Innocence and Protectionism: The Case of a New York Attorney General, a Correspondent Who Is Really Interested in Your Protecting Your Family

The author is a journalist who lives in New York and wrote the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions are of her own. View more opinion on CNN.

There is a chance for Republicans to win back middle-of-the-road voters who might be willing to vote for them even though they have differing opinions on abortion and economic issues. There is no question that Republicans’ greatest political liability continues to be their lack of preparation for a post-Roe world. If they are serious about swaying voters, they need to prove their seriousness about being pro-life, not anti-abortion.

He said that he approached him after Paxton exited the home through the garage. “As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage.”

Minutes later, said Herrera, Paxton and his wife exited the house again, climbed into a truck parked in their driveway and drove off without taking the document.

Paxton, for his part, doesn’t dispute that he ran. He ran from a shady person outside his house, not from the subpoena. The media should be embarrassed of themselves because this is a ridiculous waste of time. Conservatives across the country have faced many threats to their safety, which got little or no coverage from the mainstream media.

He said the media wanted to drum up a controversy regarding his work as Attorney General so they were attacking him for avoiding a stranger who was showing concern for the safety of his family.

Paxton makes a fair point: It’s awfully scary to have your privacy invaded, and infuriating when people try to interfere when you are trying to protect your own safety and the well-being of your family. Women in Texas can certainly relate.

Defending the sanctity of life: When the courts stop penning and passing laws to criminalize abortion, birthright and contraception

Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters used to champion fetal personhood laws, which would fully criminalize abortion and potentially IVF as well, along with some forms of contraception; recently, though, that information was deleted from his website.

On his website last election cycle, Ronchetti wrote that “life should be protected – at all stages”, and now he has put out advertisements saying that he is pro-life.

A video and a support for defending the sanctity of life were removed from the website of Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican running in Colorado.

Americans don’t support abortion bans. When it comes to criminalizing abortion in conservative states, even many voters who identify as pro-life and vote Republican don’t want to do it.

These laws may cost Republicans votes in the election. The solution is simple: Stop penning and passing wildly unpopular laws. So far, though, Republicans continue to do just that – and then they raise their hands in a cartoonish “it wasn’t me!” You gesture when pressed on it.

The Supreme Court needs to play a role like that of an umpire at times like these, as Chief Justice Roberts articulated at his own confirmation hearing. Instead, the court’s right-wingers are calling balls for one team and strikes for the other.

As Justice Elena Kagan said in a talk this month at Northwestern University School of Law, “When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem — and that’s when there ought to be a problem.”

The way the court went about eliminating the federal right to abortion is a prime example of this misuse of its power. Right-wing justices on the court decided to allow the unconstitutional anti-abortion law in Texas to stand by using the court’s “shadow docket.” They agreed to hear the other challenge from Mississippi that did not ask them to overturn Wade. When they chose to do so anyway, the majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, cherry-picked its historical examples and dismissed Roe as “egregiously wrong,” disdaining the work of earlier justices who had weighed the same constitutional questions carefully for decades.

Restoring the Right to Choose: Recovering from the First Roe V. Wade Overturned by the Supreme Court on Reproductive Health Care Access

Ms. Craig’s opponent, Mr. Kistner, who served nine years as an officer in the Marine Corps and lost to Ms. Craig by two percentage points in 2020, called himself “100 percent pro-life” on his campaign website during his primary last cycle, a descriptor that Ms. Craig has latched onto. Mr. Kistner has said that he would support abortion if the life of the mother were in danger and in cases of rape and incest, and that the issue should be left to the states to decide.

GOP office candidates have mostly downplayed the issue. Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, clumsily scrubbed his website of stridently pro-life language, while Adam Laxalt, running for Senate in Nevada, has run ads stressing his lack of interest in changing the status quo.

“I believe it should be up to the states,” he said after a rally in New Britain hosted by the Republican National Committee, according to The Connecticut Mirror. “Right here in Connecticut, we have codified a woman’s right to choose. That’s what I support.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday will mark 100 days since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court with the second meeting of the administration’s Task Force on Reproductive Health Care Access.

The president and vice president will announce two steps to increase abortion protections at the meeting. The moves that were made build on existing efforts towards protecting reproductive health care at the federal level, according to a report by the White House’s Gender Policy Council director.

The Department of Education is releasing guidance for universities reiterating the Title IX requirement that institutions protect students from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, including pregnancy termination, Klein said.

The Department of Health and Human Services will award more than $6 million in Title X grants to help protect and expand access to reproductive health care and improve service delivery.

Klein renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation to codify the protections established in Roe as she lambasted “extreme steps” from Republican elected officials at the state and national level, pointing to proposed abortion ban legislation from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other moves at the state level, including abortion bans in effect in more than a dozen states affecting nearly 30 million women of reproductive age.

The villainizing of patients who need care and my colleagues who can provide that care, the constant misinformation about abortion, the prolonged trauma from the never-ending hoops patients must jump through, all weigh heavily on us.

Reply to Senator Patty Murray: A Stand Up for Abortion and Pregnancies in the State of Washington, and why she should have voted for O’Dea

A number of government employees will be present at the meeting, including Biden and Harris, and also health and human services secretary and education secretary.

“Democrat politicians have done incredible damage to America, ruining our economy, causing chaos at our border, increasing crime in our cities. They made a difference in our lives. But one thing hasn’t changed: abortion in Nevada,” the spot says.

The Senator from Wisconsin took a different approach. Although he has backed a federal abortion ban in the past, he now calls for “a one-time, single-issue referendum to decide the question.” His campaign wanted to know if society had the responsibility to protect the life of an unborn child.

The Democratic senator is running an ad saying she will always fight for a woman’s right to make their own health care decisions while Laxalt doesn’t.

Tiffany Smiley, a Republican Senate candidate in Washington state, has aired ads that express her opposition to a federal ban. One of her spots states that Patty Murray has spent millions to paint her as an extremists. I am pro-life, but I do not support a federal abortion ban.

Shortly after Roe was overturned, Murray began airing a straight-to-camera ad, in which she says, “It is a horrifying reality: Extreme politicians across our country, now in charge of the most private health care decisions.”

Those numbers are even more dramatic since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June. Since then, Democrats have spent more than 130 million dollars on ads about abortion, while Republicans have spent $16 million airing 100 ads.

She said that they should have been called Republicans for their stance against abortion bans and not for their stance against pro-life candidates.

This is exemplified by the way Joe O’Dea, the Republican nominee for Senate in Colorado, has addressed the issue in his race against Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in a blue-leaning state.

While running for Congress, the first time candidate and businessman promoted his outsider credentials and support for abortion in the early stages of a woman’s pregnancies.

(O’Dea has also said he would have voted for Obama nominee Elena Kagan, a liberal justice who dissented in the Dobbs ruling, as he wants to end the “blood sport” over the Supreme Court confirmation process.)

Bounds on the Role of Abortion in Local Policy, and a Case for an End of the State’s Prostitution Law

“If it is an issue in the district and it is showing up in your polling, talk about. If you don’t see it in the polls, talk about other issues like the economy that are more beneficial to you.

In a local interview in September, Ted Budd said the Supreme Court made it clear that this was a Raleigh decision not a Washington decision.

After making that point, he co-sponsored a House companion bill that would allow elected officials in Washington and not the NC capitol of Raleigh to decide how to regulate abortion.

The Ohio decision extends an earlier, temporary suspension of the law that was set to expire next week. The ruling means that the state’s abortion ban is suspended while the court case proceeds, providing a bit more certainty for abortion providers and women.

Since the Supreme Court decision, Vice President Harris has had a long series of conversations.

Harris has held more than 20 events focused on reproductive rights, hearing from activists, state legislators, health care providers, legal experts, faith leaders, civil rights leaders, and others about their concerns — and making clear that she sees it as a key issue ahead of November midterm elections.

“Let’s link arms, and do what we need to do, including in the next 34 days,” Harris said last week at one such event at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn.

There is no reason for me to ask about abortion when I go to the polls on Tuesday. Voting is a big deal in my family.

