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Year: 2024

New Jersey Democrat proposes bill to create travel advisories to inform pregnant women of state abortion laws

New Jersey Democrat proposes bill to create travel advisories to inform pregnant women of state abortion laws

A New Jersey Democrat introduced legislation establishing travel advisories informing women of restrictive abortion laws in other states they may be visiting. The bill, proposed by state Sen. John Burzichelli, would require New Jersey’s health and state departments to launch a website that would list color codes for states depending on how restrictive their abortion laws are, according to NJ Spotlight News. “If you’re an individual, a woman, traveling across this country for business — or if you’re thinking about going to school in Mississippi [for instance] — it will help you to know what kind of medical services are available to you should you need emergency care of some kind,” Burzichelli told the outlet. The color codes under the “Reproductive Health Travel Advisory” are blue, yellow and red. GEORGIA JUDGE OVERTURNS STATE’S SIX-WEEK ‘HEARTBEAT’ ABORTION LAW, CALLS IT ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL’ Blue would mean women can exercise normal caution and access to abortion would be available without fear of civil or criminal prosecution, and yellow would mean women should exercise increased caution as abortion restrictions could result in civil or criminal prosecution. Red would mean women are urged to reconsider travel because abortion access is extremely restricted and could result in medical issues and civil or criminal prosecution. “Right now, there’s no single place to go to say, ‘OK I have to travel. I have to go to Texas and then move over and go to Tennessee,’” Burzichelli said. “You don’t have that info at your fingertips. You can find it, but it’s a hodge-podge.” “You, as an American female, do not have equal rights across all 50 states,” he added. “And it’s important for you to know what rights you don’t have when you go somewhere, because something unexpected could happen.” JUDGE BLOCKS NY AG LETITIA JAMES FROM TRYING TO SILENCE PREGNANCY CENTERS THAT PROMOTE ABORTION PILL REVERSAL The proposal comes after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, returning the power to make laws on abortion access back to the states. Following the ruling, a number of Republican-controlled states enacted laws restricting abortion access, with some exceptions such as in cases of medical emergencies, while some Democrat-controlled states have approved advanced protections of abortion access. “It’s hard to imagine we’re even talking about this in 2024 in America,” Burzichelli said. “To think that we have to think about even doing this just speaks volumes about where we are at the moment,” New Jersey expanded access to abortion, enacting statutory protection for abortion as a fundamental right, and the state’s highest court ruled the “fundamental right of a woman to control her body and destiny” is protected under the state’s constitution, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. The state also welcomes women who travel from other states for an abortion because their own states have bans in place. Additionally, the Garden State protects them from being extradited after the procedure.

Politics hijacks hurricane devastation in the South, Biden calls Trump a liar

Politics hijacks hurricane devastation in the South, Biden calls Trump a liar

Television news, with few exceptions, completely botched the unimaginable devastation that struck western North Carolina over the weekend. Once Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and headed inland, officials assumed it would lose strength. Instead, cities like Asheville, and eastern Tennessee, were hit with an almost biblical level of flooding, leaving a trail of impassable roads and collapsed bridges. Why was this not the lead story everywhere? To be candid, North Carolina is just a blip on the radar of the coastal media elites, dismissed as fly-over country. Most news organizations don’t have a single reporter based there. NORTH CAROLINA REELING FROM DEVASTATING HELENE AS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS: ‘NEVER SEEN ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THIS’ President Biden just put out statements over the weekend, adding to the sense that this wasn’t a Katrina-level crisis. I went to New Orleans eight months after that 2005 storm and was stunned to see mile after mile and after mile of uninhabited suburban homes damaged by the flooding. Imagine if the same level of flooding hit northern New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. There would have been 500 times as much coverage. In fact, we had a real-life example in Superstorm Sandy, which rightly drew enormous media attention. Many shows had their B teams in, with few taking charge and ordering a full-scale mobilization on the story. I was just realizing the magnitude of the destruction on my show when leadoff guest Mary Katharine Ham, who’s from North Carolina, texted me an hour before airtime and pushed to cover the story that was being largely ignored. It was a packed program, but I gave her a couple of minutes to talk about it on “Media Buzz.”  By Monday, perhaps realizing that they looked terrible, TV outlets shifted gears and started constant coverage of the plight of North Carolina, interviewing local officials and survivors. But their journalists faced the challenge of getting to a mountainous region that was isolated and in some towns all but wiped out. And yet the New York Times and Washington Post did a terrific job of getting their reporters to produce one front-page story after another from the city of Asheville, an artsy town partially submerged by the monster flooding.  KAMALA HARRIS’ SOFT MEDIA INTERVIEWS ARE A ‘BETRAYAL OF JOURNALISM’: MARY KATHARINE HAM As the Times put it, the storm left “at least 37 people dead in the region and communities struggling to cope without water, food, power, gasoline and cellphone service.” The Washington Post, from Canton, N.C.: “Doris Towers awoke to the beeping of her husband’s dialysis machine early Friday morning, meaning it had lost power. Her neighbor’s Christmas lights, still up from last year, had gone out. Those were early hints of Helene’s destruction to come. She hadn’t known a storm was on the way. “Across the mountains in Swannanoa, Joe Dancy and Jenna Shaw got up before dawn to walk their dog and saw floodwaters creeping toward their house. An hour later, they were climbing out a window with the help of a National Guard soldier.” Biden, who will visit North Carolina today – Kamala Harris is also planning a visit–addressed the nation on Monday morning with his trademark empathy: “I’m here to tell every single survivor in these impacted areas that we will be there with you as long as it takes.” But the president, who kept coughing because of a cold, should have given that speech on Sunday. That would have spurred the journalists into action, because they often follow the White House, and instead left the impression that no one was in charge.  Donald Trump, meanwhile, visited a shelter in Valdosta, Ga., and said, reading from notes:  TRUMP LAUNCHES GOFUNDME TO HELP HURRICANE HELENE VICTIMS, RAISES MORE THAN $1M “As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election. At a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters. We’re not talking about politics now. We have to all get together and get this solved.” The important thing is that Trump, working with Franklin Graham, son of Rev. Billy, who heads a Christian relief group, brought plenty of supplies. But the former president didn’t stay on that high road for long. He posted that Biden and Harris “have left Americans to drown in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South.” FEMA officials have been working furiously – more than 3,300 federal agents are on the ground–and Harris, canceling several events, returned to Washington for a briefing from agency chief Deanne Criswell, and addressed officials there about the “heartbreaking” losses. Trump also claimed that GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had not been able to reach Biden. But Kemp told reporters he did talk to Biden and the president “offered that if there are other things that we need just to call him directly, which – I appreciated that.” “He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said. “I don’t know why he does this. I don’t care what he says about me. I care about what he communicates to people that are in need. He implies that we’re not doing everything possible. We are.” SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES Trump also suggested, without evidence, that the Biden-Harris administration is deliberately not helping Republicans in red counties.  Perhaps it was inevitable that partisan politics would hijack a crisis that has devastated many southern states. And I’m glad that cable news, having largely snoozed through the weekend, is now all in on the coverage.

Voter panel reacts to Vance clash with debate moderators, mic cutoff: ‘You’re fact checking me’

Voter panel reacts to Vance clash with debate moderators, mic cutoff: ‘You’re fact checking me’

