Politics

(WASHINGTON) — As the country marks its 245th Independence Day, the Biden administration has officially missed its target of getting 70% of all adults at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. And as state governments examine what went wrong with their vaccine rollout programs, a culprit is clear: the younger population is significantly less likely to be vaccinated.

“At the end of the day, the young people — we’re having a hard time getting them across the finish line and getting them vaccinated,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice told ABC “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz.

“They’re young people all across this country that are not getting vaccinated,” Justice added. “It’s a challenge. That’s all there is to it.”

Nationally, 67% of all adults have received one dose, but only 56.1% of adults in West Virginia have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine — a surprise from a state that was lauded months ago as being one of the leaders in the U.S. on vaccine distribution.

When that statistic is broken down by age group, the vaccination rate plummets in younger generations. While more than 78% of the U.S. population over the age of 65 is vaccinated in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 39.5% of 18- to 24-year-olds are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Let’s go back to who’s not getting vaccinated,” Raddatz said. “The statistics will show it’s poverty, race and you just look at the map — it’s a lot of red states.”

“Well, I mean, there’s some truth to that and everything,” Justice responded. “Because, you know, the red states probably have a lot of people that, you know, are very, very conservative in their thinking. And they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.”

“Do you really think those people who aren’t vaccinated — who as you said may be more conservative, may not want anybody in their business — are really ever going to get vaccinated?” Raddatz asked. “What could actually put them over the edge to want it at this point?”

“Well, Martha, I hate to say this, is what would put them over the edge, is an awful lot of people die,” Justice responded. “The only way that’s going to happen is a catastrophe that none of us want.”

“And so, we’re just going to keep trying,” he added.

As nationwide vaccinations fall short of Pres. Biden’s July Fourth deadline to get 70% of adults at least one shot, @MarthaRaddatz was on the ground in West Virginia speaking with young adults still hesitant to get the vaccine. https://t.co/XaQ0O17OQs pic.twitter.com/0Aq2N5gMWl

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 4, 2021

In the capital of West Virginia, the local Kanawha-Charleston Health Department is only vaccinating eight to 10 people a day, according to Dr. Sherri Young, a health officer and the executive director of the health department. On their best day earlier this year, they had administered 5,344 shots.

“Do you think that last little trickle out there — which is pretty sizable — will ever do it?” Raddatz asked Young.

“Probably not,” Young replied.

According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 74% of people who are unvaccinated probably won’t get a shot, which is up from 55% in April.

While reporting in West Virginia, ABC News came across dozens of individuals under the age of 35 who were still unvaccinated.

William Paterson, 22, of Morgantown, West Virginia, told Raddatz he would “probably not” get the vaccine because he felt he wasn’t at risk.

“Do you worry that you might give it to someone else?” Raddatz asked Paterson.

“A lot of the people in my family that are at health risks are already vaccinated, so I’m not really that worried about it right now,” he replied.

The state of West Virginia has continued to try incentivizing people to get vaccinated, offering multiple lotteries: a million dollar cash prize, custom-outfitted trucks, full four-year scholarships to any public institution in the state, lifetime hunting and fishing licenses, custom hunting rifles and shotguns, and getaways to West Virginia State Parks.

When asked if the vaccine lottery swayed his decision to get vaccinated, Paterson said “it doesn’t change anything really.”

Justice told ABC News that people are gambling with their lives.

“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves,” Justice said. “We have a lottery, you know, that basically says, ‘if you’re vaccinated, we’re going to give you stuff.'” “Well you’ve got another lottery going on,” Justice later added. “And it’s the death lottery.”

“I was saying earlier, that it’s the old, ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make ’em drink,’ right?” Raddatz said to the governor. “You’ve provided the vaccine, and yet…”

“Maybe what you got to do is lead them to water — and then if they won’t drink — you’ve got to just, some way, stand up and push their head down to some way — at least a few will drink,” Justice responded. “And that’s what we got to do.”

