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      Are you a doctor who hates treating gay people? Come to Florida, where Ron DeSantis has legalised bigotry | Arwa Mahdawi

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      You know what I love about living in the US? Freedom! You can choose between multiple overpriced insurance companies to provide you with healthcare, for example. The healthcare companies, in turn, can seemingly charge you whatever they like for their services. If they want to charge you $1,500 (£1,200) for some toenail fungus cream, that is their prerogative. That’s freedom, baby.As if this wasn’t glorious enough, the healthcare system in Florida has just had a new layer of freedom added to it. On 1 July, a new law goes into effect that means a doctor can look a potential patient up and down, decide they are giving off homosexual vibes and refuse to treat them because interacting with gay people goes against their personal beliefs. The doctor will not face any repercussions for denying care and has no obligation to refer the patient elsewhere.I wish I was exaggerating but I’m not. Last week, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Protections of Medical Conscience (pdf) bill, which lets medical professionals and health insurance companies deny patients care based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs. While the new law doesn’t allow care to be withheld because of race, colour sex, or national origin, there are no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity. The only bright spot is that hospitals must still abide by federal laws that require them to stabilise a patient with an emergency condition. In other words, you can’t let a patient die just because they’re wearing a Drag Race T-shirt.At least, I don’t think you can: it is hard to say precisely what is allowed under this new law because, like a lot of regressive Republican legislation, the bill is deliberately vague. It does not list which procedures are acceptable to refuse and it doesn’t clearly define what constitutes a “sincerely held religious, moral, or ethical belief”. This lack of clarity is by design: Republicans love passing legislation with vague language because it creates confusion and is more difficult to challenge. It is also a lot scarier for the people affected when you don’t have a clear idea what is allowed and what isn’t. The journalist Mary C Curtis has called the tactic “intimidation by obfuscation”. The American Civil Liberties Union noted that the new law means “Floridians will have to fear discriminatory treatment from medical providers every time they meet a new provider, calling into question everyone’s trust in their medical care.”DeSantis has been a very busy man: in the brief moments he has not spent fighting with Disney, his state’s second-largest employer, he has been signing a flurry of regressive legislation. The day before he signed his bill attacking healthcare equality, he signed a draconian immigration bill that makes life for migrants in Florida very difficult. And, on Monday, he signed a bill that would ban Florida’s colleges and universities from spending state or federal money on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It also limits how race can be discussed on many courses. In a speech after he signed the bill, DeSantis told prospective college students that if they want to study wacky things such as “gender ideology” they should get the hell out of Florida. “We don’t want to be diverted into a lot of these niche subjects that are heavily politicised; we want to focus on the basics,” said DeSantis. Sounds like a great advert for Florida’s educational institutions, doesn’t it? “Come here if you just want to learn the basics!” I’m not sure what “the basics” are but they clearly don’t include studying Michelangelo or watching animated films since, earlier this year, a Florida principal had to resign after parents were outraged that their kids were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David and now a Florida teacher is being investigated for showing her class a Disney movie featuring a gay character.Having banned everything in sight, DeSantis’s next big project appears to be modifying Florida’s “resign-to-run” law so that he can run for president while still serving as governor. It’s not clear when he might finally announce his candidacy, but I will tell you this: it is looking very likely that the Republican nominee for 2024 is going to be either DeSantis, a man who has turned the sunshine state into a hotbed of bigotry, or Donald Trump, a fellow bigot who has been found to be a sexual predator by the law. Please feel free to scream. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Republicans aren’t fixing the migrant border plight. In fact they’re making it worse | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Last week saw the end of Title 42, the Trump-era border restriction which was technically introduced as a health measure during the coronavirus pandemic. The policy allowed the Trump and then Biden administrations to expel without due process the vast majority of people seeking asylum at the United States-Mexico border. Given that the acute phase of the pandemic has passed, the end of the policy – which has been used about 2.7m times – was inevitable.But the end of Title 42 has also reignited the political firestorm over the US immigration and refugee system. Republicans have seemed to gleefully anticipate “chaos” and “disaster” at the border after the policy is lifted. Less biased observers are also concerned that the US refugee processing system will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of people now expected to seek asylum. The Biden administration has come under fierce criticism from the left for a tough new policy of questionable legality which requires most refugees to seek asylum from abroad using a glitchy cellphone app called CBP One.Not to be outdone, Republicans have responded to the situation by promising to return to the failed and cruel policies of the past. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill which would order the resumption of Trump’s border wall and eviscerate the right to asylum for those who reach the US. Meanwhile, speaking at a CNN town hall last week, Trump defended his policy of family separation and indicated that he would consider reinstating it if he became president again.All of these proposals show that even though there are many reasons to be concerned about the humanitarian situation at the southern border, Republicans have no solutions to it. Migration is driven by human suffering and the desire for a better and safer life, rooted in structural factors like the climate crisis, human rights violations and economic inequality. US government policies have some impact, but they’re not determinative. If people could be prevented from seeking asylum through angry posturing or cruel policies like family separation, then it’s hard to explain why 2019 – a year when Trump was president – saw the largest number of arrivals in 12 years.What’s even worse is that the policies that Republicans want to pursue in other areas of life only make the structural factors underlying migration more severe. The party is opposed to serious efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and it cut foreign aid to Central America under Trump – in some cases actually as punishment for the arrival of migrants at the border. Furthermore, the weak US gun laws which Republicans back create an “iron river” of firearms flowing into Mexico and Central America, where 70% and 50% of guns used in crimes are traced back to the US.The party also has a long history of promoting US military intervention in Latin America, which has caused instability and propped up the regimes that fuel the inequality and violence of today. Republicans are busy right now proposing that the US invade Mexico to take out its drug cartels, an action that would contribute to the country’s insecurity and undoubtedly fuel an increase in migration northwards.If Republicans wanted to actually help deal with the refugee crisis, there are many things they could do. They could join with Democrats to properly fund the system of refugee centers, in which the number of detainees is already exceeding capacity, and immigration courts, where some refugees have been waiting more than a decade for a hearing. They could try to advance proposals to work constructively with the nations with which the United States shares a hemisphere to tackle common problems like the climate crisis, economic inequality and gun violence. And they could work to expand, rather than contract, legal pathways to citizenship and asylum.The Biden administration is now working to do just that, announcing plans to set up immigration processing centers throughout Latin America, with the first to open in Guatemala and Colombia in the coming weeks. Eventually, the administration hopes to reduce the need for desperate people to arrive at the border by offering them an opportunity to apply for asylum from elsewhere. This should not only dial down the political heat at home, but much more importantly mean that would-be migrants don’t have to suffer the harrowing journey north, which for many ends in abuse or death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut these plans can only be effective and sustainable over the long term with the cooperation of Republicans, both in Congress and in future administrations. For that to happen, the party would need to start seeing immigrants and refugees as fellow human beings in need of assistance rather than as enemies to be quashed. Only then can America really make progress in tackling this problem and escaping the cycle of cruelty in which it is currently trapped.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a newsletter and podcast More

