Democrats and Biden campaign cheer surprise special election victory in Alabama
Just how did Marilyn Lands end up ousting Republicans from a suburban state house seat in northern Alabama? The Associated Press reports that the licensed counselor’s pitch to voters included the following demands: “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”
Voters liked what they heard, and so did the Democratic party at large. Here’s what chair Jaime Harrison had to say about Lands’s victory:
Today’s election – one of the first since the devastating decision by the Alabama supreme court that stopped IVF care – was a referendum on Maga Republicans’ out-of-touch extremism on reproductive rights. Marilyn Lands’ victory demonstrates that voters aren’t going to sit idly by while Maga Republicans lay the groundwork for a national abortion ban.
And Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign:
Last month, Alabamans lost access to fertility treatments because of Donald Trump. Tonight, the voters in Alabama’s 10th house district elected a pro-choice champion in Marilyn Lands, sending Trump and extreme Maga Republicans a clear message: they know exactly who’s to blame for restricting their ability to decide how and when to build their families and they’re ready to fight back. Trump overturned Roe vWade, paving the way for attacks on women’s freedoms like we saw in Alabama – now he’s running to ban abortion and gut access to IVF nationwide. Tonight’s results should serve as a major warning sign for Trump: voters will not stand for his attacks on reproductive healthcare. This November will be no different.
Key events
Appeals court keeps Texas law allowing police to arrest suspected illegal border crossers on hold
A ruling late on Tuesday from a federal appeals court will for now block a Texas law allowing police to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally, the Associated Press reports.
The law passed by Texas’s Republican government has drawn criticism from the Biden administration, which warned it will undermine border security by involving state police in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, argues it’s necessary to deter migrants entering from Mexico, after such arrivals surged following Biden taking office.
This isn’t the final word on the law – its legality will likely be decided by a federal appeals court, or the US supreme court. Here’s more on the ongoing saga, from the AP:
The 2-1 ruling late Tuesday from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will likely prevent enforcement of the law until a final decision on its merits, either by the 5th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling followed a March 20 hearing by a three-judge panel of the court. It’s just the latest move in a seesaw legal case over Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s strict new immigration law that is not yet ended.
The Justice Department has argued that Texas’ law is a clear violation of federal authority and would create chaos at the border. Texas has argued that President Joe Biden’s administration isn’t doing enough to control the border and that the state has a right to take action.
Chief Judge Priscilla Richman, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, cited a 2010 Arizona law that was largely stricken by the U.S. Supreme Court to say immigration enforcement is exclusively a federal responsibility.
“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” wrote Richman, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush.
The Texas law, Richman wrote, “creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses and related procedures regarding unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the country and their removal.”
She was joined in the opinion by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Biden appointee.
Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump and a former aide to Abbott, dissented with the majority decision.
Here’s more of what the surprise Democratic victory in an Alabama special election might mean for the presidential campaign in November, from the Guardian’s Oliver Milman:
An Alabama Democrat who campaigned against the state’s near-total abortion ban has won a special election to the state legislature, a stark signal that reproductive rights is a potent issue for Democratic candidates, even in the deep south.
Marilyn Lands won the state house seat on Tuesday, defeating Teddy Powell, a Republican, by 63% to 37%. Lands, a licensed professional counselor, previously ran for the seat in 2022 and lost by 7% to David Cole, a Republican who resigned last year after pleading guilty to voter fraud.
Lands made Alabama’s abortion ban and access to contraception and in vitro fertilization central to her campaign, speaking openly about her own previous abortion experience in a TV ad that featured her saying that it was “shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago”.
Lands said that her win sent a clear message in the wake of Alabama’s near-total abortion ban, which came into effect after the US supreme court struck down Roe v Wade in 2022. In February, there was also a highly controversial state supreme court decision that threatened the use of IVF.
One of the earliest indications that the overturning of Roe v Wade would represent an earthquake in American politics was seen in Kansas, another reliably Republican state.
Just weeks after the supreme court’s decision in 2022, Kansas voters rejected a referendum that would have allowed abortion to be banned in the state. But the Associated Press reports that Republicans who dominate the Kansas legislature haven’t given up, and yesterday approved a law that will require doctors to ask women the reasons why they are seeking an abortion. The Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, is likely to veto it, but the GOP appears to have the votes to override it.
Here’s more on that, from the AP:
At least eight states require similar reporting, but none of them has had a statewide vote on abortion rights as Kansas did in August 2022. In the first state ballot question on abortion after the US supreme court’s Dobbs decision, voters decisively protected abortion rights under the state constitution.
Democrats are frustrated because Republicans and anti-abortion groups have pursued new rules for abortion providers despite the 2022 vote. But supporters of the reporting bill say it would give the state better data that would help legislators make policy decisions.
The bill would require providers to ask patients 11 questions about their reasons for terminating a pregnancy, including that they can’t afford another child, raising a child would hinder their education or careers, or a spouse or partner wanted her to have an abortion. A woman would not be required to answer, however.
The bill also would require providers to report each patient’s age, marital status, race and education level, while using a “confidential code” for each patient so that they wouldn’t be identified to the state. The state would be barred for at least five years from identifying the abortion providers in the data it publishes.
Reproductive rights were also on the minds of the supreme court justices yesterday, when they considered a challenge by a conservative group to abortion medication mifepristone. But while many of the justices who heard the case voted to overturn Roe v Wade, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman and Jessica Glenza report they don’t appear inclined to take similar action against medication abortion:
A US supreme court hearing that held the potential to reshape abortion access and the US Food and Drug Administration’s authority did not go well for anti-abortion doctors behind the case, legal experts said on Tuesday.
The consensus is a positive sign for abortion-rights advocates, who feared the case would curtail access to medication abortions, which now account for the majority of all abortions nationally.
“It’s very possible that they will just toss the lawsuit out because the anti-abortion doctors didn’t have legal standing to sue,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown Law School and an expert in global public health law, said about the justices.
“In my view, the lawsuit was absurd on its face and deserves to be thrown out because these anti-abortion doctors had very little injury,” Gostin added.
The case deals with FDA regulation of the drug mifepristone, one-half of a two-drug regimen used to terminate an early pregnancy. A group representing the doctors, called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, has sought to roll back FDA decisions that expanded mifepristone access, such as allowing doctors to prescribe it via telehealth.
The politics sages at Sabato’s Crystal Ball have a breakdown of Democrat Marilyn Lands’s triumph in Alabama.
Lands lost by about seven percentage points in 2022, but the seat became open again after Republican David Cole resigned when it turned out he did not actually live in the district, according to the AP. That paved the way for Lands to crush the Republican challenger for the open seat, Teddy Powell:
In the Huntsville AL area, Democrats have flipped state House District 10 tonight. In 2022, Marilyn Lands (D) lost by about 7 points. This time, she won by almost 25%, sweeping nearly everything.
This was a stronger margin here than Doug Jones’s 23-point spread from 2017. pic.twitter.com/NUlH8cZEeF
— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) March 27, 2024
But Democrats may not want to get too excited about the victory, since the seat has been trending away from the GOP over the last few presidential elections:
Also, going with this, per DRA, it was roughly 60%-39% for McCain and gave Romney 62%. Trump won it by 14 in 2016, but was down to carrying by 1 in 2020–so def. one area of AL moving the wrong way for Rs longer term.
— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) March 27, 2024
Democrats and Biden campaign cheer surprise special election victory in Alabama
Just how did Marilyn Lands end up ousting Republicans from a suburban state house seat in northern Alabama? The Associated Press reports that the licensed counselor’s pitch to voters included the following demands: “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”
Voters liked what they heard, and so did the Democratic party at large. Here’s what chair Jaime Harrison had to say about Lands’s victory:
Today’s election – one of the first since the devastating decision by the Alabama supreme court that stopped IVF care – was a referendum on Maga Republicans’ out-of-touch extremism on reproductive rights. Marilyn Lands’ victory demonstrates that voters aren’t going to sit idly by while Maga Republicans lay the groundwork for a national abortion ban.
And Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign:
Last month, Alabamans lost access to fertility treatments because of Donald Trump. Tonight, the voters in Alabama’s 10th house district elected a pro-choice champion in Marilyn Lands, sending Trump and extreme Maga Republicans a clear message: they know exactly who’s to blame for restricting their ability to decide how and when to build their families and they’re ready to fight back. Trump overturned Roe vWade, paving the way for attacks on women’s freedoms like we saw in Alabama – now he’s running to ban abortion and gut access to IVF nationwide. Tonight’s results should serve as a major warning sign for Trump: voters will not stand for his attacks on reproductive healthcare. This November will be no different.
In surprise victory, Democrat wins state House seat in deep red Alabama after campaign focused on reproductive rights
Last night, Democrats in Alabama did something they do not often do in the deeply conservative state: win a seat in the state house of representatives back from the GOP. And how they did it may be a sign of what we can expect to work with voters nationwide as Joe Biden stumps for a second term while trying to gain complete control of Congress in November. In the case of Alabama, the Democrat Marilyn Lands campaigned on repealing Alabama’s strict abortion ban and fully restoring access to in vitro fertilization, the fertility treatment that the Alabama supreme court briefly outlawed last month. Lands lost the race for the seat in the swing district just two years ago, but in last night’s special election triumphed with a more than 25% margin over the Republican candidate.
Why does this all matter? For Democrats, it’s the latest sign that voters remain uncomfortable with the implications of the supreme court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v Wade, and those objections can be harnessed to make inroads even in the most inhospitable terrain, like Alabama. Whether Biden and his allies can repeat the act just over seven months from now is an open question.
Here’s what else we are watching today:
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Six construction workers working on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key bridge when it was struck by a container ship and collapsed are presumed dead, after rescuers spent most of yesterday attempting to locate them.
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Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican party chair known for spreading Donald Trump’s election lies, was axed by NBC after an outcry.
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Americans once narrowly supported Israel’s campaign in Gaza, but are now generally opposed to it, new polling from Gallup shows.
