Biden set to Codify Roe if This Happens

For many, abortion is a subject that evokes incredible passion on both sides of the argument. For conservatives, the codifying of Roe would be a nightmare scenario. For the left, the act would be wildly supported. Either way, a lot of Americans are going to be angry. Comment now and tell us what you support.

Joe Biden vowed yesterday that the first bill he sent to Capitol Hill next year would codify Roe v Wade – if Americans return his party to power with wide enough margins to pass abortion protections.

It’s a major lift for Democrats, who face a challenging political environment marked by a rocky economy and decades-high inflation. But the loss of abortions rights has sparked a political backlash, motivating Democratic voters and women more broadly who have registered to vote in significant numbers since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson.

“I’m asking the American people to remember how you felt that day the extreme Dobbs decision came down and Roe was overturned after 50 years,” Biden said during remarks at an event hosted by the Democratic National Committee at the Howard Theater in Washington. “The anger, the worry, the disbelief.”

“If you care about the right to choose,” he added, “then you gotta vote”.

• Will this tactic work? Clear majorities of Americans believe abortion should remain legal and disapprove of the supreme court’s decision. Yet polling consistently shows that voters’ top priority this election is the economy and inflation, issues that play to Republicans’ strengths. Biden’s approval rating remains low, which is a drag on vulnerable Democratic candidates.

The next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data.

Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediments from Lake Hazen, the largest high Arctic freshwater lake in the world, suggests the risk of viral spillover – where a virus infects a new host for the first time – may be higher close to melting glaciers.

The findings imply that as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, it becomes more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife, particularly as their range also shifts closer to the poles.

For instance, in 2016 an outbreak of anthrax in northern Siberia that killed a child and infected at least seven other people was attributed to a heatwave that melted permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass. Before this, the last outbreak in the region had been in 1941.

• What do scientists say about the research? “Two things are very clear now. Firstly, that the Arctic is warming rapidly and the major risks to humanity are from its influence on our climate. Secondly, that diseases from elsewhere are finding their way into the vulnerable communities and ecosystems of the Arctic,” Arwyn Edwards at Aberystwyth University said.

Donald Trump’s assertions of executive and attorney-client privilege over certain documents that the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort appeared to lack evidence sufficient for him to rule in the former US president’s favor, the special master reviewing the records suggested yesterday.

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The special master, senior US district court judge Raymond Dearie, complained during a conference call in the case that the log of documents Trump is trying to withhold from the justice department did not give enough information about the validity of the privilege claims.

Dearie encouraged Trump’s lawyers to elaborate on why they believed the documents could be excluded from the justice department’s criminal investigation into the potential wilful retention of national defense information, removal of government records and obstruction of justice.

“It’s a little perplexing as I go through the log,” Dearie said. “What’s the expression – ‘Where’s the beef?’ I need some beef.”

• What does this mean for the legal case? The dispute could foreshadow what could be a messy argument between Trump’s lawyers seeking to limit what documents can be used in the criminal inquiry, and the justice department, which is trying to keep as many records in play.