Missouri moves to become first state without an abortion clinic since Roe v Wade – as it happened

• Former FBI director James Comey published an oped in the Washington Post in which he defended the FBI against President Trump and his “dumb lies.”
• President Trump came back with another confusing tweet about Kim Jong-un and their discussion about former vice president Joe Biden and his IQ.

Before he announced his 2020 bid, former vice president Joe Biden had to put out a video addressing complaints from women about the inappropriate way he touched them or commented on their looks.

“I get it,” he said in April. “I’ll be much more mindful. That’s my responsibility.”

Well.

When Donald Trump Jr. hits you with actual sound political advice, maybe it’s time to start reevaluating your decisions.

If you need some help remembering, Roy Moore was the Alabama judge whose bid for the US Senate was foiled by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s. Despite losing the race to the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, Moore has said he is considering entering the 2020 race.

President Trump now seems to be trying to walk back his “low IQ individual” comment about former vice president Joe Biden, whose campaign called him out today for “exchanging ‘love letters’ with Kim Jong-un.”

Former FBI director James Comey penned an oped in the Washington Post today in which he defended his former agency against President Trump’s “whole ‘treason’ narrative ”.

“We must call out his lies that the FBI was corrupt and committed treason, that we spied on the Trump campaign, and tried to defeat Donald Trump,” Comey writes. “We must constantly return to the stubborn facts.”

In the piece. Comey uses a form of the the word “dumb” three times, a form of the word “lie” four times and the word “conspiracy” four times:

There is a reason the non-fringe media doesn’t spend much time on this “treason” and “corruption” business. The conspiracy theory makes no sense. The FBI wasn’t out to get Donald Trump. It also wasn’t out to get Hillary Clinton. It was out to do its best to investigate serious matters while walking through a vicious political minefield.

But go ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations. There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.

Read the whole piece here.

Hey all, Vivian Ho taking over the blog for Oliver Laughland. Hope you’re all enjoying your Tuesday.

I’m handing over to my colleagues on the West Coast shortly so here’s a summary of the day’s developments so far.

• Donald Trump arrived back in Washington on Tuesday afternoon following a state visit to Japan. The president had no other public engagements today and has, uncharacteristically, resisted from sending any incendiary messages on social media since yesterday.
• The state of Missouri could become the first jurisdiction in the United States without an abortion clinic after the state government declined to renew a license for Planned Parenthood. Missouri is one of a number of Republican controlled states to pass aggressive abortion laws this year, paving the way for a potential show down at the conservative controlled Supreme Court in which the right to abortion in America could be dramatically rewritten.
  
• Netflix became the first Hollywood giant to say it would reconsider its business operations in the state of Georgia should another hardline abortion law in the state go into effect.
• Joe Biden’s campaign labelled Donald Trump’s jabs at him - with reference to derogatory comments made by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un - as “beneath the dignity of the office”. Biden and a host of other Democratic candidates for president hit the campaign trail across the US as Congress was in recess.
• The Supreme Court handed down a number of notable rulings today, most significantly upholding an Indiana law that mandates aborted fetuses should be disposed of in the same manner as human remains.
  

Netflix has become the first Hollywood giant to pledge action should Georgia’s extremist abortion law come into effect.

In a statement to CNBC the streaming and film production company said it would “rethink our entire investment in Georgia” should the so-called “heartbeat law” go into effect.

“We have many women working on productions in Georgia, whose rights, along with millions of others, will be severely restricted by this law,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement. “It’s why we will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court. Given the legislation has not yet been implemented, we’ll continue to film there — while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to. Should it ever come into effect, we’d rethink our entire investment in Georgia.”

Georgia is home to a blossoming film and television industry with more than 92,000 industry jobs and wages exceeding $4.6 billion in the state, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Vice president Mike Pence has responded to the Supreme Court decision earlier in the day that upholds an Indiana law requiring fetal remains be disposed of in the same way has human bodies.

The law was signed by Pence, then the governor of Indiana, in 2016.

The Biden campaign has responded to Donald Trump’s inflammatory tweets over the weekend, in which he said he “smiled” after North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un told the president he believed Biden was a “low IQ individual”.

As quoted by NBC News Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said:

“The President’s comments are beneath the dignity of the office. To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President speaks for itself.”

The statement continued: “And it’s part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions — whether taking Putin’s word at face value in Helsinki or exchanging ‘love letters’ with Kim Jong-un.”

Reporting from Reuters suggests that Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier alleging links between the Trump campaign and Russia will not be co-operating with the US justice department as it reviews the start of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

From Reuters:

Christopher Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham, named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team, said the source close to Steele’s London-based private investigation firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

Trump has given Barr broad authority to declassify intelligence materials related to the investigations. Last week Trump ordered the heads of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies to cooperate with Durham.

Steele, who had previously collaborated with the FBI on issues such as corruption in the global soccer organization FIFA, was hired in 2016 by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based private investigations firm working for lawyers representing the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Steele produced for Fusion GPS a set of controversial and sometimes salacious reports describing alleged contacts Trump and his team had with Russians before the election.

The report continues:

The source close to Steele’s company said Steele would not cooperate with Durham’s probe but might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department’s Inspector General into how US law enforcement agencies handled pre-election investigations into both Trump and Clinton.

Steele also cooperated with Mueller’s investigative team, voluntarily submitting to two interviews in September 2017. He also gave written testimony to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in August 2018, the source said.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment, and a spokesman for Durham declined to comment.

Returning to Missouri, the local ACLU chapter there have just announced they will seek a statewide referendum on a newly passed law that bans most abortions starting at eight weeks of pregnancy.

The civil liberties group announced this afternoon that it has submitted a referendum petition to the secretary of state’s office in a bid to block and potentially repeal the new law, signed by the state’s Republican governor last week.

If the petition is approved for circulation, it requires more than 100,000 signatures to block the law from taking effect later this year.