Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Californians may be the only ones that can vote in Tuesday’s recall election, but in his closing arguments for Gov. Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden warned that the country’s political future is on the ballot.

“This is not hyperbole. The eyes of the nation are on California because the decision you’re about to make isn’t just going to have a huge impact on California, it’s going to reverberate around the nation, and quite frankly, not a joke, around the world,” Biden stressed.

Biden rallied alongside Newsom Monday, first traveling to survey the fire damage from the Caldor Fire, then to Long Beach, California, to make one final pitch to voters.

His support for Newsom comes after a slew of top Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, traveled to the Golden State to campaign for the embattled governor.

On the eve of his recall election, Newsom main argument was one focused on Trumpism.

“We may have defeated Donald Trump, but we have not defeated Trumpism,” he said. “Trumpism is still on the ballot in California and that’s why it’s so important, not just for all of us here at 40 million Americans strong in the nation’s largest and most populous state, but also to send a statement, all across the United States of America, that Trumpism isn’t … has no place here.”

It was a theme that Biden picked up, calling Republican front-runner Larry Elder a “clone of Donald Trump.”

“This is the closest thing to a Trump clone that I’ve ever seen in your state. Now I really mean it. And he’s leading the other team. He’s a clone of Donald Trump … you can’t let that happen. There’s too much at stake,” he said.

“You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor, or you’ll get Donald Trump,” Biden continued.

While both speeches largely focused on making comparisons between Elder and the former president, Biden did praise Newsom on many of his policies, such as Newsom’s handling of the pandemic — which is one of the main reasons the recall effort took off.

“We don’t need politics in this battle against COVID. We need science. We need courage. We need leadership. We need Gavin Newsom. The governor will follow science. He’s got the courage to do it right now,” Biden said.

In another effort to nationalize the recall, Biden pointed to other states to warn voters of what could happen should Newsom be replaced.

“Do you have any doubt about how important it is to have Gavin, who respects women’s rights? Just take a look at what’s happening to states like Texas,” Biden said. “It just passed a law empowering complete strangers … become bounty hunters, going after women who exercise their right to choose. A law the United States Supreme Court refused to stop. Now other states say they’re looking to replicate the Texas law. You don’t think women’s rights are under assault? You’re not looking.”

In Tuesday’s election, voters will be asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And if so, who should replace him?

At least 50% of voters will have to vote no on Tuesday’s recall in order for Newsom to keep his job.

As election day gets closer, Newsom’s job security is looking better, as 57.3% of voters say they’ll vote no, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.

While Newsom’s team has expressed confidence in his ability to make it though Tuesday’s recall, his ally, Biden, wrapped up his remarks Monday night with a stark warning: it’s not over yet.

“You have a governor to make sure Donald Trump’s dark, destructive divisive politics never finds a place in California. So please — not a joke — on behalf of the people of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, all across America, don’t take anything for granted,” the president said.

Although Californians will make their voices heard at the ballot box, candidates on both sides are warning of potential legal challenges that could follow.

Elder, who would not say if he would accept the results of Tuesday’s election in an interview with ABC News’ Zohreen Shah, has already started making claims of fraud.

On his campaign website, Elder has linked to a “Stop CA Fraud” page where voters can report fraud. While no votes have been calculated yet, the page already claims: “Statistical analyses used to detect in elections held in 3rd world nations…have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor.”

John Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, a nonpartisan, liberal-leaning political advocacy organization, told ABC News that such claims should be expected.

“There will inevitably be claims that the election is rigged because the purveyors of the ‘big lie’ need these local and state elections in between the major national elections to keep up their momentum; but all of their allegations in the November 2020 election fell flat,” Stein said. “There’s nothing new under the sun here. And we assume that there will be lawsuits filed after the recall and they will be treated the same way as the lawsuits in the 2020 election.”

Stein said misinformation in the recall could also undermine and limit turnout among the voters that those who are sowing the misinformation are trying to reach.

