improve maternal health. During a 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate, then-candidate Harris said it was “outrageous” that abortion had been overshadowed by other issues, despite a woman’s right to the procedure being “under full-on attack” even then.

The vice president most forcefully signaled the outspoken role when she declared a day after the draft opinion leaked in May: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women, well, we say, how dare they?”

She then used subsequent weeks to argue that undermining Roe v. Wade could soon wipe out other key privacy rights — the same theme she raised during Kavanaugh’s hearing.

Harris says many states moving to fully ban abortion could restrict in vitro fertilization if legislatures argue that human life begins at fertilization. They could prohibit contraception methods, including intrauterine devices and the “morning after” pill, she argued.

Law enforcement might scrutinize data collected from millions of women who use menstrual cycle tracking apps, or those doing internet searches on getting abortions in other states, the vice president said.

Also ultimately at stake, Harris maintains, is the legalization of gay marriage, noting that states with the strictest abortion laws often also have past LGBTQ prohibitions that the Supreme Court could revive. Once those rights have fallen, the argument goes, voting rights could be next. She convened a recent meeting with privacy experts to discuss the matter.

“That slippery slope is really slippery,” said one of the meeting’s participants, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the women and democracy fellow at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice in New York. “We’re barreling right down it right now.”

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told attendees to be prepared for “the coming of a new Jane Crow,” as efforts to limit abortion begin to emulate antiquated laws that once sanctioned open discrimination against Black people.

Dannenfelser countered that Harris and others are exaggerating, saying the current Supreme Court is “the least likely to do what she’s saying. They believe in the rule of law.”

“It’s intended to scare people and to build a coalition on the other side outside of the abortion issue,” Dannenfelser said.

Harris’ office says she is indeed building a coalition, but it will be one of people who believe that Roe v. Wade’s effects far exceeded abortion, and not just for women. To help drive home that point, Harris met recently in Los Angeles with religious leaders, noting that “to support Roe v. Wade, and all it stands for, does not mean giving up your beliefs.”

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For AP’s full coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, go to https://apnews.com/hub/abortion

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(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued another significant ruling broadening religious rights, siding with a Christian former public high school football coach in Washington state who sued after being suspended from his job for refusing to stop leading prayers with players on the field after games.

The court, especially its conservative bloc, has taken a wide view of religious liberty in numerous cases in recent years. Here is a look at some of the cases involving religious rights decided during its current term, which began in October.

KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT

In the case decided on Monday, the court ruled 6-3 in favor of Joseph Kennedy, who until 2015 served as a part-time assistant football coach in the city of Bremerton. The justices rejected the local school district’s concerns that in a public school setting Kennedy’s prayers and Christian-infused speeches could be seen as coercive to students or a governmental endorsement of a particular religion in violation of the First Amendment’s so-called establishment clause. The justices overturned a lower court’s ruling siding with the school district.

CARSON V. MAKIN

In a 6-3 decision on June 21, the court endorsed more public funding of religious entities as it sided with two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private religious schools. The justices overturned a lower court ruling that had rejected the families’ claims of religious discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion. Maine’s program provides public funds for tuition at private high schools of a family’s choice in sparsely populated areas lacking public secondary schools. Maine required eligible schools to be “nonsectarian,” excluding those promoting a particular religion and presenting material “through the lens of that faith.”

SHURTLEFF V. BOSTON

The court ruled 9-0 on May 2 that Boston violated the free speech rights of a Christian group by refusing to fly a flag bearing the image of a cross at City Hall as part of a program that let private groups use the flagpole while holding events in the plaza below. The justices decided that the city violated free speech rights protected under the First Amendment of the Christian group Camp Constitution and its director Harold Shurtleff. Boston had argued that raising the cross flag as Camp Constitution requested under a flag-raising program aimed at promoting diversity and tolerance in the city could appear to violate another part of the First Amendment that bars governmental endorsement of a particular religion. The justices overturned a lower court ruling in favor of Boston.

