If court curtails use of statute in connection with January 6, it could eliminate two of the four charges against Donald Trump

The US supreme court expressed concern on Tuesday with prosecutors using an obstruction statute to charge hundreds of January 6 Capitol riot defendants, with the justices leaning towards a position that could jeopardize those prosecutions and the criminal case against Donald Trump .

The Trump case was not mentioned at the argument. But a decision curtailing the use of the obstruction statute in connection with the Capitol attack could eliminate two of the four charges against the former president.

Supreme court ruling left more than 90% of state’s surface waters with no pollution protections, since they don’t run continuously

New Mexico’s rivers, which include the Rio Grande, Gila, San Juan and Pecos, are America’s most threatened waterways, according to a new report. This is largely due to a 2023 US supreme court decision that left more than 90% of the state’s surface waters without federal protections from industrial pollution, according to state officials.

“Virtually all the rivers in New Mexico are losing clean water protections,” said Matt Rice, the south-west regional director of American Rivers, the conservation group that publishes the annual list . “It has the most to lose, and the threat is particularly acute there.”

Conservatives are taking legal action against public and private organizations that aim to aid women and people of color

Last year’s supreme court decision to ban affirmative action in college and university admissions was a watershed moment for far-right conservative activists and groups, who have used the momentum to target not only public institutions, but also private organizations that aim to aid women and people of color.

Many of the targeted groups are being sued by complainants who allege that they have been discriminated against because they do not fit diversity requirements. In some cases, the would-be applicants are engaging in presumptive suing – alleging the organizations have engaged in discriminatory behavior without even applying.

Ex-president who boasts about Roe’s fall say matter is ‘about states’ rights’ but concedes revived 160-year-old ban goes too far

Insisting abortion rights should be left to state governments, Donald Trump nonetheless said the rightwing Arizona supreme court went too far when it ruled on Tuesday that a 160-year-old near-total ban could be enforced.

“Yeah, they did [go too far],” Trump said on Wednesday to reporters at an airport in Atlanta, Georgia. “That’ll be straightened out, and as you know it’s all about states’ rights.”

Three men granted early releases but review of legality of a federal charge against them could see them ordered to return to prison

Several January 6 rioters have won early release from their sentences ahead of a key supreme court review of the legality of a specific federal charge against them – a review that could, in turn, see them ordered to return to prison.

A decision on the legal issue, which revolves around how January 6 prosecutors distinguished between conduct qualifying as “obstructing an official proceeding” of Congress and misdemeanor offenses, including shouting to interrupt a congressional hearing, is not expected until the summer, according to the Washington Post .

The UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom has increased its spending and is forging ties with key MPs

A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up ­policy briefings for politicians.

The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.

The conservative obsession with purity and control is being achieved by increasingly punitive means

The US supreme court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas cited the Comstock Act, named after the 19th-century anti-vice campaigner Anthony Comstock, in last week’s case about access to the abortion pill mifepristone. If you don’t know who Anthony Comstock was or what his law did, that might not have alarmed you. But it should have.

The Comstock Law has come up a lot lately, and it’s part of the Republican war on sex, and to put it that way might sound overly dramatic. But there is such a war, and parts of it – against sex education, against access to birth control, against the healthcare provider Planned Parenthood and of course against abortion – have long been out in the open along with a war against the rights of women and on the rights and very existence of queer and trans people.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

Three women share their stories of getting medication abortions, and their thoughts on that access being curtailed

Mercy’s periods had always been very regular, so when she missed one in 2016, she immediately took a pregnancy test. It was positive, and she managed to get an appointment at an abortion clinic the next day.

Despite being able to act quickly, she was in her seventh week of pregnancy by the time she could take abortion pills in Ohio – a state that was, at the time, debating banning abortion from the moment fetal cardiac activity is detected (usually around six weeks). Ohio has since enshrined abortion rights in its state constitution following a referendum.

The anti-choice case relies on outlandish legal leaps. And if they can’t win there, they’ll redouble efforts to win the White House

It is a testament to how weak the plaintiffs’ case is that the justices seemed so skeptical. Erin Hawley, a lawyer for the far-right antifeminist litigation shop Alliance Defending Freedom and the spouse of conservative US senator Josh Hawley, usually gets a much warmer reception at One First Street. But in Tuesday’s oral arguments in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v FDA – a lawsuit which seeks to challenge FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, and specifically to reverse regulatory changes that made the drug more easily accessible – she was on the defensive.

The three Democratic appointees, along with Republican justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Roberts, all signaled at least some skepticism of her clients’ claims to legal standing. Amy Coney Barrett, the Trump appointee known for her maximalist religious commitments, struggled to help Hawley establish a convincing merits case to restrict access to the drug. And the far-right extremists Sam Alito and Thomas Gorsuch spent their question time signalling their support for the Comstock Act, a long-obscure and once-forgotten 1871 statute that some anti-choice lawyers say could be used to ban abortion nationwide by executive order.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist