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      in Elections

      Here’s who won and who lost in Florida, New York and Oklahoma.

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      Voters in Florida, New York and Oklahoma went to the polls on Tuesday. Here is a rundown of some of the most important wins and losses so far.New YorkRepresentative Jerrold Nadler defeated Representative Carolyn B. Maloney in the Democratic primary in the 12th Congressional District, in the heart of Manhattan, after a New York court combined their longtime seats in redistricting. Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney are both House committee chairs with storied careers.Pat Ryan, a Democrat, won an upset over Marc Molinaro, a Republican, in a special election in the 19th Congressional District, which both candidates framed as an opportunity for voters to send a national message after Supreme Court rulings on guns and abortion. Joe Sempolinski, a Republican, defeated Max Della Pia, a Democrat, in a special election in the 23rd District. He will fill a seat vacated by Tom Reed, a fellow Republican accused of sexual misconduct.In the regularly scheduled Republican primary in the 23rd District, Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chairman, won over Carl Paladino, a former candidate for governor with a history of racist, sexist and homophobic remarks. Mr. Sempolinski, who won the special election to serve until January, did not run in the primary for a full term.Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who helped impeach President Donald J. Trump, won a crowded Democratic primary over State Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou in the 10th Congressional District, a rare open seat in the heart of New York City. The field also included Mondaire Jones, a sitting congressman from another district; Carlina Rivera, a city councilwoman; and others.Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee, won the Democratic nomination in the Third District, on Long Island. He is expected to face a stiff challenge in November from the Republican nominee, George Santos.Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, beat back a progressive challenger, State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, in the exurbs north of New York City. Mr. Maloney had drawn heavy criticism when he chose to run in this district, the 17th, after redistricting made his current one less reliably Democratic.FloridaRepresentative Charlie Crist easily won the Democratic primary for governor over Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, and will now face Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Representative Val B. Demings won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Marco Rubio, handily defeating three lesser-known candidates.Representative Matt Gaetz beat back a Republican primary challenge from Mark Lombardo, a Marine Corps veteran and former FedEx executive. Mr. Gaetz’s hard-right views are popular in this strongly Republican district in the Florida Panhandle, and he won despite being a subject of a child sex trafficking investigation.Cory Mills, an Army veteran who ran an ad likening mask mandates to Taliban control, won the Republican primary in a safely red district north of Orlando. He defeated State Representative Anthony Sabatini, who recently called for Florida to “sever all ties” with the Justice Department and suggested arresting F.B.I. agents, and several other candidates.Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a progressive activist who would be the first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress, won in a crowded Democratic primary for this solidly blue Orlando-area seat that Ms. Demings is leaving to run for Senate.Representative Daniel Webster won an unexpectedly narrow victory in the 11th District’s Republican primary over Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has called herself “a #ProudIslamophobe.” Ms. Loomer had not been expected to pose a serious challenge.Anna Paulina Luna, a Trump endorsee, is the Republican nominee in the 13th District, a seat in the Tampa Bay area made much redder after redistricting. She defeated Kevin Hayslett and Amanda Makki and is expected to win the general election to replace Mr. Crist.OklahomaRepresentative Markwayne Mullin defeated the former Oklahoma House speaker T.W. Shannon in a runoff for the Republican nomination to replace Senator James M. Inhofe, who is retiring. He is expected to win easily in November over Kendra Horn, the Democratic nominee. More

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      in US Politics

      Markwayne Mullin, election-denying former cage fighter, closes on Oklahoma Senate seat

