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An organizer carries a clipboard with petitions for a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion into the Arizona state constitution during a small rally led by Women's March Tucson after Arizona's Supreme Court revived a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion in virtually all instances, in Tucson, Arizona, U.S. April 9, 2024.
High stakes in Arizona abortion ban
On Wednesday, Arizona Republicans blocked attempts by Democrats to repeal an 1864 total abortion ban that the state’s supreme court reinstated on Tuesday. The court’s move means the state must revert to the 123-year-old law making abortions almost entirely illegal except when it is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life.
That ruling came a week after a pro-choice group obtained enough signatures to put an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution on the ballot in November – all but ensuring that abortion, a major motivating issue for Democratic voters, will play a big role in how the swing state votes later this year.
It is also having political fallout beyond the Grand Canyon State with Democrats wasting no time rallying opposition to abortion restrictions. Polling shows it is an effective issue for Democrats, particularly among young voters, with whom Joe Biden has struggled to connect.
In the upcoming, razor-close election against Trump, the struggle for battleground states that will allow the winner to carry the electoral college is intense. Abortion ballot initiatives could give the Democrats a boost in the presidential election and down-ballot races, since it may drive turnout. The issue is largely credited for helping the Democrats outperform in the 2022 midterms.
Abortion will likely be on the ballot in the battleground states of Arizona and Florida. Voters in blue states New York and Maryland will also have the opportunity to vote on abortion initiatives, and Democrats are trying to get it on the ballot elsewhere, including Nevada, which is seen as a crucial swing state.
Like the dog that caught the car, Republicans now look to be in disarray on the issue, trapped between wanting to take credit for restricting abortion and fears of alienating moderates and not wanting to fuel Democratic momentum on the issue. Trump, who likes to take credit for the Supreme Court appointments that ended Roe v. Wade, now seems to sense his vulnerability on this issue. He said Wednesday he would not sign a national abortion ban, preferring to leave the matter to the states.
It’s an issue that may gain salience north of the border, where abortion rights advocates can be expected to warn against Conservative plans for Canada during the election to come.
What Florida's abortion rulings mean for the 2024 US election
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: Abortion.
Abortion is the big story in US politics this week with the Florida state Supreme Court ruling that a ballot initiative that would protect access to abortion up until fetal viability will be on the ballot in abortion in Florida this year. Democrats are excited about this ruling because it was starting to look like Florida was increasingly out of reach for them.
Republicans now out register Democratic voters in the state by over 800,000 registered voters, which is a flip from a decade ago when Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 500,000 registered voters. Florida is looking like more and more of a red state with a massive 20 point victory for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2022 midterm elections. That's what was making Democrats feel like it wouldn't be a very competitive state in this presidential cycle.
However, with abortion on the ballot, they now see an opportunity for outside groups to come in and spend a bunch of money who otherwise wouldn't have sent money there, forcing Republicans to respond by potentially wasting money there. The state is probably a little bit too red for it to truly be competitive for President Biden in this election cycle.
But this abortion referendum story is going to play out across the country. Democratic activists have the opportunity to get abortion on the ballot in two critical swing states of Nevada and Arizona. But it's unlikely they would show up in the other swing states of Wisconsin or Michigan, because Wisconsin had a recent state Supreme Court decision about it. And Michigan had an abortion referendum in 2022. That doesn't mean they can't find other ways to make this election about access to abortion, which has been a very positive issue for Democrats.
There have been seven state referendums since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And in each of those, the electorate shifted significantly to the left from what they did in the 2020 results, even in deep red states like Kansas and Kentucky. So this is going to be an important issue to keep watching throughout the election. And could be one of the wild cards that helps Joe Biden overcome the bad polls that he's been experiencing in recent weeks.
Nikki Haley
Haley games the GOP’s future
After conceding Trump’s win and leaving the race, she chose not to endorse him. Instead, she announced, it’s the presumptive GOP nominee who has work to do. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that," she said. “This is now his time for choosing.” So far, Trump has responded only by mocking the failures of her campaign.
In the fall, when party unity will be crucial for Trump’s success, how will Haley calculate her odds for future success? Will she fall in line to endorse him, as nearly all Trump’s rivals and GOP sometime-critics, including outgoing GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, have done? Or will she position herself as the one still-politically viable Republican who called him to account for his personal and political failings?
We, and Trump, will be watching.
Trump continues to lead the GOP charge
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Thought I'd talk about the US election. I try not to do that every week because it would get really boring.
It is, of course, the longest and most expensive and most dysfunctional of any major democracy. And would we have it any other way in the United States? Trump, of course, is getting closer and closer to the nomination on the Republican side. It is all over except for the fact that Nikki Haley does not want to drop out. She is still in it. Her arguments are that everybody should get a chance to vote and that she would be much more likely to win in the general election against Joe Biden.
All of those things are true. But as we all know, that's not the way the US electoral system works. She can't win a single state. She can't come close. South Carolina, her home state, where not just Republicans that are registered, but others can actually vote. So an open primary and she still lost by 20 points, could have lost by more. It was a respectable showing, considering just how popular Trump is. But she's got no shot. And she lost her funding just now from the Koch network, which is a big deal. When they stood up and said that they wanted to give a lot of money to Haley, they understand that they're not going to throw good money after bad.
And so that's done. And she's not likely to be able to stay in very long if she's going to lose significant funding, because she needs to be relevant in terms of the airwaves and get her message out there. She has said that she is not thinking about what's going to happen after Super Tuesday, which is almost certainly not true. But what else is she supposed to say for as long as she's in the race? I think when she loses the slate on Super Tuesday, she's going to be in a lot of trouble.
On the Biden side, no one is really running against Biden. Williamson dropped out, but most people didn't know she was in. Dean Phillips hasn't dropped out. Most people don't really know he's in. But very interestingly and coming up real soon in Michigan, where you have five and a half percent of the electorate, Arab American, and they are deeply, deeply unhappy with the fact that Biden has been so strongly supportive of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. And there is a significant campaign in Michigan not to support Biden, but to write in that they don't have anybody that they're in favor of. And if that proves significant, that is absolutely going to hurt the president. It's one of many things that are not going particularly well for him as we think about his effort to secure a second go at the presidency come November.
But the more relevant point in the near term is what happens in the GOP. How does Trump secure the nomination and is everyone behind him or does he lose a significant piece of Republicans? On that front, I think he gets everybody. I've seen so many people that privately have said that they were never Trump six months ago, even three months ago, people that were supporting Chris Christie, high level folks in the Republican Party that are now saying, “well, he's going to be the nominee, he's probably going to be president because they want a Republican to be president. And so we're going to get behind him.” I've seen that with John Thune just come out, the number two on the Republican side in the Senate. Tim Scott, of course, a serious adult, serious conservative who has decided he's going to be as full throated, as supportive Trump is humanly possible. A lot of the billionaires are in that camp. Koch, of course, is going to be there. But also we've seen that with Jamie Dimon coming out of Davos and so many of all of these people that have been privately saying we can't stand the guy, we want anyone but him. But since that isn't going to prove worthwhile or possible, we're going to get behind Trump.
And this is the biggest issue for democracy, he has huge amounts of support in the Republican Party, he has the money that will be behind him. But he also refuses to accept the outcome of a free and fair democratic election. That is fundamental. There's nothing that's more essential to the functioning of a democracy than being able to hold an election that people believe in and transferring power to an opponent if you lose. That fundamental assumption of democracy is something that Trump as strongly disagrees with as anything in his body and showed that off in 2020 and will show that off again in 2024 if it goes against him or if it threatens to go against him.
And the fact that is not close to the issue that exercises all of these people that privately say they can't stand this guy but will get with him, shows that they are not particularly worried about the nature of eroding US democracy. And that reality should be a top concern of American allies around the world. It should be a top hope of American adversaries looking to take advantage of American weakness around the world. It creates and injects a huge amount of chaos into the global system. The most powerful country in the world today is also the one that is least confident about the intrinsic value of its political system, doesn't really know what it stands for, and is going to continue to erode its institutions legitimacy and the strength of its institutions without particular guardrails, at least as far as this electoral cycle goes.
And that is true, frankly, no matter whether Trump or Biden wins. And again, I feel that Trump is clearly unfit for the job and it's not a matter of anything other than what I just said. And I felt that way when he was a Democrat. This has nothing to do with his political party. It certainly has nothing to do with his ideology because Trump isn't fundamentally ideological except in support of his narcissism. But the fact that even under four years of Biden, that the political institutions in the US has have continued to erode, that you continue to have stronger and stronger distance between what is seen as basic facts and belief among Democrats and Republicans. The fact that the United States is becoming more politically tribal and dysfunctional says that Trump is a symptom, a deep symptom, and a strong symptom of something that is profoundly broken in the US system. Something I've talked about for a while.
