Politics
Opinion: Is Arizona's abortion ban a return to the 19th century? No, it's actually worse
Arizona’s Supreme Court opened a new front in the war on women’s reproductive rights last week when it resurrected an obscure 1864 law that bans abortion in almost all cases. Critics of the ruling say the court has thrown Arizona back into the 19th century.
That isn’t entirely fair to the 19th century.
The irony of last week’s reactionary ruling is that the author of the original law, William T. Howell, was a progressive by the standards of his time. The politics of Arizona’s current justices bear little resemblance to the 19th century antecedent upon whom their ruling relies.
Although many of Howell’s views have aged poorly, he argued against the era’s prevailing patriarchal dogma and in favor of women’s property rights. Even his abortion law was guided by concerns about maternal health, not the right-wing, religious orthodoxy that animates much of the antiabortion movement today.
If 19th century legal precedent is important, so is historical context. As today’s lawyers and politicians battle over the future of abortion rights, they should understand how and why the original Arizona law came to be. The statute emerged from the upheaval of the Civil War and its little-known front in the West.
As a history professor and the author of a book on this subject, I never expected Howell to become a posthumous standard-bearer for the modern American right. If he’s known at all, it’s as an agent of Abraham Lincoln’s campaign to stamp out slavery in the Southwest and secure Union control of the region.
That story began in the spring of 1861, when a band of migrants from neighboring Texas seized power in southern New Mexico. Proclaiming their affinity for the slave-holding South, they broke from the Union and threw their allegiance behind the newly formed Confederacy. They named their new rebel territory “Arizona.”
Several months later, the Confederacy launched its first invasion of the war — into the Southwest. The rebel invaders routed U.S. troops in several battles, secured military control over Arizona and seized Santa Fe, New Mexico’s capital. Then they planned to march on the gold fields of California.
They never made it. In the spring of 1862, Union troops sabotaged the Confederates’ supplies and finally sent them scrambling back to Texas.
Congress then divided the region into a western half (Arizona) and an eastern half (New Mexico), splitting the erstwhile Confederate Arizona Territory. To strengthen the Union’s tenuous hold, Lincoln poured federal troops and agents into the region. One of them was Howell, newly appointed as an associate justice of Arizona’s territorial Supreme Court.
A veteran jurist and former Michigan legislator, Howell got to work on a new code of laws for Arizona. The final document, now known as the Howell Code, ran to nearly 500 pages. One of its primary purposes was to ensure that slavery would never again take root in Arizona.
Buried within it was the now-infamous abortion ban. The provision was no outlier. In fact, it was copied from California’s legal code, one of many such laws passed by states and territories in the 1860s and ’70s.
From the colonial era into the early 19th century, abortions had been commonly administered and rarely criminalized. Benjamin Franklin even included a recipe for an abortifacient in a math textbook, of all places. Abortions before “quickening” — within roughly the first four or five months of pregnancy — were considered “the purview of women” rather than the law, according to the historian Sarah Handley-Cousins. Even the Catholic Church “implicitly accepted” abortions before quickening, the historian Leslie J. Reagan has noted.
The Howell Code, then, marked a departure from a more permissive approach to abortion. Even so, the antiabortion laws of the mid-19th century were generally born of a sincere concern for women’s health that is absent from today’s legislation. Tellingly, Arizona’s original antiabortion clause appeared within a provision on poisoning. The underlying premise was that abortions posed health risks to women, who were seen as victims and not held legally liable for the medical procedures performed on them.
Howell himself had a woman’s health on his mind at the time. Shortly after drafting the code, he rushed back to Michigan to be at the bedside of his ill wife. She survived, and Howell remained in Michigan, never seeing his code put into practice.
The judge had previously defended women’s right to property in their own name rather than subsumed under her husband’s. He also advocated free public schools and opposed capital punishment (though executions were allowed for certain crimes under the Howell Code).
Howell is no progressive poster child by today’s standards. He was in many ways a man of his time. And his code, written hastily in his provisional courtroom — an adobe shack adjoining a horse corral — reflected some of the prevailing prejudices of the early American frontier, imposing numerous restrictions on people who weren’t white.
But Howell is nevertheless an awkward antecedent for today’s antiabortion movement. If Arizona’s 21st century Supreme Court justices wish to exhume an obscure 19th century predecessor from the recesses of history, that’s their prerogative. But they should understand that even he is misaligned with their extreme politics.
Kevin Waite is an associate professor of history at Durham University and the author of “West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire.”
Politics
JD Vance says Trump is ‘locked and loaded’ to restart military campaign against Iran if nuclear talks fail
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Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is still pursuing a diplomatic deal with Iran but remains “locked and loaded” to restart the military campaign if nuclear talks collapse.
“It takes two to tango,” Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing. “We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.
“So as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded,” Vance added. “We don’t want to go down that pathway. But the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.”
