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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Richard Luscombe

Senate Democrats aim to reveal which Republicans oppose abortion ahead of midterms – live

Hundreds of protesters march in support of abortion rights in San Diego, California on Sunday.
Hundreds of protesters march in support of abortion rights in San Diego, California on Sunday. Photograph: Hayne Palmour IV/REX/Shutterstock

Closing summary

That’s a wrap for our first US politics blog of the week.

The White House is slamming comments by Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell hinting at a nationwide abortion ban, and attacking other Republicans pondering extreme legislation affecting women.

And Joe Biden has just signed a law speeding up US military aid to Ukraine, updating a second world war era act that allowed western allies to better stand up to Nazi Germany.

Here’s where else the day went:

  • The US Senate is poised to advance a vote on enshrining into law abortion rights. The move would set up a floor vote Wednesday that Democrats would lose, but use to win voters for November’s midterm elections.
  • Biden joined vice-president Kamala Harris in the White House Rose Garden to unveil a program that would make high-speed internet access free for millions of low-income Americans.
  • Nancy Pelosi says Republicans will take aim at basic human rights and “drag our nation back to a dark time” if the supreme court overturns abortion protections this summer.
  • New York state’s attorney general Letitia James announced a plan to significantly expand abortion access, including for non-residents, if the supreme court overturns the Roe v Wade ruling.
  • The Biden administration said it would erase the Trump-era 25% tariff on Ukrainian steel imports, for an initial period of one year.

Updated

White House 'exploring options' to protect women's rights

The Biden administration is exploring “a range of considerations” to counter extreme Republican laws that might follow the overturning of abortion rights, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said.

In her afternoon media briefing, she also slammed comments by Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, that his party might consider a nationwide abortion ban, and attacked Republicans in several states looking to introduce measures that she said would further restrict women’s fundamental rights.

Jen Psaki addresses reporters on Monday.
Jen Psaki addresses reporters on Monday. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Psaki said she believed the US was “at serious risk” of a Republican abortion ban:

Dozens of Republicans in Congress signed on to the Mississippi court case advocating for severe restrictions on a woman’s right to choose, and a woman’s right to make choices about her own body.

Just yesterday, the governor of Mississippi wouldn’t say directly if they would go after the right to use contraception ... Louisiana legislators advanced a bill to classify abortion as homicide, which would allow women who terminate their pregnancies to be charged with murder, and potentially criminalize in-vitro fertilization and forms of birth control.

So yes, you’re seeing an outcry by the nearly two thirds of the public, many of them peacefully protesting, who are concerned about what this [supreme court] opinion will say.

But you’re also seeing a number of Republicans in states, and some in Congress, double down on this potential to overturn a law that has been the law of the land for 50 years.

Asked what the Biden administration could do if some of the proposals came to fruition, Psaki said:

There’s a range of considerations that are under way by our counsel’s office [and] by the Department of Justice led by the gender policy council, to take every step we can to protect women’s fundamental rights and protect rights beyond that.

Updated

Biden signs lend-lease law speeding up Ukraine aid

Joe Biden has just appeared at a ceremony in the White House to sign the so-called lend-lease act speeding up aid to Ukraine.

The bipartisan bill, passed 417-10 in the House last month, updates a 1941 law that allowed the US, before its own entrance into the second world war, to hasten military support for allies fighting the forces of Nazi Germany.

Biden said it would allow Ukraine to better defend itself against the Russian invasion ordered by its president Vladimir Putin.

Support for Ukraine is pivotal at this moment. Every day Ukrainians pay with their lives ... the atrocities that the Russians are engaging in are just beyond the pale and the cost of the fight is not cheap.

But caving to aggression is even more costly. That’s why we’re staying in this.

Biden referenced yesterday’s Victory in Europe (VE) Day, that marked the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, expanded on the theme in her afternoon press briefing:

This day is supposed to be about celebrating peace and unity in Europe and the defeat of Nazis in world war two. That is what is celebrated every year in Russia as well.

Instead, Putin is perverting history, attempting to change it I should say, to justify his unprovoked and unjustified war, which has brought catastrophic loss of life and immense human suffering.

