Politics

(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) — The Oklahoma legislature gave final approval Thursday to a so-called “heartbeat bill” that seeks to ban most abortions in the state.

It is the latest bill in the U.S. modeled after the strict Texas law that prohibits abortions after six weeks, before most women know they’re pregnant.

Formally called S.B. 1503, but known as the “Oklahoma Heartbeat Act,” the bill bans abortions after cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo or fetus. There are exceptions for when the mother’s life is at risk, but not for rape or incest.

This is not the first abortion ban that Oklahoma has passed in 2022. Earlier this month, lawmakers passed a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to several years in prison.

S.B. 1503 also allows any private citizen to sue someone who performs an abortion, intends to perform an abortion or helps a woman gets an abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. These citizens could be awarded at least $10,000 for every abortion performed.

However, a civil lawsuit cannot be brought against a woman who receives an abortion. Additionally, someone who impregnated a woman through rape or incest would not be allowed to sue.

The bill is now heading to the desk of Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is expected to sign it. Because of the bill’s emergency clause, it will go into effect once signed by the governor.

“We want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country,” Stitt said when he signed the previous abortion bill. “We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma.”

The governor’s office told ABC News in a statement it “does not comment on pending legislation.”

“The Texas law has already saved the lives of many unborn children,” Republican state. Sen. Julie Daniels, who sponsored S.B. 1503, said in a statement last month. “We can achieve the same result in Oklahoma with SB 1503.”

Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights said they plan to ask the Oklahoma State Court to block the bill before it goes into effect and ends most abortion care in the state.

“Unless these abortion bans are stopped, Oklahomans will be robbed of the freedom to control their own bodies and futures,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “Unless these bans are blocked, patients will be turned away, people seeking abortion will be unable to access essential care in their own communities, and their loved ones could be stopped from supporting them due to fear of being sued.”

Since the law in Texas went into effect in September 2021, thousands of women have flocked to Oklahoma to receive the procedure.

A recent study from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas Austin found that of the 1,500 women that traveled out of state every month to receive abortion since September, 45% visited Oklahoma.

Emily Wales, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said the organization has served hundreds of women who have traveled from Texas to Oklahoma to seek abortion care.

“Now, rather than serving as a haven for patients unable to get care at home, Oklahoma politicians have made outcasts of their own people,” Wales said in a statement. “With today’s filings, we lift up the patients who will otherwise be unable to get care and ask the court to do its most essential function: honor the constitution and the individuals who need its protections.”

Under the bill making performing abortion a felony, any medical provider who performs an abortion would face a fine of $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. The only exceptions for performing an abortion would be if the mother’s life is in danger.

Several Republican-led states have been passing abortion legislation ahead of a Supreme Court decision in June that will decide the future of Roe v. Wade. The court will review a 15-week ban in Mississippi and decide whether or not it is constitutional. If the ban is declared constitutional, it could lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned or severely gutted.

ABC News’ Ely Brown contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump said his head of security “did nothing wrong” during a 2015 protest at Trump Tower at which five Hispanic men allege they were assaulted.

Trump called the protesters “troublemakers” during a deposition last October, according to a transcript made public Wednesday in Bronx Supreme Court, where Trump, his campaign, and his head of security, Keith Schiller, are being sued by Efrain Galicia and other demonstrators who say they were “violently attacked” during a protest over Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“I think they were troublemakers, yes I do. I think they were,” Trump said of the plaintiffs during the deposition.

“He did nothing wrong,” Trump said of Schiller. “He went out — I didn’t know about it — but he went out, he heard there was a disturbance and he went out.”

Video of the altercation showed Schiller smacking a protester in the face after he appeared to reach for a sign that said “Trump: Make America Racist Again.”

“And he went out, he took the sign down. He then walked away. And he was attacked from behind, and they tried to get his gun. I don’t even know if he was carrying a gun. But if he was, they were obviously trying to get it,” Trump said.

Trump denied having any knowledge of the protests in real time, despite attorneys for the demonstrators saying they have evidence to the contrary.

