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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday signed into law one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans, a measure supporters hope will force the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its 1973 decision sanctioning the procedure.

Under Senate Bill 6, abortion would only be allowed in cases where it's necessary to save the life or preserve the health of the fetus or mother. The law does not allow any exceptions in situations of rape or incest — a line that anti-abortion rights activists and lawmakers have supported in the past.

The measure's supporters expect the law to be challenged by abortion rights activists. It's future is uncertain, as similar attempts to restrict access to abortion services in Ohio, Georgia, and Alabama in the last two years have failed after federal courts struck down local laws.

President Biden's budget proposal fulfills a campaign promise to remove a longstanding ban on federal funding for most abortions known as the Hyde Amendment.

Abortion rights advocates have praised the move; a statement from Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson called the Hyde Amendment "racist, sexist, deeply unjust" and thanked Biden for working to remove it.

Biden reversed his longtime position on Hyde, joining other Democratic hopefuls in saying he would work to overturn it. "If I believe heath care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's zip code," Biden said in June 2019.

Joe Biden is only the second Catholic president of the United States. He's also a supporter of abortion rights — a position at odds with official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, said she hopes for what she describes as a "better dialogue" between church leaders and some rank-and-file Catholics who disagree with aspects of the church's teachings.

Polling suggests a majority of American Catholics support abortion rights in most or all cases and oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday issued a tacit rebuke of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, slamming the Georgia Republican's "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer" for the party.

"Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party."

While McConnell did not name Greene directly, his statement stands as a scathing rebuke of the freshman Republican House member.

The Fox News/talk radio machine — part mob, part cult, part business racket — has come up against a variety of honorable, respected professionals, trying to testify honestly about the abuse of power

But the triumph of ad hominem arguments on the Trump right also has a deeper and darker meaning

Fox News is no longer content to spout pro-Trump propaganda. It must destroy Trump’s opponents, even if they are honorable people. Especially if they are honorable people. The goal is not to dispute their testimony — which, on the facts, seems indisputable — but to discredit them as witnesses and as human beings.

An analysis of clam shells and volcanic rocks from an Italian cave shows that Neanderthals collected shells and pumice from beaches. And due to specific indicators on some of the shells, the researchers also believe Neanderthals waded and dove into the ocean to retrieve shells, meaning they may have been able to swim.

It's fortunate that the shells, as well as the volcanic rock called pumice, were retrieved from the cave and stored at the Italian Institute of Human Paleontology because the cave itself is no longer accessible. Blasting for coastal highway construction buried the cave in the early 1970s.

Shell tools for Neanderthals are rare, and only a few examples of them have been discovered. The majority of tools associated with Neanderthals involve stone spear tips and stone hammers. But there was even less evidence prior to this study that Neanderthals living in Western Europe dove underwater. The study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS.

Abortion opponents were among those most excited by the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in October.

She is considered likely to vote not only to uphold restrictions on the procedure, but also, possibly, even to overturn the existing national right to abortion under the Supreme Court's landmark rulings in Roe v. Wade

A Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — a ban that's impermissible under existing court precedents — is awaiting review by the justices

As the electoral odds facing President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have continued to diverge in national and state polls, there’s at least one area where the divergence has been particularly striking: By early October, one national poll had Biden leading Trump by over 20 points among registered female voters; Trump and Biden were tied among likely male voters

Nationally, women in the U.S. have had the vote for 100 years. For the last 40 of those years, they have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in greater numbers than men have.

It took 60 years for women to vote in the same proportion as men. In 1980, for the first time since the passage of the 19th Amendment, women voted at the same rate as men. That was also the first time they voted noticeably differently from men.

But the cybersecurity expert, who now is director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, says the toughest misinformation threat technology companies face, and can’t solve, is from within the U.S. — disinformation sowed by U.S. politicians, and one figure, in particular.

“The most important disinformation this cycle is coming from domestic sources, and that is huge problem for technology companies,” Stamos said. “They are loathe to wade into democratic processes in the U.S.”

f President Trump goes to a White House podium and declares victory, it will be covered by every major news organization.

The death of the iconic Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has shocked the political world, altered the contours of the upcoming election and induced an overwhelming dread among liberals who fear some basic rights could now be in jeopardy.

it remains unclear whether the Senate will hold a vote before Election Day. If it did, it would represent a colossal act of hypocrisy since many of the same senators refused to even give Barack Obama’s last nominee, Merrick Garland, a hearing, arguing that it was inappropriate to fill a seat on the court in an election year.

But Republicans have the power to force a vote, and barring defections, they could exercise it.

Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Senate, meaning they can only afford to lose a few votes in their push to confirm a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has touched off a partisan brawl in the Senate to confirm President Trump’s nominee to replace her, a vote that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has vowed to hold.

