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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race bill

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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race billSupermajority runs out of time to greenlight House version of bill but does pass abortion restriction Republicans who enjoy a supermajority in the West Virginia legislature nonetheless failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session.Butt of the joke: Bette Midler fires back at West Virginia governor Jim JusticeRead moreLawmakers spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the Anti-Racism Act of 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late on Saturday to take a final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly and the vote was merely to greenlight the House version. “We took the vote, but essentially that didn’t matter because it didn’t make deadline,” Senate spokesperson Jacque Bland said, adding that the education bill now has no path to becoming law. A separate bill restricting abortion access did pass, minutes before midnight. It bars parents from seeking abortion because they believe their child will be born with a disability. It provides exemptions in the case of a medical emergency or in cases where a fetus is “non-medically viable”. Republican lawmakers appeared unhurried as the clock ticked down on Saturday, spending about an hour passing resolutions honoring two outgoing senators. Supporters of the Anti-Racism Act of 2022 said it would prevent discrimination based on race in K-12 public schools, banning teachers from telling students one race “is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”. The bill said students can’t be taught moral character is determined by race, or that a person by virtue of their race “bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race”. It would have created a mechanism for reporting complaints and for the legislature to collect data on how many complaints are substantiated each year. It did not specify punishment. Legislators convened at the snowy state Capitol on Saturday with dozens of bills to finalize. The House speaker, Roger Hanshaw, arrived late to a debate on the state budget bill because he was delayed by a car accident on roads which were still being cleared. The bill dealing with disabilities and abortion was passed minutes before midnight, following 90 minutes of discussion. It now moves to the desk of the Republican governor, Jim Justice. “This is about science and morality,” said Republican Kayla Kessinger. “It’s about, ‘When does life begin?’ and whether or not it has a value.” Democrats voiced their opposition, with Evan Hansen saying the bill does nothing substantial to help people with disabilities and their families. “This is an attempt to use people with disabilities as props for an anti-abortion agenda, something that the disability community has not asked for, as far as I know – and that’s just wrong,” Hansen said. “It creates government overreach into personal family medical decisions.” A physician who violates the law could see their license to practice medicine suspended or revoked. The bill also requires physicians to submit a report, with patients’ names omitted, to the state for each abortion performed and whether “the presence or presumed presence of any disability in the unborn human being had been detected”. The reports would include the date of the abortion and the method used, as well as confirming the doctor asked the patient if they chose an abortion because the baby might have a disability. These reports must be submitted within 15 days of each abortion. That bill wasn’t the only abortion-related legislation brought forward but lawmakers declined on Saturday to take up a bill banning abortions after 15 weeks. Lawmakers voted 90-9 to send a $4.635bn budget to the governor’s desk after two hours of discussion on the House floor. The bill includes 5% pay raises for state employees and teachers and an additional bump for state troopers. The budget does not include a 10% personal income tax cut passed by the House last month. Lawmakers also promised that social workers in the foster care system will see a 15% pay raise. After a bill to provide the increases was essentially gutted, they advised the Department of Health and Human Resources to provide the raises by eliminating open positions. Additionally, lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing fentanyl test strips, which can signal the presence of synthetic opioid in illicit drugs. Other bills repealed the state’s soda tax and banned requiring Covid-19 vaccination cards to enter state agencies or public colleges and universities. TopicsWest VirginiaRepublicansRaceUS politicsUS educationnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks out

