Subterms
CoronavirusSarah Sanders promotes ‘Trump vaccine’ but says Americans should ‘pray about it’Former Trump press secretary criticises ‘arrogant’ medical experts but admits the benefits of the shot outweigh any potential risks Adam Gabbatt@ More
US newsRepublican governors urge vaccine-hesitant residents to get Covid shotsLeaders of Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah describe high stakes as Delta variant poses threat Edward Helmore in New YorkMon 5 Jul 2021 14.02 EDTLast modified on Mon 5 Jul 2021 14.03 EDTSeveral Republican governors with lagging vaccine rates in their states have urged residents to accept the shots as the Biden administration comes under pressure to reopen US borders to overseas visitors.The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, West Virginia’s Jim Justice and Spencer Cox of Utah warned against vaccine hesitancy, which some disease experts, including the White House chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said could create “two types of America”.“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. About 32% of people in Arkansas are fully vaccinated, compared with 47.9% nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. “If we stopped right here, and we didn’t get a greater per cent of our population vaccinated, then we’re going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter.” The solution, he said, “is the vaccinations”.In a Fourth of July address on Sunday, Joe Biden called vaccination “the most patriotic thing you can do”, saying the US had moved into a new phase of virus response. But he also warned that while the country is “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus”, the effort was not complete. “We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said.Justice told ABC’s This Week: “Red states probably have a lot of people that are very, very conservative in their thinking and they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.”01:28West Virginia, which has been offering vaccine incentives from college scholarships to free hunting and fishing licenses, has a similar rate of vaccination to Arkansas.“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves,” Justice said. “We have a lottery that says if you’re vaccinated, we’re going to give you stuff. Well, you’ve got another lottery for them, and it’s a death lottery.”Cox called Utah’s low vaccination rates “troubling”, and placed blame on the state’s youthful population. He told CBS’s Face the Nation “hopefully reason will rule”.Cox’s delicacy in urging his state’s residents to accept vaccination comes as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 74% of people who have not been vaccinated said they probably or definitely would not get the shots.The divide corresponds to political affiliation, the survey found, with 86% of Democrats and only 45% of Republicans having received at least one vaccine shot. Six per cent of Democrats and 47% of Republicans said they were unlikely to get the shot.Asked about whether he is concerned the Delta variant of coronavirus could cause outbreaks in the US, Fauci said: “I don’t think you’re going to be seeing anything nationwide. Because fortunately, we have a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So it’s going to be regional. … We’re going to see, and I’ve said, almost two types of America.” Persistent resistance to vaccination in red states led Fauci to warn on Sunday that fully vaccinated Americans should “go the extra step” and wear masks when traveling to parts of the country with low rates.“If you put yourself in an environment in which you have a high level of viral dynamics and a very low level of vaccine, you might want to go the extra step … even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press.Fauci added that the situation was lamentable: “When you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”The warnings came as the administration’s Covid response coordinator, Jeff Zients, acknowledged that it had narrowly missed its goal of 70% of adults having at least one shot by the Fourth of July.“I think we’re much further along than anyone would have anticipated at this point, with two out of three adult Americans with at least one shot,” Zients told CNN, noting that 90% of those age 65 and older had received at least one shot.The situation comes as the administration comes under increasing pressure to lift international travel restrictions that have been in place since March 2020.Steve Shur, president of the trade group Travel Technology Association, told the Hill on Monday that the administration’s travel bans were “frozen in time.”With exceptions for citizens, green-card holders, students and some family members, US entry bans remain in place for travelers from China, Iran, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, India and South Africa.“We believe it’s possible now, at least for countries of low risk, to start to reopen international travel” to the US, Shur told the outlet.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, came under pressure late last month from European heads to reciprocate the EU’s recent reopening of borders to vaccinated travelers from the US.“I can’t put a date on it,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris on 25 June. “I can tell you we’re working very actively on this right now, and we are – like France, like our other partners in Europe – both anxious and looking forward to restoring travel. But we have to be guided by the science. We have to be guided by medical expertise.”TopicsUS newsArkansasWest VirginiaUtahVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
