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      Republican Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz calls far-right rival’s comments on Islam ‘reprehensible’

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      Republican Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz calls far-right rival’s comments on Islam ‘reprehensible’Kathy Barnette, who is challenging Dr Oz in the GOP Pennsylvania primary, tweeted in 2015 that ‘pedophilia is a cornerstone of Islam’ Republican Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz has stepped up his criticism of far-right candidates in Pennsylvania who are gaining traction ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.After spending much of the campaign steering clear of fellow Republican Senate contender Kathy Barnette, Oz said she was out of step with the Republican party and would be unable to win the general election in November.In an interview, he took issue with a 2015 tweet from Barnette in which she wrote that “Pedophilia is a Cornerstone of Islam”. Oz, who would be the nation’s first Muslim senator, described the comments as “disqualifying”.“It’s reprehensible that she would tweet out something that is defamatory to an entire religion,” Oz told the Associated Press. “This state was based on religious freedom. I’m proud as a Pennsylvanian to uphold those founding beliefs that every faith has its merits.”The Barnette campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Earlier in the week, Barnette told NBC News that she did not make the statement, though it was still live on her Twitter feed on Saturday.For months, the race for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat has been an expensive fight between former hedge fund CEO David McCormick and Oz, who have spent millions of dollars attacking each other on television.But in the final days of the Republican primary, a third candidate – Barnette, a conservative commentator who has courted hard-line pro-Trump groups – has emerged. Trump himself has warned that Barnette’s background hasn’t been properly vetted.With the election just days away, polls show a tight three-way race with a sizable number of undecided voters who could sway the results next week.Oz has won Trump’s endorsement in the Senate contest, although some Trump supporters continue to question his conservative credentials.TopicsPennsylvaniaUS SenateUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Can this offbeat tattooed Democrat flip a Pennsylvania Senate seat?

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      Can this offbeat tattooed Democrat flip a Pennsylvania Senate seat?John Fetterman, a proponent of marijuana legalization and sentencing reform, is the frontrunner in his party’s primary John Fetterman isn’t like most politicians, and not just because of his tattoos, his goatee, his 6ft 8in frame and his penchant for sweatsuits.What really sets the frontrunner in Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary apart is his demeanor. Fetterman is a bit awkward, the opposite of the stereotypical smooth-talking politician. He tends to stumble through debates, and in personal interactions he doesn’t always hold eye contact. On the campaign trail, it sometimes looks as though he just doesn’t want to be here. And maybe that’s part of the secret to his success.“It’s hard to brand him as a politician,” says Lara Putnam, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies grassroots politics, “because he literally shows up in shorts everywhere, year-round – with such commitment that it’s not a gimmick.”Now this least slick of politicians is poised to win the most heavily contested elections in America, and to test the strength of Democrats under Joe Biden in a crucial race. Pennsylvania is the swingiest of swing states, and, not incidentally, its Senate race this year will be the most expensive in the nation. It presents the Democratic party’s best chances to flip a seat away from Republican control, and could even decide the fate of the Democratic majority in the Senate.Yet Fetterman’s ideology is hard to peg. He’s an enthusiastic union supporter who says he would vote for Medicare for all, but does not support scrapping the electoral college or defunding the police. He’s a longtime proponent of legalizing marijuana, but he also cares passionately about the minutiae of prison policy. When asked about the precise targeting of a wealth tax proposal, he shrugged and said, “You know it when you see it.”“He doesn’t come across as a generic Democrat, in ways that may benefit him electorally and compensate for him not being a telegenic, charismatic gladhander,” says Putnam.In fact, Fetterman’s ability to find strength in not being a predictable politician reminds some observers of another successful outsider.