CHICAGO (AP) — Two court rulings this week have delivered major blows to reproductive rights in Texas and Georgia but, during a crucial time in the election cycle, Democrats are seizing on them in an attempt to energize voters who support abortion access.
Advocates hope the rulings will serve as reminders about what’s at stake in a post-Roe America just weeks before a presidential election that has been partly defined by competing visions of abortion rights and the sometimes harrowing consequences for women living in states with abortion bans.
“Every time our opponents say the policies we have in place are fine and not as extreme as you think, this continual drumbeat of headlines illustrates the reality and galvanizes voters,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which is providing money and other support for several ballot measure campaigns hoping to preserve or strengthen abortion rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a lower court decision that bans emergency abortions that violate Texas law. The same day, the Georgia Supreme Court halted a ruling that had struck down the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, took the opportunity to remind voters of the threats her campaign says a second Trump presidency poses to reproductive rights and his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, which once granted a federal right to abortion. Trump has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion that had stood for 50 years.
“Because of extreme Trump Abortion Bans in states across the country, including Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia, women are facing horrific consequences to their health and lives — even death,” Harris posted on X. “Let me be clear: Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis.”
Monday's rulings are just the latest court decisions around reproductive rights to ripple through this year's races for president and Congress. In February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos can be considered children, a decision that temporarily halted in vitro fertilization treatments and threw the lives of couples seeking fertility treatments into chaos.
In April, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a near total abortion ban from 1864 — when the state was only a U.S. territory. The Legislature repealed it months later, but not until after the issue had galvanized abortion rights supporters in a state that will help determine the presidency and control of the Senate.
Kristi Hamrick, spokesperson for the national anti-abortion group Students for Life Action, accused Democrats of “latching onto anything and blaming losses on anyone but themselves in a desperate attempt to get votes.” She celebrated the two rulings Monday and expressed hopes the anti-abortion wins will instead energize voters against abortion.
“We’re grateful for these wins and hopeful they may add some wind in our sails,” she said.
In Texas, the state’s abortion ban – one of the strictest in the country – is playing a role in the Senate race between the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ted Cuz, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred. The weekend before Monday’s ruling, Allred vowed to restore Roe v. Wade at a campaign event in Fort Worth.
Other Democrats in the statehouse, including Texas Rep. Donna Howard, also expressed outrage at the rulings. She accused the courts of "willfully ignoring the dangerous reality many pregnant Texans are forced to endure if they experience severe pregnancy complications.”
In Georgia, one of the seven presidential battleground states, the state supreme court’s ruling comes on the heels of outrage over the deaths of Georgia women Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who died after being denied immediate care that was attributed to the state’s restrictive laws.
Georgia voters are watching these stories about the impact of the state’s abortion restrictions and “they will bring that to the polls” during the presidential election, said Jessica Arons, a director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU. But these headlines might also energize voters in contests up and down the ballot, including citizen-led ballot measures in nine states aiming to protect abortion rights, she said.
Support for legal abortion has risen since the Supreme Court eliminated protections two years ago, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion for any reason if they don’t want to be pregnant. That represents an increase from June 2021, a year before the Supreme Court decision, when about half of Americans thought legal abortion should be possible under these circumstances.
Many experts and advocates have credited this shift to Americans’ reactions to the abortion restrictions affecting a wide swath of the country since Roe was overturned. Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy while another four ban it after six weeks — before many women know they’re pregnant.
“It’s hard to say how much voters are following each development, but it’s clear abortion is still an incredibly salient issue, and these are reminders of why as we head closer to November,” Arons said. “As courts and politicians continue to play ping-pong with women’s lives, ballot measures will be especially important.”
Only about half the states allow citizen-led ballot initiatives. Georgia and Texas, states where Republicans control the Legislature and governor's office, are not among them.
Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for a coalition aiming to enshrine abortion rights into the Florida Constitution, said the Georgia Supreme Court ruling only adds to a “public health crisis in the Southeast.”
Florida is the only state in the Southeast that allows citizen-led ballot initiatives, Brenzel said. If Floridians vote in favor of abortion rights, the state may become a major access point for Georgians seeking abortions. The Florida amendment needs at least 60% support to pass.
“It raises the stakes for us here in Florida,” Brenzel said.
After the Arizona Supreme Court revived the Civil War-era ban on nearly all abortions, a coalition organizing around a statewide ballot measure to protect abortion rights reported a surge in donations, volunteers and interest. Laura Dent, the coalition’s political director, said it's evidence that voters are paying attention and taking action.