But such misinformation, he said, has “no basis in the realities of California’s election administration, which has been stress-tested repeatedly and proven to be some of the most secure, most reliable elections in the nation.”

That reliability will be put to the test Tuesday in an election with profound national consequences.

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(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Voters who haven’t already cast their ballots by mail head to the polls Tuesday to weigh in on whether they would like to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Californians are faced with a two-part question — if they would like to recall Newsom and who they would like to replace him with. If more than 50% of voters say he should be recalled, he will be replaced with the highest vote-getter in the recall field, which consists of 46 candidates.

This is the fourth time in the nation’s history that voters have had an election to recall their governor, and only one governor has been recalled in the last century. In 2003, Democratic California Gov. Gray Davis, facing extremely low approval ratings, was recalled and replaced with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This time, Republicans have a crowded primary field and, before nationally syndicated conservative radio host Larry Elder’s entrance into the race, the field was without a clear leader.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer was once thought to be the front-runner and is seen as the moderate in the race. Businessman John Cox, who was the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in 2018, campaigned across the state with a live bear and an 8-foot ball of trash. Reality star and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner entered the recall field, although she spent some time out of the country in Australia, reportedly filming a celebrity edition of a reality show.

Although numbers appear to be in his favor, Newsom recruited some of the biggest Democratic heavy-hitters to stump for him, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. President Joe Biden hit the trail with Newsom to close out his campaign in Long Beach, California, on Monday night.

“This is not hyperbole. The eyes of the nation are on California because the decision you’re about to make isn’t just going to have a huge impact on California, it’s going to reverberate around the nation, and quite frankly not a joke around the world,” Biden said Monday.

According to a recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, Newsom’s approval rating is sitting at 53%, and 58% of voters said they do not want him to be recalled. In 2003, exit polls showed Davis’ approval rating at 26% — a stark difference from where Newsom is today.

Historically, gubernatorial recalls produce similar vote margins for the governor holding office as they had in their last election, according to recall expert and senior fellow at Wagner College, Joshua Spivak. Gray Davis got 47% of the vote in 2002, and 44% in 2003 when he was recalled. In Wisconsin in 2010, Scott Walker was elected with 52.2% of the vote, and defeated his recall with 53.1%.

In 2018, Newsom won the state with 61.9% of the vote to GOP nominee John Cox’s 38.1%. In 2020, Biden carried with a similar margin, 63.5% of the vote to Trump’s 34.3%.

Democratic voter registration in the Golden State largely outpaces that of both Republicans and independents, putting Newsom at an advantage. So far, Democrats are leading both groups combined when it comes to returning their ballots: Democrats have returned nearly 4.1 million compared to the 3.8 million Republican and independent ballots that have been returned, according Monday data from Political Data Inc.

Democrats have attempted to nationalize the race to increase enthusiasm, warning of lawmaking similar to that of Republican-led states.

Harris, a native of the Bay Area, rallied with Newsom on Thursday and warned of the national consequences the recall could have if it was successful, referencing the recent change in abortion laws in Texas, among other things.

“What’s happening in Texas, what’s happening in Georgia, what’s happening around our country with these policies that are about attacking women’s rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, workers rights, they think if they can win in California they can do this anywhere, but we’re gonna show them they can’t,” Harris said.

The pandemic being a top issue across the state, Newsom has spent the campaign warning voters about potential policy changes surrounding the coronavirus if the recall passed. His team released an ad painting the election as “life or death.” He has singled out Elder’s promises that he will immediately end mask mandates and testing for state employees.

Spivak told ABC News that the threat of a leading candidate among the recall field, which was lacking before Elder joined the race two months ago, was helpful to Newsom in solidifying his message.

“He was really helped by Larry Elder eventually being the front-runner, because it gave him a comparison. Before he was trying to make it Newsom versus Trump, but Trump isn’t on the ballot,” Spivak said. “Larry Elder is, so Larry Elder can be Trump, play the role of Trump. And Larry Elder was obviously very happy to play the role … it was beneficial to both of them.”

