Politics

(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Vice President Kamala Harris issued a call to action Sunday, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and lambasting bans on abortion in several states since constitutional protection for the procedure was removed by the Supreme Court last year.

In a speech in Tallahassee, Florida, where state lawmakers are considering more stringent abortion restrictions, Harris compared the fight for abortion access to that for various other civil rights and warned that existing bans put both women and health care professionals at risk.

“For nearly 50 years, Americans relied on the rights that Roe protected. Today, however, on what would have been its 50th anniversary, we speak of the Roe decision in the past tense. Because last June, the United States Supreme Court took away that constitutional right, a fundamental right, a basic freedom from the people of America, from the women of America,” she said.

“The right of every woman in every state in this country to make decisions about her own body is on the line. And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: How dare they! How dare they!” the vice president said to cheers.

“Today, we are fighting back,” she said. I’m pleased to announce that President Biden — I’m announcing it today — has issued a presidential memorandum on this issue.”

In the memo, Biden directed the secretary of health and human services, along with the U.S. attorney general and the homeland security secretary, to explore ways to make it easier for patients, providers and pharmacies to access, prescribe and provide abortion medication. It also directs them to work to ensure patients can get abortion medication from pharmacies “free from threats or violence.”

The abortion pill mifepristone, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is increasingly being targeted for restrictions in Republican-led states that want to limit abortions.

Many states with abortion bans restrict the availability of mifepristone either by making the drug illegal or cutting down on who can dispense it.

However, the FDA said earlier this month that it will permit pharmacies to offer abortion pills to patients with a prescription who live in states where abortion is legal.

“Members of our Cabinet and our administration are now directed, as of the president’s order, to identify barriers to access to prescription medications and recommend actions to make sure that doctors can legally prescribe, that pharmacies can dispense and women can secure safe and effective medication,” Harris said in her speech in Tallahassee.

She also called for a federal law to codify the right to access abortion, a proposal that has stalled with legislators.

“Know this, President Biden and I agree, and we will never back down,” she said. “And we know, we know, this fight will not be won until we secure this right for every American. Congress must pass a bill that protects freedom and liberty, a bill that protects reproductive rights, and President Biden will sign it.”

Since Roe was overruled, Republican-led states across the country have imposed various bans on abortion, some with exceptions for rape, incest and considerations for the life of the mother.

A 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court ruled in June that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” and that the Constitution “does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.”

Some anti-abortion activists are pushing for more sweeping regulations such as a federal ban, which has divided Republicans in Washington but united Democrats in opposition.

“Let us not be tired or discouraged, because we’re on the right side of history,” Harris said in her speech. “So we will continue to stand together in the fight to protect the freedom and liberty of all people, of all women everywhere,” she said. “And here now, on this 50th anniversary, let us resolve to make history and secure this right.”

Harris led a call-and-response with the audience, asking, “Can we truly be free?”

“Can we truly be free if a woman cannot make decisions about her own body?” she said as attendees replied, “No!”

“Can we truly be free if a doctor cannot care for her patients?” she asked. “No!” they said.

President Joe Biden commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in a statement, saying that Republicans are bent on curtailing access to abortion even more after last year’s Supreme Court ruling and despite the failure of anti-abortion measures in Kansas, Kentucky and elsewhere.

“Since the Supreme Court’s decision, Americans, time and time again, have made their voices heard: women should be able to make these deeply personal decisions free from political interference,” Biden said. “Yet, Republicans in Congress and across the country continue to push for a national abortion ban, to criminalize doctors and nurses, and to make contraception harder to access. It’s dangerous, extreme, and out of touch.”

The president, like Harris, urged Congress to act.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is expected to name Jeff Zients as his next White House chief of staff, replacing Ron Klain, who is set to step down in the coming weeks, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

No official announcement has been made. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Washington Post first reported the selection.

Zients co-chaired the Biden presidential transition, served as the White House COVID-19 response coordinator and most recently worked at the White House preparing for staffing changes following the midterm elections.

