Vermont gets respite from flood warnings as US senator pushes for disaster aid package

MORGAN, Vt. (AP) — Vermonters started removing debris and silt from their houses and yards and pulled out damaged goods from homes on Thursday as crews began the process of repairing roads from the latest bout of violent flooding that came just weeks after more widespread flooding in the state.

In Morgan, near the Canadian border, trucks continuously traveled a stretch of closed road delivering dirt and gravel to some heavily damaged roads. The roads with sections washed away were inaccessible by car, leaving some residents stranded.

The flooding early Tuesday morning ripped the ground and road away from around Richard and Patty Morley's house and foundation on Seymour Lake, depositing rocks, silt and debris in their yard and covering their dock. Across the road, Toad Pond Road was crumbled and washed away in parts.

“The water came down Toad Pond Road off the hill, a mile or two up the road, and a lot of headwater pressure coming down and the streams and culverts couldn't handle it and this is where it ends up,” said Richard Morley. "It washed out all of this but more importantly it ended up in the lake. That to me is more of an issue."

He, his wife and 6-year-old grandson evacuated at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, walking through knee-deep rushing water after neighbors who live across the road arrived to help them leave. The small town got over 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain in about three hours, overwhelming roads and cutting out some home foundations, said Bruce Remick, a town selectboard member. The flooding caused a tremendous amount of damage to state and town roads, he said.

Gov. Phil Scott said at a news conference Wednesday that the latest storms to hit the state have undone much of the cleanup and recovery work from its last major bout of flooding only weeks ago, and he called on residents to “stick together.”

“This time, it’s especially bad after workers spent the past three weeks working furiously to recover from the last flooding, ” Scott said. “It feels much worse than a punch or a kick. It’s simply demoralizing. But we can’t give up. We’ve got to stick together and fight back against the feeling of defeat.”

State officials said preliminary information indicated that 50 homes were destroyed or suffered significant damage. More than half a dozen roads were closed, a lightning strike knocked out water for part of the town of St. Johnsbury, and flooding had contaminated several wells that serve the village of Lyndonville.

In Washington, Democratic U.S. Sen. Peter Welch asked Congress to pass a supplemental disaster aid package.

“We can’t recover without that federal help,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “I just can’t stress this enough. We need Congress to step up. And we need the help of all of us here because well, it’s Vermont this time, it may be New Hampshire next time. It may be Texas next month. And I believe all of us have to help one another when an event occurs causing such harm to people we represent. And it’s through no fault of their own."

Vermont experienced major flooding earlier in July caused by what was left of Hurricane Beryl. The flooding destroyed roads and bridges and inundated farms, and it came exactly a year after a previous bout of severe flooding hit Vermont and several other states.

McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

A flood-damaged road is shown Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Morgan, Vt. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said at a news conference Wednesday, July 31, that the latest storms to hit the state have undone much of the cleanup and recovery work from its last major bout of flooding only weeks ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

Trees sit across a roadway destroyed by flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Parts of the state hit by flooding Monday night and Tuesday are bracing again as a new round of severe thunderstorms moves through the region. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

Trees sit across a roadway destroyed by flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Parts of the state hit by flooding Monday night and Tuesday are bracing again as a new round of severe thunderstorms moves through the region. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

Damaged vehicles sit beside a farm in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndon, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

Water floods a roadway amid storms in Lyndon, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

Damaged vehicles sit beside a farm in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

A cone blocks a washed out roadway in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

A river flows past a damaged road in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

A river flows past a damaged road in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndonville, Vermont, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

Residents walk barefoot away from flood damage in Lyndon, Vt., Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

People clean up damage from flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Parts of the state hit by flooding Monday night and Tuesday are bracing again as a new round of severe thunderstorms moves through the region. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

Crews clean up debris from flash floods in Lyndonville, Vt., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Parts of the state hit by flooding Monday night and Tuesday are bracing again as a new round of severe thunderstorms moves through the region. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

Cones guard a washed out roadway in the aftermath of flash floods in Lyndonville, Vermont, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Belyakov)

A flood-damaged house is shown Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, on Seymour Lake in Morgan, Vt. Storms dropped more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain on some northeastern areas of Vermont on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, causing another bout of violent flooding. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — With ballot deadlines approaching, courts in Nebraska and Missouri are weighing legal arguments that could take measures seeking to expand abortion rights out of the hands of voters.

The Missouri Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in an appeal over a proposed amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. And on Monday, the Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments in three lawsuits that seek to keep one or both of the state's competing abortion initiatives off the ballot.

One initiative would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until viability, or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution Nebraska's current 12-week abortion ban, passed by the Legislature in 2023, which includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant woman.

Two lawsuits — one brought by an Omaha resident and the other by a Nebraska neonatologist who both oppose abortion — argue that the measure seeking to expand abortion rights violates the state’s prohibition against addressing more than one subject in a bill or ballot proposal. They say the ballot measure deals with abortion rights until viability, abortion rights after viability to protect the woman’s health and whether the state should be allowed to regulate abortion, amounting to three separate issues.

But lawyers opposing the abortion rights measure spent much of their time challenging the language of the proposal, with attorney Brenna Grasz insisting that its wording that “all persons” shall have a fundamental right to abortion would extend abortion rights to third parties. An example would be parents seeking to force a minor child to get an abortion.

“Is this a single-subject argument?” Chief Justice Mike Heavican asked.

Attorney Matt Heffron with the conservative Chicago nonprofit Thomas More Society, which has filed lawsuits across the country to challenge abortion rights, argued that the Protect Our Rights initiative logrolls competing subjects into one measure. It would force voters who support abortion up to the point of fetal viability to also support abortion after that point to protect the health of the mother, which they may not want to do, he said.

“This is a sea change in the current Nebraska law, which was popularly enacted by representatives, and each one of these should be voted on by the voters separately,” Heffron said.

Heavican countered that “virtually every bill that has gone through the Legislature” dealing with abortion has also included the subjects of exceptions and state regulation.

Heffron answered that lawmakers had the benefit of time and expertise to “hash out the terms” of those bills and that voters will go into the voting booth much less informed. But the justices noted that a nearly identical single-subject argument on an abortion rights ballot measure before the conservative Florida Supreme Court earlier this year failed.

An attorney for the lawsuit challenging the 12-week ban initiative argued that if the high court finds that the abortion rights measure fails the single-subject test, it must also find that the 12-week ban initiative fails it, too.

Attorney David Gacioch, of Boston, said that under the theory floated by opposing attorneys, the 12-week ban measure would loop in at least six separate subjects to include regulating abortion in the first, second and third trimesters and separate exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Gacioch acknowledged that insisting on separate ballot measures for each of those issues would be as specious as trying to break down the abortion rights measure into separate issues.

“We don’t think that’s what this court has articulated under a single-subject test,” Gacioch said. “We think that would frustrate the rights of the voters to pass constitutional amendments as reflected in the Constitution.”

The state's high court has offered a mixed bag on single-subject law challenges. In 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative seeking to legalize medical marijuana after finding that its provisions to allow people to use marijuana and to produce it were separate subjects that violated the state’s single-subject rule.

But in July, the high court ruled that a hybrid bill passed by the Legislature in 2023 combining the 12-week abortion ban with another measure to limit gender-affirming health care for minors does not violate the single-subject rule. That led to a scathing dissent by Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman, who accused the majority of applying different standards to bills passed by the Legislature and those sought by voter referendum.

The court agreed to expedite Monday's hearing as state law requires the November ballot to be certified by Friday.

In Missouri, the state's high court will hear arguments Tuesday in its proposed abortion rights initiative, following that state's enactment of a near-total abortion ban in 2022. The proposal had been slated for the November ballot, but a judge ruled Friday that the abortion-rights campaign did not properly inform voters during the signature-gathering process about the range of abortion laws the amendment could undo.

Tuesday is also the deadline to make changes to Missouri’s November ballot, so judges will have hours to rule on whether abortion will go before voters this year.

Abortion is currently on the November ballot in nine states. Additionally, a measure in New York would bar discrimination based on pregnancy outcomes but does not mention abortion specifically.

Abortion rights advocates have historically prevailed most of the time it’s been before voters – including on all seven ballot measures since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a nationwide right to abortion. Since the ruling, most Republican-controlled states have implemented bans or restrictions – including 14 that now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

With such high stakes, there have been court fights over most of the measures. An Arizona Supreme Court ruling is letting the state refer to an embryo or fetus as an “unborn human being” in a pamphlet; courts in Arkansas found paperwork problems with initiative submissions and kept the measure off the ballot. A measure is on the ballot in South Dakota, but an anti-abortion group is trying to keep the votes from being counted.

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Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine contributed to this report from Columbia, Missouri.

FILE - Andi Grubb, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, speaks during the Protect Our Rights Abortion Rights Ballot Initiative launch, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in Omaha, Neb. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via AP, File)

FILE - Missouri residents and pro-choice advocates react to a speaker during Missourians for Constitutionals Freedom kick-off petition drive, Feb. 6, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga, File)