Politics

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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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Iraqi official Mohammed Jalood was elected president of the International Weightlifting Federation in chaotic scenes on Saturday.

In an election more than a year overdue, more controversy and confusion was stirred up when nine of the 11 candidates for president withdrew just before voting began.

A vote was taken but Qatari candidate Yousef Al-Mana protested that Jalood signaled his withdrawal, too, when the two men sat together before the vote — which would have left Al-Mana unopposed.

After the officials in charge ruled Jalood could take part after all because they couldn’t be sure whether he signaled his withdrawal or not, Al-Mana then told delegates he was stepping aside “to satisfy all of you.” That made Jalood the new president without a vote count.

Jalood is a longtime IWF official who held the post of general secretary until Saturday and worked closely with Al-Mana at the Asian Weightlifting Federation. Jalood thanked Al-Mana for withdrawing and called him “a good friend” in comments on the IWF website.

“Today, we have taken the first step in building a stronger organization, one that is more resilient and more ambitious,” he said.

Among the candidates who withdrew was Maxim Agapitov of Russia, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned an earlier decision to bar him from standing. He was joined by Ursula Papandrea of the United States, who was interim president briefly in 2020 until she was ousted by the board after pushing for anti-doping and governance reforms. The incumbent interim leader, Michael Irani from Britain, didn’t run.

Jalood is the first permanent president since Tamás Aján stepped down in 2020 after controlling the IWF for 44 years. He faced allegations that failed drug tests were covered up and millions of dollars were unaccounted for under his presidency. Aján was banned for life last week by CAS.

Those revelations, followed by bitter infighting at the IWF, have put weightlifting’s Olympic status at risk. The International Olympic Committee has left weightlifting off the initial list of sports for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, though it could reinstate it later.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mitt Romney isn’t up for reelection this year. But Trump-aligned Republicans hostile toward the Utah senator have made his name a recurring theme in this year’s primaries, using him as a foil and derisively branding their rivals “Mitt Romney Republicans.”

Republicans have used the concept to frame their primary opponents as enemies of the Trump-era GOP in southeast Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The anti-tax group Club For Growth, among the most active super PACs in this year’s primaries, used “Mitt Romney Republican” as the central premise of an attack ad in North Carolina’s Senate primary.

But nowhere are references to Romney Republicanism as common as they are in Utah. Despite his popularity with many residents here, candidates are repeatedly deploying “Mitt Romney Republican” as a campaign trail attack in the lead-up to Tuesday’s Republican primary.

“There are two different wings in the Republican Party,” Chris Herrod, a former state lawmaker running in suburban Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, said in a debate last month.

“If you’re more aligned with Mitt Romney and Spencer Cox,” he added, referring to Utah’s governor, “then I’m probably not your guy.”

The fact that his brand has become potent attack fodder reflect how singular Romney’s position is in U.S. politics: He’s the only senator with the nationwide name recognition that comes from running for president and the only Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump twice.

“It’s kind of a puzzlement, actually,” said Becky Edwards, an anti-Trump Republican running in Utah’s Senate primary.

As one of the most famous members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney is revered by many in Utah, where the church is a dominant presence in politics and culture. He won praise for turning around Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Olympics after a bribery scandal. After moving to Utah full-time more than a decade ago, he breezed to victory in the state’s Senate race in 2018. He did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Herrod, who went to Las Vegas to campaign for Romney in 2012, said in an interview that referring to Romney was effective shorthand — a way to tell voters about his own belief system as well as that of incumbent Republican Rep. John Curtis. Herrod has attacked Curtis for his positions on energy policy and for founding Congress’ Conservative Climate Caucus.

“In the midst of a campaign, it’s kind of tough to draw a line. I just put it in terms I thought people would understand,” Herrod said.

The Curtis campaign said the congressman was more focused on legislation and passing bills than branding. “Congressman Curtis doesn’t spend his time labeling himself or other Republicans,” his campaign manager, Adrielle Herring, said in a statement.

Much like Herrod, Andrew Badger, a candidate running in northern Utah’s 1st Congressional District, frames his primary campaign as a “tug of war” between two competing factions within the Republican Party. He describes one as the moderate, compromise-friendly wing embodied by Romney and the other as the conservative wing embodied by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a frequent guest of FOX News who is often the Senate’s lone “no” vote.

Both Badger and Herrod acknowledge attacking Romney may turn off some voters, four years after he easily defeated a right-wing state lawmaker in Utah’s Republican primary and a Democrat in the general election. But they question the durability of his support given how the last six years have broadly transformed Republican politics.

“There’s a lot more frustration, and it’s only building. I don’t think he would win in a vote today, certainly not in a Republican primary,” Badger said.

Badger in his campaign has focused on simmering outrage stemming from the 2020 election and anger over coronavirus mandates and how race, gender and sexuality are taught in K-12 schools. He has attempted to draw a direct line between Romney and his opponent, incumbent Rep. Blake Moore, by attacking Moore for being one of 35 House Republicans to vote to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In a district where support for Trump remains strong, he’s likened Moore’s vote to Romney’s two votes in favor of impeachment.

“These folks like Mitt Romney and Blake Moore, they always cave to the left when the pressure gets turned on them,” Badger said. “We’re not going to compromise for the sake of compromise.”

Moore did not vote for impeachment. After the Senate scuttled the commission, Moore, along with all but two House Republicans, voted against the creation of the Jan. 6 select committee that ultimately convened.

In response to Moore being labeled a “Mitt Romney Republican,” Caroline Tucker, the congressman’s campaign spokesperson, said he could be best described a “Big Tent Republican” who doesn’t think the process of lawmaking requires abandoning his conservative principles.

Jason Perry, director of University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, said the label “Mitt Romney Republican” may appeal to some Republican primary voters, but given Romney’s popularity, it likely won’t work in Utah, he said.

“They’re appealing to a segment of the Republican Party but probably do not have the numbers on that far-right side to be successful,” Perry said.

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By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, the issue has become one of the defining fault lines in U.S. politics, with Democratic politicians firmly supporting abortion rights and Republican lawmakers lining up in opposition.

In 1973 the lines were more blurred. Republican and Democratic voters were equally likely to say abortion should be legal, while it was easy to find Republican officials who supported abortion rights and Democrats who opposed the procedure.

So what changed?

NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE AT FIRST

Abortion on demand was legal in four states in the early 1970s, while 14 more allowed it under some circumstances.

While the Catholic Church opposed abortion, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination, was on record saying it should be allowed in many circumstances.

Neither party viewed abortion as a defining issue.

Republicans like first lady Betty Ford said the Roe decision was “a great, great decision,” while some Democrats, like a newly elected senator named Joe Biden, said the court’s ruling went “too far.”

Voters also did not see the issue along partisan lines. The General Social Survey opinion poll found in 1977 that 39% of Republicans said abortion should be allowed for any reason, compared to 35% of Democrats.

A CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT MOBILIZES

In the years that followed, conservative activists like Phyllis Schlafly seized on the issue as a threat to traditional values and enlisted evangelical churches, which had shown a new interest in politics following a series of court rulings that limited prayer in public settings.

These groups portrayed abortion as a threat to the family structure, along with broader social developments like gay rights, rising divorce rates, and women working outside of the home. For pastors and parishioners, abortion became a proxy issue for concerns about a liberalizing society, said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian at University of California-Davis.

“For many evangelicals, this was more about family and women and sex,” she said.

In 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution opposing abortion, reversing its earlier position.

Republican Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory that same year gave abortion opponents a powerful ally in the White House. At the same time, women’s rights activists gained more influence within the Democratic Party and pushed leaders to support abortion rights.

But support for Roe still did not line up along party lines.

In a 1983 Senate vote, 34 Republicans and 15 Democrats voted for a proposed constitutional amendment that would have overturned the Roe decision, while 19 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted against it.

Biden was among those voting no, even though he had backed the legislation in committee the previous year.

POLITICIANS PICK SIDES – VOTERS FOLLOW

In the years that followed, the dividing lines became more apparent as political candidates found it increasingly necessary to align with activists who were becoming more influential within their parties.

Republican George H.W. Bush, an abortion opponent who had earlier supported abortion rights, won the presidency in 1988. In 1992 he was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton, an abortion rights supporter who had earlier opposed abortion.

Since 1989, abortion-rights groups have donated $32 million to Democrats and $3 million to Republican candidates who support keeping abortion legal, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. Groups that opposed abortion have given $14 million to Republicans and only $372,000 to Democrats over that time period.

Voters were slower to sort themselves out. As late as 1991, 45% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans said they supported abortion for any reason, according to the General Social Survey.

Partisan differences widened in the following years, however, as the issue became a staple of TV attack ads fundraising appeals and mass rallies by interest groups.

By the turn of the century, only 31% of Republicans supported on-demand abortion, while Democratic support remained steady at 45%, according to the General Social Survey.

BOTH SIDES DIG IN

Other opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans support some restrictions on abortion but oppose an outright ban.

At the same time, Democrats have grown more absolute in their support for abortion rights.

Biden, who supported a ban on federal funding for most abortions in the Medicaid program for the poor for most of his political career, reversed his position as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

In the current Congress, only one House Democrat and one Senate Democrat voted against legislation that would make abortion legal nationwide under all circumstances. The bill failed in the Senate, but Democrats have said they plan to make it a central issue in the November 2022 elections.

Among Democratic voters, support for unrestricted abortion has jumped from 56% in 2016 to 71% last year, according to the General Social Survey, while Republican support continues to hover around 34%.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Ross Colvin and Lisa Shumaker)

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By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – In a bombshell decision, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognized a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The court voted 5-4 to overturn Roe, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the center of that case, which bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but would not have reversed Roe. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

Here are some excerpts from their opinions.

CONSERVATIVE JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO, IN THE MAJORITY OPINION:

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. A ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, made in 1992, reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access.

“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

CONSERVATIVE JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS, IN A CONCURRING OPINION:

“Because the Court properly applies our substantive due process precedents to reject the fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion, and because this case does not present the opportunity to reject substantive due process entirely, I join the Court’s opinion.”

“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold (which protected the right to contraception), Lawrence (which invalidated state laws banning sodomy), and Obergefell (which legalized gay marriage nationwide).”

“Substantive due process conflicts with that textual command and has harmed our country in many ways. Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.”

CONSERVATIVE JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH, IN A CONCURRING OPINION:

“The Constitution does not take sides on the issue of abortion. The text of the Constitution does not refer to or encompass abortion.”

“Because the Constitution is neutral on the issue of abortion, this Court also must be scrupulously neutral. The nine unelected Members of this Court do not possess the constitutional authority to override the democratic process and to decree either a pro-life or a pro-choice abortion policy for all 330 million people in the United States.”

“To be clear, then, the Court’s decision today does not outlaw abortion throughout the United States. On the contrary, the Court’s decision properly leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process.”

CONSERVATIVE CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS, CONCURRING IN THE JUDGMENT ON THE MISSISSIPPI LAW ONLY BUT NOT OVERTURNING ROE:

“I would take a more measured course. I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense.”

“If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more. Perhaps we are not always perfect in following that command, and certainly there are cases that warrant an exception. But this is not one of them.”

“The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system – regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case.”

LIBERAL JUSTICES STEPHEN BREYER, ELENA KAGAN AND SONIA SOTOMAYOR, DISSENTING:

“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.”

“No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation.”

“The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.”

“With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Scott Malone and Will Duham)

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