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, are already raising the alarm about the potential for voter fraud, based in conspiracies about the 2020 election. Trump claimed that the election is “probably rigged.” Elder warned of “shenanigans” last week — though he told ABC News Saturday, “So many people are going to vote to have it recalled, I’m not worried about fraud.”

Elder had previously said that he believed Biden won the 2020 election “fairly and squarely.” But he is now encouraging his supporters to call a hotline to report issues of voter fraud for litigation purposes in the recall, saying he fears there will be integrity issues similar to those of the 2020 election — despite there being no widespread evidence of voter fraud in November.

“We’re going to file lawsuits in a timely fashion,” Elder said last week.

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(WASHINGTON) — In his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken faced more than five hours of questions from members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

He faces more questions from the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Here are some key takeaways from Monday’s hearing in the House:

Doubling down on the withdrawal

Blinken’s opening statement laid out the Biden administration’s view of why everything went south so quickly and how they believe they did the best they could in those circumstances to evacuate 124,000 people — a line that Blinken never really broke from.

Instead, the top U.S. diplomat stuck to those talking points throughout the afternoon and into evening. He occasionally argued them in novel terms, but what was billed as the first oversight hearing of the Afghan withdrawal provided little new information.

“We inherited a deadline. We did not inherit a plan,” he said early on, essentially blaming former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops by May 1, something Trump bragged about just earlier this summer.

While President Joe Biden reversed several Trump-era agreements, Blinken argued if Biden had “not followed through on the commitments his predecessor made,” then Taliban attacks on U.S. troops would have resumed, and the U.S. would have had to send more American forces into Afghanistan.

For every aspect of the chaotic evacuation, he also countered criticism largely by laying the blame elsewhere. While some Americans were left behind, the State Department had warned them to leave repeatedly, he said; or while thousands of Afghan partners were not evacuated, the Biden administration did its best to reinvigorate the special immigrant visa program in its short time in office after Trump gutted it.

Evacuation operations “definitely improved, but it did not start from a great place,” he conceded at one point — before adding, “largely because of the exigency of the situation that we were in.”

It was not a victory lap and Blinken came as close to bristling as he does when asked about the administration calling the evacuations a “success.” But in five and a half hours of testimony, Blinken echoed what his boss has said publicly — he doesn’t regret his momentous decision to pull out, one that a majority of Americans have long supported.

Criticism of Biden’s withdrawal is bipartisan

How that withdrawal ensued, however, is a different question. Most of the committee’s Democrats defended Biden and lay the blame at Trump’s feet for his negotiations with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government and ended in a deal to withdraw U.S. troops and release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for Taliban commitments.

But a handful of them criticized the way Biden has conducted the withdrawal. Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., said many Afghan partners were not getting the help they needed, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., said there were “missteps,” and Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Mich., said the administration’s coordination was “very challenging.”

Perhaps the sharpest Democratic criticism came from Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., who served with Blinken in the State Department during the Obama administration. He said Biden picked “up where the Trump administration left off” and “sacrificed everything that was right with Afghanistan.”

“The sacrifice, I think, is profound: An extremely important counterterrorism partnership was lost, and a terrorism state is now upon us. Enormous gains for women, for the rule of law, for democracy, for human rights. Mass displacement,” he said.

“The Afghans remade their society. We didn’t do it, they did. It was our withdrawal, I’m afraid, that has unmade their society — and what have we gained for this,” he added — noting U.S. troops are not coming home, but deploying elsewhere in the region as they continue to pursue terrorists, but now without partners on the ground and with more civilian casualties likely.

Across the aisle, however, few Republicans conceded there were any errors in how Trump handled Afghanistan — some even suggested that the president who orchestrated the withdrawal wouldn’t have carried it out.

