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      Republican Senate candidate says she’s anti-abortion but against federal ban

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      Republican Senate candidate says she’s anti-abortion but against federal banTiffany Smiley, a trained nurse, wants to win in Washington state, where a 1991 law protects abortion access A Republican Senate nominee in Washington state said on Sunday she was against abortion – but supported a state law that guarantees the right to abortion until fetal viability.Trump calls FBI, DoJ ‘vicious monsters’ in first rally since Mar-a-Lago searchRead moreSpeaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Tiffany Smiley said she supported the law despite the US supreme court decision earlier this summer, in Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned the right to abortion, a right previously guaranteed for almost 50 years.“I respect the voters of Washington state,” Smiley said. “They long decided where they stand on the issue.”The state law was passed in 1991. Across the US, polls consistently show that nearly two-thirds of Americans support the right to abortion in some form.As the midterm elections approach, abortion has served as a prime motivator for women voters across the US, especially among Democrats and fueling striking special-election successes for the party seeking to hold both houses of Congress.Smiley’s remarks reflected a growing recognition among Republicans that the fall of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which protected the right to abortion until June this year, may have been a longed-for supreme court success but could cost them dearly at the polls as they seek to take the House and Senate.Speaking to CNN, Smiley also backed off her previous statement that she would welcome an endorsement from Donald Trump.“I am laser-focused on the endorsement of the voters of Washington state,” she said, twice, as she sought to deflect the question.Smiley, a trained nurse, is challenging the incumbent Democratic senator, Patty Murray, who has criticized Smiley for her “100% pro-life” views.In an ad released last week, Smiley told viewers she was “pro-life but I opposed a federal abortion ban”. The ad came in response to a Murray ad which called Smiley “Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked candidate”, referring to the Senate Republican leader known for his anti-abortion views and push to stack the supreme court with conservative justices opposed to abortion.Murray’s ad claimed that if elected, Smiley would support federal abortion bans. Smiley said: “Murray is trying to scare you, I am trying to serve you.”On Sunday, Smiley said: “I made it clear in my ad that … I am not for a federal abortion ban. You know, the extreme in this race is Patty Murray. She is for federalizing abortion.”Smiley previously expressed support for a Texas law that implements a near-total abortion ban, the Hill reported last year. On Sunday, Smiley said “there’s a lot of parts of [the Texas ban] that make it very hard for me in Washington state”.‘I want to work with everyone’: Alaska’s history-making new congresswomanRead moreShe added: “But at the end of the day, I’m pro-woman first and then always pro-life.”In response, Murray told CNN: “What I believe is that we have a constitutional right in this country under Roe by the supreme court that allowed women and their families and their faith and their doctor to make a decision for them about whether or not they should carry their pregnancy.“That is what the law and constitutional right of this land was, until this supreme court overturned that.“I do not believe that politicians should be making these decisions for women. That is what I support.”TopicsAbortionUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansWashington stateUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in office | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in officeAustin Sarat and Dennis AftergutRepublicans have put all their chips on extremism. But voters are sending more and more signals that they’re fed up with it Polls and election results over the last week reminded Americans that politics seldom moves in a straight line. As in physics, action produces reaction. Overreach invites backlash.For a long while former President Trump and his cronies seemed to be immune from this rule of political life and from the consequences of even the most outrageous conduct. As Trump himself once famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”And so it seemed. He escaped conviction in not one but two impeachment trials and cowed Republican leaders to fall in line after the January 6 insurrection. He remains the leading contender for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination.Today Republicans are still falling over themselves to prove their loyalty to him by outdoing each other in extremism.On 19 August, a Republican candidate for Florida’s state assembly even took to Twitter to call for violence against federal law enforcement officials. “Under my plan,” Luis Miguel tweeted, “all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other [federal agents] ON SIGHT! Let freedom ring!”In Washington, the US supreme court cast aside almost 50 years of settled precedent to overturn Roe v Wade. Republican-dominated state legislatures rushed to enact draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.This kind of extremism may be off-putting to swing voters. There are signs that most Americans aren’t ready to trade their rights and freedoms for a strongman and his election-denying, rights-infringing, violence-threatening allies. As the Cook Report’s Amy Walters wrote on 26 August: “The more Trump is in the news, the more dangerous the political climate for the GOP.”But let’s start with the supreme court’s Dobbs decision.Dobbs sent shock waves across the political spectrum and has jolted Democratic turnout. On 25 August, Axios reported that immediately after Dobbs, “Democratic primary turnout for governors’ races increased … in five of the eight states holding contested primaries.”Similarly, a report from TargetSmart suggests that in states like Michigan and Wisconsin “where reproductive rights are at stake”, women “are out-registering men by significant margins.”This pattern portends a “pink wave” in November, as women mobilize to defeat pro-life candidates. We saw evidence of this in the 23 August special congressional election in New York, where Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro, 52% to 48% in a bellwether swing district.Ryan’s campaign message was largely focused on protecting abortion rights. His victory follows the striking 2 August referendum vote in Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to ban abortion.Are Republicans being taught a lesson they should have learned from history?When the supreme court gets too far out in front of – or too far behind – the American public by ignoring American sentiment, political backlash results. That happened in the 1850s in the run-up to the civil war and in the 1930s when the conservative court that Franklin Roosevelt inherited struck down a new minimum wage law.It happened again after Roe v Wade, when abortion foes reacted and organized for a 50-year battle that resulted in a reactionary court majority.Republicans may now be reaping what those reactionaries on the court sowed.And it isn’t only that many Americans have been alarmed and aroused by what the court did last June. They are also awakening to the threats posed by Trump’s “big lie” and the election denial it has inspired.Democratic messaging that has called out the “big lie”, along with the meticulously presented hearings of the January 6 congressional hearings, seem to be taking root.Americans are coming to see that, as President Biden has warned, “A poison is running through our democracy … with disinformation massively on the rise. But the truth is buried by lies, and the lies live on as truth.”At the start of this summer’s January 6 hearings, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney echoed that sentiment: “People must pay attention. People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”An NBC News poll last week suggests that the American people are indeed now paying attention. It found that more respondents ranked “threats to democracy” as the most important issue facing the country, more important than inflation or jobs.Other polls suggest that candidates who are running as election deniers or opponents of a woman’s right to choose will pay a price in November.Take Pennsylvania, for example. A Franklin & Marshall poll released on 25 August found that the Democratic candidate for the Senate, John Fetterman, is leading Trump-endorsed election denier Mehmet Oz, 43% to 30%. Fetterman is also a vocal abortion rights supporter, while Oz supported overturning Roe.The same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, leads the Trump favorite and abortion foe, Republican Doug Mastriano, by 44% to 33%.According to the Washington Post, “In 2020, Mastriano tried to block Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory by introducing a resolution asserting incorrectly that the Republican-dominated legislature had the right to choose which electors’ votes should be counted.” As the Post also notes, “He attended the Jan. 6 riot … where he was captured on video crossing the police line.”This is not to say that in Pennsylvania or elsewhere the Trump fever has completely broken. And polls are not the same thing as an election. But they are signs of hope.Democracy won’t save itself. Abortion rights will not restore themselves. The American majority’s power to defeat Trumpism lies at the ballot box. If Trumpist candidates lose in general elections, over time Republicans may get the message that they’ve placed a losing bet on extremism.There is much to be done by Americans committed to preserving our republic and to saying “no” to Trump. As former president Obama put it in his 2017 farewell address: “It falls to each of us to be … jealous guardians of democracy.” Across America, a majority of voters are ready to do just that.
      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022US SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativescommentReuse this content More

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      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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      Biden hails ‘biggest step forward on climate ever’ as he signs Inflation Reduction Act – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has signed into law a plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the climate crisis and lowering healthcare costs for Americans, capping more than a year of negotiations ahead of elections in which voters may oust his Democrats from control of Congress.Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a major accomplishment for the Biden administration, and marks the first time the United States has passed legislation specifically geared towards lowering its carbon emissions.“With this law, the American people won, and the special interests lost,” the president said as he signed the legislation in a White House ceremony. He called it proof for “the American people that democracy still works in America, notwithstanding … all the talk of its demise, not just for the privileged few, but for all of us”.The act will invest $386bn into programs to speed the transition into energy and climate programs, most of which are meant to speed the transition towards renewable sources. It will also extend health insurance subsidies, and expand coverage under government health care programs.“This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever,” Biden said.Joe Biden signed into law his landmark spending plan to fight the climate crisis and lower healthcare costs, in what his administration hopes will turn around the president’s fortunes after months of worrying unpopularity. Elsewhere, more details about the many investigations surrounding Donald Trump were revealed.Here’s a look back at today’s news:
      Two Democratic committee chairs accused the homeland security inspector general of not complying with their investigations into the January 6 attack. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported two of Trump’s former lawyers were interviewed by the FBI regarding classified documents that made their way to Florida.
      Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and will isolate in South Carolina, where she was on vacation with her husband. Joe Biden remains negative, but will wear a mask indoors and around others for the next 10 days.
      The White House is making plans for a campaign to convince men and women alike of the harm of abortion bans, and to sue states that restrict the procedure.
      Democrats consider the Inflation Reduction Act to be a major win, but in an interview with the Guardian, independent senator Bernie Sanders outlined the many ways in which he feels it falls short.
      Joe Biden has signed into law a plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the climate crisis and lowering healthcare costs for Americans, capping more than a year of negotiations ahead of elections in which voters may oust his Democrats from control of Congress.Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a major accomplishment for the Biden administration, and marks the first time the United States has passed legislation specifically geared towards lowering its carbon emissions.“With this law, the American people won, and the special interests lost,” the president said as he signed the legislation in a White House ceremony. He called it proof for “the American people that democracy still works in America, notwithstanding … all the talk of its demise, not just for the privileged few, but for all of us”.The act will invest $386bn into programs to speed the transition into energy and climate programs, most of which are meant to speed the transition towards renewable sources. It will also extend health insurance subsidies, and expand coverage under government health care programs.“This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever,” Biden said.In a few minutes, Joe Biden will sign the Democrats’ marquee spending plan into law, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars towards fighting climate change and lowering health care costs.Biden and other Democrats have been trying to hype up the legislation – dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act – as much as they can. Here’s how he cast it on Twitter:Later today, with the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act into law, we make history.— President Biden (@POTUS) August 16, 2022
      Congress is in recess and many lawmakers are visiting their districts across the United States. In a letter to Democrats sent this afternoon, House speaker Nancy Pelosi offered advice on how to sell constituents on the legislation:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It is crucial that, during this District Work Period, we communicate to our constituents how America’s families will benefit from this new law:
      Health: reducing pollution to secure clean air and clean water in every community across the country.
      Economy: securing an estimated nine million new good-paying jobs, saving families around $1000 per year on their energy bills and offering more stability from the volatile oil market that inflames inflation.
      National Security: declaring our energy independence so that foreign dictators cannot hold families and our economy hostage by manipulating the price of oil.
      Justice: delivering $60 billion in environmental justice initiatives so that we repair the mistakes of the past and ensure all communities feel the benefits of a cleaner, greener economy.
      Future: taking a giant step to honor our sacred responsibility to build a healthier, more sustainable future for our children.
      It took more than a year of negotiations to reach an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act, which garnered no Republican votes in either chamber. Its name is a nod to the ongoing wave of high inflation in the United States, though the legislation itself may not make much difference. According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, it will lower the US’ budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, but “the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”At the same time as voters in Wyoming head to the polls, the top House Republican is in the state for a fundraiser that Bloomberg reports will feature a special guest: Elon Musk.The Tesla boss is considered the world’s richest man, but has kept his politics murky, often announcing that he had voted for Democrats but lately expressing sympathy with some Republican positions. McCarthy, meanwhile, is likely to become speaker of the House of Representatives should Republicans win a majority following the November midterm elections. He also also been vocal in support of Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed candidate expected to triumph over Liz Cheney in today’s GOP primary.Despite the investigations swirling around him, Donald Trump’s influence within the GOP will likely be confirmed again today in Wyoming, where Republicans are expected to oust Liz Cheney from her seat in the House of Representatives in favor of a challenger backed by the former president. The Guardian’s David Smith reports:Widely praised for her defence of democracy during the January 6 committee hearings, Liz Cheney looks set to lose her seat in Congress on Tuesday to a rival backed by former US president Donald Trump.Opinion polls show Cheney trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.Victory for Hageman would continue a recent winning streak for Trump-backed candidates in congressional primaries and deal a blow to remnants of the Republican party establishment.Liz Cheney looks set