An Iowa judge has ruled the state’s strict abortion law will take effect Monday, preventing most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
The law passed last year, but a judge had blocked it from being enforced. The Iowa Supreme Court reiterated in June that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold to be lifted. That translated into Monday’s district court judge’s decision ordering the law to into effect July 29 at 8:00 a.m. Central time.
Lawyers representing abortion providers asked Judge Jeffrey Farrell for notice before allowing the law to take hold, saying a buffer period was needed to provide continuity of services. Iowa requires pregnant women to wait 24 hours for an abortion after getting an initial consultation. Abortion had been legal in the state up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The high court’s order gave a decisive win to Iowa’s Republican leaders after years of legislative and legal battles.
Iowa will join more than a dozen states where abortion access has been sharply curbed in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Currently, 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy and three states — Iowa will make four — ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Abortion access stands to be a major issue in the 2024 election, especially as Vice President Kamala Harris aims to lead the Democratic Party. Harris has said “everything is at stake” with reproductive health in November’s election and has traveled across the country to draw attention to the issue, including in Des Moines roughly a year ago after the stricter law initially passed.
Iowa’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in a special session last July, and a legal challenge was immediately filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic. The law was in effect for just a few days before a district court judge temporarily blocked it.
“Today is a victory for life,” Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday.
There are limited circumstances under the Iowa law that would allow for abortion after six weeks of pregnancy: rape, if reported to law enforcement or a health provider within 45 days; incest, if reported within 145 days; if the fetus has an abnormality “incompatible with life”; or if the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.
The state’s medical board defined standards of practice earlier this year, though the rules do not outline how the board would determine noncompliance or what the appropriate disciplinary action might be.
A federal appeals court blocked the implementation of the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, which would have lowered monthly payments for millions of borrowers.
In a ruling Thursday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion for an administrative stay filed by a group of Republican-led states seeking to invalidate the administration’s entire student loan forgiveness program. The court’s order prohibits the administration from implementing the parts of the SAVE plan that were not already blocked by lower court rulings.
The ruling comes the same day that the Biden administration announced another round of student loan forgiveness, this time totaling $1.2 billion in forgiveness for roughly 35,000 borrowers who are eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
The PSLF program, which provides relief for teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public servants who make 120 qualifying monthly payments, was originally passed in 2007. But for years, borrowers ran into strict rules and servicer errors that prevented them from having their debt cancelled. The Biden administration adjusted some of the programs rules and retroactively gave many borrowers credits towards their required payments.
Borrowers who are enrolled in the SAVE plan, which was the subject of Thursday’s ruling, will be placed into interest-free forbearance while the case works its way through the legal system, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Thursday.
“Today’s ruling from the 8th Circuit blocking President Biden’s SAVE plan could have devastating consequences for millions of student loan borrowers crushed by unaffordable monthly payments if it remains in effect,” Cardona said in a statement. “It’s shameful that politically motivated lawsuits waged by Republican elected officials are once again standing in the way of lower payments for millions of borrowers.”
Two separate legal challenges to Biden’s SAVE plan have worked their way through the courts. In June, federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan to provide a faster path towards loan cancellation and reduce monthly income-based repayment from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. Those injunctions did not affect debt that had already been forgiven.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with the lowered monthly payments. Thursday’s order from the 8th circuit blocks all aspects of the SAVE plan.
The Education Department said it was reviewing the ruling. “Our Administration will continue to aggressively defend the SAVE Plan — which has been helping over 8 million borrowers access lower monthly payments, including 4.5 million borrowers who have had a zero dollar payment each month,” the administration said. “And, we won’t stop fighting against Republican elected officials’ efforts to raise costs on millions of their own constituents’ student loan payments.”
A solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason, a new poll finds, highlighting a politically perilous situation for candidates who oppose abortion rights as the November election draws closer.
Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don't want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s an increase from June 2021, a year before the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedure, when about half of Americans thought legal abortion should be possible under these circumstances.
Americans are largely opposed to the strict bans that have taken effect in Republican-controlled states since the high court’s ruling two years ago. Full bans, with limited exceptions, have gone into effect in 14 GOP-led states, while three other states prohibit abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, before women often realize they’re pregnant.
They are also overwhelmingly against national abortion bans and restrictions. And views toward abortion — which have long been relatively stable — may be getting more permissive.