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      Markwayne Mullin, election-denying former cage fighter, closes on Oklahoma Senate seatCongressman who embraced Donald Trump’s big lie seeks to replace retiring Senator Jim Inhofe An election-denying former mixed martial arts fighter who was widely criticised for an attempted freelance mission last year to rescue Americans trapped in Afghanistan has won a shot at a US Senate seat from Oklahoma.Markwayne Mullin, a sitting congressman, beat another Donald Trump loyalist and election denier for their party’s nomination in a special election on Tuesday and will seek to replace the long-serving senator Jim Inhofe in November.‘I’m not Rambo’: Republican unrepentant about attempt to enter AfghanistanRead moreMullin, a plumbing company owner from Westville, and TW Shannon, a former speaker of the Oklahoma House and a bank executive from Oklahoma City, both embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was subject to widespread fraud.The two were the top finishers in a 13-candidate Republican primary in June, but neither topped the 50% threshold needed to win the nomination outright.Mullin, who topped that field with nearly 44% of the vote, earned Trump’s endorsement shortly after the primary. He has something else in common with the former president: an exaggeration of his own sporting prowess.The politician who declared “I’m not Rambo” after his much-ridiculed attempt to enter Afghanistan in the company of a private US security team, boasts on his website a 5-0 record as a professional mixed martial arts fighter.The official record of his short-lived career suggests a different story: a total of three wins, two against the same opponent, and cumulative fight time of less than 10 minutes in under three rounds.In the political ring, Mullin will now seek to replace the retiring 87-year-old Inhofe, a fixture in Republican politics in Oklahoma since the 1960s who has held his Senate seat since 1994. Inhofe is leaving before his six-year term is finished, so his replacement will serve four years.In November, Mullin will be heavily favored to beat the former Democratic congresswoman Kendra Horn, along with an independent candidate and a Libertarian. Oklahoma has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate in more than 30 years.In a state where nearly 10% of the population identifies as American Indian, both Mullin and Shannon are members of Native American tribes. Mullin is a Cherokee citizen and Shannon, who is also African American, is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.Campaign finance reports showed Mullin raised about $3.6m, nearly three times the $1.3m Shannon reported.In campaign ads and on the stump, both touted their positions on hot-button issues and vowed to fight Joe Biden’s agenda.Shannon launched an anti-abortion ad in which he labeled Planned Parenthood the “true face of white supremacy”. Mullin, in an ad featuring two of his own children and a montage of the transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, said: “Democrats can’t even tell us what a woman is.”Also on Tuesday, in the Democratic primary runoff for Oklahoma’s other US Senate seat, the cybersecurity expert Madison Horn defeated Jason Bollinger, an Oklahoma City attorney.Horn, who is not related to Kendra Horn, will face the incumbent Republican senator, James Lankford, who will be the heavy favorite in November, along with a Republican and an independent.TopicsOklahomaRepublicansUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Oklahoma lawmakers urge pause amid fears innocent man to be executed

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      Oklahoma lawmakers urge pause amid fears innocent man to be executedBipartisan group calls for new hearing over lack of evidence in case of Richard Glossip, 59, as state rushes to speed up executions A letter signed by 61 Oklahoma lawmakers – most of them pro-death penalty Republicans – has been sent to the state’s attorney general calling for a new hearing in the case of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed next month.Forty-four Republican and 17 Democratic legislators, amounting to more than a third of the state assembly, have written to John O’Connor pleading for the new hearing.Alabama executes Joe Nathan James Jr despite opposition from victim’s familyRead moreThe outpouring of concern is an indication of the intense unease surrounding the Glossip case, and the mounting fear that Oklahoma is preparing to kill an innocent man.Glossip, 59, is due to be killed on 22 September as part of a sudden speeding up of capital punishment activity in Oklahoma. He was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of a Best Budget motel in Oklahoma City, where Glossip was manager.Justin Sneed, the motel’s maintenance worker, admitted that he had beaten Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. But Sneed later turned state’s witness on Glossip, accusing the manager of having ordered the murder.As a result, Sneed, the killer, avoided the death penalty and was given a life sentence. Glossip was put on death row almost entirely on the basis of Sneed’s testimony against him, with no other forensic or corroborating evidence.In their letter, the 61 legislators ask the attorney general to call for a hearing to consider new evidence that has been uncovered in the case. Last year a global law firm, Reed Smith, was asked by state lawmakers to carry out an independent investigation.Their 343-page report found that the state had intentionally destroyed key evidence before the trial. The review concluded that “no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder”.Glossip’s scheduled execution forms part of an extraordinary glut of death warrants that have been issued by Oklahoma in recent weeks. In July, the state received court permission to go ahead with 25 executions at a rate of almost one a month between now and December 2024.Should all those executions be carried out, Oklahoma’s current death row would shrink by almost 60% from its current occupancy of 43 prisoners.The first scheduled execution of the 25 is that of James Coddington, 50, on 25 August. Coddington’s fate is now in the hands of Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, after the state’s parole board recommended that he commute the prisoner’s sentence to life without parole.The clemency petition pointed out that Coddington had been impaired by alcohol and drug abuse starting when he was a baby. It said he had shown full remorse for having murdered Albert Hale, a friend who had refused to lend him $50 to buy cocaine.Glossip is the second of the 25 death row inmates to be booked for execution.The Republican-controlled state is rushing to kill so many prisoners over the next two years as it rebounds from a six-year capital punishment moratorium that was forced upon it following a spate of gruesomely botched executions. In April 2014 Clayton Lockett writhed and groaned on the gurney after lethal injection drugs were administered into his flesh rather than a vein – he took 43 minutes to die.In January, 2015 Charles Warner was heard to say: “My body is on fire” as he was being killed. It was later discovered that the state had used an unauthorized drug in the procedure.Glossip was set to be the next one to die in September 2015 but the execution was postponed after it emerged that the same mistaken drug was about to be used. Oklahoma halted executions for six years before the practice was cranked up again last October.Remarkably, the first execution carried out after the hiatus in October 2021 was also botched. Witnesses saw John Grant displaying full-body convulsions and vomiting for 15 minutes.TopicsOklahomaRepublicansCapital punishmentDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Native American elders recall abuse at US government boarding schools

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      Native American elders recall abuse at US government boarding schoolsElders testify in Oklahoma about beatings, whippings and sexual abuse at institutions that sought to assimilate Native children Native American tribal elders who were once students at government-backed Indian boarding schools testified Saturday in Oklahoma about the hardships they endured, including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts and hurtful nicknames.They came from different states and different tribes, but they shared the common experience of having attended the schools that were designed to strip Indigenous people of their cultural identities.Trump considers waiving Bannon’s executive privilege claim, reports sayRead more“I still feel that pain,“ said 84-year-old Donald Neconie, a former US Marine and member of the Kiowa Tribe who once attended the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, about 80 miles south-west of Oklahoma City. “I will never, ever forgive this school for what they did to me.“It may be good now. But it wasn’t back then.’As the elders spoke, US secretary of the interior Deb Haaland, herself a Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico and the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history, listened quietly. The event at the Riverside Indian school, which still operates today but with a vastly different mission, was the first stop on a year-long nationwide tour to hear about the painful experiences of Native Americans who were sent to the government-backed boarding schools.“Federal Indian boarding school policies have touched every Indigenous person I know,“ Haaland said at the start of the event, which attracted Native Americans from throughout the region. “Some are survivors. Some are descendants. But we all carry the trauma in our hearts.“My ancestors endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead. This is the first time in history that a cabinet secretary comes to the table with this shared trauma.”Haaland’s agency recently released a report that identified more than 400 of the schools, which sought to assimilate Native children into white society during a period that stretched from the late 18th century until the late 1960s. Although most closed their doors long ago and none still exist to strip students of their identities, some still function as schools, albeit with drastically different missions that celebrate the cultural backgrounds of their Native students.Among them is Riverside, which is one of the oldest.Riverside, which opened in 1871, serves students from grades four through 12 these days, offering them specialized academic programs as well as courses on cultural topics such as bead-working, shawl-making and an introduction to tribal art, foods and games.Currently operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, it has nearly 800 students from more than 75 tribes across the country, and the school’s administration, staff and faculty are mostly Native American.It is one of 183 elementary and secondary schools across the country funded by the Bureau of Indian Education that seek to provide education aligned with a tribe’s needs for cultural and economic wellbeing, according to the bureau’s website.But Riverside also has a dark history of mistreating the thousands of Native American students who were forced from their homes to attend it.Neconie, who still lives in Anadarko, recalled being beaten if he cried or spoke his native Kiowa language when he attended Riverside in the late 1940s and early 1950s.“Every time I tried to talk Kiowa, they put lye in my mouth,“ he said. “It was 12 years of hell.“Brought Plenty, a Standing Rock Sioux who lives in Dallas, recalled the years she spent at Indian boarding schools in South Dakota, where she was forced to cut her hair and told not to speak her Native language. She recalled being forced to whip other girls with wet towels and being punished when she didn’t.“What they did to us makes you feel so inferior,“ she said. “You never get past this. You never forget it.“Until recently, the federal government hadn’t been open to examining its role in the troubled history of Native American boarding schools. But this has changed because people who know about the trauma that was inflicted hold prominent positions in government.At least 500 children died at such schools, but that number is expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as more research is done.The interior department’s report includes a list of the boarding schools in what were states or territories that operated between 1819 and 1969 that had a housing component and received support from the federal government.Oklahoma had the most, 76, followed by Arizona with 47 and New Mexico with 43. All three states still have significant Native American populations.Former students might be hesitant to recount the painful past and trust a government whose policies were to eradicate tribes and, later, assimilate them under the veil of education. But some welcome the opportunity to share their stories for the first time.Not all the memories from those who attended the schools were painful ones.Dorothy WhiteHorse, 89, a Kiowa who attended Riverside in the 1940s, said she recalled learning to dance the jitterbug in the school’s gymnasium and being taught to speak English for the first time. She also recalled older Kiowa women who served as house mothers in the dormitories who let her speak her Native language and treated her with kindness.“I was helped,“ WhiteHorse said. “I’m one of the happy ones.“But WhiteHorse also had some troubling memories, including the time she said three young boys ran away from the home and got caught in a snowstorm. She said all three froze to death.“I think we need a memorial for those boys,“ she said.TopicsUS newsUS politicsOklahomaDeb HaalandIndigenous peoplesReuse this content More