Louisiana

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US senator denounced as ‘profoundly ignorant man’ over remarks on Mexico

      by

      Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.Kennedy’s rant came on Wednesday during a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing that in part focused on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s budget. Kennedy told DEA administrator Anne Milgram that she and other members of the Biden White House should pressure López Obrador to let US military and law enforcement officials storm into his country “and stop the cartels”.“Make him a deal he can’t refuse,” Kennedy said, an apparent allusion to the famous line from the classic mobster film The Godfather. Kennedy also said: “Without the people of America, Mexico, figuratively speaking, would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback.”Kennedy’s comments about the US’s neighbor to the south built on prior Republican statements exalting the idea of using the American military to crack down on Mexican cartels. Mexican cartels press most illegal fentanyl into counterfeit pills which are designed to look like Xanax, oxycodone, Percocet and other prescription medications, or they mix it into other drugs, including cocaine and heroin.Many of the 70,000 overdose deaths registered in the US annually involve people who took fentanyl without knowing it.In a response on Thursday to Kennedy, Ebrard said numerous Mexican government officials and citizens have died in the name of stopping fentanyl from crossing into the US. “He doesn’t know that or pretends like he doesn’t,” Ebrard said.Ebrard added that Kennedy should contemplate why people in the US can obtain fentanyl simply by going out to certain streets or logging on to certain websites online. “It’s a fallacy to argue in favor of sending an armed force to Mexico when in the United States you have fentanyl circulating everywhere,” said Ebrard, who has previously noted that it is mostly Americans who are arrested for trafficking fentanyl in the US.Kennedy delivered his tirade against Mexico in a southern American accent that many of his detractors have likened to the voice of Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn. As the Louisiana politics and culture news outlet Gambit reported, it is widely believed that Kennedy maintains the drawl to come off as folksy, despite his holding degrees from the University of Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia and Oxford University in the UK.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe is also one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, where Democrats and independents who caucus with them hold a two-seat majority after last year’s midterm elections. Open Secrets estimated that Kennedy’s net worth was more than $12m in 2016, when the former longtime treasurer of Louisiana’s state government first won his Senate seat.Kennedy began his political career as a Democrat before switching his party affiliation to Republican in 2007. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud

      by

      Five red states have severed ties since last year with the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that helps maintain accurate voter rolls.First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.Wes Allen, Alabama’s secretary of state, withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, a day after he was sworn in.Butch Dill/Associated PressDefenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for president, did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly based on the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Louisiana anti-abortion group calls on doctors to stop denying care exempted by ban

      by

      Louisiana anti-abortion group calls on doctors to stop denying care exempted by banGroup speaks out after hospitals refused to offer treatment for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage citing ambiguous lawAn influential group in Louisiana that has long opposed abortion access is calling out medical providers and their legal advisers who – for an apparent fear of liability – have cited the state’s ban on most abortions to deny treatments that remain legal.The group spoke out after hospitals in the state’s capital, Baton Rouge, refused to provide treatments for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage.The treatments which Kaitlyn Joshua needed were similar to an abortion, and her doctors feared being prosecuted, citing purported ambiguities in the ban on terminating most pregnancies which took effect in Louisiana after the US supreme court last year overturned the nationwide abortion rights granted by Roe v Wade.Even though Louisiana has some of the tightest restrictions against abortion in the US, Joshua was legally entitled to the care she sought under an exception to the ban which involves miscarriages, Sarah Zagorski of Louisiana Right for Life said.Zagorski, whose organization has been involved in anti-abortion legislation since 1970, said it is clear under Louisiana’s abortion ban that it is legal to provide and receive miscarriage treatments, even if they closely resemble some abortions.“It was just a gross misunderstanding of the law from the practitioners handling the case, unfortunately,” Zagorski said.In a recent interview with the Guardian, Zagorski said the public in general urgently needs more education on the exceptions to the abortion ban in a state which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the US. While she stopped short of saying what her organization might be able to contribute that effort, she did say it was imperative for medical providers and their legal teams to take it upon themselves to study and comprehend the exceptions to the abortion ban in Louisiana, especially in light of a case like the one centering on Joshua.Joshua for her part has retained an attorney, though neither she nor the lawyer would comment to the Guardian on what actions they are possibly contemplating against any providers who turned Joshua away.“The law itself is very specific about this,” Zagorski added. “This should not have been how this happened.”Louisiana’s abortion ban states, in part: “Abortion shall not mean any one or more of the following acts, if performed by a physician: …The removal of a dead unborn child or the inducement or delivery of the uterine contents in case of a positive diagnosis, certified in writing in the woman’s medical record along with the results of an obstetric ultrasound test, that the pregnancy has ended or is in the unavoidable and untreatable process of ending due to spontaneous miscarriage, also known in medical terminology as spontaneous abortion, missed abortion, inevitable abortion, incomplete abortion, or septic abortion.”To the author of the ban, the Louisiana state senator Katrina Jackson, the language makes it clear that miscarriage treatment is distinct from an abortion. Though she did not speak with the Guardian, she has previously released a statement to National Public Radio and its local New Orleans affiliate, WWNO, saying that nothing in the law bans women from receiving miscarriage treatments.But Jackson has not indicated whether she may try to at all clarify the legislation she authored. She first faced calls to do at least that after Louisiana woman Nancy Davis, who was carrying a skull-less fetus that would die within a short time of birth, was denied an abortion in the state and had to travel to New York to terminate the pregnancy.Abortion access advocates have similarly rallied around Joshua.At six weeks pregnant with her second child, Joshua called a physician group in Baton Rouge – her state’s capital – to schedule her first prenatal appointment, but the clinic denied her an appointment. The group said it was no longer providing prenatal care for women under 12 weeks of pregnancy because it thought it was too risky in light of the abortion ban that took effect in Louisiana after last year’s overturning of Roe v Wade to be ambiguous.Miscarriages most frequently occur during the first trimester of pregnancy, and they require the same medical procedures as abortions, Joshua – who declined to speak to the Guardian – was told. Joshua told WWNO that the clinic did not want to face possibly being investigated if their miscarriage care was interpreted as an abortion.As a Black woman, Joshua told WWNO that she was aware of maternal-related deaths in her state. A 2018 report by the Louisiana Department of Health found that Black women are four times more likely than their white counterparts to die during childbirth, so she decided to schedule her next appointment with a Black obstetrician.Yet before her appointment, Joshua bled heavily and felt severe pain between her 10th and 11th week of pregnancy. She went to Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge for immediate care and received an ultrasound that showed her fetus had a faint heartbeat and had stopped growing three or four weeks earlier.Joshua’s pregnancy hormones, meanwhile, were abnormally low. Nonetheless, the hospital would not confirm that she was having a miscarriage.By the next evening, Joshua ended up at Baton Rouge general hospital after losing a large amount of blood and tissue. A female doctor told Joshua that there appeared to be a cyst in her ultrasound and questioned if she was pregnant.Joshua told WWNO that the doctor recommended waiting at home for the miscarriage to pass, if this was in fact a spontaneous abortion. However, the doctor refused to give her treatments that would lessen the pain and quicken the miscarriage.“She stated that they’re not going to put … ‘spontaneous abortion’ [anywhere] because that would then flag an investigation on them,” Joshua told WWNO.Zagorski says it’s natural for things to be confusing for providers and patients after last year’s landmark supreme court decision. Nonetheless, Joshua’s ordeal was separate and apart and clearly fit the built-in exceptions, she said.For the record, Zagorski said neither her group nor the ban support aborting a child with life-threatening medical conditions, as seen in the Nancy Davis case. “We believe that even in dire severe cases like that, where the baby is likely to not live long, that it is still a human life and there are ways that a woman can deliver naturally and have hospice care for that baby,” Zagorski said.Despite that stance, Louisiana’s state health department issued an emergency rule late last month that allows women to terminate pregnancies if their unborn child suffers from one or more of 25 listed medical conditions, including acrania. The medical diagnoses remain an exception to the abortion law for at most 180 days.Abortion access advocates would prefer Louisiana and other similarly situated states to do away with their bans altogether. But the legislatures of Louisiana and those other states are controlled by conservatives who oppose abortion.TopicsAbortionLouisianaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      3 Races for Governor to Watch This Year