I'll talk about more going forward, but it does make us very concerned about where 2024 is going. It's why the US versus itself was our number one risk back at the beginning of this year and by a long margin, given the impact of what that means for the rest of the world, while we continue to focus on it all the way through.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey
Republicans rally to protect IVF
After Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be legally considered children this week, lawmakers are scrambling to pass legislation to protect in vitro fertilization.
The ruling only applies to the three families who brought the initial lawsuit, but its wording has many medical professionals worried it could be used against them. Three major fertility clinics halted IVF treatments in the state this week.
While all of Alabama’s Supreme Court justices are Republican, many politicians in their party are trying to distance themselves from the ruling and take action to counteract it. Republican legislators, who have a super-majority in Alabama, are considering introducing a bill to protect the treatment. Donald Trump has condemned the ruling and is urging Alabama’s GOP to protect IVF.
Does this mean the GOP is pro-choice now? No, we wouldn’t go that far.
The Alabama ruling has highlighted the schism among Republicans who believe life begins at conception and those who want to protect reproductive services. Republicans are also realizing that reproductive restrictions rally Democrats, and extreme positions like this one are gifts to their opponents ahead of the 2024 election.
Democratic congressional candidate for New York's 3rd congressional district, Tom Suozzi, campaigns in Westbury, New York, U.S., February 13, 2024.
Democrats win back George Santos’ House seat
Democrats prevailed in New York’s snowy special election on Tuesday, narrowing the GOP’s razor-thin House majority and boosting Joe Biden's party ahead of the November presidential election.
Their candidate Tom Suozzi, a mainstay in Long Island politics, defeated the Republicans by firing up an angry base following the fiascos of disgraced former Republican Rep. George Santos. After voting for Biden in 2020, the district has voted red ever since. Regaining the seat gives Democrats some much-needed good news as Biden suffers from lackluster polling numbers.
For Republicans, the loss narrows their House majority to 219-213, limiting the breathing room their unruly House coalition will have to pass legislation.
Suozzi's campaign focused on immigration, Israel, inflation, and abortion. It remains to be seen how the district vote broke down, but it’s clear Suozzi’s moderate reputation, his push for stricter immigration rules, and a boatload of national and grassroots funding helped him win the day.
Why Republicans hold Biden accountable for border problems
President Truman famously had a sign on his Oval Office desk that read: "The buck stops here." Indiana Republican Congresswoman Victoria Spartz believes that truth holds when it comes to President Biden and US immigration dysfunction as well.
"I will lay responsibility on President Biden because he is in charge," Spartz tells Ian Bremmer in an interview for GZERO World. "He's a top executive president. Trump is campaigning to be president, so I'll judge him if he is a president, I think he will likely might be."
Ian interviewed House members on both sides of the political aisle for this episode, and Spartz, a Ukrainian immigrant who supports increased US aid to her home country, is not surprised that the bipartisan border deal could not deliver it.
Watch full episode here: The US border at a tipping point
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week online and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Ian Explains: Why Congress can't fix the US border problem ›
- Will Democrats and Republicans head for the border? ›
- Migrant and housing crises hit both sides of border ›
- Hard Numbers: A loss for the GOP in Ohio, Poland beefs up border, shark attacks in Gotham, chips fall well for Dresden, Chinese parents swipe for their kids ›
- Zelensky agrees with GOP on border crisis ›
If Ukraine loses, US troops could be fighting Russians, warns Rep. Zoe Lofgren
It's a reality that many still find hard to imagine: American troops fighting Russian troops in Europe. But according to California Congresswoman and Immigration subcommittee member Zoe Lofgren, it's a reality we may be facing if we don't continue to support Ukraine.
"Just a short time ago I talked to a Republican House member, and we discussed the lack of Ukraine funding and agreed that if we don't do something that Russia will be emboldened" Lofgren tells Ian Bremmer in the latest episode of GZERO World. "And ultimately we will have American troops fighting Russian troops in Europe. That's pretty dire. We all see it. And yet we're not getting the funding necessary. They're running out of ammunition."Whether or not Congress can get its act together in time to help Ukraine is still very much uncertain. But in the meantime, the US/Mexico border will remain dysfunctional, and one of America's closest allies in Europe will keep fighting to maintain its own borders as well.