At least one Republican lawmaker made clear that there was blame on both sides: Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a frequent Trump critic, told Blinken, “The Trump administration failed in the setup, and I think the Biden administration absolutely failed in the execution of this.”

Congress prioritizes partisan fights, not oversight

In two decades of war, Congress’ oversight role has been proven feeble at best — and Monday’s hearing put on bright display how deeply the legislative body has failed this critical mission.

Instead of achieving insights into executive branch decisions or securing commitments on the way forward, most lawmakers used their time to score political points or deliver soliloquies on who was to blame for a military and diplomatic mission that both parties led.

“Will you honor these families and give the American people the answers they deserve?” asked Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Tenn., without asking any question about the withdrawal except whether Blinken took responsibility.

He said he did for his agency and his decisions.

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., repeatedly accused Biden, Blinken and the administration of manipulating U.S. intelligence about the Taliban threat — a dramatic accusation that, he said, meant they had blood on their hands. But when Blinken tried to address the accusation, Mast repeatedly talked over him, accused Blinken of lying, and said he wasn’t interested in what he had to say.

When Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., accused Blinken of trying to “ride the coattails” of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed by mentioning that State Department officials served alongside at the airport, Blinken interrupted with stunned offense. But Stuebe continued over him, refusing to let him address the accusation.

Three hours into the hearing, no lawmaker had asked about the U.S. drone strike that reportedly killed an aid worker and his family, not the ISIS-K terrorists the Pentagon said it had. There were just four questions about the issue, from two lawmakers.

Instead, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., for example, asked Blinken about Hunter Biden’s laptop and Burisma, the Ukrainian state-run energy company — something the committee’s Democratic chair Gregory Meeks reminded him was outside the scope of the hearing. Perry also pressed Blinken about evacuating Afghan interpreters and other allies — even though he was one of 16 Republicans who voted against authorizing more visas for these Afghan partners and their families in July.

While Blinken maintained a polite demeanor — one that engendered good will among some Republican members — he was more than happy to let Democrats slug back for him.

Trump left him and Biden with little to work with, Rep. Kathy Manning, D-N.C., said, and Blinken responded with a subdued chuckle, “Not much.”

Rep. Gerald Connelly, D-Va., used his time to torch Trump’s Taliban deal and accuse Republicans of “amnesia,” as Blinken watched on through his monitor.

Under the U.S. constitution, Congress alone has the right to declare war — a vote its members never took despite 20 years of operations in Afghanistan. And in spite of repeated findings by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction that U.S. money was being wasted or fueling corruption, Congress conducted very little oversight of U.S. funding.

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(WASHINGTON) — The lone abortion clinic in Mississippi is warning the U.S. Supreme Court that any move to undermine a half-century of legal precedent affirming abortion rights would diminish the court’s credibility and lead to a national “upheaval” with sweeping consequences for millions of American women.

“People would be harmed, and chaos would ensue, even in states that claim not to be prohibiting abortion directly,” attorneys for Jackson Women’s Health wrote the court in a brief filed Monday.

The court later this year is expected to revisit a pair of longstanding but controversial decisions that have allowed states to regulate — but not ban — abortions before fetal viability, which is around 23-24 weeks, according to medical experts.

Mississippi passed a law in 2018 attempting to ban all abortions after 15 weeks, but lower courts blocked the measure citing Supreme Court precedent from Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.

The state has asked the justices to overturn those decisions.

“Unless the court is to be perceived as representing nothing more than the preferences of its current membership, it is critical that judicial protection hold firm absent the most dramatic and unexpected changes in law or fact,” attorneys for the abortion providers wrote the court.

“Two generations (of women) — spanning almost five decades — have come to depend on the availability of legal abortion, and the right to make this decision has been further cemented as critical to gender equality,” they wrote.

The appeal comes on the heels of the court’s 5-4 decision this month allowing Texas to effectively ban most abortions across the state, despite what the majority called “serious questions” about the constitutionality of the law.