to lose Congress seat to Trump-backed rivalRead moreThe New York Times reports that the FBI has interviewed Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel under Donald Trump, and his deputy Patrick Philbin regarding classified documents the former president may have taken with him to Florida after he left office.The lawyers are the most senior Trump White House officials the FBI has contacted as it investigated the documents, according to the report, which cites people familiar with the matter. The two men were appointed by Trump to deal with the National Archives, which usually takes possession of an outgoing president’s documents. Philbin spoke to investigators in the spring, while it was unclear when Cipollone was interviewed, the Times reports.The FBI last week searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of their investigation into the documents, and turned up papers that were deemed “top secret” and other classifications that require special handling. Cipollone and Philbin have also been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack.Trump under investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act, warrant revealsRead moreTwo House Democratic committee chairs have today sent a letter to Joseph V. Cuffari, the department of homeland security’s inspector general, accusing him of blocking their probe into the January 6 insurrection.Cuffari has been at the center over the scandal caused by the Secret Service’s deletion of texts from around the time of the attack on the US Capitol, which the agency has said was caused by a change in their phone technology, but which lawmakers investigating the attack worried may be an attempt to cover up details of what happened that day.“In response to the committees’ requests, you have refused to produce responsive documents and blocked employees in your office from appearing for transcribed interviews. Your obstruction of the committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an inspector general,” Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the oversight and reform committee, and Bennie G. Thompson, chairman of the homeland security committee, wrote to Cuffari.“If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternate measures to ensure your compliance.”Last week, it was revealed that Cuffari apparently failed to act on a memo from top career officials in his office to Congress informing lawmakers that the texts had been erased.Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreIndeed, the federal government has followed through on its plans to ration water as the west faces a “megadrought”, with the interior department announcing it will again cut water releases from the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams.The two embankments create lakes Powell and Mead, which together provide water to 40 million people in the southwestern United States.Here’s more from deputy interior secretary Tommy Beaudreau:Today, @Interior announced urgent actions to improve and protect the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River System in the face of climate change-driven drought, extreme heat and low precipitation. https://t.co/bPFnmy3nwF— Tommy Beaudreau (@DepSecBeaudreau) August 16, 2022
      We are committed to using every resource available to conserve water and ensure that irrigators, Tribes and communities receive assistance and support to build resilient communities and protect our water supplies.— Tommy Beaudreau (@DepSecBeaudreau) August 16, 2022
      As drought shrivels Lake Powell, millions face power crisisRead moreThe federal government may today announce water cuts in western states in an attempt to conserve resources amid the region’s “megadrought”, Richard Luscombe reports:Water cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday to western states in the grip of a severe “megadrought” that has dropped levels in the country’s largest two reservoirs to record lows.The flow of the Colorado river, which provides water to more than 40 million people across seven states and Mexico, will be stemmed to reduce supply to Arizona and Nevada initially, if the federal government confirms the proposal.The crisis, which has dropped levels in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US to an 80-year low of barely one-quarter its 28.9m acre-feet capacity, is threatening the future of the crucial river basin.It has also led to potential disruption of water delivery and hydropower production, forcing the US Bureau of Reclamation to consider drastic action.Drastic water cuts expected as ‘megadrought’ grips western US statesRead moreJoe Biden will this afternoon sign into law his marquee spending plan to fight climate change and lower healthcare costs, as his administration looks to make the most of hopeful political developments ahead of November’s midterm elections.Here’s a look back at what has happened today so far:
      First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and will isolate in South Carolina, where she was on vacation with her husband. Joe Biden remains negative, and is heading back to the White House for the 3.30pm eastern time signing of the Inflation Reduction Act spending plan.
      The White House is making plans for a campaign to convince men and women alike of the harm of abortion bans, and to sue states that restrict the procedure.
      Democrats consider the Inflation Reduction Act to be a major win, but in an interview with the Guardian, independent senator Bernie Sanders outlined the many ways in which he feels it falls short.
      The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas spoke with the mother of a man who shot himself after driving into a barricade at the US Capitol. She attributed his actions not to politics, but rather brain trauma from playing football:The mother of a Delaware man who shot himself to death after driving into a US Capitol barricade over the weekend says she believes he was struggling with brain trauma from growing up playing football.Richard Aaron York III’s mother, Tamara Cunningham, said she suspects his past as a high school football player left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition colloquially known as CTE. Some football players develop CTE because of repeated head blows that are common to the sport.“Something was going on for a while,” Cunningham told the Guardian in an interview Tuesday. “And it was progressively getting worse.”Mother of man who shot himself after driving into Capitol barrier speaks outRead moreThe Biden White House has plans for capitalizing on both the defeat of the anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas this month and the supreme court’s June decision overturning Roe v Wade, Reuters reports.The campaign is targeted at both women and men, and among its goals is getting Americans to better understand the economic and mental health effects abortion bans can have. The justice department also plans to use two laws to sue states that try to crack down on access to the procedure, as well as on abortion pills.“The idea is to be much more disciplined and consistent in messaging to break through to the everyday American,” a source with direct knowledge of the plans told Reuters. More

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      Liz Cheney looks set to lose Congress seat to Trump-backed rival

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      Liz Cheney looks set to lose Congress seat to Trump-backed rivalPolls show congresswoman trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s Republican primary Widely praised for her defence of democracy during the January 6 committee hearings, Liz Cheney looks set to lose her seat in Congress on Tuesday to a rival backed by former US president Donald Trump.Opinion polls show Cheney trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggleRead moreVictory for Hageman would continue a recent winning streak for Trump-backed candidates in congressional primaries and deal a blow to remnants of the Republican party establishment.Cheney is vice-chairwoman of the House panel investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. She has used the committee’s televised hearings to eviscerate Trump and members of her own party who remain loyal to him and his “big lie” that electoral fraudsters caused his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.The three-term congresswoman has also made the existential struggle for American democracy a central part of her re-election campaign in Wyoming.In a closing video message, she said: “America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”But Cheney’s status as an unyielding leader of the anti-Trump resistance has alienated many Wyoming Republicans, many of whom accuse her of putting personal ambition in Washington ahead of her constituents at home.She trailed Hageman 52% to 30% in a survey of likely primary voters from 7 to 11 July published by Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune. A University of Wyoming poll released last week put Hageman’s lead at 29 percentage points.Supporters of Cheney, the 56-year-old daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, believe she still has a fighting chance if enough Democrats and independents cross over and vote for her, which is allowed in the state’s primary system.But political strategist Terry Sullivan, who managed the Republican senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, regards Cheney’s defeat on Tuesday as a “foregone conclusion” but sees her efforts as part of a larger battle.“Liz Cheney isn’t fighting for re-election – she’s fighting for the direction of the Republican party,” he told the Reuters news agency, noting that some observers have discussed whether Cheney should mount a presidential campaign in 2024. “It’s more of a kind of a beginning, not an end.”Cheney supported Trump’s agenda 93% of the time, according to the FiveThirtyEight website. But she was stripped of her role as the No 3 House Republican for voting to impeach him on a charge of inciting the January 6 Capitol attack.She was among 10 House Republicans to do so and to earn the former president’s wrath and vow of revenge. Three others have already lost their primaries – four decided not to run again and two won their contests.The fate of another Trump adversary, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was less clear on Tuesday as the state’s non-partisan primary format allows the top four vote-getters to advance to the 8 November general election, which could bring a possible rematch of Murkowski and Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka.Alaska voters will also determine whether to pick Sarah Palin, a former governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee whom Trump endorsed for the state’s only House seat.Palin finished first among 48 candidates to qualify for a special election seeking to replace congressman Don Young, who died in March at age 88, after 49 years as Alaska’s sole House member.Palin is on Tuesday’s ballot twice: once in a special election to complete Young’s term and another for a full two-year House term starting in January.Most of the candidates Trump has backed this election season have triumphed in what his supporters say is a sign of his continued sway over the party as he considers whether to run for office again in 2024.TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsWyomingAlaskaUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggle

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      Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggleThe campaigns of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance have been tarnished by bizarre remarks and unscrupulous histories In Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance, the Republican party has three celebrities running for Senate in November.The only problem? At the moment, each of them looks as though they might lose.Oz, a television stalwart better known as Dr Oz to millions of Americans, is trailing his opponent in Pennsylvania by double digits.Vance, a bestselling author and conservative commentator, is behind in his race in Ohio, an increasingly red state that many expected Republicans to win. So far the most notable point of his campaign was when Vance appeared to suggest women should stay in violent marriages.In Georgia, Walker, a former NFL running back, is running close against Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat. But Walker’s campaign has been characterized by a series of gaffes, and this week, more seriously, his ex-wife recalled in a campaign ad how he once held a gun to her head.The three men’s travails spell out a problem in selecting outsider, celebrity candidates. Each brings name recognition, but in some cases have been unexposed to the media’s glare.The Pennsylvania Senate race is looking particularly dire for Republicans. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor, holds an 11% lead over Oz. Among Republicans in Pennsylvania, just 35% say they are “enthusiastic” about Oz’s candidacy, according to a Fox News poll in July, and 45% of Republicans say they “have reservations” about the physician.Oz’s struggles are significant enough that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is considering diverting money away from Oz’s campaign “to seats that we feel we can win”, Politico reported in July – a dramatic move given the Senate seat was previously held by a Republican.Oz has decided to try his hand at politics after being a fixture on American television for two decades, initially as a medical expert on the Oprah Winfrey show, then as the host of several of his own shows, including The Dr Oz Show, Surgeon Oz, and Transplant!.His TV career brought him fame, but scrutiny, too. In 2014 a Senate panel chastised Oz for featuring quack medical products on The Dr Oz Show. The doctor had described various supplements as “magic weight-loss cure”, and “the No 1 miracle in a bottle”, the Senate panel noted, despite no evidence to support the claims.“I don’t get why you say this stuff because you know it’s not true,” Claire McCaskill, a Democratic senator, said at the time.In response Oz said of the products, which included green coffee extract: “I recognize they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact, but nevertheless I would give my audience the advice I give my family all the time, and I have given my family these products.”If suspicions linger about Oz’s snake oil salesman past, another problem for the GOP is that serious questions have been asked about whether Oz actually lives in Pennsylvania. Oz was a longtime New Jersey resident before, he says, he moved to the Keystone state in late 2020 – specifically into a house owned by his wife’s parents.Fetterman has seized upon Oz’s residency status by recruiting Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, from the TV show Jersey Shore, to troll Oz online.Walker’s campaign seems less doomed. He’s less than three points behind Warnock. But the retelling by Cindy Grossman, Walker’s ex-wife, of how the Republican “held the gun to my temple and said he was going to blow my brains out”, probably horrified some Georgians. Walker has said he struggled with mental health problems during the marriage, and has said he is “accountable” for violence in the relationship.Before the video aired, Walker’s campaign was hardly running smoothly, with reports that his staff faced a constant struggle to limit the candidate’s public appearances after a string of gaffes and bizarre comments.Walker has stumbled when talking about his ideas to limit school shootings, and baffled many with comments about the environment, when he claimed that “good air” above the US “decides to float over to China’s bad air”.He has also suggested in one interview that the theory of evolution is incorrect.“At one time science said man came from apes,” Walker said.“If that is true, why are there still apes?”The Daily Beast quoted one Walker staffer as saying: “He screws up on Fox News where people agree with him, so the idea of him taking an adverse interview or interacting with people who don’t agree with him is a non-starter.”The Republican leadership might have expected fewer problems from Vance, who is about four points behind Tim Ryan in Ohio. The Hillbilly Elegy author has been a frequent commentator in conservative circles and is a TV regular.But Vance attracted severe criticism in July, after Vice published footage of him suggesting that people should stay in violent marriages, during a Q & A at a school in September 2021. Speaking about the rise in marriages that end in divorce, Vance said:“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace.“Which is the idea that like: ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’“And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”Asked by Vice News why “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced”, Vance said he was a victim of domestic violence.“I reject the premise of your bogus question,” Vance said.“As anyone who studies these issues knows: domestic violence has skyrocketed in recent years, and is much higher among non-married couples. That’s the ‘trick’ I reference: that domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives got what they want, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair person would recognize I was criticizing the progressive frame on this issue, not embracing it.”If the disagreeability, and general incompetence, of the celebrity candidates – all of whom have been endorsed by Donald Trump – has surprised many, it doesn’t appear to have shocked senior Republicans.Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who has looked on as Trump has effectively taken over the GOP, is among those who seem to have admitted that some of the candidates would struggle in November.“I think it’s going to be very tight. We have a 50-50 nation,” McConnell said in an interview on Fox News.“I think when this Senate race smoke clears, we’re likely to have a very, very close Senate still, with us up slightly or the Democrats up slightly.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS SenateUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      US House passes Democrats’ landmark healthcare and climate bill