A focus group of Republicans, Democrats and independents reacted to former President Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance’s microphone being cut off during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate on Tuesday night. Independent and Republican voters disapproved of the interjection, but independent voters dipped significantly when Vance began explaining his stance. Despite CBS announcing that it would not allow live fact-checking during the debate, moderator Margaret Brennan interjected to correct Vance after he suggested that illegal immigrants are overwhelming public resources in Springfield, Ohio. JD VANCE REMINDS CBS MODERATORS OF DEBATE RULES AFTER THEY TRY TO FACT-CHECK HIM ABC DEBATE MODERATORS SPARK FURY FOR AGGRESSIVE FACT-CHECKING OF TRUMP, EASY TREATMENT OF HARRIS “Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” Brennan said. “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance reminded them. “And since you are fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.” When Walz tried interjecting, independent approval also decreased for a brief moment.  While explaining the process of obtaining legal status and tying it to a Harris-backed immigration policy, the moderators again spoke over Vance, thanking him for “describing the legal process” before they cut off his microphone as Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attempted to argue with him. When the microphones were cut off, the independent voter dial line can be seen moving in the approval direction as Republican approval decreased slightly.  Fox News Digital’s Yael Halon contributed to this report. 

Vance’s debate answer on immigration crisis shows voter polarization in real time responses

Vance’s debate answer on immigration crisis shows voter polarization in real time responses

Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s argument that the U.S. needed to “stop the bleeding” at the border during Tuesday’s debate elicited a mixed response from voters, “Before we talk about deportations, we have to stop the bleeding,” Vance argued during Tuesday’s debate. “We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said that she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies.” According to Fox News debate dials, which measure how Republican, Democrat, and Independent voters are responding to particular answers by candidates during the debate, the response by Vance received mixed responses. WALZ REPEATS GEORGIA ABORTION DEATH FALSEHOOD DECRIED BY DOCTORS AS ‘FEARMONGERING’ While Republican views of Vance’s answers had an immediate positive response, Democratic viewers of the debate went in an opposite direction, the dials showed. Independents, meanwhile, hovered around 50% approval with Vance’s answer. Voters began to see Vance’s response in a more positive light when he touched on former President Donald Trump’s border policies, arguing that the next administration should return to handling the border similar to how Trump did during his four years in office. DISGRACED EX-CBS NEW ANCHOR DAN RATHER SAYS OLD NETWORK LOOKING TO AVOID ‘BLOWBACK’ ABC RECEIVED “You’ve gotta reimplement Donald Trump’s border policies, build the wall, reimplement deportations,” Vance said, garnering an improved response from independent voters and a very positive response from Republicans. Meanwhile, Democratic voters remained sour on the Ohio Senator’s answer. Voters also responded well to Vance’s remarks on deportation, where the Ohio Senator argued in favor of focusing on those who have committed crimes in addition to crossing the border illegally. “We start with the criminal migrants,” Vance said on deportations, gaining a strongly positive response from Republicans, a mostly positive response from independents, and an improved response among Democratic voters. “About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally, I think you start for deportations on those folks.”

Voters react to Gov. Tim Walz claiming abortion is a ‘basic human right’

Voters react to Gov. Tim Walz claiming abortion is a ‘basic human right’

Voters in Fox News Digital’s debate dial group had mixed reactions in real time to VP Harris’ runningmate, Gov. Tim Walz’s argument in favor of abortion during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate against Sen. JD Vance. When Walz was asked whether he supports abortion up until the ninth month supported as Minnesota is one of the least restrictive states for abortion, he responded, “That’s not what the bill says.” While Republican voters dipped significantly as Walz spoke, independent and Democratic voters stayed mostly in the approval zone. WALZ REPEATS GEORGIA ABORTION DEATH FALSEHOOD DECRIED BY DOCTORS AS ‘FEARMONGERING’ “What we did is restore Roe v. Wade, we made sure that we put women in charge of their healthcare,” Walz said. Independents dipped slightly in approval while Democratic voters shot up during his statement. The two eventually evened out and stayed in the approval zone.  A VISIBLY SHAKY WALZ SAYS THE WORLD NEEDS ‘STEADY LEADERSHIP’ “This is a basic human right,” he later said. The independent voters stayed slightly under the Democratic approval line, as Republicans significantly disapproved. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP