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Republicans in multiple states are pushing for federal legislation to address noncitizen voting, something they insist is an urgent matter requiring intervention at the highest levels of the government. But the problem does not really exist and is a smokescreen for rules, regulations, and practices that help Republicans win elections. Earlier this week, 12 of the state chairs for the right-wing State Freedom Caucus Network sent a letter to congressional leaders pushing for passage of the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.” The law, proposed by Republicans, purports to close loopholes allowing for noncitizen voting. “The states continue to face the prospect of a huge population of noncitizens illegally voting in our elections and potentially affecting the outcome,” the letter alleges. “We must close the loopholes that put the integrity of our elections at risk. We need the SAVE Act to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections.” This is false.  First, it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. If a noncitizen even registers to vote, they could face up to five years in prison. In a study conducted by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, researchers could find only 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting in the 2016 election, comprising 0.0001% of votes that were cast in those jurisdictions. That number includes only potential noncitizen votes—not cases that have been investigated and determined to be ineligible. Not only is noncitizen voting extremely rare, it’s also not coordinated by any groups in a way to systematically control the outcomes of elections. Additionally, civil rights groups have called the SAVE Act “unnecessary and dangerous,” and said it “is intended to elicit irrational fear of the growing number of citizens of color.” Donald Trump But the issue is just one of the latest ways Donald Trump and other Republican officials are fearmongering around immigration. Similarly, right-wing media outlets, like Fox News and Newsmax, have made stories about the purported problem a staple of their programming. Promoting these lies creates an environment where voter-suppression laws and regulations can thrive. When these rules are in place, eligible voters have then been barred from voting, and frequently when election turnout is low, that has favored the political fortunes of the Republican Party (but it is not the case in every election). Noncitizen voting is also a convenient boogeyman for the right. Conservative ideas and candidates are often unpopular, but instead of confronting this lack of appeal, the right can simply blame noncitizens—a population they demonize anyway—for their loss. Trump did this in 2017, when he falsely claimed that his popular-vote loss to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was the fault of undocumented immigrants. Campaigning against an imaginary wave of noncitizen voting serves many purposes for the right: It rallies supporters against migrants, it pushes laws that help Republicans, and it excuses Republican losses in elections. The core issue is made up, but the effects are unfortunately very real. Campaign Action

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Campaign Action

People on polar sides of the abortion debate are preparing to fight over how far the protection for abortion extends. by Bram Sable-Smith and Katheryn Houghton, for KFF Health News In November, Montana voters safeguarded the right to abortion in the state’s constitution. They also elected a new chief justice to the Montana Supreme Court who was endorsed by anti-abortion advocates. That seeming contradiction is slated to come to a head this year. People on polar sides of the abortion debate are preparing to fight over how far the protection for abortion extends, and the final say will likely come from the seven-person state Supreme Court. With the arrival of new Chief Justice Cory Swanson, who ran as a judicial conservative for the nonpartisan seat and was sworn in Jan. 6, the court now leans more conservative than before the election. A similar dynamic is at play elsewhere. Abortion rights supporters prevailed on ballot measures in seven of the 10 states where abortion was up for a vote in November. But even with new voter-approved constitutional protections, courts will have to untangle a web of existing state laws on abortion and square them with any new ones legislators approve. The new makeup of supreme courts in several states indicates that the results of the legal fights to come aren’t clear-cut. Activists have been working to reshape high courts, which in recent years have become the final arbiters of a patchwork of laws regulating abortions. That’s because the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned federal abortion protections, leaving rulemaking to the states. Since then, the politics of state supreme court elections have been “supercharged” as fights around abortion shifted to states’ top courts, according to Douglas Keith, a senior counsel at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. “Because we’re human, you can’t scrub these races of any political connotations at all,” said former Montana Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson. “But it’s getting worse.” The wave of abortion litigation in state courts has spawned some of the most expensive state supreme court races in history, including more than $42 million spent on the nonpartisan 2023 Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, where abortion access was among the issues facing the court. Janet Protasiewicz won the seat, flipping the balance of the court to a liberal majority. In many states, judicial elections are nonpartisan but political parties and ideological groups still lobby for candidates. In 2024, abortion surfaced as a top issue in these races. In Michigan, spending by non-candidate groups alone topped $7.6 million for the two open seats on the state Supreme Court. The Michigan races are officially labeled as nonpartisan, although candidates are nominated by political parties. An ad for the two candidates backed by Democrats cautioned that “the Michigan state Supreme Court can still take abortion rights away” even after voters added abortion protections to the state constitution in 2022. The ad continued, “Kyra Harris Bolden and Kimberly Thomas are the only Supreme Court candidates who will protect access to abortion.” Both won their races. Abortion opponent Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, decried the influence of abortion politics on state court elections. “Pro-abortion activists know they cannot win through the legislatures, so they have turned to state courts to override state laws,” Pritchard said. Some abortion opponents now support changes to the way state supreme courts are selected. Residents sign a petition in support of the ballot initiative to end Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion, which passed in November. In Missouri, where voters passed a constitutional amendment in November to protect abortion access, the new leader of the state Senate, Cindy O’Laughlin, a Republican, has proposed switching to nonpartisan elections from the state’s current model, in which the governor appoints a judge from a list of three finalists selected by a nonpartisan commission. Although Republicans have held the governor’s mansion since 2017, she pointed to the Missouri Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling in September that allowed the abortion amendment to remain on the ballot and said courts “have undermined legislative efforts to protect life.” In a case widely expected to reach the Missouri Supreme Court, the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics are trying to use the passage of the new amendment to strike down Missouri’s abortion restrictions, including a near-total ban. O’Laughlin said her proposal, which would need approval from the legislature and voters, was unlikely to influence that current litigation but would affect future cases. “A judiciary accountable to the people would provide a fairer venue for addressing legal challenges to pro-life laws,” she said. Nonpartisan judicial elections can buck broader electoral trends. In Michigan, for example, voters elected both Supreme Court candidates nominated by Democrats last year even as Donald Trump won the state and Republicans regained control of the state House. In Kentucky’s nonpartisan race, Judge Pamela Goodwine, who was endorsed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, outperformed her opponent even in counties that went for Trump, who won the state. She’ll be serving on the bench as a woman’s challenge to the state’s two abortion bans makes its way through state courts. Partisan judicial elections, however, tend to track with other partisan election results, according to Keith of the Brennan Center. So some state legislatures have sought to turn nonpartisan state supreme court elections into fully partisan affairs. In Ohio, Republicans have won every state Supreme Court seat since lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 requiring party affiliation to appear on the ballot for those races. That includes three seats up for grabs in November that solidified the Republican majority on the court from 4-3 to 6-1. “These justices who got elected in 2024 have been pretty open about being anti-abortion,” said Jessie Hill, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, who has been litigating a challenge to Ohio’s abortion restrictions since voters added protections to the state constitution in 2023. Until the recent ballot measure vote in Montana, the only obstacle blocking Republican-passed abortion restrictions from taking effect had been a 25-year-old decision that determined Montana’s right to privacy extends to abortion. Nelson, the former justice who was the lead author of the decision, said the court has since gradually leaned more conservative. He noted the state’s other incoming justice, Katherine Bidegaray, was backed by abortion rights advocates. “The dynamic of the court is going to change,” Nelson said after the election. “But the chief justice has one vote, just like everybody else.” Swanson, Montana’s new chief justice, had said throughout his campaign that he’ll make decisions case by case. He also rebuked his opponent, Jerry Lynch, for saying he’d respect the court’s ruling that protected abortion. Swanson called such statements a signal to liberal groups. At least eight cases are pending in Montana courts challenging state laws to restrict abortion access. Martha Fuller, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana, said that the new constitutional language, which takes effect in July, could further strengthen those cases but that the court’s election outcome leaves room for uncertainty. The state’s two outgoing justices had past ties to the Democratic Party. Fuller said they also consistently supported abortion as a right to privacy. “One of those folks is replaced by somebody who we don’t know will uphold that,” she said. “There will be this period where we’re trying to see where the different justices fall on these issues.” Those cases likely won’t end the abortion debate in Montana. As of the legislative session’s start in early January, Republican lawmakers, who have for years called the state Supreme Court liberal, had already proposed eight bills regarding abortion and dozens of others aimed at reshaping judicial power. Among them is a bill to make judicial elections partisan. Montana Sen. Daniel Emrich, a Republican who requested a bill titled “Prohibit dismembering of person and provide definition of human,” said it’s too early to know which restrictions anti-abortion lawmakers will push hardest. Ultimately, he said, any new proposed restrictions and the implications of the constitutional amendment will likely land in front of the state Supreme Court. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing. This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