      by

      Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIn Mississippi, the Republican governor, Tate Reeves, appears to have avoided a rugged Republican primary field, despite his lackluster approval ratings and a water crisis in Jackson. Two potential G.O.P. challengers skipped the race: Philip Gunn, Mississippi’s House speaker, and Michael Watson, the secretary of state. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      The Key Elections Taking Place in 2023

      by

      Among the races to watch are governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia.It might be tempting to focus on the 2024 presidential election now that the midterms are in the rearview mirror, but don’t sleep on 2023: key races for governor, mayor and other offices will be decided.Their outcomes will be closely watched for signs of whether Democrats or Republicans have momentum going into next year’s presidential election and congressional races — and for what they signal about the influence of former President Donald J. Trump.Virginia and New Jersey have noteworthy state house elections, and in Wisconsin, a state Supreme Court race will determine the balance of power in a body whose conservative majority routinely sides with Republicans. Here’s what to watch:Kentucky governorOf the three governors’ races this year, only Kentucky features an incumbent Democrat seeking re-election in a state that Mr. Trump won in 2020. The race also appears packed with the most intrigue.Gov. Andy Beshear won by less than 6,000 votes in 2019, ousting Matt Bevin, the Trump-backed Republican incumbent in the cherry-red state that is home to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate G.O.P. leader.A growing field of Republicans has ambitions of settling the score in 2023, including Daniel Cameron, who in 2019 became the first Black person to be elected as Kentucky’s attorney general, an office previously held by Mr. Beshear. Mr. Cameron, who is seen as a possible successor to Mr. McConnell, drew attention in 2020 when he announced that a grand jury did not indict two Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor. Last June, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Cameron for governor, but there will be competition for the G.O.P. nomination.Attorney General Daniel Cameron, signing the papers for his candidacy last week, is among Republicans seeking to challenge Gov. Andy Beshear this year.Timothy D. Easley/Associated PressKelly Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, is also running. So are Mike Harmon, the state auditor of public accounts, and Ryan Quarles, the state’s agricultural commissioner, and several other Republicans. The primary will be on May 16.Louisiana governorGov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who narrowly won a second term in 2019, is not eligible to run again because of term limits. The open-seat race has tantalized some prominent Republicans, including Jeff Landry, the state’s attorney general, who has declared his candidacy.Two other Republicans weighing entering the race are John Schroder, the state treasurer who has told supporters he will run, and Representative Garret Graves.Shawn Wilson, the state’s transportation secretary under Mr. Edwards, is one of the few Democrats who have indicated interest in running in deep-red Louisiana.Electing a New Speaker of the HouseRepresentative Kevin McCarthy won the speakership after a revolt within the Republican Party set off a long stretch of unsuccessful votes.Inside the Speaker Fight: Mr. McCarthy’s speaker bid turned into a rolling disaster. “The Daily” has the inside story of how it went so wrong and what he was forced to give up.A Tenuous Grip: By making concessions to far-right representatives, Mr. McCarthy has effectively given them carte blanche to disrupt the workings of the House — and to hold him hostage to their demands.Looming Consequences: Congressional gridlock brought on by far-right Republicans now seems more likely to lead to government shutdowns or, worse, a default on debt obligations.Roots of the Chaos: How did Mr. McCarthy’s bid become a four-day debacle? The story begins with the zero-sum politics of Newt Gingrich.Mississippi governorGov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, is running for a second term. But the advantage of incumbency and a substantial campaign fund may not be enough to stop a primary challenge, especially with his job approval numbers among the lowest of the nation’s governors.Philip Gunn, Mississippi’s House speaker, has been coy about possible plans to enter the race after announcing in November that he would not seek re-election to the Legislature. Among the other Republicans whose names have been bandied about is Michael Watson, the secretary of state. But Mr. Reeves is the only Republican to have filed so far; the deadline is Feb. 1.A Democrat hasn’t been elected governor of Mississippi in two decades, since a contest was decided by the Legislature because the winning candidate did not receive a majority of votes. Not surprisingly, few Democrats have stepped forward to run. One name to watch is Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner. Mr. Presley is a relative of Elvis Presley, who was from Tupelo, Miss., according to Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news website.U.S. House (Virginia’s Fourth District)The death in late November of Representative A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat from Virginia, prompted Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to schedule a special election for Feb. 21.In December, Democrats resoundingly nominated Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, to represent the party in the contest for Virginia’s Fourth District, which includes Richmond and leans heavily Democratic. She could become the first Black woman elected to Congress in Virginia, where she would complete the two-year term that Mr. McEachin won by 30 percentage points just weeks before his death.Republicans tapped Leon Benjamin, a Navy veteran and pastor who lost to Mr. McEachin in November and in 2020.Chicago mayorMayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, a Democrat who in 2019 became the first Black woman and first openly gay person to lead the nation’s third-most populous city, faces a gantlet of challengers in her quest for re-election.That test will arrive somewhat early in the year, with the mayoral election set for Feb. 28. If no candidate finishes with a majority of the votes, a runoff will be held on April 4.Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago faces several challengers in her re-election bid.Jim Vondruska/ReutersThe crowded field includes Representative Jesús G. García, a Democrat who is known as Chuy and who was overwhelmingly re-elected to a third term in his Cook County district in November and previously ran unsuccessfully for mayor. In the current race, Ms. Lightfoot has attacked Mr. García over receiving money for his House campaign from Sam Bankman-Fried, the criminally charged founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.Ms. Lightfoot’s other opponents include Kam Buckner, a state legislator; Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner; Sophia King and Roderick T. Sawyer, who both serve on the City Council; Paul Vallas, a former chief executive of Chicago public schools; and Ja’Mal Green, a prominent activist in the city.Philadelphia mayorAn open-seat race for mayor in Pennsylvania’s foremost Democratic bastion has attracted an expansive field of candidates. The office is held by Jim Kenney, a Democrat who is not eligible to run again because of term limits.Five members of the City Council have resigned to enter the race, which city rules require. They are Allan Domb, Derek Green, Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker and Maria Quiñones Sánchez.The field also includes Rebecca Rhynhart, the city’s controller, who has likewise resigned in order to run; Amen Brown, a state legislator; Jeff Brown, a supermarket chain founder; and James DeLeon; a retired judge.Wisconsin Supreme CourtConservatives are clinging to a one-seat majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, but a retirement within the court’s conservative ranks could shift the balance of power this year. The court’s justices have increasingly been called on to settle landmark lawsuits involving elections, gerrymandering, abortion and other contentious issues.Two conservative and two liberal candidates have entered what is technically a nonpartisan election to succeed Judge Patience D. Roggensack on the seven-member court.Daniel Kelly, a conservative former justice on the state Supreme Court who lost his seat in the 2020 election, is seeking a comeback. Running against him in the conservative lane is Jennifer Dorow, a circuit court judge in Waukesha County who drew widespread attention when she presided over the trial of Darrell E. Brooks, the man convicted in the killing of six people he struck with his car during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., in 2021.Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell, judges from Milwaukee County and Dane County, which includes Madison, the capital, are seeking to give liberals a majority on the court.The two candidates who receive the most votes in the nonpartisan primary on Feb. 21 — regardless of their leanings — will face each other in the general election on April 4.Legislature (Virginia and New Jersey)Virginia is emerging as a potential tempest in 2023, with its divided legislature up for re-election and elected officials squarely focused on the issue of abortion — not to mention a Republican governor who is flirting with a run for president.Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s repeal last summer of Roe v. Wade, the 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion.His proposal is expected to resonate with Republican lawmakers, who narrowly control the House of Delegates. But it is likely to run into fierce opposition in the Senate, where Democrats are clinging to a slender majority. All seats in both chambers are up for election.Another Mid-Atlantic state to watch is New Jersey, where Republicans made inroads in 2021 despite being in the minority and are seeking to build on those gains. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local elections

      by

      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local electionsEight states have passed laws against ballot access, even as some progressive cities are extending local voting rights Louisiana voters recently approved a constitutional amendment barring anyone who is not a US citizen from participating in elections, becoming the eighth state to push back against the growing number of progressive cities deciding to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreWhile noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections and no states allow noncitizens to vote for statewide office, ambiguous language in constitutions has allowed localities to pass statutes legalizing noncitizen voting in local or school board elections. A short but expanding list of cities include two cities in Vermont, almost a dozen in Maryland, and San Francisco.Other cities are trying to join that list, including Boston and Washington DC, where the latter city’s council in October passed legislation allowing noncitizens who have lived in the city for at least 30 days to vote in local elections. New York City’s council also passed a measure in December to allow close to 900,000 green card holders and those with work authorization to vote in local elections, but a state trial court struck it down in June, finding it violated the state constitution. The ruling is currently being appealed.The potential for major cities like DC and New York to expand their electorates prompted backlash from Republican lawmakers.“This vote sends a clear message that the radical election policies of places like San Francisco, New York City and Washington, DC have no place in Louisiana,” Kyle Ardoin, the Republican secretary of state, said in a statement after the passage of the constitutional amendment, which he said will “ensure the continued integrity of Louisiana’s elections”.Louisiana law already prohibits anyone who is “not a citizen of the state” from voting, so voting rights advocates say the new amendment is an effort by Republicans in the state to limit voting based on false allegations that noncitizens are committing voter fraud by participating in elections.Louisiana’s amendment made it on to the 10 December ballot after it was passed by both chambers of the state legislature. Over 73% of Louisiana voters approved it, making Louisiana the latest in a series of states moving to explicitly write bans into their constitutions.Before 2020, just Arizona and North Dakota specifically prohibited noncitizens from voting in local and state elections, but voters in Alabama, Colorado and Florida all approved constitutional amendments in 2020 and Ohio approved one in November.Ohio’s amendment came after one town in the state, Yellow Springs, passed an initiative in 2019 to allow noncitizens to vote, giving voting rights in local elections to just a few dozen people in the small town. A few years later in 2022, Republican lawmakers proposed what would eventually become the constitutional amendment banning the practice and revoking the right from noncitizens in Yellow Springs.Fulvia Vargas-De Leon, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a New York-based immigrant rights group, said the movement for ballot amendments is just one way that some lawmakers are trying to restrict voting rights.“It is a response to the expansion of the right to vote, and our concern is that since 2020, we’ve seen such attacks on the right to vote,” she said, adding that the pushback was coming because of an anti-immigrant sentiment “but also a larger effort to try to ban who has access to the ballot”.The United States allowed noncitizens to vote for much of its early history. From the founding of the country through 1926, noncitizens could vote in local, state and federal elections. But anti-immigrant sentiment led to lawmakers in most states to push for an end to the practice.“Resurgent nativism, wartime xenophobia, and corruption concerns pushed lawmakers to curtail noncitizen voting, and citizenship became a voting prerequisite in every state by 1926,” William & Mary professor Alan H Kennedy wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Policy History this year.In 1996, Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, making illegal voting punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation.But on the local level, the subject has re-emerged as a topic for debate in recent decades, as the populations of permanent noncitizen immigrants has grown in many cities.Advocates for noncitizen voting argue that documented immigrants pay taxes and contribute to their local communities and should have their voices heard when it comes to local policy.“We should have a representative democracy, where everyone who is part of the fabric of the community, who is involved, who pays taxes, should have a say in it,” said Vargas-De Leon, whose group intervened in the New York litigation and has filed the appeal.But conservative groups say that allowing noncitizens to vote dilutes the votes of citizens. Republican strategist Christopher Arps started the Missouri-based Americans for Citizen Voting to help states amend their constitutions to explicitly say that only US citizens can vote. He said that people who want to vote should “at least have some skin in the game” by completing the citizenship process.“We’ve been hearing for the past five, six years about foreign interference, Russia and other countries,” he said. “Well to me, this is a type of foreign interference in our elections.”It would also be a “bureaucratic nightmare”, he said, for states to have to maintain two separate voter rolls for federal and local elections, and could lead to illegal voting if noncitizens accidentally vote in a federal election.Though noncitizen voting still has not been signed into law in DC, Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to block it. One bill, introduced by the Texas senator Ted Cruz last month, would bar DC from using federal funds to facilitate noncitizen voting.“Allowing noncitizens and illegal immigrants to vote in our elections opens our country up to foreign influence, and allows those who are openly violating US law or even working for hostile foreign governments to take advantage and direct our resources against our will,” Cruz said in a statement.But Vargas-De Leon pointed to the benefits of expanding the electorate to include the country’s 12.9 million legal permanent residents and other documented immigrants.“All we’re trying to do here is ensure that everyone has a say in our government,” she said.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS politicsLaw (US)LouisianaOhioFloridaVermontfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      The battle to keep LGBTQ+books in Louisiana libraries