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      Suspect named in baseball bat attack at Democratic congressman’s office

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      Police in Virginia on Monday named the suspect in a violent attack in which two staffers for a Democratic congressman were assaulted with a baseball bat, requiring hospital treatment.Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, was arrested after the attack at Gerry Connolly’s office in Fairfax. Connolly told CNN one staff member was hit in the head while the other, an intern on her first day in the job, was hit on the side.Connolly said the attacker, a constituent, caused widespread damage to the office, including shattering glass and breaking computers.“The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating,” Connolly said in a statement.He told CNN the suspected attacker “was filled with out of control rage”.A police spokesperson, Sgt Lisa Gardner, said police were called at about 10.50am. Connolly was not at the office, Gardner said, adding that some staff members hid during the attack.Acts of political extremism, including ones targeting lawmakers, have become increasingly common in the US.Last October, Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in his home in San Francisco by a man armed with a hammer.Afterwards, the Michigan representative Debbie Dingell predicted “somebody is going to die”.Speaking to Axios, Dingell said that two years previously, after the now fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast a segment about her, she “had men outside my home with assault weapons that night”.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, was the target of a rightwing kidnap plot foiled by law enforcement.Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, has complained of an increase in threats to members of the supreme court. Last year, a man was charged with attempting to kill Brett Kavanaugh, like Alito a member of the 6-3 conservative majority.Connolly, 73, has represented the 11th congressional district in Virginia since 2009. A prominent Democratic voice in Congress, he frequently spars with Republicans who control the House.Connolly last week criticised CNN’s decision to host Donald Trump for a town hall in New Hampshire, telling Fox News that the event was a “travesty”.“Why would you put a liar and a convicted criminal on a town hall?” Connolly asked during his appearance on the network. “And why would you give him that privilege? … To me, it is frankly reprehensible.”Trump is not a convicted criminal. Last week, in a civil case in New York, he was found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll.On Monday, Connolly thanked police and emergency medical professionals. The person who attacked his office was taken into custody, he said, adding that his focus was on ensuring his staff members were “receiving the care they need”.“I have the best team in Congress,” Connolly said. “My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day.”Mark Warner, one of two Democratic senators from Virginia, said: “Intimidation and violence – especially against public servants – has no place in our society. This is an extraordinarily disturbing development, and my thoughts are with the staff members who were injured.”Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general of Virginia, wished Connolly’s staff members well and said: “Political violence is always unacceptable. The coward who did this should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”But Dan Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, linked the attack to remarks about political violence by Republicans.“This is horrifying,” Goldman wrote. “From ‘very fine people on both sides’” – which Donald Trump said about violence at a far-right march in Virginia in 2017 – “to calling January 6 a ‘peaceful protest’, there are serious consequences when elected officials refuse to condemn or outright glorify political violence.” More

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      Rick Perry hints at 2024 presidential bid and revives memories of debate gaffe

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      The former Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement on Sunday that he could mount a third run for the Republican presidential nomination encountered widespread mockery over a famous debate stage gaffe in which he forgot the name of a government department he said he would abolish.But Perry, 73, also ran into stormier waters, being accused of lying regarding his alleged involvement in Donald Trump’s election subversion.Perry is the longest-serving Texas governor, in office between 2000 and 2015. A telegenic ex-air force pilot, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and 2016.Both campaigns flopped but, speaking to CNN on Sunday, he said a third run was “something that I haven’t taken off the table”.In response, many observers pointed to Perry’s debate stage nightmare in Rochester, Michigan, in November 2011.Perry said then: “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the uh … what’s the third one, there? Let’s see … Commerce, education and the, uh, um uh … The third agency of government I would do away with, uh, education, commerce, and, let’s see … I can’t. The third one. I can’t.“Oops.” The third department turned out to be the Department of Energy, which Perry eventually led under Trump’s presidency. During his confirmation process, he told senators he regretted calling for the department to be eliminated.Trump now faces unprecedented legal jeopardy but enjoys commanding leads in Republican polling. On Sunday, Perry declined to endorse him.“He may get to hear me call him names again,” Perry said, a reference to the 2016 campaign which he quit after failing to qualify for a CNN debate featuring no fewer than 11 presidential hopefuls.He added: “It’s early in the process, I think, for any of us to sit back and say, ‘I’m for this person or that person.’ [A 2024 run] certainly is something that I haven’t taken off the table, but the chances of it happening are probably a little bit slim.“There’s a lot of time left, and we’ll see how this all works out.”Perry resigned as energy secretary in October 2019. To CNN, he denied complicity in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021 it was reported, first by CNN, that congressional investigators believed Perry texted Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, recommending that Republican-held state legislatures disregard wins for Joe Biden.Perry on Sunday told CNN: “I didn’t send it, and that’s kind of the interesting thing. As a matter of fact, if you go back and look at the congressional testimony, the congressman who brought that up said later, you know what, we’re not really sure where this came from.”In December 2021, the text in question was read on the House floor by Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who sat on the House January 6 committee. Raskin initially said the text was sent by a “House lawmaker” but according to CNN, “learned of the error … from CNN” as it reported Perry’s alleged authorship.On Sunday, Perry added: “I got called on [the texts] a couple times. Number one, it’s not my style of speak, or texting, so to speak. So again, there is a lot of misinformation out there … and that was one piece of it. So I can assure you that that didn’t come from me.”The Guardian contacted Raskin for comment.Another January 6 committee member, however, rejected Perry’s claim not to have sent the tweet in question.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican now retired from Congress, tweeted: “Well, that’s a lie because he did.” More

