Rights & Justice
Arizonans Submit Over Double the Signatures Needed for Abortion Ballot Measure
"The enthusiasm we've seen from Arizona voters for this constitutional amendment is unprecedented, and we're ready to stand with them through Election Day and restore the reproductive freedom they deserve."
Campaigners on Wednesday turned in 823,685 signatures—more than double the 383,923 required—to the Arizona secretary of state's office to get a proposed state constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the November ballot.
"What we're turning in is a show of strength of the campaign, but also strength of the issue of protecting abortion," said Chris Love, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access. "And I'm confident that we will obviously appear on the ballot, but more importantly, I'm confident that we'll win in November."
County election officials and Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes will now work on reviewing the signatures and formally certifying the ballot measure by late next month.
Arizona for Abortion Access campaign manager Cheryl Bruce declared that "this is the most signatures ever gathered for a ballot measure in Arizona history, which is a testament to the broad support among Arizona voters for restoring and protecting abortion access in Arizona."
"An astonishing signature collection effort from volunteers, organizers, advocates, patients, and providers in Arizona has made this moment possible."
The Arizona Republicreported that "the secretary of state does not keep data that would easily confirm the number of signatures is the most in state history," but "the number far outpaces that of popular petition campaigns in recent years."
Fontes' office does publish voter registration data. As of April, there were 4,058,320 registered voters—meaning more than 1 in 5 signed their names in support of the abortion rights campaign, which is backed by groups including the ACLU of Arizona, the Fairness Project, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, and Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona.
"An astonishing signature collection effort from volunteers, organizers, advocates, patients, and providers in Arizona has made this moment possible, and we're thrilled to be part of it," said Fairness Project executive director Kelly Hall in a statement.
"While extreme politicians in Phoenix have allowed a 15-week abortion ban to block patients from getting the care they need, the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign has worked tirelessly to let voters have a say in their own healthcare decisions," she continued. "The enthusiasm we've seen from Arizona voters for this constitutional amendment is unprecedented, and we're ready to stand with them through Election Day and restore the reproductive freedom they deserve."
The effort to pass the Arizona Abortion Access Act began last summer—before a nationally watched legal battle earlier this year: The Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 abortion ban that included no exceptions for rape or incest, then the Arizona Legislature passed and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill to repeal it.
Still, in addition to banning abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona has rules that make it harder to get care. The proposed amendment would affirm a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability and limit state restrictions. It would also protect access to care after viability if a healthcare provider determines ending a pregnancy is needed for the patient's life or health.
Reproductive freedom has been a key issue at all levels of American politics since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversedRoe v. Wade with their Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling two years ago, which bolstered GOP efforts to attack access to abortion care—along with birth control.
It remains a top issue going into the November election. Along with choosing which party controls the White House and Congress, voters in several states are set to weigh in on ballot measures designed to protect reproductive rights. The Associated Presspublished a graphic showing the states where such measures are on the ballot pending:
"Supporters of an Arkansas proposal to scale back the state's abortion ban face a Friday deadline to submit petitions to qualify for the November ballot," according to the AP. "The group behind the measure, Arkansans for Limited Government, said on Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday that it still needed 8,200 signatures out of the 90,704 required."
'The Land Theft Continues': Israel Announces Biggest West Bank Seizure in Over 30 Years
The Israel-based activist group Peace Now says "2024 is by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the occupied West Bank."
Human rights defenders on Wednesday condemned the far-right Israeli government's announcement of the largest seizure of Palestinian land—many critics bluntly called it "land theft"—in the illegally occupied West Bank in over 30 years.
On June 25, Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally declared 12,700 dunams, or 4.9 square miles, of land in the Jordan Valley "state lands." Israel's Custodian of the State's Property in the Civil Administration published the declaration on Wednesday. The move supplements previous Israeli land grabs totaling nearly 11,000 dunams (4.2 square miles) in February and March.
Combined, these are the biggest seizures of Palestinian land since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"Land theft is a component part of colonial genocide as a social process," noted Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto.
Muther Isaac, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Jerusalem, lamented that "the land theft continues in the West Bank!"
Israel's goal, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to "establish facts on the ground" in service of annexing the Palestinian lands and establishing or expanding overwhelmingly Jewish colonies there. The push comes as more and more countries—nearly 150, according to Palestinian officials—officially recognize the state of Palestine and as Israeli forces continue an assault on Gaza that has been widely condemned as genocidal.
"We will establish sovereignty... first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalize the young settlements," Smotrich said last month, referring to illegal outposts that are newer and smaller than established Jewish settler colonies.
"My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state," he added.
Under international law, all of the settlements are illegal. Most were built on land seized from Palestinians through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the establishment and consolidation of modern Israel in the late 1940s, and during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to end," the Tel Aviv-based activist group Peace Now said in a statement Wednesday.
"Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state alongside Israel," the group added. "Still, the Israeli government chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed."
That bloodshed includes a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October. More than 500 Palestinians—around a quarter of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there over the past nine months, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Protected and sometimes aided by Israeli troops, Israeli settlers have launched multiple deadly pogroms targeting Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories since last year.
These and other previous attacks prompted the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a handful of the most extremist Israeli settlers. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also reverted to classifying Israeli settlements as unlawful, which was the State Department's position from 1978 until the Trump administration reversed it in 2019.
