Iowa’s state legislature voted last night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant. Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in the Iowa house and Senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.
The legislation will take immediate effect after Reynolds signs it on Friday and will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.
“The Iowa supreme court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed”.
The ACLU of Iowa’s executive director, Mark Stringer, said the reproductive rights of Iowans to control their bodies and their lives, their health and their safety should be protected and that it would file a lawsuit “to block this reckless, cruel law.”
If at first you don’t succeed. A similar six-week ban that the legislature passed in 2018 was blocked by the state’s supreme court one year later. Since that decision, however, Roe has been overturned and a more conservative court ruled that abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right in Iowa.
Trump not entitled to immunity in Carroll defamation lawsuit, DoJ says
The justice department has reversed its position on defending Donald Trump in a lawsuit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, paving the way for a possible trial in January. The department said in a court filing yesterday that it could no longer conclude Trump was acting in his capacity as president when he made allegedly defamatory statements about Carroll in 2019.
The former Elle magazine columnist alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Trump in a New York department store in 1996, a claim that he dismissed as “a complete con job”. Carroll, 79, has already won a second case against Trump over comments he made after he left the White House. In May, a New York jury found that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and ordered him to pay her $5m in damages.
Trump has sought to delay the first defamation lawsuit by claiming that he should be granted immunity because he made the comments while speaking to the media as president.
At first, the justice department – under Trump and Joe Biden – agreed with that view. But in the filing on Tuesday, US lawyers cited the jury’s verdict, Trump’s October deposition and new claims Carroll has since made that Trump defamed her again with comments he made during a CNN town hall a day after the verdict.
The plot thickens. Lawyers reportedly said the new evidence suggested “that Mr Trump was motivated by a ‘personal grievance’ stemming from events that occurred many years prior to Mr Trump’s presidency”.
Archaeologists dig for children who died at Nebraska Native American boarding school
Archaeologists have started digging for the remains of children who died at a Native American boarding school in Nebraska. Grave sites of dozens of children who died at the Genoa Indian industrial school have been lost for decades, a mystery that archaeologists aim to unravel as they dig in a field that a century ago was part of the sprawling campus.
Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that separated Indigenous children from their families and cut them off from their heritage. Newspaper clippings, records and a student’s letter indicate at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid, while at least one death was blamed on an accidental shooting.
For decades, residents of the tiny community of Genoa, with help from Native Americans, researchers and state officials, have sought the location of a forgotten cemetery where the bodies of up to 80 students are believed to be buried.
As part of an effort last summer to find the cemetery, dogs trained to detect the faint odour of decaying remains searched the area and signalled they had found a burial site in a narrow piece of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal.
‘Cultural genocide’. The school, about 90 miles (145km) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students from more than 40 tribes across the country. It closed in 1931 and most buildings were long ago demolished.
In other news …
US authorities have arrested a California man accused of killing three women in the Mexican border city of Tijuana and crossing back and forth across the international line after each of the deaths, which occurred over the course of nearly a year starting in 2021.
Thailand’s parliament will gather for a high stakes vote tomorrow that will determine whether the leader of the country’s most popular and progressive party can take power after almost a decade of rule by the former army chief who seized power in a military coup.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile off its east coast towards Japan earlier today, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said, in a move that followed threats of retaliation for alleged US spy plane flights. The launch is North Korea’s 12th this year. In April, it test-fired its first ever solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile.
Russia has been accused of “an act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto at the UN security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid designed to help 4 million people living in rebel-held north-west Syria. The vote throws into doubt the continued existence of the key aid route into Syria from Turkey.
Don’t miss this: Cut out the middlemouse: how Disney pop stars took control of their careers
When the Disney Channel star Hilary Duff released her debut album in 2003, it marked a key shift in pop. Before her, the corporation’s TV teen talent – Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake – had left Disney behind when they signed with major labels en route to becoming superstars. But with Duff, who played her show’s titular Lizzie McGuire, Disney saw an opportunity: instead of letting one of their biggest names find success elsewhere, they wanted to monetise whatever pop stardom their latest ingenue could deliver, and signed Duff to Disney’s own Hollywood Records, reviving a label that had never really managed to get off the ground, writes Alim Kheraj.
But a draconian-level control over artists led to ever more dramatic rejections of Disney. By the start of this decade, Disney’s stars couldn’t wait to break out and seize independence on their own terms. In January 2021, Olivia Rodrigo, the star of Disney’s meta show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, released the blockbuster single Drivers License. Tellingly, it wasn’t on Hollywood but Interscope, and was framed as her debut, despite her having previously released the song All I Want, sung from the perspective of her Disney character, on Hollywood.
… or this: Inside a New York billionaire’s private museum
The gallery tour ended after 35 minutes precisely, and a distinguished-looking gentleman with a Strand Bookstore bag asked: “So why were you closed for so long?” The question implied the gallery was once open. It wasn’t. For years, the art could be glimpsed only from outside, beyond the glare of the windows. The collection, amassed by real estate mogul Sheldon Solow, who died in 2020 aged 92 and worth $4.4bn, is conservatively valued at $500m.
Could some kind of democratisation be under way at 9 West 57th Street with the changing of the guard after the death of Solow? Michael Hershman, the chief executive of the Soloviev Group, wrote in an email: “The reason for opening the collection to the public is social responsibility. It is a wonderful collection, and we want to share it with the public.” The opening was not, he added, “in any way driven by past criticism”, and the decision was taken by the late Solow’s son, Stefan Soloviev.
Climate check: Residents of US south-west swelter under record-breaking heatwave
Record-breaking heat is baking the US south-west this week, putting millions under extreme heat warnings as temperatures upwards of 100F hit Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and southern California for days on end. Even desert residents accustomed to scorching summers are feeling the relentless grip of the heat. Phoenix, which hit a 12th consecutive day of 110F on Tuesday, could experience its longest ever heatwave.
The high temperatures in Arizona’s largest city are expected to continue through next week, with the National Weather Service warning it will rival “some of the worst heatwaves this area has ever seen”. The longest recorded stretch of 110F-days was 18 days in 1974. The region has not yet reported any monsoon activity, powerful storms that can help offset blazing temperatures and are typical of this time of year.
Last Thing: How hip-hop fuelled Egypt’s rebellion
For anyone who participated in the 18 days of protests in 2011 that led to the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, the early days of the revolution, when people camped out in Tahrir Square, had the feeling of a festive event, somewhat like a concert. Ramy Essam, then in his early 20s, was one of the singers who brought music to the heart of the revolution, writes Yasmine El Rashidi. During the height of the uprising, Essam performed in front of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians gathered in and around the square.
He got up on a small platform set up for political manifestos, brought out his classical guitar and started to sing political rock. Slowly he commanded the attention of all those in the square who could hear him. Word spread and the crowds around him grew. He would scribble down his lyrics at night in the tent he shared with friends. His song Irhal (Leave) became an anthem to the revolution: “We’re all one hand and we have one demand / Leave leave leave down / Down with Hosni Mubarak! The people demand / The fall of the regime / He will leave / We won’t leave / We’re all one hand and we have one demand / Leave leave leave.”
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