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      Outrage after Republican candidate tells voters ‘don’t be weak and gay’

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      Valentina Gomez, a Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state, stoked outrage with a video in which she ran down a street while wearing a protective vest and said: “In America, you can do anything you want, so don’t be weak and gay. Stay fucking hard.”Jason Kander, a former Democratic Missouri secretary of state and candidate for US Senate, said with sarcasm: “So refreshing to see a female GOP candidate who never served in the military doing the whole veteran cosplay, stolen valour, bigotry as a substitute for strength routine as well as any man.”Observers noted that Gomez’s video was filmed in the Soulard District of St Louis, a historically LGBTQ+ neighbourhood.Gomez’s tweet included the handles for Andrew Tate, a British influencer, and his brother Tristan Tate, a kickboxer, who deny charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.Gomez said her video featured music by “the great Lupe Fiasco”. Users pointed to the rapper’s statements against homophobia, including: “You should not use words like ‘faggot’ it’s derogatory and unacceptable … no room for homophobia in hip hop.”On Tuesday, apparently in response to the video, the rapper said: “We are aware and currently taking action.”Gomez, 25 and from St Louis, describes herself as “a real estate investor, financier, strategist, former NCAA Division I swimmer, relentless achiever, and a fierce advocate for the principles values we hold dear as Americans battling for a better future”.Like many other short videos Gomez has made, the ad featuring her running included an image of her holding a large gun. Others show her firing guns, including at an inflatable Star Wars stormtrooper.In February, Gomez posted a video in which she used a flamethrower to burn books with LGBTQ+ themes.“This is what I will do to the grooming books when I become secretary of state,” she said. “These books come from a Missouri public library. When I’m in office, they will burn.”The Kansas City Star told readers: “Public book burnings typically illustrate extreme censorship related to political, cultural and religious materials. They often invoke historic atrocities such as burning of Jewish texts in Nazi Germany or racist bonfires by the Ku Klux Klan.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGomez’s campaign director told NBC News: “You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children.” The statement also included familiar far-right complaints about drag shows, pronouns and transgender rights.Whoever succeeds the current Missouri secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, will control elections in the state. Gomez supports Donald Trump’s lies about electoral fraud.The independent non-profit Ballotpedia places Gomez among the frontrunners in an eight-strong Republican field, alongside members of the state house and senate.Gomez is “a real estate investor who has received national attention for her social media presence”, the site says. More

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      in Elections

      Missouri and South Dakota Join States Pursuing Abortion Rights Referendums

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      Both states are reliably Republican and have abortion bans that are among the strictest in the nation.Two more states with near-total abortion bans are poised to have citizen-sponsored measures on the ballot this year that would allow voters to reverse those bans by establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions.On Friday, a coalition of abortion rights groups in Missouri turned in 380,159 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot, nearly double the 172,000 signatures required by law. The Missouri organizers’ announcement followed a petition drive in South Dakota that announced on Wednesday that it, too, had turned in many more signatures than required for a ballot amendment there.Both groups are hoping to build on the momentum of other states where abortion rights supporters have prevailed in seven out of seven ballot measures in the two years since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion for nearly five decades.Groups in about 10 other states have secured spots on the ballot for abortion rights measures or are collecting signatures to do so. Those include Arizona and Nevada, swing states where Democrats are hoping that voters who are newly energized around abortion rights will help President Biden win re-election.South Dakota and Missouri are reliably Republican states. But their bans are among the strictest in the nation, outlawing abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman.Missouri, where post-Roe polls show that a majority of voters want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, appears to offer abortion rights groups the bigger chance of success. But both measures face significant hurdles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Missouri Democratic Presidential Primary Election Results 2024

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      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Camille Baker, Neil Berg, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Additional reporting by Patrick Hays; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White.
      Editing by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. More