The administration sees two paths forward, according to Vance: a negotiated agreement that permanently blocks Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, or renewed U.S. military action.
VANCE WARNS IRAN THAT ‘ANOTHER OPTION ON THE TABLE’ IF NUCLEAR DEAL NOT REACHED
Vice President JD Vance spoke during a news conference on anti-fraud initiatives in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on May 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration warned states they could lose Medicaid funding if they fail to comply with federal anti-fraud statutes. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We think the Iranians want to make a deal,” Vance said. “The president of the United States has asked us to negotiate in good faith. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
But Vance warned that diplomacy will not come at the cost of Trump’s core demand that Tehran never obtain a nuclear weapon.
“There’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America’s objectives,” Vance said. “But that’s not what the president wants. And I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either.”
TRUMP WARNS IRAN’S ‘CLOCK IS TICKING’: MOVE ‘FAST’ OR ‘THERE WON’T BE ANYTHING LEFT’
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media after returning to the White House on May 15, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is returning to Washington from his trip to China, where he and President Xi addressed ways to enhance bilateral economic cooperation and investment, and agreed that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. ( (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The exchange came after Trump said he was just an hour away from ordering fresh attacks on Iran on Monday night.
“We were getting ready to do a very major attack [Tuesday], and I put it off for a little while — hopefully maybe forever,” Trump said, “because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran, and we’ll see what they amount to.”
“There seems to be a very good chance that they can work something out,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If we can do that without bombing the hell out of them, I’d be very happy.”
The announcement marked the latest shift in Trump’s handling of the fragile ceasefire reached in mid-April. For weeks, the president has warned Iran that fighting could resume if it did not accept a deal, while repeatedly setting deadlines and then backing away from them.
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
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Over the weekend, Trump warned that “the Clock is Ticking” and said Iran needed to move “FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”
Trump first disclosed the pause in a social media post Monday, saying he had ordered the U.S. military to be ready “to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if an acceptable deal is not reached.
Politics
Hilton and Becerra lead in a tightening race in final weeks of California governor’s campaign, poll shows
Former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra remains the top Democrat in the California governor’s race despite being targeted by a barrage of negative political ads and enduring sharp attacks from his rival candidates during recent debates, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the state Democratic Party.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democrat who is shattering self-funding records for statewide office, has been flooding the television airwaves, internet and social media with ads ripping Becerra’s long record in public office, as well as for accepting campaign donations from oil giant Chevron. But, thus far, that has not been enough for Steyer to overtake Becerra.
The survey found that 21% of likely voters backed Becerra, who also served in Congress and as California’s attorney general, while 15% backed Steyer. Among the other top Democrats: Former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter received 7%; San José Mayor Matt Mahan came in at 4%; and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa registered at 1%.
Becerra on Tuesday said he believes he has climbed in the polls because voters are now paying attention to the race.
“They’re really looking closely at who’s out there, and I think I’ve been one of the beneficiaries of folks looking for a place that they can feel comfortable, where they can trust,” Becerra told reporters after a campaign event in South Los Angeles. “I think more and more as people look at the candidates, they’re going to start to crystallize behind somebody who won’t need training wheels, as I say, when they get into the governor’s office and can hit the ground running, day one.”
He said he thinks Steyer’s attacks aren’t working because Californians are skeptical of the billionaire.
“He’s spending like no one before, and he’s hitting like no one before, and so far, it hasn’t made a difference,” Becerra said. “We continue to surge, even after weeks of his barrage of lies and attacks…. California voters are not anxious to have someone who wants to buy the office.”
Leading all candidates in the race was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, who was supported by 22% of likely voters. His top GOP challenger, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, was backed by 10%, the poll showed.
While Hilton and Becerra right now appear to be the likeliest candidates to finish in the top two in California’s June 2 primary, which is required to advance to the November general election, there still remains plenty of time for political fortunes and voter support to rise or fall. Ballots were mailed to the state’s 23.1 million registered voters and early voting sites opened earlier this month, but most Californians have not sent them in thus far.
For Becerra, the strong poll results indicate an astounding turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead just weeks ago. In early April, the California Democratic Party tracking poll showed Becerra with support from just 4% of likely voters. That changed after then-Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been the front-running Democrat in the race, withdrew from the campaign and resigned from Congress after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.
The California Democratic Party launched a series of tracking polls in March after leaders and allies grew increasingly concerned that Republicans would win the top two spots in the primary, shutting the party out of the November general election. This prospect, while statistically possible given the crowded field of candidates running for governor, has grown increasingly less likely as California voters finally focused on the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Under California’s top-two primary system, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their political party or affiliation.
The poll of 1,200 likely voters took place between May 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of 2.83% in either direction.
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HEBRON, KY – Ed Gallrein, the Republican congressional candidate backed by President Donald Trump who is challenging Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky for the GOP nomination, landed extra firepower on the eve of the state’s primary.
Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, was joined on the campaign trail Monday by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Massie has long been one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in Congress and the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, in the northeastern part of the state, the latest test of Trump’s immense grip over the GOP.
“President Trump needs reinforcements, and that’s what war fighters do. They stand behind leaders and have their back,” Hegseth said at an event organized by America First Works, a Trump-aligned nonprofit political advocacy group.
TRUMP SCORES MAJOR PRIMARY VICTORY AS CASSIDY OUSTED IN LOUSIANA
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, joins former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, at an event on the eve of Kentucky’s primary, in Hebron, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. Gallrein is backed by President Donald Trump as he primary challenges Rep. Thomas Massie for the GOP nomination in the state’s fourth congressional district. (Jessica Sonkin/Fox News)
Massie, a libertarian-minded lawmaker who repeatedly takes aim at the president over foreign policy, including the Iran war and unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, also successfully pushed for the release of government files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Hegseth argued that Massie’s record is one of “too much grandstanding, too few great votes, years of acting like being difficult is the same thing as being courageous. It’s not. Real courage means stepping up when the mission matters most, when we need that tough vote to beat left-wing lunatic Democrats the most.”
“President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most,” Hegseth added.
Hegseth’s remarks, which came soon after a stop at nearby Fort Campbell to award medals for service members, were rare for the civilian head of the nation’s military. Defense secretaries have traditionally avoided appearing at political events.
Ahead of the stop, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth would appear only “in his personal capacity” and that “no taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit.”
Hegseth noted the unusual appearance.
“I have to say up front, for the lawyers, that I’m here in my personal capacity as a private citizen, a fellow American, and a fellow combat veteran.”
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But Massie, who’s locked in a competitive clash with Gallrein in what’s become the most expensive congressional primary in history, claimed in a Fox News Digital interview on Monday that Hegseth’s stop “shows that I’m up in the polls. They wouldn’t be sending the Secretary of War to my congressional district if I weren’t.”
“I think it also shows I’m tougher than Iran, and I don’t even have a nuclear weapon. I mean, they are all in at this race. It’s basically a national race at this point, the most expensive race primary in congressional history, and that’s because, you know, I’m up there, I’m getting things done. I got the Epstein files released, I’m getting legislation in the farm bill, I’m getting legislation passed on the floor, and they want to shut me down,” Massie emphasized.
Gallrein, speaking with Fox News Digital ahead of his event with Hegseth, charged that Massie’s “running against President Trump, and the agenda that has been put forward by the Republican Party.”
Kentucky’s primary is being held two weeks after Indiana’s primary, where Trump-backed challengers ousted five sitting Republican state senators who last December teamed up with Democrats to defeat the president’s push for congressional redistricting in the GOP-dominated Midwestern state.
And the ballot box showdown in Kentucky comes three days after Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was ousted as he sought renomination. The senator came in third in the primary, behind Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and conservative Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming.
Cassidy’s political defeat came five and a half years after he voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House for his role in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters who aimed to upend congressional certification of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
Massie said he “absolutely can” overcome the Trump endorsement of Gallrein. “I’ve got the groundswell here, like my events. I’ve got 100-200 sometimes 300 people show up. My opponent had to cancel events because he couldn’t get enough people, you know, to fill up a Dairy Queen, half a Dairy Queen.”
SCOOP: TRUMP-BACKED FORMER NAVY SEAL LAUNCHES GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGE AGAINST MASSIE
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky campaigns on the eve of his state’s primary, in Mason County, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
The race has become the most expensive in House history in terms of ad spending, with over $32 million shelled out, according to the nationally known ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Much of that money has been shelled out by Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups.
“Here’s the thing, I’ve got nothing against Israel. I just have never voted for foreign aid. When I said America First, I meant it. I don’t vote for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Ukraine. I’ve got a flawless record on this, and I’m not going to ruin it by sending foreign aid to one country,” Massie said as he defended his stance on Israel.
And Massie touted that while Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups have spent tens of millions to take him out, he said, “I’ve got tens of thousands of grassroots donors who are funding me $50 at a time, $20 at a time. We’ve been able to match them to go toe to toe with them on TV using grassroots donors, and it’s really galvanized the nation.”
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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves to speak with the media after the House voted 427-1 to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the release of documents and files at the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Trump has repeatedly targeted Massie in social media posts in the closing days of the primary campaign.
The president said in a video posted to Truth Social on Monday that he hoped Kentucky voters would put Massie “out of business” and that “we’re in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country.”
And Trump praised Gallrein as “a great guy” and “a great patriot.”
But Massie said Trump’s taunts on social media may backfire.
“It shows he’s losing sleep, his reputation is on the line. He really shouldn’t have got involved in this race, because I vote with him 90% of the time,” the congressman said.
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