Up First from NPR - Arizona Abortion Law Repeal, Police Tactics On Campus, Trump On The Trail

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Arizona lawmakers have repealed a Civil War-era law that bans nearly all abortions. The police clearing pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses are doing their jobs under intense scrutiny. And Donald Trump's New York criminal trial takes Wednesdays off, so he spent the day campaigning in two swing states.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Gigi Douban, Larry Kaplow, Megan Pratz, Elana Perl Lisa Thomson and Ben Adler. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Lilly Quiroz. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Arizona lawmakers voted to repeal an 1864 abortion ban in favor of a 21st century version. The old ban may still briefly take effect. How much will the debate affect ballot measures on abortion? The state is likely to see this fall. I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Police say they break up campus protests only when somebody asks them to come in. What have they learned about how to do it peacefully? There's been a lot of lessons from the 60s and 70s, but most recently from the summer of 2020,

of how you diffuse demonstrations that are illegal. Also, Donald Trump gets each Wednesday off from his criminal trial in New York. And this week, he spent his free day campaigning for president. What's his pitch to voters? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad.

From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Arizona lawmakers have repealed an abortion law from the Civil War. That 1864 law is older than the state of Arizona and bans almost all abortions. It became a center of national debate when Arizona State Supreme Court said it was still in effect. The Arizona legislature has narrowly voted to repeal it. A few Republicans joined all Democrats to make a majority, but the law is not quite entirely dead. Ben Giles with member station KJZZ in Phoenix is covering this.

Hey there, Ben. Hi, Steve. How'd it go yesterday in the Arizona State Senate? Oh, it was feisty. The gallery was packed with abortion rights supporters and lots of opponents. Debate was interrupted at times by cheers and jeers. Republicans hold a narrow one-vote majority in that chamber, but two Republicans

bucked that majority, joined all of Senate Democrats to repeal the territorial ban 16-14. Democrats like Senator Ava Birch said it's archaic and it's not what the majority of Arizonans want. I don't want us honoring laws about women written during a time when women were forbidden from voting because their voices were considered inferior to men. Similar legislation also passed the House last week, another close vote in a chamber controlled by Republicans, and Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs's office says she'll sign that bill this afternoon. Ben, I'm interested that the vast majority of Republicans stuck with this 1864 ban, even though many national figures in their

party had said, this is too extreme, it's not a political winner, we should get rid of it. Yeah, this has really revealed a schism in the Republican Party in Arizona. You saw national leaders like former President Donald Trump, they've called on Republican state lawmakers to fix the law, to repeal it. But rank and file Republicans like Senator Jake Hoffman, he leads the local version of the Freedom Caucus, they weren't listening to Trump. He said the 1864 ban was great. Our job as humans, our job as people is to defend and protect the most vulnerable, to defend and protect those who can't speak for themselves. Well, if he likes the 1864 law, I should note that we said it's not quite entirely dead. So what law does apply in Arizona

from now on? Well, the intent of repealing the 1864 ban is to let another 15-week law passed in 2022 stay in effect. But the law that Governor Hobbs is about to sign, it won't take effect for more than 90 days. So the near total ban could at least temporarily be in place. Democratic Attorney General Chris Mays in Planned Parenthood, Arizona, have both asked the state Supreme Court to prevent that from happening. Okay, so the almost total ban might take effect for a minute. Eventually, it becomes a 15-week ban, and that sets the stage for the fall campaign, which will partly be about abortion, won't it? Right. There's an effort in the field in Arizona.

Folks are gathering signatures for a ballot measure to allow abortion to the point of fetal viability up to roughly 24 weeks. That's similar to Florida's November ballot measure that was covered here yesterday. The Arizona measure has already got more than enough signatures to qualify, but complicating things are Republican state lawmakers who may refer other questions about abortion, like a 14-week ban to the ballot. A leaked memo from GOP legislative staff here said that's all part of an effort to dilute support for the proposed 24-week ban. Okay, Ben Giles of KJZZ, thanks so much. Thank you. The police clearing college campuses of protesters are doing their jobs under intense scrutiny. Yes, the authorities

have arrested more than a thousand people over the last two weeks, including dozens more in the last few hours at Dartmouth and Hanover, New Hampshire, and at Stony Brook on New York's Long Island. In Los Angeles, law enforcement and protesters are currently in a standoff at UCLA. In what may be the most prominent case, police cleared protesters from a building at Columbia University in New York. The Columbia protesters against Israel's war in Gaza have made frequent references to protests from 1968, one of many past years when police confronted demonstrators. So what has law enforcement learned from all that experience? NPR law enforcement correspondent Martin Kostya is with us. Martin, good morning. Morning, Steve. Okay, so when do police go onto campuses?