Some young adults are gradually visiting their local pharmacies though. Ally Kirk, 20, got vaccinated the day ABC News spoke with her.

“Well, a lot of my friends started getting it,” Kirk told Raddatz, while explaining what changed her mind about getting vaccinated. “My parents were vaccinated. I felt a lot more comfortable with it. I did some research on my own, and I felt that it was time for me to get it. I was ready. I’m ready to move past COVID and get on with life back to normal.”

ABC “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz and ABC News’ Nate Luna contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has announced his support for the recommendation that prosecution of sexual assaults and sexual harassment cases be removed from the military chain of command in favor of independent prosecutors to handle those cases.

Recommended by an independent civilian panel that looked at sexual assault in the military, the change has been long been supported by advocates for sexual assault victims who say it will improve the handling of sexual assault allegations.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had already announced that he backed the same recommendation made by the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault on the Military when the group presented him with recommendations.

“I strongly support Secretary Austin’s announcement that he is accepting the core recommendations put forward by the Independent Review Commission on Military Sexual Assault (IRC), including removing the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault from the chain of command and creating highly specialized units to handle these cases and related crimes,” Biden said in a statement released Friday.

“Sexual assault is an abuse of power and an affront to our shared humanity,” he added. “And sexual assault in the military is doubly damaging because it also shreds the unity and cohesion that is essential to the functioning of the U.S. military and to our national defense.”

“Today’s announcement is the beginning, not the end of our work,” Biden said. “This will be among the most significant reforms to our military undertaken in recent history, and I’m committed to delivering results.”

Biden said he looked forward to working with Congress “to implement these necessary reforms and promote a work environment that is free from sexual assault and harassment for every one of our brave service members.”

The change to remove the military chain of command from prosecutions has been the centerpiece of legislation championed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., for the last decade.

Recently, Gillibrand has received bipartisan support for a bill that has been previously voted down and not backed by the Pentagon.

But Gillibrand’s bill has not received the support of key lawmakers on the Armed Services Committees who are opposed to the removal of the chain of command from all felony cases, not just sexual assault prosecutions.

While Biden expressed support for the change in military sexual assault prosecutions, ahead of Friday’s announcement two senior administration officials seemed to indicate that Biden does not support broader changes in Gillibrand’s bill.

The officials said the independent panel recommends that the changes be enacted by Congress this year but that they not go into effect until 2023 to help build the infrastructure needed to bring special victims prosecutors on board.

“We reject the notion that shifting legal decisions about prosecution from command to prosecutors diminishes the role of those commanders,” said one of the officials.

“We believe, instead, that it enhances their role and places them in the lead of taking care of their people — the number one job of commanders — and creating climates of no tolerance for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and related crimes” the official added.

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(WASHINGTON) — Over the objections of three conservative justices, the US Supreme Court has turned away an appeal from a Washington State flower shop that violated state anti-discrimination law by refusing to serve a same-sex couple on religious grounds.

The decision means a California Supreme Court judgment against Arlene’s Flowers and owner Barronelle Stutzman will stand. In 2013, Stutzman refused to arrange wedding flowers for a pair of long-time customers — Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed — saying that doing so would violate her religious beliefs.

“After Curt and I were turned away from our local flower shop, we cancelled the plans for our dream wedding because we were afraid it would happen again. We had a small ceremony at home instead,” said Robert Ingersoll in a statement. “We hope this decision sends a message to other LGBTQ people that no one should have to experience the hurt that we did.”

With help from the ACLU, the couple sued the shop under Washington’s anti-discrimination law, which says businesses that are open to the general public cannot refuse to serve someone based on sexual orientation, even on the basis of sincere religious beliefs.

After years of legal proceedings, the state’s highest court sided with the couple. In 2018, the US Supreme Court remanded an appeal from Arlene’s Flowers back to the state for a second look. A year later, the Washington Supreme Court affirmed its original decision.

