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      Democrats Meddle in Ohio G.O.P. Senate Primary, Pushing Trump’s Choice

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      A Democratic group is wading into the Republican Senate primary in Ohio with a new television spot aimed at promoting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.The spot criticizes Mr. Moreno as ultraconservative and too aligned with Mr. Trump. But by running the ad in the final week of the primary, those critiques are likely to be viewed as badges of honor by Republican primary voters, a tactic Democrats have employed in other races in recent years.A group called Duty and Country is spending roughly $879,000 on the ad, which is set to run across the state, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks advertising.The group is funded largely through the Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to maintain control of the chamber.Mr. Moreno is running for the Republican nomination against State Senator Matt Dolan and Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose. The winner will face Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent.“Democrats constantly underestimate the America First movement at their own peril,” said Reagan McCarthy, communications director for Mr. Moreno. “They thought President Trump would be easy to beat in 2016 and then they got their clocks cleaned when he demolished Hillary Clinton. The same thing is going to happen to Sherrod Brown this year.”Mr. Moreno has struggled to pull away from his primary challengers despite the endorsement from Mr. Trump and others, including Senator J.D. Vance, a Trump-backed Republican who was elected in 2022. Mr. Moreno won their backing by embracing hard-line conservative positions that Democrats view as potentially easier to run against in a general election.“When Ohio voters head to their polling place, they deserve to know the truth about Bernie Moreno — and the truth is that Moreno is a MAGA extremist who embraced Donald Trump just like he embraced his policies to ban abortion nationwide and repeal” the Affordable Care Act, said Hannah Menchhoff, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC.Republicans need to flip two seats to win back power if President Biden is re-elected, but just one if the White House returns to Republican hands. Republicans already are expected to gain one seat in West Virginia after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, announced he would not seek re-election.In the California Senate primary last month, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, ran a spot describing Steve Garvey, a Republican and a former Major League Baseball player, as too conservative. Mr. Schiff and Mr. Garvey will face off in November in their deep-blue state.In the Pennsylvania governor’s race in 2022, the Democrat, Josh Shapiro, ran an ad in the Republican primary playing up the conservative credentials of Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed candidate in the race. Mr. Mastriano won and Mr. Shapiro easily defeated him to win the governor’s office. More

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      Biden visited East Palestine a year after Trump. This doesn’t bode well | Ben Davis

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      Joe Biden visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a massive train derailment and ecological disaster, for the first time last week. The problem, of course, is that the accident happened over a year ago. Donald Trump visited while out of office, only two weeks after the initial disaster.The mismatch encapsulates a major problem for the Democrats’ messaging. They have allowed Trump and the Republican party to position themselves more and more as representing workers and victims of corporate negligence and malfeasance. Biden and the Democrats must change their positioning and economic messaging to reassert that they will fight for workers.Changing strategy is crucial. Biden’s poll numbers are weak, particularly with working-class voters, allowing Trump to put himself in the pole position in the election. Contrary to what Trump and his allies would have voters believe, a Trump victory would be a disaster for workers, safety regulations on corporations, and environmental protections.Much has been made of Trump and the Republicans’ strengthening position among working-class voters. If anything, the trend has been overstated: Biden won low-income voters in 2020 by double digits. When accounting for other factors like age, gender, and education level, higher income is still, statistically, a particularly clear driver of more conservative politics. Trump’s actual economic policies in office were a massive upward transfer of wealth, not appreciably different from any establishment Republican.But the perception is becoming more and more the reality. Biden’s sagging approval numbers are driven almost entirely by middle- and lower-income voters. Unlike in 2016, the losses among working-class voters can’t be attributed to white racial resentment; these new losses are concentrated among voters of color.Voters do not think the government is working for their economic interests. Even among Democratic-leaning voters, perception of the economy among younger, lower-income, and non-white voters is drastically lower than among other voters.The Democratic strategy has been to point out that the economy, by most metrics, is doing very well, and argue that the media drives poor perception of the economy. This may be true, but it’s also not a solution. Politics doesn’t have rules or referees you can complain to. Perception is reality.Allowing Trump to brand himself as the supporter of the downtrodden – visiting East Palestine, posing with Teamsters, and more – without challenge will only further alienate Democrats from the voters they need. Biden needed to be in East Palestine last year, and he needs to be in places like that as much as possible going forward, particularly while Trump is in court for crimes that show that he is a wealthy elite only in it for himself.The Democratic messaging strategy has leaned heavily on correcting voters and denying their feelings – telling people “actually … ” Actually, the economy is great. Actually, Biden’s age is not an issue. This strategy doesn’t work. Democrats need to empathize with voters. They need to show up and listen. They need to point out the actual material harm caused by Trump.Trump will gut regulations that protect people from disasters like East Palestine, and worse. His role in politics is fundamentally to transfer wealth upwards and make workers less safe and secure. Voters struggle to conceptualize abstract threats to democratic norms, but they understand real threats to their standard of living.Going forward, Biden must be front and center on issues affecting working people. He must publicly show he cares about people. The perception that he empathized with ordinary Americans was a driving factor in his victory in 2020, in contrast with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it’s one of the critical issues on which he has lost ground.Showing up may not materially change things, but not showing up allows the perceptions of incompetence and lack of empathy to grow. Democrats need to show up if they are going to win in November.
      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign More

