Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Morning Digest: Voters have the chance to protect abortion access this fall—even in Idaho

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Morning Digest: Voters have the chance to protect abortion access this fall—even in Idaho

Reproductive rights will be on the ballot in as many as five states

David Nir and Jeff Singer

Jul 15

Rally to promote initiative to restore abortion rights to Idaho. (Credit: Idahoans United for Women and Families Facebook)

Leading Off

Abortion

Voters in as many as five states will have the chance to either safeguard—or roll back—abortion access this fall, among them Idaho, where election officials confirmed Monday that an initiative to restore the right to an abortion has qualified for the November ballot.

Nevada and Virginia, meanwhile, will choose whether to amend their constitutions to enshrine existing protections.

Republicans in Missouri, by contrast, are asking voters to repeal an amendment they approved two years ago to restore reproductive rights. And conservatives in Colorado are collecting signatures in an attempt to remove constitutional language protecting abortion rights that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2024.

The Idaho measure, known as the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, would end the near-total ban that took effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

It would be replaced by a statute that, as the initiative describes itself, “establishes a right to make private reproductive health care decisions, including abortion up to fetal viability and in medical emergencies.” Fetal viability, which refers to the point at which a fetus can survive outside a womb, is generally viewed by experts as beginning at around 23 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

While Idaho is one of the most Republican states in the nation, the campaign behind the initiative argues its plan can capture the simple majority it needs to prevail. Idahoans United for Women and Families says that over one-quarter of the 110,000 voters who signed its petition are registered Republicans.

Proponents have also drawn attention to a poll conducted by Boise State University last fall that found about 60% of respondents favored the proposed initiative, with roughly half that many opposed. No one, however, has released any polling this year testing how the plan will perform at the ballot box.

The Idaho Republican Party, however, is calling for the GOP-dominated state government to ensure the status quo remains intact no matter what voters decide. Last month, the party passed a resolution calling for lawmakers to use their power “to amend or repeal voter-approved ballot initiatives” should this proposal pass this fall.

Reproductive rights advocates in Nevada and Virginia, by contrast, are promoting constitutional amendments that would protect abortion rights should Republicans one day regain power in either state.

In Nevada, voters long ago took steps to safeguard abortion access through an unusual “statute affirmation” referendum in 1990, but an amendment would be even harder to undo.

While Nevada is one of the nation’s premier swing states, proponents have reason to feel good that their amendment, which will be identified as Question 6 on the ballot, will easily succeed.

The state has an unusual law that requires any citizen-initiated amendments to pass in two back-to-back general elections. Question 6 cleared the first hurdle in 2024 when it passed in a 64-36 landslide even as Donald Trump was taking Nevada’s six electoral votes. One more victory would ensure its success.

Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature, meanwhile, voted over the winter to place an amendment on the ballot that would also enshrine the right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution. A poll conducted in January by Christopher Newport University showed a strong 66-28 majority of voters in support of the plan.

The Republicans who control Missouri’s state government want to achieve the very opposite objective this fall with a proposal that would remove protections voters just put into place.

In 2024, voters narrowly approved an amendment by a 52-48 margin that undid a law Republicans had enacted banning abortion except in cases of certain medical emergencies. The state constitution now says the state government “shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” with “abortion care” specifically mentioned.

That outcome made Missouri the first state where voters restored abortion rights they’d lost in 2022, leading a judge to strike down most of the state’s restrictions on the procedure last month. But the battle is by no means over.

Last year, lawmakers voted to place what’s now known as Amendment 3 on the general election ballot to repeal the 2024 amendment and once again allow lawmakers to “enact laws that regulate the provision of abortions.” The new amendment also includes a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a plank that proponents highlight first on their website.

A poll conducted in February by St. Louis University and YouGov showed a 47-40 plurality supporting Amendment 3, though there has been no other data on the topic.

Before Amendment 3 appears on the ballot in November, voters will weigh in on a different GOP proposal called Amendment 4 that would make it all but impossible for citizens to pass initiatives in the future. That requirement, though, wouldn’t apply to amendments advanced by the legislature, which would still require only a simple majority to pass.

Morning Digest: Missouri Democrats mobilize against GOP plan to make initiatives impossible

David Nir and Jeff Singer

Jul 8

Read full story

Finally, conservatives in Colorado are similarly promoting a plan to excise an abortion rights amendment voters approved recently, but they face a much tougher task than their counterparts in Missouri.