Jahana Harris: Telling Us What’s Happening at Next-to-Leading Order, and What We Can Do About It

In her New Britain stop, Harris was introduced by Rep. Jahana Hayes. It is normally a safe seat for the Democrats, but in this year’s election one of them is in trouble and they are trying to win it back.

Harris has brought people from all over the country to listen to the president, but she has also traveled to states like North Carolina and Indiana, where she will be campaigning for the fall elections.

These events give Harris the chance to hear from people affected by the new restrictions on abortion. But they’re also a “smart move” politically, said Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod.

Even when they don’t make national news, the events get a lot of local headlines. Elrod said that most of the daily papers in those states would likely lead from her visit.

People who have been in the meetings say Harris is focused on the details. “Just by looking at her presence at the meetings, I think you’d know she’s very much involved in the conversation,” said the president of the advocacy group National Partnership for Women and Families.

“This not a meeting where she is just reading talking points. She is immersed in what’s going on day-to-day … it was a conversation where she really wanted to learn. She had done her homework,” Frye told NPR.

At last week’s event in Connecticut, Harris said that the issue of fighting for women’s health care was ingrained in him from the time he was a child.

Harris said the issue would be “about what all of our movements have been about.” There is going to be a need for litigation and legislation as well as organizing.

Harris often raises the “Venn diagram” method, which states that restricting abortion access is also limiting voting and rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LBGT) community.

The message of that was clear to the Utah state representative when she went to one of Harris’ roundtables with other Latina state lawmakers. She said she left the meeting feeling like the call to action Harris had given them was about more than abortion.

She gave us a challenge as elected officials to organize. Ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to vote was the main focus of the event.

Ramos said her takeaway from the roundtable was a reminder that there is a lot at stake — and she says it’s pushed her to engage with her constituency, to knock on doors and encourage people to vote.

Patrick T. Brown: Pro-life Conservatives and Pregnancies in the Geography of Abortion: An Analysis of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives

Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on his favorite social network. The views he expressed in this piece are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

According to Alice Stewart, Republicans think they have the traction in their effort to regain control of the House and Senate because they have listened to voters and offered solutions. Democrats have been tone deaf when it comes to the real issues impacting Americans, choosing to focus on threats to democracy over everyday concerns about the cost of groceries and gas. This election is not about fear of fallen democracy, but about the need for families to feed themselves.

Without crystal-clear carveouts for pregnancies that are ectopic or that pose a direct threat to for the life of the mother and robust support for the health care and material needs of pregnant mothers, standalone anti-abortion legislation will struggle at the ballot box. The legislative strategy and all-of-the-above approach should be adopted by the pro-life conservatives.

Some elected Republicans have already pivoted in that direction. A package of safety-net proposals was unveiled by Marco Rubio of Florida, locked in a close-than- expected reelection campaign, that would increase resources available to pregnant mothers and give them more help with their children’s needs.

The researchers compared the health outcomes in 26 abortion-restricting states with those in the remaining 24 states and the District of Columbia, which appear to be unlikely to pass such restrictions.

It showed the poll results in which voters in Georgia were asked to name their top concern. The economy was the most common answer given. threats to democracy was the second most common answer. Access to abortion came in a distant third. Nearly one in ten respondents said that.

A Posteriori Attack on Biden and the Preventable Future of Abtresholds in Greenville, Georgia (revised)

He also appeared to abandon prior claims that the results of the 2020 election weren’t trustworthy, saying for the record that Biden won. Walker might as well have been wearing a sandwich board upon which he’d scrawled: “See? Not as crazy as you thought I was.

Did they not like Biden using an executive order to forgive billions of dollars in student loans? Walker let them know he was as well. Did they feel that too many progressives demonstrated too much contempt for the police? He was upset about that.

It was as though he was going through a list of why Republicans needed to be on board with him, and he had a discipline that made it seem as though he was a hapless buffoon. Was he eloquent? Please. Was he articulate? It was all that is required to exceed the expectations for him.

Walker, whose candidacy has endured a stream of gaffes on policy, has more recently been contended with allegations from two women who say he had pressured them to have abortions. Walker has denied the allegations and CNN has not independently confirmed them. The woman claims are not in line with the candidate’s previous statements in favor of a full federal abortion ban without exceptions. He has since walked back his previous comments, and now supports Georgia’s law, which prohibits abortions after six weeks if there is a timely police report and exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Anomalous Public Safety: The Case for the 2020 Murder of George F. Ellison in the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania (revised)

You bring with you, your hopes and fears. Your choice is made through a lot of considerations, but they all boil down to how the candidates line up with your beliefs. Would they, if elected, represent and promote the kind of community and country you want to live in? Are they on your side, fighting for you and people like you?

Often, the things that are top of mind as you consider those questions are urgent and imminent, rather than ambient and situational. Issues like the economy, for instance, will almost always take top billing, since they affect the most people most directly.

Anger over abortion can also be potent, and in some races, it may determine the outcome, but it is a narrower issue. No person assigned male at birth will have to wrestle with the issue of an abortion or health problems from a pregnant woman. So, for half the electorate, the issue is a matter of principle rather than one of their own bodily autonomy.

I am in a state where there is a race that offers a pure test of whether abortion rights or crime are more important to the electorate.

Keith Ellison, the incumbent attorney general and a Democrat, insists that his bid for re-election will hinge on abortion, which remains legal in Minnesota.

But his Republican challenger, Jim Schultz, says the contest is about public safety and what he argues are “extreme” policies that Ellison endorsed after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — the aftermath of which Minnesota is still wrestling with.

In an interview, he said that he was physically ill because of Floyd’s death and the fact that the police officer who killed him was later convicted. He supported banning chokeholdings and what he called “warrior-style police training” and he was happy with Ellison’s prosecution of Chauvin.

Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who was chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 to 2017, where he worked on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies. He is a CNN political commentator. His views are his own in this commentary. CNN has more opinion on it.

Pennsylvania has two statewide, open seat races, with US Sen. Pat Toomey retiring and Gov. Tom Wolf finishing the second of his two terms. It is a highly unusual occurrence in the commonwealth.

The governor’s race has featured Democrat Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano. The campaign was well-funded and error-free. He maintains a nearly 9-point lead in most polls over the election-denying, underfunded Mastriano, who embraces wild conspiracy theories and shuns traditional media.

The airwaves have been dominated by him. What’s more, during an interview last week on the Real America’s Voice network, Mastriano falsely claimed the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia “is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning, something that is irreversible.”

The Oz-Ffetterman Tort During a Very Competitive Primary: The Case for a Republican Senator in the House of Representatives

Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman are neck-in-necked in the US Senate race. Oz and Fetterman will debate on Tuesday for the first and only time, and the stakes couldn’t be higher for Fetterman, who suffered a near fatal stroke days before the primary election in May.

Fetterman’s capacity to perform the duties of a US senator is in question due to deafness he suffered after a stroke. Fetterman will use closed caption during the debate, so all eyes will be on him. Neurological experts have said that people with hearing problems use closed captioning.

Polling is very close. Oz’s unfavorable rating went high among Republicans, Democrats and independents, because of his success in the GOP primary. Republican voters have since come home to Oz.

He and his allies have been pounding Fetterman on inflation, taxes, fracking and the Green New Deal, a plan to wean the United States from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Fetterman, a supporter of Senator Sanders, has been accused of being a radical socialist.

Republicans think crime will appeal to swing voters in Pennsylvania. Fetterman is under fire for his votes to release murderers like Charles Goldblum who was convicted of murder after a man was stabbed with garden shears.

Fetterman has waged aggressive attacks against Oz, troll him over social media and paid advertising on issues such as health care and Social Security in a bid to portray the wealthy GOP candidate as out of touch with ordinary Pennsylvanians.

There is a reason for Republican optimism. Oz is poised to win as Republicans are more likely to express concerns about the economy and inflation. Republicans are surging throughout the country on economic issues, notwithstanding candidate quality problems, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on abortion, and former President Donald Trump’s unhelpful midterm interventions.

