US Politics

Republican can’t list himself as ‘The Patriot’ on ballot, state rulesState lawmaker claims it’s his nickname – but he struggles to spell it and opponent says he doesn’t use it A state Republican lawmaker who wanted to refer to himself as “The Patriot” on the ballot can’t use that nickname, the Oklahoma Election Board has ruled.Sean Roberts can still run for Oklahoma labor commissioner, but he can’t refer to himself using that nickname on the ballot, the board decided Monday.Oklahoma election rules allow a candidate to use a nickname if it’s a name the candidate is generally known by or if the candidate does business using the nickname. Roberts’ opponent, the Republican labor commissioner, Leslie Osborn, said there was no evidence Roberts was known as “The Patriot”.She pointed out in her petition to the board that Roberts had appeared on the ballot in seven successive elections as Kevin Sean Roberts or Sean Roberts.Roberts also struggled at one point in the proceedings to spell “patriot”, according to NonDoc.com, which the state representative Chris Kannady suggested was evidence that he was not, in fact, called The Patriot. “When asked to spell ‘patriot’, Representative Roberts had issues with spelling. Probably because he’s not used to spelling it out or writing it out as part of his legal name,” Kannady said.Roberts’s website describes himself as Sean The Patriot Roberts, without quotation marks, and says he “is a husband, father, Christian, small business owner, healthcare provider, former 2016 Trump delegate, and 12-year Oklahoma State Legislator”.It also says he has “promoted economically sound policies while defending Oklahoman’s freedom and liberties” – presumably referring to multiple people, rather than to one Oklahoman.“Using a campaign slogan as part of your name is inconsistent with ballot integrity,” said the former Oklahoma attorney general Mike Hunter, who is representing Osborn. “You don’t want a cascade of cases like this one in future elections.”When asked how many people know him as “The Patriot,” Roberts said roughly 200 to 600 people.His attorney cited evidence including a plaque naming him a “patriot” and a 46th birthday card which stated: “Thank you for picking up the torch of freedom and finally getting constitutional carry across the finish line. You truly are The Patriot.”After the verdict Roberts released a statement saying he was considering an appeal.TopicsOklahomaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

The supreme court’s coming abortion ruling may spark a new era of US unrestStephen MarcheThere’s a strong risk that the case will spark anger and violence – whether the court overturns Roe v Wade or not Civil wars don’t always begin with gunfire. Sometimes civil wars begin with learned arguments. In April 1861, Confederate forces shot on Fort Sumter, but at the time even Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, had doubts about whether the event mattered all that much. It was, he claimed, “either the beginning of a fearful war, or the end of a political contest”; he could not say which. During the decades that preceded the assault on Fort Sumter, complex legal and political fissures had been working their way through the United States, slowly rendering the country ungovernable and opening the path to mass violence.The US is the middle of another such legal crackup, this time over the question of abortion. The courts today face the crisis American courts faced in the 1850s: is there any way to make laws for a country with furious and widening differences in fundamental values?Tell us: have you had to travel to another US state for an abortion? Read moreThis summer, when the US supreme court makes its long-expected decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it will inevitably alienate half the country. In anticipation of the overturning of Roe v Wade, several states have passed draconian anti-abortion laws, in the expectation that they won’t be challenged. Idaho has already imitated the Texas law which allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman procure an abortion, a law that the supreme court has refused to overturn.Two American blocs are emerging. In the south and parts of the west and midwest, abortion laws are about to return to where they were in the 1950s. The rest of the country has already set itself in opposition to these laws. The division will not stay considerate and respectful, particularly in areas where liberal and conservative states neighbour one another. In anticipation of a post-Roe world and a flood of out-of-state patients, abortion providers have established a series of abortion clinics in Illinois, across the river from more conservative Missouri. Oregon recently invested in a $15m fund for medical refugees traveling from Idaho for abortions.There are, right from the beginning, two reactions to the new division. The first is the use of force, as in the case of a 26-year-old Texan woman, Lizelle Herrera, who was recently arrested for murder for allegedly self-inducing an abortion. The local district attorney’s office ultimately released her without charge, explaining that “in reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her”. To be clear, current applicable Texas law doesn’t apply to Herrera’s case. When it does, they will charge people like her with murder. How far will the forces opposing abortion take a custodial approach? Do they want to set up a DEA-style birth police? Any enforcement mechanism will also probably be highly ineffective. After billions of dollars spent on the war on drugs, the average price of a hit of heroin on the street is between $5 and $20. Women with means who want