Zients, who like Klain is a member of the president’s inner circle, is well-liked among rank-and-file White House staff. As chief of staff, he would supervise a sprawling executive office.

“Everyone is pretty excited about it. People like him [and] respect him,” one aide told ABC News.

The transition comes as the administration faces near-daily headlines about the president’s potential mishandling of classified materials — with a special counsel appointed to look into the matter — and a debt ceiling and spending fight looming with House Republicans.

Klain, a longtime Biden confidante, has been chief of staff as the administration saw a string of legislative successes over its first two years, such as major COVID-19 aid, investments in infrastructure and on climate change and more.

He is also known as a vocal defender of the White House — on TV and on social media — including as economic anxiety mounted last year over record-high gas prices and inflation.

“We have done a lot of work to bring the economy back … [a] tremendous amount of progress on getting the economy going again in 14 months,” Klain said on ABC’s “This Week” last April. “But a lot of work left to be done.”

Andy Slavitt, who worked closely with Zients on Biden’s COVID-19 response, said that Zients would make a “great choice” for Biden due to his integrity and since “everyone trusts him.”

“He seeks out everyone’s views, but he does it in a way that pushes the ball down the field toward a decision,” Slavitt told ABC News. “Most importantly, he gets the team win. He defines the goal and gets everybody on the same page and makes everybody win.”

A lengthy career in business, politics

A 2021 ABC News profile of Zients described him as a well-connected multimillionaire businessman known in Washington circles for his “Mr. Fix-It” ability to navigate thick bureaucracies.

“Big ideas do change the world — but not on their own,” Zients said in a 2018 commencement speech to business students at American University. “None of it matters unless you execute well, and executing well is really hard.”

Zients’ corporate career was lengthy — having worked in consulting and investing and previously sitting on the boards of Facebook and Sirius XM Radio — before his time in politics, and some progressives in 2021 cited concerns over Zients’ business-world track record.

Under President Barack Obama, Zients was the White House’s first-ever chief performance officer, director of the National Economic Council and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Former Human and Health Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell, who worked with Zients during the debacle over the government’s launch of healthcare.gov, told ABC News in 2021 that “he’s the kind of guy who runs into the fire without drama.”

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court said Thursday it has been unable to determine who leaked Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case last May.

After a probe that involved interviews with more than 100 employees, investigators are “unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” according to the court.

In response to questions being raised to clarify whether the justices themselves were questioned, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley said Friday she uncovered no leads in the Dobbs leak probe that implicated the justices and therefore did not question any of them under oath.

She does say, however, that they were active and cooperative participants.

“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions,” she said in a statement. “The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.”

The draft opinion was leaked and published by Politico on May 2. The copy of the draft opinion showed a majority of justices appeared to vote to effectively overrule the 1973 landmark abortion precedent set in Roe v. Wade.

The findings were independently reviewed by former judge and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who provided an independent analysis.

The court does not say the case is fully closed. Curley, who oversaw the probe, left the door open to the possibility of new evidence emerging down the line.

“In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure,” she wrote. “Whether or not any individual is ever identified as the source of the disclosure, the Court should take action to create and implement better policies to govern the handling of Court-sensitive information and determine the best IT systems for security and collaboration.”

On June 24, the court issued its official opinion, which did in fact overturn Roe v. Wade as a national precedent and returned the decision on the legality of abortion to the states.

The leak of the draft opinion immediately triggered protests outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., and across the country. It also led to protesters outside Supreme Court justices’ homes in the D.C. area. About a month after the release of the draft opinion, a man was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a gun, ammunition, pepper spray and zip ties.

Those protests were triggered again when the official opinion was released the following month.

Both conservative and liberal sides pointed the finger at each other for who was responsible for the leaked opinion. The unprecedented publication of Alito’s leaked draft also upended the court’s traditional workflow, an iterative process marked by frank and private exchanges of ideas between justices over the course of months.

