Michigan Results, Hunter Biden Testifies, Personhood Bills

Will anger over the president's handling of Gaza overshadow his easy primary win?

House investigators finally compelled Hunter Biden to testify behind closed doors.

What's riding on today's deposition for the president's son and for Republicans who've

talked of scandal for years?

treatments.

This after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling gave fertilized eggs the same rights as children.

Could that decision lead other states to do the same?

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Republican side.

Here is Biden's challenge.

More than 100,000 people took the time to vote for nobody.

More than 13% of Democrats voted uncommitted to protest Biden's handling of the conflict

in Gaza.

primary is NPR political reporter Elena Moore, who is in Detroit.

Good morning, Elena.

How did Mr. Biden do?

by the Associated Press.

The uncommitted option was second to that.

A group called Listen to Michigan wanted Democrats to send a message that way.

Basically, Listen to Michigan is advocating for Biden to call for an immediate and permanent

ceasefire and stop sending U.S. aid to Israel.

And organizers say Biden is at risk of losing key support in the general if he doesn't do

that.

Hillary Clinton by in 2016.

And notably, Biden won Michigan in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes.

But a few caveats here, Michelle.

It's not uncommon to get several thousand uncommitted votes in 2012, which was the last

time an incumbent Democratic president was on the ballot.

And uncommitted got more than 20,000 votes in 2008.

Over 200,000 voted uncommitted as part of a movement to support President Barack Obama's

candidacy, who was not on the state primary ballot.

So last night I asked Michigan State Representative Abraham Ayosh why this moment is different.

of sending the message that we do not want a party that is led with a lack of humanity

for the Palestinian people.

of the state.

And organizers from these communities talk about the pain and anger folks are feeling.

And what's notable from Tuesday's results is this is the first major test for how voter

attitudes towards Biden's handling of Gaza could affect outcomes.

And anecdotally, all week I've been speaking with young voters about the violence in Gaza,

and it's really resonated with them.

And that's a key constituency in Michigan and generally for the Democratic Party.

You know, and I agree.

I mean, we've been hearing from our colleagues, Leila Fadl and Don Gagne, you know, all week

on the program, hearing very similar things.

OK, before we let you go, the Democratic primary was not the only one.

There was still a contested Republican primary.

The former President Donald Trump won there.

But what about his challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley?

loss last night, calling it, you know, a sign of Biden's weakness in November.

But nevertheless, you know, Trump has another win under his belt, making the window of viability

even smaller for Haley.

But, you know, she's continuing on.

The campaign has stops planned in different states ahead of Super Tuesday, which is, you

guessed it, Tuesday.

And that will be another major test for Haley.

Over a third of the total delegates are on the line in next week's contests.

And the former South Carolina governor has yet to win a sizable number or any state.

Elena, thank you.

business dealings publicly, never behind closed doors.

In a House hearing room today, House Republicans are expected to hear privately as they wanted

from one of their longstanding political targets.

today.

Good morning, Ryan.

Good morning.

All right.

So congressional Republicans have been, you know, so focused on Hunter Biden for so long.

Now they get to talk to him.

What do they want to ask?

in their impeachment inquiry against his father.

They've devoted a ton of time, a ton of effort trying to dig into Hunter's business dealings,

particularly the work that he's done overseas.

They will undoubtedly ask him about a deal he made with the Chinese energy company, about

his work with a Ukrainian energy company.

Other business deals will no doubt come up.

In all of this, Republicans are going to try to funnel into their working theory of the

case here that President Biden somehow played an active role in or somehow benefited from

the business dealings of his family members, Hunter, of course, chief among them.

At this point, though, it has to be said months in, Republicans have not turned up any concrete

evidence of wrongdoing on the president's part.

So for Republicans, there is a lot riding on this deposition today.

his struggles with addiction.

So a lot of this is ground that's been covered to one degree or another.

But a source familiar with the matter tells me that Hunter will tell lawmakers that his

father was not involved in his business affairs.

That echoes what James Biden, the president's brother, told Congress last week in his own

deposition.

I'm told Hunter also is expected to acknowledge that he made mistakes, that he's had his own

struggles with addiction, stuff that has been well documented.

