Politics
Meet Arizona’s most powerful political couple, who are on opposite ends of an abortion ban
Before she voted to repeal Arizona’s near-total abortion ban, state Sen. Shawnna Bolick rose from her seat on the Senate floor to painstakingly detail one woman’s three difficult pregnancies.
The first pregnancy was not viable and would require a dilatation and curettage, known as D&C — which, as the doctor informed the patient, is “like having an abortion” because tissue is removed from the uterus.
The second pregnancy resulted in a healthy baby boy, but required an emergency C-section. The third delivered a baby girl, but demanded 23 weeks of bed rest.
Then Bolick revealed the story’s twist.
“I know the chronicles of these pregnancies quite intimately because they’re all my own,” she said. “None of my pregnancies were easy, and none of them would have been possible without the moral support of my husband.”
And yet the Republican state senator omitted a crucial detail about her husband: that he was part of the reason she had to cast the controversial vote. Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick was part of the court’s four-seat majority that allowed enforcement of an 1864 law prohibiting abortions except when a woman’s life is at risk.
“Justice Bolick made a legal construction decision. That’s what judges do,” said Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy and a staunch opponent of abortion. “Sen. Bolick made a policy decision. That’s what state senators do. They both were carrying out the duty of the position that they hold.”
In an op-ed Tuesday in the Arizona Republic, Clint Bolick said his marriage could easily withstand his wife’s vote: “That caused no marital disharmony because she is a policymaker and I am not.”
By coincidence, Justice Bolick faces a retention vote in November, just as Sen. Bolick is up for election. Both have already felt political backlash over the 1864 law. Will Arizona’s most powerful couple in government also pay a price at the ballot box — one for permitting the abortion ban, the other for ending it?
Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick administers the oath of office to his wife, state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, in July 2023. She was appointed to the seat, to which she seeks election in November.
(Arizona Capitol Television)
The entanglement of politics in the Bolicks’ marriage stretches back long before abortion became a crucial 2024 issue in the battleground state.
After obtaining his law degree from UC Davis in 1982, Clint Bolick, 66, made a name for himself as a constitutional literalist in conservative legal circles across the country and the globe — among them, the Federalist Society and the Goldwater Institute.
“He’s not your typical run-of-the-mill, you know, right-wing Republican,” said Chuck Coughlin, president of HighGround Inc., a Phoenix-based political consulting firm. “He has an intellectual basis — deep intellectual basis — for what he believes in.”
In 2004, Clint Bolick became general counsel for the Alliance for School Choice, where he joined his wife on their mission to change laws to allow parents to use taxpayer money to help pay for their children’s private school education.
“I never reported directly to Clint while he was working at the Alliance … full-time,” Sen. Bolick wrote in a LinkedIn endorsement of her husband. “IF I did I think I would’ve barfed — he’s my husband, but also an important colleague in the school choice movement.”
The state senator, 49, declined an interview request for this story, saying in a text message, “My husband and I both value one another and have had an incredible 24 years of marriage.”
Sen. Shawnna Bolick confers with a colleague in the Senate chambers in April.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
For Sen. Bolick, who describes herself on the social media site X as a wife, mom and school-choice advocate, a career in education policy led her to work in government. Then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a fellow Republican, appointed her to the Arizona Early Childhood Education and Health Board in 2015; he appointed her husband to the state Supreme Court a year later.
She won a seat on the Arizona House of Representatives in 2018. Her profile rose in the wake of the 2020 election, when Arizona was roiled by election denialism, as she sponsored a bill that included a provision to give state legislators the ability to overrule the vote of the people. The bill died in committee.
The Washington Post reported that a couple of months earlier, Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, had emailed then-Rep. Bolick asking her to support a “clean slate of electors.”
Bolick responded with guidance for how to submit claims of voter fraud in Arizona, the Post reported, along with the message, “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!”
The Thomases are close with the Bolick family, according to the Post and the Arizona Mirror, which reported Justice Thomas is godparent to the Bolicks’ son.
When the Arizona Capitol Times in 2019 asked Shawnna Bolick how she and her husband juggled their unique situation, she responded: “We don’t talk much, let’s just say that. Our schedules don’t match up. I can’t even ask him for advice, which stinks because some issues might go to him.”
(For a time, according to the newspaper, the family was also represented in the Arizona executive branch, with their teenage son Ryne in the Governor’s Office of Youth, Faith and Family.)
Last summer, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously appointed Shawnna Bolick to finish a term vacated by Sen. Steve Kaiser, a Republican who resigned amid frustrations with his party’s far-right flank.
Justice Bolick administered his wife’s swearing-in ceremony, she wiping away tears as he looked on with pride.
“Sweetheart, you never cease to amaze me, and I am enormously proud of you,” he said. Given their different roles, he observed, he couldn’t campaign for her or offer legislative advice.
“But there are three things I can do,” he said. “First of all, is to commend you for being one of the most amazing public servants I’ve ever known — and I mean that in the literal and best sense of the word. Second is I can swear you in.” He paused. “And the third is that after I swear you in, I can kiss you — and I don’t normally do that.”
After she swore her oath, he did.
Justice Bolick congratulates his wife, Sen. Bolick, after her swearing-in last summer.
(Arizona Capitol Television)
In a Federalist Society keynote address two years ago at Arizona’s Waldorf Hotel, Justice Bolick described originalism and federalism — the division of power between national and local governments — as two of his “favorite ‘isms.’”
“We are oath-bound to give those words their original public meaning,” he said, adding, “We do not have one constitution, we have 51 constitutions. … We are empowered to give our constitutions a meaning that provides greater protection for individual liberty than is recognized at the federal level, but not less.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, the Arizona Legislature passed a law — which Shawnna Bolick co-sponsored — that would restrict abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But just five months after she was sworn into office as a senator, the Arizona Supreme Court took up the case examining whether the limited abortion ban superseded the 1864 law.
“Having a Supreme Court justice married to a key state legislator causes all sorts of problems,” said Paul Weich, a semiretired lawyer and Arizona politics watcher who runs two blogs covering the state court and Legislature.
When asked by a CBS station whether he should recuse himself from the case, Justice Bolick replied: “I will recuse in any challenge to the constitutionality of a law in which I am aware that my wife was a prime sponsor or prominently identified as a supporter or opponent. Otherwise, I will not.”
“This case involves statutory interpretation and does not challenge the constitutionality of the 15-week abortion limit, and thus presents no conflict of interest,” he wrote. “I therefore have an ethical duty to participate.”
The court issued its ruling on the 1864 ban in April. In his op-ed, Justice Bolick asserted that the court’s opinion was “solidly grounded in law.” He pointed to previous court decisions that he said angered activists from both parties.
“In our state, the people have the ultimate lawmaking power, including the ability to overturn our decisions,” he wrote. “But we cannot afford to have conscientious judges voted out for unpopular decisions.”
Already, activists have mounted an effort to unseat him in his upcoming retention election — an attempt the justice decried in his op-ed. Until recently, the justice said he was undecided whether he would seek retention. But he finally said he would, saying he intended to defend the judiciary’s independence.
“As a judge I have never ruled on the basis of politics — apparently, to my current detriment,” he wrote. “I would rather go down in electoral flames than to compromise my constitutional oath.”
Sen. Bolick reposted her husband’s article on X, writing, “Just like November 2018, I look forward to campaigning to retain my husband as the only appointed independent to our state’s highest court. Don’t let the Left hijack our independent judiciary we have in AZ.”
Still, Justice Bolick’s literalist reading of the law put his wife in a tricky predicament. Facing her first election as senator in north Phoenix, one of the most closely divided swing districts in the state, she must appeal both to her Republican base and Democrats who prefer a more moderate stance on abortion.
The Arizona Senate in session in April.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Knowing that political reality, she stood before her colleagues May 1 in the Senate, where Republicans hold a two-seat majority, and launched into her story of three pregnancies.