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks outExclusive: Longtime activist who still faces the possibility of a retrial tells the Guardian she believes she’s being ‘persecuted’ for being outspoken Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, says she is grateful to be released – but believes the case against her was a “scare tactic” to discourage other people from casting a ballot.Moses was released from prison on bond on 25 February after a judge unexpectedly granted her request for a new trial, citing evidence, obtained by the Guardian, that had not been disclosed to Moses’ defense.New evidence undermines case against Black US woman jailed for voting error | The fight to voteRead moreIn her first interview since being freed Moses recalled the moment in the courtroom when Judge W Mark Ward decided to grant her a new trial – and said she was “overwhelmed with joy”. Video shows Moses nearly in tears and screaming in excitement when Ward ruled he was granting her a new trial.She knew that judges rarely reverse themselves and grant requests for new trials, but she had been praying Ward would see beyond her criminal record. “I was very grateful that God had allowed him to correct his own mistake, and that’s what you need in the criminal justice system.”But Moses, a longtime activist who founded the Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter, still faces the possibility of a retrial. Moses says she was unaware she was ineligible to vote, and state officials acknowledged they made an error in indicating to her that she was eligible. Her case has brought renewed focus to the practice, common in many US states, of depriving people convicted of certain felonies of their voting rights for widely varying lengths of time, but sometimes for life.“It’s a scare tactic, what they did to me,” Moses told the Guardian. She thinks other people with criminal convictions will think twice before seeking to cast a ballot in elections. “It’s like, ‘if she went to jail for that, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to follow her because we’re going to be in jail for six years too.’ I would say it sends a confusing message to people who want to vote.“Why should people be worried if they’re going to be prosecuted for doing their civic duty?”Moses is a well-known activist in Memphis who has filed numerous cases in local and federal courts, often representing herself. She has been outspoken against a number of local officials, including the local election commission, judges and Amy Weirich, the local district attorney who is prosecuting her case. She said she believes she’s being “persecuted” for being so outspoken.“If you silence the loudest person that’s screaming, ‘hey Black people, go vote, don’t vote for her, remove her from office’ then you eliminate the opposition,” she said. “I believe, not only if I wasn’t Black, but if my name wasn’t Pamela Moses, this probably never would have been a case.”Moses’ case attracted national attention because of the harshness of her sentence, which seemed at odds with the evidence in the case. Before the trial, election officials in Memphis conceded that they erroneously never removed her from the voter rolls after she pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2015.In 2019, Moses launched a campaign for mayor of Memphis and sought clarification from court officials about whether she had completed her felony probation and could appear on the ballot. A judge told her she was still on probation, but Moses still believed she was eligible and went to a probation office and asked them to verify her eligibility and sign a certificate saying she could vote. After about an hour of investigating, the probation officer did so.Prosecutors blamed Moses for this. In their request for an indictment, they wrote she “convinced” the officer to sign off on the document. And during her sentencing hearing, Ward, the judge overseeing her case, accused her of deceiving the probation officer into signing off on the eligibility certificate. Moses said she didn’t trick anyone and was stunned to hear such an assertion.“I was like wow, I need to go to magic school or something. I’m the new Houdini. I’ve got that much power to trick somebody I’ve never met, never seen in my life into doing something just by walking in the place? You know, no.”But a document obtained by the Guardian last month, after the trial concluded, showed that probation officials investigated the incident and found that the probation officer, identified as Manager Billington, had made an error on his own. Even though Moses’ file said she was still on probation, Billington thought that another person had made a mistake. The official who conducted the investigation ultimately determined that Billington was negligent and to blame for the error.Moses went out of her way to defend Billington. “I don’t like how everybody is portraying that supervisor as a bad person. That man did his job,” she said. “I don’t think that man did anything other than what he could do based on the information that he had in front of him.”But Moses was critical of Weirich, the prosecutor, who has said Moses bears some of the responsibility for her sentence because she declined to accept a plea deal that would not have resulted in additional prison time. “I gave her a chance to plead to a misdemeanor with no prison time,” Weirich said in February “She requested a jury trial instead. She set this unfortunate result in motion and a jury of her peers heard the evidence and convicted her.”Moses pushed back on that characterization. “I haven’t done anything in my mind wrong so why would I plead to anything?” she said.“We have a right to that. But you want me to give it up because you want it to be right? It was about the principle to me. “I hadn’t done anything wrong.”Weirich’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Weirich has yet to say whether she will pursue a new trial. Moses and her new legal team plan to hold a press conference in Memphis on Friday asking her to drop all of the charges.Her prosecution may already be having a local policy impact. Citing her case, a coalition of civil rights groups is pushing the county commission to conduct a “racial equity audit” to examine whether there is racial discrimination in Weirich’s office.The Moses case is one of several high-profile instances that underscores the disparity between how white and Black defendants can be treated when it comes to election crimes. Several white defendants across the country received minimal punishments, such as probation, for purposefully impersonating family members in order to cast multiple votes – yet Black people who made mere mistakes when attempting to follow complicated processes and procedures received prison sentences.“The reason why Ms Moses’ situation has got the attention of the nation is because this sort of disparate treatment happens all the time,” said Rodney Diggs, one of her attorneys. “The disparate treatment between people of color and non-people of color. You can just see the differences.”Moses had been in jail since December, when the judge overseeing her case abruptly revoked her bond. She said that she contracted Covid-19. She was unaware of the attention her case was getting, except for periodic dispatches from a jail nurse who would mention that she had seen her on the local news.Her incarceration had been particularly hard on Tyler, her 24-year-old son, who she said lost his job and took on tasks like handling her mail and bills.Since she’s been released, she said she has spent time with her 13-year-old son Taj – a “mini me”. The weekend after she was released, they went to a funeral for a relative who had been killed. She has been taking him to school and they watch Netflix together. She hasn’t had to explain her case to him because he’d researched it on the internet. “He asked me certain things. And I just divert,” she said.Still, Moses said she still has a lot of anxiety. On Wednesday, she was at 40% back to normal. On Thursday, she said she was up to 65%.“I’m anxious. I’m worried because these charges haven’t gone away,” she said. “I mean look at how much money they spent on this. Just think about it. They probably could have built a school with all the money they spent prosecuting me over a piece of paper.”TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsRaceTennesseeMemphisfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US census produced huge undercount of Latino population in 2020