      by

      The battle to keep LGBTQ+books in Louisiana libraries Conservatives in the state are pushing for library systems to remove books with LGBTQ+ themes and charactersMel Manuel never expected to be an activist – they even shy away from the term.“No, no way,” they said with a laugh. “No, I’ve just been a teacher my whole life.”‘We’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bansRead moreBut earlier this month, Manuel found themselves at a St Tammany library board of control meeting, packed in a small room of the local library in Covington, Louisiana, a town of just over 10,000 people directly across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. They were there to speak out against efforts to remove certain books from the library’s collection.Public library systems in Louisiana are seeing books and materials, many with LGBTQ+ themes and characters, challenged by conservative groups in the state, who are calling for them to be taken off the shelves. St Tammany parish, which includes Covington, is the latest parish – the term Louisiana uses for county – to see a showdown between pro and anti-censorship groups.Borrowing rhetoric already seen in other parts of the US, the pro-censorship groups say the books are inappropriate for children, labeling them as pornographic and pedophilic, and charging them with “grooming”, a term that refers to the process of earning the trust of a minor in order to lure them into sexual exploitation. Far-right groups are increasingly using the term as a homophobic slur against queer people.Attacks on books in public libraries come at a time when the U.S. is in a “heightened threat environment” and LGBTQ+ people are “targets of potential violence” according to a 30 November homeland security department bulletin. And young LGBTQ+ readers in St Tammany parish say they feel hurt when they see people in their community targeting books with characters like them.The anti-censorship groups that believe the books should stay on the stacks say they tell stories of marginalized and underrepresented people and their availability is important for a diverse and equitable society.“We have the highest murder and maternal death rates in the nation and the highest incarceration rates on earth,” Manuel told the library board during the meeting’s public comments, alluding to three of Louisiana’s most pressing endemic issues. “Louisiana has some serious problems, all of which directly harm our children.“We’re ignoring the very real issues our kids are facing and spreading hate in the name of protecting those very same children.”Manuel is trans and a lifelong resident of Covington. They teach high school Spanish and said it’s always been tough to meet new people like them in town. So, in January 2022, Manuel and a friend started a group called “Queer Northshore” to organize events and meet ups for LGBTQ+ people and allies in the area.The group ended up on the frontlines of the battle over local libraries after complaints from conservative groups about an LGBTQ+ Pride month display in one of the branches in July.Opposite them are conservative groups – mainly the St Tammany Library Accountability Project – which claims to be seeking the removal of books and materials they consider to be pornographic or pedophilic in order to “protect children from sexual exploitation”, according to written responses.In addition to other ordinary library business, the 13 December meeting, which drew Manuel and Accountability Project members, considered appeals for two children’s books about which the library had received complaints, or “statements of concern”.One was I Am Jazz, a picture book written by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, relating Jennings’ experience growing up as a trans child.“Transgenderism is a movement and ideology being promoted worldwide without regard to the long-term damaging effects to youngsters who fall victim to the perverting ideology and their promoters,” St Tammany resident Diane Bruni, who submitted the statement of concern, told the library board at the meeting. “The result of accepting this lie is that young children and teens are encouraged to mutilate their bodies with irreversible castrated hormones and surgery.”Bruni also submitted a statement of concern for another book being considered by the board, titled My Rainbow, an autobiographical picture book cowritten by DeShanna and Trinity Neal about a time when DeShanna made a rainbow wig for her trans daughter, Trinity, to boost her confidence.Self-love and acceptance are exactly what author DeShanna Neal said she intended with her book, along with loving family support. “We need to not only listen with our ears but with our hearts,” Neal told the Guardian. “That is what I hope people would take from My Rainbow. That every voice matters, especially when it’s from someone you love.”Ultimately, the library board found that the books did not contain any vulgar material that would warrant their removal and voted to keep them freely available on the stacks for all patrons to browse. “In these books that I’ve read,” library board member William Allin said during the board’s discussion period, “the common theme is, ‘We love you for who you are.’ That’s where the parents end up. That’s the message.”Attendees seeking the removal of the books were disappointed in the board’s decision but said the battle wasn’t over. Accountability Project attorney David Cougle reacted to the telling by telling the board his group would take its case to the parish council and seek a local law that would prevent the materials from being accessed.“We will not stop fighting this until … the children of this community are protected from a predatory library administration,” Cougle said. He predicted voters would ultimately reject a property tax set to be voted on next year that would affect the library system’s budget, essentially threatening to defund the libraries.Numbers do not back up Cougle’s claims that his group’s primary concern is child safety. To date, the St Tammany parish library system has received 82 statements of concern, but only 10% of them are for books classified as juvenile fiction or picture books. Only 1% of the books are for teens. An overwhelming 89% of the books being challenged are for young adults and adults.More than 50% of trans and non-binary youth in US considered suicide this year, survey saysRead moreEven so, the St Tammany library has adopted safeguards. Library director Kelly LaRocca, who was named the 2022 Library Director of the Year by the state’s library association in July, recently instituted new library cards that would prevent children from checking out adult books without a parent. Moreover, LaRocca said St Tammany libraries do not contain any pedophilic materials. “We do have materials that make mention of its existence,” LaRocca told the Guardian, “but we do not own materials with the expressed purpose of furthering pedophilia.”Adding fuel to the fire, Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, Jeff Landry, recently set up the “protecting minors” tip line where people can report complaints about librarians and teachers that connect children with books they say contain inappropriate content. “Rest assured that we are committed to working with our communities to protect minors from early sexualization, as well as grooming, sex trafficking and abuse,” Landry wrote in a Facebook post about the tip line.In a 19 December opinion in the local Times-Picayune newspaper’s website, Landry asserted without evidence that “graphic sexual content” in library books caused porn addiction in children as well as “violent and criminal sexual desires”.Even with the vast majority of the challenged books unavailable with children’s library cards in St Tammany, the Accountability Project and other conservative groups still don’t want them on public library shelves. One of the books that’s been a focus of attacks is Lawn Boy, a semi-autobiographical adult novel about Mike Muñoz, a 22-year-old biracial, non-binary, low-income character who educates himself by reading books at his local library.Author Jonathan Evison told the Guardian that he’s received death threats and has had people threaten to harm his children after his novel was brought before a Texas school board and charged with containing pedophilia last September, a claim that he denies. He said he believes books with LGBTQ+ characters and stories are needed now more than ever. “There’s a whole swathe of young, intelligent people looking for books that are about them, they’re looking to just belong and find their place in this larger culture,” Evison said. “Like Mike says in the book, ‘Where are the books about me?’”Some of the challenged books don’t contain any LGBTQ+ themes or characters, either. Among the list of titles the Accountability Project believes should not be on public library shelves is Toni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye, which explores the cruelty and pain wrought by racism, and Rupi Kaur’s first poetry collection Milk and Honey.Kaur said she started writing the Milk and Honey poems when she was a young teen as a way to help cope with bullying, mental health issues, sexual assault, depression and anxiety. The collection aims to comfort young readers.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead more“It’s meant to help,” Kaur said of such literature, “and it’s so important they’re able to access it no matter where they are.”Bailey Cook, a 12-year-old St Tammany resident who identifies as non-binary and bisexual, told the Guardian that the books targeted by the Accountability Project “make me feel supported”.Cook, who is in Manuel’s daughter’s class in school, said they think the reason books with LGBTQ+-affirming stories are under attack is because some St Tammany parents don’t want their children to be queer.But that shouldn’t be an impediment, Cook said, adding: “Books don’t make people, a person makes a person. You don’t need to get them if you don’t want to. Every book is for somebody, but there is no book for everybody.”TopicsLouisianaLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      New January 6 video contradicts Republican’s claims about Nancy Pelosi

