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      Indiana assembly passes anti-abortion bill, governor signs it into law

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      Indiana assembly passes anti-abortion bill, governor signs it into lawState becomes the first in the US to pass new laws removing Roe rights after Eric Holcomb’s assent Indiana’s state legislature has become the first in the US to pass new legislation restricting access to abortions since the federal supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.The bill went to the state’s Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, who signed it into law on Friday night.Indiana was among the earliest Republican-run state legislatures to debate tighter abortion laws after the supreme court ruling in June that removed constitutional protections. It is the first state to pass a ban through both chambers.The Indiana senate approved the near-total ban 28-19, hours after house members advanced it 62-38. It includes limited exceptions, including in cases of rape and incest, and to protect the life and physical health of the mother. The exceptions for rape and incest are limited to 10 weeks post-fertilization, meaning victims could not get an abortion in Indiana after that. Victims would not be required to sign a notarized affidavit attesting to an attack.The Kansas victory shows that Democrats can fight for abortion rights and win | Moira DoneganRead moreOutside the house chamber, abortion rights activists often chanted over lawmakers’ remarks, carrying signs like “Roe roe roe your vote” and “Build this wall” between church and state. Some house Democrats wore blazers over pink “Bans Off Our Bodies” T-shirts.Indiana lawmakers listened to testimony over the past two weeks in which residents on all sides of the issue rarely, if ever, supported the legislation. Abortion-rights supporters said the bill went too far, while anti-abortion activists said it did not go far enough.In advocating against the bill, Rep Ann Vermilion condemned her fellow Republicans for calling women who obtained abortions “murderers”.“I think that the Lord’s promise is for grace and kindness,” she said. “He would not be jumping to condemn these women.”The house rejected, largely on party lines, a Democratic proposal to place a non-binding question on the statewide November election ballot: “Shall abortion remain legal in Indiana?”The Indiana house speaker, Todd Huston, said that if residents were unhappy, they could vote for new lawmakers.Kansas voters already resoundingly rejected a measure that would have allowed the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to tighten abortion in the first test of voters’ feelings about the issue since Roe was overturned.Indiana’s proposed ban also came after the political firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to the state from neighboring Ohio to end her pregnancy. The case gained attention when an Indianapolis doctor said the child came to Indiana because of Ohio’s “fetal heartbeat” ban.Democratic Rep Maureen Bauer spoke tearfully before Friday’s vote about people in her South Bend district who oppose the bill – the husbands standing behind their wives, the fathers supporting their daughters – as well as the women “who are demanding that we are seen as equal”.Bauer’s comments were followed by raucous cheers from protesters in the hallway and subdued applause from fellow Democrats.“You may not have thought that these women would show up,” Bauer said. “Maybe you thought we wouldn’t be paying attention.”West Virginia legislators on 29 July passed up the chance to be the first state with a unified ban after its lower house refused to concur with senate amendments that removed criminal penalties for physicians who performed illegal abortions. Delegates instead asked for a conference committee to consider the details between the bills.TopicsAbortionRoe v WadeIndianaUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Indiana investigates abortion doctor who treated 10-year-old rape victim

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      Indiana investigates abortion doctor who treated 10-year-old rape victim State attorney general notifies Dr Caitlin Bernard and claims ‘she used a 10-year-old girl to push her political ideology’ The Indiana state attorney general has launched an investigation into the doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim.According to Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer acting for the doctor, Caitlin Bernard, a notice from the Indiana attorney general, Todd Rokita, regarding his investigation arrived on Tuesday.Daughter of doctor who gave 10-year-old an abortion faced kidnapping threatRead more“We are in the process of reviewing this information. It’s unclear to us what is the nature of the investigation and what authority he has to investigate Dr Bernard,” DeLaney told CNN. The Guardian has contacted DeLaney for additional comments.On 2 July, Bernard reported a 30 June medication abortion for her 10-year-old patient, who had been obliged to travel to the state from Ohio, after that state followed the US supreme court’s overturning a few days earlier of the federal right to an abortion and banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.According to reports reviewed by the Indianapolis Star and WXIN-TV of Indianapolis, Bernard’s reporting of her treatment to the health authorities came within the three-day requirement set by state law for individuals aged below 16 who undergo an abortion. The reports added that the patient who sought the abortion had become pregnant as the result of sexual abuse.A 27-year-old man has since been charged in Columbus, Ohio, in connection with abuse of the girl.Since the abortion, Bernard became the center of a political firestorm from rightwing media outlets and Republican politicians after Joe Biden expressed sympathy for the girl when he signed an executive order earlier this month aimed at safeguarding abortion access after the supreme court’s action in upending the historic 1973 abortion case Roe v Wade.According to DeLaney, Bernard is considering taking legal action against “those who have smeared my client”, including Rokita, who previously said that he would investigate whether she violated abortion reporting or child abuse notification laws.In a statement to the Guardian on Wednesday, Rokita said: “The baseless defamation claim and other accusations are really just attempts to distract, intimidate and obstruct my office’s monumental progress to save lives. It will take a lot more than that to intimidate us.“The doctor alone brought this case to the press. She used a 10-year-old girl – a child rape victim’s personal trauma – to push her political ideology. She was aided and abetted by a fake news media who conveniently misquoted my words to try to give abortionists and their readership numbers an extra boost.”Rokita added: “My heart breaks for this little girl.”According to Indiana University Health, where Bernard practices as an obstetrician-gynecologist, “IU Health conducted an investigation with the full cooperation of Dr Bernard and other IU Health team members. IU Health’s investigation found Dr Bernard in compliance with privacy laws.”Pregnancy termination forms that Bernard filed with the Indiana department of health, which Indy Star obtained and reviewed, showed that Bernard indicated the girl was six weeks pregnant at the time of her abortion and that Bernard did not know the age of the person who impregnated her.Bernard’s attorney said that she “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician”.Meanwhile, a Wyoming judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked that state’s abortion ban on the day it took effect, siding with a firebombed women’s health clinic and others who argued the ban would violate the state constitution and harm healthcare workers and their patients.And lawmakers in West Virginia debated an abortion ban, drawing an at times raucous crowd of hundreds to the state capitol, where dozens spoke against the bill on the house floor.Wyoming’s court action puts it among several states including Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah where judges have temporarily blocked implementation of “trigger laws” while lawsuits play out.Such trigger laws are designed to automatically implement pre-prepared abortion ban laws after Roe was felled and the power over the right to abortion was returned from the federal government to the states.Later on Wednesday, a North Dakota judge blocked a trigger law there that was set to outlaw abortion in the state starting on Thursday.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsIndianaUS politicsAbortionRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      States Turn to Tax Cuts as Inflation Stays Hot

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      WASHINGTON — In Kansas, the Democratic governor has been pushing to slash the state’s grocery sales tax. Last month, New Mexico lawmakers provided $1,000 tax rebates to households hobbled by high gas prices. Legislatures in Iowa, Indiana and Idaho have all cut state income taxes this year.A combination of flush state budget coffers and rapid inflation has lawmakers across the country looking for ways to ease the pain of rising prices, with nearly three dozen states enacting or considering some form of tax relief, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank.The efforts are blurring typical party lines when it comes to tax policy. In many cases, Democrats are joining Republicans in supporting permanently lower taxes or temporary cuts, including for high earners.But while the policies are aimed at helping Americans weather the fastest pace of inflation in 40 years, economists warn that, paradoxically, cutting taxes could exacerbate the very problem lawmakers are trying to address. By putting more money in people’s pockets, policymakers risk further stimulating already rampant consumer demand, pushing prices higher nationally.Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University who was an economic adviser under the Obama administration, said that the United States economy was producing at full capacity right now and that any additional spending power would only drive up demand and prices. But when it comes to cutting taxes, he acknowledged, the incentives for states do not always appear to be aligned with what is best for the national economy.“I think all these tax cuts in states are adding to inflation,” Mr. Furman said. “The problem is, from any governor’s perspective, a lot of the inflation it is adding is nationwide and a lot of the benefits of the tax cuts are to the states.”States are awash in cash after a faster-than-expected economic rebound in 2021 and a $350 billion infusion of stimulus funds that Congress allocated to states and cities last year. While the Biden administration has restricted states from using relief money to directly subsidize tax cuts, many governments have been able to find budgetary workarounds to do just that without violating the rules.Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a $1.2 billion tax cut that was made possible by budget surpluses. The state’s coffers were bolstered by $8.8 billion in federal pandemic relief money. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, hailed the tax cuts as the largest in the state’s history.“Florida’s economy has consistently outpaced the nation, but we are still fighting against inflationary policies imposed on us by the Biden administration,” he said.Adding to the urgency is the political calendar: Many governors and state legislators face elections in November, and voters have made clear they are concerned about rising prices for gas, food and rent.“It’s very difficult for policymakers to see the inflationary pressures that taxpayers are burdened by right now while sitting on significant cash reserves without some desire to return that,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation. “The challenge for policymakers is that simply cutting checks to taxpayers can feed the inflationary environment rather than offsetting it.”The tax cuts are coming in a variety of forms and sizes. According to the Tax Foundation, which has been tracking proposals this year, some would be phased in, some would be permanent and others would be temporary “holidays.”Next month, New York will suspend some of its state gas taxes through the end of the year, a move that Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said would save families and businesses an estimated $585 million.In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has called for gradually lowering the state’s corporate tax rate to 5 percent from 10 percent — taking a decidedly different stance from many of his political peers in Congress, who have called for raising corporate taxes. Mr. Wolf said in April that the proposal was intended to make Pennsylvania more business friendly.States are acting on a fresh appetite for tax cuts as inflation is running at a 40-year high.OK McCausland for The New York TimesMr. Furman pointed to the budget surpluses as evidence that the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package handed too much money to local governments. “The problem was there was just too much money for states and localities.”A new report from the Tax Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, said total state revenues rose by about 17.6 percent last year. State rainy day funds — money that is set aside to cover unexpected costs — have reached “new record levels,” according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.Yet those rosy budget balances may not last if the economy slows, as expected. The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates in an attempt to cool economic growth, and there are growing concerns about the potential for another recession. Stocks fell for another session on Monday, with the S&P 500 down 3.2 percent, as investors fretted about a slowdown in global growth, high inflation and other economic woes.Cutting taxes too deeply now could put states on weaker financial footing.The Tax Policy Center said its state tax revenue forecasts for the rest of this year and next year were “alarmingly weak” as states enacted tax cuts and spending plans. Fitch, the credit rating agency, said recently that immediate and permanent tax cuts could be risky in light of evolving economic conditions.