“Arizonans are seeing these headlines,” she said. “This and all the whiplash we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision really brought into focus for Arizona voters how we need to protect this right, and I think that will be reflected in November.”
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FILE - Supporters cheer as speakers arrive at an event kicking off a national "Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour" by the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz, Sept. 3, 2024, in Boynton Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War."
The revelations were made in the famed Watergate reporter's latest book, which also details President Joe Biden's frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman 's assortment of burner phones. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.
Trump denied the reporting in an interview with ABC News' Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump said of Woodward.
Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist's 2021 book, “Rage.” Trump later sued over it, claiming Woodward never had permission to publicly release recordings of their interviews for the book. The publisher and Woodward denied his allegations.
Here is more from the new book:
Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book, though it does not detail what they discussed.
Trump senior adviser and longtime aide Jason Miller told Woodward that he had not heard Trump was having calls with Putin and said, “I'd push back on that.” But Miller also said, according to the book, “I’m sure they’d know how to get in touch with each other."
Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said none of the stories in Woodward’s books are true. In a statement on Tuesday, he called them “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Trump's relationship with Putin has been scrutinized since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.
U.S. intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, though an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following an in-person meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
In recent years, Trump has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. He has said Ukraine should have made concessions to Putin before Russia invaded in 2022. He also previously touted his good relationship with Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.
Woodward reports that Trump sent Putin COVID-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.
Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be mad at Trump over it, but Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew, according to the book. Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.
The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia. It was previously reported by The Associated Press and other agencies that Trump’s administration in May 2020 sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview Tuesday with radio host Howard Stern, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling" to get tests.
“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day," said Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.
The book also details Biden’s complicated relationship with Netanyahu as well as private moments when the president has been fed up with him over the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Netanyahu “erupted” this past spring, Woodward writes. The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “bad f——— guy," according to the book. Biden said he felt, in Woodward’s accounting, that Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly.” With Netanyahu “continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas.” Woodward wrote, “Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipment.”
Biden and Netanyahu have long been acquainted, although their relationship has not been known to be close or overly friendly. Last week, Biden said he didn’t know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a Mideast peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Asked about the book's reporting, White House spokesperson Emilie Simons told reporters Tuesday that “The commitment that we have to the state of Israel is ironclad.”
Simons, when pressed on the details, said she wouldn't comment on every anecdote that may come out in reporting. She added of Biden and Netanyahu: “They have a long-term relationship. They have a very honest and direct relationship, and I don’t have a comment on those specific anecdotes.”
The book details Biden’s criticism late last year of President Barack Obama’s handling of Putin’s earlier invasion of Ukraine, when Russia seized Crimea and a section of the Donbas in 2014, at a time when Biden was serving as the Democrat’s vice president.
“They f----- up in 2014,” Woodward wrote that Biden said to a close friend in December, blaming the lack of action for Putin’s actions in Ukraine. “Barack never took Putin seriously.”
Biden was angry while speaking to the friend and said they “never should have let Putin just walk in there” in 2014 and that the U.S. “did nothing.”
Woodward reports Biden was privately furious with Attorney General Merrick Garland for appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden’s son Hunter in a tax-and-gun prosecution.
“Should never have picked Garland,” Biden told an associate, according to Woodward. The journalist did not name the associate.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June on federal gun charges and faces sentencing in federal court in Delaware in December. He pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in California and is also set to be sentenced in that case in December.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
One of Trump’s longest-term allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, blamed Trump’s ongoing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged to a cult of personality in which the former president’s ensconcement at Mar-a-Lago and circle of aides and advisers “constantly feed this narrative,” according to the book.
The weekend after Russia invaded Ukraine, Graham was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which the senator characterized as “a little bit like going to North Korea.” Graham added that “everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”
On politics, Woodward wrote that Graham’s counsel was part of what persuaded Trump to run again for the presidency.
In March, during one of his many visits to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Graham told Woodward that he had been meeting with the Saudi crown prince when Graham suggested they call Trump. From “a bag containing about 50 burner phones,” Prince Mohammed “pulled out one labeled ‘TRUMP 45.’” On another trip, Woodward wrote, the Saudi leader retrieved another burner phone, "this time labeled JAKE SULLIVAN ” when the men called Biden’s national security adviser.
Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Hillel Italie in New York, Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Aamer Madhani aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.
FILE - In this April 29, 2017, file photo journalist Bob Woodward sits at the head table during the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an extended meeting during the summit of the heads of state of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool Photo via AP)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at an event marking one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