abortions are going to get them.Texas advocates file new legal challenge to near-total abortion ban Read moreThe second reaction to an America divided along abortion lines will be interstate conflict. Missouri is leading the way here. A recent bill proposed a travel abortion ban, explicitly focused on clinics in Illinois. This looks, on the face of it, like a straight violation of the 14th amendment, but the supreme court is a partisan institution and interpretation of the constitution now follows the partisan affiliation of the justices. They’ll come up with something.No matter what decision the supreme court makes, civil unrest will follow. Anti-abortion activists will feel that their political system has failed them no matter what the court does. They have sacrificed everything – the dignity and integrity of their party, the value of their national institutions – in the name of getting enough justices on the court to enact this one legal change. If the court upholds Roe v Wade, they will quite naturally feel betrayed. If the court overturns Roe v Wade, they will discover a fact the new Texas law has inadvertently revealed: that the criminalization of abortion doesn’t work. Their basic assumption, that the government can outlaw abortion, is simply untrue. At first, the Texas law appeared to cause abortions to decline by half. But quickly the numbers reasserted themselves. The decline is less that ten percent. Women went out of state or bought chemical abortions. The overturning of Roe v Wade will makes women’s medical treatment more difficult and impersonal and humiliating. It won’t change the abortion rate significantly.Meanwhile, from the other side, an overturning of Roe v Wade will be experienced as oppression pure and simple, especially given the number of justices appointed by presidents who did not receive the popular vote. In November 1860, five months before Fort Sumter, in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s election, a judge in South Carolina announced that the state would no longer register indictments in federal court. Andrew Magrath, in a deliberate act of rejection, removed his judicial robe and folded it over his chair. He would now serve as a justice of his state, not his country. The audience recognized the gravity of the act. As one commentator at the time noted: “Here was a great political movement precipitated, not by bloody encounters in the street or upon the field, but by a deliberate and reasoned act in the most unexpected and conservatives of all places – the United State courtroom.” From that moment on, there were two legal systems. All that remained was the war. A similar breakdown in the legal system of the United States is already apparent.Needless to say, this entire conflict is futile and stupid. Abortion in the United States is in rapid decline without the negligible effects of criminalization. The number of procedures dipped 19% between 2011 and 2017. If activists want fewer abortions, there are plenty of strategies that are vastly more effective than making them illegal. Canada, which has no federal laws of any kind on abortion, has a fraction of the abortion rate of the US.But that’s not really the point. Abortion is only a stand in for a fundamental conflict in political vision: morality against policy, community values against personal agency. There are two countries, at least, in the United States. The legal system is only catching up.
Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
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Sarah Palin faces formidable opponent in Congress run: Santa ClausThe bearded city council member in North Pole, Alaska, backs Bernie and champions child welfare. Could his new workshop be in Washington? Sarah Palin announced her candidacy for Alaska’s only congressional seat this month, entering a race with dozens of candidates. She certainly brings name recognition to the contest – but another contender may have her beat in that department.His name is Santa Claus.Sarah Palin announces run for US Congress in AlaskaRead moreHe lives, of course, in North Pole – a town of about 2,000 in Alaska. He has a big white beard and a kindly manner, and Santa Claus is indeed his legal name, though, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, he does not exploit elf labor. He won a city council seat in 2015, to the delight of observers around the world. Now he’s ready to take his political career to the next stage.He’s running to complete the term of the long-serving Republican congressman Don Young, who died last month at age 88. A special primary will be held on 11 June.As for Claus’s politics: he’s been called “a bastion of blue on a city council as red as Rudolph’s nose”. He says voters who look at Sanders’ policy platform can get a pretty good idea of his own, including support for Medicare for All, racial justice, corporate accountability, and free and fair elections. That includes ranked-choice voting, which will feature in the second round of the coming election. “That’s what’s given me the opportunity here,” he said. Ranked-choice voting “gives people with name recognition such as yours truly, and even Sarah, for that matter, a slight advantage”.But Claus hasn’t always had that name. “Seventy-four years ago, I didn’t pop out with a beard,” he says. In fact, Claus changed his name from Tom O’Connor in 2005. He was living in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, at the time, and pondering what he should do with his life, as Julia O’Malley wrote in a 2015 Guardian profile. He had previously worked in law enforcement, where he’d witnessed kids falling “through the cracks” of the foster care system, and he wanted to do what he could to help them, he told the Anchorage Daily News in 2020. He’d already grown the beard, and as he prayed for guidance, someone in a car nearby shouted, “Santa, I love you!”