Politics

(Reuters) – A New York appeals court on Thursday ordered a redrawing of the state’s congressional map, handing a victory to Democrats hoping to retake control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives in the 2024 election.

The 3-2 decision by Appellate Division in the state capital of Albany reversed a lower court ruling, and directed the state’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission to restart the mapmaking process.

Lines drawn last year by a politically neutral special master helped Republicans flip four House seats in the Democratic-leaning state.

Republicans plan to appeal to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, which in April 2022 threw out a Democratic-drawn map that Republicans blasted as gerrymandering. It also said the special master should handle the matter.

Subsequent to that decision, the court’s chief judge, who voted with the 4-3 majority, was replaced by an appointee of Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, who progressives had pressured to undo the court’s recent conservative tilt.

“The Court of Appeals must overturn this ruling, or Democrats will gerrymander the map to target political opponents and protect political allies – all to the People’s detriment,” Republican U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik and New York Republican Chair Ed Cox said in a joint statement.

New Democratic seats could help offset losses in North Carolina, whose highest court in April said that state’s Republican-controlled legislature could craft new, politically advantageous maps.

The lawsuit was brought by a group of New York voters following the Court of Appeals decision, for a new map that would stand until after the 2030 census.

Justice Elizabeth Garry wrote for Thursday’s majority that the redistricting commission had an “indisputable duty” to submit a new map, after legislators rejected its original plan and it deadlocked when trying to craft a replacement.

“Petitioners have demonstrated a clear legal right to the relief sought,” she wrote. “In granting this petition, we return the matter to its constitutional design.”

Democrats who lost seats in the 2022 election included Sean Patrick Maloney, who ran House Democrats’ campaign arm.

Republicans gaining seats included George Santos, who is seeking re-election despite being indicted on fraud and other charges.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s support for his nominee for labor secretary, Julie Su, is “unwavering” and the White House hopes Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema “reconsider their position” on her nomination, a White House official said on Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, Manchin, a Democrat, said he will oppose Su’s nomination as labor secretary, arguing she had a “progressive background” that would prevent her from forging compromises between labor and industry representatives.

“President Biden and his team continue fighting for acting secretary of labor Julie Su’s confirmation – because she is highly qualified, experienced and has proven herself time and time again when it comes to delivering for America’s workers and our economy,” said the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Diane Bartz and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Lina Khan, the progressive head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), faced tough questions on Thursday from a Republican-led House committee about court fights over multi-billion dollar mergers the agency opposed and lost.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee came just two days after a tough loss when a federal judge ruled that Microsoft could go forward with its $69 billion deal to buy “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard. The agency has said that it would appeal.

Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican from California, asked Khan about the cases that the agency had lost.

“We fight hard when we believe there was a law violation, and unfortunately things don’t always go our way,” responded Khan.

“Are you bringing cases you expect to lose?” Kiley asked later.

“Absolutely not,” Khan said.

“Okay well your track record seems to suggest otherwise,” he answered.

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, sternly disagreed with the Khan FTC’s decision to press on with a fight against Illumina’s purchase of Grail after an FTC internal judge disagreed with FTC commissioners. That challenge was initially brought under the Trump administration and is currently before an appeals court.

The agency also lost a fight to stop Facebook parent Meta Platforms from buying VR content maker Within Unlimited.

Democrats on the committee sought to defend Khan, occasionally joined by Republicans on the panel including Rep. Ken Buck.

The White House also put out a statement backing Khan.

“Chair Khan has delivered results for families, consumers, workers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs,” said White House Press Secretary Michael Kikukawa, citing efforts including the agency’s bid to ban non-compete agreements and mergers that would harm consumers.

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican, however, worried about investors in small businesses losing their exit strategies. The way you are running the FTC, he told her, “you’re not simply trying to kill deals in the boardroom, you’re also killing small businesses still in the crib, you want startups to seek an IPO rather than acquisition but the cost of entering the public markets has doubled since the 1990s.”

The agency has upcoming legal fights aimed at stopping Intercontinental Exchange’s $13.1 billion deal for Black Knight and Amgen’s purchase of Horizon Therapeutics for $27.8 billion.

Chairman Jim Jordan called Khan’s tenure at the agency a “disaster,” pointing in particular to a probe of billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which the Republican has argued was an overreach.

Khan defended the agency’s actions, saying that the FTC requests were motivated by a desire to ensure that Twitter complied with its privacy rules and adding that Twitter “has a history of lax security and privacy policies.”

