National

If the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade and send decisions on abortion rights back to the states, it would usher in a new era of power, influence and visibility for statewide politicians across the county.

Why it matters: We're in the midst of a political moment that could jumpstart the national profiles of Democratic politicians, especially women.

Jen Jordan, Georgia state senator and attorney general candidate

During the 2019 fight over Georgia’s 6-week abortion ban, Jordan gave a speech about her experiences with miscarriage. It captured national attention and vaulted her to the forefront of the state's reproductive rights movement.

What's happening: Now in a statewide race to become Georgia's first woman attorney general, Jordan is continuing to embrace her voice on the issue in the wake of the Roe draft decision leak.

She’s currently exploring possible legal remedies at the state level for an attorney general to pursue, should Roe be overturned.

What she’s saying: Jordan told Axios while she didn’t intend to become a face of this issue, and almost didn’t give the 2019 speech, she thinks that — especially as a lawyer — "I am the person to take on this fight."

Louise Lucas, Virginia Senate president pro tempore

In Virginia, any GOP efforts to tighten abortion restrictions would have to get through the state Senate, where Democrats still hold a one-seat majority and Lucas is the party’s 78-year-old ceremonial leader in the chamber.

"I have one message tonight. When [GOP Gov.] Glenn Youngkin comes to take away our abortion rights — he is going to run into a BRICK WALL," she tweeted Monday night.

What to watch: Lucas spent the week fundraising, reminding supporters that all 40 senators are up for re-election next year. "We will need to raise an enormous amount of money," she wrote.

McMorrow made national news — the New Yorker called her "a role model for the midterms" — with an assertive floor speech last month in response to accusations from a Republican colleague that she was grooming and sexualizing children.

Her emphatic tone and plain speaking stood in contrast to more milquetoast responses from other Democrats nationwide when faced with patently false statements amid the country's deepening culture war.

The bottom line: "We have to let go of the idea that this is politics as usual," she told the New Yorker.

Nikki Fried, Florida agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate

Fried has emerged as one of Gov. Ron DeSantis' most outspoken critics over the last year, and she currently trails U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist in a primary battle for the right to take on DeSantis in the fall.

She's using this moment to uplift women, but also take on both men — including leading a fundraising push blasting Crist, who was once a Republican, for his pro-life stance during his prior stint as the state's governor.

What she's saying: "We make sure that we are standing on shoulders of the women that came before us and we are fighting for the next generation of women to make sure they have access to affordable reproductive health care," she told a rally this week.

Axios' Joe Guillen, Emma Hurt, Ben Montgomery, Ned Oliver and Selene San Felice contributed to this report.

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Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Jen Jordan is a Georgia state senator, not a state representative.

4 Democratic women legislators to watch in a post-Roe America

We're in the midst of a generational political moment.

Photo illustration of Jen Jordan, Louise Lucas, Mallory McMorrow, and Nikki Fried.

Abortion

Politics & Policy

Data: FBI, The Marshall Project; Chart: Jared Whalen/Axios Visuals (Note: The chart includes agency participation data compiled by the FBI through Feb. 7, 2022, which was the deadline for local agencies to submit crime data for its Q4 2021 report. Local agencies had until March 7, 2022, to submit data for the FBI's 2021 national crime report, so the final participation status may change.)

Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including the New York City Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department, failed to report their 2021 crime data to the FBI, according to data provided to Axios Local from a partnership with The Marshall Project.

Why it matters: That will result in a data gap that experts say makes it harder to analyze crime trends and fact check claims politicians make about crime, reports The Marshall Project's Weihua Li.

The FBI's annual data set is the country's foremost way to understand how crime across the U.S. is changing, measuring things like how many murders or rapes took place last year or how many people were arrested.

"It's going to be really hard for policymakers to look at what crime looks like in their own community and compare it to similar communities," Jacob Kaplan, a criminologist at Princeton University, told The Marshall Project.

"The more detailed the data, the more effective our police can be. ... When we look back at 2021 numbers, they're not going to be particularly useful," John Roman, a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Axios. 