“Donald Trump does things a lot of people find counterintuitive, but his finger is on the pulse of the Republican base,” says public affairs consultant and state political insider Larry Ceisler. “Maybe Fetterman has that ability.”Pennsylvania initially seemed tailor-made for a different candidate: Connor Lamb. A clean-cut former marine and congressman with a record of winning tough races in Trump-friendly areas, he seemed like the perfect man for the race. Instead, Lamb badly lags Fetterman in every poll and has raised only a third of the money. That’s not to say that Lamb and state representative Malcolm Kenyatta, the other competitive player in the primary, aren’t trying. In two bruising televised debates, they have jabbed at the frontrunner, probing his weak spots. Lamb claims Fetterman is too progressive for the state; Kenyatta attacks from the left. Fetterman simply stares forward and repeats his talking points.“This is 2022, you don’t have to be great on the debate stage. Maybe you don’t even have to be on the debate stage at all,” says Ceisler.From affluent childhood to steel-town mayorFetterman hails from York county, one of the most heavily Republican corners of Pennsylvania. His family was well-off – his father is an insurance executive – and quite conservative. According to his college roommate and football teammate, Fetterman was a conservative too.But as a volunteer with Big Brothers, Big Sisters he was exposed to an America far beyond the exurban gentry class. Instead of going into business, he attended Harvard’s Kennedy School for Government and got a job teaching in a GED program in the deeply depressed steel town of Braddock, a mostly Black community where from a peak of 21,000 the population has fallen to less than 2,000.His students persuaded him to run for mayor, and he won the 2005 election by one vote. Soon his gigantic stature and casually grizzled style attracted media attention – Levi’s even featured him in a series of advertisements set in Braddock, in exchange for a new playground and a $1m community center.“He was known as someone who was trying to advocate for a really hard-hit community and bring new jobs and opportunities to that region and to that city,” says Putnam. Although he couldn’t stop the population loss, a handful of new businesses opened in town, and he parlayed his civic fame to attract corporate donations.Above all, in a town scarred by violence, he says his greatest accomplishment is a stretch of five and a half years with no gun deaths. He championed community policing tactics and has never embraced the more aggressive leftwing critiques of law enforcement.“I’m the only Democrat or Republican [in the race] that’s actually been in charge of a police department,” he boasted at one debate. “I fought to increase their wages, I fought to shore up their benefits, and I fought to increase budgets consistently every year.”Gun violence is also at the root of the most uncomfortable criticisms of Fetterman. In the winter of 2013, he heard a burst of gunfire in his neighborhood and saw a man running in a ski mask and dark clothing. Fetterman grabbed a shotgun and drove his pickup truck in pursuit. He apprehended the man, who turned out to be an innocent Black jogger, until the police arrived.The story raised eyebrows, and in the Black Lives Matter era looks even worse. Fetterman says he never aimed the shotgun at the jogger and that he didn’t know the man was Black. (The runner, who is incarcerated for unrelated reasons, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Fetterman is lying but that he should be elected to the Senate anyway.)“For somebody who has cut an image as an incredibly tough guy, you’re so afraid of two little words: I’m sorry,” said Kenyatta, who is Black, at one of the debates. Fetterman noted that he won re-election in Braddock twice more after the incident, and Ceisler says polling found that the story did not hurt Fetterman’s standing among canvassed Black voters.“If they were counting on that story about the gun and the African American working against him, I don’t see it,” says Maurice Floyd, a Black political consultant in Philadelphia. “He’s got a lead like that and, what, you think there aren’t any African Americans in those polls?”Fetterman’s case for facing the Republicans in November is rooted in his non-Braddock campaigns. In 2016 he launched a quixotic bid for the US Senate, embraced Sanders’ socialist presidential campaign, and energetically stumped all over the state. He lost, but won a respectable 20% of the primary vote.Two years later Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor against the incumbent Democrat, a scandal-plagued politician from Philadelphia. This time Fetterman won a resounding victory.The position is mostly ceremonial, but he has used it aggressively, visiting every county in the state on a listening tour about legalizing marijuana.