Georgia Judge Strikes Down State’s Abortion Ban in Stunning Ruling

A Georgia judge on Monday struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban.

Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney quoted “liberty” in a ruling that rejected the controversial ban outlawing abortion after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant. Abortions in the state will now be allowed until 22 weeks, as they were before the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, when Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law the six-week ban.

McBurney had some choice words for politicians in his ruling, writing, “It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”

He added, “our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”

The state law prohibited abortions after six weeks, based on the misleading notion that a “heartbeat” could be detected in an embryo around that time. In reality, an embryo does not have a heart at six weeks, let alone cardiac activity. A fetus is also not viable outside the body till much later in a pregnancy.

McBurney got the chance to rule on the law after it was sent back to Fulton County court by the state Supreme Court last year.

Georgia’s restrictive abortion ban killed at least two women since its passage and caused Georgia’s monthly abortion totals to drop by roughly half.

This story has been updated.

In just three days, Hurricane Helene gas killed at least 119 people as it trailed its way along the Southeast, making it one of the deadliest storms in modern U.S. history.

The real scope of devastation is difficult to define before such an unprecedented hurricane hits land, but it’s not impossible to predict a storm’s scale, timing, and general path. Somehow, that information isn’t obvious to Donald Trump, who, after surveying some of the storm’s devastation in Georgia, told reporters Monday that “nobody” could have forecast Helene.

“That’s a big one. And the devastation wrought by this storm is incredible,” Trump said during a presser in Valdosta, Georgia. “It’s so extensive, nobody thought this would be happening, especially now it’s so late in the season for the hurricanes.”

It is, of course, not late in the season for hurricanes: September tends to be the most active month in the calendar year for the superstorms.

But Trump’s own policy proposals are likely to keep him—and every other American—from obtaining such life-saving weather forecasts and emergency weather alerts in the future. Trump has touted elements of Project 2025, a 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that proposes completely demolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose responsibilities as a federal agency include tracking the weather and predicting hurricanes.

“The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the far-right proposal reads on page 664.

That would effectively privatize weather forecasts, forcing U.S. citizens to pay for weather subscriptions that would include crucial national weather alert systems for emergencies such as flash flooding, extreme heat, earthquakes, or otherwise.

Trump has spent months trying to distance his campaign from Project 2025, but a flurry of the Republican presidential nominee’s recent comments, which include supporting demolishing the Department of Education, have practically glued himself to its policy points.

Rudolph Giuliani’s daughter, Caroline Rose Giuliani, endorsed Kamala Harris Monday, writing for Vanity Fair about how she has watched her father’s life “crumble since he joined forces with [Donald] Trump.”

Caroline Giuliani wrote an article for the magazine warning of the dangers of another Trump presidency, saying his first term “was the worst thing that ever happened to my dad, to my family, and to our nation’s modern history.”

“The consequences will only be more severe—and irreversible—a second time around. Thanks to the extremist Supreme Court he stacked, Trump would take office with full immunity: no checks on his power whatsoever,” Giuliani said. “If the president isn’t going to be subject to the law like every other citizen, which remains incomprehensible to me, then our president had better have a moral compass.”

The article carries the headline “Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country, Too,” and Giuliani not only mentions the danger that Trump presents to the country, but also how her father’s work for the former president and convicted felon has brought him down and hurt their relationship.

“I spent a lot of my life wishing my father had less power. But I never wanted it to happen like this. And selfishly, the deeper my dad gets stuck in the quicksand of his problems, the more fleeting our opportunities to connect as father and daughter become,” Giuliani said, alluding to her father’s financial and legal difficulties.

“After months of feeling the type of sorrow that comes from the death of a loved one, it dawned on me that I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too,” Giuliani wrote. 

Giuliani also praised Harris for her understanding of the climate crisis and her support for reproductive rights, calling the vice president “a life-long public servant who has spent her career upholding justice and fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.” 

Endorsing Harris is a big step for the daughter of a close confidant of Trump who also served as his lawyer. But as she wrote, Rudy Giuliani’s work for Trump has indeed imploded his life. He has been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York state. He’s on the verge of losing his assets thanks to a defamation lawsuit from Georgia poll workers and is facing criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona for election interference, as well as a pending sexual harassment lawsuit from one of his former assistants. Now, his daughter is openly expressing her sadness and shame over his support for Trump and where it has taken him. Will he listen to her?

In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destruction, Donald Trump is eager to spread rumors about President Joe Biden’s inaction. The problem is, at least one Republican politician on the front lines is willing to call Trump out on his lies.

On Monday, Trump visited Georgia, one of the six states seriously hit by the natural disaster, and claimed that while Governor Brian Kemp was “doing a very good job,” he was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone.”

“I guess they’re not being responsive, the federal government is not being responsive,” he continued. “They’re having a very hard time getting the president on the phone. He won’t get on it.” While it’s true that the federal response to the hurricane leaves much to be desired, Trump was stretching the truth when he said that Kemp hadn’t heard from Biden.

Just a few hours earlier on Monday, Kemp told press that Biden called yesterday afternoon and asked the Georgia governor what further support his state needed. Biden last week also declared a state of emergency in Georgia, approving federal disaster assistance for the state.

As Trump tours Georgia and North Carolina, Republicans continue to slam Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for not showing face in disaster zones. But perhaps while roads remain closed and many remain without power, it’s a better use of resources for the federal government to provide actual disaster relief, rather than divert resources for a tour bus. At least, that’s what many residents in Georgia thought about Trump’s publicity stunt Monday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s lawyer is trying to get his federal bribery allegations dismissed by arguing that even if the mayor did accept gifts and favors from one Turkish official for years, it didn’t constitute bribery because it happened before Adams was elected mayor.

Alex Spiro, Adams’s attorney with a long list of celebrity clients, argued in a filing Monday that the bribery charge against Adams should be dismissed. He argued that the alleged scheme did not satisfy the definition of bribery because Adams’s agreement to receive free and discounted travel and accommodations from a senior Turkish official was not quid pro quo in exchange for an official act.

Rather, Spiro argued that Adams’s indictment simply alleged that he had “agreed to generally assist with the ‘operation’ or ‘regulation’ of a Turkish consulate building in Manhattan, where he had no authority whatsoever, in exchange for travel benefits.”

Spiro cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Snyder v. United States in June, which found that it is not illegal under federal anti-bribery law for state and local officials to accept gratuities for acts they have already taken. This decision, which overturned the conviction of a former Indiana mayor, substantially weakened the government’s ability to pursue federal anti-bribery complaints and challenge corruption.

According to the indictment, Adams had been receiving benefits in the form of travel perks and straw-man donations long before the Turkish official allegedly tried to cash in on them. But Spiro argued that because one favor did not directly result in another, Adams’s alleged behavior does not constitute bribery, as the government accused in the indictment.

During a press conference Monday, Spiro tried to downplay the allegations against Adams, while seeming to confirm that the mayor had in fact received travel perks, as alleged.

“In the events in question, Mayor Adams was the Brooklyn borough president. He was not the mayor, he wasn’t even the mayor-elect, and the position of Brooklyn borough president does not have vast powers,” Spiro said. “It has, frankly, very little.”

Spiro made no mention of allegations that those very same Turkish officials, who had allegedly given Adams so many freebies, had helped to illegally fund his ascendancy to a higher office.

Adams, who was once lauded as the future of the Democratic Party, has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals. He was also charged with one count of wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, and one count of bribery.