There are three House races in Pennsylvania that are toss-up. In particular, watch the Lehigh Valley race between incumbent Democratic Rep. Susan Wild and Republican challenger Lisa Scheller, who runs a family-owned manufacturing business. The seat I held for almost 14 years is among the most competitive swing districts in the country. CNN’s John King produced an excellent report on the Lehigh Valley’s Northampton County, a key national bellwether that may determine the fate of the statewide races and control of Congress.

“What’s most surprising is, states have within their power to be able to avoid these outcomes,” Zephyrin said. “States really have it in their power to enhance maternal health capacity, really create the systems that are necessary to ensure that every person has an opportunity for a safe and healthy birth and life, whether we’re talking about recruiting maternity providers, providing more birthing centers, supporting the range of reproductive health services, expanding Medicaid, investing in postpartum Medicaid extension.”

They’re the graduate student who needs to finish their studies before grant money ends, the new mother of twins who was misled about breastfeeding, rape victims and the newly pregnant worker who lost her job.

Tara and her husband, who have both given me permission to share their story, were forced to leave their home state when hospital lawyers objected to my opinion that Tara’s risk of having a baby with a blood clot and autoimmune condition was much higher than the benefits. Tara was ultimately able to get the care she needed in Michigan, but at great emotional burden, financial cost and delay. I don’t know what I would have done if something had gone wrong during the days that Tara had to wait to get an abortion.

Patients drive to the clinic for a long time. Just as I am honored to care for my medically high-risk patients, I am also proud to ensure patients who need abortion care for these other reasons have access to it. I am proud to support them in their choice to live their lives as they had envisioned.

This law that was put on hold by a judge’s preliminary injunction was put in place by Tara and her husband to stop them from travelling out of state. The upcoming elections will have a strong impact on what comes next. As I coordinate abortion care in other states I have to keep up with the laws in our neighboring states.

It’s hard to practice medicine when you’re always bracing for the next legal crisis that could harm your patients. I speak to hospital lawyers more often than any doctor, frustrated that they can’t give the same care to patients in different states.

Every time I am forced to turn a patient away, that burning candle inside me, once a roaring and passionate fire in a young student excited to embark upon a career of helping others, dims ever so slightly. Even when I am powerless, it is not easy to recover a serious violation of my duty as a physician.

Sometimes, I still feel happy in my job. The trembling hands of a college student, suddenly still after swallowing the first pill of their medication abortion regimen, whispering with increasing confidence, “I’m going to be ok.” The tears of a transplant recipient dry when she knows she won’t have to go back on the transplant list when her already tenuous kidney fails again during another pregnancy.

The burden of being a single mom has been removed, now that she can focus on her family and her career without being limited by an unwanted pregnancy. I am comforted to know that the broken hearts of Tara and Justin are finally starting to heal now that they did what was right for Tara’s health and spared their baby.

This is a high cost to all of us. Patients seeking abortion care and providers of that care should not be leveraged as political pawns or pushed to the forefront of national elections.

Patients should be allowed to simply be patients, to make medical decisions that align with their faith, family needs and their health, without interference from the government. They should be able to receive accessible, compassionate care regardless of what state they live in. Doctors should be able to be doctors. I shouldn’t have to worry about being retaliated against or having my reputation taken away for care of my patients.

Democrat Sen. Amy Schumer, the Mechanics of Georgia and the State where we are going downhill: The Electoral Report from Syracuse, New York

Schumer was concerned about Democratic prospects in Georgia in the final weeks before the elections but he was still hopeful about his party’s chances in Pennsylvania.

“The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It is hard to believe that the Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, will win the election, said the Democratic leader.

The debate between Fetterman and Oz did not hurt Pennsylvania, according to Schumer.

The overheard comments came during a conversation among Schumer, President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on the tarmac of Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Biden gave a speech in the state Thursday as part of his midterm closing message in which he painted Republicans as a threat to Americans’ pocketbooks.

Democrats are fighting to hold onto a narrow majority in the Senate because of the vice president’s tie-breaking vote. Both Georgia, which Democrats are defending, and Pennsylvania, which represents their best opportunity to flip a seat, are critical to that mission.

The Democratic leader said the party was picking up steam in Nevada, where one of its most vulnerable candidates is Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

The Flavor of Warnock and Walker in Georgia, After a Demonstration of Fetterman’s 1993 Anomaly

The Georgia race was thrown into turmoil this week after a woman claimed to have been in a long-term romantic relationship with Walker. She said at press conference on Wednesday that he had pressured her into having an abortion in 1993. Walker had denounced all of the claims as lies and was accused of encouraging someone to have a procedure and then reimbursing them. CNN has not independently confirmed the first woman’s allegations. She has remained anonymous in public reports.

In the New York Times and Siena College survey, only 50% of likely voters supported Walker, but this difference was within the survey’s margin of error. Another poll, from Fox News at the end of October, also found a remarkably close contest, with Warnock at 44% and Walker at 43%. If neither candidate wins a majority of the vote, the election will be decided in a December 6 run-off.

Fetterman said that he didn’t want to give a clown a vote on the issue.

But while Democrats immediately seized on Oz’s comments in their paid advertising, most of the post-debate attention was focused on the effects of Fetterman’s stroke.

“We wanted to be and thought it was important to be there. The Democrat told the senator that they showed up. I was always back up after getting knocked down. And, to me, that’s really at the essence of our campaign, is that we’re running for any Pennsylvanian that ever got knocked down that has to get back up. And that’s really what we’re running on.”

Bounds on Proposed Measures for Abortion and Healthcare: State and Local Laws in the Age of Digital Illness, Politics, and Culture

Voters in nearly three quarters of the states are faced with a variety of ballot initiatives, ranging from questions on rainy day funds to hot-button cultural issues this year. The most consequential questions relate to abortion.

Michigan’s proposed constitutional amendment would allow abortions to be restricted after fetal viability. But opponents have argued that the text’s explicit right to abortion for minors would likely nullify the state’s parental consent law and make Michigan’s abortion regime one of the most permissive in the country.

A grass-roots coalition on the left, meanwhile, is pushing a ballot measure that would make abortion legal again in Michigan. The anti-abortion groups claimed that it would allow children to have gender-reassignment surgery without their parents’ permission and invalidate laws requiring parental consent. Legal experts say all that is for courts to decide but Democrats feel that the right has done a good job of muddying the waters.

In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas, Democratic governors have fought efforts to impose restrictive abortion policies, so the governor’s races there will be crucial.

In August, a ballot initiative that would have added language to the state constitution stating that there isn’t protection for abortion rights was rejected by the voters of Kansas. But that was just about six weeks after the Dobbs decision was released.

The referenda are a little woolly-headed. Oregon’s proposed amendment would declare “affordable health care as a fundamental right,” a promise no state government can keep without endless increases in taxes. In addition to its extreme abortion amendment, California proposes a new tax on multi-millionaires to pay for climate initiatives, and not one but two proposals on expanding in-person and online gambling.

Colorado will vote on whether or not to decriminalize drugs. Proponents of legalization worry that legalization could lead to a cultural norm of these drugs in the same way that marijuana has led to higher rates of illegal use.

The Case for Proposed Post-Dobbs Adoption Panels: A New Perspective on Republican Policy Issues in the Era of Nationalized Government

Safe elections are a good thing, but it’s not a good sign for the future of conservative principles that some of the most prominent advocates of voter ID law have spent more time on a narrative that is baseless.

The importance of a federalist system has never been more apparent in our era of nationalized politics. Save for the authority expressly delegated to the federal government, states retain general police power to shape the health, well-being and general welfare of their citizens. America is great due to allowing states to experiment with different approaches to the minimum wage, taxes, and health care.

The pivots have been clumsy. A former college quarterback who is running for a seat in the North Carolina Legislature supports creating a panel to decide if abortions can be allowed if the woman is raped or incest. He hasn’t given any clue about how it might work.

“There are certainly legal mechanisms you could place legislatively that would create an individual basis,” Hines told Spectrum News. Democrats blasted out a news release calling the idea “post-Dobbs rape panels.”

Mehmet Oz is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, and he supports a federal abortion ban. He made the point that local officials should be in a position to make a decision on when to end a pregnancies. Whom he meant was a mystery — the alderman? county assessor? Democrats pounced.

During the primary, she stated that she opposed abortion in cases of rape or incest because she found healing through the baby.

Georgia Senate Race 2022: Warnock Walker and the Cumming Crowd: After a Biden victory, Pence’s legacy lives on the line

For the second time in less than two years, the Peach State, which elected two Democratic senators in the last election cycle, is home to a contest that has gripped both national parties and potentially holds the key to the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

A victory by Warnock would likely cause Republicans to lose their path to a majority in the Senate. That reality, coupled with headwinds – in the form of economic angst and Biden’s low approval ratings – familiar to Democrats across the country, has helped coalesce Republicans behind Walker.

The mixed bag of political practicality and ambivalence epitomized by former Vice President Mike Pence was apparent at the Cumming rally for GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who said he was supporting the whole Republican ticket.

Initially, he sought to steer clear of addressing the controversy. He broadcasted an ad last month called “Hypocrite.”

The narrator said that Herschel Walker wanted to ban abortion, and played his comments on the issue. The narrator then asked if the allegations were for himself.

Warnock’s play to undecided voters and moderates has focused on his efforts to expand access to health care – he often cites his work to lower the cost of insulin – along with his bipartisan record in the Senate.

“I’ll work with anyone if it means helping Georgia,” he says in another ad, hammering home a message the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church has repeated at rallies and in his lone debate with the Republican.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/georgia-senate-race-2022-midterms-warnock-walker/index.html

What Walker and the Republicans are Fighting About: The War of the World, Inflation and Crime Rates in the 20th Century, and the Future of Democracy

“There is very little evidence that he has taken any interest, bothered to learn anything about or displayed any kind of inclination towards public service or volunteer work or helping people in anyway,” Obama said of Walker at a rally for Warnock last week in College Park.

Walker is campaigning on the issue of culture war and crime rates, as well as on the issue of inflation and crime rates, which he has sought to highlight more closely than any other candidate.

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The US Army War College popularized the acronym VUCA in the late 1980’s as a way of viewing a world in turmoil. It stands for uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. As professors Dan Bennett and G. James Lemoine wrote, it is crazy out there.

Will it be a verdict on the leadership of President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress? Will it strengthen or weaken the election denialism many Republicans adopted after former President Donald Trump refused to accept his 2020 election loss? What would control of the one or both chambers of congress do to the future of the country?

The two parties differ on the issues that are being discussed in the election. Republicans are stressing inflation, crime and immigration in their campaigns, while many Democrats see threats to democracy and the overturning of Roe v. Wade as key reasons to elect their candidates.

The warnings about the future of democracy made by the Democrats are justified. Dean Obeidallah wrote that inflation is temporary but that democracy could be lost permanently. He cited the recent report by The Washington Post that stated that a majority of the GOP candidates for the House, Senate, and statewide office have denied the results of the 2020 election. We have never seen anything like this in our lifetimes – if ever in the history of the United States.”

Voters are interested in the economy. “It’s nothing new,” wrote historian Meg Jacobs. She said that the first televised political advertisement focused on inflation and was for the winning Republican presidential candidate. He talks to an average woman who complains about high prices and Eisenhower promises to fight on her behalf. That was at a time when inflation was less than 2%.

“Battles over inflation — what’s the cause, who is to blame, what is there to do — get to basic fights over who should have what. Should corporations earn bigger profits, should workers earn higher wages and should consumers shoulder the burden of both?”

Rising energy prices are “being felt particularly by lower-income households and workers,” wrote Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

An “unnecessarily painful recession” is on the horizon, warned Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute. The reason: the “unusually rapid pace of monetary policy tightening” by the Federal Reserve Bank, which this week hiked interest rates by three quarters of a point for the fourth time in a row. Higher rates are rapidly slowing the housing market and putting pressure on companies to cut staffing, he argued. “The Fed’s hawkish policy stance is occurring in the context of a very troubled world economy that has also been plagued by high inflation.” The Fed may be considering slowing down the pace of interest rate hikes.

The Midterms Are Voting Columngalant: Why Barack Obama Is Not a Kryptonite, but a Secretary of State

The closing question for voters was, who will fight for your freedom? The answer is clearly the Democrats, as the former President pointed out threats to reproductive rights and same-sex marriage by some Republicans.

Having Obama make the closing argument “might not be such a great idea,” wrote Republican Marc A. Thiessen in the Washington Post. Even though it can be positive, the Obama record of helping down-ballot Democrats is not as good as it could be. In fact, Obama presided over the loss of more House, Senate, state legislative and governors’ seats than any president in U.S. history… It is not surprising that many Democrats don’t want Biden to join them on the campaign trail. They think Obama will be the one who saves them. To the contrary, based on this disastrous record, he may be electoral kryptonite.”

It’s important for readers to know that key races will decide control of the House, Senate, and dozens of governorships across the country on Tuesday. You can follow the contests that matter to you and build a custom dashboard with CNN’s My Election tool. You can create a free CNN account by logging in.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Why Do People Don’t Care About The Insurrections? A Reply to Michael Fanone, aka Michael Pelosi

Michael Fanone, a former Metropolitan Police officer who was injured in a January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, wrote a letter in which he said why people don’t care about the insurrection. In other words, most Americans just don’t seem to care. An attempt to end our democracy? Excellent… Meh…

I don’t believe that the violent attack on Paul Pelosi will be a turning point. We are no longer talking about isolated incidents or seeing universal condemnation of violence by our leaders. The husband of a woman who is considered third in line to the US presidency was attacked in his home for political reasons and the right-wing media and some Republican supporters were happy about it.

About three-quarters of the states have some initiative up for a vote this year. “Democracy itself is on the ballot in 2022,” wrote Joshua A. Douglas. Not only will we have candidates who question the 2020 election, but several states and localities will vote on measures to change how elections are run, which could affect who gets to vote.

Friday brought word that former President Donald Trump could announce that he is launching another bid for the White House in the next few weeks. “Democrats should not underestimate the threat that Trump poses,” observed Julian Zelizer.

The Republicans are a strong united party. Not much can shake that unity. The ‘never Trump’ contingent did not emerge as a dominant force. Liz Cheney, for example, was kicked out of the party.

If Republicans win control of the House and Senate next week, they will have a good excuse to talk about their culture wars and economic talking points for the foreseeable future. There are many candidates who are not in favor of Trump that a strong showing will likely create some hope for the GOP to unite behind him.

Zelizer wrote that Trump himself will feel an increase in confidence. “Despite ongoing criminal investigations and the House select committee investigating January 6, Trump is still a viable political figure. … And once Trump is formally a candidate, it will make prosecuting him all the more difficult. Trump is expected to make a case that any investigation is simply a political witch hunt and intended to take him out of the running.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The story of an icon who quit Twitter to confront the censorship of the political discourse in a world where lies matter: Musk’s alleged offensive actions and the fate of Twitter

All this has made West’s slurring of Jews even worse. An icon decided to hang a live wire around his neck, wave it around, and blow it up on his fame since there was a scary electrical charge in the air.

Musk laid off a large amount of workers and shared the idea of charging users for blue check verification in his first few days as twitter’s new CEO.

“Musk is making the remarkable power that US tech executives hold over our lives, from geopolitics to the health of democracy, painfully tangible to all,” wrote Marietje Schaake in the Financial Times.

The number of racist and neo-Nazi accounts on the site increased immediately after the sale was confirmed. Accounts marked as being linked to Russian and Chinese state media requested that the Twitter labels indicating as much be removed. Musk was being rumored to reverse the account ban for conspiracy theories or Donald Trump himself.

Musk “has placed no limits on his own speech,” wrote former advertising executive Rob Norman in the New York Times, “and, under his ownership, seems likely to enable the inflammatory, provocative and sometimes verifiably untrue speech of others.”

I have represented the world’s largest buyer of advertising space, and advertisers worry a lot about these things. In this case, advertisers’ worries could lead them to flee en masse, costing Twitter almost all its current revenue. Without money, Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the platform could be a disaster and the platform could be in danger.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The worst year of her working life: M. A. Hickson, a student at a high school, protesting against Gender Queer and Lawn Boy

Martha Hickson called it the worst year of her working life, she has worked in a high school for more than a decade. Protesters showed up at a school board meeting to protest against ‘Gender Queer,’ a memoir in graphic novel form by Maia Kobabe, and ‘Lawn Boy.’ They spewed selected sentences from the Evison book, while brandishing isolated images from Kobabe’s.”