“John doesn’t wait for campaign season to show up,” says Joe Calvello, director of communications for Fetterman. “The first thing he did as lieutenant governor was to tour 67 counties to talk to people, to get out there, to hear people’s concerns, whether it’s about legalizing marijuana or forging new lives. He’s had these conversations for years.”Fetterman also powerfully exercises one of his only actual powers in this odd duck role. The lieutenant governor sits on the board of pardons, which can review contested prison sentences and put them before the governor. As Politico reported in 2021, the board had at that point recommended for leniency more than twice as many cases under Fetterman than in the previous 20 years combined.The 2018 race is also proof he can win a statewide election, something none of the other candidates can claim. His campaign believes his unusual political brand, idiosyncratic political ideology, and attention to rural areas and small towns will win voters who wouldn’t go for a cookie-cutter Democrat.“Democrats cannot be writing off any community – that’s why we’re going anywhere in anywhere and everywhere,” says Calvello. “We don’t believe we’re going to flip these counties blue, but you cut down the margins by showing up, being honest, talking to voters. That matters in a statewide race.”His detractors argue that the lieutenant governor’s race was a low-profile affair, won in an extremely Democratic year, and that Fetterman has never been under a harsh spotlight. “The choices he has made place him too far to the extreme to win at the statewide level in Pennsylvania,” said Lamb during a debate. “When he was running around the state in his gym shorts, making marijuana the number one issue, campaigning with Bernie Sanders, he lost a lot of swing voters already.”‘Every county, every vote’So far, these fears do not seem to have infected the larger Democratic electorate. Republicans are locked in an extremely competitive and crowded primary, with two millionaires recently moved in from out of state – celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and hedge fund manager David McCormick – dealing each other expensive body blows. The Republican attack line on Fetterman is likely to be that he’s a false working-class hero who cries poor but comes from money. “The guy’s a show-off fake,” says Christopher Nicholas, a Republican political consultant who is not working on the Senate campaign. “He is an interesting MSNBC and social media novelty. He parlayed that into raising a bunch of money, but when you strip away all the technology it’s still a people business. And he can’t go to meetings and do small talk.”But in the debates Fetterman has already begun attacking McCormick: he couldn’t ask for a better foil than an exceedingly wealthy mogul who served in George W Bush’s treasury department and only just moved to Pennsylvania from Connecticut.Such a contest would be the supreme test of Fetterman’s theory of the electorate: that even in a year where all signs are against Democrats on the national level, a socially awkward, heavily tattooed man who is deeply committed to his state can break through.“We are able to bring out margins that we are going to need,” said Fetterman, making the pitch for himself at the second debate. “I’m the only candidate that has always embraced an every-county, every-vote philosophy. That’s how I believe we’re going to win in a tough cycle.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsPennsylvaniaUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More

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      How senior GOP figures tried to oust Trump: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Jonathan Martin of the New York Times after the publication of his new book This Will Not Pass and what he and his co-author Alexander Burns unearthed about events behind the scenes in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, why all is not well for the Biden administration, and what all of this says for the future of the two-party system

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: PBS Newshour, NBC You can buy This Will Not Pass here. Listen to Thursday’s episode of Politics Weekly UK with Rafael Behr. Sign up to First Edition for free at theguardian.com/firstedition. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Senator Rand Paul single-handedly holds up $40bn US aid for Ukraine

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      Senator Rand Paul single-handedly holds up $40bn US aid for UkraineDemocratic and Republican Senate leaders both supported package but Paul objected to scale of spending The top Democrat and Republican in the US Senate joined forces in a rare moment of unity on Thursday in an attempt to pass $40bn in aid for Ukraine, only to be stymied by a single Republican lawmaker: the Kentucky libertarian Rand Paul.Faced with the prospect of an extended delay for the package that passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, sought to move forward on the aid package only to be blocked by Paul, a fiscal hawk who objects to the amount of spending proposed.Putin could use nuclear weapon if he felt war being lost – US intelligence chiefRead moreThe stalemate delayed passage of the measure into next week.The Senate has scheduled an initial procedural vote on the bill for late Monday afternoon.It was unclear whether that vote