“The adjudicatory bodies that considered this case did not act with religious animus when they ruled that the florist and her corporation violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination by declining to sell wedding flowers to a gay couple, and they did not act with religious animus when they ruled that such discrimination is not privileged or excused by the United States Constitution or the Washington Constitution,” the court wrote.

“The State of Washington bars discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination based on same-sex marriage constitutes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We therefore hold that the conduct for which Stutzman was cited and fined in this case—refusing her commercially marketed wedding floral services to Ingersoll and Freed because theirs would be a same-sex wedding—constitutes sexual orientation discrimination under the [law],” the Washington high court wrote in 2019.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch indicated that they would have taken up the case to review the judgment against the shop. The justices who voted to reject the case did not elaborate.

Lawyers for Stutzman in a statement online called the decision “devastating news.”

“The Supreme Court has once again said that critical nondiscrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people are legally enforceable and has set a strong and definitive precedent,” said Alphonso David, president of Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group.

Earlier this week, the court delivered another win for LGBT rights advocates by rejecting the appeal of a Virginia school board seeking to impose a transgender bathroom ban. The move means schools in at least five states can no longer discriminate on the basis of gender identity in the use of restroom facilities.

The Court has sought to balance religious liberty and LGBT rights in a number of recent decisions.

The justices unanimously sided with Catholic Social Services this month in its dispute with the City of Philadelphia over discrimination against LGBTQ people in screening parents for foster care.

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(NEW YORK) — The number of Americans seeing crime as an extremely serious problem in the United States is at a more than 20-year high, President Joe Biden is underwater in trust to handle it and broad majorities in an ABC News/Washington Post poll favor alternative crime-fighting strategies to address it.

A sweeping 75% in the national survey said violent crime would be reduced by increasing funding to build economic opportunities in poor communities. Sixty-five percent said the same about using social workers to help police defuse situations with people having emotional problems.

These measures, aimed at underlying causes of crime, are most apt to have been seen as effective, by substantial margins, of five that were tested. Among the others, 55% think increasing funding for police departments would reduce violent crime, 51% say the same about stricter enforcement of existing gun laws and 46% say so about stricter gun-control laws.

See PDF for full results and charts.

Broad support for alternative anti-crime measures comes against a backdrop of heightened high-level concern. Twenty-eight percent of Americans see crime in the United States as an extremely serious problem, a relatively small group but the most to hold this view compared to nearly annual polls by Gallup from 2000 to 2020. The average across those previous polls is 19%.

Views of crime in the country as a high-level problem expand to 59% when including those who see it as very serious, not just extremely serious. As typically is the case, far fewer, 17%, see crime as an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, though this is at a numerical high — by a single percentage point — compared to Gallup polls since 2000.

This poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds a troubling difference in the experience of crime along racial and ethnic lines. While 13% of white people and 17% of Hispanic people call crime an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, this jumps to 31% among Black people.

Politically, just 38% of adults overall approve of how Biden is handling the issue of crime in this country, with 48% disapproving. That said, Americans divide almost exactly evenly on which political party they trust more to handle crime — 36% pick the Republicans, 35% the Democrats, about the average difference between the parties on this question in polls going back to 1990. Twenty percent volunteered that they don’t trust either party on crime.

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(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland has ordered a temporary halt to the Justice Department advocating any scheduling of further executions of federal inmates, according to a memo.

Garland in a memo to senior officials at the department Thursday echoed his own recently stated reservations about use of the death penalty, noting a number of defendants who were later exonerated as well as statistics showing possible discriminatory impact on minorities.

“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” he wrote in the memo. “That obligation has special force in capital cases. Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases.”

“Those weighty concerns deserve careful study and evaluation by lawmakers. In the meantime, the Department must take care to scrupulously maintain our commitment to fairness and humane treatment in the administration of existing federal laws governing capital sentences,” he continued.