“Substantial tax policy changes can negatively affect revenues and lead to long-term structural budget challenges, especially when enacted all at once in an uncertain economic environment,” Fitch said.The state tax cuts are taking place as the Biden administration struggles to respond to rising prices. So far, the White House has resisted calls for a gas tax holiday, though Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in April that President Biden was open to the idea. The administration has responded by primarily trying to ease supply chain logjams that have created shortages of goods and cracking down on price gouging, but taming inflation falls largely to the Fed.The White House declined to assess the merits of states’ cutting taxes but pointed to the administration’s measures to expand fuel supplies and proposals for strengthening supply chains and lowering health and child care costs as evidence that Mr. Biden was taking inflation seriously.“President Biden is taking aggressive action to lower costs for American families and address inflation,” Emilie Simons, a White House spokeswoman, said.The degree to which state tax relief fuels inflation depends in large part on how quickly the moves go into effect.Gov. Laura Kelly backed a bill last month that would phase out the 6.5 percent grocery sales tax in Kansas, lowering it next January and bringing it to zero by 2025. Republicans in the state pushed for the gradual reduction despite calls from Democrats to cut the tax to zero by July.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More

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      5 Takeaways From Ohio’s Primary Elections

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      Donald Trump showed his enduring grip over Republican primaries for Senate, and establishment Democrats won a House rematch against a progressive challenger.It was an early night in Ohio.Despite questions about turnout amid bad weather, the results of the state’s primary elections on Tuesday didn’t produce many surprises.In the night’s biggest race, J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who remade himself as a die-hard supporter of Donald J. Trump, won the closely watched Republican Senate primary after his struggling campaign was lifted by a crucial endorsement from the former president last month.Here are a few key takeaways from one of the first major primary nights of the 2022 midterm cycle:It was a good night for Donald Trump, and not just because of Vance.Mr. Vance’s victory over a crowded field, in which he consolidated support the day of the vote, was unequivocally good news for Mr. Trump. The former president’s endorsement on April 15 came when Mr. Vance had been all but left for dead. Instead, with help from Mr. Trump and allies including Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Vance turned his campaign around.“If Trump supports Vance, then we know he will be good,” said Kurt Oster, 59, a voter in Eaton, Ohio.Trailing Mr. Vance by a relatively wide margin were Josh Mandel, a former Ohio treasurer who had run as a hard-right Trump loyalist — and, like Mr. Vance, faced criticism for contorting himself in doing so — and Matt Dolan, a state senator who sought more moderate voters. Mr. Dolan had seemed to gain ground during early voting, and other campaigns had closely monitored his apparent rise.Josh Mandel giving a concession speech on Tuesday night in Cleveland.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesBut the fact that Mr. Vance and Mr. Mandel received more than 50 percent of the vote combined running as pro-Trump candidates spoke to the former president’s enduring grip over certain races — particularly Senate primary elections, in which voters are sending people to fight for them in Washington as opposed to run their states.In the general election, Mr. Vance, who improved as a campaigner over the course of the primary, will face Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate Democrat who also claims to understand the concerns of Ohio’s white working class. Part of Mr. Trump’s rationale in endorsing Mr. Vance was his belief that Mr. Ryan would be a strong candidate, and that Mr. Vance was best positioned to take him on, according to a Republican briefed on the endorsement.Mr. Vance speaking to supporters Tuesday night in Cincinnati after his victory.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIt’s not clear how much Mr. Vance’s message will change for the general election in a state that has become increasingly hostile for Democrats. Mr. Ryan, who is trying to win back blue-collar workers for his party, has signaled that he will try to paint Mr. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and venture capitalist, as a creature of the cocktail party circuit and Silicon Valley. But he faces an uphill battle in Ohio.For governor, Republican voters in Ohio preferred a familiar face.The night did not completely belong to Mr. Trump and Trumpism.Gov. Mike DeWine easily won the Republican nomination for another term despite angering many in the Trump wing of the party for what they saw as his heavy hand in controlling the pandemic. Last month, Mr. DeWine said that he could not attend a Trump rally in his state because he was committed to celebrating Ulysses S. Grant’s 200th birthday.Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife, Fran, after voting on Tuesday in Cedarville, Ohio.Paul Vernon/Associated PressHis main opponent, Jim Renacci, sought out Mr. Trump’s endorsement but did not secure it, in large part because he was never a serious threat. Mr. Renacci’s “Ohio First” campaign was clearly an echo of Mr. Trump’s presidential bids, yet he never gained traction.A Trump ally rose, as a Republican who backed impeachment departs.One of Mr. Trump’s other victories in Ohio was that of Max Miller, a young former aide who worked for him in the White House.With Mr. Trump’s encouragement, Mr. Miller ran for Congress in a state where his family has deep ties, initially as an attempt to take out a House Republican who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot. That congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, dropped out. But when the seats were redrawn during redistricting, Mr. Miller ran in a different district, and won his primary on Tuesday night.Despite some ugly headlines — Mr. Miller was accused of domestic violence by an ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Grisham, one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, an allegation that he denied before suing for defamation — he is expected to carry the safely conservative district easily in November.And if he does win, another House member whose candidacy began as a vengeance play will owe his political rise to the former president.It’s better to be the only Trump acolyte than the only establishment Republican in a race.Splitting the pro-Trump vote didn’t save Mr. Dolan’s candidacy in the Senate primary, but splitting the establishment Republican vote handed a pro-Trump candidate a surprising victory in Northwest Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District.J.R. Majewski, a burly businessman who painted his vast back lawn into one huge Trump sign in 2020, earned the right to challenge Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat who has served in Congress for decades. Her district was redrawn by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to try to thwart her bid for a 21st term.The new boundaries attracted two G.O.P. state lawmakers, State Senator Theresa Gavarone and State Representative Craig Riedel, to enter the primary. Then, almost as an afterthought, came Mr. Majewski, who ran ads showing him carrying an assault-style rifle, posted a “Let’s Go Brandon” rap on his website and earned a somewhat incoherent acknowledgment from Mr. Trump at an Ohio rally.The battle between Ms. Gavarone and Mr. Riedel, however, appeared to let Mr. Majewski squeeze through — though Ms. Kaptur may get the last laugh.Ohio Democrats showed little appetite for adding a new ‘squad’ member.Last August, Shontel Brown, a little-known chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, seemingly came from nowhere to win a House special election in Cleveland against Nina Turner, a former co-chair of Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and a hero of the activist left.In Washington, the Democratic establishment had dearly wanted to keep Ms. Turner away from the House. She had made something of a career of bashing centrist Democrats, and planned to be a brash voice in the expanding “squad” of progressive members of Congress. Ms. Brown was seen by many on the left as the establishment’s creation.Representative Shontel Brown at her watch party in Cleveland on Tuesday night.John Kuntz/Cleveland.com, via Associated PressMs. Turner surprised no one when she challenged Ms. Brown to a rematch in this year’s Democratic primary.Her pitch was that this year would be different. Crossover Republicans from the Cleveland suburbs who had helped Ms. Brown in the special election would not be available this time, because they would be voting in the Republican primary. A redrawn district, still overwhelmingly Democratic, was more concentrated in and around Cleveland, Ms. Turner’s home base.But Ms. Brown ran this year not as an unknown but as an incumbent, who could point to her vote for the bipartisan infrastructure law. The Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed her, blunting any boost Ms. Turner might have received from Mr. Sanders’s endorsement and late support from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.And in a disheartening blow for Ms. Turner and the activist left, Ms. Brown easily won the rematch.Kevin Williams More

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      When Will We Have Results in Ohio and Indiana’s Primary Contests?

