Federal judge allows North Carolina's 20-week abortion ban to be reinstated
CNN
A US district court judge in North Carolina on Wednesday allowed a North Carolina law that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy to be reinstated, lifting an injunction he had placed on the state law prior to the US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In 2019, District Judge William Osteen had stopped the law from being enforced and declared the ban unconstitutional based on Supreme Court precedent. His decision was upheld in 2021 by an appeals court.
But in his order Wednesday, Osteen wrote that "under Dobbs, there is now no constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion, thus depriving the injunction of any constitutional basis from which to enjoin the challenged North Carolina laws regulating abortion."
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.