The top Democrat on the committee, Jerry Nadler, sought to defend Khan, arguing that concentration in certain areas of the U.S. economy was a problem that the agency was tackling. “Ultimately Chair Khan, you will face attacks today because you are doing your job. That is what threatens Republicans,” added Nadler.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Bill Berkrot, Andrea Ricci and Alexandra Hudson)

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By Diane Bartz and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Lina Khan, the progressive head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), faced tough questions on Thursday from a Republican-led House committee about court fights that the agency has lost.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee began with Chairman Jim Jordan calling Khan’s tenure at the agency a “disaster,” pointing in particular to a probe of billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which the Republican has argued was an overreach.

Lawmakers have requested documents regarding the agency’s review, and said the FTC did not respond adequately. Conservatives, without evidence, have accused social media companies, including Twitter before it was acquired by Musk, of seeking to stifle conservative voices.

Jordan accused Khan of having an obsession with Twitter and criticized numerous requests for documents and details on Twitter’s decision to make some information available to journalists.

Khan defended the agency’s actions, saying that the FTC requests were motivated by a desire to ensure that Twitter complied with its privacy rules and adding that Twitter “has a history of lax security and privacy policies.”

The top Democrat on the committee, Jerry Nadler, sought to defend Khan, arguing that concentration in certain areas of the U.S. economy was a problem that the agency was tackling. “Ultimately Chair Khan, you will face attacks today because you are doing your job. That is what threatens Republicans,” added Nadler.

Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican from California, asked Khan about the cases that the agency had lost, including a tough loss on Tuesday when a federal judge ruled that Microsoft could go forward with its $69 billion deal to buy “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard. The agency has said that it would appeal.

“We fight hard when we believe there was a law violation, and unfortunately things don’t always go our way,” said Khan.

Kiley pressed on.

“Are you bringing cases you expect to lose?” he asked a bit later.

“Absolutely not,” Khan said. “

“Okay well your track record seems to suggest otherwise,” he said.

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, sternly disagreed with the Khan FTC’s decision to press on with a fight against Illumina’s purchase of Grail after an FTC internal judge disagreed with FTC commissioners. That challenge was initially brought under the Trump administration and is currently before an appeals court.

The agency also lost a fight to stop Facebook parent Meta Platforms from buying VR content maker Within Unlimited.

Representative Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican, worried about investors in small businesses losing their exit strategies. “I think the issue for myself and many of my colleagues has been that the way you’re running the FTC that you’re not simply trying to kill deals in the boardroom, you’re also killing small businesses still in the crib, you want startups to seek an IPO rather than acquisition but the cost of entering the public markets has doubled since the 1990s.”

The agency has upcoming legal fights aimed at stopping Intercontinental Exchange’s $13.1 billion deal for Black Knight and Amgen’s purchase of Horizon Therapeutics for $27.8 billion.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Bill Berkrot and Andrea Ricci)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Secret Service said on Thursday it had concluded its investigation into cocaine found at the White House and said it had been unable to identify a suspect.

The cocaine was found in a cubby hole in a West Wing entry area where visitors place electronics and other belongings before going on tours, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters previously.

In its statement on Thursday, the Secret Service said it was unable to obtain fingerprints from the package that held the cocaine and could not obtain a sufficient DNA sample to compare against a pool of people it had identified who could have brought it into the White House.

CNN was first to report that the investigation had concluded.

(Reporting by Paul Grant and Rami Ayyub; editing by Tim Ahmann)

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By Clark Mindock

(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a Biden administration plan to improve cybersecurity for public water systems, after Republican-led states complained it would thrust burdensome costs on small and rural water suppliers.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis issued a stay temporarily suspending the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cybersecurity plan while a legal challenge filed by the state attorneys general of Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa runs its course.

The EPA’s plan announced on March 3, which it called “guidance,” meaning it was non-binding, recommended a series of novel rules placing more responsibility for securing water facilities at the state level. The agency issued the plan following several high-profile hacking incidents in recent years.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement on Wednesday that he is pleased with the court’s decision and that he believes the EPA doesn’t have the authority to impose the rules.

A spokesperson for the National Rural Water Association, which intervened in the lawsuit challenging the EPA plan alongside the American Water Works Association, said in a statement that it supports enhanced cybersecurity, but that the EPA plan would be too burdensome for small water systems.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Security experts say the water sector has long been seen as vulnerable to cyberattacks, which could cause shortages or dangerously increase the concentration of chemicals normally used to treat drinking water.