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      As we have said before, predicting the timing of election results is not an exact science. It can be downright messy. And surely, every election night is different.Many factors can contribute to how late, or how early, results are reported: when polls close, what time election officials can start tabulating absentee ballots and how close races are, to name a few.For the marquee races in Ohio, like the closely watched U.S. Senate primary, the secretary of state said it would begin posting unofficial results on its website at 8 p.m. Eastern time, half an hour after voting ends. In 2020, about half the vote had been counted by 8:30 p.m. in Ohio, said Stephen Ohlemacher, the election decision editor for The Associated Press.Absentee ballots can’t be tabulated in Ohio until the polls close, and are then counted first, according to Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the secretary of state. As of Friday, about 162,000 ballots had already been cast in Ohio through the mail or via early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday, according to The A.P. In 2018, there were about 280,000 ballots cast before the primary in Ohio, which The A.P. estimated was 17 percent of the total vote.Results for U.S. House races in Ohio will appear on county-level board of election websites before the secretary of state’s, putting the onus on the candidates, political parties and news media to tally results for each county in a congressional district. The secretary of state’s office cited Ohio’s back-and-forth on redrawing congressional maps as the root cause of the delay in updating their website.Indiana expects to start posting results on the secretary of state’s website shortly after polls close — which is 6 p.m. local time, whether in the part of the state that is in the Eastern time zone or in the Central time zone. Election officials in the state can begin counting absentee ballots on the day of an election, but cannot post any results until after the polls close.As of Monday morning, 146,365 ballots had been cast statewide, both through the mail and early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday in Indiana, according to The A.P. The total ballots cast in the 2018 primary was 173,000. More

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      What to Watch in Ohio and Indiana Primary Elections Tuesday

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      Ohio’s primary elections almost weren’t going to happen Tuesday. A heated and confusing legal battle over the redrawing of congressional districts kept voters waiting for a final map. And in last-hour negotiations, elections officials took all of the statehouse races off the May 3 primary ballot, leaving them to be decided at a later date.But all eyes remain on the state, with one marquee matchup at the top of the list: the crowded, heated and expensive Republican Senate primary.More so than many other contests across the nation, the Ohio Senate race to replace Rob Portman, an establishment Republican who is retiring, will test former President Donald J. Trump’s influence on his party, and whether Republican voters have an appetite for hard-right, anti-establishment figures in his mold — or only for those with his seal of approval. The results could also give Democrats a better idea of their chances to secure the open seat in November.Once considered a national bellwether in the industrial heart of the country, Ohio has tilted Republican in the last two presidential elections, and Republicans control all levels of government. Senate candidates from both parties have been aggressively courting the white working-class voters who have left the Democratic Party in droves since Mr. Trump was first on the ballot in 2016.The campaign has been at times contentious and ugly. It has also been high-priced. Cash has poured into the race — from major super PACs and from candidates’ personal coffers — making it one of the most expensive of this election cycle. Major donors include the Protect Ohio Values PAC, largely funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, who is supporting Mr. Vance, and the Buckeye Leadership Fund, which is backing Matt Dolan, a former Ohio state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.Indiana’s primary also features some notable elections with implications for the direction of the Republican Party. This year, more incumbents at the state level are facing primary challengers from the right than in at least a decade, according to a review by The Indianapolis Star, potentially resulting in an even more conservative legislative supermajority.North of Indianapolis, in Hamilton County, the re-election campaign of the prosecutor D. Lee Buckingham against Greg Garrison, a conservative talk-show host, is garnering outsize attention: Mr. Garrison has the support of former Vice President Mike Pence.Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Delware, Ohio last month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTrump’s role as kingmakerMr. Trump rocked the Senate race landscape in Ohio last month when he threw his highly coveted endorsement behind J.D. Vance. A venture capitalist and the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance has been heavily backed by Mr. Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.On the campaign trail, Mr. Vance has sought to atone for his past negative comments about Mr. Trump. Polls have shown a significant bump for Mr. Vance, but no clear front-runner has emerged.