“What happened at the court is tremendously bad,” Justice Clarence Thomas said in June of the leak’s impact on court dynamics. “You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s kind of an infidelity.”

The findings released Thursday did eliminate several options as to what may have occurred in the leak, including saying it is highly “unlikely” the court’s IT systems were hacked from outside.

Several other pieces of information about the investigation were detailed, including:

82 staff in addition to the justices had access to the draft;
staff was interviewed under risk of perjury and asked to sign sworn affidavits;
it is not revealed whether the justices themselves were interviewed;
several staff admitted to telling a spouse or family member privately the outcome of the case before release; and
the court received limited outside assistance in the probe, but did do fingerprint analysis of one item of interest.

ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Less than a day after receiving a warning from a federal judge, former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The withdrawal came in a brief document filed Friday morning with U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who late Thursday warned Trump’s legal team that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous.

“Plaintiff, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, by and through his undersigned counsel and pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice,” the letter said.

Trump’s lawsuit against the AG had sought to shield Trump’s revocable trust from James, who has an ongoing $250 million civil suit that alleges fraudulent conduct at the Trump Organization. James has accused Trump and his family members of “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and of cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

Trump, who has denied the allegations, has called the investigation by James, who is black, a politically motivated “witch hunt” by an attorney general he has called “racist.”

Trump’s suit against James accused her “intimidation and harassment” and of making repeated “attempts to steal, destroy or control all things Trump.”

On Thursday, Middlebrooks ordered Trump and his attorney Alina Habba to pay fines of nearly $1 million after determining that Trump’s 2022 lawsuit against Hillary Clinton was frivolous litigation meant only to “seek revenge.”

Trump had sued Clinton in March 2022, for allegedly “acting in concert” with top FBI leadership to invent what became known as the Russia investigation into interference in the 2016 election. Trump had argued that the Russia probe was “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice.” Middlebrooks dismissed the lawsuit this past September.

In his Thursday opinion, the judge also cautioned Trump’s attorneys that they could face sanctions over their lawsuit against James.

In the opinion, Middlebrooks called Trump “a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions,” Middlebrooks wrote.

Habba did not immediately return a request for comment from ABC News.

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.

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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — A federal judge upheld Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension of a state prosecutor who DeSantis viewed as “woke” — but in doing so, condemned the governor for violating the prosecutor’s right to free speech.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued the ruling Friday, several weeks after a trial in the case featured testimony from some of Desantis’ top aides.

At issue was the true motivation behind DeSantis’ suspension of Andrew Warren, a Democrat who was reelected in 2020 as the top state prosecutor in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County after running on a platform of criminal justice reform.

According to DeSantis’ executive order suspending Warren in August, the state attorney demonstrated “incompetence and willful defiance of his duties” by implementing certain “policies of presumptive non-enforcement” and by co-signing a left-leaning advocacy group’s public statements about state laws criminalizing gender-affirming care and abortions.

In his order on Friday, Hinkle wrote that, “The assertion that Mr. Warren neglected his duty or was incompetent is incorrect. This factual issue is not close.”

“Running a state attorney’s office is the state attorney’s job, not the governor’s,” Hinkle wrote. “A governor cannot properly suspend a state attorney based on policy differences.”

Hinkle said that, while DeSantis was wrong to dismiss Warren, it was not within the court’s power to reinstate him, and thus ruled in favor of the governor.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last year, Warren joined more than 80 local, elected prosecutors from around the country in signing a statement saying, “[We] commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions.”

The top lawyer in the Florida governor’s office, general counsel Ryan Newman, testified during the trial that any “reasonable person” would view the statements Warren signed as “a pledge,” making Warren’s suspension not only warranted but lawful under Florida state law.

However Warren disputed that the statements reflected any type of policy or pledge, testifying that he signed them because he “agreed with the general idea” behind them.

David O’Neil, an attorney for Warren, lauded the judge’s commentary on Friday and said he and his legal team were already considering next steps, which could include an appeal.