“That’s about as fast an answer to your prayer as I’d probably ever get,” Claus tells the Guardian. “So next day, I called up the county clerk to change my name legally.” It caused a few headaches, including some brief suspicion at airport security, where he got “the once-over”. “Somebody about a month later sent out an email, I guess, letting people know, yeah, there’s this guy Santa who’s gonna be flying around. Not necessarily in my sleigh, but using regular transportation.”Despite his name, greeting children at Christmastime isn’t his thing. “I’m not really interested in that,” he says. “There are plenty of my beloved helpers throughout the world who sort of stand in for me with their in-person visits.” Instead, he says, “I tend to interact more with adults with respect to legislation.”To that end, shortly after changing his name, he embarked on a tour of every state, meeting with governors, their staffers and legislators to advocate for child welfare, as he told the Daily News. It was on this tour that he met his future rival for the congressional seat – and despite the political gulf between them, she made a good impression.“Sarah Palin was one of the governors I visited,” he says. “We met very briefly, but she had set up a meeting with six of her different department heads, which was quite unusual for a governor to do. So I was appreciative,” he says, saying Palin was “very nice, very helpful to me”.As for their disagreements, Claus, who has not declared a party affiliation, is diplomatic. “Now that she’s been endorsed by Trump,” he says, chuckling, “let me put it this way: being a Bernie supporter, we have disparate views on a variety of subjects.”He continues: “I don’t plan to get pushed around by her or by Trump. So it may have some interesting moments during the race,” for which he says he is not soliciting or accepting donations. “As a candidate, as a legislator, I tend to look for common ground. There are people I disagree with and people who disagree with me. But there’s always common ground and one’s willing to make the effort to find it and then legislate for greater good.”The congressional election will determine who completes Don Young’s term, ending in January. If Santa Claus wins, he doesn’t plan to run for re-election.“I think there should be people a decade two or three younger than I am stepping up and doing their best to help their communities and their states. For some positive change, I’d like to do my little part.“Plus I think it’d be kind of fun. Alaska is known for kind of having characters up here. I would certainly be well within that tradition.”TopicsAlaskaSarah PalinUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Republican Madison Cawthorn cited for carrying gun in his bag at airportNorth Carolina congressman faces misdemeanor criminal charge after gun spotted at security screening checkpoint The far-right North Carolina Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn is facing a misdemeanor criminal charge after police at an airport in his home state said they found a gun in his bag Tuesday.Police at Charlotte Douglas international airport handed Cawthorn, 26, a municipal citation accusing him of possessing a dangerous weapon on city property, officers said in a statement. Police didn’t arrest Cawthorn, instead essentially issuing him a ticket summoning him to return to court at a later date to answer to the weapon charge. They also confiscated the gun.Cawthorn, whom police described as “cooperative” with officers, didn’t immediately comment on his encounter with officers at the airport Tuesday.According to police, officers at the airport’s security screening checkpoint spotted a gun in a bag belonging to Cawthorn. The congressman was nearby and admitted that the gun was his.A municipal law in Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, prohibits people from possessing guns on airport and other property owned by the city government. Anyone convicted of the misdemeanor could get up to 120 days in jail and be fined by both the city government as well as the federal Transportation Security Administration.Cawthorn, who took office early last year, has often landed in controversy.The rightwing gadfly and supporter of Donald Trump riled up senior members of his Republican party over his claims of being invited to orgies and of having witnessed prominent figures using cocaine in Washington DC.Cawthorn has also accumulated a number of speeding tickets across multiple states in recent years, including a charge that he drove despite having his license revoked in a county west of Charlotte.Tuesday was not the first time law enforcement officials have reportedly found a gun on Cawthorn at an airport. TSA agents at the regional airport in Cawthorn’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, seized a pistol from his bag in February 2021.He was not charged criminally in that case.TopicsNorth CarolinaRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

US politics liveUS politics‘No sign Putin is serious’ about Ukraine negotiations, says Blinken – as it happened
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 Updated 39m agoRichard LuscombeTue 26 Apr 2022 16.13 EDTFirst published on Tue 26 Apr 2022 09.42 EDT01:03Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

The US ‘has seen no sign to date’ that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin wants to end the Ukraine conflict through diplomacy, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said.