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.David McIntosh’s anti-tax Club for Growth, which had first opposed Mr. Trump’s 2016 before supporting him, is pitching for a battle. The G.O.P. group has put its support behind Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer, who went from reluctant Trump supporter in 2016 to one of the nation’s most ardent backers of Trumpism.Other Republican Senate hopefuls include Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, who has been endorsed by Mr. Portman and has campaigned with the former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, and Mike Gibbons, a financier who has outspent all of the candidates in the race. He has at times been at the top of the polls with a sales pitch similar to Mr. Trump’s, reminding audiences he is not a politician but a businessman.Still, Ohio voters might decide they do not want a Trump-centered candidate at all. The only Republican running in this lonely lane has been Mr. Dolan, who says he supports Mr. Trump but has made him less of a focus in the campaign. Unlike the top candidates in the race, he recognizes President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Is there an ‘exhausted majority’?On the Democratic side of the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan is considered the front-runner. He faces a challenge from the left by Morgan Harper, a progressive lawyer and a senior adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Barack Obama.Mr. Ryan has been visiting with voters across the state in a bet that they have had enough of the extremism in American politics and might be willing to elect a Democrat to a seat formerly held by a Republican. He is seeking to appeal to the “exhausted majority,” a phrase coined by researchers to describe the estimated two-thirds of voters who are less polarized and who feel overlooked.It will be interesting to see if such an electorate manifests itself in Ohio — and if it goes for Mr. Ryan or for Mr. Dolan on the other side of the aisle.Success for Mr. Ryan in the fall could carry lessons for Democrats across the Midwest on how to counter the appeal of Trumpism and the erosion of support for the party among the white working-class — voters who once formed a loyal part of the Democratic base.Representative Shontel Brown with supporters in Lakewood, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesNina Turner speaks with children during a campaign event in South Euclid, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesThe rematch between Nina Turner and Shontel BrownRepresentative Shontel Brown narrowly defeated Nina Turner, a former state senator and a top surrogate for Bernie Sanders, in a Democratic primary last year that was seen as somewhat of a proxy battle between the party’s progressive and establishment wings.The two were vying for a seat vacated by Marcia L. Fudge after President Biden appointed her as the secretary of housing and urban development. The race attracted big Democratic names and millions of dollars, with Ms. Brown, then a Cuyahoga County councilwoman, drawing support from Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina.This year, major establishment figures have once more endorsed Ms. Brown, including President Biden and Mr. Clyburn. She now also has the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.Ms. Turner previously was attacked for taking anti-Israel positions — and for using language that some said echoed anti-Semitic tropes — as well as for a crass denunciation of President Biden. This time around, she has aggressively courted Jewish voters. She has the ground-game support of Our Revolution, a progressive political action organization that emerged from Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. The group’s 150 volunteers have centered on building support for Ms. Turner through one-on-one conversations with voters.Will Ohio have a shot at a female governor?The former congressman Jim Renacci is one of several Republican candidates who are trying to seize on their party’s internal divisions to unseat G.O.P. governors. But Mr. Renacci seems to be gaining little traction against Gov. Mike DeWine, a longtime Ohio politician who has been working to attract the support of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters.In the Democratic primary, two former mayors — John Cranley of Cincinnati and Nan Whaley of Dayton — are facing off, with Ms. Whaley seeking to become the first woman elected governor in the state. More

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      Trump endorses Pence’s brother after sparring with ex-vice-president

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      Trump endorses Pence’s brother after sparring with ex-vice-presidentEndorsement for Congress comes after Mike Pence rejected Trump’s claim that he could have reversed his election defeat Even though Donald Trump recently sparred with Mike Pence over whether the former vice-president could have done more to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, Trump on Friday handed an endorsement to Pence’s brother in an Indiana congressional race.Trump’s endorsement of Greg Pence, who is seeking a third term as the US House representative for Indiana’s sixth congressional district, is politically intriguing for a couple of reasons.Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’, audio revealsRead moreIt comes a little more than a year after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and demanded – among other things – Pence’s hanging. A bipartisan Senate committee has connected seven deaths to the attack, which delayed a joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s win by several hours.And the endorsement comes a couple of months after Mike Pence, in a rare stand against the former president, rejected Trump’s claim that Pence could have reversed Trump’s election defeat during the joint congressional session that was temporarily interrupted by the Capitol insurrection.At one point that day, Secret Service agents tried to drive Pence away from the Capitol, where he was tasked with leading lawmakers’ certification of the presidential election results. But Pence wouldn’t leave, signaling his opposition to the mob’s goal of keeping Trump in power, the Maryland Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, who serves on a House panel investigating the Capitol attack, said recently.