“While Texas is circumventing Roe and the Constitution, Mississippi is openly asking the court to overturn Roe,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Jackson Women’s Health and is leading the legal challenge against SB8 in Texas.

“If the court grants Mississippi’s request to overturn Roe, large swaths of the South and Midwest — where abortion is already hard to access — will eliminate abortion completely,” she said.

Eleven states have passed so-called “trigger laws” that would immediately ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe were overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

At the heart of the Mississippi case is a delicate balance the court has attempted to strike in its decisions over the years between a woman’s individual liberty and a state’s interest in protecting an unborn fetus.

The line devised by the court has been viability.

“Before that point, the court concluded, no state interest is strong enough to outweigh the woman’s liberty interest in deciding whether to carry her pregnancy to term,” attorneys for Jackson Women’s Health explained in their brief.

Mississippi has advocated for jettisoning the viability standard but, critics said, not proposed a clear alternative for the court to adopt instead.

“Scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability. States should be able to act on those developments,” the state told the court in July. “But Roe and Casey shackle states to a view of the facts that is decades out of date.”

Approximately 100 women per year in Mississippi seek abortions after 15 weeks, the clinic said in court documents. Jackson Women’s Health only performs abortions up to 16 weeks.

Attorneys for the clinic urge the justices to consider the human toll on millions of American women should they uphold the law or abolish Roe. They say forcing women to continue an unwanted pregnancy puts them at higher risk of health complications, emotional harm and financial strain.

“Accepting Mississippi’s request to abandon the viability line would turn back the clock for generations who have never known what it means to be without the fundamental right to make the decision whether to continue a pregnancy,” they write. “Until viability, a state may regulate, but not ban, abortion.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Amy Coney Barrett found common ground Monday over shared concern that the nation’s highest court is increasingly viewed in ideological terms.

Barrett, in one of her first public speeches as a justice, told an audience Sunday in Kentucky that “this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

Breyer, asked about those comments in an interview with the Washington Post on Monday, said that he agrees “with I think the approach is that she’s taking there.”

“As I’ve said, it takes some years and then you gradually pick up the mores of the institution. And the mores of the institution — you’re a judge, and you better be there for everybody,” said Breyer, the court’s oldest member and most senior liberal. “Even if a Democrat or Republican appointed you – you’re there as a judge.”

Barrett appeared to echo that sentiment in her speech, telling the audience that differences among “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

Her message may have been undercut, however, by the fact that the event was hosted by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell inside an academic center named in his honor. Several progressive legal groups and independent judicial watchdogs criticized the optics.

“If Justice Barrett wants the Supreme Court not to be seen as partisan, she should avoid being hosted by a center named after the most partisan person in America,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix The Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “There’s value in members of the high court speaking to audiences outside of Washington, but that concept is corrupted when stretched to rationalize appearing at events that look and sound like political pep rallies.”

Breyer was not asked about and did not comment on the connection with McConnell. His appearance came as part of a media tour for his new book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.”

The public defense of the court as a nonpartisan institution comes at a fraught time for the justices and their credibility. The Court’s approval rating has dipped below 50% for the first time since 2017 and down 9-points from a decade high just last year, according to Gallup.

This month, the court became embroiled in a dramatic and highly divisive debate over abortion in Texas, after refusing to block an unprecedented law that effectively outlaws the procedure across the state by a narrow 5-4 vote.

Barrett voted with the majority; Breyer dissented.

“The timing wasn’t very good for my book because it’s pretty hard to believe when a case like those come along that we’re less divided than you might think,” Breyer lamented.

“A lot of people will strongly disagree with many of the opinions or dissents that you write, but still, internally, you must feel that this is not a political institution, that this is an institution that’s there for every American,” he said.

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(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden on Monday was making his first visit to the West Coast as president, with plans to survey wildfire damage and push for action on combatting climate change.