We’re continuing to do what we can to provide support for Ukraine at this pivotal moment on security, economic and humanitarian assistance.

Updated

Discussion of gender identity or sexual preference is now banned in many of Florida’s classrooms because of governor Ron DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” bill.

But with one more stroke of the Republican governor’s pen on Monday, another subject became compulsory: students must receive at least 45 minutes’ instruction learning about the “victims of communism” every November.

Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis. Photograph: Marta Lavandier/AP

In a ceremony at Miami’s Freedom Tower, where scores of Cuban immigrants were admitted into the US, DeSantis signed House Bill 395, designating 7 November as Victims of Communism Day, according to the Miami Herald.

The newspaper says the law makes Florida one of a handful of states to adopt the designation, but it is the first state to mandate school instruction on that day.

“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, according to the Herald, noting that tens of millions of people died in China under his rule.

“I know we don’t need legislation here to do this, but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like [former Cuban dictator] Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro [president of Venezuela].”

The instruction will begin in the 2023-2024 school year, DeSantis said, and require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes.

Say what you like about Donald Trump’s supporters, you cannot fault them for commitment. When the former president arrived for his latest rally in a deeply rural corner of western Pennsylvania, many had already been standing in solid rain for 10 hours.

The field in which they were to greet their revered leader was a mud bath. By the time Trump finally arrived, 20 minutes late, the scene had taken on the qualities of the apocalypse – like the closing sequences of the Fyre festival.

On this occasion, the seemingly boundless patience of Trump’s devoted followers was being put to the test for an additional reason. He had come to the Westmoreland Fairgrounds outside Greensburg to sprinkle Trump stardust on his preferred choice for the US Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican senator Pat Toomey.

A rain-soaked Mehmet Oz addresses the crowd in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
A rain-soaked Mehmet Oz addresses the crowd in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Whether Pennsylvanian conservatives go along with the endorsement when the primary is held on 17 May will have big consequences, not merely on Trump’s record of advancing his chosen people – and with it his grip on the Republican party. It will also have ramifications for the November election which, in tune with recent contests in the state, is almost certain to be nail-bitingly close and could be critical in determining whether the Republicans retake the Senate.

The trouble is, many Trump supporters don’t know what to make of Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV surgeon better known as Dr Oz.

“We love Trump, but we’ll be booing Oz,” said Pam, 46, a local educator who asked to give only her first name. She admitted one of the reasons she had turned up in the first place was to see how hostile her fellow Trump supporters would be towards the candidate.

In the end, after all that sodden waiting, Pam was disappointed. Occasional booing could be heard earlier in the evening whenever Oz was mentioned, but when the man himself took to the stage, whether by design or accident, the music was cranked up so loud that it was impossible to tell jeering from cheering.

Read the full story:

Biden reveals fast internet program for low-income Americans

Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House to announce plans for free high-speed internet for millions of low-income Americans.

The US president is using the partnership with 20 tech companies to promote the success of his $1tn bipartisan infrastructure, more than $14bn has been used to provide $30 monthly subsidies to families for internet service.

Joe Biden speaks at the White House, watched by vice-president Kamala Harris.
Joe Biden speaks at the White House, watched by vice-president Kamala Harris. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Kamala Harris was also present at the Rose Garden event at which Biden revealed details of the affordable connectivity program (“I refuse to call it the ACP. I am so tired of acronyms in Washington, I can’t stand ‘em,” Biden said).

Under the new program, the providers have agreed to drop their monthly charge to $30 a month, effectively making high-speed internet free for 48m Americans, Biden said.

In the past, 30 bucks a month meant you had to settle for a slow internet service, unless you wanted to pay a heck of a lot more out of pocket.

We secured a commitment from 20 providers to lower prices for high speed for tens of millions of households. Families who are eligible can select a plan from a participating provider and receive high speed internet at no cost in most cases.

Biden said he understood the feelings of isolation that being disconnected from the outside world could bring, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic:

Mental health problems are becoming a serious problem, feeling left out, feeling you can’t participate, and not knowing what to do.

