NEW: All 5 Republican candidates for Michigan Governor just indicated at a debate they want the Supreme Court to go after same-sex marriage next now that Roe is overturned.

According to former aide Stephanie Grisham, the former First Lady made a documented choice during the Capitol riot

On January 6, 2021, while MAGA enthusiasts rioted in and around the U.S. Capitol, Melania Trump was asked if she'd like to tweet a statement encouraging peace and the former First Lady responded with a one-word answer.

According to ex-aide Stephanie Grisham, she personally sent a text to Melania on Jan. 6 asking "Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?"

Melania's response was a simple "No."

Grisham, who was Melania's chief of staff during the time of this exchange, and a former White House press secretary and communications director, resigned later that day without making mention of what had happened. Tweeting a farewell message, Grisham said "It has been an honor to serve the country in the White House. I am very proud to have been a part of Melania Trump's mission to help children everywhere, & proud of the many accomplishments of this Administration."

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/29/melania-gave-a-one-word-response-to-the-option-of-promoting-peace-on-jan-6/

Some advocacy groups and their allies are crafting legislative language that could be adopted in Republican-led state capitals.

Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere, according to people involved in the discussions.

The idea has gained momentum in some corners of the antiabortion movement in the days since the Supreme Court struck down its 49-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide, triggering abortion bans across much of the Southeast and Midwest.

The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state. The draft language will borrow from the novel legal strategy behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.

The subject was much discussed at two national antiabortion conferences last weekend, with several lawmakers interested in introducing these kinds of bills in their own states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-state-lines/

Michigan abortion ballot drive nears signature goal in final push for Nov. election

Proposal would codify right to abortion in state

A push to add a proposal to the November ballot on the right to an abortion in Michigan is nearing its signature goal.

Reproductive Freedom for All, backed by the Michigan ACLU, Planned Parenthood of Michigan and Michigan Voices, would amend the Michigan constitution to affirm “that every person has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which involves the right to make and carry out decisions without political interference about all matters relating to pregnancy, including birth control, abortion, prenatal care, and childbirth.”

Specifically, “this measure will ensure that all Michiganders have the right to safe and respectful care during birthing, everyone has the right to use temporary or permanent birth control, everyone has the right to continue or end a pregnancy pre-viability, and no one can be punished for having a miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.”

As of Tuesday, the signature campaign had reached the minimum threshold (425,059 signatures), but organizers are pushing through the July 11 deadline to build a safe cushion in case some signatures are rejected by canvassers, which is a normal tactic for any ballot initiative.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2022/06/29/michigan-abortion-ballot-drive-nears-signature-goal-in-final-push-for-nov-election/

Pilots Are Airlifting Patients Out of Red States to Get Abortions

The patient’s first two appointments were canceled. When Oklahoma’s governor signed the nation’s strictest abortion ban into law on May 26, her third was moved from a Planned Parenthood in Oklahoma City to the closest clinic with an appointment roughly a 10-hour round trip drive away, in Kansas. (The local chapter, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, covers four states — Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas — and books patients across all four.) “It was a goddamn mess,” says Alison Dreith, director of strategic partnerships at Midwest Access Coalition, a Chicago-based abortion fund.

...

Midwest Access Coalition was ready to reimburse the patient for a second rental car so she could make the return trip to Kansas, but then her companion bailed. The patient, old enough in the state’s eyes to be forced to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term, was not old enough to rent a car. “She could not get a rental car, so she was freaking out,” Dreith recalls.That’s when Drieth turned to Mike, a volunteer with Midwest Access Coalition who’d been quietly preparing for a moment like this one for several months.

A soft-spoken Midwesterner, Mike (whom Rolling Stone has agreed to only identify by his first name to protect his identity) has been an amateur pilot for more than a decade. It’s an expensive pastime; pilots like himself, he says “sometimes do what we call the $100 hamburger, where we’ll fly from our home airport to a nearby airport that has a restaurant” just to have lunch. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Mike started thinking about how he could put his pilot’s license to better use. Last fall, around the time Texas’ abortion snitch law went into effect, he floated the idea of airlifting patients out of abortion deserts to his colleagues at MAC. “I’ve been in this work for about 15 years,” Drieth says, “and it’s one of the few really innovative solutions I’ve heard of.”

Small propeller planes offer several advantages to a patient seeking abortion care in post-Roe America: They can pick you up at any of the regional airports found in virtually every county in America, ferry you across state lines, and return you home within a few hours. In an era in which zealous state legislatures are contemplating laws that would criminalize helping patients travel to recieve abortion care, flying private has another advantage: no flight manifests. “There’s no TSA security,” Mike says. “Nobody’s asking you who you are, why you’re there at the airport. It’s as private as you can get, about as safe as you can get without having to sit down on an airplane with a whole bunch of people.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/elevated-access-volunteer-pilots-abortion-1375732/