Biden planned to first stop in Boise, Idaho, to visit the National Interagency Fire Center — which coordinates the federal government’s response to wildfires — before traveling to the Sacramento, Calif., area to view the impact of the Caldor Fire and receive a briefing from local officials.

The president has used recent natural disasters to show the urgency of climate change and its deadly effects on the American people, pitching his massive spending plan as a way to rebuild infrastructure in a greener, cleaner, more resilient manner. This month, he has visited Louisiana, New Jersey and New York to see the impact of Hurricane Ida and its remnants.

The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress hope to pass two major bills by the end of the month that, together, would make hundreds of billions of dollars available for developing clean energy, rebuilding physical infrastructure to make it withstand more extreme weather events, and electrifying the federal fleet of vehicles.

The larger bill — the price tag and contents of which have been subject to Democratic infighting — would devote $135 billion to preventing wildfires, dealing with droughts, and promoting clean energy in rural communities, among other things.

After an aerial tour of the Caldor Fire’s impact on El Dorado County, Calif., Biden plans to deliver remarks on his administration’s response to recent wildfires and how his spending proposals “will strengthen our nation’s resilience to climate change and extreme weather events,” according to the White House.

He then plans to travel to Long Beach, Calif., to speak at a Monday evening campaign rally with Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat facing a recall election in which voting ends Tuesday.

“Today, the president’s showing how nature will take its course if we don’t act and we don’t start investing,” White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy said in an interview with CNN on Monday.

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(NEW ORLEANS) — Tropical Storm Nicholas has set a course toward the Gulf Coast and is expected to bring drenching rains to some regions still recovering from Hurricane Ida.

The system strengthened from a tropical depression late Sunday morning in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, currently carrying maximum sustained winds up to 40 mph and moving north-northwest at 15 mph. The center of the storm is currently about 300 miles south-southeast from the mouth of the Rio Grande River.

Nicholas is expected to become better organized and strengthen as it closes in on the southern Texas coast in the next 24 to 36 hours. Landfall is expected late Monday into early Tuesday morning, but the impact will begin hours earlier.

The tropical moisture from the storm is already triggering scattered showers and thunderstorms along the western Gulf Coast Sunday afternoon. Flash flooding along the coast is possible in the next to 12 to 24 hours, and on Monday morning, the center of the storm will be off the northeast coast of Mexico.

A tropical storm warning is in effect from the Rio Grande River to Port Aransas, Texas, including cities such as Corpus Christi and South Padre Island. A tropical storm watch is in effect from Port Aransas along the Texas coast to High Island, which includes Galveston and Victoria.

Nicholas is the 14th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which is currently at its peak, with five tropical disturbances being monitored across the Atlantic basin.

The outer bands of Nicholas could potentially affect some regions along the Louisiana coast that were devastated by Hurricane Ida last month, such as New Orleans.

Flash flood watches are now in effect from Brownsville, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. A storm surge watch has been issued along parts of the Texas coastline as well, with surges between 2 and 4 feet expected.

Nicholas is expected to weaken on Tuesday but will also slow down, which could increase the risk of flash flooding. While the winds will die down, the heavy rain will continue and crawl over east Texas through the middle of the week.

The primary widespread hazard from Nicholas will be the heavy rain and flash flood threats. Rounds of heavy rain will slam much of the Texas and Louisiana coast over the next few days.

Between 6 and 10 inches of rain is forecast for Galveston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. The Houston metro area could see between 2 to 4 inches, which higher amounts closer to the coast. South of Lake Charles, 10 to 15 inches is possible.

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(LOS ANGELES) — There are still two days to go before California’s gubernatorial recall election, but the current governor’s team and his leading opponent, Larry Elder, have each already indicated they’re ready for legal challenges.

In a sit-down interview with ABC News’ Zohreen Shah on Saturday, Elder was asked repeatedly if he would accept the results of Tuesday’s election, but he avoided answering by conveying confidence in his ability to win.

“So many people are going to vote to have [Newsom] recalled, I’m not worried about fraud,” he said.

But Elder earlier this week made unsubstantiated claims of possible fraud at a campaign event, saying the recall could see similar “shenanigans” as many Republicans claimed happened in last year’s presidential election, despite no evidence of widespread election fraud.

Elder’s campaign has an election integrity section on his website, where voters can fill out a form to report alleged incidents of voter fraud and sign a petition to investigate the results of the recall.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign team said they were prepared for potential lawsuits but wouldn’t elaborate on specifics during a campaign stop Thursday.

In the interview with Shah, Elder also deflected questions about some of the controversial statements he’s made in the past, such as saying slave owners should get reparations.

“Cover what I said about the election,” he said. “The election is occurring because people are unhappy with how California is being governed the last two years.”

If he were to be elected, Elder already has his first order of business planned. “The first thing I’m going to do is repeal the requirement for state workers that they have to be tested once a week and they have to wear a mask,” he said. “I don’t think the science supports that.”

It’s the issues brought up by COVID-19 that previously plagued Newsom’s political career and now, in recent days, have bolstered it. The Public Policy Institute of California reported that 60% of respondents approve of the way Newsom has handled the pandemic in a survey released earlier this month.

Recent polling about the recall election looks promising for Newsom, as 56.2% of voters said they’ll vote to keep him, a 4% increase from last week’s reported polling average, according to FiveThirtyEight.

“Democrats didn’t even take it seriously until literally, I won’t even say a couple months ago, I’d say six or seven weeks ago,” Newsom told ABC News. “People started waking up to this reality, we’re closing that gap every single day. We’re going to pull this thing out.”

The boost comes as President Joe Biden is set to travel to California to campaign with Newsom on Monday as a final push to motivate voters.

But Newsom is facing new controversies in the final stretch. Actress Rose McGowan recently alleged Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, tried to bribe her against coming forward with her sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. A spokesperson for Siebel Newsom told ABC News the allegation “is a complete fabrication,” adding, “It’s disappointing but not surprising to see political opponents launch these false attacks just days before the election.”

McGowan will campaign with Elder on Sunday in Los Angeles.

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(NEW YORK) — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., reiterated his call on Sunday for a strategic pause on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., doubled down on the need to pass both the bipartisan infrastructure and budget reconciliation bills.

“The urgency — I can’t understand why we can’t take time to deliberate on this and work,” Manchin told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

In an interview that followed, Sanders told Stephanopoulos that he believes both bills will be passed.

“I think we’re gonna work it out, but it would really be a terrible, terrible shame for the American people if both bills went down,” Sanders said.

Manchin on Thursday wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for a “strategic pause” on the budget resolution Democrats took the first step in passing last month. Debate continues over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, with some Democrats threatening to hold up the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the passage of the reconciliation package.

The Senate returns on Monday and the tentative deadline for Senate committees to turn in their draft legislation to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sanders, the Budget Committee chairman, is Wednesday.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court allowing an unprecedented pre-viability abortion ban to go into effect in Texas has prompted questions on the status of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that’s supposed to protect the right to abortion nationally.

To some experts, this marks the end of the line for the right to abortion to be federally protected, especially with an upcoming case soon to be heard by the court that directly challenges Roe.

“Roe v. Wade is dead in Texas, the second-most-populous state,” Elizabeth Sepper, a University of Texas at Austin School of Law professor, told ABC News, “and I think it’s really hanging by a thread for much of the rest of the nation.”

Not overturned, but some say ignored in Texas case

The Supreme Court did not remark on the constitutionality of the Texas law, but it did reject a request for an emergency injunction, citing technical grounds, in a brief so-called shadow docket, allowing the law to go into effect while it’s being legally challenged.