RAMIREZ V. COLLIER

The court ruled 8-1 on March 24 that Texas must grant a convicted murderer on death row his request to have his Christian pastor lay hands on him and audibly pray during his execution, bolstering the religious rights of condemned inmates. The justices overturned a lower court’s decision against John Henry Ramirez, who appealed the state’s rejection of his request for pastoral touch and prayer while he dies from lethal injection. Ramirez was sentenced to death for a fatal 2004 stabbing outside a convenience store.

(Compiled by Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama’s Republican Party has declared a tie in the primary race for a state Senate seat and says the winner will be chosen by lot.

A state party news release says the party’s Candidate Committee held a hearing Saturday and said the District 27 primary race between Auburn City Councilman Jay Hovey and incumbent Tom Whatley was officially a tie. It said the winner would be determined in accordance with the state election code.

News outlets reported that the committee held the hearing after provisional ballots were counted in the already close primary race and Hovey appeared to be ahead by only a single vote. The party did not release a reason for its decision.

Hovey in a message to The Montgomery Advertiser on Saturday night accused the party of counting an unregistered voter to bring the race to a tie.

“Certainly every vote is important and it’s unfortunate if anyone is mistaken that they are registered to vote,” Hovey wrote. It was unclear if he would challenge the decision.

The state election code says that in the event of a tie in a legislative race, the Secretary of State shall decide the winner by lot.

The district covers Tallapoosa, Lee and Russell counties. The GOP news release did not provide details on when the winner would be selected or the method to be used.

The Opelika-Auburn News reports that one method of deciding a tie by lot is to have the candidates draw slips of paper with one of them being marked as the winner.

“It could be a roll of a dice, high card, or rock-paper-scissors,” Secretary of State John Merrill told AL.com.

Whoever is declared the winner of the primary will run against Democrat candidate Sherri Reese of Opelika in the general election in November. Reese was unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democrats looking to unseat Republican Sen. Ron Johnson focused their attacks on him Sunday, and not each other, as the eight candidates made their case to party activists at the state convention held six weeks before the primary.

The Democratic Senate candidates blasted Johnson for his attempt to deliver fake Republican Electoral College ballots to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, his skepticism over COVID-19 vaccines, his voting for a tax law that benefited him, and his support for overturning Roe v. Wade.

The race in Wisconsin, which Donald Trump carried in 2016 but President Joe Biden won in 2020, could determine which party control the Senate. Polls show a tight Democratic primary between Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Alex Lasry, who is on leave from his job as an executive for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Barnes highlighted his upbringing in a “hard working union household” in Milwaukee and contrasted that with Johnson, who is a millionaire and former owner of a plastics company.

“It feels like the deck is stacked against us,” Barnes said at the convention in La Crosse. “We don’t want a hand out, we just want a fair shot. And we know we will never get that fair shot as long as Ron Johnson is in the Senate.”

Lasry, a millionaire, touted his union support, his work to build the Fiserv Forum where the Bucks play and his role getting the Democratic National Convention to be in Milwaukee in 2020. He also contrasted himself with Johnson and blasted him for not fighting to persuade Oshkosh Defense to locate 1,000 jobs in Wisconsin rather than South Carolina.

“He’s attacked organized labor,” Lasry said. “Spread lies about COVID. Tried to overthrow the government. And he’s even advocating to ship Wisconsin jobs to South Carolina.”

Other candidates include state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, political organizer Steven Olikara, restaurant owner Kou Lee, state emergency management administrator Darrell Williams and attorney Peter Peckarsky.

Godlewski, the only woman in the race, said she would work to pass a law legalizing abortion now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade.

“If we had more Democratic women at that U.S. Senate table, we would have gotten this done a long time ago,” Godlewski said.

Nelson, who has tried to run a humor-infused, folksy campaign similar to former Sen. Russ Feingold’s first bid for office 30 years ago, had some of the strongest words for Johnson, calling him a “lying, treason-loving, woman-hating, Putin stooge.”