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      I’m a drag queen in Tennessee. The state’s anti-drag law is silly, nasty, and wrong | Bella DuBalle

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      I am the show director at Atomic Rose, a nightclub in Memphis, Tennessee. I first discovered drag through Shakespeare. I’m a founding member of Tennessee Shakespeare Company, and I got to play some drag roles there. Growing up in the conservative south, I had learned to suppress anything considered feminine as a safety mechanism. Drag was the first time I was able to put the feminine parts of me forefront, as a source of pride and strength rather than shame or weakness. I fell in love with the art, and I’ve been doing it now for over a decade.On 2 March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed into law two bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. The first, SB1, outlaws all gender-affirming healthcare for minors. SB3, the “anti-drag bill,” redefines drag performers as adult cabaret artists and classifies drag as a prurient art form. “Prurient” is a legal term referring to a shameful or morbid interest in sex.If SB3 is enforced in the way its backers would like, it would prohibit any public drag displays – meaning no Pride events, no Drag Queen Story Hours, no drag performances in any place that might be seen by a minor. This would shut down all-ages drag brunches and other family-friendly functions. It would even raise questions about venues like mine that have large windows and lots of passersby. Would that qualify as viewable by a child? The law’s language is vague and incredibly broad.SB3 was supposed to take effect on 1 April but a local drag theatre troupe I used to work with, Friends of George’s, filed a suit against it. “The law prohibits a drag performer wearing a crop top and mini skirt from dancing where minors might see it,” their complaint notes, “but does not prohibit a Tennessee Titans cheerleader wearing an identical outfit from performing the exact same dance in front of children.”A federal judge temporarily blocked the law through 26 May while it is adjudicated. We are confident it will be overturned as a blatantly unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Even the judge – a Trump appointee – has effectively said as much, which is telling. Multiple district attorneys, including Memphis’s Steve Mulroy, have also called the law unnecessary and unfair.As for SB1, the US Department of Justice recently filed suit against Tennessee to prevent the bill from going into effect on 1 July as originally scheduled. We hope to see it swiftly overturned as well.Although neither of these laws currently has legal standing, they have absolutely had a chilling effect on freedom of expression and the queer community. Organizers in Knoxville said they may have to cancel their annual Pride parade if SB3 goes through. I also know some local non-queer venues that have shut down their shows out of fear or uncertainty. Theatre, ballet, and opera companies are asking lawyers, “Can we still produce Peter Pan with a female Pan? Can we do Mrs Doubtfire? Is it okay for us to put on Shakespeare the way it was traditionally performed?”Transgender and gender-nonconforming people are worried about just being in public. The rightwing pundit Michael Knowles recently called for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated from public life entirely”; I think people with that worldview, who view trans folks as embodiments of an ideology rather than actual human beings, could see a trans woman in public and say, “That’s a man impersonating a woman.” SB3’s language never uses the word “drag”; it only refers to “male and female impersonators.” My fear is that the language is intentionally and maliciously vague.These attacks on the queer community are part of a broader political impulse. SB1 and SB3 are just two items on what we call Tennessee’s “Slate of Hate.” I get the sense that many of our elected officials are not as politically experienced, savvy or well-versed in law or public policy as they present. Children and families in Tennessee face very real issues, but our state’s legislative session was obsessively focused on trans kids, pronouns, drag queens, and the like – all in the guise of “protecting children.”Tennesseans overwhelmingly support stronger gun control, particularly after the Covenant shooting – one of many horrific mass shootings in Tennessee in recent years. Yet the legislative session ended having done nothing to address these concerns. This comes as little surprise: our governor recently signed into law a widely-opposed permitless carry bill – at a gunmaker’s factory. How is this protecting children?Last year, the Southern Baptist Convention released a list of over 700 of their ministers accused of sexual abuse, with many of the ministers in Tennessee. And that’s just one denomination. There is no record, not a single documented instance, of a child ever being harmed or abused at a drag show. Statistically speaking, children are far safer at a Drag Queen Story Hour than at church. Yet we aren’t attempting to legislate whether parents can take children to church. How is this protecting children?Tennessee is dead last in the nation in the stability of our foster care system – failing the nearly 9,000 children under the state’s care. This information was released by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth after multiple failed attempts to dissolve the commission by state senator Jack Johnson – who incidentally also introduced both SB1 and SB3. How is this protecting children?We have real and difficult issues in Tennessee that require real and difficult solutions. Rather than confront the problems constituents are begging them to address, rightwing lawmakers are concocting solutions to imaginary issues. And it’s not just here in Tennessee; conservative legislatures across the US have realized there is an easy political power grab to be had by vilifying a minority group. Over 650 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 46 states since the beginning of the year. This is beyond alarming.I am reminded of a not-too-distant past when the Nazi government painted queerness as inherently evil, a danger to families, children and culture. It resulted in pink triangles, camps, executions, the burning of books and the destruction of the Hirschfeld Institute. The othering and dehumanization of a minority group is always the first step toward their eradication.In the last election cycle, about 10% of queer Tennesseans voted. In that same cycle, nearly 60% of our elected representatives ran unopposed. It is well past time we elect officials focused on solving the myriad problems facing their constituents rather than those championing a far-right Christian nationalist agenda.
      Bella DuBalle is a drag artist in Tennessee More

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      A House Republican wants to prove Biden is compromised – but where’s the evidence?

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      “This is a very serious investigation,” James Comer, chairman of the US House of Representatives’ oversight committee, told the rightwing channel Newsmax recently. “The allegations and the things that we’re investigating make Watergate look like jaywalking.”The Watergate scandal needed a whistleblower, John Dean, to bring down President Richard Nixon half a century ago. Republican Comer claims that he, too, has a “highly credible” whistleblower who will provide evidence that Joe Biden has been compromised by a foreign power.Such a monumental allegation from such a senior politician would once have been front page news. Even if Republicans were assumed to have partisan motivations, many observers would have begun with the premise that there is no smoke without fire.However, Republicans’ embrace of former president Donald Trump and his bogus conspiracy theories has turned the default response in Washington to one of skepticism. With the identity of the whistleblower still shrouded in mystery, the burden of proof falls on Comer – and he is yet to deliver.Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, said: “We should always take the whistleblowers seriously but this committee, at least so far, is cheapening the use of whistleblowers because they keep saying that they have found all this evidence for a whistleblower, and I think they even mentioned they might have more, but where is it?”Comer has previously been rebuked by Democratic colleagues for exaggerating the number of whistleblowers that his investigation has. He took his latest claim to national television earlier this month.Appearing on Hannity on the rightwing Fox News network, he said a whistleblower had provided Congress information raising concerns that, during Biden’s vice- presidency under Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017, he was allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.He said: “Senator [Chuck] Grassley and I have reviewed this whistleblower disclosure. We find it very credible. We have a lot of questions about whether the FBI even looked into this.”In a fundraising email to supporters, the House oversight committee chairman added: “It is with a heavy heart that I fear our Commander-in-Chief may be compromised by foreign actors, and I’m going to do everything in my power to deliver the whole truth to the American people.”In a letter that used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph, Comer issued a subpoena to FBI director Christopher Wray for a document that, according to the whistleblower, “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice-president and includes “a precise description” about it.But the FBI this week declined to provide the document. Christopher Dunham, acting assistant director for the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, wrote in a letter to Comer: “The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it.“Indeed, the FBI regularly receives information from sources with significant potential biases, motivations, and knowledge, including drug traffickers, members of organized crime, or even terrorists.”Comer has also said he obtained thousands of pages of financial records showing that at least nine members of the Biden family – including the president’s son, Hunter, and brother, James – allegedly exploited the Biden name in their business dealings by accepting money from foreign nationals in China and Romania.The oversight committee chairman followed up with an eagerly hyped press conference this week, stating in an interim report that some Biden family members, associates and their companies received more than $10m from foreign entities between 2015 and 2017.Hunter, a lawyer, received more than $1m from a company controlled by Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, who was the subject of a criminal investigation and prosecution for corruption in Romania.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the financial records showed no evidence that Biden himself acted improperly or took any official action because of his family’s business affairs. Nor, despite the claims of “influence peddling”, did they demonstrate actual wrongdoing by the Biden family. The press conference was widely ignored or panned.David Brock, president of Facts First USA, a non-profit watchdog, said afterwards: “The reality is we don’t even have a scandal here, much less Watergate.”Humiliatingly, Comer was even given a rough ride on Fox News. Host Steve Doocy told the Kentucky congressman: “You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence. And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is that – there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”Republicans are under pressure to deliver after winning the House majority last year and promising to use their subpoena power to investigate foreign entities that did business with the Biden family, with a specific focus on Hunter.The effort coincides with an imminent decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.Although Hunter never held a position in the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy”. There are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president in any way.The White House has dismissed his investigation as “yet another political stunt”. Spokesperson Ian Sams said: “Congressman Comer has a history of playing fast and loose with the facts and spreading baseless innuendo while refusing to conduct his so-called ‘investigations’ with legitimacy.”Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, a watchdog monitoring the Republican investigations, suggests that Comer is abusing the term whistleblower.“If they have a whistleblower that’s what he the public would be interested in but, other than them talking about it, I haven’t seen anything materialise from that,” he said.Comer’s office did not respond to a request for comment or further details. More

