Good morning.
In the wake of yesterday’s supreme court hearing in which a majority of justices appeared willing to significantly curb abortion rights, reproductive rights advocates said they would continue to fight in statehouses and lower courts for the right to choose.
While a significant blow to abortion rights is far from a foregone conclusion, questions from the supreme court’s conservative justices yesterday appeared to show a willingness to allow restrictions on abortion at 15 weeks and perhaps earlier in a pregnancy.
Julie Rikelman, litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who argued before the justices, said campaigners would continue to fight if the supreme court went against reproductive choice.
“We will continue to make every argument we can in the federal courts, we will continue to litigate in the state courts … we will not stop fighting, because it is just too important,” Rikelman said.
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What happened yesterday? The supreme court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, widely regarded as the most important abortion rights case in nearly five decades. A decision is not expected until June 2022.
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Here are five key takeaways from the crucial court session yesterday.
Revealed: how Sidney Powell could be disbarred for lying in court for Trump
The Guardian has learned that Sidney Powell, the former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits across America for the former president hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has on several occasions represented to federal courts that people were co-counsel or plaintiffs in her cases without seeking their permission to do so.
Some of these individuals say that they only found out that Powell had named them once the cases were already filed.
During this same period of time, Powell also named several other lawyers – with their permission in those instances – as co-counsel in her election-related cases, despite the fact that they played virtually no role whatsoever in bringing or litigating those cases.
Both Powell’s naming of other people as plaintiffs or co-counsel without their consent and representing that other attorneys were central to her cases when, in fact, their roles were nominal or nonexistent, constitute serious potential violations of the American Bar Association model rules for professional conduct, top legal ethicists told the Guardian.
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Will she be disbarred? The Texas bar held its first closed-door hearing regarding the allegations but investigations by state bar associations are ordinarily conducted behind closed doors and thus largely opaque to the public.
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What has Powell said? She has not responded to multiple requests for comment via phone, email, and over social media.
Ghislaine Maxwell accuser says she met Trump at 14 and flew with Prince Andrew
The first accuser in Ghislaine Maxwell’s child sex trafficking trial testified yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump when she was 14.
The woman, who used the pseudonym “Jane” in court, also claimed that she was on a flight with Prince Andrew. She did not accuse Trump or the Duke of York of any misconduct.
When Jane’s testimony concluded, prosecutors called one of her former boyfriends to the stand. The man, who testified under the pseudonym “Matt” to keep Jane’s identity confidential, said she had discussed a godfather-like figure who helped cover her expenses as a child.
He said she eventually told him who the man was but did not share details of what happened. Asked how Jane reacted to questions about Epstein, Matt said: “She would say to me: ‘Matt, the money wasn’t fucking free.’”
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Who is Maxwell? She is the daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell. Prosecutors have alleged that she was Epstein’s “best friend and right hand”.
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What is she accused of? She is on trial for six counts related to her alleged involvement in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls. She has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
In other news …
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The Omicron variant has fuelled a “worrying” surge in coronavirus cases in South Africa and is rapidly becoming the dominant strain, local health officials have said, as more countries including the US detected their first cases of the new variant. The United Arab Emirates and South Korea also confirmed cases of Omicron.
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Republicans are preparing to shut down the American government on Friday, in the latest attempt by the party to thwart White House efforts to increase vaccine take-up, by undermining vaccine mandates across the country. Clamor is growing for Republican senators to oppose a stopgap funding bill, which would fund the government for the next few weeks.
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Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat and leading voting rights activist, has announced she will launch another campaign to become the nation’s first Black female governor. The announcement could set up a rematch between Abrams and the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
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Beijing has urged US business groups with interests in China to “speak out” and lobby the US government in its defence, warning that as bilateral relations deteriorate they cannot make money “in silence”. The vice-foreign minister Xie Feng, also urged against political boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Stat of the day: 1,500 unhoused LA residents died on the streets during pandemic, report reveals
Nearly 1,500 unhoused people are estimated to have died on the streets of Los Angeles during the pandemic, according to a new report that raises alarms about authorities’ handling of a worsening humanitarian crisis. Authored by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a coalition of unhoused residents, the report analyzed the LA county coroner’s records to identify 1,493 cases of people who died between March 2020 and July 2021 on the streets and were probably unhoused. The most common cause of death was accidental overdose.
Don’t miss this: how the Covid era changed our bodies – from hair loss to weight gain
Living through the pandemic has had surprising health consequences – even for people who have not caught coronavirus. It has recently emerged, for instance, that the Covid era has been a global hair-loss event – a clear manifestation of the stress everyone has been under. What else have these unprecedented times written on our bodies? Sore, blurry eyes, decaying teeth, spreading feet – the strange, difficult years of coronavirus have had unexpected effects on our general health.
Climate check: Californian firm touts ‘mushroom leather’ as sustainability gamechanger
Vegan alternatives to leather could save more than just animals. The scientists behind fashion’s new latest must-have – the “mushroom leather” handbag – believe that mycelium, a material grown from fungi which can be engineered to look and feel like calfskin or sheepskin, could help save the planet. Speaking to the Guardian, Dr Matt Scullin, CEO of biomaterials company MycoWorks, forecast that mushroom leather could be a sustainability gamechanger, “unlocking a future of design which begins with the material, not with the object”.
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Last Thing: Dancing cactus toy that raps in Polish about cocaine goes viral
A word of warning before you go toy shopping this Christmas: beware the rapping cactus. The toy, marketed as educational, may teach your children more than you want them to know, as a woman in Brampton, Ontario, discovered the hard way. The miniature, bright green dancing cactus Ania Tanner bought sings in English, Spanish and Polish while squirming to the beat. After buying it for her granddaughter, Tanner realised one of the songs was an explicit tune about cocaine and hopelessness. “It just so happens that I am Polish, and when I started to listen to the songs and I heard the words … I was in shock,” she said.