I know Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, is going to talk about this in other contexts, but you know, I really think that just knowing that you belong, knowing and feeling that you can get access to what other people get on a regular basis, will make a big difference for people.

Updated

Interim summary

Where things stand halfway through our day:

  • The US Senate is set to advance a vote on enshrining into law abortion rights. The move would set up a floor vote Wednesday that Democrats would lose, but use to win voters for November’s midterm elections.
  • Joe Biden is speaking at the White House about a program that would make high-speed internet access free for millions of low-income Americans.
  • Nancy Pelosi says Republicans will take aim at basic human rights and “drag our nation back to a dark time” if the supreme court overturns abortion protections this summer.
  • New York state’s attorney general Letitia James has announced a plan to significantly expand abortion access, including for non-residents, if the supreme court overturns the Roe v Wade ruling.
  • The Biden administration says it will erase the Trump-era 25% tariff on Ukrainian steel imports, for an initial period of one year.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state best known for being asked by Donald Trump to “find” enough votes to overturn the former president’s 2020 defeat, has announced plans to solve a problem that doesn’t exist: non-US citizens voting in elections.

Brad Raffensperger.
Brad Raffensperger. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

Raffensperger has conducted a citizenship audit of the state’s voter rolls, and will integrate citizenship checks into the voter registration process, the Associated Press reports.

He admits noncitizen voting is not a problem and that state law already bars those who aren’t US citizens from voting. And while his audit flagged more than 1,600 potential noncitizens who tried to register over the last 25 years, none was successful.

But Raffensperger, who doubles as the state’s chief elections officer, is making the issue a centerpiece of his effort to win over diehard conservatives ahead of what could be a difficult bid to clinch the Republican nomination for another four year term in office, the AP says.

“I want to make sure that we follow the law, that we follow the constitution, and I want to make sure that only Americans can vote in our elections,” Raffensperger said.

His Trump-endorsed rival, Republican congressman Jody Hice, who objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for Biden, wasted no time in attacking Raffensperger.

“Non-citizens voting in Georgia elections is already illegal,” he said in an emailed statement.

“If Brad worked as hard at executing the responsibilities of secretary of state as he does at political posturing, I wouldn’t be challenging him.”

Conservative groups perpetuating Donald Trump’s false charges that the 2020 election was rigged have sparked a lawsuit against one in Colorado, and a congressional panel investigation of another in New Mexico, over aggressive tactics allegedly used to seek out possible voter fraud.

The scrutiny and criticism facing these conservative groups underscore how Trump loyalists in several US states are working to sustain falsehoods about Trump’s loss, while launching new drives that voting rights advocates say smack of voter intimidation, often targeting communities of color.

A lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and two other groups in March charging that Colorado-based US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has echoed Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 election fraud, has gone door to door in some counties aggressively questioning residents about their voting status and sometimes bearing arms.

Moreover, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has been investigating EchoMail, a firm that helped push false claims of election fraud in Arizona and has reportedly been paid $50,000 by a New Mexico county to oversee a local “audit force” doing intrusive door-to-door voter canvassing.

Other states including Michigan and Utah boast conservative groups that, under the guise of protecting voting integrity by ferreting out fraud, have been criticized for the methods they employed in seeking out potential voter fraud.

“As Americans, we expect and demand an open and participatory democracy that welcomes all voters equally,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “Those engaging in these pressure tactics should know that voter intimidation is a crime with serious consequences.”

The lawsuit against USEIP filed by the NAACP in Colorado, the League of Women Voters in Colorado and Mi Familia Vota charges that USEIP has engaged in “door-to-door voter intimidation”, including taking pictures of some houses, in neighborhoods with a large number of minority residents.

The lawsuit alleges, without providing specific cases, that USEIP representatives have at times worn badges or carried firearms when visiting voters’ residences, although they are not government officials.

Read more:

Following last Monday night’s leak of a supreme court draft opinion that would overrule Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that guaranteed the right to an abortion, Republican state lawmakers are working to make sure they are ready to limit access as soon as is legally permissible.