They attacked Banned Books Week, an event celebrating the freedom to read. The protesters characterized it as a nefarious plot to lure kids to degradation,” wrote Hickson.

“But the real sucker punch came when one protester branded me a pedophile, pornographer and groomer of children. It was heartbreaking after a career that was successful, to be cast as a villain.

“Even worse was the response from my employer – crickets. The board was silent that night, and for five months refused to say anything about my defense.

Hickson’s piece was the concluding personal essay in CNN Opinion’s series on midterm issues, “America’s Future Starts Now.” Nine education experts also weighed in with thoughts on how to move America’s schools forward.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Brady-Bndchen Divorce in Israel and the Effects on the Marriage and Family of a Former Brazilian President, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Family

The elections in Latin America and the Middle East brought back some familiar faces. The former President of Brazil posted a stunning political comeback in his home country.

“Not since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s have Brazilians been faced with two more starkly contrasting candidates, each with diametrically opposing political outlooks for the country,” Wierson wrote. A lot of the voting population didn’t buy in to either of the visions for the country.

Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to form a right-wing governing coalition in Israel after last week’s election.

Likud is the most reliable political party in Israel. Israel is now shaped by the right wing more than at any point in its history, because Netanyahu is its master.

It’s not unusual for celebrity power couples to get into a messy divorce, as was seen with the Brady and Bndchen situation. There is a huge amount of public interest in the split. The Brady-Bndchen divorce makes perfect sense, since these two people are not exactly like us and yet seem to be splitting up over a familiar gender dynamic that is imminently.

“Bündchen’s public comments indicate a worry about Brady’s health playing a dangerous sport and a desire – after years of sacrificing so that he could thrive professionally – for him to spend more time with their family.”

This is “a familiar and frustrating” dynamic: “The woman who steps back to care for children and make sure her husband succeeds – and the husband who doesn’t quite seem to appreciate that sacrifice and continues to push professionally far past when he needs to, at the expense of his family.”

Can the U.S. Supreme Court Overturning of Roe V. Wade Exponential Energy be Harmened at the Polls?

The question for Democrats — who are in a historically unfavorable position as the party in charge of the White House and facing growing concerns about inflation and the rest of the economy — is to what degree the energy unleashed by this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade can be harnessed at the polls, and to what extent that energy can overcome voters’ economic worries.

The overturning of Roe sent the question of abortion back to the states – making state legislators and governors extremely important in determining the laws and policies that regulate the procedure.

Without a nationwide abortion ban, people will travel from states with more liberal abortion laws to states that do not, according to Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs at SBA Pro-Life America.

The president promised to veto any anti-abortion legislation that might pass, but the president said that was too close for comfort.

“We certainly don’t want to let it get that far. Timmaraju said that it was a bad precedent. “We’re absolutely not going to let it get to that point; that’s our goal.”

Butler, of Emily’s List, said she is hopeful abortion rights will be top of mind for voters in what many political observers are suggesting may be a difficult midterm for Democrats.

“Voters are whole people; they carry their whole selves into the ballot box,” Butler said. Our economy ebbs and flows but we don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get it back once our fundamental freedoms are taken away.

The Night Before Melissa’s Abortion Arrives at the Front Desk of Northland Family Planning, Mich: The Women Speak Out Pac Project Revisited

Meanwhile, SBA Pro-Life America’s Musgrave says the group’s Women Speak Out Pac has contacted some 8 million voters nationwide on behalf of anti-abortion rights candidates and related ballot measures.

The night before her abortion, Melissa had to travel to another state. She didn’t reach her hotel until 3 a.m., after driving all day from Ohio to Michigan. But just a few hours later, she had arrived on time for her 8 a.m. check-in at the front desk of Northland Family Planning in Sterling Heights, Mich.

NPR agreed to not to use full names for all the patients interviewed in this story because of the intimate medical information discussed concerning a highly politicized and controversial issue.

The Northland waiting room is built to feel welcoming, even pretty. The tall pines are bending in the breeze as big windows look out. The TV broadcasts the cheerful chatter of people remodeling their farmhouses.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

How abortion in Michigan is legal at ballot-clinic? A friend of a mother and a grandmother tells her: I’ll never tell anyone, ever, ever

“‘You can never tell anyone, because no man will ever marry you if he knows that this has happened,’” Chelian recalled her father telling her afterward. ‘You’re going to be OK. We’re going to take care of you. We will never discuss it again after this conversation.

On August 1 for example, rapid-fire court rulings meant that abortion in Michigan was legal at breakfast, illegal at lunchtime, but legal once again by dinner.

It’s possible that the abortion issue will come down to this election. Proposal 3 would get a vote of confidence from the voters on Tuesday in order to get the right to abortion in the Michigan constitution.

The founder of Northland, who is now 71, is a small powerhouse who never ceases to move. She has spent most of her adult life pouring that energy into creating the clinics she wished had existed when she was 15: spaces that are spotless but not soulless, where soothing music plays in the procedure rooms. Patients receive a brown paper bag with their prescriptions inside and a small heart on the front of it, after their appointments.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

Seeing beyond the dobbs ban: Seeing through a baby’s eyes in obstetrician-gynecology

But then the appointment took an unexpected turn. “She wanted to pray for me,” Melissa says. “She gave me a Bible. It didn’t even seem like it was religion until the very end … They were posing to be so pro-choice, and they’re not.”

“I’m in this weird situation of, I’m going through a divorce, and I slept with somebody one time. And then I had a baby. And they were wondering if it was a future for you with this guy. What if we brought him in here?’ They were trying to talk me into having a baby that I couldn’t have, but then they were talking me into a relationship as well. It’s crazy.”

“And I just feel so much better, because I have two kids, I have a ten-year-old and a two-year-old,” she says, taking a deep breath. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”

When Melissa’s name is called, a staff member brings her from the waiting area into one of the procedure rooms, where she meets the doctor who’ll perform her procedure: obstetrician-gynecologist Audrey Lance.

Like many of the patients who come here, Lance has kids, and the shared experiences of parenthood — Halloween costumes, soccer games, the agony and ecstasies of living with a toddler — provide most of the small talk before the procedure begins, or the abortion pills are dispensed.

Lance dyed her brown hair purple earlier in the year to make her seem cooler and to help patients relax when she comes in, as she is an abortion doctor.

Every little moment of connection and ease is important, given how public, politicized and ugly the legal fights over abortion have become, Lance says. Since the decision of the Dobbs case, it’s been a difficult time.

It seems every week there was a new challenge that was affecting the way we worked or whether we could work and provide care,” Lance says.

Despite the turmoil of recent months, she’s optimistic Prop. 3 will pass, and nullify forever any threat from that 1931 ban. “I am hopeful. But…” she sighs, then pauses. “I think you just have to be. How can I come to work if I don’t?

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

A mom who’s been through a lot: When I got a job at a clinic, I was so excited to go home

Northland’s clinic in Sterling Heights sees about 22 to 24 patients a day. On the nine days a public radio reporter visited, about half of the patients agreed to an interview or allowed the reporter to accompany them during the office visit or surgical procedure.

A. is a slender, energetic mom with big, bright eyes. She’s quick to make a joke out of anything. But she dissolves into tears when asked about why she came to Northland.

“I don’t think I could survive if I knew that I had to have these babies with an abusive person,” A. says. That’s crazy to me. I feel like a prisoner.

A. has two toddler girls and her former partner was violent. She had taken the girls and left to get a personal protection order when she found out she was pregnant with twins.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

How much abortion is needed in a given patient? A patient’s cry before a doctor’s diagnosis tells you that abortion is illegal

I’ve asked and begged them to do anything that they have to do. She says that she is denied. “But then I end up on medication for birth control. It’s insanity.”

I need to stop having sex in order to not become pregnant because I’m so fertile. So, abortion, even though this is my first one, I’m happy that it’s here because I don’t know what I would do right now.”