      by

      New January 6 video contradicts Republican’s claims about Nancy PelosiSteve Scalise questioned whether Democrats sought help on January 6, but video shows him standing near Pelosi as she called for national guard troops The second-highest ranking Republican in the US House, Steve Scalise, is facing criticism for questioning what Democrats did to halt the deadly January 6 Capitol attack on the day of the riots despite being shown on video standing beside chamber speaker Nancy Pelosi as she called for back-up from national guard troops.Scalise, whose Louisiana district includes a large suburban area outside New Orleans, at one point questioned the lengths to which top Democrats went to end the assault on the Capitol staged by a mob of Donald Trump supporters as the former president questioned the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.But a video released last week by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Capitol attack showed Scalise, the Republican whip in the chamber, got an up-close look at the Democratic majority’s leadership trying to summon troops who could help quell the insurrection.The video was timestamped at 3.46pm on the day of the attack. Part of it showed the House majority leader, Democratic Maryland representative Steny Hoyer, saying: “We need active duty national guard.”After some back and forth over whether or not such reinforcements were possible as well as calls by Senator Chuck Schumer to have the grounds evacuated, Pelosi – the House speaker and yet another Democrat – told the person on the phone: “Just pretend for a moment it were the Pentagon or the White House, or some other entity that was under siege. And let me say you can logistically get people there as you make the plan.”The video shows Scalise mere footsteps away from Pelosi, Schumer and Hoyer, listening to them engaging in the conversation about securing the building on speakerphone.Nonetheless, in a news conference held in June to discuss the Capitol attack, Republican Indiana congressman Jim Banks said: “Was Speaker Pelosi involved in the decision to delay National Guard assistance following January 6? Those are serious and real questions that this committee refuses to even ask.”Scalise at that session thanked Banks for those remarks and added: “Banks just raised some very serious questions that should be answered by the January 6 commission, but they’re not. And they’re not for a very specific reason. And that’s because Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want those questions to be answered.”MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough has since fiercely denounced Scalise for “lying through [his] teeth.”“He was in the room,” Scarborough said. “He was in the room where it happened. … I mean, come on.”The former chair of the Republican National Committee and now frequent critic of the GOP, Michael Steele, said: “Why are we surprised to see Scalise in the room, at the table, next to the phone that’s open for everybody to hear and then go out there and lie about it?”Scalise has not responded to the video released by the January 6 committee or the criticism. But in a statement provided to the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper’s website, a spokesperson for Scalise said the Republican whip’s comments at the June press conference referred to broader security failures at the Capitol days rather than singling out any Democrats.The video in question came just weeks ahead of the 8 November midterm. Scalise is expected to easily win another term as the House representative for Louisiana’s first congressional district, with his only real challenger being Democratic candidate Katie Darling.Darling did capture some national attention after a recent campaign ad featuring her pregnant and calling out the extremely restrictive Louisiana abortion laws that went into effect after the US supreme court in June voted to overturn the nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy that had been established by the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case.The ad shows Darling going to the hospital in a wheelchair as she is about to give birth – then holding her infant baby.“We should be putting pregnant women at ease, not putting their lives at risk,” she says in the political spot.In the ad, Darling is seen going to a hospital by wheelchair as she is about to give birth. Then, while holding her newborn son in the hospital, she looks at the camera and declares, “I’m running for Congress … for him.”Scalise and his Republican colleagues hope to seize back control of both the House and the Senate, where the Democrats have razor-thin advantages going into the midterms.TopicsUS Capitol attackLouisianaUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More