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      Missouri: home to child marriage, corporal punishment and sick ‘child welfare’ ideas | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Did you know that child marriage is still legal in much of the US? About 300,000 children and teenagers were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2018, according to the advocacy group Unchained at Last. At least 60,000 of those marriages “occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime”.Did you know that, until quite recently, Missouri was a “destination wedding spot” for children who wanted to tie the knot? The state has tightened its child marriage laws now – and is seeking to ban the practice – but not all lawmakers are happy about the changes. Missouri state senator Mike Moon said last year that he knows kids who have been married at age 12 (to another minor) and they’re “thriving”!Did you know that many school districts in Missouri still authorize corporal punishment? If a kid acts up in class, a teacher can spank them. Don’t worry though, they’re not allowed to do anything horrible like punch them in the face. According to one school district, the only punishment allowed is “swatting the buttocks with a paddle”.Did you know that Human Rights Watch gave Missouri an “F” grade last year for its compliance with international child rights standards?I mention all these fun Missouri facts because I think they’re important to bear in mind as we look at the latest dystopian news coming out of the state. Which is this: state representative Jamie Gragg is so concerned about the welfare of kids in his district that he has come up with a novel new way to “protect” them. How? By introducing a new bill which would force teachers to register as sex offenders if they use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns or otherwise help them in their “social transition”.The bill states that any teacher or school counsellor who provide support or “other resources to a child regarding social transition” could be found guilty of a class E felony and placed in the same sex offender registration category as someone possessing child sexual abuse images. They would not be able to work at a school again or be within 500ft of one.One hallmark of a Republican-authored bill is ambiguity: key terms are defined extremely broadly (or not at all) so that it is unclear what is prohibited and what isn’t. This vagueness is a feature not a bug: the idea is that people will over-comply because they’re worried about getting in trouble. It also means that Republicans can say “We didn’t mean it like that” if people try to argue that the legislation is unconstitutional. It’s a deviously brilliant tactic.This new anti-trans proposal is no exception to the GOP vagueness rule. “Social transition” is defined extremely broadly in the bill as: “The process by which an individual adopts the name, pronouns, and gender expression, such as clothing or haircuts, that match the individual’s gender identity and not the gender assumed by the individual’s sex at birth.”So what does this mean? Well it means that if this bill becomes law a teacher in Missouri would potentially be able to spank a child on the buttocks without facing any consequences but would lose their job and have to register as a sex offender if they used that kid’s preferred pronouns while doing the spanking. Hell, this bill is so broad that simply complimenting a cis girl who just got a “boyish” haircut could get a teacher in serious trouble.Of course, a bill is not a law. We should be very clear that, at the moment, HB2885 is just one lawmaker’s fantasy written down on paper. There are currently no co-sponsors for the bill and no hearing scheduled. It’s highly unlikely it will actually become law anytime soon. Erin Reed, a journalist specializing in transgender legislation and the first person to break the news of the bill, has noted that she doesn’t “believe something like this could pass, even in Missouri”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut just because HB2885, as it is currently written, is unlikely to move through the state legislature doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t alarm us. Extreme bills like this signal where Republicans want to head and help push the Overton window more and more to the right. Pretty soon a “moderate” is going to mean a raging conservative who is kind enough to think that a teacher shouldn’t be called a sex offender for using someone’s preferred pronouns. (Oh, hang on, that’s already what it means! Just how look at how frequently Nikki Haley is labelled a “moderate”.)It’s also important to note that while HB2885 might not move forward, plenty of other anti-trans bills will. Last year was a banner year for anti-trans bigots: over 308 anti-trans bills were introduced in the US, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, including 43 in Missouri. This year will probably be even worse.All this legislation, and the anti-trans rhetoric that comes with it, is endangering the lives of trans and non-gender-conforming people. A bill doesn’t have to be passed for it to contribute to an environment where is dangerous to be LGBTQ+. Transgender deaths are on the rise in the US, with 53 transgender people killed and 32 lost to suicide last year. So, again, don’t dismiss the importance of bills like HB2885. This particular proposal might not go anywhere, but its very existence is a horrifying sign of where the US is heading.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in Elections

      Missouri Republican Caucus Results 2024

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      The Republican caucuses will take place in person across the state beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Instead of secret ballots, participants will move around a room and form groups that will determine how many representatives each candidate will have at district and state conventions held later. Missouri voters may affiliate with a party via […] More

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      Ferguson, Mo., Agrees to Pay $4.5 Million to Settle ‘Debtors’ Prison’ Suit

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      A federal judge gave the settlement preliminarily approval nearly a decade after a class-action lawsuit accused the city of wrongfully jailing plaintiffs for traffic tickets and other minor offenses.The City of Ferguson, Mo., has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that accused it of violating the constitutional rights of thousands of people who said they were jailed without due process because they could not pay fines.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 amid protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white Ferguson police officer. It accused the city of jailing the plaintiffs in “deplorable” conditions simply because they could not pay debts owed for traffic tickets or other minor offenses.“They were threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement,” lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in the suit, noting that these conditions lasted until families could produce enough cash for bail, or until jail officials decided to let them out.On Tuesday, ArchCity Defenders, the nonprofit group in St. Louis that filed the suit, said in a statement that checks would be sent to more than 15,000 people who were jailed by the city between Feb. 8, 2010, and Dec. 30, 2022, and that the amount would depend on the number of hours each of them had spent in jail.David Musgrave, Ferguson’s assistant city manager, said in an email on Thursday that the city would not comment “while the settlement agreement is pending final approval by the Court.”Mr. Musgrave directed further questions to the city’s lawyers, one of whom, Apollo Carey, declined to comment. Another lawyer did not immediately respond to an email and call. Neither the mayor nor the Ferguson Police Department could be reached for comment on Thursday evening.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jean Carnahan, First Woman to Represent Missouri in U.S. Senate, Dies at 90