California added five states, including Florida, to its list of places where state-funded travel is banned because of laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community.California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, on Monday added Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia to the list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbidden except under limited circumstances.“Make no mistake: we’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country, and the state of California is not going to support it,” Bonta said.Lawmakers in 2016 banned non-essential travel to states with laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The 12 other states on the list are: Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.The five states newly added to the list have introduced bills in their legislatures this year that prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, block access to certain types of healthcare and allow the discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community, Bonta said.Florida, Montana, Arkansas and West Virginia passed laws that prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports that confirm with their gender identity. North Dakota signed into law a bill allowing certain publicly-funded student organizations to restrict LGBTQ+ students from joining without losing funding. Arkansas passed the first law in the nation to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender minors, regardless of the wishes of parents or whether a physician deems such care to be medically necessary.These lawmakers “would rather demonize trans youth than focus on solving real issues like tackling gun violence beating back this pandemic and rebuilding our economy”, Bonta said.The California law has exemptions for some trips, such as travel needed to enforce state law and to honor contracts signed before the states were added to the list. Travel to conferences or out-of-state training are examples of trips that can be blocked.It’s unclear what effect California’s travel ban will have. Bonta did not have information about how many state agencies have stopped sending state employees to the states on the list or the financial impact of California’s travel ban on those states. More
A school principal in Arkansas has apologized for “political inaccuracies” in a yearbook falsely stating that Donald Trump was not impeached and that last year’s racial protests in the US were “Black Lives Matter riots”.Josh Thompson, principal of Bentonville’s Lincoln junior high school, admitted that some of the contents of the yearbook, which also included a photograph of the deadly 6 January insurrection in Washington DC captioned: “Trump supporters protest at the Capitol,” were “both biased and political”.In a letter sent to students and parents, Thompson said the yearbook “does not represent our values nor meet LJHS and Bentonville Schools’ standards for quality and excellence.”The letter did not address how the false statements and political opinions came to be published, but promised the school would “evaluate its vetting process for all yearbook content to ensure future publications are of the highest quality”.In many US schools, yearbooks are produced by students under the supervision of teachers, often during journalism classes.The Lincoln yearbook featured a photograph of an unidentified group next to an overturned car, with the caption: “Black Lives Matter riots Started in Minneapolis in may of 2020 [sic]”; and a separate photograph of the former president with his fists clenched and the caption: “President Trump WAS NOT impeached.”In reality, Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and again this year for inciting the Capitol insurrection.“We can and will do better to provide a quality yearbook to students that can be a cherished item as they reminisce about their time at [the] school,” Thompson said, offering his “deepest apologies” and a refund to parents who had bought one.A spokesperson for the Bentonville school district declined to answer questions from the Guardian, stating that the principal’s letter would be its only comment.The Arkansas controversy follows another yearbook scandal earlier this week in which a Florida high school was criticized for digitally altering dozens of images of female students to hide their chests and shoulders.A teacher at Bartram Trail high school in St Johns admitted manipulating 80 photographs of girls she considered inappropriately dressed, while leaving images of male students, including one of a swimming team attired only in bathing trunks, untouched. The school also offered refunds. More
Sarah Huckabee Sanders seems likely to bring the Trump brand to Arkansas politics in a big way. But the state is a testing ground for different possible futures for the party.LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — For decades, Arkansas punched above its weight in politics and business.In the 1990s, it was home to the president and the world’s wealthiest family. In the 2000s, three onetime Arkansans ran for president. A decade later, the state claimed its sixth company on the Fortune 500 list.But Arkansas may be entering its most consequential period yet, as a test case for the future of the Republican Party.Having undergone a lightning-quick transformation in the last decade from Democratic dominance to Republican rule, how closely the state clings to former President Donald J. Trump and his style of politics will offer insights about the party he still dominates.Arkansas represents the full spectrum of today’s G.O.P.There are Trump devotees fully behind his false claims of a stolen election and his brand of grievance-oriented politics. That faction is now led by the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the state’s onetime governor. More ideological, and less Trump-centric, conservatives include Senator Tom Cotton.And then there are pre-Trump Republicans, like Gov. Asa Hutchinson, hoping against hope the moment will pass and they can return the party to its Reaganite roots. Finally, some Republicans are so appalled by Trumpism, they have left or are considering leaving the party.Perhaps most significant, each of these factions are bunched together in a state powered by a handful of corporations that are increasingly uneasy with the culture-war politics that define Trump Republicanism. In a meeting of Walmart’s Arkansas-based executives last month, a number of officials cited state measures limiting transgender rights to express concern about how such bills could hamper their ability to recruit a diverse work force, according to a business leader familiar with the discussion.Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas at the state Capitol in Little Rock.Liz Sanders for The New York Times“They’ve got to recruit people to this state, and this makes it harder for them,” said Mr. Hutchinson, alluding to transgender measures that he opposed in this year’s legislative session. “And there’s many in the base of the party that just don’t care,” he said. “They would rather fight the cultural war and pay the price in terms of growth.”In the next year and a half, Ms. Sanders will road-test Trumpism in state politics as she runs for governor in a state the former president carried by 27 points last year. She will initially face a longtime friend and former aide to her father, the state’s Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who unsuccessfully pleaded with Mr. Trump not to endorse Ms. Sanders.Then, if Ms. Sanders prevails, she may prompt a long-shot challenge in the general election from a Republican-turned-independent who left the party in disgust with Mr. Trump, and just happens to be Mr. Hutchinson’s nephew.At the same time, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hutchinson will be circling one another, perhaps in Iowa as often as in Arkansas, as they both eye 2024 presidential bids with very different bets about the future of the party.“There will be a lot of complicated relationships,” State Senator Jonathan Dismang, an influential lawmaker, said with maximum delicacy.For many veterans of Arkansas politics, the intra-Republican competition is a full-circle moment, reflecting the state’s rapid shift from an overwhelmingly Democratic state to an overwhelmingly Republican one. This period is also eerily familiar to an earlier era when it was Democrats like then-Governor Bill Clinton and former Senators Dale Bumpers and David Pryor who were vying for supremacy. What’s different about today is how much politics in a small, mostly rural state at the intersection of the Deep South, Midwest and Southwest is shaped by a figure who has almost certainly never let the phrase “Woo Pig Sooie” slip from his lips.“Arkansas Republicanism is defined by President Trump right now,” said Trent Garner, a south Arkansas state lawmaker who defeated one of the remaining rural white Democrats when Mr. Trump was first elected.If there was any doubt about that after Mr. Trump’s romp in the state last year, it was erased in February when Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin abruptly pulled out of the 2022 governor’s race. A longtime political operative and former House member, Mr. Griffin had been collecting chits for what many here assumed was an inevitable run for the state’s top job after returning home from Congress in 2014 to serve as lieutenant governor.Former President Donald J. Trump with the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in June 2019.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThen Ms. Sanders, who has never served in elective office, made clear she would run for governor, and Mr. Trump quickly endorsed his former spokeswoman.The combination of her connection to Mr. Trump, her father’s legacy and her own celebrity from being a Fox News regular made her seemingly unbeatable, according to a private survey Mr. Griffin took, Republicans familiar with the findings said.Now running for attorney general, Mr. Griffin, an Army Reserve colonel, sought to put the best face on his climb-down. “If bio and résumé was key to politics, then George H.W. Bush would’ve been re-elected, Bob Dole would’ve won and John McCain would’ve won,” he said.Mr. Hutchinson put a finer point on how Ms. Sanders had derailed Mr. Griffin. “It shows you the power of media and personality,” he said.Ms. Sanders does still have competition for governor, particularly from Ms. Rutledge, a conservative who, in the friends-and-neighbors world of Arkansas politics, served as Mr. Huckabee’s general counsel as governor and in the same capacity when he ran for president in 2008.“She’s never made decisions,” Ms. Rutledge said of Ms. Sanders. “It’s a big difference answering questions behind a podium versus making decisions behind a desk.”She insisted primary voters would ultimately value her experience, and dismissed State Capitol speculation that she would eventually follow Mr. Griffin to the exits, perhaps to run for lieutenant governor or the state Supreme Court.Asked about Ms. Rutledge’s criticism, Ms. Sanders ignored her rival and trumpeted her own record-setting early fund-raising. “I take nothing for granted,” she said via text message.Ms. Sanders will initially face a longtime friend and former aide to her father, the state’s Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, in the Republican primary for governor.Liz Sanders for The New York TimesShould Ms. Sanders emerge as the Republican standard-bearer, she may face a third-party opponent from well outside the pro-Trump orbit. State Senator Jim Hendren, who left the G.O.P. after the Jan. 6 riot, and Davy Carter, a former state House speaker, are both considering bids.In separate interviews, they said they would not compete with one another in the same race. “I’m convinced that even in Arkansas, Trump and Trumpism is a slow-sinking ship,” said Mr. Carter, who as speaker helped push through Medicaid expansion. He said that a successful challenge to Trumpism would not happen unless liberals, moderates and anti-Trump Republicans “organize in one lane.”Asked who he’d ultimately back in the governor’s race, Mr. Hutchinson said, “I expect to support the Republican nominee.”But he acknowledged talking extensively with his nephew, Mr. Hendren, saying they share “the same frustrations” about the party, except that Mr. Hutchinson is determined to fight from within the tent. Offering some barely veiled advice for Ms. Sanders, he said: “Leadership is about bringing people along and not giving in to a lie.”The governor, and most observers, are deeply skeptical that an independent could win statewide. Indeed, more than a year and a half before Ms. Sanders would even take office, many insiders have moved on to discussing what sort of governor she would be.Would she repurpose Mr. Trump’s media-bashing and grievance-oriented politics to stay in the national headlines, and perhaps propel a presidential run of her own, or would she mirror her father’s more pragmatic approach to the office? While he is now known for his own Fox News and social media profile, Mr. Huckabee governed in the political center, even incurring the wrath of the far right, whom he labeled “Shiite conservatives.”