“So we don’t see a citation to Roe v. Wade, we don’t see a discussion of the constitutionality of banning abortion, but here we are, right?” Sepper said. “Abortion is banned in the state of Texas, and that speaks volumes beyond this mealy mouthed sentence and the one paragraph we got from the court.”

In 1973’s Roe and in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court affirmed “the constitutionally protected liberty of the woman to decide to have an abortion before the fetus attains viability and to obtain it without undo interference from the State.”

The Texas law bans physicians from providing abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — well before viability.

“To have allowed that to happen in this procedural way,” said Kimberly Mutcherson, a co-dean and law professor at Rutgers Law School, referring to the Supreme Court, “is something that I would have thought they were at least a little bit too good for, but apparently I was wrong.”

On Thursday, the Department of Justice sued the state of Texas to block the law, with Attorney General Merrick Garland calling it “clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent.”

Ripple effect

Since the near-total ban in Texas was allowed to go into effect, Republican lawmakers in other states have said they aim to mimic the law.

Priscilla Smith, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice who argued in front of the Supreme Court in a 2000s abortion case, called the court’s action “cowardly” and “completely lawless.”

“It overturned it in effect in that it’s saying, ‘Here’s how you can get out from under Roe.’ So it’s instructing states on how to do something to make it so Roe doesn’t apply in their state,” she said.

The Texas law is different from previous bans in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.

With that, Mutcherson said, “they created this sort of confusion and this hook that the Supreme Court was able to use.”

“This kind of tactic is going to be used throughout the country in anti-abortion states to deprive women of federal constitutional protections,” Smith said.

Upcoming case

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case this term from Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, challenging another pre-viability ban. The state of Mississippi formally asked the court to overturn Roe as part of that case.

“The Supreme Court’s decision not to decide with regard to the Texas abortion law signals quite strongly, I think, the outcome on the Mississippi 15-week ban on abortion,” Sepper said.

Because precedent might indicate the Texas ban should have been enjoined, Sepper said, “I think that does signal really the end of Roe.”

Smith agreed: “There’s no reason to think they’re not just going to overturn the right itself.”

Since 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts has stepped in as a swing vote on abortion, including siding with the liberal-leaning justices in the latest full abortion case, although his opinion followed more procedural lines.

But the Supreme Court balance has changed since 2018 with former President Donald Trump’s appointments, who have voted more conservatively. Roberts joined Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in dissenting on the Texas law, but his vote did not make theirs the majority opinion.

“Justice Roberts is no longer the swing vote,” Smith said. “I don’t think there is a swing vote.”

Acknowledging it was “possible” one of the Trump-appointed justices could side with the liberal-leaning justices, Smith said, “There’s no indication that anybody’s going to swing.”

Sepper posited the justices could overtly overturn Roe or do it in a “sneaky, silent sort of way,” like by changing a standard that opens the door for more restrictions and bans.

Possible political repercussions

While the door has arguably been opened for state lawmakers to ban abortion, some argue they may not want to because of potential political repercussions.

A 2019 ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a majority of Americans support the right to abortion, so lawmakers could face backlash from voters if they actually ban it.

Many conservative lawmakers have introduced bills restricting abortion knowing that they would probably never go into effect because they were unconstitutional, Sepper added.

“So these legislators got credit with the anti-abortion activists for passing the laws, but they didn’t have to face the electoral consequences of having banned abortion or denied emergency abortion care,” she said. “The fact that they may soon face those political repercussions is something they’re going to have to think about.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is already facing backlash for the new law’s lack of exceptions for cases of incest or rape.

One way for voters to indicate disapproval is protesting, and while there have been some demonstrations about the Texas law, Smith said she’s surprised there aren’t more.

“And I’m not sure why they’re not, except that people are getting this idea that this is just a procedural move,” she said. “If Dobbs comes through the way the anti-abortion folks want it to, if Roe gets overturned in Dobbs, then maybe people will wake up and hit the streets. But you know, if you’re in a red state right now, you better watch out

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