With Democrats all but certain to unite in opposition to Mr. Trump’s nominee

the chance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy seemed like a political lifeline, a chance to mobilize supporters and talk about something, anything, other than the coronavirus that has killed 200,000 Americans.

he has propelled himself, his Republican allies and the country into a breakneck race to confirm a successor to Justice Ginsburg before the Nov. 3 election, bulldozing past the precedent his own party set four years ago in a gamble that the political payoff will outweigh any political cost.

If they act before the election, they may lock in a conservative majority on the court for the years. But if they hold off they may give voters on the right greater incentive to turn out to keep the Senate Republican, ensure Mr. Trump’s re-election and make it more likely that his pick is eventually seated.

“cognitive dissonance.” This term has become familiar, but the rest of Festinger’s theory has been forgotten. Festinger proposed that people do not typically remain in this uncomfortable state. Instead, cognitive dissonance is often resolved by people subconsciously modifying their private views to better align them with their public sentiments, and not the other way around.

This may help explain why, after Trump skeptics cross over and express their support, they seem to be drawn ever further into the fold.

Having rationalized so much already, they are likely to find it less psychologically stressful to wade in further than to stop and ask themselves how they got in so deep.

On a muggy July night in 1917, American journalist Arno Dosch-Fleurot joined the protestors parading along Petrograd’s Nevsky Prospekt when gunshots suddenly rang out. Banners pleading for liberty and freedom crashed to the ground as blood stained the Russian capital’s most fashionable thoroughfare. After diving for cover in a gutter, the New York World correspondent came face-to-face with a Russian officer and asked him what was happening. “The Russians, my countrymen, are idiots,” he replied. “This is a white night of madness.”

“St. Petersburg was a very Western-looking city with much more contact with Western culture than Moscow,” Rappaport tells HISTORY. In addition to a large British population, the city was home to a sizable American community that included employees of major corporations such International Harvester, the Singer Sewing Machine Company and Westinghouse. The American presence only grew after the start of World War I as entrepreneurs arrived to sell weapons to the imperial government.

Empty stomachs, rather than political philosophy, launched the onset of the Russian Revolution, and Rappaport says the spark that ignited the political tinderbox came on March 8, 1917, when tens of thousands of protestors marked International Women’s Day by marching through the streets of Petrograd demanding not just the right to vote—but food for their families. In the ensuing days, the protests grew in size and turned violent as the imperial forces tried to keep order. Courts, police stations and other buildings of the czarist regime were torched. Morgues could not keep up with the flow of bodies, which were flung into mass graves.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history.

But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

State police in body armor and riot gear lined up Friday morning near the Minneapolis police precinct that was set ablaze by protesters overnight following the death of an unarmed black man this week in city officers' custody.

Others tossed fireworks toward the precinct, which is closest to where Floyd was captured on video with an officer kneeling on his neck Monday before he died. Before state police arrived, the precinct was deserted after officers were evacuated Thursday.

A CNN crew has been released from police custody after they were arrested Friday during a live broadcast at the site after clearly identifying themselves to officers. CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was placed in handcuffs while the cameras rolled, shortly followed by producer Bill Kirkos and photojournalist Leonel Mendez.

Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.

China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.

officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike Mr. Trump, the officials said.

Barrett again declined to preview how she would rule on potential cases during her confirmation hearing, as she did for the previous two days, seeking to portray herself as an independent judge without an agenda.

Lindsey Graham seemed to suggest that Barrett would vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act in an upcoming case because of a judicial principle known as severability, defending himself from political attacks in his tough reelection race against Democrat Jaime Harrison.

"From a conservative point of view, generally speaking, we want legislative bodies to make laws, not judges," Graham said later. "Would it be further true that if you can preserve a statue you try to, to the extent possible?"

Justices do not set an agenda, Judge Barrett said, they respond to the cases that come before them. The description of the process was accurate, but also largely irrelevant in today’s legal world, where interest groups seek out and advance cases to come to the Supreme Court for the express purpose of getting justices to rule on policies to match their political beliefs.

“Judges cannot just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda — I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion, I hate abortion,’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world,” Judge Barrett said.

Senate Republicans voted to confirm President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Monday, a major victory for the President and his party just days before November 3, that could push the high court in a more conservative direction for generations to come.

The vote was 52-48. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is in a tough reelection fight, was the only GOP senator to cross party lines and vote with Democrats against the nomination after having expressed concerns that it's too close to Election Day to consider a nominee.

The stakes in the Supreme Court battle are immense and come at a pivotal time in American politics in the run up to an election in which control of Congress and the White House are on the line.