As uncontrolled blazes have turned large swaths of Los Angeles into hellscapes the last week, Associated Press photographers have been on the frontlines. They have captured burning so intense that it lights the night sky, people so shocked they have a hard time putting sentences together and destruction so complete that what stands out is the little that survived. Balancing the need for safety with the risks of getting close to wildfires, these photojournalists have also had to manage their emotions. Seeing unimaginable destruction and suffering is hard. And for some, Los Angeles is home. Here 12 photographers, each selecting a picture they made the last week, share a little about it. The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I chose this picture because it speaks to the enormity of the Los Angeles fires. I made the photo as winds showered embers down the streets, the fire rapidly burning down through Palisades, destroying block after block. Having covered dozens of wildfires, some the largest in California’s history, I immediately knew the scale of destruction was unlike anything I’d seen before.” -Ethan Swope Firefighters work from a deck as the Palisades Fire burns a Malibu beachfront property. “Working alongside firefighters means your priority is to make sure you are not compromising their work and safety while reporting on their actions and trying to capture the essence of the moment. Taking this picture meant working close to them while on a cramped wooden deck while strong gusts of winds were blowing ashes, embers and other debris in our faces, which was a delicate task.” -Etienne Laurent A person walks amid the destruction left behind by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. “One of the biggest challenges in taking this photo was ensuring my safety in such a hazardous environment. The air was thick with smoke, making it hard to breathe. Emotionally, it was difficult to document such a tragic scene, knowing that many people had lost their homes and possessions. Documenting the aftermath while respecting the emotions of survivors is always a challenge.” -Jae C. Hong Robert Lara looks through his Altadena home that was destroyed by the Eaton Fire on Jan. 9. “It’s emotionally hard asking people — often on the worst day of their lives when they have nothing left — to take the time away from their grief and talk to someone they just met who wants to invade their space. It takes empathy, good ethics and professionalism to approach this work and in those moments, the work is never about you as a photojournalist. You can’t approach what you’re documenting with any ego or anything.” -Nic Coury Ari Rivera, rear,  and Anderson Hao hold each other in front of their destroyed home in Altadena. “When you hear that thousands of homes have been destroyed, a picture like this reminds you that each of those homes represent the memories collected by the people who live there. For some it stretches back generations. For others Like Ari Rivera and Anderson Hao, it may not be as long but it’s just as meaningful. It was the first place they’ve lived together.” -John Locher Caution tape cordons off townhomes and trees burned by the Eaton Fire in Altadena. “I chose this picture because of the trees. The dramatic light illuminated the yellow caution tape that cordoned off townhomes and trees that had been burned by the Eaton Fire. It was a crime scene. Scorched trees are everywhere. I’m going to keep photographing the trees. They are part of us.” -Carolyn Kaster A VW van sits among burned out homes in Malibu. “While there were lots of images that illustrated the enormity of the disaster better than this, it was the splash of color among the charcoal grey remnants of people’s homes that immediately stood out to me and makes it unique from the thousands of other photographs that I took on that helicopter flight. From the comments that I am getting from people on social media, it seems to speak to people in a way that I didn’t really expect. ‘The van. So California. Wow,’ said one person. ‘Beautiful desolation,’ said another.” -Mark J. Terrill Water is dropped by helicopter on the Palisades Fire in the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles. “This picture was made on the fifth day of the Palisades Fire in Mandeville Canyon, where homes were still threatened. At that point most of the devastation had already occurred, but firefighters were still working on active parts of the fire. The effort of the firefighters, even as they were completely overwhelmed, cannot be emphasized enough. They worked in a calm and methodical way, even as chaos played out all around them.” -Eric Thayer A firefighter walks past a charred bunny sculpture and debris at the destroyed Bunny Museum in Altadena. “The Bunny Museum is among the most unique museums I’ve ever seen — over 46,000 pieces of bunny memorabilia, so it’s a truly irreplaceable part of Altadena. My family and I had visited it just a month or so before.” -Chris Pizzello A statue and other structures are burned in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. “The statue makes me think of the tragedy of Pompeii. The volcanic eruption turned humans into preserved stone statues. The Southern California fires have turned us headless and homeless. We lay down with our arms crossed motionless in the face of an environmental catastrophe.” -Damian Dovarganes A car drives past homes and vehicles destroyed by the Palisades Fire at the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates in Los Angeles. “One of the biggest challenges of documenting a wildfire with widespread destruction is conveying the scale. Ground level views often cannot show the striking devastation. I took this shot from a bluff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway. The contrast between the pristine red car driving through the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates also drives home the intensity of this fire. A week ago, this view would’ve shown a vibrant, colorful community now left in rubble.” -Noah Berger A surfer takes off on a wave in Santa Monica, as sunset falls under a sky blackened from the Palisades fire. “It had been a little tricky to get to the beach with traffic being so frantic and people evacuating. I was struck by how casual the surfer was under this smoke-filled blood red sky filled with smoke. It was very apocalyptic.”  -Richard Vogel Campaign Action

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Campaign Action