* North Carolina…

Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly have reached a deal on legislation that would place restrictions on most abortions after 12 weeks.

Assuming the agreement holds, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who has worked to enshrine abortion rights, would be unable to block the legislation due to a veto-proof GOP supermajority in the state that was reached last month after a Charlotte-area Democrat switched parties.

Senate Bill 20, dubbed the “Care for Women, Children and Families Act,” bans any licensed physician from performing surgical abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy. It provides exceptions in the case of rape and incest through 20 weeks of pregnancy or in the event of a “life-limiting anomaly” through 24 weeks. […]

The bill would additionally prohibit any health care provider who objects to abortion “on moral, ethical, or religious grounds” from being required to participate in medical procedures that would result in an abortion.

* Florida via Politico…

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature agreed on Tuesday to shield the publicly-funded travel records of Gov. Ron DeSantis, giving his administration a way to block inquiries from the media and political opponents ahead of an expected run for president.

The far-reaching bill would not only apply to DeSantis’ future movements but also could be used retroactively to deny access to information on trips he’s already taken.

GOP legislators muscled the bill through just days after lawmakers agreed to change state law to ensure that DeSantis doesn’t have to resign if he becomes the Republican nominee for president. Taken together, the moves by the GOP-controlled Legislature pave the way for DeSantis to more easily jump into the presidential race and prevent further scrutiny of his travel.

The House approved the bill by an 84-31 vote along long strict party lines — and there were four votes above the required two-thirds threshold needed to enact a public records exemption since Florida has some of the strongest open records laws in the country. Republicans gained supermajorities in the House and Senate last November at the same time voters overwhelmingly elected DeSantis to a second term.

* More from Florida…

Deborah Dorbert’s son Milo died in her arms on March 3, shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. […]

She said her pregnancy was proceeding normally until November, when, at 24 weeks, an ultrasound showed that the fetus did not have kidneys and that she had hardly any amniotic fluid. Not only was the baby sure to die, her doctors told her, but the pregnancy put her at especially high risk of preeclampsia, a potentially deadly complication.

Her doctors told her it was too late to terminate the pregnancy in Florida, which bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks. The only options were to go out of state to get an abortion or to carry the baby to full term, and Dorbert and her husband didn’t have the money to travel.

What followed was an agonizing 13 weeks of carrying a baby she knew would die and worrying about her own health. It left Dorbert with severe anxiety and depression for the first time in her life.

* Louisiana…

Louisiana legislators joined the national debate on if transgender minors should have access to gender affirming care. The debate was a long and tense debate over conflicting statistics and passionate pleas from the transgender community.

HB463 State Rep. Gabe Firment, R-Pollock, would punish doctors who provide gender affirming care which includes hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery to minors. Already parents have to give permission for kids to get the care.

Firment made claims people are against the bill because it makes them a profit and claimed a lot of the statistics from doctors who treat transgender kids are not accurate. […]

Discussion from those in favor of the bill talked about kids regretting their transition and misinformation spread about the percentage of transgender people de-transitioning. The percentage point varied from speaker to speaker. Proponents for the bill brought in two young women who have testified across the country about having negative experiences transitioning young and have de-transitioned.

Parents of transgender kids talked about how it is already a years-long process to get access to hormones and surgery is in most cases off the table for kids. One parent said the conversation around the hormones being prescribed without care is not what they experienced and his child even struggled to get access to the treatment.

* Texas…

A Texas bill calling for the abolition of the position of elections administrator in Harris County is inching closer and closer to final passage after a Monday vote moved the legislation out of the Texas House Elections Committee. Senate Bill 1750 already passed the Senate on April 18. House Bill 3876, an identical piece of legislation, will be up for debate in the House Chamber.

The measures call for the “abolition” of election administrators in counties with populations larger than 1,000,000—a metric that only applies to Harris County, which Republican state lawmakers have taken a keen interest in in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections.