He likened his own candidacy to a “strong Wisconsin beer,” holding up a bottle of Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewing Co. and compared the other Democratic candidates to a bottle of Bud Light.

Olikara, running his first campaign for office, emphasized his work leading the Millennial Action Project, which lobbied Congress to enact bipartisan legislation. He said the best ideas in Congress should be coming from regular people, “not the big money special interests.”

The candidate were largely united on the issues, voicing support not for abortion rights, also gun control, ending the Senate filibuster, expanding voter rights and fighting climate change.

The winner of the Aug. 9 primary will advance to face Johnson, who is seeking a third term after previously promising to not run again. Johnson is also one of Trump’s loudest backers and has been endorsed by the former president. He has espoused conspiracy theories related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and attempted to shift blame for what happened away from Trump supporters.

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This version corrects that Nelson compared some of the other Democrats, not Johnson, to Bud Light.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Seven states are set to host primary elections Tuesday as the nation comes to terms with last week’s stunning Supreme Court ruling eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion.

This week’s nominating contests could offer the first clues as to whether the political landscape has shifted. Abortion is particularly relevant in Colorado, where GOP voters are deciding whether to nominate a rare abortion-rights-supporting Republican for U.S. Senate.

And in Illinois, a Donald Trump-backed congresswoman ignited a political firestorm over the weekend by celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade as “a victory for white life,” phrasing that her spokesman later called a “stumble” and was meant to be “right to life.”

The primaries will also offer new insight about the state of the Republican Party, with the central issue in virtually every GOP contest being fealty to Trump and his baseless conspiracy theories. Those Republicans who have pushed back at all, including a senator in Oklahoma and a congressman in Mississippi, are facing fierce challenges.

Democrats have their own challenges. Illinois voters will decide a rare incumbent-on-incumbent primary for a House seat, while in South Carolina, Democrats are picking which candidate will take on South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott this fall.

In all, primary elections are playing out across Colorado, Illinois, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah on Tuesday. Nebraska is holding a special election.

What to watch:

COLORADO

GOP businessman Joe O’Dea, who has spoken publicly about his support for abortion rights, is running for the nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet this fall. O’Dea’s top rival is state Rep. Ron Hanks, who opposes abortion in all circumstances and attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

O’Dea said he backs a ban on late-term abortions and government funding of abortions, but the decision to terminate a pregnancy in the initial months is “between a person and their God.”

While Colorado has trended Democratic over the past decade, Tuesday’s top Republican primary contests will show whether far-right candidates are making progress in their quest to take on uncontested Democrats like Bennet, Gov. Jared Polis and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s led the national fight against 2020 election deniers.

One of them is Republican Tina Peters, a conspiracy-theorist county elections clerk who’s been indicted for tampering with voting equipment and posting data online. Peters wants to unseat Griswold as Colorado’s top elections official despite calls from the state GOP for Peters to suspend her campaign. She’s running against Republican Pam Anderson, a former head of the state’s clerks association and defender of Colorado’s mail-in elections system.

Colorado’s congressional primaries will measure the staying power of first-term GOP firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert in a sprawling western Colorado district that leans more Republican after redistricting. She’s up against state Sen. Don Coram, a hemp farmer and GOP moderate.

In the Republican race to take on Polis, a former suburban Denver mayor, Greg Lopez, is facing Heidi Ganahl, the lone statewide-elected Republican as a University of Colorado regent.

ILLINOIS

As he is in most GOP contests, Trump is a central issue in Illinois’ Republican primary for governor.

Darren Bailey, a conservative farmer who earned Trump’s endorsement over the weekend and often reads from the Bible in campaign videos, is part of a six-candidate Republican field. His rivals include Richard Irvin, the first Black mayor of Illinois’ second-largest suburb, who had $50 million in support from billionaire Ken Griffin but was heavily targeted by Democrats who see Bailey as an easier matchup for Pritzker.