Toward the end of the deposition the questioning turned to a 2016 Trump campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, during which Trump told the crowd, “If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you?”

The plaintiffs’ attorney asked whether Trump meant to incentivize the crowd to engage in violence.

“No,” Trump replied. “I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than — tomatoes are bad, by the way.”

Trump said it would be OK with him for his security to use force to stop someone from throwing fruit.

“To stop somebody from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that — yeah, it’s dangerous stuff,” Trump said, according to the transcript.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden formally asked Congress on Thursday for $33 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine over the next five months to help counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion over the long term.

“The cost of this fight is not cheap. But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen,” Biden said. “It’s critical this funding gets approved and approved as quickly as possible.”

“We’re not attacking Russia. We’re helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression,” he added. “And just as Putin chose to launch this brutal invasion, he could make the choice to end it, this brutal invasion. Russia is the aggressor, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Russia is the aggressor, and the world must and will hold Russia accountable.”

Biden said the supplemental budget request will allow weapons and ammunition to flow “without interruption to the brave Ukrainian fighters” and the U.S. to continue delivering economic and humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian people, whom he said are paying the real price of this fight with their lives.

Over $20 billion of the $33 billion would be for military and other security systems, the White House said. Biden is also asking for an additional $8.5 billion in economic assistance to help provide basic services to the Ukrainian people and $3 billion in humanitarian assistance and food security funding.

Part of the package also includes targeted funding to address economic disruptions in the U.S. as a result of the war in Ukraine, like helping increase U.S. production of wheat and soybeans, “and funding to allow the use of the Defense Production Act to expand domestic production of critical reserves — of reserves of critical minerals and materials that have been disrupted by Putin’s war and are necessary to make everything from defense systems to cars,” a senior administration official said ahead of Biden’s remarks.

Biden said he was also sending lawmakers another comprehensive package to enhance our effort to sanction Russian oligarchs and “take their ill-begotten gains.”

As billions in additional COVID funding remains stalled in Congress, asked if that funding should be tied to the Ukraine aid, Biden said, “I don’t care how they do it — I’m sending them both up.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Judge Robert Summerhays of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Department of Homeland Security from phasing out Title 42 for at least the next two weeks.

Title 42 is a policy instituted under the Trump administration that allowed migrants seeking asylum along the southern border to be expelled under the public health emergency authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill Tuesday that bans the use of nonbinary gender markers on state birth certificates.

It’s the first ban of its kind in the U.S., according to LGBTQ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal. Several states have done the exact opposite in recent years, allowing citizens to use nonbinary gender markers on state documents.

States like Colorado, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Indiana and Hawaii have adopted the gender-inclusive policy. The federal government now also allows nonbinary gender markers on passports.

The bill follows a 2021 civil case against the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The agency was sued after it refused to allow a nonbinary option on a birth certificate. The department settled the lawsuit and allowed the use of the nonbinary option.

Despite the settlement, Stitt issued an executive order that would prohibit people from changing their gender on birth certificates. A federal lawsuit against the state from Lambda Legal is ongoing and seeks to allow transgender people to correct the gender marker on their Oklahoma birth certificates.

This ban on gender markers is the latest bill targeting the LGBTQ community that Stitt has signed into law.

Just a few weeks earlier, Stitt signed a bill banning transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams in state public K-12 schools and higher education institutions.

Across the country, similar Republican-led efforts have succeeded.

Tennessee signed a trans sports ban into law on Monday and the Kansas Senate voted on Tuesday to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a similar transgender athlete ban.

Other governors, including Republican governors in Utah and Indiana, have vetoed such bills to protect LGBTQ youth from the social and emotional harms they say these bans can have on individuals.

LGBTQ advocacy groups have slammed legislative efforts.

“We should be increasing access to the things that can help protect this group of young people that already face increased risk for suicide. But a small group of anti-LGBTQ politicians is instead fighting to decrease it,” said Sam Ames, the director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans on Wednesday rallied behind Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as he defended himself over audio recordings surfaced of him blaming former President Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 riot and suggesting that some GOP lawmakers were inciting violence and should be kicked off social media platforms.

In the first closed-door GOP meeting since the New York Times released recordings of a Jan. 10, 2021, leadership call in which McCarthy was sharply critical of Trump and some hard-right members of Congress, the California Republican argued that he was speaking hypothetically and walking through various “scenarios” following the attack on the Capitol as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results.

“He said that, you know, they were speculating on different scenarios,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., told ABC News. “He said they were laying out different things of what could be, and he said he never accused anyone of anything.”

“I think the majority of the conference understood,” one GOP member told ABC News, adding that McCarthy claimed the tapes were “taken out of context by the New York Times.“

McCarthy received a standing ovation and a round of applause after his remarks, multiple lawmakers told ABC News.

“We’re coming together as a team,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, told ABC News, adding that Republicans wouldn’t “let leaked audio tapes sent to the press pose a part we’ve got bigger things to do. We’re all on the same page.”

Still, his explanation did little to satisfy some of McCarthy’s persistent critics, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Asked if he had confidence in McCarthy after the meeting, Gaetz replied, “No more or less than usual.”

Gaetz criticized Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., in the meeting over comments made on the recording obtained by the New York Times. The Louisiana Republican suggested Gaetz’s comments attacking Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in television appearances after the Capitol riot were “potentially illegal.”

The discussion quickly turned “heated” between Gaetz and Scalise after Gaetz confronted him about the comments, sources told ABC News. Gaetz directly asked Scalise to explain his rationale for calling Gaetz’ comments “potentially illegal,” the sources said.

At one point, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., even chimed in and demanded Scalise apologize to Gaetz. An apology was not offered, according to a source familiar with the exchange.

McCarthy was also critical of Gaetz on the recording, and discussed Greene as well as GOP Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Of Trump, McCarthy said, “I’ve had it with this guy,” and told other GOP leaders on the recorded call that “what he did is unacceptable.”

He also suggested he would tell Trump “it would be my recommendation you should resign,” and that some Republicans who made inflammatory comments on and around the Capitol riot should be taken off Twitter.

“Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?” he said, according to the audio.

McCarthy initially denied the New York Times reporting, calling it “false.” After the reporters published the audio recordings of the comments, McCarthy told GOP lawmakers that he had spoken with former President Trump and that he still supported McCarthy.

McCarthy later told Fox News he never told Trump to resign.

“He basically said we need to keep on track and keep pushing forward with what we’re doing,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Georgia, said after the meeting. “This is a distraction by the left trying to drive a wedge in a very unified Republican Party.”

“Kevin McCarthy is a great leader and he will be a great speaker,” said Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga.

While few Republicans publicly criticized McCarthy after the meeting, others suggested they still needed to digest the episode and McCarthy’s actions.

“I think I’m going to talk to him in private,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz. “I’m glad he talked about what was said.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Much of official Washington remembered former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to ever serve in that role, at her funeral Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral.

Albright, who had cancer, died in March at the age of 84.

She served as secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton after serving as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. from 1993 to 1997.

President Joe Biden eulogized Albright, sharing a story of a speech he gave last month in Poland, where he said a crowd of hundreds cheered when Albright’s name was mentioned.

“Her name is still synonymous with America as a force for good in the world. Madeleine never minced words or wasted time when she saw something needed fixing, or someone who needed helping. She just got to work,” Biden said.

During her tenure as secretary of state, she focused on promoting the eastward expansion of NATO and pushed for NATO intervention in the 1999 war in Kosovo, according to the historical office of the Department of State.

Her approach to diplomacy and statecraft was colored by her own experiences as a refugee who fled what was then Czechoslovakia with her family in the aftermath of World War II.