Local and conservatives have keyed in on paper ballot shortages and a number of voting machine malfunctions that were reported at a small number of polling locations on Election Day— incidents that prompted a district judge to extend voting by 1 hour at Harris County polls. Since then, the Harris County Elections Office report concluded that they couldn’t determine if potential voters were pushed away because of the issues at polling centers.

In the aftermath, a number of Houston Republican candidates who lost their races filed lawsuits against the county, alleging that those issues led to them losing on election day. They have requested to overturn the election results and redo their races.

* Montana…

A judge ruled on Tuesday against a Montana legislator who had sought a court order allowing her to return to the House of Representatives after she was barred during an escalating standoff over her remarks on transgender issues.

The lawmaker, Representative Zooey Zephyr, was ousted from the Republican-controlled chamber last week after making impassioned comments against a ban on hormone treatments and surgical care for transgender minors. The remarks led Republicans to silence her during debates on other legislation, prompting protests and arrests.

Ms. Zephyr, a Democrat from Missoula who is transgender, filed the lawsuit on Monday arguing that her rights had been violated, along with those of her 11,000 constituents. “I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard,” she posted on Twitter. A spokeswoman for the state’s Republican attorney general called the legal action “political activism masquerading as a lawsuit.”

Judge Mike Menahan, who served in the House as a Democrat before being elected to the state’s First District Court a decade ago, said in a five-page order issued late Tuesday that he did not have the authority to intervene in the legislative dispute.

* Zephyr has been working outside the House chamber…

On Thursday, Zephyr started working on a bench just outside the House floor the day after her censure, although the Speaker first tried to stop her from using the space to work. On Monday, women who identified themselves as wives of legislators but did not wish to provide their names, sat on the bench Zephyr had been working on– one of them had a name tag that read Beth Hinebauch, which identified her as the wife of Sen. Steve Hinebauch, R-Wibaux. Darin Gaub, director of Montana’s Freedom Caucus Network, also sat on the bench. The women denied that they were making a statement by sitting on the bench, but said they were aware that Zephyr had been working there. They asked where else they could go, although seats were available outside the Senate Chamber.

Zephyr tweeted in response to the bench she’d been using being occupied, saying “some folks showed up early this morning and sat on the public benches near the entrance to the House, so Seat 31 has moved.”

“I’m up and ready to work. Plus, I hear stand desks are all the rage these days.”

* Kansas…

As officials strain to discern the impact of a sweeping proposal enacted last week that could affect transgender Kansans in virtually every facet of life, the clearest effect could well be on identification documents, such as driver’s licenses and birth certificates. […]

The bill has the impact of effectively counting transgender individuals for data collection purposes based on their sex assigned at birth, as well as requiring a whole host of state agencies to do the same. The bill also could restrict transgender individuals to using public facilities that align with their sex assigned at birth. […]

A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Revenue said the agency was reviewing the bill ahead of July 1 and “will take the time to review the language as it pertains to the driver’s license act and make adjustments as necessary.”

Advocacy groups have urged transgender and gender non-binary Kansans to change their driver’s license or birth certificate before July 1, if they had considered doing so previously.

* South Carolina…

Democrats in the South Carolina Senate turned debate about a bill to set guidelines for history curriculum on subjects like slavery and segregation into discussion about why the body can’t take a vote on a hate crimes bill.

South Carolina and Wyoming are the only states in the U.S. without a law allowing extra punishment for hate crimes — which a judge or jury determines were motivated by hate over someone’s race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or physical or mental ability.

For the past three years, a hate crimes bill has made it through the South Carolina House and to the Senate floor, only to stop there. The outlook for the bill this year is grim. The Republican-dominated chamber has not held any debate or brought the proposal up for a vote despite the support of survivors of a racist attack that killed nine at a Charleston church, in addition to business leaders.

“You look at the news all day long, I think we can agree, hate is all around us. Hate exists. So why is this bill more important than the hate crime legislation?” Democratic Sen. Kevin Johnson asked.

“This bill actually has the potential to address hate,” said Republican Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, about allowing students to come to their own conclusions based on facts about the history of slavery and segregation. “That bill doesn’t. That bill isn’t going to change how people act.”