The language of the court’s decision will probably change at least somewhat when it is ultimately issued by the end of June. But its central, top-line declaration – a 5-4 majority issuing a clear, unequivocal overturning of Roe – is widely expected to remain.

Here is what Republican state lawmakers across the country are doing in the lead-up to the decision to assure that abortion restrictions will swiftly go into effect:

John Oliver delivered an impassioned episode of his HBO show after the “catastrophic” news that the supreme court is poised overturn the basic right to an abortion.

On the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, the host said that “while the fate of Roe might not have been a surprise, the draft itself was still a horror show”, referring to Samuel Alito’s leaked draft calling for the 1973 decision to be reversed.

Oliver said that “we need to be able to talk about abortion like adults”, which means focusing on the “immediate and devastating consequences” this will have.

He referred to it as “catastrophic” as it will quickly trigger bans on abortion in 22 states. He noted that approximately 25% of women have had an abortion and said this reversal is ultimately about “bodily autonomy”.

He played a clip from Fox News where a host said that people can just move to a different state if they want an abortion.

“It’s not about merely having the right to go somewhere else, it’s also about whether you have the resources and ability to do that and many may not,” Oliver said.

Pelosi: 'Republicans will take aim at basic human rights'

Nancy Pelosi has assailed Republicans in her weekly “Dear Colleague” letter to fellow Democrats, saying once Roe v Wade abortion protections are overturned, basic human rights will be next.

Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters

In the missive, the House speaker says it is “urgent and essential” that Democrats share with the American public the “dangers of the Republican agenda” in the wake of the supreme court’s draft ruling ending almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections:

Republican state legislators across the country are already advancing extreme new laws, seeking to arrest doctors for offering reproductive care, ban abortion entirely with no exceptions, and even charge women with murder who exercise their right to choose.

These draconian measures could even criminalize contraceptive care, in vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care, dragging our nation back to a dark time decades into the past.

Make no mistake: once Republicans have dispensed with precedent and privacy in overturning Roe, they will take aim at additional basic human rights. At this pivotal moment, the stakes for women - and every American – could not be higher.

Updated

Authorities in Wisconsin are investigating an arson attack on an anti-abortion group’s office in the early hours of Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

According to police in Madison, a Molotov cocktail thrown into the building at about 6am yesterday, starting a small fire at the Wisconsin Family Action office. Nobody was present and damage was minimal.

The words “if abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either” were spray-painted on the building’s exterior, according to a statement from police chief, Shon Barnes.

Tony Evers, the Democratic Wisconsin governor, condemned the attack in a meeting with reporters on Monday, calling it “horrible”.

“This is unacceptable. Violence does not solve the issues we’re facing as a country,” he said.

Updated

The Republican governor of Mississippi has refused to rule out attempting to ban some forms of contraception if the supreme court ruling which guarantees the right to abortion should fall.

“That is not what we’re focused on at this time,” Tate Reeves said.

The ruling, Roe v Wade, seems likely to fall this summer, after the leak of a draft supreme court decision supported by five conservatives on the nine-member court.

The leak set off celebrations among conservatives and protests among liberals, as a near 50-year battle over a key privacy right approached a decisive moment.

Like other states, Mississippi has a “trigger law” which if Roe falls will outlaw almost all abortions, with exceptions in cases of rape or threat to the life of the mother. The case at issue in the draft ruling, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, originated in Mississippi.

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Reeves confirmed that his state’s trigger law would go into effect if Roe fell.

Reeves’ host on CNN, Jake Tapper, then referred to neighbouring Louisiana, where Republicans have advanced a bill to make abortion a crime of murder.

Tapper said: “They’re talking about not only criminally charging girls and women who get abortions as committing homicide, but they’re also talking about defining the moment of conception as fertilisation, which would theoretically … mean if you use an IUD [intrauterine device], you are committing murder.

“… I’m not making this up. These are the conversations going on in legislatures in your area. So, just to be clear, you have no intention of seeking to ban IUDs or Plan B [morning-after pills]?”

Reeves said: “That is not what we’re focused on at this time.