While Trump endorsed Bailey, he also campaigned alongside first-term Rep. Mary Miller, who is challenging five-term Rep. Rodney Davis in one of the state’s two incumbent-on-incumbent primaries.

But at Saturday’s rally, Miller described the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade as “a victory for white life.” A spokesperson later said she had intended to say the decision was a victory for a “right to life.”

But the Illinois congresswoman is no stranger to provocative statements. Soon after joining the House, Miller quoted Adolf Hitler, saying he was right to say that “whoever has the youth has the future.”

Davis is a powerful, more moderate lawmaker who is the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, which deals with election legislation and the Capitol complex.

Meanwhile, two Democratic incumbents — Reps. Sean Casten and Marie Newman — are facing off for a Chicago-area seat. Also on the Democratic side, about two dozen candidates are fighting to succeed Rep. Bobby Rush, the only lawmaker to ever defeat Barack Obama. They include John Jackson, son of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Karin Norington-Reaves, who has Rush’s endorsement.

NEW YORK

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was vaulted into office last fall when Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal, is trying to hold on to her job.

Hochul, a Democrat from western New York, is facing challenges from New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and Rep. Tom Suozzi, a moderate congressman from Long Island.

Tuesday’s elections cover New York’s statewide offices and state assembly races, but primary elections for U.S. House seats and the state Senate will be held Aug. 23. Those elections were delayed because of a redistricting lawsuit that led a court to throw out new political maps.

Hochul, who was Cuomo’s lieutenant governor for six years, promised to restore New Yorkers’ faith in its government after stepping into the office last summer, but she hit a major stumbling block in April, when her handpicked lieutenant governor was arrested in a federal corruption probe.

Williams, a progressive running to Hochul’s left, said Hochul is either “consistently shamefully out of the loop, or shamefully enabling through her inaction.” Suozzi, running to Hochul’s right, says she’s not being tough enough on crime, suggesting she should have gone further to harden the state’s bail law.

On the Republican side, Rep. Lee Zeldin is considered the front-runner in a crowded field that features Andrew Giuliani, the son of New York City’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani; Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino; and businessman Harry Wilson. Former Vice President Mike Pence has endorsed Zeldin, who also enjoys the backing of the state GOP and Conservative Party, but Trump has stayed out of the race.

UTAH

The Republican primary for U.S. Senate pits one of Trump’s closest allies, GOP incumbent Sen. Mike Lee, against two challengers who have spent months questioning Lee’s loyalty to the former president.

Former state lawmaker Becky Edwards and political operative Ally Isom have attacked Lee as a divisive politician who cares less about governing than about television appearances and winning Trump’s favor. Unlike Lee, neither voted for Trump in 2020.

Both Republican challengers have highlighted the post-election text messages Lee sent to Trump’s chief of staff, which show his early involvement in efforts to overturn the election. Edwards has also stood out by saying she disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to revisit Roe v. Wade.

The Senate primary is testing whether Trump’s brand of divisive politics and conspiracy theories resonates with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who make up a majority of Utah’s population.

In November, the winner will take on independent Evan McMullin, a former Republican who won backing from the state Democratic Party in April.

MISSISSIPPI

Congressional primary runoffs are rare in Mississippi, but on Tuesday, two of the state’s Republican incumbents are fighting to keep their jobs in runoffs against challengers from their own party.

Rep. Steven Palazzo is seeking a seventh term and was considered vulnerable after being accused in a 2021 congressional ethics report of abusing his office by misspending campaign funds.

Rep. Michael Guest is seeking a third term. He voted to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and was forced into a runoff amid criticism that he was disloyal to Trump.

Both Palazzo and Guest failed to cross the 50% threshold to win outright in their June 7 primaries. Palazzo is facing Mike Ezell, the sheriff of a coastal county, while Guest is going up against Michael Cassidy, a former Navy fighter pilot who has highlighted his allegiance to Trump.

OKLAHOMA

Republicans are picking two U.S. Senate nominees on Tuesday.

A crowd of high-profile GOP contenders is vying to replace retiring Sen. Jim Inhofe, including Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, who resigned from his Washington post under a cloud of ethics scandals. Other candidates include Rep. Markwayne Mullin; T.W. Shannon, the state legislature’s first Black House speaker; and Luke Holland, Inhofe’s longtime chief of staff.

Republican Sen. James Lankford is facing a primary test of his own that centers on Trump.

Lankford, among the Senate’s most conservative members, has faced backlash from Trump loyalists for not embracing the former president’s lies about election fraud. Lankford is facing Tulsa evangelical pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, a political newcomer endorsed by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.

NEBRASKA

A judge on Tuesday will sentence longtime Nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry on campaign contribution charges on the same day voters will decide who should serve out the Republican’s term. Fortenberry resigned in March.

Republican Mike Flood will be favored to win the election in the Republican-leaning district over Democrat Patty Pansing Brooks. Both are state legislators.

Regardless of who wins the special election, Flood and Pansing Brooks will face off again in the November general election. The eastern Nebraska district includes Lincoln and parts of suburban Omaha as well as rural area.

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Associated Press writers Michelle Price in New York; Sara Burnett in Chicago; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; Jim Anderson in Denver; Grant Schulte in Omaha, Neb.; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden rarely mentions his predecessor by name. But as he spoke to a nation processing a seismic shift in the rights of women, he couldn’t ignore Donald Trump’s legacy.

“It was three justices named by one president — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said Friday after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that provided constitutional protections for women seeking abortions.

The abortion decision marked the apex in a week that reinforced the former president’s ongoing impact in Washington more than a year and a half after he exited the White House.

A court that includes three Trump-appointed conservatives also decided to weaken restrictions on gun ownership. And across the street at the Capitol, which was ravaged by a mob of Trump supporters in the final days of his presidency in 2021, new details surfaced of his gross violations of democratic norms. The House’s Jan. 6 committee used a public hearing last week to spotlight the intense pressure that Trump put on top Justice Department officials to overturn the 2020 election, along with discussions of blanket pardons for cooperative members of Congress.

The developments were a reminder of the awkward political bargain social conservatives embraced to achieve their grandest ambitions. In refusing to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee during the final year of his presidency, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., ensured that the next president would be able to make his mark on the court. As Trump pledged to transform the Supreme Court’s ideological leanings —- even providing a list of the judges he would choose from — reluctant conservatives Republicans and evangelical Christians rallied behind Trump, a thrice-married man who had previously described himself as “very pro-choice.”

“When he ran in 2016, he promised that he would appoint conservative and pro-life judges to the federal courts starting with the U.S. Supreme Court. And he kept his word,” said Ralph Reed, an evangelical leader and chair of the The Faith and Freedom Coalition, who was criticized in some corners for his embrace of Trump. “Those in the faith community that felt it was worth taking a chance on Donald Trump in 2016 have been vindicated.”

The GOP is now at something of a turning point in its relationship with a man who has fundamentally transformed the party with his populist, “Make America Great Again” agenda and his fight against the establishment Republicans who used to control the party. There’s a growing debate within the party about whether Trump’s resonance is beginning to fade as lays the groundwork for a third presidential run in 2024.

Other leading Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, are taking increasingly bold steps toward White House bids of their own. And many of Trump’s own supporters are eagerly embracing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as Trump’s natural successor as they look to the future.

Pence, Pompeo and DeSantis are among those who have made clear that a Trump candidacy would not influence their own decisions about whether to run. If they do run, they will all be competing for support from the same conservatives who fueled Trump’s rise.

Trump himself seems somewhat uncertain about how to navigate the political fallout from the past week, particularly the abortion ruling. He has privately expressed concern to aides that the decision could energize Democrats going into the November elections, The New York Times first reported.

Indeed, in a Fox News interview after the abortion opinion was released, Trump said that, “in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.”

Asked about his own role in the eventual decision, Trump responded that, “God made the decision.”

Trump grew more emboldened as Friday unfolded, raising money off the decision and issuing a statement in which he took full credit for what he called “the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation.”

He said that it and “other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. It was my great honor to do so!”

At a Saturday night rally, Trump took another victory lap to cheers from the crowd.

“Yesterday the court handed down a victory for the Constitution, a victory for the rule of law, and above all, a victory for life,” he told supporters, who broke into a chant of “Thank you Trump!.”

While Democrats are hoping the decision will galvanize its voters heading into November’s midterm elections, Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign and White House adviser, agued the decision would be beneficial to Trump’s future political prospects, helping to cement his standing with conservative voters if he runs again.

“President Trump has been accepting his share of the credit for the Trump Court’s decision, as he should,” Caputo said “This is yet another confirmation of his transformational presidency. Suburban Republican angst is a progressive myth; real suburban Republicans know their handwringing is performative: This decision simply moves the abortion issue to the states where it has always belonged.”

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee and related investigations, including a special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, looking at whether Trump and others illegally meddled in the 2020 election, continue to loom.

As the committee has held a series of public hearings, few Republicans have surfaced to defend Trump’s actions, which increasingly drew comparisons to President Richard Nixon’s actions during the Watergate scandal 50 years ago.

The committee last week showed how a defeated Trump tried to use the Justice Department for his own political ends, much the way Nixon fired his top ranks in the “Saturday Night Massacre” before his resignation.

John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon and famously testified against Nixon in hearings about the scandal, said that watching the three Trump-era Justice Department officials recount how Trump pressured them to investigate baseless allegations and threaten mass resignations brought him back to conversations he had had with Nixon.

“I did fall back and was reminiscent of my March 21 ‘Cancer on the presidency’ conversation with Nixon where I kept pushing and escalating the problems. And he clearly had made up his mind,” he recounted. “Nothing I could say seemed to get through.”

He said he hoped the Jan. 6 hearings would help the public “understand the seriousness of what Trump tried to do, that he is a threat to democracy and those who support him are a threat to democracy. Authoritarianism and democracy just don’t work together.”

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By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that will dramatically change life for millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a deeply polarized country.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law without taking the additional step of erasing the Roe precedent altogether.

The reverberations of the ruling will be felt far beyond the court’s high-security confines – potentially reshaping the battlefield in November’s elections to determine whether Biden’s fellow Democrats retain control of Congress and signaling a new openness by the justices to change other long-recognized rights.

The decision will also intensify debate over the legitimacy of the court, once an unassailable cornerstone of the American democratic system but increasingly under scrutiny for its more aggressively conservative decisions on a range of issues.

The ruling restored the ability of states to ban abortion. Twenty-six states are either certain or considered likely to ban abortion. Mississippi is among 13 states with so-called trigger laws to ban abortion with Roe overturned. (For related graphic click https://tmsnrt.rs/3Njv3Cw)

In a concurring opinion that raised concerns the justices might roll back other rights, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider past rulings protecting the right to contraception, legalizing gay marriage nationwide, and invalidating state laws banning gay sex.

The justices, in the ruling written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, held that the Roe decision that allowed abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb – which occurs between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy – was wrongly decided because the U.S. Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.

Women with unwanted pregnancies in large swathes of America now may face the choice of traveling to another state where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, appeared to nix an idea advocated by some anti-abortion advocates that the next step is for the court to declare that the Constitution outlaws abortion. “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Kavanaugh also said that the ruling does not let states bar residents from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion, or retroactively punish people for prior abortions.

‘SAD DAY’

Biden condemned the ruling as taking an “extreme and dangerous path.”

“It’s a sad day for the court and for the country,” Biden said at the White House. “The court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans.”

Empowering states to ban abortion makes the United States an outlier among developed nations on protecting reproductive rights, the Democratic president added.

Biden urged Congress to pass a law protecting abortion rights, an unlikely proposition given its partisan divisions. Biden said his administration will protect women’s access to medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration including pills for contraception and medication abortion, while also combating efforts to restrict women from traveling to other states to obtain abortions.