A wipes tears from her face after a moment. She manages a small smile. “That’s more sharing than I’ve experienced in a long time.” I’m like the Grinch, my heart is getting bigger.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

Medical abortion in Michigan: A case study of an abuser’s first reaction to an interview with the WSJPAP et al

An abusive relationship is the reason someone would need an abortion. Money problems. Emotional distress. You do see a lot of that.

But you also see patients who are in great relationships, they’re financially stable, and emotionally composed. M. also requested to be identified by her first initial.

She said she wanted to go back to work because she wants to have something else besides being a mother all day.

M. has three kids and the youngest is about to start school. After ten years of being at home with her kids, M thought she was on the verge of something new.

The pills for medication abortions are prescribed in the morning and the surgical procedures take place in the afternoon.

“Okay, so I’m just going to get you set up on the table and we’re going to do that sedation medicine,” Lance tells one patient, who agreed that the reporter could observe and record her procedure, but asked that she not be identified.

The woman, who is from Michigan and already has a toddler, was about 11 weeks pregnant. Most of the abortions in Michigan are performed in the first 13 weeks of the baby’s life.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic

A Patient’s Advocate During the First Trimester of Fermion Abortion: A Story of Three Conversations in Northland Family Planning

The lights are not on until after the procedure is over. The patient is wearing a medical gown and bare legs, and the staffer is holding her hand to help her get through it.

It’s typical for patients to be partially awake during first trimester abortions. Northland Family Planning gives every patient numbing medication applied to the cervix, and intravenous medications for pain and anxiety (fentanyl and midazolam).

This patient talked about how hard the journey had been, while sitting in the waiting area. How she hid it from her mom at first, until her aunties threatened to tell her mom if she didn’t do it herself. How her mom was surprisingly supportive, getting up early with her that morning, and making sure she ate a good breakfast before her appointment.

She didn’t want to be with the guy who got her pregnant. She asked if he would help pay for the abortion. He told her that the most he could do was split it.

“The guys, they’re never held responsible for things like this, ever,” she says. “It’s always the woman. We always got to step up and take care of it. It’s always in our lap regardless of whether we keep it or not.

“Don’t think it can’t touch you.” It could affect you in so many different ways. It could be your mother. It could be your sister. It could be your niece. Maybe it’s your daughter. Your future, your future daughter. Your future wife. Stop thinking it’s not going to touch you, man or woman.”

Do Abortion Rules Go Out of State? The Idaho Republican Platform Counts on the Backlash to Alito’s Proposal

Editor’s Note: Mary Ziegler is the Martin Luther King Professor of Law at UC Davis and author of the book “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment.” The views she expresses are her own. CNN has an opinion on it.

But Democrats can’t count on Republicans to make the same mistake twice. They must tell voters that reproductive freedom is economic freedom, and they can do it by legislating that way.

None of this was likely to be popular. The majority of Republicans support exceptions to rape, incest and health. So far, Dobbs has seemed to mean bans on abortion that go further than most voters want. It’s not surprising to see some backlash to that.

Voters were reacting to what the Supreme Court did. There is no real precedent for the court to destroy what was long recognized as a constitutional right – much less to do so in a way that was mocking and dismissive. Justice Samuel Alito found that more than half of the electorate was female. If people didn’t like what the court had done, he suggested, they could just go out and vote. Last night, voters certainly took Alito’s advice.

Some state lawmakers would like to go even further. The CEOs of major corporations in Texas have been threatened with felony charges because of the way they reimburse their employees for out of state travel for abortion. The Idaho Republican platform includes no exceptions for abortion at all.

Did I Know a Gen Z Student Vote? Changing the debate about gun violence in Kansas and the “Roe wave”

Editor’s Note: Dolores Hernandez, a junior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, lives with her family in Shawnee, Kansas. Her own views are expressed in this commentary. Read more opinions at CNN.

Place in front of us an existential issue that could determine our future. Give us the knowledge that we can have a say about issues that affect us with our votes, and we will turn out in droves.

As someone barely out of my teens, I’m supposed to be among the disaffected youth who doesn’t care about politics. But in my experience, there’s no such thing: Almost all of the people I know from my age group care deeply about some issue or the other.

For some of us, that issue is the environment. This week, the first Gen Z member of Congress became an activist in the fight for gun violence prevention.

In the states where Republicans held control of the government, the “Roe wave” failed to break their defenses. Since 2021, those states have moved with startling speed to approve a conservative social agenda that includes restrictions or outright bans on abortion rights; laws making it more difficult to vote; bans on transgender girls playing school sports and on transgender minors receiving gender affirming treatment; censorship of classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation; measures empowering parents who want to ban books from school libraries; and statutes eliminating permitting and training requirements for people who want to carry concealed weapons.

When I turned 18 two years ago and became eligible to vote, my mother, dad and sister all accompanied me to the polls as I cast my very first ballot. My parents have always been avid voters, because my brother has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and relies on social services. They understand that his access to services depends on who is in office. My dad and my sister, who’s currently in law school, sat down with me to go over every candidate and issue beforehand, to make sure I understood who I was voting for.

Gen Z voters like me were important in the August vote. Since then, discussions about voting and abortion still dominate the conversations on campus. The victory for abortion rights is opening students up to discussions on a number of issues. Now students on campus are talking more about healthcare, education funding and immigration. The debate about abortion gave many of us an opening to become more involved in activism.

In Kansas, my sister and I are together with other student activists. There is a rise in youth voter activism. More people under the age of 25 registered to vote this midterm than in 2018, according to CIRCLE Research at Tufts University.

Between August and September of this year, young women accounted for 54% of new registered voters – a change from most years, when voter registrations have been fairly evenly divided by gender. I’m sure that the abortion vote has a lot to do with that.

Gen Z voters have grown up in a country that always protected our bodily autonomy. A lot of us woke up to the importance of voting when it wasn’t represented by the majority of us. We won’t soon unlearn that lesson.

In Democratic-leaning and swing states, voters last week delivered an unmistakable cry of resistance to the restrictive Republican social agenda symbolized by the drive to ban abortion.

Across that red terrain, Republican governors who have been at the forefront of championing and implementing that agenda uniformly cruised to reelection. That list included GOP governors in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, Tennessee, South Dakota and Florida- – where Ron DeSantis’ blowout win was arguably the party’s highlight on a deeply disappointing night. Republicans have control of all of the legislative chambers in states that have banned or restricted abortion, and are expected to keep their control there.

The Democrats succeeded in defeating the president in the last two elections largely because of the voters who turned out in large numbers to vote against him. Women in that coalition leaned more Democratic than men due to the fact that they are people of color, college educated, urban and less religious.

According to the exit polls done by a Consortium of Media organizations including CNN, the Democratic performance was not as good as in previous years. It wasn’t surprising that erosion occurred given the huge majorities of those groups who expressed negative views about the economy and the poor performance of President Joe Biden.

More surprising was that despite that undertow, Democrats held just enough of their support from these key voting blocs to post a succession of unexpected victories. In the national exit poll, Democrats had a huge advantage over the Republicans, winning a narrow plurality of independent voters who have always voted against the party in power at times of national discontent. Democrats carried independents by even larger margins in the key blue and purple state governor races, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, the exit polls found.

“My main takeaway is there is a pro-freedom, anti-MAGA majority,” says Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, vice-president and chief strategy officer of Way to Win, a liberal group that pressed the party to emphasize the threats to rights in its campaign messaging. We weren’t sure if it would show up again as it did in the last two years, but we saw that American voters wanted us to move forward.

It was striking that economic pessimism was pervasive even in these states, with around three-fourths of voters describing the economy as poor in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Role of Proton Prostitution in Electing the 2024 Republican gubernatorial Congressional Candidate in Wisconsin

“In places where people have gotten used to having these rights and freedoms, the idea that they would be taken away overpowered other things they might have been concerned about,” says Fernandez Ancona.

About one-third of college educated white voters said abortion should stay legal, and Abbott captured more than one fourth of them. By contrast Dixon, Mastriano and Tim Michels, the losing GOP gubernatorial nominee in Wisconsin, each won only about one-sixth of such voters.

abortion rights supporters think that it should be no more acceptable to allow states to impose segregation through the 20th century than it is to allow them to do so now.

“The pieces are in place for us to be able to have this coalition mobilize again in 2024,” says Fernandez Ancona. She notes that young voters who supported the Democrats last week will constitute a bigger percentage of the electorate than they did this year.

But at the same time Fernandez Ancona sees reasons for optimism for Democrats about the presidential race in 2024, she acknowledges that Tuesday’s results show “it’s going to take much longer to build the kind of power” to challenge the GOP dominance in red states.

Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different than You Think) – Comments on “The Case of the Covid-19 Red Wave”

Editor’s Note: Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms. She wrote “Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why it’s Different than You Think)”. The views expressed here are hers. Read more opinion on CNN.

As pundits began to predict a looming red wave, Michigan Gov. Guggling put a stake in the ground.

The governor stated that Covid-19 was a she-cession, and that they need to get women back in the workplace. “But you know how you do that? You help women. You don’t take our ability to make the most important economic decision we make in our lifetimes away from us.”

In the months that followed, commentators and pollsters breathlessly speculated about whether voters would prioritize abortion or the economy in casting their vote. Democrats were furious that the abortion decision backlash was not as bad as Republicans would have you believe.

Democrats would be wise to run on the fact that the price of parenthood is the ultimate economic issue in elections to come, and only one party is doing something about it.

The additional costs kill parents’ budgets every day. The cost of child care is going up more quickly than inflation. In fact, it’s now the norm for pre-school to cost more than an in-state public university degree, contributing to a staggering 40% of parents going into debt well before their children have moved into a dorm.

What Parents Can Do to Help Their Children? The Costs of Parenting in the Early 2024 Elections: The Role of Democrats and Black Folks

It’s not a matter of guaranteeing paid sick leave for everyone, but a matter of determining who gets it and how much, which will create enormous disparity and implications for individual and public health, as well as the robustness of the US economy.

And then, as Whitmer argued, there’s the most fundamental financial issue for parents, and especially for Black women – whether or not to become one in the first place. Months after the Dobbs decision overturning, it’s more expensive than ever to raise a child – over $18,000 per year, per child for a working-class family, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. The Supreme Court required you to care for a child when gas prices were high, and the cost pales in comparison to that.

Not to mention, the issues Republicans did campaign on – banning books, eliminating some sex education and taking away transgender people’s access to health care – are deeply unpopular to us. Indeed, for all the time the GOP spent manufacturing culture wars, none of these so-called “parental rights” issues cracked the top 10 for voters going into the midterms, according to Gallup.

This election gave many Democrats a chance to change things, including codifying women’s rights and putting paid leave back on the table, among other things. These policies would ease parents’ financial stresses far more than Republican corporate tax breaks ever could – and history shows that if candidates articulate the value of these policies, their numbers may in fact improve.

These candidates offer a blueprint for a better nation – and, looking ahead to 2024, Democrats would be wise to take them and their strategy seriously. They show us a future where leaders will talk about the pocketbook issues they are and prove they can pass them on behalf of the people.

Parents across the political spectrum can be sure that their chosen party is giving us a chance as well, thanks to this world.

The Problem of Dobbs: Why Democrats Are So Extreme? The Case of Abortion During Midterm Elections 2022

This year’s midterms were certainly unusual — when the president’s approval is below 50% (as President Biden’s is), their party loses 43 House seats in midterm elections, on average. It’s possible that Democratic losses are in the single digits. Less than six months after the Supreme Court’s decision, both sides are still trying to figure out how large a part abortion played in the elections.

The effect was probably much more complicated though, says Sarah Longwell, founder of the Republican Accountability Project, which opposes Republicans who deny the 2020 election results. She explained the pattern that she used to see in swing voter focus groups.

One way to read this is that abortion was not necessarily top of mind, but it was a prominent data point supporting a narrative that some Republicans were too extreme. That’s how Democratic strategist Tom Bonier sees it.

He thinks that the issues that weren’t really relevant to people were focused by Dobbs. Democrats were talking about a lot of things but they weren’t really making a difference in the numbers. And then another person is added to the mix. And I think it made this argument of Republican extremism more real to voters. The dots were connected.

Bonier said there was a significant surge in the gender gap in two to four weeks after Dobbs. “And then we saw an increase, but not as pronounced after that.”

A few unanswered questions is left by that. One is the reason why women were motivated. exit polls suggest that young women broke for Democrats. The post election survey showed that women over the age of 65 swung toward Democrats in July and November.

People like to use logic. They like something that can tell them what to do without any mental investment. Bitecofer said the party label was powerful because of that.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139040227/abortion-midterm-elections-2022-republicans-democrats-roe-dobbs

Democrat messaging of abortion midterm elections 2022: What worked and how to move forward on it, and what did we learn from it?

Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of SBA Pro Life America, which opposes abortion rights. Conversely, she thinks that more spending on the ballot measures would have been key to helping abortion rights supporters prevail. She sees political wins by Abbott and other politicians as proof of their power.

“The one thing you have in an election on the pro-life side and we’ve always had is the candidate — a human representation of the argument on the debate stage,” she said. Governors who have been ambitious for their life are the reason they are winning. They have the bully pulpit of the governorships.”

“In Texas, people generally like the job that Abbott’s doing, right? They thought that he did a good job on COVID, and culturally they feel like they are with him more than they’re not with him,” she said. “And so people will tolerate being out of step [with him] on something like abortion, especially if it’s not a high priority issue for them.”

One more takeaway — one that’s harder to quantify — is what messaging strategy worked and how to move forward on the issue. For Dannenfelser it’s clear that Republicans failed, and that Democrats found a winning strategy.

Multiple Democratic strategists agree that staying away from gestational limits was smart, though they often do not see it as painting Republicans as overly extreme, like Republicans do.

“I think it was not only smart, but right of them to say there isn’t some line, there isn’t some like countdown clock in which you go from being a full autonomous human being to property of the state,” said Analilia Mejia, codirector of the progressive Center for Popular Democracy.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139040227/abortion-midterm-elections-2022-republicans-democrats-roe-dobbs

What are the best abortion rights laws? – Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Fetterman, and a few other things the Republicans and Democrats can do

With that in mind, we can ask what the parties see as their best paths. The Republican party needs to get rid of abortion measures that are too tight.

He told the post-election panel that there are a lot of laws that are far from the mainstream that include exceptions for rape or incest. “That’s the very definition of outside the mainstream.”

She said that you can’t expect to be successful in the primaries if you don’t promote federal 15-week abortion protection.

The Senate campaign of John Fetterman wants their party to do more than simply message when it comes to abortion rights legislation.

She believes that people should not be high fiving because of the devastating impact of the cycle. There is a lot of work to be done.

The House is expected to vote and pass legislation on Thursday to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, the last step before the measure goes to President Joe Biden for his signature and becomes law.

The Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn its landmark abortion decision gave rise to a push for federal legislation protecting same-sex marriage.

Even if the Supreme Court overturns the same-sex marriage decision, a state could still ban same-sex marriage, if it wanted to, and it would also be required to recognize same-sex marriage from another state.

The legislation to protect same-sex marriage in the United States will be one of the last things Nancy Pelosi will do in the House, she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

The Respect for Marriage Act was praised last week by President Joe Biden, who said in a statement that it would safeguard rights and protections to which the LGBTQI+ community and their children are entitled.

After the House sends the legislation to my desk, I will sign it into law and greet them at the White House.

The Commonwealth Fund: Left-Leaning Voting in the Interest of a Project to Design a Website for Same-Sex Couples

Several conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed sympathetic on Monday to arguments from a graphic designer who seeks to start a website business to celebrate weddings but does not want to work with same-sex couples.

The justices of the conservative court seemed to think that if the government wanted an artist or someone making a product to say something that violates their religious beliefs, then they could not force it.

“Compared with their counterparts in other states, women of reproductive age and birthing people in states with current or proposed abortion bans have more limited access to affordable health insurance coverage, worse health outcomes, and lower access to maternity care providers,” Zephyrin and her colleagues wrote in the new Commonwealth Fund report.