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      US census produced huge undercount of Latino population in 2020 Census also undercounted Black and Native Americans, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans The 2020 US census undercounted America’s Latino population at more than three times the rate of the 2010 census, according to a report released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau.The census also undercounted the nation’s Black and Native American residents, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans.The census helps guide the annual federal distribution of $1.5tn for public services including education, healthcare and transportation. Undercounting communities results in reduced political representation on local, state and federal level.According to the report, Latinos had a net undercount of nearly 5%. The Black population had a net undercount of 3.3%, a slight increase from a 2.1% shortfall a decade ago. American Indian and Alaska Natives living on reservations had a net undercount of 5.6%, up from 4.9% in the last census.The non-Latino white population had a net overcount in the 2020 census of 1.6% while Asians had a net overcount of 2.6%.In comparison, the non-Latino white population had a net overcount of 0.8% in 2010 while Asians had a net undercount of 0.08% that year.Overall, the 2020 census overlooked 0.24% of the total US population. In 2010, the census missed 0.01% of the national population.During a webinar on Thursday, the Census Bureau director, Robert Santos, said numerous factors played a role in the undercount of the Latino community, including the pandemic and increased joblessness and housing insecurity.“I’m personally not surprised to see the results we see today,” he said.Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, expressed concerns about the undercount during the conference, saying that throughout his 35 years of tracking the census, he had never seen such a significant undercount in the Latino population.“As you can imagine, we are just terribly – I can’t even find the word right now – upset about the extent of the Latino undercount,” Vargas said.“These numbers are devastating. Once again, we see an overcount of white Americans and an undercount of Black and Hispanic Americans,” the National Urban League CEO, Marc Morial, told reporters on a phone call. “I want to express in the strongest possible terms our outrage.”The report cited various factors that influenced the undercounts, stating, “The 2020 Census faced many challenges, such as conducting fieldwork during the Covid-19 pandemic. Other challenges … included controversy around a proposed citizenship question, and changes in the duration of the Nonresponse Followup and other operations.”In 2019, the Donald Trump administration proposed adding a question to the 2020 census which would ask: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” The proposal, which eventually failed, led to concerns that many Latinos and immigrants would not return their census forms out of fear that their responses could be used against them.Despite the undercount, the bureau said that the results are “fit to use” for redistricting and are of “high quality”.“In fact, the quality of the 2020 census data is quite remarkable amid all the challenges we faced last year,” the bureau said.TopicsCensusUS politicsRacenewsReuse this content More

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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crime