Britain, France and some other nations called the ruling a step backward, although the Vatican praised it, saying it challenged the world to reflect on life issues.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decision was “a loss for women everywhere”. “Watching the removal of a woman’s fundamental right to make decisions over their own body is incredibly upsetting,” she said in a statement.

U.S. companies including Walt Disney Co, AT&T <T.N> and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc said they will cover employees’ expenses if they now have to travel for abortion services.

‘DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES’

A draft version of Alito’s ruling indicating the court was ready to overturn Roe was leaked in May, igniting a political firestorm. Friday’s ruling largely tracked this leaked draft.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote in the ruling.

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access. Friday’s ruling overturned the Casey decision as well.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division,” Alito added.

The court’s three liberal justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – issued a jointly authored dissent.

“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” they wrote.

As a result of Friday’s ruling, “from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” the liberal justices added.

The ruling empowered states to ban abortion just a day after the court’s conservative majority issued another decision limiting the ability of states to enact gun restrictions.

The abortion and gun rulings illustrated the polarization in America on a range of issues, also including race and voting rights.

Overturning Roe was long a goal of Christian conservatives and many Republican officeholders, including former President Donald Trump, who as a candidate in 2016 promised to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would reverse Roe. During his term he named three to the bench, all of whom joined the majority in the ruling.

Asked in a Fox News interview whether he deserved some credit for the ruling, Trump said: “God made the decision.”

Crowds gathered outside the courthouse, surrounded by a tall security fence. Anti-abortion activists erupted in cheers after the ruling, while some abortion rights supporters were in tears.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Emma Craig, 36, of Pro Life San Francisco. “Abortion is the biggest tragedy of our generation and in 50 years we’ll look back at the 50 years we’ve been under Roe v. Wade with shame.”

Hours later, protesters angered by the decision still gathered outside the court, as did crowds in cities from coast to coast including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle.

House of Representatives Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, denounced the decision, saying that a “Republican-controlled Supreme Court” has achieved that party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”

The number of U.S. abortions increased by 8% during the three years ending in 2020, reversing a 30-year trend of declining numbers, according to data https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/06/long-term-decline-us-abortions-reverses-showing-rising-need-abortion-supreme-court released on June 15 by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Katanga Johnson and Rose Horowitch; Writing by Lawrence Hurley and Ross Colvin; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone, Daniel Wallis and Michael Perry)

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Biden was given a red-carpet welcome after he arrived in Munich on Saturday night, greeted with Bavarian music, dozens of people in traditional dress and children presenting him with flowers. He also signed a guest book.

Biden and the G-7 leaders intend to announce a ban on importing gold from Russia, according to a person familiar with White House planning who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Gold is Moscow’s second largest export after energy.

Russian’s subsequent retreat from western Ukraine and regrouping in the east has shifted the conflict to one of artillery battles and bloody house-to-house fighting in the country’s industrial heartland, the Donbas region.

While U.S. officials see broad consensus for maintaining the pressure on Russia and sustaining support for Ukraine in the near term, they view Biden’s trip as an opportunity to align strategy for both the conflict and its global ramifications heading into the winter and beyond.

Allies differ over whether their goals are merely to restore peace or to force Russia to pay a deeper price for the conflict to prevent its repetition.

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the summit will address problems such as inflation and other “challenges in the global economy as a result of Mr. Putin’s war — but also how to continue to hold Mr. Putin accountable” and subject to “constant consequences.”

“There will be some muscle movements,” he said from Air Force One as Biden flew to Germany.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is set to address both summits by video. The U.S. and allies have shipped his country billions of dollars in military assistance and imposed ever stricter sanctions on Russia over the invasion.

Kirby said previously that allies would announce new “commitments” to further sever Russia from the global economy and make it more difficult for Moscow to acquire technology to rebuild the arsenal it has depleted in Ukraine, and to crack down on sanctions evasion by Russia and its oligarchs.

G-7 summits have traditionally put global finance issues front and center, but amid soaring inflation in the U.S. and Europe, few concrete actions are expected.