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      Ms. Carnahan was appointed to the seat after her husband was posthumously elected to it just weeks after he was killed in a plane crash in 2000.Jean Carnahan, who in 2001 became the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to fill her husband’s seat following his posthumous election, died on Tuesday. She was 90.Her family released a statement saying that Ms. Carnahan died following a brief illness.“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life,” the statement said, without specifying the cause of death. “She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in the statement.Ms. Carnahan, the wife of Mel Carnahan, was appointed to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in December 2000, following the posthumous election of her husband, who was killed just weeks beforehand with their son and a longtime aide in a plane crash. She was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001.Ms. Carnahan, a moderate Democrat who had never held public office before being appointed to fill in for her husband, served for nearly two years. She lost to Jim Talent, a Republican, by 22,000 votes in November 2002.Following her defeat, Ms. Carnahan told The New York Times that despite the tumult and heartache she had endured, she had always pushed bitterness aside. “It’s an acid in your life that corrodes your soul,” she told The Times.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      ‘Utter stupidity’: Missouri Republican bids to bring back dueling for senators

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      A Missouri Republican’s proposal to reintroduce dueling to solve statehouse differences was branded “utter stupidity” by a leading historian of political violence.“Back in the day,” Joanne B Freeman of Yale tweeted, “they were smart enough to take dueling OUTSIDE. The draft that I saw suggests doing it in the chamber. This doesn’t show guts or bravery or manhood – if it’s supposed to. It shows utter stupidity.”Freeman is the author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.The state senator behind the proposal said he was making a point about the breakdown of regular order in Missouri politics.The draft rule change came to national notice when it was posted to social media by Democrats in the state senate.“The Missouri Republican civil war continues to escalate as a member of the Freedom Caucus faction has filed a proposed rule change to allow senators to challenge an ‘offending senator to a duel’,” they wrote.The Missouri Freedom Caucus is a hardline rightwing group on the lines of the group of the same name in the US House of Representatives and with a similarly fractious relationship with party leaders, impeding political business.The draft rule read: “If a senator’s honor is impugned by another senator to the point that it is beyond repair and in order for the offended senator to gain satisfaction, such senator may rectify the perceived insult to the senator’s honor by challenging the offending senator to a duel.“The trusted representative, known as the second, of the offended senator shall send a written challenge to the offending senator. The two senators shall agree to the terms of the duel, including choice of weapons, which shall be witnessed and enforced by their respective seconds.“The duel shall take place in the well of the senate at the hour of high noon on the date agreed to by the parties to the duel.”The author, Nick Schroer, represents District 2 in the Missouri senate. According to his biography, he is a lawyer, specialising in family law and criminal defence.His chief of staff, Jamey Murphy, told Newsweek that Schroer was “deeply committed to restoring a sense of honor in the Missouri Senate” but suggested “the idea of a duel … in a metaphorical sense”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchroer told the Kansas City Star: “The behavior that we’ve seen on the floor, lack of communication from leadership, politics as a whole just eroding … If we’re going back in time and acting like an uncivilized society, I think we need to have discussion.”Dueling was long part of the American political scene, famously resulting in the killing of the founding father Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr in 1804. It had largely died out by the 1850s but other forms of political violence continued.Freeman has illuminated how incidents of political violence – including the South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks’ caning of Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts, in 1856 – paved the road to conflict.In 2021, after Donald Trump incited the January 6 Capitol attack and amid fears of rising violence, Freeman told the Guardian of the incidents she studied: “Depending on how it’s acted out and the language that’s used and the posturing that’s taken by the members of Congress, it’s deliberately intended to rile up Americans, which it does.“That kind of violence can encourage violence, intensify political rhetoric [and] seemingly justify extremism and violence. It has an impact on the public. If the public gets riled up, they’re going to demand more things from their representatives – more violence, more extremism.” More