Vincent Wheeler, a 47-year-old Republican from Los Angeles, said abortion should be available for any reason until viability, the point at which health care providers say it's possible for a fetus to survive outside the uterus.
“There’s so many reasons as to why someone may want or need an abortion that it has to be up to that person of what they have to do in that specific circumstance,” Wheeler said, acknowledging that some fellow Republicans might disagree.
Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has declined to endorse a nationwide abortion ban, saying the issue should be left up to the states. But even that stance is likely to be unsatisfying to most Americans, who continue to oppose many bans on abortion within their own state, and think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to abortions nationwide, according to the poll.
Seven in 10 Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a slight increase from last year, while about 3 in 10 think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Robert Hood, a 69-year-old from Universal City, Texas, who identifies as an “independent liberal,” has believed that abortions should be allowed for any reason since he was an 18-year-old high school senior, because “life is full of gray situations.” He recalls reading stories as a teenager about women who died trying to get an abortion before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision provided a constitutional right to the procedure.
In a major reprieve for former President Donald Trump, sentencing for his hush money convictions was postponed Tuesday until at least September — if ever — as the judge agreed to weigh the possible impact of a new Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
Trump had been scheduled to face sentencing July 11, just before the Republicans’ nominating convention, on his New York convictions on felony charges of falsifying business records. He denies any wrongdoing.
The postponement sets the sentencing for Sept. 18 at the earliest — if it happens at all, since Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the Supreme Court ruling merits not only delaying the sentencing but tossing out his conviction.
“The impact of the Immunity Ruling is a loud and clear signal for Justice in the United States,” Trump crowed on his Truth Social media site after the sentencing was delayed.
Using all capital letters, he claimed the Supreme Court’s decision netted him “total exoneration” in this and other criminal cases he faces.
There was no immediate comment on the sentencing postponement from Manhattan prosecutors, who brought the hush money case.Though the Sept. 18 date is well after this month’s Republican National Convention, where Trump is set formally to accept the party’s nomination for president in this year’s race, it is far closer to Election Day, which could put the issue top-of-mind for voters just as they seriously tune into the race. Because of absentee voting timelines in certain states, some voters may already have cast ballots before anyone knows whether the former president will have to spend time in jail or on home confinement.
The delay caps a string of political and legal wins for Trump in recent days, including the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and a debate widely seen as a disaster for Democratic President Joe Biden.
The immunity decision all but closed the door on the possibility that Trump could face trial in his 2020 election interference case in Washington before this November’s vote. The timeline in itself is a victory for the former president, who has sought to delay his four criminal cases past the balloting.
The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday in an opinion that narrows the scope of public corruption law.
The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines sided with James Snyder, who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts the company’s way.
The decision continues a pattern in recent years of the court restricting the government’s ability to use broad federal laws to prosecute public corruption cases. The justices also overturned the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2016, and the court sharply curbed prosecutors’ use of an anti-fraud law in the case of ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling in 2010.
Snyder, a Republican, has maintained his innocence, saying the money was payment for consulting work. His attorneys argued before the high court that prosecutors hadn’t proved there was a “quid pro quo” exchange agreement before the contracts were awarded and that prosecuting officials for gratuities given after the fact unfairly criminalizes normal gift giving.
The Justice Department countered that the law was clearly meant to cover gifts “corruptly” given to public officials as rewards for favored treatment.
But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the conservative majority, said “the government’s interpretation of the statue would create traps for unwary state and local officials.”
A gratuity or reward could be unethical or illegal under other laws, but it doesn’t violate the law Snyder was charged with breaking, he said.
In a sharply worded dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that that reading ignores the plain text of the law. She said Snyder’s argument was an “absurd” reading of the law that “only today’s court could love.”
Snyder was elected mayor of the small Indiana city of Portage, located near Lake Michigan, in 2011 and was reelected four years later. He was indicted and removed from office when he was first convicted in 2019.
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a settlement between Western states over the management of one of North America’s longest rivers.
The 5-4 decision rebuffs an agreement that had come recommended by a federal judge overseeing the case over how New Mexico, Texas and Colorado must share water from the Rio Grande. The high court found that the federal government still had claims about New Mexico’s water use that the settlement would not resolve.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy had called the proposal a fair and reasonable way to resolve the conflict between Texas and New Mexico that would be consistent with a decadeslong water-sharing agreement between the two states as well as Colorado.
