Three GOP States Are Pushing Radical Abortion Bans on the Same Day

Republican-majority legislatures in Nebraska, North Carolina, and South Carolina are all trying Tuesday to ram through extreme abortion bans at the last minute, despite recent failures.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion has been legal in Nebraska until 20 weeks and in South Carolina until 22 weeks, although both states have multiple restrictions, such as a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and biased counseling aimed at running out the clock. Abortion is also currently legal in North Carolina until 20 weeks. If the bills pass, particularly the Carolinas’ measures, they will have wide-ranging negative consequences for abortion access.

The Nebraska legislature failed last month to overcome a filibuster against a six-week abortion ban after two anti-abortion senators voted “present.” Republicans are now pushing a 12-week abortion ban instead, as part of an anti-trans bill restricting gender-affirming care. One of the senators who helped kill the previous ban, Republican Merv Riepe, could once again prove to be the crucial swing vote.

A six-week ban also died in the South Carolina legislature in late April, after all of the female senators, who span the political spectrum, banded together to filibuster the measure. The bill had looked unlikely to make it back to the floor because there weren’t enough days left in the legislative session. But Republican Governor Henry McMaster called lawmakers back for a special session to consider multiple measures, including an abortion ban.

A new six-week ban has now made it through the state Senate and goes Tuesday before the House, where Democrats have filed 1,000 amendments to try and block the measure from reaching a final vote. If an amended bill passes the House, it will need reapproval by the Senate before it goes to McMaster for his signature.

The North Carolina state legislature will also convene Tuesday to vote to override a veto on a 12-week abortion ban. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill over the weekend, cheered on by hundreds of abortion rights supporters.

But state Republicans have just enough votes to override the veto, after Representative Tricia Cotham switched parties. If they succeed, the bill will go into immediate effect. The measure technically bans abortion after 12 weeks, but in reality, the window could be much shorter. People would also only be allowed to get a medication abortion until 10 weeks of pregnancy, and to get one, they would have to go to three separate, in-person appointments that are 72 hours apart.

While any of the bills passing would be a huge blow to reproductive rights, the measures in the Carolinas would absolutely decimate abortion access in the South. North Carolina in particular has become a haven for people seeking out-of-state abortions. Taken in conjunction with Florida’s six-week abortion ban, abortion access could be practically wiped out for a huge swathe of the United States.

According to Rudy Giuliani, “Black guys hit women more than anybody else does … and so do Hispanic guys—it is in their culture,” and “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago.”

The comments are just the cherry on top of a vile ice cream sundae of allegations about the former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer. A new $10 million lawsuit accuses Giuliani of making these comments, as well as promising to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to work as his associate, and instead raping and abusing her over the course of two years. The suit adds that Giuliani was constantly drunk, was open about efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and that he plotted to go in with Donald Trump on selling off pardons at $2 million a pop.

The 70-page lawsuit goes to great detail in explaining Giuliani’s alleged behaviors, down to specific dates and locations; the defendant and victim, Noelle Dunphy, reportedly has a trove of recorded conversations to back up her allegations.

From allegedly abusing Dunphy and being constantly drunk to making vile comments about public figures and pretty much every single culture, the lawsuit levels a slate of disturbing accusations against the longtime Trump lackey.

Here’s a taste of the scale and degree of what Giuliani is being accused of in the massive $10 million lawsuit, through word count:

• Abuse, abused, abusive, abusing: 33
• Alcohol, alcoholic, alcoholism: 11
• Drink, drinking, drinks, drinker, drunk: 16
• Force, forcing, forced, forcible: 21
• Harass, harassing, harassment, harassed: 47
• Intoxicated: 9
• Jew, Jewish: 3
• Pressure, pressuring: 11
• Rape: 4
• Scotch: 4
• Sex: 35
• Sexual, sexually, sexualize, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment: 87
• Wage: 19

Elon Musk has gone all in on the classic conservative antisemitic trope of blaming George Soros for everything, seemingly all because the older billionaire sold his Tesla stock.

Soros’s family office, Soros Fund Management, bought up stock in the electric car maker over the course of 2022, holding a total of 132,000 shares by the end of the year. Then the fund capitalized on Tesla’s impressive 68 percent jump in value this year, selling off its entire Tesla stake in the first quarter of 2023, according to reports on Monday.

Soros Fund Management also sold some of its stake in electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive, but apparently Musk still took the sales personally. “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he tweeted late Monday, referring to the X-Men villain.

When journalist Brian Krassenstein pushed back, arguing Soros has “good intentions” but gets attacked for his political affiliation, Musk came back with some full-throated antisemitism.

“You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” said the outgoing Twitter CEO.

Soros declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The New Republic.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that either a conservative has blamed Soros for something completely unrelated to him or that Musk has pushed antisemitism. Republicans love blaming Soros for anything and everything. One recent example is when they blamed him for former President Donald Trump being indicted.

As for Musk, he has let Nazis back onto Twitter, as well as Kanye West. Musk ultimately had to re-ban West, who now goes by Ye, after the musician proudly proclaimed that he loves Hitler. Musk himself also shared a Nazi photo while urging people to vote Republican in the 2022 midterm elections.

A Trump-era special counsel’s four-year-long investigation into the FBI over its probe of possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ended Monday with a whimper instead of the previously promised bang.

Special prosecutor John Durham was appointed in 2019 by then–Attorney General William Barr to look into possible misconduct by the FBI during its investigation of Trump-Russia ties. Trump promised at the time that Durham would uncover the “crime of the century.”

Instead, in a more than 300-page report released Monday, Durham sharply criticized the FBI but failed to bring about the raft of criminal convictions the previous administration had expected. Durham accused the FBI of launching its investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” He also said investigators relied on “confirmation bias” instead of considering evidence that would have cleared Trump.

Over the course of Durham’s entire investigation, his team only charged three people. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the bureau cited when applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. The other two defendants, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and an analyst for a Russian American think tank, were both acquitted of charges of lying to the FBI.

Barr appointed Durham shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation into allegations that Trump and Russia had colluded to rig the 2016 election. Mueller, by comparison, issued about 36 criminal charges, including for half a dozen Trump associates. He determined that Russia had intervened in the election for Trump, which the campaign welcomed, but that it had not actively colluded with Team Trump.

The FBI first began investigating the allegations of collusion in July 2016, but there were multiple revelations of flaws in the probe. Durham’s own investigation dug into these mistakes, but by the time he released his report on Monday, the Justice Department had already examined those issues and the FBI had made dozens of corrective actions.

This is not the first time the Republicans have touted an investigation that turned up a whole lot of nothing. House Republicans have been investigating President Joe Biden and his family for months but have been unable to provide any actual evidence linking Biden to any wrongdoing. And Monday morning, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed that one of their top informants has gone missing.

Former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani allegedly promised to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to be his close associate, and instead raped and abused her over the course of two years. He was allegedly constantly drunk, plotted to sell pardons to criminals, and made racist and antisemitic comments. And he also apparently never paid the woman he abused for months on end.

The litany of disturbing accusations come in a $10 million lawsuit buttressed by phone records, thousands of emails, and recorded conversations, all brought by the victim, Noelle Dunphy. The bombshell lawsuit reveals in great detail how Giuliani sexually assaulted his employee and, at the same time, how he has long been planning to undermine our democracy.

Dunphy’s lawsuit states that Giuliani allegedly first met her in 2016, in the lobby of the Trump Tower. The Trump lawyer asked her details about her life and suggested his interest in hiring her. Three years later, Giuliani sent Dunphy a Facebook message and friend request.

Incredibly odd timing, but Dunphy was coincidentally looking for a job. Soon enough, Giuliani offered her a proposal that seemed too good to be true: Be his director of business development for the Giuliani Companies and also his personal executive assistant—all for a $1 million salary.

But it all came with one strange provision: Her pay would have to be deferred, and her employment kept a “secret” until Giuliani’s divorce proceedings finished up. Giuliani apparently claimed his ex-wife and her legal team were monitoring his finances and so he was somehow limited in his financial decisions; moreover, his ex-wife would “attack” and “retaliate” against any female employee he would hire.

A final attachment to the offer? After Giuliani found out Dunphy was a domestic abuse survivor, he offered to represent her pro bono in any legal matters related to her case.

According to the lawsuit, the grossness immediately ensued. Literally after the interview, Giuliani made Dunphy come to a meeting with his team and Ukrainian associates to discuss her work with the company. During that meeting, Giuliani drank excessively and pressured Dunphy to join along. Afterward, Giuliani told his bodyguard to buzz off, so he could have some private time with Dunphy in the backseat of a limo serviced car.

Once alone, Giuliani kissed Dunphy and asked if he could come into her home; she declined and thanked him for the job. But before the goodbye could happen, Giuliani leaned even further in, saying that since the pair would be working from different locations, he would like it if Dunphy sent him flirtatious photos. After Dunphy finally escaped, Giuliani still called her five times that same evening.

And that repellent first day characterized much of what was to come. The lawsuit’s allegations are too numerous to detail, but here are just a few disturbing accusations.

On many occasions, as soon as four days into the job, Giuliani forced Dunphy to give him oral sex; he often made this demand while he was on the phone with high-profile individuals, including then–President Donald Trump. He forced Dunphy to begin working at his apartment, rather than the Giuliani Companies office. He demanded that “she work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her.” Even when apart, he directed Dunphy to remove her clothes and would meanwhile visibly touch himself.

Giuliani rapidly grew more possessive, texting Dunphy things like “You’re mine,” and “Nobody will ever have you now,” and even giving her a battery pack for her phone so she had no excuse not to be at his beck and call. Soon, he forced Dunphy to have sexual intercourse with him; he allegedly would not take “no” for an answer. He also wholly disregarded Dunphy’s boundaries as a domestic violence survivor, imposing his interest in BDSM (bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism) onto her on numerous instances. And during sex, he called her a “cunt,” a “bitch,” and “Rudy’s slut.”

“I think of you as my daughter. Is that weird?” he once asked Dunphy while sexually abusing her.

Outside of the constant sexual abuse and surveillance, Giuliani told Dunphy that if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, he and Trump were going in on selling them for $2 million a pop. He confided in her various plans to try to overturn the 2020 election results if Trump lost the election, including spreading the theory that “voter fraud” occurred.

And Giuliani’s abuse wasn’t limited to Dunphy, according to the lawsuit. Giuliani also made numerous inappropriate comments about other women. He told Dunphy of his being in love with three or four women, including his attraction to a 20-year-old employee more than 50 years younger than him. He apparently fantasized about her, and kissed her on the lips but did not “consummate” the relationship. He “just could not control” himself around her, he said, in a recorded conversation.

Beyond being a sex pest and cartoonish criminal, Giuliani also apparently was a Luddite; he had to have Dunphy explain to him what a podcast was.

When all was said and done, by the time Giuliani fired Dunphy two years later, she alleges she was paid only $12,000 of what should’ve been $2 million—for the job she was told she was getting.

The vile extent of Giuliani’s alleged behavior is, again, too long to list here. A final taste of what else he reportedly said: He used the word “fag” to refer to actor Matt Damon. He mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying: “Pocahontas was a really hot babe, and Warren does not look like a babe. She looks like a person in search of a gender.” He also later said he was “very hot” for Warren. He stated that he would “get in trouble with underage girls” if they were 16 but looked 20. He implied that Jewish men’s penises were inferior, due to “natural selection.” He told Ms. Dunphy that “black guys hit women more than anybody else does … and so do Hispanic guys—it is in their culture.” He said, “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. The Red Sea parted: big deal. It’s not the first time that happened.” And he made comments about “freakin Arabs” and Jews.

To Giuliani, it seems, the most praiseworthy people are 16-year-old girls he could get away with sexually harassing.

Again, the lawsuit alleges that recordings for a lot of these comments exist, so expect this story to only get worse from here on out.