“President Trump is wrong,” Pence told the conservative Federalist Society in February, according to National Public Radio (NPR). “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion any one person could choose the American president.”When asked later about his brother’s remarks, Greg Pence stopped well short of agreeing with them, highlighting how reluctant Republicans are to speak out against Trump while it remains unclear how much power his still-coveted endorsements carry.“I stand by my brother and always will, and I’ll let him speak for himself about his remarks,” Greg Pence told NPR, in part.US Capitol attack: Liz Cheney says Mike Pence ‘was a hero’ on 6 JanuaryRead moreGreg Pence earlier this month also voted against referring criminal contempt charges against Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to the US justice department. Congress ultimately ended up making the referral, saying Navarro and Scavino ignored subpoenas issued to them as part of the investigation into the Capitol attack that put Mike Pence in jeopardy.That stance on Friday helped the former vice-president’s brother net a statement from Trump reading: “Greg Pence has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”Trump also hailed the Republican congressman for opposing Biden’s immigration policies on the southern border, keeping guns accessible, opposing abortion and supporting the military.Greg Pence’s office didn’t immediately issue a statement in response to Trump’s endorsement. The former oil executive and Marine Corps veteran is facing a challenger in James Dean Alspach in the Republican primary on 3 May.The victor would advance to an 8 November runoff against the winner of the Democratic primary, whose candidates are George Thomas Holland and Cynthia Wirth.TopicsDonald TrumpMike PenceUS politicsRepublicansIndiananewsReuse this content More

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      'This is not justice': supreme court liberals slam Trump's federal executions

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      The supreme court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer have excoriated the Trump administration for carrying out its 13th and final federal execution days before the president leaves office.Dustin John Higgs died by lethal injection at the federal correctional institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Friday night, after his 11th-hour clemency appeal was rejected.Higgs, 48, was convicted of murdering three women at a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, even though it was an accomplice who fired the fatal shots. Willis Haynes was convicted of the same crime but sentenced to life.“This was not justice,” Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote in an order issued late on Friday.Sotomayor, who was critical of the Trump administration’s July 2019 announcement that it would resume federal executions after a two-decade hiatus, condemned what she saw as “an unprecedented rush” to kill condemned inmates. All 13 executions have taken place since July 2020.The government executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than in the previous six decades“To put that in historical context, the federal government will have executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than it had in the previous six decades,” she wrote.“There can be no ‘justice on the fly’ in matters of life and death,” Sotomayor added. “Yet the court has allowed the United States to execute 13 people in six months under a statutory scheme and regulatory protocol that have received inadequate scrutiny, without resolving the serious claims the condemned individuals raised.”Breyer, a fellow liberal on the nine-justice high court, was equally scathing, naming each of the 13 executed prisoners and noting a lower court’s observation that Higgs had significant lung damage. The lethal injection of pentobarbital, Breyer said, would “subject him to a sensation of drowning akin to waterboarding”.He said the court needed to address whether execution protocols risked extreme pain and needless suffering and pressured the courts into last-minute decisions on life or death.“What are courts to do when faced with legal questions of this kind?” he wrote. “Are they supposed to ‘hurry up, hurry up?’”Breyer went further than Sotomayor by questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty, the first member of the current panel to do so. The third liberal justice, Elena Kagan, also dissented in the Higgs case but did not give an explanation.Higgs’s petition for clemency said he had been a model prisoner and dedicated father to a son born after his arrest. He had a traumatic childhood and lost his mother to cancer when he was 10, it said.He was convicted in October 2000 by a federal jury in Maryland for the first-degree murder and kidnapping in the killings of Tamika Black, 19; Mishann Chinn, 23; and Tanji Jackson, 21. Although Haynes shot the women, Higgs handed him his gun.“He received a fair trial and was convicted and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for a despicable crime,” the US district judge Peter Messitte wrote in December.Arguably the most high-profile execution of the Trump administration came just days ago when Lisa Montgomery received a lethal injection at Terre Haute and became the first woman put to death by the federal government almost seven decades.Her lawyer accused the Trump administration of “unnecessary and vicious use of authoritarian power”.Many believe officials rushed to complete a series of executions before Joe Biden is inaugurated on 20 January. Biden has stated his desire to have the death penalty abolished at federal and state level. More