He's also expected to push back against the whole impeachment effort to tell lawmakers

that, in his view, it's based on lies.

I expect that he'll point to the recent criminal charges against Alexander Smirnoff.

He's the former FBI informant who allegedly fabricated claims of a Biden bribery scheme,

a scheme that has been central, of course, to the Republicans' impeachment effort.

privately.

He would only testify in public in an open session.

Do you have a sense of why he agreed to testify privately?

That was part of the fight over this whole deposition.

It's worth noting that Republicans were threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Two sides ended up working out an agreement for today's deposition.

The deposition will not be videotaped, I am told.

The transcript will be released as quickly as possible.

That was another part of this agreement.

And those two points seem to address Hunter Biden's concerns.

That's the informant.

Of course, he's accused of lying about the Bidens to the FBI.

Where is he now?

He's been ordered to remain in jail.

They're pending trial.

He's pleaded not guilty to the charges.

But there are still questions swirling about his contacts with Russian intelligence.

Prosecutors say that those contacts are extensive.

They say they aren't benign.

And they raise questions of whether some of the information that Smirnoff was giving the FBI

could have been false info fed by the Russians.

The Smirnoff case certainly undercuts one of the main allegations that Republicans

have made in their impeachment bid, but it has not killed that impeachment bid.

Democrats say it should be all over and done with.

But House Republicans leading this probe say that their investigation

doesn't rest solely on the Smirnoff claims.

They say they have other leads that they are pursuing.

And it's also worth noting that they are under a lot of pressure from their base

to keep this going.

Ryan, thank you.

in vitro fertilization treatments.

fertilized eggs have the same rights as children.

It's not just Alabama where lawmakers are debating whether a fetus is a person.

context about this.

Good morning.

We've been waiting on bills to be introduced to address last week's state Supreme Court ruling.

I take it we now have them?

So just a quick reminder how we got here.

This all stems from a lawsuit by three Alabama couples whose frozen embryos

were accidentally destroyed by a fertility clinic.

Justices ruled that an 1872 law allowing parents to sue over the death of a child

applies to, quote, unborn children.

This immediately raised concerns about in vitro fertilization in the state.

There's a lot of pressure to come up with a quick legislative fix for this.

And yesterday afternoon, state Republican lawmakers proposed two bills that would

exempt IVF from the effect of the ruling.

However, one key measure no longer includes a definition of viability for an embryo.

That bill's author told Troy Public Radio he took that out of his draft in order to

get the bill passed.

That means even if this bill becomes law, frozen embryos would remain children as

defined by the state Supreme Court.

Why is that?

right to abortion.

Ever since that ruling two years ago, states have been in charge of regulating abortion

and advocates have been on the lookout for anything that further erodes reproductive

rights.

And of course, this is also a big election year and Republicans are worried about this

issue.

So shortly after the ruling, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said he supports

IVF.

And in a memo obtained by NPR, the fundraising arm for the Senate, Republicans warned their

candidates that the ruling could be, quote, fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate

the abortion issue for electoral gain.

And since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republican policymakers in some states are trying to

restrict reproductive rights through this fetal personhood mechanism.

I spoke with Candace Gibson.

She's the state policy director at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights

and tracks abortion legislation.

She says the Alabama decision could reverberate in other states.

and trying to really replicate those efforts.

I would be surprised if they didn't.

to do it in different ways.

personhood as beginning at fertilization when it comes to homicide and wrongful death laws.

And that includes no exceptions for IVF.

At least six states have bills that would allow women to seek child support for fetuses.

Georgia already has a law like that on the books.

And although these proposals don't explicitly have anything to do with IVF, reproductive

rights advocates say that even granting limited protections to embryos and fetuses could have

broader implications like we saw in Alabama.

Rylan, thank you.

I'm Michelle Martin.

Today's Up First was edited by Megan Prance, Kelsey Snell, Barbara Sprott, H.J. Mai, and

Ben Adler, produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams, and Julie Deppenbrock, who is

pointing at me from time to time right now to tell me when to talk.

We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes, and our technical director is Stacey Abbott.

Join us here tomorrow.

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