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      Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley downplays federal abortion ban

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      Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has distanced herself from calls for a federal abortion ban, saying that to promise such a universal barrier to terminations would be to lie to the American people.In an interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Haley declined to follow some of her other potential Republican rivals for the presidency by backing a nationwide ban through congressional legislation. Instead, she said she supported the right of each state to set its own abortion limits.“There are some states that have been pro-life – I welcome that,” she said. “There are some states that have erred on the side of abortion – I wish that wasn’t the case. We need to make sure that people’s voices are heard.”Haley, 51, is firmly in the anti-abortion wing of the Republican party and has the track record to prove it. As South Carolina governor, she signed into law a provision that bans abortions after 20 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest.That law went into effect after the decision by the US supreme court last June to overturn the nationwide right to an abortion.Despite her hardline position, the Republican presidential candidate is now attempting to soften that image by detaching herself from talk of a federal ban. The disappointing result of the party in last November’s midterm elections was widely attributed to Republican messaging on abortion, which stands starkly out of line with the broad pro-choice sentiments of American public opinion.On Sunday, Haley, who was ambassador to the UN during Donald Trump’s presidency, pointed to the filibuster in the US Senate as the reason for her hesitation on a federal ban. Under its terms, such a prohibition could only be secured with 60 votes in favour.Republicans are in the minority in the 100-member Senate by two seats.“We have to tell the American people the truth,” she said. “In order to do a national standard, you’d have to have a majority of the House, 60 Senate votes and a president. We haven’t had 60 pro-life senators in 100 years.”She added: “So the idea that a Republican president could ban all abortions is not being honest with the American people.”Haley’s double-edged posture – anti-abortion at state level, ambivalent at national level – will partly define the terms of her engagement with Republican competitors. She is one of four Republican candidates who have formally declared their candidacies for the presidency, with several others waiting in the wings.Haley launched her campaign in February, presenting herself as a president for a “new generation”. But she has so far struggled to find her footing, laboring from low public name recognition and only 4.2% in the Real Clear Politics rolling average of the polls.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther Republican hopefuls are also wrestling with the abortion issue. In his fractious CNN town hall this week, Trump repeatedly declined to answer whether he would support a federal abortion ban, offering only such bland statements as: “President Trump is going to make a determination what he thinks is great for the country and what’s fair for the country.”Haley continues to tread with extreme caution around Trump, who remains the clear Republican frontrunner. Asked by Face the Nation to comment on the fact that Trump was last week found liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll, she dissembled.“There’s a verdict and I think there’s been an appeal, and I think the American people need to make their decision based on that,” she said.Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is exploring the possibility of a presidential run, has backed a federal abortion ban at 20 weeks. Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who spent the weekend in the critical early-voting state of Iowa in preparation for a potential presidential bid, has also aligned himself with anti-abortion hardliners.In April he signed into Forida law an extreme abortion ban that comes into effect at six weeks – before many women even know they are pregnant.Haley and DeSantis have been going at each other with increasing intensity in recent weeks, as both languish some distance behind Trump in the polls. Haley has trolled the Florida governor over his feud with Disney, calling him “thin-skinned” and inviting the entertainment giant to move Disney World to South Carolina. More

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

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