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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crimeAn earlier version of the bill, which was blocked in the Senate, was passed by the House in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder The US Senate has unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.”Lynching Postcards: a harrowing documentary about confronting historyRead moreThe New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, Senate co-sponsor with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”Subject to Biden’s signature, the bill will make lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.According to the Equal Justice Initiative, about 4,400 African Americans were lynched in the US between the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, and the years of the second world war. Some killings were watched by crowds. postcards and souvenirs were sometimes sold.The bill heading for Biden’s desk is named for Emmett Till, who was 14 when he was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. Two white men were tried but acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, then confessed. The killing helped spark the civil rights movement.The House passed Rush’s anti-lynching measure 422-3. Three Republicans voted no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.In 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and amid national protests for racial justice, the chamber passed an earlier version of the bill with a similar bipartisan vote.Then, the measure was blocked in the Senate. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he did so because “the bill as written would allow altercations resulting in a cut, abrasion, bruise or any other injury no matter how temporary to be subject to a 10-year penalty”.Paul also called lynchings a “horror” and said he supported the bill but for its too-broad language.Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, now vice-president, called Paul’s stance “insulting”.Late last year, in another high-profile case, three white men were convicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who went jogging in a Georgia neighbourhood.Will justice finally be done for Emmett Till? Family hope a 65-year wait may soon be overRead moreIn an interview published on Tuesday, Christine Turner, director of the Oscar-nominated short Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, referred to the Arbery murder when she told the Guardian: “There are many what people refer to as modern-day lynchings that may cause some people to take our history of lynching more seriously.”On Monday, in a further statement, Rush said lynching was “a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy.“Perpetrators of lynching got away with murder time and time again – in most cases, they were never even brought to trial … Today, we correct this historic and abhorrent injustice.”He also cited a great civil rights leader: “I am reminded of Dr King’s famous words: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”TopicsRaceUS crimeUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’South Carolina congressman extracted Biden’s promise to instal first Black woman on court

      Opinion: Jackson will be a superb addition to the court
      The supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson should be placed “beyond politics”, the politician who extracted Joe Biden’s politically priceless promise to instal the first Black woman on the court said on Sunday.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBiden introduced Jackson as his pick to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer this week.Some Republicans have complained that nominations should not be made on grounds of race or gender – ignoring promises to put women on the court acted on by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.Others have complained about how Democrats treated one of Trump’s nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, who denied allegations of sexual assault. Others have objected on ideological grounds, for example Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, claiming the Jackson nomination was the work of the “radical left”.James Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman and House Democratic whip whose endorsement both propelled Biden to the presidential nomination and produced his promise to pick a Black woman, appeared on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.He said: “This is beyond politics. This is about the country, our pursuit of a more perfect union, and this is demonstrative of another step in that pursuit.”Of 115 supreme court justices, 108 have been white men. Two have been Black men, five women. As well as being the first Black woman on the court, Jackson would be the fourth woman on the current nine-justice panel, joining liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative.Clyburn said he hoped “that all my Republican friends will look upon” the nomination of Jackson as being “beyond politics”.“Let’s have a debate,” he said. “Let’s talk to her about her rulings and about her philosophy. But in the final analysis, let’s have a strong bipartisan support to demonstrate that both parties are still in pursuit of perfection”.No supreme court nomination – or, most observers would argue, hearing or ruling – is ever above politics. If confirmed, Jackson will not alter the balance of a court tilted 6-3 to conservatives by Republican political hardball which gave Trump three picks.Before Biden made his decision, Clyburn and Republicans including Graham and the other South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, championed J Michelle Childs, a judge from their state. Clyburn said it would be important to instal a justice who did not go to Yale or Harvard. Jackson went to Harvard.“It’s more traditional, no question about that,” Clyburn told CBS. “This means that we will continue that tradition, and I am one, as you can see, that’s not so much for tradition. I want to see us break as much new ground as possible.“But … in the final analysis, I think this is a good choice. It was a choice that brings on to the court a background and some experiences that nobody else on the court will have. And I think when you look at not just [Jackson’s] background in the family, life, but also her profession, she was a public defender. That adds a new perspective to the court.”Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas, has pointed out that Jackson has more trial experience than four current justices combined – including the chief, John Roberts.Clyburn also said a successful confirmation process could help Biden politically with Black voters facing difficulties familiar to most Americans, particularly inflation.“When you have an opportunity to make an appointment like you just had,” he said, “and he made an African American appointment, I guarantee you, you see some of that move up. It may not move up with the people who are having income problems, but it will move up to those who have other reservations about the president.”Last year, Jackson was confirmed to the court of appeals for the DC circuit with support from three Republican senators: Graham, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska.‘Leaders lead during crises’ – but Biden’s approval rating hits new low, poll findsRead moreThis year, Democrats will be able to confirm Jackson simply by keeping their 50 votes together and using Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president.But on Sunday Mitt Romney of Utah told CNN’s State of the Union he could vote to confirm Jackson.“Yes,” the former presidential nominee said, “I’m going to take a very deep dive and had the occasion to speak with her about some of the concerns when she was before the Senate to go on to the circuit court.“Look, her nomination and her confirmation would or will be historic. And like anyone nominated by the president of the United States, she deserves a very careful look, a very deep dive. And I will provide fresh eyes to that evaluation, and hope that I will be able to support her in the final analysis.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRaceDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schoolsNobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

