Florida Republicans’ New Plan Is to Fine Abortion Clinics Into Bankruptcy

Florida health regulators have fined an Orlando abortion clinic nearly $200,000, a move that is purportedly for violating a state abortion law and would likely bankrupt the health center into closing.

Abortion is currently legal up to 15 weeks in Florida, but patients are required to wait 24 hours between the initial visit with their doctor and getting an abortion. The state legislature passed a law mandating the waiting period in 2015, but it did not go into effect until 2022.

Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration said that the Orlando Women’s Center has violated the waiting period 193 times since the law took effect, and on Monday ordered the abortion clinic to pay a $1,000 fine for each violation.

The total $193,000 total is nearly triple the fine that a judge recommended in the spring. Administrative law Judge J. Bruce Culpepper issued an order that said the clinic should only pay $350 per violation.

The clinic said in court filings that it repeatedly asked the AHCA, which is led by a Ron DeSantis appointee, when the waiting-period law went into effect, but they never heard back. The AHCA has made multiple efforts to fine abortion clinics for not complying with this particular law.

Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani, who represents Orlando, slammed the fine. “This is a local abortion provider that is being charged excessive fees by AHCA all designed to shut them down,” she said Thursday on Twitter. She also shared a fundraiser for the Orlando Women’s Center organized by a group of abortion clinic escorts, who help guide patients past protesters.

Florida’s 15-week abortion ban will go before the state Supreme Court in September. If the court upholds the law, then an even more restrictive measure banning abortion at six weeks—before people know they are pregnant—will go into effect.

DeSantis signed the hugely unpopular six-week ban in April. If it is implemented, it will decimate abortion access for much of the southern United States.

Meanwhile, the pro-abortion group Floridians Protecting Freedom is working to get an abortion rights referendum on the state’s 2024 ballot. The group says they have collected nearly three quarters of the 900,000 verified signatures from registered voters required for the ballot initiative.

If they succeed, then abortion protections would likely be enshrined in the state constitution, overriding any laws the legislature has passed. A February study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 64 percent of Floridians believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Donald Trump’s legal team is begging him to abort his stupid plan to publicly refute the newest indictment against him by proving voter fraud in the 2020 Georgia election.

After his fourth indictment late on Monday, the former president promised to hold a press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, and finally show irrefutable proof that the Georgia election was rigged.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed to have a “Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.” But now, his own team is trying to prevent him from delivering it.

Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding a press conference to refute the charges against him will only serve to embroil him in a more messy legal situation, sources told ABC News. Some of his attorneys have even advised him to cancel the event altogether.

For once, listening to his lawyers may be wise, especially considering that next week is going to be very busy for Trump, what with the whole turning-himself-in thing. Not to mention, the first Republican presidential debate is set for August 23, just two days before the deadline for Trump and his 18 co-defendants to turn themselves in.

Trump has said he’s still thinking about whether or not to attend, but now he may be planning to use his arrest to upstage his opponents on the day.

“You are in our sights, we want to kill you.”

This was the totally normal, not-at-all terrifying voicemail that a Donald Trump supporter left for Judge Tanya Chutkan, the U.S. District Court judge in Washington who is presiding over one of the former president’s indictment cases.

A Texas woman was arrested Wednesday for making this threatening call to Chutkan. Abigail Jo Shry called Chutkan’s chambers on August 5, two days after Trump was indicted in Washington, D.C., for trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Shry called Chutkan, who is Black, a “stupid slave” and said the judge would be “targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.” Shry warned that “if Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”

When she was arrested, Shry admitted that she had also threatened to kill Texas Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who is also Black.

The same day that Shry was arrested, the grand jurors who indicted Trump in Georgia were doxxed, meaning that their personal information was shared online. Georgia is one of the few states that publishes the names of jurors for the sake of transparency in criminal proceedings.

Internet users have shared the grand jurors names and addresses on far-right message boards and made violent threats against them. One user on the message board where the QAnon conspiracy theory began threatened to “follow these people home and photograph their faces.”

A user on another message board described the jurors’ names as a “hit list.” Another user responded, “Godspeed anons, you have all the long range rifles in the world.”

Yet another user said they were “about ready to go Turner Diaries on these treasonous n***** fucks,” referring to a gruesome white supremacist book, written by a neo-Nazi leader, that has inspired multiple acts of violence.

It should come as no surprise that the people involved in holding Trump accountable, particularly people of color, are under threat from his supporters. Trump supporters rioted on January 6, with many arguing Trump himself had summoned them to Washington. Acts of extremist political violence are on the rise, and many can be traced directly back to Trump’s own rhetoric.

Representative Matt Gaetz has finally said the quiet part out loud: Republicans don’t have enough evidence to impeach and convict Joe Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election.

Republicans have insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. Many in the GOP, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are starting to suggest opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden so that they can access more information and witnesses that will supposedly lead them to the truth.

But Gaetz said that Republicans should go straight to impeachment proceedings, not just an inquiry. “The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses,” he said during a Twitter Space on Monday night. “It’s to put on a trial in the Senate, and by the way, not for the sake of conviction.”

“There’s no conviction and removal of Joe Biden coming on impeachment. I know that. You know that,” Gaetz said, although he blamed that on the Senate being controlled by Democrats, not the utter lack of proof.

Gaetz argued that Republicans should impeach Biden in order to put him on trial. But “the jury is the American people.”

“If we had the Senate as the stage and the platform for James Comer to put on his evidence and advance this impeachment, it will not result in a conviction,” Gaetz said, referring to the chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been leading the charge against Biden.

“But the true verdict can still be rendered by the American people.”

Republicans are reportedly planning to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden in the fall. McCarthy insisted that such an inquiry would not be for political purposes, a pointed dig at the president, whom Republicans accuse of weaponizing the government to go after Donald Trump.

But all of the investigations into Biden are absolutely for political purposes. House Republicans have mobilized multiple committees to go after the Biden family. There has yet to be any proof of wrongdoing, but Republicans have used the investigations as excuses to trash Biden, attack policies they don’t like such as immigration, and share his son’s nude photos.

An impeachment inquiry, and certainly a full-on impeachment, would take that governmental weaponization to the next level.

The battle over access to the abortion pill mifepristone got one step closer to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the future of the medication—which is currently still available—grows more uncertain.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion, had been improperly approved by the Food and Drug Administration, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the drug is safe. The Justice Department is expected to appeal the decision to the conservative-majority Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

Mifepristone’s status currently remains unchanged, because the Supreme Court in April halted lower court rulings that would have yanked the pill from the market. Mifepristone will remain nationally available until the Supreme Court hears and rules on the lawsuit.

A coalition of anti-abortion groups, represented by the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, sued to block access to mifepristone in November. They specifically brought the case in Texas, where they were likely to get Trump-appointed, ultra-conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Kacsmaryk ruled in April that mifepristone had been improperly approved and should be yanked from the U.S. market. The Department of Justice appealed the decision, first to the Fifth Circuit Court, which only partially stayed the ruling. The Justice Department then appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which issued a temporary stay while the lawsuit plays out.

Kacsmaryk’s initial ruling hinges on several heavily biased “studies,” one of which claims to find most people who had medication abortions reported negative effects. The sample size was 98 blog posts from an anti-abortion website. The study authors only analyzed 54 posts and then just cherry-picked quotes from the rest.

Another study, which Kacsmaryk cited as proof of “adverse effects” from the abortion pill, is now under investigation for author bias and massively misrepresented findings.

Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. These drugs can be ordered online and delivered via mail, making them a key resource for people who live in states that have cracked down on abortion access since Roe was overturned.

A bigger issue at play, in this case, is that nonelected judges who do not have medical backgrounds are now making decisions about medication. When the lawsuit first began to play out, Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school, told The New Republic, “The question for appellate courts is not just about abortion but about deference to a federal agency’s expertise.”

The Texas case “undermined” the FDA’s authority, she said. “To take seriously that it ignored risks, risks unsupported by any credible evidence, suggests questions as to what federal courts might decide about other federal agencies’ decisions.”