Harris sidesteps questions on Netanyahu and taxing the rich; Georgia’s top court reinstates abortion ban – US elections live | US news

Joanna Walters

Here is some more detail on the new ruling by Georgia’s supreme court reviving the state’s six-week ban on abortions, a week after the ban was struck down.

The lawsuit challenging the ban was brought by Atlanta-based SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective.

Today, the Georgia Supreme Court sided with anti-abortion extremists. Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” SisterSong’s executive director, Monica Simpson, said in a statement, Reuters reports.

The office of Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, a Republican, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The law bans almost all abortions after what it labels a “human heartbeat” is detected, typically around six weeks. In fact, at six weeks a fetus has not yet developed a heart, but there may be rudimentary, pulse-like signals. This is before many women know they are pregnant.

The ban was passed in 2019 during Donald Trump’s presidency but did not take effect until the end of Roe v Wade in 2022.

Here’s Simpson speaking at an event last month.

Georgia supreme court reinstates abortion ban

Joanna Walters

Georgia’s highest court on has today reinstated a ban on nearly all abortions in the state after about six weeks of pregnancy while it considers the US state’s appeal of last week’s ruling by a lower court judge blocking the law.

The order from the Supreme Court of Georgia allows the ban to take effect at 5pm ET today, Reuters reports.

A week ago, Fulton county superior judge Robert McBurney struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban, ruling that the ban is unconstitutional and blocking it from being enforced.

McBurney ruled that the state’s abortion laws must revert to what they were before the six-week ban – known as the Life Act – was passed in 2019. The ban was blocked as long as Roe v Wade was the law of the land, but went into effect after the US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022.

So for one week, abortions became legal in Georgia again up until about 22 weeks of pregnancy.

Kamala Harris is on a media blitz, with appearances planned on everything from The View to Howard Stern in the days to come. We will see her later tonight on 60 Minutes, one of the most watched news programs in the country, but based on what we have seen so far, the vice-president doesn’t seem interested in breaking new ground. In excerpts released by CBS, she sidestepped a question about how she would cajole Congress into approving higher taxes on the rich, and demurred when asked if she regarded Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “close ally”. Meanwhile, the supreme court began a new term with cases dealing with transgender rights and the Biden administration’s effort to curb ghost guns on its docket. It also declined to weigh in on a wrongful death lawsuit involving an Alabama clinic at the center of the controversy over IVF care, and a Biden administration challenge to Texas’s abortion ban and how it affects carrying out the procedure in an emergency.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Donald Trump’s policies would add more to the national debt than Kamala Harris’s, an analysis by a nonpartisan budget watchdog found.

• Biden, Harris and Trump are all marking today’s one-year anniversary of the 7 October attack in Israel.

• Florida is bracing as Hurricane Milton, which has just been upgraded to a category 5 storm, churns towards it west coast, even as it continues to recover from Hurricane Helene.

The supreme court began a new term today, where the conservative-dominated body could issue major rulings on transgender rights, rules to curb the spread of ghost guns, and a high-profile death penalty case.

The court will hear cases in the months to come, and likely issue rulings next year. There is also the chance the justices could be drawn into disputes over the November elections.

From the Associated Press, here are some of the cases they will be considering, starting with ghost guns:

The justices will hear a case Tuesday on regulations for ghost guns, privately made weapons that are hard for police to track because they don’t have serial numbers.

The number of the firearms found at crime scenes has soared in recent years, from fewer than 4,000 in 2018 to nearly 20,000 recovered by law enforcement in 2021, according to Justice Department data.

The numbers have been declining in multiple cities since the Biden administration began requiring background checks and age verification for ghost gun kits that can be bought online.

But manufacturers and gun rights groups argue that the administration overstepped and the rule should be overturned.

The rights of transgender minors:

Perhaps the court’s most closely watched case so far this year is a fight over transgender rights.

The case over state bans on gender-affirming care comes as Republican-led states enact a variety of restrictions, including school sports participation, bathroom usage and drag shows.

The administration and Democratic-led states have extended protections for transgender people, though the Supreme Court has separately prohibited the administration from enforcing a new federal regulation that seeks to protect transgender students.

The justices will weigh a Tennessee law that restricts puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. The case does not yet have a hearing date but will likely be argued in December.

And the case of death row inmate Richard Glossip:

In the decades since Richard Glossip was sentenced to die over a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme, the case has become a rare one where prosecutors are conceding mistakes.

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general has joined with Glossip in seeking to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence.

Despite those doubts, an Oklahoma appeals court has upheld Glossip’s conviction, and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked in a vote to grant him clemency.