“On the merit and substance,” O’Neil said, “this ruling was a complete rebuke of Gov. DeSantis.”

Warren’s supporters also leapt at the ruling. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., released a statement calling on the Republican-controlled state Senate to “put partisanship aside” for Warren, “immediately reinstating him to his duly elected position.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Tim Kaine announced Friday he will seek a third term, which is welcome news for Democrats as they face a tough 2024 cycle.

Kaine, who has represented Virginia in the U.S. Senate since 2013, said “there is so much to be done.”

“I am happy to announce that I will seek re-election in 2024 to keep delivering results for Virginia,” he said in a statement. “I’ve been honored to serve people as a missionary, civil rights lawyer, and elected official at the local, state, and federal levels. I love the Commonwealth and its citizens and want to keep being your Senator.”

Kaine handily won reelection in 2018, and Virginia is considered a must-keep seat for Democrats with control of the chamber on the line.

Democrats have more than twice as many Senate seats to defend in 2024 as Republicans, and the party already suffered a blow when Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., announced she would not be seeking another term in the battleground state.

Had Kaine decided not to run, it would’ve created an open seat in Virginia and placed even more pressure on Democrats as they try to hold onto their narrow majority in the Senate. Currently, Democrats and the independents who caucus with them hold a narrow 51-seat majority in the chamber.

Kaine acknowledged the tough map for Democrats as he spoke to reporters in Virginia on Friday.

“In thinking about serving for the next eight years, what’s the chances that I’m in the minority? That’s a significant chance,” Kaine said.

“It just tells you how closely divided our nation is,” he added.

The landscape in Virginia has changed since Kaine’s last election, with Republicans gaining ground statewide in 2021 with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory.

Kaine began his career in the state as a civil rights attorney before turning to politics, eventually being elected as Virginia’s lieutenant governor and then governor. He was first elected to the Senate in 2012 and rose to national prominence in the 2016 presidential race as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.

As he announced his decision to run for reelection, Kaine touted his work in helping to pass the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration and more recent legislation on gun safety and infrastructure.

“I’m a servant. I love Virginia. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I got a whole lot more I want to do,” Kaine said. “That’s the four reasons.”

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Florida has sanctioned former President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, ordering them to pay fines of nearly $1 million for filing what he deemed to be a frivolous lawsuit claiming that Hillary Clinton and others involved in the Russia investigation unlawfully conspired to damage Trump’s reputation.

The opinion from Judge David Middlebrooks calls Trump “a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions,” Middlebrooks wrote in his opinion.

“As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba,” wrote the judge.

Habba did not immediately return a request for comment from ABC News.

Trump sued Clinton, his 2016 presidential challenger, for allegedly “acting in concert” with top FBI leadership to invent what became known as the Russia investigation into interference in the 2016 election. Trump had argued that the Russia probe was “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice.”

Judge Middlebrooks dismissed the lawsuit this past September.

Middlebrooks’ sanctions, issued late Thursday, direct Habba and Trump to pay $938,000 to 18 defendants in the case.

“A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm,” Middlebrooks wrote in his opinion.

The judge also cautioned Trump’s attorneys that they could face sanctions over their separate lawsuit targeting New York Attorney General Letitia James, who in September filed a $250 million suit against Trump and his family members for allegedly defrauding lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

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(DAVOS, Switzerland) — Speaking Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, FBI Director Christopher Wray described how his agency saw an increase in cyberattacks from Russia at the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine last year and he hammered the Chinese for their artificial intelligence program.

At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, the FBI observed a growing number of Russian attempts to carry out cyberattacks, Wray said.

“We did see, as the conflict erupted and increased, effort by the Russian intelligence services — which have been conducting malicious cyberactivity against U.S. infrastructure for years,” he said.

Wray also took aim at another U.S. competitor: China.

He predicted that China’s artificial intelligence program would be used by the country for more harm than good. Chinese officials have previously pushed back on criticism of its cybersecurity, calling such comments “groundless attacks” and “malicious smear[s].”