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      Potential Trump running mate JD Vance says he still questions results of 2020 election

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      JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is being floated as a potential Republican running mate to Donald Trump, said on Sunday that he still questions the results of the 2020 election and that the votes should not have been immediately certified.“Do I think there were problems in 2020? Yes, I do,” Vance told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, adding it was “ridiculous” to ask if he would have certified the results as Mike Pence had done and told the host he was “obsessed with talking about this”.In a contentious interview, the senator also suggested that Trump should ignore “illegitimate” US supreme court rulings.That remark came after Vance was questioned about a 2021 podcast during which he said he would advise Trump to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people” and ignore legal rulings against it.“We have a major problem here with administrators and bureaucrats in the government who don’t respond to the elected branches … If those people aren’t following the rules, then of course you’ve got to fire them, and of course the president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should,” Vance said.“The constitution says that the supreme court can make rulings … but if the supreme court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling,” added Vance, whose wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, has previously clerked for John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justices.Vance also argued that the civil claims and criminal cases against Trump were not legitimate efforts to prosecute the former president for wrongdoing, but “about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can’t beat him at the ballot box. And so, they’re trying to defeat him in court.”The interview ended badly, with the network cutting to a commercial break after Stephanopoulos told Vance he had made it “very clear” he believed a president can defy the supreme court.“No, no, George …” Vance said before the sound was cut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, was elected senator in 2022 after abandoning his past criticism of Trump, in which he had said the former president was “America’s Hitler”, “a total fraud” and “a moral disaster”.The reversal helped to secure Trump’s endorsement and his backing has not wavered since. He has described the legal claims against Trump, specifically E Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit that last week concluded with an $83m judgement against Trump, as “illustrative of what’s gone wrong in this country”. More

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      A year on from the East Palestine toxic train derailment, what’s changed? – podcast

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      A year ago on 3 February a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in a small village on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. A few days after the derailment, officials decided to vent and burn the chemicals it was carrying to prevent an explosion.
      Those still living in East Palestine and the surrounding communities have been told the air they breathe is safe, but many aren’t confident in what they’re being told.
      So what led to the derailment? What’s changed in terms of legislation to make sure this kind of accident doesn’t happen again? And how are residents coming together to advocate for their safety and that of fellow Americans in the future?
      The Guardian’s fossil fuels and climate reporter, Dharna Noor, travelled to East Palestine to see for herself what’s changed in the 12 months since the disaster

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Ohio Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktails at a Church Gets 18 Years in Prison

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      Aimenn D. Penny, 20, was angry because the Community Church of Chesterland had planned to host two drag shows, federal prosecutors said.An Ohio man who prosecutors said had tried to burn down a church in anger by throwing Molotov cocktails at it last year because it planned to host two drag shows was sentenced on Monday to 18 years in prison, federal authorities said.The man, Aimenn D. Penny, 20, of Alliance, Ohio, who was arrested and charged after the March 25 episode, pleaded guilty in October to violating the Church Arson Prevention Act and to using fire and explosives to commit a felony, according to federal prosecutors, who had recommended a 20-year sentence.“We hope this significant sentence sends a clear and resounding message that this type of hate-fueled attack against a church will not be tolerated in our country,” Kristen Clarke, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement on Tuesday.John W. Greven, a lawyer for Mr. Penny, said in an interview on Tuesday that his client intended to appeal the sentence. He called Mr. Penny’s case “a classic example” of a young person looking for acceptance and turning to the internet to find it.Fire damage on a door and sign at Community Church of Chesterland after Molotov cocktails were thrown at the building in March 2023.Jim Urquhart/Reuters“I feel he was brainwashed by some people because really there is nothing in his past that would ever indicate that he would do something like this,” Mr. Greven said. “It’s sad all the way around.”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?  More

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      Ohio pastor fights court battle with city over shelter for unhoused people

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      A Christian pastor is fighting back against a city in Ohio after it charged him with breaking a municipal law by opening up his place of worship to unhoused people as well as others who need shelter.Police in Bryan, Ohio, filed 18 charges accusing Chris Avell – the pastor of Dad’s Place – with zoning violations at his rented church building. Officers alleged that the church lacked proper kitchen and laundry facilities, safe exits and adequate ventilation, as required.Avell pleaded not guilty. Then his church sued Bryan’s government in federal court on Monday, arguing the city has violated the pastor’s constitutional rights to religious freedom.Despite Avell making changes trying to address the city’s complaints, including the installation of a stove hood and closing its laundry facility, the church alleges in its lawsuit that officers are still harassing and intimidating them.An attorney for Avell and the church, Jeremy Dys, said he suspects city leaders do not want a ministry for the unhoused in the middle of town. He described it as a “not in my backyard” – or, colloquially, “Nimby” – issue that his client’s lawsuit seeks to reframe as a test of the federal rights of free religious exercise and protection against government intrusion on religion.“Nothing satisfies the city,” Dys said on Monday, hours after the lawsuit was filed. “And worse – they go on a smear campaign of innuendo and half-truths.”Dys also accused the city of “creating problems in order to gin up opposition to this church existing in the town square”.The defendants in the church’s lawsuit – the city of Bryan, its mayor, Carrie Schlade, and other municipal officials – deny allegations that any religious institution has been dealt with inappropriately.“The city has been and continues to be interested in any business, any church, any entity complying with local and state law,” an attorney for the city, Marc Fishel, said.The church said in its lawsuit that its leaders decided in March to remain open at all hours as a temporary, emergency shelter “for people to go who have nowhere else to go and no one to care for them”.On average, eight people stay there each night, and a few more do so when weather is bad, the church said.The city said police received complaints of criminal mischief, trespassing, theft and disturbing the peace and requests to investigate generally inappropriate activity at the church.The church said its policy had been to let anyone stay overnight and not to ask them to leave “unless there is a biblically valid reason for doing so or if someone at the property poses a danger to himself or others”, according to the complaint.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe church holds a “rest and refresh in the Lord” ministry from 11pm to 8am, which includes scriptural readings piped in under dim lights. It is open to anyone.The city argues these actions constitute housing, and the church is in a zone that does not permit residential use on the first floor of a building.Bryan’s planning and zoning administrator gave the church 10 days to stop housing people. After an inspection, police in December sought charges against Avell for code violations.The church wants a federal judge to enforce its rights to free exercise of religion and protection from government hostility. It also seeks a restraining order keeping Bryan officials from taking action against the church in connection with the charges in the case that were obtained by police, and the church additionally is pursuing damages along with attorneys’ fees.“No history or tradition justifies the city’s intrusion into the church’s inner sanctum to dictate which rooms may be used for religious purposes, how the church may go about accomplishing its religious mission, or at what hours of the day religious activities are permitted,” the church said in its lawsuit.Dys added in a statement: “Instead of supporting a church that is trying to help citizens going through some of the worst situations in their lives (and in the dead of winter), the city seems intent on intimidating the church into ending its ministry to vulnerable citizens or relocating it somewhere out of mayor Schlade’s sight. The constitution and the law say otherwise.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Ohio trans candidate threatened with disqualification cleared to run in house race

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      A transgender candidate vying for a seat in the Republican-majority Ohio house was cleared to run on Thursday after her certification had been called into question for omitting her former name on qualifying petitions as required by a little-used state elections law.The Mercer county board of elections chose not to take up a vote on disqualifying Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from Auglaize county who is one of four trans individuals campaigning for the legislature, for not disclosing her previous name on petition paperwork.Childrey, who legally changed her name in 2020, has said she would have provided her deadname – the name a trans person was assigned at birth but does not align with their gender identity – if she had known about the law.“I would have filled out whatever was necessary, because at the end of the day, while it would have been a hit to my pride, there is something much more important than my pride, and that’s fighting for this community,” Childrey said.The Ohio law, unfamiliar even to many state elections officials, mandates that candidates disclose any name changes in the past five years on their petition paperwork, with exemptions for changes caused by marriage. But the law isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide and there is no space on the petition paperwork to list any former names.All four trans candidates for the legislature this year have run into issues with the name-change law, which has been in place in some form for decades but is rarely used – typically in the context of candidates wishing to use a nickname.The complications in Ohio come at a time when Republican-controlled state governments nationwide have moved to limit trans rights. Last year, legislatures passed dozens of bills restricting medical care for trans youth, governing pronoun and bathroom usage at schools and dictating which sports teams trans athletes can join.Earlier this month, Ohio’s Mercer county board of elections received a protest to Childrey’s ballot certification from the county Republican party chairman, Robert J Hibner. Because the ballot is for the upcoming 19 March primary, the board ruled Hibner’s protest invalid, as Hibner is from the opposing political party.The board did not immediately respond to questions regarding the elections law itself and what role it played in Thursday’s decision to keep Childrey on the ballot.If Childrey were to win the Democratic primary, she would probably face representative Angie King, a Republican lawmaker who has sponsored anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and voted for bans on gender-affirming care for minors in November’s general election.Childrey told the Associated Press on Thursday that it’s “nice to take a deep breath” as she and her team now plunge into campaigning.“Hopefully people will see that this is a marginalized community in Ohio, and yet we’re still standing,” she said.Last week, the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, said his office was open to putting the rule on the candidate guide but not to tweaking the law, and that it was up to candidates to ensure they comply with Ohio election law.But the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said on Tuesday that the law should be amended and county boards should stop disqualifying trans candidates on these grounds. DeWine did not say how it might be amended.“We shouldn’t be denying ballot access for that reason,” the governor told Cleveland.com’s editorial board. “It certainly should be fixed.”DeWine recently vetoed a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, but the state house overrode that veto. The senate is expected to do the same next week.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Stark county running for the Ohio house who legally changed her name in 2022, was disqualified earlier this month for omitting her deadname from petition paperwork. She appealed her disqualification but was denied. Joy, who said the current law was a barrier to trans individuals who want to seek office but do not want to disclose their deadname, is now working with legal counsel and the Ohio Democratic party to try to change the law.Ari Faber, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio state senate from Athens, was cleared to run but must use his deadname, since he has not legally changed it.Bobbie Arnold, a contractor from West Alexandria running as a Democrat for the Ohio house, had her possible disqualification dismissed on Tuesday by the Montgomery county board of elections and will be on the ballot in the March primary.However, under the state law, if Arnold or Childrey were to win their elections, they could still be removed from office for not disclosing their deadname and both are consulting with legal counsel about that part of the law.Arnold hopes that between Joy’s work with her own team to change the law and DeWine’s call for candidates to stay on the ballot, that will not be an issue come November.For now, like Childrey, she is excited to start campaigning.“It’s important for the overall wellbeing of our society that every voice has an opportunity to be heard,” said Arnold, who went to Childrey’s hearing to support her. “And that’s something that we’re not experiencing right now in Ohio.”In light of the outcomes of Childrey and Arnold’s cases, Joy appealed again on Thursday to the Stark county board of elections. 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      Vanessa Joy, Transgender Candidate in Ohio, Is Disqualified for Not Disclosing Birth Name

