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The justices voted 5 to 4 on Thursday to grant a temporary stay on a Louisiana law that opponents said could have left the state with only one authorized abortion provider.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four-member liberal wing in the majority, highlighting the pivotal position he has assumed after last year’s departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy was often the swing vote in closely divided cases.
The details: The Louisiana law requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. A federal court judge struck down the law in 2017, saying it created an undue burden on women’s constitutional right to abortion. That decision was later reversed.
What’s next: The court’s action on Thursday did not end the case, and the justices are likely to hear a challenge to the law on the merits in its next term, which starts in October. The court struck down a similar law in Texas in 2016.
Related: Lawmakers in several states have recently been working on legislation that either protects abortion or makes it illegal, in the event that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationwide.
Mr. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the world’s richest man, said on Thursday that the owner of The National Enquirer had tried “extortion and blackmail” to stop him investigating how material exposing his extramarital affair was leaked to the tabloid.
In an online post, Mr. Bezos accused American Media Inc. of threatening to publish explicit photos, including a “below the belt selfie,” if he didn’t affirm that The Enquirer’s reporting on his affair was not politically motivated. Mr. Bezos mentioned his ownership of The Washington Post. American Media’s owner, David Pecker, is a friend of President Trump, who has criticized The Post.
Catch up: Mr. Bezos and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, announced last month that they would be getting a divorce, a day before the tabloid published an 11-page story about his affair with Lauren Sanchez, a TV personality.
Excerpts: “If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” Mr. Bezos wrote.
The State Senate’s top Republican faced questions on Thursday about racist photographs and slurs in a college yearbook that he helped oversee, adding a bipartisan angle to the nearly weeklong crisis over the conduct of the state’s top elected officials.
The Republican lawmaker, Thomas Norment, pointed out that he did not take or appear in any of the images of students in blackface in the 1968 yearbook. Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring, both Democrats, have admitted wearing blackface in the 1980s.
Separately, several prominent Democrats called for an investigation into a woman’s accusation that Lt.