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      US House passes Democrats’ landmark healthcare and climate billBiden is expected to quickly sign the legislation, which delivers a much-needed political victory for the party ahead of the midterms The House passed Democrats’ healthcare and climate spending package on Friday, sending the landmark piece of legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and delivering a much-needed political victory for the party ahead of the midterm elections this November.The bill passed the House in a party-line vote of 220 to 207, and Democratic members broke into raucous applause as the proposal crossed the finish line.“Today is really a glorious day for us. We send to the president’s desk a monumental bill that will be truly for the people,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said before the final vote. “If you are sitting at your kitchen table and wonder how you’re going to pay the bills – your healthcare bills, your prescription drug bills – this bill is for you.”Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign the legislation, which he has celebrated as a significant step toward combatting the climate crisis and reducing Americans’ healthcare costs.The final House vote capped off a lively debate among members in the chamber, as Republicans attacked the bill as a reckless spending spree that would fail to address Americans’ financial needs. A number of Republicans sharply criticized the bill’s provision to increase funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert compared to “armed robbery on the taxpayers”.That comment prompted a rebuke from John Yarmuth, the Democratic chairman of the House budget committee. “I would implore my Republican colleagues to cut out the scare tactics, quit making things up and debate the substance of this bill,” Yarmuth said.The House’s passage of the bill came five days after the Senate approved the package in a vote of 51 to 50, following a marathon session that lasted overnight and stretched into Sunday afternoon.The bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, is the culmination of more than a year of negotiations among Democratic lawmakers. The proposal was negotiated behind closed doors by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and centrist Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who single-handedly quashed the bill’s predecessor, the Build Back Better Act, last year.House progressives complained that the new bill is much narrower in scope than the Build Back Better Act, but they ultimately supported the spending package, largely because of its climate provisions. The legislation includes $369bn in funds aimed at expanding renewable energy sources and lowering planet-heating emissions. Experts have estimated the bill could reduce America’s emissions by about 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.“This landmark legislation marks the largest ever federal investment in climate action,” Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Friday. She added: “We think we crafted the best bill in the world with Build Back Better … So as soon as we get a couple more Democrats, we’ve made the case for the rest of the bill.”The bill also fell short of expectations for some of the centrist members of the House Democratic caucus. Lawmakers from high-tax states like New Jersey and California had pushed for changes to the limit on federal deductions for state and local taxes (Salt), but they failed to get that policy added to the spending package.Instead, the bill includes a number of tax changes to cover the cost of the rest of the proposal. Those policies, including a new corporate minimum tax and a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks, are expected to bring in more than $700bn in revenue for the government.Despite their reservations, centrist Democrats supported the bill, while emphasizing that they would continue their efforts to reform the Salt deduction.“I will also remain steadfast in my commitment to ensuring that any discussion of reforms to the 2017 tax law begins with addressing Salt,” Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat of New Jersey, said on Sunday. “Because this legislation does not raise taxes on families in my district, but in fact significantly lowers their costs, I will be voting for it.”The bill previously attracted criticism from the progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who said the spending package did little to help working Americans who are struggling under the weight of record-high inflation. Sanders attempted to expand the healthcare and financial assistance provisions in the bill during the Senate’s 16-hour vote-a-rama session last weekend, but those efforts were unsuccessful.Sanders has taken particular issue with the bill’s provisions aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs, which he has said are too limited. The bill will allow Medicare to start negotiating the price of certain expensive drugs and will cap Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year, but key provisions meant to help Americans who receive health insurance coverage through the private market were stripped out of the legislation.“It’s a very modest step forward,” Sanders told MSNBC on Sunday. “Bottom line is, I’m going to support the bill because given the crisis of climate change, the environmental community says this is a step forward. It doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it should. It is a step forward.”Democratic leaders have downplayed criticism of the bill, instead championing the legislation as America’s most significant effort yet to address the climate crisis.“As I say to members, you cannot judge a bill for what it does not do. You respect it for what it does do. And what this bill does do is quite remarkable,” Pelosi told MSNBC on Tuesday. “Do we want more? Of course. Will we continue to work for more? Of course.”Democrats hope the passage of the bill could help the party’s prospects in the midterm elections, which have appeared grim so far. Republicans are heavily favored to regain control of the House of Representatives, although Democrats have inched ahead in polling since the supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, which ended the federal right to abortion access. Party leaders have voiced optimism that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act will show the country how Democrats are delivering for their constituents and convince voters to support them in November.“Yes, I do. It’s going to immediately help,” Biden said on Monday when asked whether he believed the bill will bolster Democrats’ midterm prospects. “It changes people’s lives.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS CongressJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicansUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats celebrate ‘historic’ climate bill: Politics Weekly America

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      As the Inflation Reduction Act heads to the House floor, many Democrats are hoping the landmark legislation to tackle the climate crisis, which passed in the Senate last week, will result in more votes in the November midterm elections. Some experts aren’t convinced the bill goes far enough.
      Joan E Greve speaks to Leah Stokes, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, about what the bill – if passed into law – will mean for Americans, and for the planet

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