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      Vanessa Joy, who wanted to run for a state House seat, said she was unaware of a statute that said candidates must disclose previous names on nominating petitions.A transgender woman was disqualified from a race for the Ohio House of Representatives after she did not include her previous name in election materials, raising the prospect that transgender candidates would face similar barriers elsewhere.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer running as a Democrat in Ohio’s 50th District, was informed in a letter from the Stark County Board of Elections on Tuesday that she had been disqualified from the state House race.The board cited a state law that requires a person running for office to list on the candidacy petition any name changes within five years of an election, and it gave Ms. Joy until Friday afternoon to appeal.Ms. Joy, who hopes to be among the first openly transgender elected officials in Ohio, said in an interview that she had appealed the board’s decision and planned to challenge the law in court.“Had I known this law existed, I likely would have bit the bullet and put my deadname next to my legal name,” she said, using a term for a transgender person’s birth name.“I would have done it because I care enough to get on the ballot, but this will be a huge barrier to entry for transgender people,” she said, adding that many transgender people have their birth names sealed out of concern for their safety.Ms. Joy noted in her appeal letter that Ohio’s candidate guide made no mention of the law and that the county elections board had not raised any concerns when she submitted the dozens of signatures required to secure a place on the ballot.She also argued that the law had been “applied unevenly.” At least two other transgender legislative candidates will appear on ballots in Ohio this year despite not having included prior names in their election paperwork, according to the L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, a national organization that supports L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. The organization said it was not clear if those candidates changed their names within the last five years.Ms. Joy, 42, grew up in a conservative Christian household. She came out as transgender two years ago after the death of her father, who she said would have disapproved of her decision to transition. She also left her job running the family’s manufacturing company to work as a photographer.She said she chose to publicize her transition on social media and in a podcast as Republicans have advanced a wave of measures nationwide restricting medical care for transgender people, regulating which public bathrooms they can use and dictating which youth sports teams they can play on.“The Republicans have an absolute stranglehold supermajority in Ohio, and I want to give other people my age the courage to get out and run or vote,” she said. “If they can see a trans girl in red Ohio running for office, maybe they’ll be like, Well, I can do it, too.”Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who focuses on voting rights, said the Ohio statute had a practical purpose.“The reason you’d want to know prior names of a candidate is if they have something in their past they were trying to hide, like a criminal history or some embarrassing incidents,” he said. “Voters want to be able to judge backgrounds.”However, in the history of voting rights in the United States, many laws that appeared neutral had the consequence of being exclusionary, said Atiba Ellis, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.“In the anti-transgender political environment in Ohio, this disqualification raises that specter of concern that this becomes a new mechanism of exclusion,” he said.Melanie Amato, a spokeswoman for the Ohio secretary of state, said the office was aware of the disqualification.“The law applies to everyone and there is no discussion to have this law amended at this time,” Ms. Amato said in an email.A record number of transgender candidates sought and won office last year, according to Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024.Mr. Meloy said there was no accounting of how many states had laws like Ohio’s that could pose a barrier for such candidates.In 2017, there were no known openly transgender legislators in the United States, according to an LGBTQ+ Victory Fund database. This year, at least 14 transgender people are serving in state legislatures. More