The federal government, though, lodged several objections, including that the proposal did not mandate specific water capture or use limitations within New Mexico.
New Mexico officials have said implementing the settlement would require reducing the use of Rio Grande water through a combination of efforts that range from paying farmers to leave their fields barren to making infrastructure improvements. Some New Mexico lawmakers have voiced concerns, but the attorney general who led the state’s negotiations had called the agreement a victory.
Farmers in southern New Mexico have had to rely more heavily on groundwater wells over the last two decades as drought and climate change resulted in reduced flows and less water in reservoirs along the Rio Grande. Texas sued over the groundwater pumping, claiming the practice was cutting into the amount of water that was ultimately delivered as part of the interstate compact.
The proposed settlement would recognize several measurements to ensure New Mexico delivers what’s owed to Texas. New Mexico, meanwhile, agreed to drop its challenges against Texas in exchange for clarifying how water will be accounted for as it flows downstream. The agreement also outlined transfers if not enough or too much water ended up in Texas.
Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi testified Friday in his federal gun trial about visiting her father while he was at a California rehab center, telling jurors that he seemed to be improving in the weeks before he bought the revolver in 2018.
“I hadn’t seen my dad in a long time, and I knew he was in a rehab facility there. He reached out,” she told jurors softly, explaining that they met at a coffee shop, along with his “sober coach.” As she was dismissed from the stand, she paused to hug her dad before leaving the courtroom.
The defense began calling witnesses shortly after federal prosecutors wrapped up their case. Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell started by calling another gun store clerk who was there when the gun was purchased, raising questions about what he saw as inconsistencies on the form.
He also questioned the owner of the shop who allowed the sale to go through using Hunter’s passport, though it did not include an address as required. Then he called Hunter’s daughter. In October 2018, the month Hunter Biden bought the gun, Naomi traveled from Washington to New York in her father’s truck to move her boyfriend’s belongings. Hunter drove Joe Biden’s Cadillac to New York later that month to retrieve his truck, leaving the Cadillac with Naomi. She told jurors she didn’t see any drug paraphernalia or evidence of drug use.
When court broke for lunch, and as Hunter Biden prepared to leave, he motioned to the first row that was full of his family members, including first lady Jill Biden, who traveled back from France for the proceedings. The first lady took Hunter’s hand and held it until they got to the door.
Jurors were sent home for the afternoon after the defense had no more witnesses, and Lowell said he was weighing who else to call, though previously he said the president’s brother James would take the stand, and he was in court. The trial will resume Monday.
The week’s proceedings have been largely dedicated to highlighting the seriousness of Hunter Biden’s drug problem through highly personal testimony, all in an effort by prosecutors to prove that the president’s son lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form when he said he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
Jurors heard earlier in the week from Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and a former girlfriend who testified about his habitual crack use and their failed efforts to help him get clean. They saw images of the president’s son bare-chested and disheveled in a filthy room, and half-naked holding crack pipes. And they watched video of his crack cocaine weighed on a scale.
Prosecutors say the evidence is necessary to prove that Hunter, 54, was in the throes of addiction when he bought the gun and therefore lied when he checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to” drugs.
Lowell has argued Hunter did not think of himself as an “addict” when he bought the gun and did not intend to deceive anyone.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden worked to walk the line between president and father, telling ABC in an interview that he would accept the jury’s verdict and ruling out a pardon for his son. Earlier this week, he issued a statement saying: “I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today.”
Biden is in France this week for D-Day anniversary events. Jill Biden, who attended court most of the week, will return to France for a state dinner. Hunter Biden has been charged with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
He has pleaded not guilty. He had hoped to resolve the gun case and another separate tax case in California with a plea deal last year, the result of a yearslong investigation into his business dealings. The deal had him pleading guilty to lower-level charges that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. It fell apart after Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by Donald Trump, questioned unusual aspects of the proposed agreement, and the lawyers couldn’t resolve them.
Hunter Biden said he got charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued the Democratic president’s son was getting special treatment, and who have escalated their attacks on the criminal justice system since Donald Trump’s recent conviction in New York City in a hush money case.
Breaking Legal News - POSTED: 2024/07/25 15:42