Days after weathering Hurricane Helene, Florida is now in the path of Hurricane Milton, which has just been upgraded to a category 5 storm. The hurricane has the potential to become the latest crisis on Joe Biden’s plate just weeks before the 5 November election.

Here’s the latest on the approaching storm, from the Guardian’s Anna Betts:

In her forthcoming interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program, Kamala Harris did not quite say yes when ask asked if she would consider Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a real close ally”.

“I think, with all due respect, the better question ism do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people, and the answer to that question is yes,” the vice-president replied in an excerpt from her forthcoming interview on the popular news program.

The US relationship with Israel has grown fraught over the past year, as Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage a ceasefire in Gaza have failed and the conflict has expended into Lebanon. The issue is particularly perilous for Democrats, who are facing a backlash from some voters, including Arab and Muslim communities in battleground state Michigan, over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the 7 October attack.

Harris avoided talking about Gaza in the 60 Minutes interview, instead noting that US military aid has helped protect the country from volleys of missiles shot by Iran. Here’s the full clip:

Donald Trump’s policies would send the national debt higher than those proposed by Kamala Harris, a nonpartisan budgetary watchdog has found.

Both candidates have pitched themselves to voters are responsible stewards of the nation’s economy and the government’s spending, while simultaneously proposing expensive new policies. Harris has focused on efforts to fight poverty, making housing more affordable and improve health care, while Trump has floated lowering taxes and spending more on border security and the military.

An analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget finds that Trump’s policies would send the federal debt climbing by as much as $15.2t through 2035, and as little $1.4t. Over the same period, Harris’s policies could send it up by as much as $8.1t, or nothing at all:

The project comes as the US deals with a yawning budget deficit and a high debt-to-GDP ratio, which have been fueled by long-term expenditures such as paying for Social Security and Medicare, and short-term emergency responses, such as the stimulus measures approved to offset the impact of Covid-19.

The supreme court has upheld a ruling that will prevent abortions from being performed in some emergency circumstances in the state, the Associated Press reports.

Texas is the most populous state in the country with an abortion ban, and the Biden administration had sued to ensure abortions are available for women suffering medical emergencies, citing a separate supreme court ruling from earlier this year in a case involving Idaho’s abortion ban.

Here’s how the court weighed in on Texas’s law, from the AP:

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

Without detailing their reasoning, the justices kept in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations that would violate Texas law.

The Biden administration had asked the justices to throw out the lower court order, arguing that hospitals have to perform abortions in emergency situations under federal law. The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.

The administration also cited a Texas Supreme Court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally. The administration said it brings Texas in line with federal law and means the lower court ruling is not necessary.

Texas asked the justices to leave the order in place, saying the state Supreme Court ruling meant Texas law, unlike Idaho’s, does have an exception for the health of a pregnant patient and there’s no conflict between federal and state law.

Doctors have said the law remains dangerously vague after a medical board refused to specify exactly which conditions qualify for the exception.

There has been a spike in complaints that pregnant women in medical distress have been turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict laws against abortion.

Kamala Harris’s media blitz will take her to New York City tomorrow, where the vice-president will appear on three high-profile programs with an eye towards boosting her candidacy ahead of the 5 November election.

Harris plans to talk with Howard Stern, a one-time shock jock who has remade himself as an in-depth interviewer, her campaign said. Also on her itinerary is an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, whose host has long delighted in pointing out the absurdities of US politics, particularly on the right.

Harris will finally appear on The View, much as Joe Biden did two weeks ago, and put her policies before the talkshow’s daytime viewership.

Kamala Harris may be doing more media interviews in the final weeks before the 5 November election, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she is saying all that much.

CBS this morning released a portion of her interview on their high-profile broadcast news staple, 60 Minutes. It shows Harris telling correspondent Bill Whitaker that she supports higher taxes on the wealthy (as does Joe Biden and most Democrats in Congress), but sidestepping a question on how she’ll get such a plan through Congress. From CBS:

VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, one of the things is I’m gonna make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations.

VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: And I plan on making that fair.

BILL WHITAKER: But we’re dealing with the real world here.

VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: But the real world includes–

BILL WHITAKER: How are you gonna get this through Congress?

VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: You know, when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about ‘cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about. Their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses.

Whitaker is getting at a real issue of concern for Democrats. While they may be able to claw back the majority in the House of Representatives from the GOP in November, their ability to maintain control of the Senate hinges on the re-election of two senators from red states, a tough task that they may not be able to pull off. Should they fail but Harris take the White House, she would be the first president since 1989 to be inaugurated without her party in control of Congress, and in this era of heightened partisanship, that may prove fatal for her prospects of passing any significant legislation in the first two years of her term.

Perhaps Harris will elaborate on what she would do in this situation when the full 60 Minutes interview airs tonight at 8pm.