“She is a notoriously private person,” said Coughlin. “I mean, I have not seen her ever, ever, ever, ever expose her personal feelings as she did in that 20-minute speech on the floor. All of us were looking at each other, going, ‘What is going on? What is this about?’”
Growing restless, her Republican colleagues called multiple times for a “point of order,” interrupting her speech to ask how it pertained to the matter at hand — the 1864 abortion law.
“The comments are germane because not every pregnancy is the same,” she replied.
She went on to criticize some Planned Parenthood practices before pivoting back to the proposed repeal of the law. When she said she’d vote for repeal, the chamber erupted with jeers. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed the bill into law.
Bolick’s opponent in the Senate race, Democratic House Rep. Judy Schwiebert, said she was “moved” by Bolick’s remarks. Explaining her own passionate support for abortion access, Schwiebert cited her son and daughter-in-law; they tried to have a child through in vitro fertilization, only for the pregnancy to become nonviable and require an abortion.
But Schwiebert said she was disappointed that Bolick targeted abortion providers in her speech.
Nancy Gillenwater of Scottsdale rallies with others against the Arizona abortion ban in April.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“I suppose that she was trying to thread a needle of explaining her vote to get sympathy or support from Democratic voters, but at the same time, trying to bash Planned Parenthood types of organizations, because that plays well with her base,” Schwiebert said. “So it was a little bit of a convoluted speech, unfortunately, because of that for me.”
Coughlin, of the political consulting firm in Phoenix, believed Sen. Bolick’s speech was genuine but predicted it would not help her in November.
“My money’s on Schwiebert winning that race,” he said.
He also predicted that a proposed ballot measure, which would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution, would pass in Bolick’s district.
Former President Trump offered his impersonation of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an event in Washington, D.C., this week, drawing laughter from a crowd as he pretended to be talking about the development of rockets.
Trump told an audience at the annual Moms for Liberty conference Thursday that Musk gave him a “tremendous endorsement” and described him as a “very different kind of a guy as he thinks [when] he talks.”
“With Elon, it’s like, ‘well, you know, I’m doing a new stainless steel hub that can get us around the engines much quicker,’” Trump said. “’Because there’s a problem with the type of engine going into space nowadays.’”
“’But in the end I think we can have a good hookup because of the new foils that are coming up,’” Trump joked.
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Former President Trump gives his impersonation of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“And I’m hearing everything that’s going through his mind. But he is like, he’s a super genius guy,” Trump added.
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Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X Holdings Corp., speaks at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in May in Beverly Hills, California. Musk and Trump recently participated in an interview on X. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)
The former president recently did a lengthy interview in mid-August with Musk on X and said Thursday that “I think we are going to do another one too.”
President Trump acknowledges Spacex founder Elon Musk after the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“I’m a huge fan of his electric car, I think it’s incredible, his car,” Trump also said. “I think of he does and I’m a big fan of electric, but they don’t go far and they are expensive.”
Days after Vice President Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid, a video — created with the help of artificial intelligence — went viral.
“I … am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate,” a voice that sounded like Harris’ said in the fake audio track used to alter one of her campaign ads. “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire.”
Billionaire Elon Musk — who has endorsed Harris’ Republican opponent, former President Trump— shared the video on X, then clarified two days later that it was actually meant as a parody. His initial tweet had 136 million views. The follow-up calling the video a parody garnered 26 million views.
To Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the incident was no laughing matter, fueling calls for more regulation to combat AI-generated videos with political messages and a fresh debate over the appropriate role for government in trying to contain emerging technology.
On Friday, California lawmakers gave final approval to a bill that would prohibit the distribution of deceptive campaign ads or “election communication” within 120 days of an election. Assembly Bill 2839 targets manipulated content that would harm a candidate’s reputation or electoral prospects along with confidence in an election’s outcome. It’s meant to address videos like the one Musk shared of Harris, though it includes an exception for parody and satire.
“We’re looking at California entering its first-ever election during which disinformation that’s powered by generative AI is going to pollute our information ecosystems like never before and millions of voters are not going to know what images, audio or video they can trust,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz). “So we have to do something.”