She remained engaged with both American and international affairs until the end of her life, writing a book in 2018 warning about a resurgence of fascism and sounding an alarm about Russian President Vladimir Putin in a New York Times op-ed published just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia… Flying home, I recorded my impressions. ‘Putin is small and pale,’ I wrote, ‘so cold as to be almost reptilian,'” Albright wrote in the Times. She added that “should he invade [Ukraine], it will be a historic error.”

Both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were also slated to speak at the funeral, according to the Washington National Cathedral.

“Few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served… Because she knew firsthand that America’s policy decisions had the power to make a difference in people’s lives around the world, she saw her jobs as both an obligation and an opportunity,” the former president wrote in a statement the day Albright died.

Her daughters, Anne, Alice and Katie, were also scheduled to speak.

ABC News’ Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced blunt questions from lawmakers on Wednesday about how the Biden administration is handling and preparing for the eventual end of pandemic-justified border restrictions that have reduced humanitarian relief options for asylum seekers at the border.

On Monday, a federal judge in Louisiana indicated he would pause the rollback of Title 42 — the Trump-era policy that allowed migrants seeking asylum along the southern border to be expelled under the public health emergency authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The Democratic Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, asked Mayorkas directly if he believes it’s time to end Title 42 and, as he has done before, Mayorkas deferred to the CDC.

“Our responsibility in the Department of Homeland Security is to implement the Title 42 authority of the CDC at our border and to implement it effectively and judiciously according to the law. We are mindful that the that there can be an increase in migratory flows encountered at our southern border should Title 42 come to an end, as the CDC has determined it needs to do by May 23. Our responsibility therefore, is to prepare and plan for that eventuality.”

The CDC rescinded the policy earlier this month, and it was expected to be phased out by May 23 before the federal judge announced his intent to block the recision.

Judge Robert Summerhays said he intends to issue a temporary restraining order in the case if the Justice Department and Arizona, Missouri and Louisiana, the three states that sued to pause the rollback, can come to an agreement.

A senior administration official told reporters the administration intends to comply with the temporary restraining order the judge intends to issue, but the administration disagrees with the premise of the restraining order. For now, the administration continues to prepare for the eventual end of Title 42. Mayorkas issued a memo on Tuesday outlining the objectives DHS plans to carry out regardless of when Title 42 comes to an end.

The six-part plan explains a variety of steps the administration has already started taking to prepare for a potential surge in migration. It involves surging resources to the border including medical supplies and personnel, speeding up case processing at CBP holding centers, working with NGOs to transition migrants from government custody to local communities and stepping up efforts to crack down on human smuggling organizations.

“I’ve been to the border approximately eight times and in my last visit I heard loudly and clearly the concerns of our heroic, incredibly dedicated Border Patrol agents about their need for additional support so that they can get out into the field and interdict individuals seeking to evade law enforcement and cross our border illegally,” Mayorkas told lawmakers.

The secretary testified that about 300 case processors have been contracted to increase capacity and move those who enter without authorization through the system.

“When the Title 42 public health order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas wrote in a prior memo titled, “DHS Plan for Southwest Border Security and Preparedness.”

DHS officials told reporters in March they could expect to see as many as 18,000 migrants along the southern border per day, when Title 42 gets lifted.

Mayorkas has stressed Title 42 is not an immigration policy, but rather born out of the public health crisis.

“We inherited an immigration system from the prior administration that had been studiously dismantled and so was unprepared to meet the challenges posed by the high numbers of non citizens arriving at our borders today,” according to a senior Administration official who briefed reporters on Tuesday.

In addition to the two hearings on Wednesday, Mayorkas goes in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Last week, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote to Mayorkas in anticipation of his testimony.

“The Biden Administration’s radical immigration policies have caused a humanitarian and security crisis along our southwest border,” Jordan wrote. “The American people deserve answers and accountability for the Biden Administration’s lawlessness along the southwest border.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — U.S. and Russian officials have been negotiating the prisoner swap for Trevor Reed for months, according to senior administration officials Wednesday, with talks intensifying in recent weeks amid concern about his health.