Confronted by the Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who wanted to know why the Biden administration was ‘agitating’ for Ukraine to join Nato, Blinken said it would be a decision for Ukraine to make if they remained independent. He added the US government was ‘broadly aligned’ with Ukraine’s needs

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Biden to issue first pardons of his term and reduce dozens of prison sentencesPresident will pardon three people, including a former Secret Service agent, and reduce the sentences of 75 others Joe Biden will issue the first pardons of his presidential term on Tuesday, in addition to reducing dozens of prison sentences and launching criminal justice reform initiatives.The president will pardon three people and will reduce the sentences of 75 additional people, many of whom have been convicted of non-violent drug crimes.Marjorie Taylor Greene texted Trump chief of staff urging martial law to overturn electionRead moreBetty Jo Bogans, 51, will be pardoned for a 1998 conviction of possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute in Texas. Bogans was arrested for attempting to transport the drugs for her boyfriend and served seven years.Dexter Jackson, 52, is receiving a pardon after being convicted in 2002 of allowing cannabis distributors to use his pool hall.Biden is also pardoning Abraham Bolden, 86, the first Black person assigned to a president’s Secret Service detail, guarding John F Kennedy.Bolden was convicted of attempting to sell government information, but a key witnesses in his trial admitted to lying at the prosecution’s request. Bolden has maintained his innocence throughout.“America is a nation of laws and second chances, redemption and rehabilitation,” said Biden in a statement announcing the clemencies.“Elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree that our criminal justice system can and should reflect these core values that enable safer and stronger communities.”Several people who received reduced sentences from Biden were serving their sentences in house arrest due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Many of those who were granted commutations would have received lesser sentences if they were sentenced today, a result of a 2018 bipartisan sentencing reform law passed under the Trump administration.The White House also announced a series of new reentry programs and policies for incarcerated people and those who have been recently released, including a $145m job training program at federal prisons.“Helping those who served their time return to their families and become contributing members of their communities is one of the most effective ways to reduce recidivism and decrease crime,” said Biden.But for many criminal justice reform activists, Biden’s announcements fall short of their expectations, with organizers calling for broadly commuting sentences for non-violent drug offenses and freeing more people who were previously convicted.Amid the clemency announcements, the Biden administration has also faced congressional scrutiny for the mistreatment of incarcerated people in the federal Bureau of Prisons.During his 2020 election campaign, Biden promised to reduce the number of people incarcerated and divert those convicted of non-violent drug offenses to treatment and drug courts.Biden also promised to address racial and economic disparities in the US prison population, inequalities he helped usher in through the 1994 crime bill he oversaw while previously serving as Senate judiciary chair. Many criminal justice experts argue that the crime bill contributed to the harsh and disproportionate sentencing of Black people.The US prison population remains the largest in the world. Despite having less than 5% of the world’s population, the US hosts a fifth of all incarcerated people.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Ron DeSantis signs bill to create Florida voter-fraud police forceRepublican governor embraces top priority of his party, following Donald Trump’s false claims that his 2020 re-election was stolen Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday to create a police force dedicated to pursuing voter fraud and other election crimes, embracing a top priority of Republicans after Donald Trump’s false claims that his reelection was stolen.DeSantis, who is running for reelection and considered a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, made voting legislation a focus this year, pushing the Republican-controlled Legislature to create the policing unit in a speech where he referenced unspecified cases of voter fraud, which have become popular talking points in his party.Twitter agrees Elon Musk takeover dealRead moreVoter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected. An Associated Press investigation of the 2020 presidential election found fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast in the six states where Trump and his allies disputed his loss to President Joe Biden.Republicans nationwide have stressed the need to restore public confidence in elections and have passed several voting laws in the past two years aimed at placing new rules around mail and early voting methods that were popular in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted in-person voting.Florida’s new law, which critics have deemed as politically motivated and unnecessary, comes after DeSantis praised the state’s 2020 election as smooth but later suggested more rules were needed.The law creates an Office of Election Crimes and Security under the Florida Department of State to review fraud allegations and conduct preliminary investigations. DeSantis is required to appoint a group of special officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who would be tasked with pursuing the election law violations.Existing state law allowed the governor to appoint officers to investigate violations of election law but did not require him to do so.The law also increases penalties for the collection of completed ballots by a third party, often referred to as ballot harvesting, to a felony. It raises fines for certain election law violations and requires that election supervisors perform voter list maintenance on a more frequent basis.Democrats, the minority party in the state legislature, have criticized the bill as a way for DeSantis to appeal to Republican voters who believe the 2020 election results were fraudulent while he flirts with a presidential run of his own.Late last month, a federal judge struck down portions of a sweeping election law passed last year in a blistering ruling that alleged the state’s Republican-dominated government was suppressing Black voters, and ordered that attempts to write similar new laws in the next decade must have court approval.US district judge Mark Walker overturned a provision of last year’s law limiting when people could use a drop box to submit their ballot, along with a section prohibiting anyone from engaging with people waiting to vote. He also blocked a section that placed new rules on groups that register voters, including one requiring that people working to register voters submit their names and permanent addresses to the state.The DeSantis administration is working to reverse Walker’s ruling.TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More