The backdrop: Last year, the FBI retired its nearly century-old national crime data collection program and switched to a new system, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which gathers more specific information on each incident. 

Even though the FBI announced the transition years ago and the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help local police make the switch, nearly 7,000 of the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not send crime data to the voluntary program in 2021.

What they're saying: Axios Local talked to law enforcement agencies around the country. Those that didn't submit any crime data largely blamed their non-compliance on staffing shortages and technical issues.

The Philadelphia Police Department was unable to collect NIBRS data until its new reporting systems went live last April. There was a "significant project delay" to update its legacy systems, which was exacerbated by the pandemic, PPD Sgt. Eric Gripp told Axios.

The Des Moines Police Department moved to a new records management system that was incompatible with the state of Iowa's system, which reports data to the FBI. Transferring over records required a manual fix, but there wasn’t enough staffing to do it in time, according to DMPD Sgt. Paul Parizek.

“We just got certified last week to do submissions,” Peoria (Ill.) Police Department records administrator Shawn Wetzel said. “It has been a big challenge with the vendor trying to figure out how to get the [coding] right to provide that electronically. But it's being worked out and we hope to be uploading the data this month.”

Worth noting: Law enforcement agencies nationwide have received over $160 million in federal funding to help with the transition since the switch to NIBRS was announced in 2015.

The other side: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation transitioned to the NIBRS system in the 1990s, which accounts for the state’s higher reporting rate, TBI’s Dale King tells Axios.

King, who works with the state data system, helped write an article with the FBI warning states to work ahead of time on the NIBRS transition.

“Agencies that wait until 2021 to begin their transition efforts will likely discover that the process will be much more difficult than if they had begun their transition efforts sooner,” the article states.

The bottom line: Violent crime across America is set to be a top issue in this fall's midterms, and the data that many politicians will use to make their case on the topic will be — at best — incomplete.

Axios' Mike D'Onofrio, Monica Eng, Linh Ta and Adam Tamburin contributed to this report.

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This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

Sweeping reporting failures may compromise the FBI’s 2021 crime data

That could make it harder to analyze crime trends and fact check claims politicians make about crime.

Law enforcement

2020 conventions

Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including the New York City Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department, failed to report their 2021 crime data to the FBI, according to data provided to Axios Local from a partnership with The Marshall Project.Why it matters: That will result in a data gap that experts say makes it harder to analyze crime trends and fact check claims politicians make about crime, <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="reports" data-vars-click-url="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell" target="_blank">reports</a> The Marshall Project&#x27;s Weihua Li.

A leaked draft Supreme Court opinion showing the justices are poised to overturn Roe v. Wade has injected new urgency into midterm races across the country. 

Why it matters: Removing federal protection for abortion rights is likely to jumpstart voters of both parties, and bring heightened scrutiny to some previously sleepy races.

State of play: Purple states, especially those currently with divided control between their governor's mansion and legislature, now have added attention on their statewide races.

Pennsylvania's governor's race — which had taken a backseat to the battle for its Senate seat — could now decide the fate of abortion rights in the state. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, long antagonized by a Republican legislature, is term-limited, and his replacement will decide what's next.

In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's term isn't up until 2024, but he's now trying to avoid a GOP supermajority in the state legislature that could veto his attempts to preserve abortion rights.

"That's where the battles will move to — the state capitals — and where these fundamental freedoms will be won and lost. And it will matter who [the] governors are," Cooper told Axios.

Zoom in: The stakes also got higher for Democrats to try to flip their own gubernatorial races, especially in Georgia, where the party managed to lock down two Senate seats in the 2020 cycle.

The state saw an emotional, polarized battle over a six-week abortion ban in 2019, which has been frozen in federal court pending the Supreme Court decision.

Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, the leading Republican candidate, championed Georgia's 2019 anti-abortion law.

On Tuesday, he vowed to continue defending the "strongest pro-life law in the country," but did not go as far as his primary opponent David Perdue, who said he would call a special legislative session to "ban abortion," if elected. 

Presumptive Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams said she is "enraged" and "appalled" by the implications of the leaked decision.

Even in states where big races aren't expected to flip, like Florida's gubernatorial contest, the news energized Democrats in the race — especially coupled with the state's new 15-week abortion ban taking effect July 1.

"This is just Step 1 of this radical-right agenda across our country," Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said at a well-attended, impromptu rally in Miami. "And if you're not angry today, what are you waiting for?"

"I just wish this weren't happening to America. It's heartbreaking," former governor and U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist told reporters.

Of note: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has been silent on Twitter since the leaked ruling was published Monday night. 

The bottom line: Even if Roe is indeed ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court, the true effects of that decision won't be known in some key states until after the midterms.

Axios' Taylor Allen, Emma Hurt, Ben Montgomery, Selene San Felice and Lucille Sherman contributed to this report.

Abortion battleground states brace for midterm brawl

"That's where the battles will move to — the state capitals — and where these fundamental freedoms will be won and lost."

Illustrations of ballots in an hour glass, with a small amount of red ones in the bottom and many more blue ones above

Policymaking

A leaked draft Supreme Court opinion showing the justices are poised to overturn Roe v. Wade has injected new urgency into midterm races across the country. Why it matters: Removing federal protection for abortion rights is likely to jumpstart voters of both parties, and bring heightened scrutiny to some previously sleepy races.

With America in a pandemic lull, communities across the country are choosing to shut down COVID testing and vaccination sites, even as experts warn that another wave could be on the horizon.

Why it matters: The Omicron surge showed how our defenses can be quickly overwhelmed, but many places are scaling back anyway.

These latest shifts are often taking place in more solidly Democratic areas that have prided themselves on their pandemic response so far.

Driving the news: Colorado announced last week its intention to close 14 state-run testing and vaccination sites by the end of the month, and it ended a program to ship at-home rapid tests to residents.

That means definitive PCR tests and vaccines in the state — including boosters — will more often need to come from battle-weary health care providers moving forward.

New strategies are needed because vaccine demand is plummeting, ​​Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesperson Kristen Stewart told Axios.

Minnesota is similarly preparing to shift into an "endemic" phase of pandemic management by finalizing plans to close community testing and vaccination sites.

Gov. Tim Walz told Axios the state will do so "with the ability to pop them out almost immediately should we need them again."

"What happens if we have to come back here in April, May or August whenever the next surge comes?" he added. "How do we properly scale back up?"

Austin, Texas, has closed at least three testing sites run by Austin Public Health since mid-February "to meet the evolving needs of our communities and in response to declining testing demand."

At Omicron's peak, APH teams administered more than 5,500 tests in just three days, but by mid-February, the weekly figure dropped to just 410.

"Moving away from mass testing and vaccination sites allows APH to return to its core mission — serving as a safety net provider," APH officials wrote in an email to Axios.

The big picture: There might not be relief from the federal government if another surge comes, as the Biden administration sounded the alarm that it doesn't have the funding to secure fourth vaccine doses for many Americans should they become necessary, the Washington Post reports.

Plus, falling demand is causing testing manufacturers to cut back production — just like last year, per Politico.

Worth noting: The country should have significant built-in immunity to the more-transmissible Omicron subvariant driving concerns of another wave, thanks to the past winter's sky-high caseloads.

"[H]opefully, when we do — and I think it will be that we do — see an uptick [in cases], hopefully, it won't be accompanied by an increase in hospitalizations," Anthony Fauci told the Post this week.

What they're saying: Last week, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said during a press conference that the pandemic is entering "the next phase of individual responsibility, preparedness and prosperity" as the state announced it would move "from crisis response to disease management."

"[I]n most instances individual decision-making and risk assessment is the appropriate path forward," read a North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services document on the plan.

The bottom line: As Americans start returning to normal life en masse, officials across the country are once again similarly shifting policy — and hoping it sticks this time.

Axios' John Frank, Katie Peralta Soloff, Asher Price and Torey Van Oot contributed to this report.

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The U.S. powers down its COVID defenses

Many communities are charging headlong into a new normal.

COVID-19

Coronavirus

Public health

With America in a pandemic lull, communities across the country are choosing to shut down COVID testing and vaccination sites, even as experts warn that <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="another wave" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/omicron-subvariant-sparks-reopening-jitters-76a976ec-0032-46bf-bf34-cfd96e8ff7cc.html" data-vars-content-id="c5a27f37-bcf1-43a7-9851-9d483bf32e5b" data-vars-headline="The U.S. powers down its COVID defenses" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/omicron-subvariant-sparks-reopening-jitters-76a976ec-0032-46bf-bf34-cfd96e8ff7cc.html" target="_self">another wave</a> could be on the horizon.Why it matters: The Omicron surge showed how <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="our defenses can be quickly overwhelmed" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/biden-covid-omicron-falling-behind-13b12a1f-b185-473c-ac5c-cf5a50892149.html" data-vars-content-id="c5a27f37-bcf1-43a7-9851-9d483bf32e5b" data-vars-headline="The U.S. powers down its COVID defenses" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/biden-covid-omicron-falling-behind-13b12a1f-b185-473c-ac5c-cf5a50892149.html" target="_self">our defenses can be quickly overwhelmed</a>, but many places are scaling back anyway.

The U.S. faces a range of health care flashpoints — unaffordable drugs, opioids, vaping — as we debate whether to adopt universal care. For now, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, but Republicans want to issue it a final death blow.

Health

The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday and send the question of abortion rights back to the states kickstarted a period of legal uncertainty that effectively halted abortion access across some red states.

Why it matters: For many Americans, especially those residing in the bluest parts of red states, abortions might not technically become illegal for a few more weeks — but they've instantly become almost impossible to obtain.

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed that the state's "trigger" law will come into effect a month after the Supreme Court's official judgment, but noted that "some prosecutors may choose to immediately pursue criminal prosecutions based on violations of Texas abortion prohibitions predating Roe that were never repealed by the Texas Legislature."

That led Whole Woman's Health, America's largest independent abortion provider, to choose to stop abortions at its four clinics in the state, per the Texas Tribune.

In Tennessee, which also has a "trigger" law, Attorney General Herbert Slatery asked the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately end a stay on the state's separate 2020 law that would outlaw abortions after 6 weeks — a move that would effectively criminalize the procedure in most instances.

Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi told WPLN in a statement that it expects the stay to be lifted and has stopped offering abortions in the state as a result.

The other side: Blue cities in these states are discussing implementing policies of their own in an attempt to offer their citizens some level of abortion access, which Axios' Oriana Gonzalez previewed earlier this month.

In Austin, city council members Chito Vela and Vanessa Fuentes called for a special meeting to decriminalize abortion, part of a measure that would make enforcing Texas’ abortion ban of the lowest priority for Austin police. The move also would restrict the use of city funds and staff for investigations into abortions.

A spokesperson for Vela’s office previously told Axios that his office has been in contact with lawmakers in several other cities, including Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, who are interested in advancing similar measures.

Nashville Councilmember Freddie O'Connell tells Axios he is studying how the city could create an abortion access fund to provide ways for city residents to legally get abortions in other states. The city's district attorney has also said he won't prosecute abortions, although state law allows for a special prosecutor on certain charges.

The bottom line: More than anywhere else in America, residents of cities like Austin and Nashville will face the biggest shock from the Supreme Court's decision — with their immediate access to abortion cut off almost overnight.

Axios' Nicole Cobler, Nate Rau and Adam Tamburin contributed to this story.

Austin

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A daily look at the most significant and interesting stories affecting Austin. Written by Nicole Cobler and Asher Price.

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Post-Roe legal turmoil hits hardest for blue cities in red America

Cities like Austin and Nashville faced the biggest shock from the decision.

Illustration of a small blue megaphone against a red background.

The Supreme Court&#x27;s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday and send the question of abortion rights back to the states kickstarted a period of legal uncertainty that effectively halted abortion access across some red states.Why it matters: For many Americans, especially those residing in the bluest parts of red states, abortions might not technically become illegal for a few more weeks — but they&#x27;ve instantly become almost impossible to obtain.

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