“We’re focused on looking at – see[ing] what the court allows for. The bill that is before the court is a 15-week [abortion] ban. We believe that the overturning of Roe is the correct decision by the court. And so, in Mississippi, we don’t have laws on the books that would lead to arresting individuals or anything along those lines.”

Asked if that meant he would arrest doctors who performed abortions, Reeves said: “I don’t think that you’re going to see doctors performing abortions if we have a state statute which says that they’re not allowable, except for those exceptions that we have mentioned earlier.”

Read more:

Biden to lift Ukraine steel tariffs: report

The Biden administration is reversing Trump-era tariffs on Ukrainian steel for an initial period of one year, the New York Times is reporting, citing a document it says is a copy of an announcement coming from the White House later in the day.

Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign steel in 2018, the former president claiming at the time that cheap overseas metal was harming the US steel industry and posing a threat to national security.

The newspaper says that although Ukraine is only a minor provider, its 218,000 metric tons of steel to the US in 2019 ranking it 12th in overseas suppliers, the administration sees it as an important additional way to assist the country as it fights the Russian invasion.

The Ukraine prime minister Denys Shmyhal, in a visit to Washington DC last month, told administration officials that some Ukrainian steel mills were starting to produce again after initially shutting down because of the invasion.

The Times said Shmyhal asked the Biden administration to suspend the tariffs, citing a senior commerce department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly before the official announcement.

New York expands abortion access, including for non-residents

New York’s attorney general Letitia James has just given a press briefing at which she announced a program to expand abortion access to residents, and those from states where the procedure will become illegal if Roe v Wade is overturned:

We know what happens when women are unable to control their own bodies and make their own choices and we will not go back to those dark times.

New York must lead the fight to keep abortion safe and accessible for all who seek it.

According to an accompanying statement released by James’s office, clinics in New York already perform at least 7,000 abortions a year for women from out of state, 9% of its annual total.

If the supreme court ends almost half a century of abortion protections, as last week’s leaking of its draft ruling suggested it was about to do, New York expects a massive surge from states with “trigger laws” that would immediately make the procedure illegal.

From Ohio and Pennsylvania alone, the statement predicts, an additional 32,000 women will come to New York each year seeking an abortion.

The measure announced by James includes a reproductive freedom and equity program within the New York state department of health “that would provide funding to abortion providers and non-profit organizations to grow the capacity of providers and meet present and future care needs”.

The White House is previewing Joe Biden’s lunchtime appearance in the Rose Garden, at which he will announce that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to people with low incomes.

More than $14bn from the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package passed last year went towards $30 a month subsidies for lower income families to pay for internet service.

The internet providers have agreed to drop their prices to match the subsidy, Biden will announce today, the Associated Press reports, making about 48m households will be eligible for fully paid for $30 monthly plans for 100 megabits per second, or higher speed.

According to a White House fact sheet posted Monday, Biden will say:

High-speed internet service is no longer a luxury - it’s a necessity. But too many families go without high-speed internet because of the cost or have to cut back on other essentials to make their monthly internet service payments.

The 20 companies that have agreed to lower rates provide service in areas where 80% of the US population, including 50% of the rural population, live, according to the White House.

Participating companies that offer service on tribal lands are providing $75 rates in those areas, the equivalent of the federal government subsidy in those areas.

Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris will meet telecoms executives and members of Congress before the Rose Garden announcement, according to the AP.

Members on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on 6 January are moving closer to issuing subpoenas to Republican members of Congress to compel their cooperation in the inquiry – though it has started to dawn on them that they may be out of time.

The panel is expected to make a final decision on the subpoena question over the next couple of weeks, according to sources directly familiar with internal deliberations, with House investigators needing to start wrapping up their work ahead of public hearings in June.

While the members on the select committee remain undecided about whether to subpoena Republican members of Congress, their refusal to assist the investigation in any form has caused the sentiment to turn towards taking that near-unprecedented action, the sources said.

The shifting view has come as a result of the dismay among the members in January, when House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and others turned down requests for voluntary cooperation, turning to anger after three more of Donald Trump’s allies last week refused to cooperate.

What has changed in recent weeks in the select committee’s assessment is that they cannot ignore the deep involvement between some Republican members of Congress and the former president’s unlawful schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the sources said.