Newsom has signaled he will sign the bill, which would take effect immediately, in time for the November election.
The legislation updates a California law that bars people from distributing deceptive audio or visual media that intends to harm a candidate’s reputation or deceive a voter within 60 days of an election. State lawmakers say the law needs to be strengthened during an election cycle in which people are already flooding social media with digitally altered videos and photos known as deepfakes.
The use of deepfakes to spread misinformation has concerned lawmakers and regulators during previous election cycles. These fears increased after the release of new AI-powered tools, such as chatbots that can rapidly generate images and videos. From fake robocalls to bogus celebrity endorsement of candidates, AI-generated content is testing tech platforms and lawmakers.
Under AB 2839, a candidate, election committee or elections official could seek a court order to get deepfakes pulled down. They could also sue the person who distributed or republished the deceptive material for damages.
The legislation also applies to deceptive media posted 60 days after the election, including content that falsely portrays a voting machine, ballot, voting site or other election-related property in a way that is likely to undermine the confidence in the outcome of elections.
It doesn’t apply to satire or parody that’s labeled as such, or to broadcast stations if they inform viewers that what is depicted doesn’t accurately represent a speech or event.
Tech industry groups oppose AB 2839, along with other bills that target online platforms for not properly moderating deceptive election content or labeling AI-generated content.
“It will result in the chilling and blocking of constitutionally protected free speech,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel for NetChoice. The group’s members include Google, X and Snap as well as Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and other tech giants.
Online platforms have their own rules about manipulated media and political ads, but their policies can differ.
Unlike Meta and X, TikTok doesn’t allow political ads and says it may remove even labeled AI-generated content if it depicts a public figure such as a celebrity “when used for political or commercial endorsements.” Truth Social, a platform created by Trump, doesn’t address manipulated media in its rules about what’s not allowed on its platform.
Federal and state regulators are already cracking down on AI-generated content.
The Federal Communications Commission in May proposed a $6-million fine against Steve Kramer, a Democratic political consultant behind a robocall that used AI to impersonate President Biden’s voice. The fake call discouraged participation in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary in January. Kramer, who told NBC News he planned the call to bring attention to the dangers of AI in politics, also faces criminal charges of felony voter suppression and misdemeanor impersonation of a candidate.
Szabo said current laws are enough to address concerns about election deepfakes. NetChoice has sued various states to stop some laws aimed at protecting children on social media, alleging they violate free speech protections under the 1st Amendment.
“Just creating a new law doesn’t do anything to stop the bad behavior, you actually need to enforce laws,” Szabo said.
More than two dozen states, including Washington, Arizona and Oregon, have enacted, passed or are working on legislation to regulate deepfakes, according to the consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.
In 2019, California instituted a law aimed at combating manipulated media after a video that made it appear as if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was drunk went viral on social media. Enforcing that law has been a challenge.
“We did have to water it down,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who authored the bill. “It attracted a lot of attention to the potential risks of this technology, but I was worried that it really, at the end of the day, didn’t do a lot.”
Rather than take legal action, said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, political candidates might choose to debunk a deepfake or even ignore it to limit its spread. By the time they could go through the court system, the content might already have gone viral.
“These laws are important because of the message they send. They teach us something,” she said, adding that they inform people who share deepfakes that there are costs.
This year, lawmakers worked with the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, a project of the nonprofit California Common Cause, on several bills to address political deepfakes.
Some target online platforms that have been shielded under federal law from being held liable for content posted by users.
Berman introduced a bill that requires an online platform with at least 1 million California users to remove or label certain deceptive election-related content within 120 days of an election. The platforms would have to take action no later than 72 hours after a user reports the post. Under AB 2655, which passed the Legislature Wednesday, the platforms would also need procedures for identifying, removing and labeling fake content. It also doesn’t apply to parody or satire or news outlets that meet certain requirements.
