Closing summary
The United States and Saudi Arabia are at loggerheads, after Riyadh pushed Opec+ to cut its crude output and potentially drive gas prices higher, defying Washington’s pleas for a delay. Today, the White House confirmed that president Joe Biden is willing to re-evaluate his country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, potentially upending a decades-long alliance.
Here’s what else happened today:
Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic party. The former Hawaii congresswoman unsuccessfully stood for its presidential nomination in 2020, but has become increasingly conservative since departing Congress last year.
Elon Musk says he did not talk to Russian president Vladimir Putin about how to end the war in Ukraine.
The supreme court’s conservative majority rejected an appeal from a death row inmate challenging his conviction over some jurors’ opposition to interracial marriage. It also turned down an appeal from racist murderer Dylann Roof, as well as a case concerning so-called “fetal personhood”.
Ohio’s Senate candidates faced off in a debate last night. The race is unexpectedly close, but the Democratic candidate Tim Ryan believes the party’s leadership has given up on him.
The supreme court today declined to weigh in on the topic of so-called “fetal personhood” by turning away a challenge to a Rhode Island law codifying abortion rights, Reuters reports.
Had it taken the case, the court’s conservative majority – which in June overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban abortion – could have had the chance to decide the point at which fetuses are entitled to constitutional rights.
Here’s more from Reuters:
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in June’s ruling overturning the abortion rights precedent that in the decision the court took no position on “if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.”
Some Republicans at the state level have pursued what are called fetal personhood laws, like one enacted in Georgia affecting fetuses starting at around six weeks of pregnancy, that would grant fetuses before birth a variety of legal rights and protections like those of any person.
Under such laws, termination of a pregnancy legally could be considered murder.
Lawyers for the group Catholics for Life and the two Rhode Island women - one named Nichole Leigh Rowley and the other using the pseudonym Jane Doe - argued that the case “presents the opportunity for this court to meet that inevitable question head on” by deciding if fetuses possess due process and equal protection rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The Rhode Island Supreme Court relied on the now-reversed Roe precedent in finding that the 14th Amendment did not extend rights to fetuses. The Roe ruling had recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protected a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy.