      Books bans and ‘gag orders’: the crackdown no one asked for
      A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book ClubRead moreThe board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.Morrison’s 1970 debut novel is one of several titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and L8R, G8R by Lauren Myracle, to have gained the attention of school boards in conservative US areas.The Wentzville ban was imposed after a challenge by a parent exercising the right to request titles not be available to their children. Backlash was swift, critics saying the board had violated first amendment rights.In a letter of protest, the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Missouri Library Association said: “We encourage you to reexamine the depth of your commitment to education in the truest sense, and to find your courage in the face of baseless political grandstanding at the expense of educators and students in your district.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the district on behalf of two students. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the board accepted a review committee’s recommendation to retain Morrison’s book, voting 5-2 on Friday to rescind the ban. An ACLU official, Anthony Rothert, welcomed the news but warned that books remain suppressed including All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. Challenges against two other books had been withdrawn, the Post-Dispatch reported.The board also approved the retention of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero, which faced challenges regarding language and depiction of rape.“Wentzville’s policies still make it easy for any community member to force any book from the shelves even when they shamelessly target books by and about communities of color, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups,” said Rothert. “Access to The Bluest Eye was taken from students for three months just because a community member did not think they should have access to Toni Morrison’s story.”Many library associations argue that parents of minors should be able to control their children’s reading but should not make books unavailable to others.Opponents of Morrison’s book, including conservative lawmakers, urged the school board to maintain its ban. After the decision, board member Sandy Garber maintained that The Bluest Eye “doesn’t offer anything to our children”.According to the American Library Association, which monitors challenges to books, calls for bans are increasing.“It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen in my time at the ALA – the last 20 years,” the director of the ALA office of intellectual freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, told the Guardian in November. “We’ve never had a time when we’ve gotten four or five reports a day for days on end, sometimes as many as eight in a day.Reuse this content More

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      Tim Scott, only Black Senate Republican, hints he could be Trump running mate

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      Tim Scott, only Black Senate Republican, hints he could be Trump running mateSouth Carolinian tells Fox News ‘Everybody wants to be on President Trump’s bandwagon, without any question’

      Opposition to Trump stirs among Republicans
      The only Black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott of South Carolina, has indicated a willingness to be Donald Trump’s running mate should the former president mount another White House campaign.Florida governor: school districts that defied no-mask mandate to lose $200m Read moreAsked by Fox News if he would consider joining a Trump ticket in 2024, Scott said: “Everybody wants to be on President Trump’s bandwagon, without any question.”The remark prompted criticism, in light of Trump’s long history of incendiary rhetoric on race.Mehdi Hasan, an MSNBC host, listed some examples when he wrote: “Shithole countries, go back to where you came from, very fine people, white people don’t get vaccines, stand back and stand by … none of it matters to Tim Scott.”Scott, 56, is widely seen as a contender for the Republican nomination itself, though most observers think it remains Trump’s for the taking.The former president is free to run after Republicans, including Scott, voted to acquit in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the deadly Capitol attack.Tensions between the party establishment and Trump supporters have increased, particularly after the Republican National Committee called Trump’s lie about election fraud and the attack on Congress it fueled “legitimate political discourse”.On Sunday, Scott told Fox News: “One of the things that I said to the president is he gets to decide the future of our party and our country because he is still the loudest voice.”On Saturday, the Washington Post ranked its top 10 contenders for the Republican nomination. Trump was first, Scott sixth.Pointing to the South Carolinian’s aggressive fundraising, the paper said Scott was “raising huge money – $7m last quarter – for something which should, by all accounts, be a pretty sleepy re-election race. He’s also doing something lots of presidential candidates do before running: release a book.”Cruz: Biden promise to put Black woman on supreme court is racial discriminationRead moreThe paper made the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, second-favourite. The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley was third, former vice-president Mike Pence fourth and Donald Trump Jr fifth.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was seventh, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin eighth, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu ninth and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo 10th.Scott said: “What I hope happens is that we rally around the principles that lead to our greatest success. I am not looking for a seat on a ticket at this point. I am however looking to be re-elected in South Carolina.“So my hope is that you win next Friday’s football game before thinking about any other one. So that’s my primary responsibility.”TopicsUS elections 2024Donald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsRaceSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More