Well, this isn't following a single script around the country. It kind of depends on the location. In New York, for example, NYPD has gone out of its way to tell everyone that it's going in when the universities call them in. At the University of Texas, though, it's kind of a contrast. The state troopers have the support there of Governor Greg Abbott, who's been quite vocal about the need for police there. Generally speaking, though, I think what we can say here is these police departments are definitely waiting for someone else to tell them to go in. Once they have the request, what tactics do they use? Well, again, here it varies. The lay of the land matters a lot. If it's tense in an outdoor area, the police have a lot more leeway to arrest people

peacefully if people want to give themselves up peacefully or vacate the premises. If you have groups fighting each other, though, as we saw at UCLA early yesterday morning, there's this video that the Associated Press has. That kind of a fight calls for cops to be more aggressive. Then you have this striking image of the Hamilton Hall in Columbia, which was a very specific tactical situation because it's a building in which protesters had barricaded doorways with big piles of furniture. They brought this giant truck in with the elevated ramp and went in in a second-story window. People watching that kind of expressed shock at the scale of that operation and the number of officers who were involved in this. But lots of officers is something police say

is important for safety here. Russ Hicks, a longtime police academy trainer in Washington State, told me that more officers on the scene is actually safer, both for the law enforcement and for the protesters. What you don't want is a handful of five officers managing a large crowd because that's when things get out of control. Those are the videos that stick in people's minds. There's these officers maybe using too much force because they don't have enough people.

This was one of the first things that came to my mind when I heard about the massive presence at places like Columbia. It may be safer if done properly. How have their tactics changed over the years? Well, I think in the case of Columbia, for instance, the police action in 68 was just more chaotic. There was tear gas. More than 100 students were injured. One officer suffered a broken back. Operations today tend to be a little more planned, more disciplined.

And I talked about some of these differences with Chuck Wexler, who runs the Police Executive Research Forum. He thinks that in most cases today, protesters are getting more careful treatment by the police. They're given warnings, given the opportunity to leave. Generally speaking, there's been a lot of lessons from the 60s and 70s, but most recently from the summer of 2020 of how you diffuse demonstrations that are illegal. Hasn't there been some violence anyway, Martin? Oh, for sure. I mean, we've seen people tackled to the ground. There've been reports of injuries. That police trainer we heard from a little bit ago, Russ Hicks, he says he's been watching some of the coverage of what's going on. He's definitely seen cops losing their cool in a way that a

trainer would not want to see. And the police are definitely sounding more willing to get into the fray now. The NYPD put out sort of a triumphant video after the operation at Columbia with kind of dramatic music. And it ends with this stark warning for protesters. In the video there, they say, if protesters try this kind of thing again, they will be extracted and taken to jail. Okay. NPR's Martin Koste, thanks for the insights. You're welcome. On Wednesdays, former President Donald Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan goes into recess. That's the one weekday when he can campaign.

Yesterday, he devoted that free time to swing states. He held an afternoon rally in Wisconsin and an evening rally in central Michigan. And NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben was at the Michigan rally. Danielle, good morning. Hey, Steve. Okay, so what are you hearing from the former president? Well, a lot of his speeches yesterday were the standard Trump fare that is nevertheless still shocking. He is very much still spreading the lie saying that he won in 2020. He also did a lot of casting undocumented immigrants as

dangerous yesterday. But he did have a couple newer notes he hit on. One is Gaza. In his Wisconsin speech, he addressed some reports that the Biden administration is considering allowing some displaced Palestinians into the U.S. as refugees. Now, Trump didn't exactly cast it that way. He turned it into a string of falsehoods. He told the crowd that Biden is allowing those people in already, and he cast those Gazans as threats to the rallygoers. As Trump put it, Biden is creating the conditions for another October 7th here in the U.S. I notice he's also complaining that he can't campaign as much as he would like, given that he's in court so many days, which is true.

So how is he focusing when he can campaign? Well, you did see one new focus yesterday. This is a focus on a program called Protect the Vote. It's something that the Trump campaign and the RNC announced late last month. The goal is to get a massive force of poll watchers, of people to go out and watch poll workers, letting people in line in to vote, and also counting ballots just to make sure that everything goes correctly in the Trump and RNC campaign's eyes. Now, they were really pushing this yesterday. There was Pete Hoekstra, the head of the Michigan GOP, went ahead of Trump with his own speech about this. Trump mentioned it. There

were signs up on every port-a-john, people with clipboards signing up volunteers in line. So this is really a new big Republican push. So that's what he wants to focus on. Democrats would like the focus to be on something else, abortion, which is in the news once again this week out of Arizona and elsewhere. How is he addressing what Republicans do see as one of his weaknesses? Well, he's addressing it really by being very nonspecific. In both speeches, he reiterated what he seems to have settled on as his line on abortion, that Roe allowed abortion to be left to the states, which are just deciding what they want to do on their own. And here he was in Michigan talking about that. The votes are

coming up now in certain cases, and it's all starting to work out, and it's going to ultimately bring our country together. It gets the vote down to the people. Now, in that clip, and also in the speeches writ large, he didn't bring up any specific states or instances. He didn't mention any policies he likes or doesn't like. And that's just what he does on abortion right now. It really allows him to just not take a position and to just say states can do what they want. Now, Democrats smell weakness here. They put up billboards in Wisconsin and Michigan near these rally sites yesterday attacking Trump on abortion.

And you can bet that they'll be doing that a lot more. NPR's Daniel Kurtzleben with the sounds and sights at a Trump rally. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. And that's Up First for this Wednesday, May 2nd. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day.

Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and tell you what it means to you in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the Consider This feed. Today's Up First was edited by Gigi Dubon, Larry Kaplow, Megan Pratz, Alana Pearl, Lisa Thompson,

and Ben Adler. It was produced by Ziad Bach, Ben Abrams, and Lily Quiroz. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, who is always so supportive, and our technical director, equally supportive, is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow.