Why Florida’s abortion ruling is more complicated than you think

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Apr 02, 2024 View in browser   By Calder McHugh A mobile billboard sponsored by the DNC is seen outside the Florida Freedom Summit on Nov. 4, 2023 in Kissimmee, Florida. | Gerardo Mora/Getty Images HIGH BAR — On Monday, Florida’s Supreme Court handed down two important abortion rulings. They upheld a 15-week ban that will trigger a 6-week ban supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 30 days. And they ruled that a ballot initiative that would establish a state constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability (around 24 weeks) could go before voters in November. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, abortion rights have proved to be a winning issue at the polls for Democrats. Voters have decided to protect access to abortion in every ballot measure on the issue since the high court’s landmark decision — even in generally red states like Kansas and Kentucky. Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterms was also largely attributed to their abortion messaging; the party has since attempted to place abortion rights measures on the ballot across the map to both secure access and to juice Democratic turnout. But the Florida ballot measure isn’t a simple matter of winning a majority of the vote. For the constitutional amendment to pass, it needs 60 percent support — a threshold that pro-choice groups haven’t been able to reach in red states thus far. Still, the Biden campaign insists the abortion amendment will help put Florida in play. Despite the state’s recent shift to the right, the campaign contends the abortion amendment will give Democratic voters in the state a reason to turn out.. To get a better understanding of the political implications of the Florida ballot measure, Nightly spoke with health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein. This interview has been edited. Why are the Florida Supreme Court’s dual rulings so politically important? The justices in one fell swoop cleared the way for a 6-week abortion ban to take effect in May and gave Florida voters the opportunity to overturn that same ban in November. Each piece of that mixed ruling will have enormous political and practical consequences. The 6-week ban will cut off abortion access not only for millions of Floridians but also millions more people from surrounding states with even stricter bans who have depended on Florida clinics since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Living under the 6-week ban could galvanize public outrage against the GOP state officials who enacted it as well as against Donald Trump, who has repeatedly bragged about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and made state bans like Florida’s possible. Even if Trump and other Republicans try to distance themselves from the law — Trump called it “too harsh” when Gov. Ron DeSantis was still challenging him for the GOP nomination — Democrats plan to relentlessly remind voters that they are responsible for these restrictions between now and November. The court also gave voters a way to channel that anger into action, greenlighting a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment that would restore abortion access to around 24 weeks of pregnancy — the standard under Roe. More than a million Floridians have already signed petitions to get the measure on the November ballot, and Democrats are hoping it will boost turnout and buoy their chances of winning back control of the red state. What’s the state of abortion rights ballot measures — how have they fared since Dobbs and what’s in store for potential future ballot measures? In every single state that has held an abortion-rights referendum since Roe fell, the pro-abortion rights side has prevailed — and it hasn’t been close. That’s been true in states as blue as California and as red as Kentucky. Some of those contests have overturned abortion bans, while others have shored up existing protections. Anti-abortion groups are now working to end that losing streak by trying to thwart the next wave of ballot measures via lawsuits (as in Florida), legislation, and pressure campaigns. But even in states where Republicans control the levers of power, like Florida, they so far have been unable to block the referendums from moving forward. Florida’s has a 60 percent threshold for approval, which is higher than most other states. Does that change the context? It’s a much higher bar to clear than the simple majority most states require. In fact, Republicans who oppose abortion rights have repeatedly tried to implement a 60 percent threshold for ballot measures in other states — including Ohio and South Dakota — as a means of defeating the abortion-rights efforts. Had they succeeded in Ohio it could have scuttled the 2023 referendum that overturned the state’s 6-week ban, which passed with 57 percent of the vote. Still, Florida progressives remain hopeful and Florida conservatives — some of whom attempted last year to raise the threshold even higher, to 67 percent — are nervous. In addition to the presidential race, Florida also has a Senate race in November. What impact might an abortion rights ballot measure have on the political landscape there? We’re in uncharted territory since this is the first presidential election held since the fall of Roe, and we only have a mixed bag of data from the abortion-rights referendums held during the midterms and in off-year elections. Those races showed that while the ballot measures are popular, they don’t necessarily boost turnout among Democrats or help Democratic candidates win. In Kentucky in 2022, for example, voters overwhelmingly opposed an anti-abortion ballot initiative but at the same time reelected the staunchly anti-abortion GOP Sen. Rand Paul. Hopeful Democrats point to Michigan, where a 2022 abortion-rights ballot measure helped the party hold the governor’s mansion and flip the legislature. But Republicans hold a significant advantage among registered voters in Florida, making it a heavier lift. What’s certain is that Democrats will try to tie Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) — and Republicans up and down the ballot — to the state’s ban, and argue that only a Democratic Senate will shield people from government interference in reproductive health care. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.   SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, the newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world, including WEF in Davos, Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to UNGA in NYC and many more. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     What'd I Miss? — Biden’s agenda for call with Xi included election meddling, cyberattacks: President Joe Biden planned to warn China’s leader Xi Jinping against interfering in the November U.S. presidential election in a call between the two leaders today, a senior administration official told reporters before their talks. It was the sixth call between the two leaders since Biden took office, and their first direct contact following their summit in San Francisco last November. Biden wanted to hammer home to Xi “our concern that any country interferes or influences our elections,” the senior official said. Suspicions of potential Chinese interference run high. — Health agencies brief Congress on avian flu: Senior Biden health officials today briefed congressional committees and leadership, telling them that the risk to the general public from the avian flu remains low. The call, confirmed by two congressional aides granted anonymity to discuss the confidential briefing, comes a day after the CDC confirmed a dairy worker in Texas tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza. Officials from the FDA, CDC, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and U.S. Department of Agriculture largely repeated publicly available information, according to one of the congressional aides who relayed details of the briefing. — As ouster vote looms, Greene says she and Johnson still haven’t talked in depth: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t backing away from her threat to hold a referendum on Mike Johnson that could boot him from the speakership. Nor have the two had much of a conservation about it — yet. “I haven’t talked to him on the phone one time,” Greene told POLITICO this afternoon. Greene said Johnson texted her again earlier today explaining he had a busy schedule and that he wanted to chat Wednesday. Greene, citing her schedule, said she proposed Friday instead. The timing of their conversation still appears unclear. Nightly Road to 2024 ON WISCONSIN — Keep an eye on Wisconsin’s presidential primary results tonight. The battleground state has a number of threads worth watching, setting the stage for the high-stakes general election in the state later this year, writes POLITICO. Another opportunity for protest votes against President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Ballot initiatives that could change how November’s elections are run. A big stump speech from Trump. POLITICAL POISON — Donald Trump again used language denounced by Democrats to hammer President Joe Biden over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border today as he campaigned in two midwestern swing states likely to be critical to the outcome of the 2024 election, reports the Associated Press. Trump, who has accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in the country’s history if he wins a second term, delivered a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in which he accused Biden of allowing a “bloodbath” that was “destroying the country.” The former president referred to immigrants in the U.S. illegally suspected of committing crimes as “animals,” using dehumanizing language that those who study extremism have warned increases the risk of violence. BAITING BIDEN — Former President Donald Trump today issued a demonstrative call for head-to-head debates with President Joe Biden, placing an empty lectern on the stage before a Green Bay rally to represent where Biden could stand, reports NBC News. “This is for Joe Biden. I am trying to get him to debate,” Trump said, referring to the empty podium. “Trying to get Crooked Joe to debate. Anytime, anyplace.” A staple of down-ballot candidates seeking to force reluctant rivals to debate, the visual aid emphasized Trump’s charge that Biden is afraid to meet him one-on-one. But it also hinted at the very real possibility that a presidential election could come to pass without at least one televised debate for the first time in generations. And, by implication, it excludes the candidate causing consternation for both presumptive major-party nominees: independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. AROUND THE WORLD People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers were killed in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. | Abdel Kareem Hana/AP AID WORKERS KILLED — An Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen, leading the charity to suspend delivery today of vital food aid to Gaza, where Israel’s offensive has pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the brink of starvation, POLITICO reports. Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to the territory, said ships that recently arrived were turning back — with some 240 tons of undelivered aid. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the country’s forces had carried out the “unintended strike” on “innocent people in the Gaza Strip.” He says officials are looking into the strike and would “do everything for this not to happen again.” Footage showed the bodies, several wearing protective gear with the charity’s logo, at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Those killed include three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian, according to hospital records. World Central Kitchen, a food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, was key to the recently opened sea route, which offered some hope for northern Gaza — where the U.N. says much of the population is on the brink of starvation, largely cut off from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces. Andrés — whose charity has operated in several countries wracked by wars or natural disasters, including Israel after the attack that triggered the current conflict — said he was “heartbroken” by the deaths of his colleagues. TRUMP SHIELD — The U.S. and other Western countries are considering transferring to NATO a U.S.-led multinational group that coordinates the shipment of weapons to Ukraine, a move that could help maintain the flow of arms to Kyiv under a second Donald Trump presidency, POLITICO reports. During the NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels Wednesday and Thursday, officials are expected to discuss gradually moving the organization — called the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — into the alliance’s control, according to three European officials and a U.S. official with knowledge of the internal deliberations. The goal would be to finalize the move at the NATO leaders’ summit in Washington in July, one of the officials said.   Access New York bill updates and Congressional activity in areas that matter to you, and use our exclusive insights to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more.     Nightly Number 129 The number of wind turbines that the Biden administration has approved off the coast of Massachusetts. The turbines could power up to 1 million homes in southern New England, and the project is the eighth large offshore wind turbine project that’s been greenlit. RADAR SWEEP PUNCHING LEFT — At a recent Ultimate Fighting Championship event, the loudest cheers didn’t go to the athletes. It was reserved for UFC president and CEO Dana White and the people who walked into the arena with him: Kid Rock and Donald Trump. White and UFC have in recent years molded their sport to be explicitly friendly to the right, with overtures to the former president, who in turn feels at home at their events. It’s a contrast to some other professional sports, at least in its direct embrace of one political party. But it’s a posture that’s been at least incidentally successful in building UFC’s brand — and it’s an alliance that’s only getting stronger. Sam Eagan reports for The New Republic. Parting Image On this date in 1964: Rebel troops from Belo Horizonte enter Rio de Janeiro, after a successful coup ousted Brazil's President João Goulart, ending the Fourth Brazilian Republic and beginning the Brazilian military dictatorship, which lasted until 1985. | Erno Schneider/AP Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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