In March 2019, a terminated employee at a Kansas-based water facility used his old computer credentials to remotely take systems offline, a Biden administration official said when the plan was announced.

The Republican-led states filed their lawsuit in April, saying the EPA does not have the authority to force cybersecurity assessment responsibilities onto states and local water suppliers.

The lawsuit said the memo creates costly legal obligations, even though the EPA has referred it as only guidance.

(Reporting by Clark Mindock; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)

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By James Oliphant, Gram Slattery and Alexandra Ulmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign is making a high-risk bet that it can halt Donald Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination by winning the key state of Iowa next January, despite the former president’s commanding lead in polls and growing questions about DeSantis’ viability.

Even as he trails Trump by close to 30 percentage points in national polls, DeSantis and his advisers are sticking to a long-haul, Iowa-first strategy. They hope that an upset win in the state would stall Trump’s momentum, according to two sources close to the campaign, who asked not to be identified so that they could discuss campaign strategy.

They acknowledged they might never fully close the national polling gap before Iowa’s caucuses on Jan. 15, the first in a series of nominating contests to decide the Republican nominee for the November 2024 presidential election.

The focus on Iowa appears to be a recognition by the campaign that DeSantis’ other paths to victory are shrinking, turning the Midwestern state into a do-or-die for him, according to more than a dozen interviews with the DeSantis campaign, Trump advisers, grassroots Republican operatives in Iowa and donors.

After a much-anticipated presidential launch on May 24, DeSantis is languishing a distant second in the Republican field and has yet to catch fire in any real way.

“A win in Iowa, a second in New Hampshire, we lose a couple candidates before Nevada and South Carolina, and then we are in a bloody, two-person race,” one of the two sources told Reuters, referring to other nominating contests that will follow.

But even winning Iowa, should DeSantis pull it off, carries risk. His play for the state’s religious voters by staking out hardline positions on abortion and transgender issues could alienate voters in states further down the nominating calendar.

“He’s gotta have a win in the first three primaries, and Iowa is his best bet,” said Chris Stirewalt, an elections analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Stirewalt said the biggest fear of the donors he has spoken to is that DeSantis wins Iowa but becomes a candidate “with the resources to stick around but not the reach to win the nomination.”

None of the last three winners of a competitive contest in Iowa – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee – went on to claim their party’s nomination, in part because of their conservative stances.

Embarrassingly for DeSantis, Steve Cortes, a spokesperson for Never Back Down, a fundraising super PAC supporting him, acknowledged earlier this month in a Twitter forum that “clearly Donald Trump is the runaway front-runner.”

Amid a flurry of stories questioning his viability over the past week, DeSantis has accused the media of prematurely writing his obituary.

“They’ve tried to create a narrative that somehow the race is over,” he said on the Fox Business channel on Monday.

DeSantis’ campaign has argued that his ability to raise $20 million in the first six weeks of his campaign shows that donors view him as the top alterative to Trump. In the second quarter, Trump raised $35 million, according to a campaign official.

KNOCKING ON DOORS

Of the 640,000 doors that Never Back Down has knocked on so far nationally, a full quarter have been in Iowa, according to a person connected with the group with knowledge of internal metrics.

The group expects to have opened five offices across the state by the end of July, a separate person said, an unusually large number at this point in the campaign, according to people with knowledge the operations of outside spending groups.

“I think the DeSantis people have done themselves a huge favor by getting a door-to-door operation going early,” said Ryan Frederick, chair of the Republican Party in Adair County in rural western Iowa. “It is extremely rare in my part of the world.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Tim Scott and others are also trying to make a play for Iowa, and it remains possible that a splintered field could help Trump to win.

DeSantis is scheduled to visit Iowa on Friday, his third trip to the state since declaring his presidential bid. His wife, Casey DeSantis, last week traveled to Iowa to launch a national “Mamas for DeSantis” campaign focused on parental rights, hoping to win over the swing vote of suburban Republican women.

The DeSantis campaign is hoping that the governor, who has made hot-button, conservative social issues the centerpiece of his campaign, will find favor with the state’s typical Republican voting mix of evangelical Christians, Lutherans and Catholics.

New Hampshire and Nevada, whose primaries are due to take place after Iowa, are less religious and are seen as less likely to reward his hardline stances.

DeSantis’ supporters are also emphasizing what they see as the similarities between DeSantis and Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular Republican governor, said one person close to the campaign. Reynolds has been a frequent guest at DeSantis’ events, causing Trump to lash out at her.

TRUMP LOOMS

Along with the intense focus on Iowa, the DeSantis campaign is also simply crossing its fingers and hoping that Trump may yet be weakened by one of the existing indictments against him for making hush money payments to a porn star and mishandling classified documents or by new ones relating to his actions to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump, however, owns a deep reservoir of support in Iowa, where he was widely popular as president.

His team has knocked on some 30,000 doors in the state and has over a dozen staffers there, two campaign strategists told Reuters. And Trump himself has traveled to Iowa at least three times since declaring his presidential run.

“The campaign has the most sophisticated and experienced team ever in Iowa, and is poised to crush DeSantis,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said.

A dearth of reliable polling in Iowa makes it difficult to assess the real strength of both DeSantis and Trump in the state.

J. Ann Selzer, a veteran pollster in the state, said the race remains wide open with six months to go.

“Recent caucuses have been political mayhem. It used to be the front-runner stayed the front-runner,” Selzer said. “What I say about the caucuses is that anything could happen and probably will.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant, Gram Slattery and Alexandra Ulmer, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director Chris Wray rejected Republicans’ wide-ranging criticism at a congressional hearing on Wednesday that targeted everything from the bureau’s handling of a probe into Hunter Biden to claims it encouraged social media companies to censor conservative views.

Wray appeared before the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee panel for the first time since former President Donald Trump was indicted for retaining highly classified documents and obstructing justice.

His appearance also marks the first time he has testified since President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was criminally charged with two misdemeanor tax counts, while avoiding a felony gun charge through a pretrial diversion agreement with prosecutors.

Republicans have repeatedly accused the FBI and other federal agencies of “weaponizing” their law enforcement and regulatory powers to silence critics on the right, target political enemies and protect political allies.

House Republicans have claimed without evidence that the documents case against Trump is politically motivated.

They have also pointed to testimony by an IRS whistleblower as proof that the department interfered with the Hunter Biden probe – a claim that both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in charge of the probe have denied.

“Are you protecting the Bidens?” asked Republican Representative Matt Gaetz.

“Absolutely not,” replied Wray, a fellow Republican who has increasingly become the target of Republicans’ wrath.

Several Republican lawmakers also grilled Wray about whether the bureau pressures social media companies to silence conservative views, after a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana last week sided with the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and blocked the FBI and other federal agencies from communicating with social media firms about moderating content on their platforms.

The July 4 ruling from U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty found that the Republican states were likely to prevail in their lawsuit to prove that the Biden administration had “used its power to silence” critics online who opposed everything from the 2020 election results to COVID-19 vaccines.

Wray on Wednesday staunchly disagreed with the judge’s ruling, saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation is only focused on combating foreign malign influence – and not free speech.

The Justice Department has since asked a federal appeals court to stay the lower court’s ruling pending appeal.

“The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Susan Heavey)

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By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China has raised hopes in Beijing that Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports may be eased as she tries to smooth relations between the two nations, but strong anti-China sentiment in the U.S. may make that impossible.

Trade and political analysts in Washington say that even though cutting some of the “Section 301” tariffs would help U.S. companies and consumers, as well as Chinese exporters, doing so would expose Biden to a buzz-saw of Republican criticism at a dangerous time.

“The political calculus is pretty clear,” said Harry Broadman, a former White House, World Bank and U.S. trade official who is now a managing director with Berkeley Research Group. “That would be red meat for the opposition.”

Looking soft on China could cost Biden the 2024 presidential election, he said, adding that anti-China sentiment in the U.S. in recent years is the highest he’s ever seen, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s China policies.

HIGH HOPES IN CHINA

Yellen discussed trade irritants and other policy differences with China’s top economic officials and Premier Li Qiang for a marathon 10 hours over two days last week — meetings that she said put U.S.-China ties “on surer footing.”

U.S. tariffs and high technology export controls to Beijing’s new anti-espionage law that threatens the activities of U.S. companies in China were among the topics, the U.S. Treasury said. Yellen said nothing publicly to indicate that the U.S. was poised to ease tariffs, but commentators in China were hopeful, amid a U.S. Trade Representative review.

In a statement on Monday, China’s Finance Ministry called for the U.S. to cancel punitive tariffs, roll back export curbs and end import bans from Xinjiang province.

“Yellen has a say in the next phase of the U.S.’s four-year tariff review,” said Hong Hao, chief executive of Grow Investment Group in Hong Kong. “While U.S might continue its technological curbs on China, a reduction or exemption of non-core tariffs against China is possible.”