Two years ago, Coloradans voted 62-38 to place language into the constitution that guarantees the right to an abortion, as well as repeal a 40-year-old amendment that prohibited the state from using public funds to pay for abortions. A pair of longtime anti-abortion activists, though, responded to that setback by organizing a campaign to scrap the new amendment.

It remains to be seen, though, whether it will appear on the ballot this fall. The campaign has until Aug. 3 to turn in 124,238 valid signatures, a figure that represents 5% of the total number of votes cast in the most recent election for secretary of state. It must also hit targets in each of the state’s 35 state Senate districts.

The Downballot

The Graham Platner debacle

Maine’s Senate race hangs in the balance following bombshell accusations by a woman named Jenny Racicot, who accused Democrat Graham Platner of raping her in 2021. As we recorded this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, Platner’s future was still up in the air, though he dropped his bid soon after. We brought on frequent guest host—and dyed-in-the…

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Governors

NE-Gov

Former Nebraska state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, who previously derided speculation that he might run for governor as “wishful thinking,” is now running for governor.

Lindstrom, a longtime Republican, left the GOP to become an independent earlier this year, not long after he abandoned his bid for the open 2nd Congressional District. At the time, the ex-lawmaker explained his rationale by telling the Nebraska Examiner, “I don’t feel like I fit in this political environment.”

Now, though, he’s trying to fit back into it, though first he must collect 4,000 signatures by Aug. 3 to appear on the November ballot. However, he’s been vague about why exactly he wants to challenge Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, saying to the Examiner, “It’s a lot of different things that I just don’t think there’s been a vision articulated on who we are and where we’re going.”

Lindstrom and Pillen previously squared off in the GOP primary in 2022. Pillen won the nod with 34% of the vote while Lindstrom finished third with 26%, then easily prevailed in the general election. This fall, Pillen faces former state Sen. Lynne Walz, who is hoping to become the first Democrat to win a bid for governor in Nebraska since 1994.

House

AZ-01

Former TV news anchor Marlene Galan-Woods has earned the support of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly ahead of next week’s busy Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District.

CT-01

VoteVets announced Tuesday that it was spending “nearly $1 million” on ads promoting former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin ahead of his matchup with longtime Rep. John Larson in the Aug. 11 Democratic primary. The buy represents the first major outside spending from any group ahead of the contest for Connecticut’s safely Democratic 1st District.

VoteVets’ opening spot touts Bronin’s service in the Navy Reserve as part of an anti-corruption task force. The narrator tells the audience that Bronin will “take on the corruption in Washington” by “[m]aking big corporations pay what they owe—and leading the fight to bring down costs for central Connecticut families.”

The commercial does not mention Larson or either of the other two Democrats competing for the nomination, Hartford Board of Education member Ruth Fortune and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest.

MI-10

Former prosecutor Robert Lulgjuraj announced Tuesday that he was dropping out of the Aug. 4 Republican primary for Michigan’s 10th District, a decision that came three weeks after Donald Trump endorsed Army National Guard officer Mike Bouchard for this competitive open seat.

Bouchard, the son and namesake of Oakland County’s longtime sheriff, is the favorite next month to defeat attorney Justin Kirk, who has self-funded most of his campaign, and one other little-known rival.

Democrats have a three-way primary between former prosecutor Christina Hines, former Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel, and Eric Chung, who served as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Calculations by The Downballot show that the 10th District, which GOP Rep. John James is giving up to run for governor, supported Trump 52-46 in 2024.

NH-01, TN-09

Donald Trump has issued two more endorsements of candidates running for the House.

In New Hampshire’s swingy 1st District, Trump gave his backing to wealthy real estate developer Anthony DiLorenzo, who is one of several Republicans seeking the seat that Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas is giving up to wage a bid for the Senate.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Trump has blessed state Sen. Brent Taylor, who likewise faces a busy primary for the 9th District. That seat is open as well, but for an entirely different reason: Republicans recently gerrymandered this district, which for decades had been home to a Black majority, prompting longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen to retire.

Poll Pile

MI-Sen (D): The Glengariff Group for WDIV and the Detroit News:
- Haley Stevens: 48, Abdul El-Sayed: 41.
FL-Gov (R): The Tyson Group:
- Byron Donalds: 48, Jay Collins: 9, James Fishback: 8, Paul Renner: 4.
TN-Gov (R): Fabrizio, Lee & Associates for Marsha Blackburn:
- Blackburn: 51, John Rose: 20, Monty Fritts: 12.

Editor’s Note: The last Digest incorrectly identified Chris Pappas as the incumbent in New Hampshire’s Senate race in our fundraising roundup.

Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber to The Downballot! If you’d like to further support our work, you can donate on our ActBlue page.

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Trump's GOP Is Ripping This Nation Apart. The Question Is: Why? THE MORAL DEPRAVITY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DEFINED!

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MASS GOP!

Trump’s GOP Is Ripping This Nation Apart. The Question Is: Why?

The morality of today’s Republican Party has been laid bare. But it boggles the mind the depth of this destruction and cruelty.

President Donald Trump is destroying the nation like a crazed maniac. Does anyone really understand what motivates him or the party he controls.

(Cartoon: AI generated via The Hartmann Report)

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — which gave the top 1% fully $118 billion this year in tax cuts — turns a year old this week and Republicans in Congress actually celebrated the largest cuts to food assistance and Medicaid in American history.

They told us it was about fraud, about lazy people gaming the system, about restoring the dignity of work. Exactly a year later we can now see what it was really about in a line of cars outside a food bank in Phoenix.

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That’s where ProPublica found Ana Alvarez on a recent morning, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant and lost her family’s SNAP benefits last September. She reapplied in December and the government still hasn’t processed her application.

She calls the agency every week and gets told to keep waiting, so she clips coupons, her kids don’t go to the zoo anymore, and as the summer heat bears down she’s doing grim arithmetic on rent, the car payment, and the electric bill that keeps the air conditioning running. She’s one reason Arizona has lost more than half of its SNAP recipients in a single year.

In Michigan, a widow named Sarah works two food service jobs to raise her 9-year-old daughter on $219 a month in food assistance, help she’s needed since her husband died suddenly six years ago. Last Christmas one of her employers wrote a single number wrong on her renewal paperwork, one missing zero, and the state cut her off.

And in Atlanta, Human Rights Watch documented a 36-year-old supermarket cashier who was working and meeting every requirement until she gave birth in late 2025, at which point Georgia shut off both her Medicaid and her food stamps, claiming she’d failed to report the job she was standing at every day. She’s spent the months since trying to get her coverage back while the medical bills pile up. In the party of family values, apparently, having a baby is now a firing offense.

None of these women are cheats or freeloaders. They’re workers, mothers, widows: exactly the people these cynical Republicans swear they’re protecting. But the numbers tell the story: more than 4 million Americans have been pushed off SNAP since the bill passed, the steepest drop since Clinton’s 1996 welfare cuts, and in just the 13 states that publish the data, roughly 808,000 children have lost food assistance.

The Congressional Budget Office projects millions more will lose Medicaid as the work requirement paperwork machine grinds through the states, even though more than nine in ten of the people targeted are already working, in school, caring for family, or disabled.

The cruelty built into the bill isn’t a side effect: it’s the whole reason for the “enhanced” paperwork requirements. Every mother who gives up in frustration, every widow tripped up by a typo, every application left to rot in a backlog is a line item of savings that can translate into a larger tax cut for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg while the poorest households actually see their taxes go up.

That’s the morality of today’s GOP laid bare. They looked at Ana Alvarez’s five kids and Sarah’s daughter and that new mother in Atlanta, and they decided the billionaires needed the money more.

Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.

The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”

— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that Trump’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?

— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?

— Could it be that American-values-hating foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?

— Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?

— Or are his, Vance’s, and Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel immigrants, deny benefits to people of color, elevate the rich, crush unions, and re-subordinate women?

These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:

— Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid (and the biggest cuts don’t even kick in until right after this fall’s election)?

— Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?

— Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?

— Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?

— End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?

— Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?

— Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?

— Refuse military aid to Ukraine for over a year to give Russia time to finish off their genocidal job?

— Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?

— Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?

— Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?

— End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?

— Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?

— Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?

— Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?

— Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?

— Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?

— Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?

— Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?

— Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?

— Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?

— Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?

— Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?

— Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?

— Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?

— End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?

— Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?

— Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?

— Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?

— Weaken whistleblower protections?

— Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?

— Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?

— Create a network of concentration camps across America?

— Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?

— Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?

— Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?

— Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?

— Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?

— Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?

— Ban books and censor libraries?

— Criminalize trans and queer people?

— Roll back gun safety measures?

— Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?

— Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?

— Nakedly politicize the military?

— Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?

— Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?

— Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?

— Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?

— Sabotage the US Postal Service?

— Undermine the census?

— Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?

— Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?

— Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?

— Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?

— Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?

— Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?

— Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?

— Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvious bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?

— Work so hard to conceal the crimes of a notorious sexual predator?

And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working class families.

Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.

For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks of our military and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?

“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.

Today, we’re there.

Why do you think Trump and the GOP are working so hard to ruin our country?

COMMON DREAMS

Middleboro Review 2

Wednesday, July 15, 2026