Another bill, co-authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), requires online platforms to label AI-generated content. While NetChoice and TechNet, another industry group, oppose the bill, ChatGPT maker OpenAI is supporting AB 3211, Reuters reported.
The two bills, though, wouldn’t take effect until after the election, underscoring the challenges with passing new laws as technology advances rapidly.
“Part of my hope with introducing the bill is the attention that it creates, and hopefully the pressure that it puts on the social media platforms to behave right now,” Berman said.
Politics
'For election purposes': Critics balk at Harris' claim she will 'enforce our laws' at southern border
Vice President Kamala Harris made a 180-degree turn on her opinion about prosecuting illegal border crossings during her long-awaited first interview since becoming the Democratic Party’s official nominee for president.
CNN anchor Dana Bash questioned Harris Thursday about whether she still believed illegal border crossings should be prosecuted, something Harris indicated she was against while running her 2019 campaign to become president.
“I believe there should be consequence,” Harris told Bash. “We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally. … And let’s be clear, in this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws. And I would enforce our laws as president going forward.”
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Unaccompanied minors walk toward U.S. Border Patrol vehicles after crossing over from Mexico May 9, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Harris’ comments Thursday contrasted with what she has said and done in the past regarding illegal immigration, particularly when it comes to illegal border crossings.
Besides indicating during a nationally televised debate that she would not pursue people who have crossed the border illegally for prosecution, she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015 that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She also posted the claim on social media. And in a riff with the late Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, during a 2019 episode of “The View,” Harris reiterated her stance.
“I would not make it a crime punishable by jail,” she said. “It should be a civil enforcement issue but not a criminal enforcement issue.”
As a U.S. senator, Harris sought to strip funding from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And as California’s attorney general, she instructed local law enforcement not to adhere to ICE detainers when they request that someone who has committed a crime and crossed the border illegally be held until they can be taken into custody to initiate deportation procedures.
Harris has also compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan.
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Fox News Digital spoke to critics who called Harris’ comments “insincere” and “for election purposes” only. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital spoke to two conservative immigration law experts who called her comments “insincere” and “for election purposes” only.
“If someone cares about enforcing our laws as they pertain to the border, you would think that they would be a part of and lead an administration that prosecutes sufficient offenses related to crossing the border unlawfully,” said Gene Hamilton, the director of America First Legal, a right-wing legal group founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
“The Department of Justice’s prosecution for border-related offenses are at rock bottom. They are lower than even the Obama years, and that’s saying something.”
Hamilton, who served as counselor to the attorney general at the Department of Justice under former President Trump, argued a key metric in determining how seriously an administration is taking border security is the number of illegal border crossings compared to the number of individuals deported.
Last year, there were 2.4 million illegal border crossings, according to Department of Justice data, Hamilton said.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department prosecuted around 20,000 of those violations.
“You know, the numbers — the numbers speak for themselves,” Hamilton argued. He also pointed out that in 2019, under Trump, there were fewer illegal border crossings than the country faced in 2023, but the Trump administration still prosecuted more than five times the number of illegal border crossers than the Biden-Harris administration in 2023.
“As she said last night in her interview, her values have not changed. She said that over and over again,” said Lora Ries, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. “She is telling her base, ‘Look, don’t worry about what the campaign is saying right now. We just have to say that to try and get elected. But my values have not changed.’”
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Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows when telling CNN’s Dana Bash that her “values haven’t changed” after making complete reversals on far-left positions she held in 2019. (Screenshot/CNN)
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Ries slammed the Biden-Harris administration for “gaslighting” the American public but argued the Harris campaign “is taking it to another level” by denying Harris was tapped to be the border czar and pretending as if she is not in power and able to enact tougher measures at the border.
“She’s in power right now. If she truly meant it, she would do it now, and she’s not. But to pretend like you’re not in power and not in office right now is a higher level of gaslighting,” said Ries. “I think this is just, you know, for election purposes.”
Hamilton echoed that statement, calling Harris’ comments Thursday “insincere.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign repeatedly for comment but did not receive a response.
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