The recent letters to House Republicans Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Ronny Jackson – Trump’s former White House doctor – provided just a snapshot of the entanglement, the sources said, with the Trump White House, and potentially the militia groups that attacked the Capitol.

House investigators are particularly interested in any potential connections between Republican members of Congress and the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militia groups, the sources said, since those groups were actually involved in the riot element of January 6.

Read more:

New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has emerged as one of her party’s leading voices for abortion rights. She tore into the supreme court at a press conference at the Capitol last week, her fury evident during a three-minute tirade in which she framed the issue as a “life or death” battle.

Kirsten Gillibrand.
Kirsten Gillibrand. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

On Sunday, she followed up with an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union in which she called it the “biggest fight of a generation”.

Gillibrand urged her party to stand up to Republicans seeking to abolish the constitutional right, and called the draft US supreme court opinion leaked last week, revealing a conservative-leaning super-majority supports overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, “bone-chilling”.

She told CNN:

This is the biggest fight of a generation … and if America’s women and the men who love them do not fight right now, we will lose the basic right to make decisions, to have bodily autonomy and to decide what our futures look like.

Here’s the Guardian’s Maya Yang on Gillibrand’s call to action:

Updated

Schumer seeks to capitalize on voters' fury over abortion rights

The US Senate will today channel a week of anger, acrimony and fractious debate over abortion rights into the formal step of setting up a vote to enshrine a woman’s right to the procedure into law.

By filing for cloture (the official term for cutting off debate), senators will move towards a floor vote Wednesday on legislation proposed by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Abortion rights defenders have been demanding action ever since the supreme court’s draft ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade opinion was leaked last week.

Democrats know the legislation is doomed to fall, because it won’t reach the 60 votes it needs in the bitterly divided chamber.

Chuck Schumer with abortion rights activists in New York on Sunday.
Chuck Schumer with abortion rights activists in New York on Sunday. Photograph: Ron Adar/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

But Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer will not consider it an outright failure. He’s playing a longer game, in which he sees Republicans’ refusal to support abortion rights working in Democrats’ favor in November’s midterms. After all, polls show overwhelming support nationally among voters for abortion rights.

“Every American will see how every senator stands,” Schumer said at a press conference Sunday in which he called the supreme court’s draft ruling “an abomination”.

With Democrats predicted to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November, some see the abortion debate coming at a fortuitous time. Comments by Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate minority leader, as reported by The Hill, that a national abortion ban “is possible”, will only serve to strengthen pro-choice activists’ outrage.

This Bloomberg article examines how the Democratic party is tapping into voters’ fury over abortion to avoid a midterms blowout.

We’ll keep you abreast of today’s developments as they happen.

While we wait, here’s a look at how Republicans in numerous states are moving in the opposite direction, and towards even more restrictive abortion legislation.

Updated

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the blog! It’s a brand new week in US politics, but some familiar themes are playing out.

The Senate will invoke cloture (that’s the official term for cutting off debate) today to set up a vote Wednesday on legislation to codify a woman’s right to abortion, following last week’s bombshell supreme court draft ruling ending almost half a century of constitutional protections for the procedure.

The vote will fail, because it won’t reach the required 60 votes. But that’s not the point. The Democrats’ strategy is to force Republicans to vote to defeat it, thus showing where every senator stands on the issue and providing a stick to beat them with for the midterm elections later this year. Polls show overwhelming support nationally among voters for abortion rights.

What else we’re watching today:

  • Joe Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, will speak from the White House at lunchtime about expanding high speed internet access. We’ll see if they take questions about the abortion debate.
  • The House panel investigating the 6 January insurrection is closer to issuing subpoenas for senior Republicans, but beginning to realize it’s running short on time.
  • The House itself is not in session, but the Biden administration is keeping up pressure on lawmakers to pass requests for Covid-19 funding and $33bn in aid for Ukraine.
  • White House press secretary Jen Psaki delivers her first briefing of the week at 3pm.

And a reminder that we’re covering all the developments in the Ukraine conflict in our live 24-hour blog here.

Updated

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