The new directive comes after Garland’s predecessor in the job, William Barr, had resumed the department’s use of capital punishment against inmates a year ago, after a nearly two-decade lapse. He also pushed for executions of several federal prisoners during the transition period before President Joe Biden — who opposes the death penalty — took office.

The federal government in 2020 executed more people than all 50 states combined, according to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Institute, a non-partisan, death penalty information center that tracks death row inmates and executions.

The directive, however, is not expected to impact the department’s position taken recently in the case of Boston bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, a person familiar with the matter told ABC News. Officials last month urged the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling and reinstate Tsarnaev’s death penalty despite Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment.

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

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(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — California voters will decide whether to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and replace him with another candidate in an election set for Sept. 14, the lieutenant governor announced Thursday.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber certified the gubernatorial recall petition earlier Thursday, prompting Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis to set an election date between 60 and 80 days from the date of certification.

While the signatures have only just been officially certified, Weber announced in late April that the organizer of the recall petition had collected more than the approximately 1.5 million validated signatures required.

During a 30-day period, voters who signed the recall petition could request their signatures be removed, but only 43 voters did so, Weber announced last week. More than 1.7 million signatures supporting the recall were verified.

The California Department of Finance estimated on Thursday the cost of the recall election to be $276 million.

Recent polling suggests Newsom is on his way to easily defeating the recall effort.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California’s May statewide survey, only 40% of likely voters would vote to recall Newsom if the election were held, while 57% would vote against recalling him as governor. To successfully recall the state’s governor, a majority of voters must vote “yes.”

Among Californians, 55% approve of the way Newsom is handling his job overall — and on his handling of COVID specifically, he fares even better, with 64% of Californians approving of his response, according to PPIC.

Newsom’s campaign has blasted the recall as a partisan, Republican-led effort that’s a waste of taxpayer money.

In response to the date being set, Juan Rodriguez, the leader of the Newsom-aligned group, “Stop The Republican Recall,” said in a statement, “This Republican recall is a naked attempt by Trump Republicans to grab control in California — powered by the same Republicans who refused to accept the results of the presidential election and are now pushing voter suppression laws across the country. On September 14, Californians will have the chance to defend our state and reject this Republican power grab once and for all.”

Most voters likely know Newsom is a Democrat, but back in February 2020, when responding to the recall petition, his team failed to indicate he wanted his party affiliation on the potential recall ballot. A spokesperson for the secretary of state confirmed to ABC News Tuesday that Newsom’s campaign filed a notice of his party preference to Weber on June 19, but the secretary declined to accept it, saying in a statement, “The Secretary of State’s office has a ministerial duty to accept timely filed documents. Acceptance of filings beyond a deadline requires judicial resolution.”

In a statement Thursday, Orrin Heatlie, the chief proponent of the recall effort, said they objected to the legal move, while Mike Netter, another proponent of the recall, blasted Newsom, saying, “The absurdity of this suit is almost surreal. This Governor is so focused on identity politics it is that important to him to actually sue his own appointed Secretary of State to demand she override a regulation which he signed into law.”

The California Patriot Coalition, which Heatlie and Netter co-founded, plan to intervene in the lawsuit next week.

When voters cast ballots, they will face two questions. The first is whether they want to recall Newsom and the second is who they want to replace Newsom if a majority of voters support the recall.

Though the recall organizers said they are nonpartisan, Republicans have rallied around the effort, including the California Republican Party, whose chairwoman called Newsom the “worst governor in California history” in a statement after the date was set.

So far, no major Democrats have announced campaigns to be on the recall ballot to replace Newsom. Organizers and Republican candidates vying to replace the governor have pointed to his handling of the pandemic, in particular government-mandated restrictions on businesses and schools, and general government overreach.

Prominent Republicans in the race to replace him include San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Newsom’s 2018 challenger John Cox and reality star and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner.

This is the sixth official attempt to recall Newsom. Only one California governor has ever been successfully recalled in the United States. In 2003, California’s Democratic governor, Gray Davis, lost the recall election, and actor and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger won the election to replace him.

According to PPIC’s polling, Davis’s approval rating was significantly worse than Newsom’s ever has been while in office. In five polls over nine months leading up to the 2003 election, over 70% of California voters disapproved of Davis. The state today is also far more Democratic than it was in 2003.

ABC News’ Meg Cunningham contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump called the criminal charges unsealed Thursday against his organization’s long-serving chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg a “disgrace” and “shameful,” telling ABC News he is a “tremendous man.”

Weisselberg and the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty in Manhattan State Supreme Court to 15 charges related to what the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office general counsel Carey Dunn called a “15-year-long tax fraud scheme.”

Weisselberg allegedly benefitted from the scheme to the tune of $1.7 million, Dunn said.

“During the operation of the scheme, the defendants arranged for Weisselberg to receive indirect employee compensation from the Trump Organization in the approximate amount of $1.76 million … in ways that enabled the corporate defendants to avoid reporting it to the tax authorities,” the indictment said.

Weisselberg arrived at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with his lawyer hours after a grand jury on Wednesday voted to indict him and the Trump Organization on the charges, which include grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records.

A special grand jury in Manhattan voted Wednesday to indict Trump’s firm and its chief financial officer.

The indictment said that beginning in 2005, Weisselberg used the Trump corporation’s bank account to pay the rent for his apartment and his utility bills, and to cover nearly $360,000 in upscale private school payments for his family and nearly $200,000 in luxury car leases.

“Weisselberg intentionally caused the indirect compensation payments to be omitted from his personal tax returns, despite knowing that those payments represented taxable income and were treated as compensation by the Trump Corporation in internal records,” said the indictment.

“Allen Weisselberg is a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather who has worked at the Trump Organization for 48 years,” the Trump Organization said in a statement about the charges. “He is now being used by the Manhattan District Attorney as a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President. The District Attorney is bringing a criminal prosecution involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other District Attorney would ever think of bringing. This is not justice; this is politics.”

Trump has called the investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt,” and said that the Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James are pressuring Weisselberg to lie against him. When asked if he thought Weisselberg would cooperate, he told ABC News, “No.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The ruling is a victory for Republicans, who have enacted 22 laws restricting voting in 14 states.
In a second significant opinion Thursday, the US Supreme Court divided 6-3 along ideological lines to strike down a California law that required charities to privately disclose the identities of major donors to the state attorney general.

State officials had argued that the identities, which not-for-profit charities are allowed to keep secret from the public, would help enforce rules around tax-exempt status and catch potential fraud.

A pair of conservative groups that challenged the requirement — and backed by the ACLU, NAACP and others — argued the state was unnecessarily violating the donors’ First Amendment right to free association and that prior leaks of the information exposed donors to harassment and attacks.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the conservative majority, sided with the charities, concluding “the Attorney General’s disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors’ associational rights. And this burden cannot be justified on the ground that the regime is narrowly tailored to investigating charitable wrongdoing, or that the state’s interest in administrative convenience is sufficiently important.”

Justice Roberts wrote that the state did not sufficiently consider alternative means of gathering the information or protecting against fraud. He said the current requirement could create a “chilling effect” on donors because of the state’s documented history of leaks of private donor information.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, said the charities challenging the rule failed to show any concrete harm by the disclosure requirement.

“The Court jettisons completely the longstanding requirement that plaintiffs demonstrate an actual First Amendment burden,” Sotomayor wrote. “It can point to no record evidence demonstrating that the regulation is likely to chill a substantial portion of the donors. These moves are wholly inconsistent with the Court’s precedents and our Court’s long-held view that disclosure requirements only indirectly burden First Amendment rights.”

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center summed up the impact of this case as relatively limited, if disappointing, to transparency advocates and watchdogs in a statement.

“Wealthy special interests scored a win, albeit a narrow one. We at Campaign Legal Center are disappointed that the majority chose to sidestep established precedent recognizing the important public interests in nonprofit reporting and relatively minimal burdens such reporting imposes. While the standard of review applied by the Court here was unduly skeptical, it is one transparency laws in the electoral context easily meet, limiting the reach of this case. The decision does not call into question the longstanding laws and regulations requiring public disclosure of campaign spending.”

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(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Biden and first lady to meet with families of Surfside condo collapse victims
The death toll has risen to 18 after the bodies of two children were found on Wednesda…

President Joe Biden is on the ground in Surfside, Florida, Thursday following the devastating partial collapse of a beachside condominium building last week that has killed at least 18 people.

The president departed the White House early Thursday morning and was planning to spend nearly eight hours on the ground in Florida. He’s already met with local officials and thanked first responders engaged in the ongoing search efforts ahead of consoling families affected by the disaster and delivering remarks at 3:50 p.m. ET. First lady Jill Biden is accompanying him for the visit.

At an earlier command briefing with local officials, seated next to Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Biden immediately made a big offer to cover the cost of the response effort.

“I think there’s more we can do, including, I think we have the power, and I’ll know shortly, to be able to pick up 100% of the cost to the county and the state,” Biden said, eliciting a surprised reaction from Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who put her hand on Biden’s arm.

“I think the governor will you tell you, anything he asked for, he got,” Biden said, ahead of DeSantis nodding in agreement.

Biden took a moment to turn to politics, noting the bipartisan display of cooperation

“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate when it’s really important,” Biden said.

Meeting later with a group of first responders, Biden was effusive with praise.

“I just want you to know that we understand,” he told the responder. “What you’re doing now, is just hard as hell. Even psychologically. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He also invoked three personal stories to demonstrate the importance of first responders in his own life, referring to his experience having an aneurysm, describing his two sons being pulled out of the car crash that killed his first wife and daughter with the jaws of life and explaining that his home burned down after being struck by lightning.

“You saved my life. Literally, my fire department saved my life,” he said.

Search and rescue efforts were paused Thursday morning due to concerns about the stability of the remaining structure and the potential danger it poses to the crews. Structural engineers are on-site monitoring the situation as officials evaluate possible options and determine the next steps, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

“We’re doing everything that we can to ensure that the safety of our first responders is paramount and to continue our search and rescue operations as soon as it is safe to do so,” she said at an earlier press conference.

Officials were unable to provide a timeline for when the urgent operation will resume.

Separately, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the visit has been closely coordinated with officials on the ground to ensure that it does not divert any resources away from search and rescue operations.

“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search and rescue teams, and everyone who has been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones, to offer them comfort as search and rescue efforts continue. And they want to make sure that state and local officials have the resources and support they need under the emergency declaration,” Psaki said earlier this week.

En route to Florida, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that local leaders urged the Bidens to visit Thursday, saying the time was right despite ongoing search and rescue efforts.

“The message that we’ve been given is very clear from the mayor’s office, from the governor’s office, from local officials, which is, they wanted us to come today, think now is the time to come, to offer up, offer up comfort and show unity from not just from him, but the country. And so this is why he and the first lady decided to come today, and he thought this was the right time to do it,” Jean-Pierre said.

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(WASHINGTON) — A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, rejecting claims that they discriminate against minority voters and imposing new limits on the landmark Voting Rights Act.

The 6-to-3 decision, breaking along ideological lines, overturned a lower court ruling to uphold Arizona’s policy of invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and a law criminalizing the collection of mail ballots by third-party community groups or campaigns.

Democrats had argued that data show both restrictions disproportionately hurt Latino and Native American voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any policy that “results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote of any citizen on account of race or color.”

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s six conservatives, said Section 2 requires equal openness to voting, not equal outcomes.

“It appears that the core of [Section 2] is the requirement that voting be ‘equally open.’ The statute’s reference to equal ‘opportunity’ may stretch that concept to some degree to include consideration of a person’s ability to use the means that are equally open. But equal openness remains the touchstone,” Alito wrote.

“Mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of [Section 2],” he added.

Civil rights advocates, Democrats and the court’s three liberal justices warned that the decision’s more stringent approach to racial disparity in voting will weaken the protections intended by Congress.

“This Court has no right to remake Section 2. Maybe some think that vote suppression is a relic of history — and so the need for a potent Section 2 has come and gone. But Congress gets to make that call,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. “Because it has not done so, this Court’s duty is to apply the law as it is written.”

“The law that confronted one of this country’s most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court,” she wrote.

The decision is the court’s most significant on voting rights in nearly a decade since the justices in 2013 effectively gutted Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which had required states with a history of discrimination to “pre-clear” any new voting rules with the Justice Department.

The ruling could have a sweeping impact on the fate of state election laws as dozens of GOP-led states push for voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud. Republicans in 48 states are pushing more than 389 restrictive bills that would make it more difficult to cast a ballot, according to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice.

While the Court’s conservative majority declined to lay out a sweeping new test for when state voting rules discriminate on race, it did make clear they will cast a skeptical eye on future challenges to similar measures.

Justice Alito offered a series of “guideposts” for judges to consider: the size of a voting rule’s burden; the degree to which it departs from past practice; the size of racial disparities; and the overall level of opportunity afforded voters within a state’s entire system for casting a ballot.

“No one suggests that discrimination in voting has been extirpated or that the threat has been eliminated,” Alito wrote, “but Section 2 does not deprive the states of their authority to establish non-discriminatory voting rules.”

Justice Kagan called Alito’s list of guidelines “a list of mostly made-up factors at odds with Section 2 itself.”

The law, she says, is written with a focus squarely on the effects of a voting restriction. “It asks not about why state officials enacted a rule, but about whether that rule results in racial discrimination. The discrimination that is of concern is inequality in voting opportunity.”

Alito fired back, calling Kagan’s interpretation “radical.”

Democrats and civil rights advocates say the guidelines laid out by Alito will make it more difficult to win legal challenges against restrictions like tighter rules for absentee ballots, reductions of drop boxes, stricter ID requirements, bans on ballot collection, purges of voter rolls, and even criminalizing of water distribution to people in long voting lines.

“This is a ruling that definitely will make it easier for states to impose restrictions, harder for plaintiffs and voting rights groups to challenge these kinds of restrictions, and could really impact the outcome in close elections going forward,” said Kate Shaw, Cardozo law professor and ABC News legal analyst.

President Biden said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” in the Supreme Court’s decision and that it inflicts “severe damage” to the Voting Rights Act. “After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them,” Biden wrote.

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called it a “resounding victory for election integrity.”

“Democrats were attempting to make Arizona ballots less secure for political gain, and the Court saw right through their partisan lies,” she said in a statement.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that Americans by a 2-1 margin call it more important to make it easier to vote lawfully than to make it harder to vote fraudulently.

Sixty-two percent in the national survey, completed Wednesday night, say it’s more important to pass new laws making it easier for people to vote lawfully; 30% instead say it’s more important to pass new laws making it harder to vote fraudulently.

There are sharp partisan and ideological differences. Eighty-nine percent of Democrats prioritize making it easier to vote lawfully, as do 62% of independents, dropping to 32% of Republicans. Still, that means a third of Republicans hold this view, which is at odds with the national party’s focus on the issue.

Earlier this month, Congress failed to advance a sweeping overhaul of federal election laws backed by Democrats and the White House that would have established new baseline standards for mail-in voting, early voting, ID requirements and voter registration. Republicans were staunchly opposed.

“The Court’s decision, harmful as it is, does not limit Congress’ ability to repair the damage done today: it puts the burden back on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act to its intended strength,” President Biden said.

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