There is limited or no access to maternity health care services in 39% of counties that restrict abortion access according to the analysis. In comparison, 25% of counties in abortion-access states can be considered maternity care deserts.

Separate research published in 2020 in the journal Women’s Health Issues found that although maternal mortality overall continues to increase in the United States, the maternal death rate in states that have expanded Medicaid has had less of an increase than in non-expansion states.

Dr. Kristyn Brandi, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Darney-Landy Fellow, said she is not surprised by the findings in the new report because the “issues around reproductive health care are intricately linked.”

This was possible because in about half of all U.S. states, citizens have the power to pass laws or amend the state’s constitution themselves, sidestepping lawmakers. Ballot initiatives have become a popular way to alter policy in states dominated by one party.

That backlash “really accelerated in 2021 and 2022,” says Kelly Hall, executive director with The Fairness Project. That group claims success in 31 of the 33 left-leaning ballot initiatives it has supported since 2016.

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a group which provides research and support to groups promoting ballot measures, said that there has been an increase in the number of bills regarding the initiative process over the past couple of years.

While not all would restrict the process, many propose new requirements for the number of signatures needed, where the signatures must come from, or increase the threshold to pass a measure.

One example is the requirement to carry around a bath towel-size petition if you want the language printed all on one sheet of paper. She says that the new rules have the effect of “Death by a thousand cuts” for future initiatives.

Arkansas and South Dakota voters rejected the limits, but Arizonans approved two out of three. They rejected a measure that would have allowed legislators amend or repeal ballot measures found to contain illegal language. They had approved a measure to increase the vote threshold to pass a constitutional amendment of 60%, and another limiting initiatives to one subject.

Just weeks after the November election, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, and Republican representative Brian Stewart rolled out a resolution that would require all future constitutional amendments to receive a 60% supermajority at the polls, rather than the current 50%.

This comes as advocates of abortion rights, legalization of marijuana, and other related issues are preparing to put their issues on the ballot in Ohio.

The minimum wage in Missouri went from $7.85 to $12 over five years after voters approved ballot initiatives. Missouri lawmakers introduced more bills to make it harder to amend their constitution than any other state.

“I think the recent passage of recreational marijuana, which you know I oppose, maybe indicates it’s a little too easy to get things through initiative petition,” says Missouri’s new Republican state Senate majority leader Cindy O’Laughlin.

“What’s clear here is that this is an effort to block the people of Ohio’s ability to amend our Constitution and to ensure that we can enshrine rights and protections for the people that obviously Ohio Republicans don’t want us to have,” says Katy Shanahan with the Equal Districts Coalition, a group that opposes partisan gerrymandering in Ohio.

“While an issue may be couched as partisan, when we actually put them before voters, they transcend those party lines,” says Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.

Changes to the process could make future wins less likely. Some of the votes fell well below the threshold required for amendments to be made to the constitution.

In December, GOP lawmakers in Ohio failed to pass the resolution to raise the vote threshold for constitutional amendments before the end of the lame duck session. But, they say they’ll try again in 2023.

Public Investment, Family Leave, and Work Family Policies that Advance Gender, Race and Economic Equity: Vikki Shabo’s Stand Up Against Covid-19, and the PUMP Act

Vicki Shabo is a senior fellow at the New America think tank which focuses on paid family and medical leave, and other work family policies that advance gender, racial and economic equity. She has testified before Congress multiple times on America’s need for paid leave and other policies that support women’s workforce participation and earnings. The views expressed here are hers. CNN has more opinion.

But much more is needed. Policymakers should begin 2023 by taking a hard look at how public investments can better support families – and working people who deserve better should demand that they do.

The health, care and economic challenges triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. The racial justice reckoning that shone a bright light on systemic injustices and biases that prevent full economic opportunity and fair treatment for people of color. A historic number of worker strikes and labor actions. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, constraining women’s reproductive health decisions.

We’re in an upside-down world where what’s now public should be private, and what’s long been seen as “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” private must be seen as matters of public concern and investment for women, families and the country to thrive.

An estimated 2.8 million working women will become pregnant each year, and around a quarter-million are either denied or do not ask for pregnancy accommodations they need. This law will help to change that.

The PUMP Act ensured space, time and privacy for nursing workers in all jobs, and prior to this it was not possible for 13 million other women of working age to benefit from current nursing mothers’ provisions.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/opinions/spending-bill-pregnant-workers-shabo/index.html

The End of the Obama Era: An Omnibus Spending Package to Support Families in the Presence of a Child-Internal Spouse

Both measures were adopted as amendments to the $1.7 trillion end-of-year omnibus spending bill which passed in the Senate Thursday. The bill will go up for a vote in the House on Friday.

A majority of families left to find child care or caring for older and disabled loved ones on their own affects caregivers, who are usually women. Insecurity is created in the care workforce due to the low pay of professional caregivers.

Meanwhile, tax credits for families with children are available only once a year, creating challenges for parents who need to buy shoes and clothes for their children, pay for band uniforms and field trips, or even put food on the table, despite studies showing how temporary advances to and increases in the Child Tax Credit (CTC) during the pandemic reduced child poverty and increased families’ well-being.

The reality that families need care is private, despite the fact that Dobbs had made private decisions about abortion and child bearing matters, for 50 years, as part of their constitutional right to privacy.

It might help that Congress has an omnibus spending package for the end of the year. Millions of people who are pregnant and nursing will be helped by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. This is literally the least Congress can do to support healthy pregnancies and babies. Increased spending for Child Care Block Development Grants and Head Start will help to shore up the existing child care system.

There were a lot of work left undone in this Congress. The omnibus package failed to re-establish CTC enhancements that helped so many families during the pandemic, despite valiant efforts by advocates and congressional champions. The President proposed paid family and medical leave as well as home and community based care, but the policy fights of this year failed to result in the investments that he proposed.

This most recent Congress has done other important things that show that the federal government can do good – and perhaps that provides hope for the future, as success can beget more action.

The Democrats’ American Rescue Plan included temporary investments to shore up child care and home care providers, reduce care-related costs for families, and provide families with more money and more flexibility through the advanced, enhanced CTC. Infrastructure legislation decades in the making and passed with bipartisan support invested in roads, bridges, technology and more because physical infrastructure – unlike care infrastructure – is seen as a public good.

The Democrats in Congress have made historic investments in health care, clean energy, and some adjustments to make the tax code more fair as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The new law protecting the right of LGBTQ people to marry was also enacted on a bipartisan basis, something that was unthinkable a couple of years ago.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/opinions/spending-bill-pregnant-workers-shabo/index.html

The Proximity Clause, a Problem of the State, and the Law of Families: South Carolina vs. South Carolina

So perhaps there is a path forward. The University of North Carolina law professor was the originator of the term “free market family”. The idea that family care and family support are personal or private matters, or subject to individual-level negotiations with employers, is an idea long perpetuated by the private sector, wealthy libertarians and conservative ideologues.

After nearly three years of uncertainty for families due to the pandemic, and a fall season that saw a record number of parents out of the workforce because of care needs or illness, an increase in families’ economic hardships earlier this year after historic reductions, we should celebrate victories for pregnant and nursing workers.

It is not possible for the state to limit those rights, but only if the time frames imposed are meaningful and can afford a pregnant woman enough time to know her true age and take appropriate steps to end her pregnancies.

In a dissent penned by Justice John Kittredge and also joined by Justice George James, Kittredge wrote that he would honor the decision made by the General Assembly regarding abortion policy in the state.

South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster blasted the ruling on Thursday, writing in a statement that the court “has found a right in our Constitution which was never intended by the people of South Carolina.”

The court has clearly overstepped its authority with this opinion. The elected representatives have heard from the people multiple times. I look forward to working with the General Assembly to correct this error,” the governor said.

The White House applauded the decision of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, which ruled against the abortion ban in their state.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and Greenville Women’s Clinic, as well as two individual providers, filed their lawsuit against the law last July, alleging that the six-week prohibition on the procedure violates several clauses of South Carolina’s ​constitution.

There is a promising path to restore and safeguard these rights in many states and some of them are controlled by Republicans.