“I think she’s going to be very eager to prove that she’s a competent executive who cares about the state,” said John Burris, a state legislator-turned-lobbyist.While shunning the state media and declining an interview for this story, Ms. Sanders has quietly reached out to state Republican lawmakers to discuss state policy and convey her desire to work with them, according to Mr. Garner.Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas at a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., last year. Christopher Lee for The New York TimesFew in the state will be watching as closely as the business titans at companies like Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, the transportation and logistics giant, which are headquartered in the Northwest corner of the state. Once the only Republican region of Arkansas — even Bill Clinton couldn’t win a House seat there in the aftermath of Watergate — it is now the state’s economic engine.The area is booming, will gain about a half-dozen new state legislative seats in redistricting, and is becoming more diverse. As the local business alliance, the Northwest Arkansas Council, notes, from 1990 and 2019, the nonwhite population of the region grew from less than 5 percent to over 28 percent.To lure more transplants, the business giants have showered the region with money, helping develop local attractions like the Crystal Bridges art museum, which was founded by Alice Walton, daughter of the Walmart founder Sam Walton.But this transformation is coming into conflict with the state’s shift right.At the height of the transgender legislation debate this spring, Tom Walton, a grandson of Sam Walton, issued a statement decrying “policy targeting L.G.B.T.Q. people in Arkansas” and spoke directly to what he saw as the threat presented. “This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state.”Mr. Hendren, who represents a swath of the region in the State Senate, said the business community would have to do far more to slow Arkansas’s sprint right.“Continuing to do the same thing is going to lead to the same results,” he said, dismissing the companies’ strategy of sending the maximum allowable donations to candidates “and thinking that’s going buy you any loyalty.”As for the Arkansans eying 2024, neither is willing to expound on their ambitions before the midterm elections. But both are attempting to carve out space for their potential bids.Mr. Cotton is quick to jump on issues he knows will animate core Republicans — from introducing legislation to address anti-Semitic hate crimes, to lambasting what he calls “woke corporations” — while Mr. Hutchinson has become a frequent presence on the national television circuit.“I don’t want to sit back idly and let the division grow greater and let our party just become more angry,” Mr. Hutchinson said. More
Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, has defended his decision to veto a state law banning gender-confirming treatments for transgender youth – a veto the state legislature immediately overturned. “It’s a conservative position to say that’s not the role of government,” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union. “It is compassionate to say we care for all our young people, whether they’re trans youth or otherwise, we care for them and that’s the message of compassion and conservatism that we need to have as a party.”But Hutchinson also defended his decision to sign other bills targeting trans rights, one banning trans children from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, even though there are no such cases in Arkansas.“Anytime you are passing laws to address a problem that currently doesn’t exist but you worry about in the future you have a potential of getting it wrong,” he said. “But in this case I did sign the protection for girls in sports which says biological males cannot compete on a girls team. To me that’s a fundamental mount way of making sure girls sports can prosper.”Hutchinson also spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press. “I signed two [bills] that I thought made sense,” he said. “… The other one was supporting medical conscience, that doctors can claim a conscience reason if they want to deny a particular procedure but they have to do emergency care. And so those are two bills that I signed. “The third one was not well done. It did not protect the youth. It interfered with the government getting into the lives of transgender youth, as well as their parents and the decisions that doctors make.”Regardless, the law could take effect by July. Holly Dickson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said: “This is a sad day for Arkansas but this fight is not over – and we’re in it for the long haul.”Hutchinson told CNN: “These are tough areas. And … we can debate them on conservative principles but let’s show compassion and tolerance and understanding as we do that and that’s the simple message that I think is important for our party.”Former president Donald Trump did not show compassion or tolerance towards Hutchinson over his veto, dismissing him as a “lightweight Rino”, or “Republican in name only” and saying: “Bye-bye Asa, that’s the end of him.”Trump addressed Republican donors on Saturday night. He reportedly abused party leaders and received applause when he repeated his lie that his election defeat was the result of electoral fraud. Many observers see a party in the grip of Trump’s brutal politics, determined to fight the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race over “culture wars” issues such as the debate over trans rights.Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, told the Associated Press “frustration with an inability to move policy at a federal level” – where Democrats hold the White House, Senate and House – “trickles down to more action in the states.“I think a lot of these state legislatures are responding to the demands of the conservative base, which sees the culture wars headed in the wrong direction.”During debate on one transgender measure in Arkansas, one Republican cited a Bible verse that called people who wear another gender’s clothes an “abomination”. Another compared parental acceptance of transgender youth to allowing a child to decide to become a cow.Hutchinson told NBC that among Republican voters, “the fear is about the future, and the fear is also that we’re losing our culture … and so, again, there’s too much. As a Republican party, it’s the principles of limited government and it’s pushing freedom and choice in the free market. That’s what the party is about. We’ve got to apply those principles, even when it comes to the social war.”Hutchinson is a former congressman who sees himself in the mould of Ronald Reagan. He told CNN: “Are we going to be a narrow party that expresses ourself in intolerant ways, are we going to be a broad-based party that shows conservative principles but also compassion and dealing with some of the most difficult issues that parents face that individuals face? “… Sure, I signed pro-life [anti-abortion] bills and I know that there’s a role for government even in the social issues. But we have to fundamentally ask ourselves, do we need to do this, is there a better way?”He would not be drawn on whether he plans to run for the presidential nomination in 2024. Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas and a hardline conservative, is among prominent figures jostling to attract donor support. More
The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, has vetoed a controversial bill which would have stopped anyone under the age of 18 getting treatment involving gender reassignment surgery or medication in the southern state.Arkansas would have been the first state to take such a move. Its Republican-controlled legislature could still enact the measure, however, since it takes only a simple majority to override an Arkansas governor’s veto.The bill, known to supporters as the Safe Act, would prohibit doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.Hutchinson’s veto followed pleas from pediatricians, social workers and parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide.A number of measures targeting transgender people have advanced in states controlled by Republicans this year. The governors of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have signed laws banning transgender girls and women from competing on school sports teams consistent with the gender identity.Hutchinson recently signed a measure allowing doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections, a law opponents have said could be used to turn away LGBTQ patients.Last month, the Guardian interviewed a number of young transgender Americans about such threats to their rights and what they can do to fight them.Corey Hyman, 15 and from Missouri, said: “It’s going to take a lot of us to stop these bills. It’s going to take a lot out of us, out of our parents, out of our supporters. [This fight will] probably go on for many years.“I’m worried and I’m scared that even more bills are going to be put through. Sometimes we don’t get notice about the bills until 24 hours before. It’s like, ‘By the way, tomorrow’s a senate hearing that could quite literally end your life.’“They just don’t care.” More
Arkansas lawmakers have approved a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children, sending the governor a bill that has been widely criticized by medical and child welfare groups.The Senate voted 28-7 on Monday in favor of the legislation. If the bill is enacted it would be the first prohibition of its kind in the country, opponents say. The bill would prohibit doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment or surgery to minors, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment. It also allows private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for trans people of any age.The legislation restricts treatments that have been endorsed by major medical associations and human rights groups. They say the care is well established and part of a gradual process that has been shown to dramatically improve the mental health of the most vulnerable kids.The state’s governor Asa Hutchinson a Republican, has not said whether he supports the measure, but has previously supported anti-trans bills. He has five days, not counting Sunday, after the bill reaches his desk to sign or veto the legislation before it becomes law without his signature.The measure is among dozens of bills targeting trans people that have advanced in Arkansas and other states this year. Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have enacted measures prohibiting trans girls and women from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity. On Monday, South Dakota’s governor also issued an executive order to prohibit trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.Conservative legislators have introduced more than 80 bills restricting trans rights in the US so far this year – most that would either block trans kids’ use of gender-affirming care or limit their access to certain sports teams. It is the highest number of anti-trans legislative proposals ever filed in a single year.Hutchinson on Friday signed a law that would allow doctors to refuse to treat someone because of religious or moral objections, a move that opponents say could be used to turn away LGBTQ+ patients.Opponents of the measure include the American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans legal action to block the treatments ban if it’s signed into law.If signed, the ban would take effect later this summer. More