“The Chinese government has a bigger hacking program than any other nation in the world,” Wray said. “And their AI program is not constrained by the rule of law and is built on top of massive troves of intellectual property and sensitive data that they’ve stolen over the years and will be used, unless checked, to advance that same hacking program — to advance that same intellectual property — to advance the repression that occurs not just back home in mainland China but increasingly as a product that they export around the world.”

During his time as FBI director, Wray has used his bully pulpit to raise the specter of China’s growing international influence as well as the ability of so-called hack and steal programs to advance their goals.

Last month, the Justice Department charged a Chinese national with allegedly harassing a Chinese dissident in Boston.

Wray also said at the forum that he is concerned by the amount of data that is collected by autonomous vehicles and how it could be used to harm citizens.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Thursday he has “no regrets” as the investigation continues into the classified documents found at his home and office.

Biden broke his silence on the issue during a trip to California to survey storm damage. He had not answered questions on the matter since last week, and has addressed the issue only three times since the news broke earlier this month. He had not done so since a special counsel was named.

“You know what, quite frankly, bugs me is that we have serious problems here we’re talking about,” he said to reporters who shouted questions. “We’re talking about what’s going on and the American people don’t quite understand why you don’t ask me questions about that, but having said that, what’s your question?” Biden said.

The president was then asked why he did not reveal the existence of the documents back when they were first found in early November, a few days before the midterm elections.

“We found a handful of documents … were filed in the wrong place, we immediately turned them over to the archives and the Justice Department,” he said. ‘We’re fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

“I think you’re going to find, there’s nothing there,” he continued. “I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no ‘there’ there. Thank you.”

The White House has faced scrutiny for avoiding reporters’ questions on the document drama, instead referring them to the Department of Justice.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court said it has been unable to determine who leaked Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case last May.

After a probe that involved interviews with more than 100 employees, investigators are “unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” according to the court.

The draft opinion was leaked and published by Politico on May 2. The copy of the draft opinion showed a majority of justices appeared to vote to effectively overturn the 1973 landmark abortion precedent set in Roe v. Wade.

The findings were independently reviewed by former judge and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who provided an independent analysis.

The court does not say the case is fully closed. Marshall Gail Curley, who oversaw the probe, left the door open to the possibility of new evidence emerging down the line.

“In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure,” he wrote. “Whether or not any individual is ever identified as the source of the disclosure, the Court should take action to create and implement better policies to govern the handling of Court-sensitive information and determine the best IT systems for security and collaboration.”

On June 24, the court issued its official opinion, which did in fact overturn Roe v. Wade as a national precedent and returned the decision on the legality of abortion to the states.

The leak of the draft opinion immediately triggered protests outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., and across the country. It also led to protesters outside Supreme Court justices’ homes in the D.C. area. About a month after the release of the draft opinion, a man was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a gun, ammunition, pepper spray and zip ties.

Those protests were triggered again when the official opinion was released the following month.

Both conservative and liberal sides pointed the finger at each other for who was responsible for the leaked opinion. The unprecedented publication of Alito’s leaked draft also upended the court’s traditional workflow, an iterative process marked by frank and private exchanges of ideas between justices over the course of months.

“What happened at the court is tremendously bad,” Justice Clarence Thomas said in June of the leak’s impact on court dynamics. “You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s kind of an infidelity.”

The findings released Thursday did eliminate several options as to what may have occurred in the leak, including saying it is highly “unlikely” the court’s IT systems were hacked from outside.

Several other pieces of information about the investigation were detailed, including:

• 82 staff in addition to the justices had access to the draft;
• staff was interviewed under risk of perjury and asked to sign sworn affidavits;
• it is not revealed whether the justices themselves were interviewed;
• several staff admitted to telling a spouse or family member privately the outcome of the case before release; and
• the court received limited outside assistance in the probe, but did do fingerprint analysis of one item of interest.

ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.