As the Marine veteran, held since August 2019, was released, he met with U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens — and was described by an administration official as being in “good spirits” — before traveling onward to the U.S., the officials said.

This diplomatic exchange continued even amid Russia’s war in Ukraine — but the senior administration officials made clear, the talks never touched on the war or U.S. sanctions.

There was not even senior-level U.S. official travel to Russia to negotiate the exchange, according to the officials.

“This is a discrete issue on which we were able to make an arrangement with the Russians. It represents no change — zero — to our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” a senior administration official told reporters.

“Let me just emphasize this again because it’s so important — the discussion with the Russians that led to this exchange were strictly limited to these topics, not a broader diplomatic conversation or even the starting point,” they added.

Topics around the war “weren’t broached. They were never intended to be broached” during the high-stakes secrets talks, a second senior administration official said.

After months of talks, President Joe Biden made “a very hard decision” to commute the sentence of Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian drug smuggler convicted of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.

But the senior administration officials emphasized Yaroshenko was not pardoned, and argued he “has already paid a steep price in the U.S. justice system for his crime. In fact, he’s already served the majority of his sentence.”

Serving a nine-year sentence in a remote prison camp, Reed went on a second hunger strike in late March to protest his treatment, according to his family. After a reported exposure to tuberculosis in December, his family was increasingly concerned about reports he was coughing up blood or experiencing fevers, especially when he was transferred to a prison hospital on April 1.

Appearing publicly for the first time in months, Reed told a Russian court via video teleconference on April 12 that it had been two weeks since he’d coughed up blood or had a fever, but he said he wasn’t receiving medical care for a broken rib.

While American Paul Whelan, another Marine veteran, has been held longer than Reed, it was Reed’s failing health and his family and the U.S. government’s concern that led to his case being raised in the exchange.

The officials declined to say more about Reed’s condition now or when and where he is expected to arrive in the U.S., out of privacy concerns for him and his family.

Yaroshenko is in Russian custody now, they confirmed.

But they repeatedly emphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to securing the freedom of U.S. citizens unjustly detained around the world.

“We will continue to work on and attempt to find ways to address other cases as best we can,” the senior administration official said when asked about Whelan and American WNBA star Brittney Griner, detained in Russia since February.

Whelan was also a tourist in Russia when he was arrested on espionage charges that he, his family, and the U.S. government have said are spurious.

Whelan has been detained since December 2018 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020 — transferred to a prison colony eight hours southeast of Moscow.

Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner, has been held since being accused of having hashish oil in her suitcase while returning to Russia to play basketball.

She remains in pre-trial detention, with a court extending her detention until May 19.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — A funeral for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to ever serve in that role, will be held Wednesday at the Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital.

The funeral is set to begin at 11 a.m. and will be streamed on ABC News Live.

Albright, who had cancer, died in March at the age of 84.

She served as secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton after serving as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. from 1993 to 1997.

During her tenure as secretary of state, she focused on promoting the eastward expansion of NATO and pushed for NATO intervention in the 1999 war in Kosovo, according to the historical office of the Department of State.

Her approach to diplomacy and statecraft was colored by her own experiences as a refugee who fled what was then Czechoslovakia with her family in the aftermath of World War II.

She remained engaged with both American and international affairs until the end of her life, writing a book in 2018 warning about a resurgence of fascism and sounding an alarm about Russian President Vladimir Putin in a New York Times op-ed published just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia… Flying home, I recorded my impressions. ‘Putin is small and pale,’ I wrote, ‘so cold as to be almost reptilian,'” Albright wrote in the Times.

She added that “should he invade [Ukraine], it will be a historic error.”

Both former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will speak at the funeral, according to the Washington National Cathedral.

“Few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served… Because she knew firsthand that America’s policy decisions had the power to make a difference in people’s lives around the world, she saw her jobs as both an obligation and an opportunity,” the former president wrote in a statement the day Albright died.

President Joe Biden will eulogize Albright at the funeral, and her daughters, Anne, Alice and Katie, will also speak.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.