“There are different drivers of inflation in these various economies, different things that can be used to address it,” said Josh Lipsky, director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. He foresees “a lack of an ability to do something coordinated on inflation, other than really talk about the problem.”

Biden has blamed much of the rise in prices on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, especially in the energy markets, as U.S. and allied sanctions have limited Moscow’s ability to sell its oil and gas supplies. Sustaining the Western resolve will only get more challenging as the war drags on and cost-of-living issues pose political headaches for leaders at home, U.S. and European officials said.

Finding ways to transition from Russian energy to other sources — without setting back longstanding goals to combat climate change — is set to be a key discussion point.

“There’s no watering down of climate commitments,” Kirby said.

Russia was once a member of what was then the G-8. It was expelled in 2014 after it invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, a move that foreshadowed the current crisis.

In Madrid, Biden will help promote NATO’s effort to welcome Finland and Sweden into the alliance after the Russian invasion of Ukraine led the two historically neutral democracies to seek the protection of the mutual-defense association.

Kirby declined to say whether Biden will meet with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has indicated he plans to block the two countries’ accession into NATO unless he receives concessions. Adding new members requires unanimous support from existing NATO members.

U.S. officials have maintained optimism that the two countries will be welcomed into the alliance, but have played down expectations for a breakthrough in Madrid.

Biden speaks often of the world being in a generational struggle between democracies and autocracies that will set the global agenda for the coming decades. He aims to use the trip to show that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “firmed up” democracies on the threats from autocracies in both Moscow and Beijing.

The president is also securing a significant step by NATO to recognize China as an emerging challenge to the alliance. The formal reference of China in NATO’s new “Strategic Concept,” the first update to its guiding principles since 2010, fulfills efforts by multiple U.S. presidents to expand the alliance’s focus to China, even in the face an increasingly bellicose Russia.

In a symbolic step, NATO has invited Pacific leaders from Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia to the summit. Kirby said China “will be a significant focus” for the G-7 and cited Beijing’s “coercive economic practices.”

Biden is also set to relaunch a global infrastructure investment program meant to counter China’s influence in the developing world, which he had named “Build Back Better World” and had introduced at the 2021 G-7 summit.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused NATO of trying to “start a new Cold War” and warned against the alliance “drawing ideological lines which may induce confrontation.”

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By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law the first major federal gun reform in three decades, days after a decision he condemned by the Supreme Court expanding firearm owners’ rights.

“God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives,” Biden said at the White House after signing the bill with his wife Jill by his side.

The bipartisan bill came together just weeks after mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo that killed more than 30 people, including 19 children at an elementary school.

The law includes provisions to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.

The reform came the same week as the Supreme Court expanded gun owners’ rights, saying on Thursday for the first time that the U.S. Constitution protected an individual’s ability to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

“The Supreme Court has made some terrible decisions,” Biden told reporters after that ruling, and another on Friday that eliminated the right to abortion nationwide.

Gun control has long been a divisive issue in the nation with several attempts to put new controls on gun sales failing time after time.

Biden, who is looking to improve sagging public approval ratings ahead of Nov. 8 midterm elections for control of Congress, made securing victories on gun control a part of his campaign pitch to voters.

The new law blocks gun sales to those convicted of abusing unmarried intimate partners and cracks down on gun sales to purchasers convicted of domestic violence. It also provides new federal funding to states that administer “red flag” laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous to themselves and others.

It does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines. But it does take some steps on background checks by allowing access, for the first time, to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles.

“At this time when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential: If we can reach compromise on guns, we oughta be able to reach compromise on other critical issues,” Biden said before traveling to Germany for the Group of Seven rich nations summit.

“I know there’s much more work to do, and I’m never gonna give up. But this is a monumental day.”

He said he would host families of gun violence victims and lawmakers at a White House event on July 11 to mark the passage of the gun safety law.

(Reportng by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani; editing by John Stonestreet and Chizu Nomiyama)

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