However, the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest international supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover for Israeli policies and actions that, in addition to occupation and colonization, critics say amount to apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Ralph Nader to New York Judge: Prison Time for Trump 'More Imperative Than Ever'
"Your task is to ensure that the sentence matches the character of the offender, including his clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of presidential power."
Legendary consumer advocate and attorney Ralph Nader is calling on the New York judge who presided over Donald Trump's hush money trial to hit the former president with a prison sentence, arguing the case for jail time is "open and shut" and that the defendant poses a grave threat to democracy.
"The law endows you with the discretion to sentence Mr. Trump to prison up to four years based upon the circumstances of the felonies and the obligatory appraisal of the character of the offender after a customary investigation—time-honored sentencing considerations," Nader and Bruce Fein, an attorney who specializes in constitutional law, wrote in a letter to New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Nader released the letter, dated June 28, on the day the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority ruled that current and former presidents are entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution—a decision that threw a wrench in the hush money proceedings and the separate election-subversion case led by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
On Tuesday, Merchan granted a request from Trump's legal team to delay the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's sentencing in the hush money case—in which he was found guilty on 34 felony counts—and consider how the Supreme Court's immunity ruling could impact the proceedings. Trump is now scheduled to be sentenced on September 18, "if such is still necessary," Merchan announced.
Nader argued in a social media post that "a prison sentence is more imperative than ever."
In light of the Supreme Court blocking all avenues of accountability for Trump with its decision in Trump v. United States, Judge Merchan is the last best hope to preserve the Republic from its overthrow by Donald Trump. See our letter to Judge Merchan, which explains why a…
— Ralph Nader (@RalphNader) July 1, 2024
In their letter to Merchan, Nader and Fein wrote that "the future of the United States will be materially influenced by your sentencing Donald J. Trump."
"Mr. Trump threatens a counter-revolution against the American Revolution and the United States Constitution in favor of executive absolutism indistinguishable from French King Louis XIV," Nader and Fein continued. "Mr. Trump and his would-be vice-presidential running mates have repeatedly refused to endorse the peaceful transfer of presidential power after the 2024 presidential election if Mr. Trump shouts electoral fraud without any testing in courts of law or other due process."
"Do not be oblivious to what all the world can see. Mr. Trump covets dictatorial powers like his friend Vladimir Putin in Russia," they added. "Germany's Weimar Republic invited its demise by ignoring Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, a playbook for the Nazi ascent to absolute power for which the world paid a staggering price. Your task is to ensure that the sentence matches the character of the offender, including his clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Set a standard to which the wise and honest judge may repair with a jail term—at least a serious fraction of the four-year statutory maximum."
A jail term would not necessarily end Trump's bid for another four years in the White House, and legal experts have struggled to answer the question of what would happen if the former president was elected from prison.
"I don't think that the Framers ever thought we were going to be in this situation," Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, toldThe New York Times last month.
Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, has vocally warned of the fascist threat posed by Trump and the GOP, a threat he says has only grown in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States. Trump's advisers have already signaled that the former president intends to exploit the high court's ruling if he wins in November.
"The six Supreme Court dictators have issued an opinion that 'the king can do no wrong,'" Nader wrote in response to the decision. "They have given absolute immunity to presidents to use the Insurrection Act and the vague national emergency and national security declarations to suppress citizen protests and their political opponents."
"Today will live in infamy as a dictatorial, judicial putsch against the American Republic," Nader added. "Our founders, led by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and George Washington would have been stunned."
Rudy Giuliani Permanently Disbarred in New York State
A court found that the former Trump lawyer "flagrantly misused his prominent position" and "repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious," about the 2020 election.
Rudy Giuliani—onetime mayor of New York City, federal prosecutor, and attorney for former President Donald Trump—was permanently disbarred in New York state on Tuesday for lying about the 2020 presidential election being "stolen" by Democrats.
The New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division unanimously disbarred Giulian, calling his propagation of Trump's "Big Lie" about 2020 election fraud a threat to the public interest and the legal profession.
The panel found that Giuliani—whose law license was suspended in 2021—"flagrantly misused his prominent position as the personal attorney for former President Trump and his campaign" and "repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public … and this court concerning the 2020 presidential election, in which he baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country's electoral process."
"The seriousness of [Giuliani's] misconduct cannot be overstated," the court stressed.
As the New York Law Journalreported:
Once known as "America's Mayor," the 80-year-old has faced mounting legal battles and financial ruin in recent years.
Giuliani was indicted in Arizona in May alongside 17 others for his alleged role in an attempt to overturn Trump's loss in the state during the 2020 presidential election.
Giuliani filed for bankruptcy protection in December following a $148 million defamation judgment leveled against him for false statements in the wake of former President Donald Trump's failed attempt to retain the presidency.
He is also facing multiple actions in New York state—including a $10 million complaint from an alleged former employee who accuses him of sexual assault and wage theft—though many were stayed in the wake of his Chapter 11 filing.
Giuliani—who is also facing felony charges in Georgia along with Trump and others who allegedly tried to subvert the 2020 election—denies these and other accusations, including that he tried to sell presidential pardons for $2 million each.
Barry Kamins, the retired judge who represented Giuliani as he fought to keep his New York law license, said his client "is obviously disappointed in the decision" and that they are weighing their appeals options.
A bar disciplinary committee in the District of Columbia has also recommended that Giuliani be disbarred.