China’s state-run Global Times, normally a harsh U.S. critic, called Yellen a “professional and pragmatic” official who could influence the Biden administration to take such steps to improve the economic relationship.

Yellen last year advocated eliminating some duties on “non-strategic” goods as a way to ease some specific costs amid high inflation.

But U.S. political pressure to raise China tariffs is growing, said Chad Bown, a trade economist with the Peterson Institute of International Economics who has researched them extensively.

“There is no political appetite to reduce tariffs on China – Secretary Yellen will do well in this political climate if they manage to stay where they are,” Bown said.

U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about any response to the Chinese call for action, noting that no new initiatives were under way. A U.S. Treasury spokesperson declined comment on tariffs.

A USTR spokesperson said the agency was continuing its review and was evaluating feedback received, nearly seven months after it closed public comments.

Collections of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods peaked at $49 billion in fiscal 2022, bringing the total amount collected from U.S. importers over four years to $182.9 billion, according to U.S. customs data.

U.S. imports from China had nearly reached their 2018 peak in 2022, but are down 24% so far this year.

ENDLESS ‘GROVELING’

Hardliners who dominate China discussions within the U.S. Republican party took to social media memes to mock Yellen for appearing to bow to Chinese vice premier He Lifeng at the start of a meeting.

Firebrand Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in a tweet that such “embarrassing groveling to China is a historic mistake.”

Republican presidential hopefuls have adopted confrontational rhetoric with respect to China, which they see as the nation’s top geopolitical foe.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have laid out the most specific plans so far to confront China on trade, and advocate revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status, a legal designation granted by the U.S. that lowers trade barriers with specific nations.

Haley has said she would push Congress to revoke China’s trade status until China curbs its alleged role in the fentanyl trade. China is a major producer of chemicals required to create fentanyl, which is frequently smuggled over the U.S.-Mexico border.

Former President Donald Trump, who leads the Republican field with DeSantis a distant second, told Reuters that he would give China 48 hours to remove what sources say is Chinese spy capability on the island of Cuba 90 miles off the U.S. coast. If China fails to comply, his administration would impose new tariffs.

(This story has been refiled to add missing words in paragraph 4)

(Reporting by David Lawder, Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Gram Slattery and Jeff Mason. Editing by Heather Timmons and Nick Zieminski)

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By Richard Cowan and Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday said white nationalists are racist after having denied that earlier in the day, an incident that drew criticism from the chamber’s top Democrat, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“White nationalists are racist,” Tuberville, a first-term senator and former college football coach, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon, after a morning interview on CNN in which he said the opposite.

The Alabama senator’s earlier comments defending white nationalists were not the only controversy involving him on Tuesday.

Democratic President Joe Biden’s nominee to become the top U.S. general earlier in the day warned that Tuberville’s blockade of military promotions in a protest over abortion policy could have a far-reaching impact across the armed forces.

Tuberville has used a Senate procedure to hold up hundreds of military nominations.

Hardline Republicans in both chambers of Congress have increasingly turned to stonewalling tactics in pursuit of conservative culture-war goals, with a group in the House last month bringing that chamber to a halt in protest over their leader Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with Biden to avoid a catastrophic debt default.

Schumer earlier on Tuesday took to the Senate floor to declare that Tuberville was “on a one-man mission to excuse and even defend the meaning of white nationalism.”

He called on Tuberville’s fellow Republicans to urge him to apologize, recounting recent interviews in which he was asked about white nationalists serving in the U.S. military.

“I call them Americans,” Tuberville responded during a May interview with an Alabama radio station.

On Monday, Tuberville was pressed on that statement in an interview on CNN, and said: “If we are going to do away with most white people in this country out of the military, we’ve got huge problems.”

In comments to reporters later Tuesday morning, he said that he was “totally against racism” but added: “If Democrats want to say that white nationalists are racist, I’m totally against that too.”

No. 2 Senate Republican John Thune, asked by reporters whether Tuberville should issue an apology for his remarks, said there is no place in the Republican Party, the military or the country for white nationalism.

“I’m not sure exactly what it was he thinks he was saying there,” Thune said. “I’m sure it’s probably something different than how, perhaps, it’s being interpreted.”

Tuberville, who came to the Senate in 2021, has blocked Biden’s military nominees to protest the Pentagon’s practice of funding travel costs for abortions for service members and their dependents.

The Defense Department began providing that funding after the Supreme Court last year struck down the Roe v. Wade ruling granting a constitutional right to abortion.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Moira Warburton, additional reporting by David Morgan; editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Lincoln Feast.)

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