would then speed passage of the Ukraine aid. Alternatively, passage could come around the middle of next week if any senator wants to force a series of legislative steps before a final vote.As the Ukraine aid bill became caught in the Senate’s procedural gears, Schumer pleaded for fast action: “The package is ready to go, the vast majority of senators on both sides of the aisle want it.”He added: “If Senator Paul persists in his reckless demands … all he will accomplish is to single-handedly delay desperately needed Ukraine aid.”But Paul was not moved.The delay into next week could cause problems for western countries trying to bolster Ukraine in its fight against Russia.The Biden administration has said that by 19 May it expects to run out of available funds to draw on under an authority that allows the president to authorize the transfer of weapons without congressional approval in response to an emergency.Paul is demanding that the legislation be altered to require an inspector general to oversee spending on Ukraine. Without his agreement, the Senate must follow a lengthy process stipulated by the chamber’s arcane rules.McConnell, Paul’s fellow senator from Kentucky, weighed in, saying: “Ukraine is not asking us to fight this war. They’re only asking for the resources they need to defend themselves against this deranged invasion. And they need this help right now.”The House passed the Ukraine spending bill by 368 to 57, with only Republicans voting against it.Joe Biden had asked Congress to approve an additional $33bn in aid for Ukraine. But lawmakers decided to increase the military and humanitarian funding.“This is the second spending bill for Ukraine in two months. And this bill is three times larger than the first,” Paul said before formally blocking the aid package. “Congress just wants to keep on spending, and spending.”The aid package had previously included more spending for dealing with Covid-19 in the US, but the two causes were decoupled after Republicans balked.Meanwhile, the White House Covid-19 coordinator, Ashish Jha, issued a dire warning that the US will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress does not swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.In an Associated Press interview, Jha said Americans’ immune protection from the virus was waning, the virus was adapting to be more contagious and booster doses for most people would be necessary, with the potential for enhanced protection from a new generation of shots.His warning came as the White House said there could be up to 100m infections from the virus later this year and as Biden somberly ordered flags to half-staff to mark the imminent milestone of 1 million US Covid deaths.TopicsUS SenateUS politicsUkraineCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rights

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rightsFinal tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure The US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead moreThe Senate roll call was a stark reflection of the partisan divide over abortion rights, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of Virginia, voting against the measure. The final tally was 49-51, well short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to serve as vice-president, presided over the vote.“Sadly the Senate failed to stand in defense of a women’s right to make decisions about her own body,” Harris told reporters, after stepping off the dais. Pointing to the onslaught of laws restricting abortion access in Republican-led states, she said “the priority should be to elect pro-choice leaders at the local, the state and the federal level”.Democrats moved quickly to hold the doomed vote after a leak last week of a draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito in February and confirmed as authentic, indicated that the court’s conservative majority had privately voted to strike down Roe and subsequent rulings. The extraordinary disclosure ignited protests around the country, pushing reproductive rights to the center of the political debate six months before the congressional midterms. A final ruling from the court is expected this summer.Ahead of the vote, a group of House Democratic women marched across the Capitol to protest against the end of Roe, chanting: “My body, my decision.”Democrats, under intensifying pressure to act, saw a political opportunity in forcing Republicans to vote against a bill protecting abortion at a moment when the threat to access is urgent and polls show a majority of Americans want the procedure to remain legal in all or some cases.They hope to use the Republican blockade as a data point in their midterm message to voters: that the GOP has become a party of “ultra-Maga” extremists, on the cusp of fulfilling a decades-long goal to strip women of their reproductive rights.It is an issue Democrats hope will energize young voters disenchanted by the Biden administration and persuade Republican-leaning suburban women to back them again this cycle.“If we do not take a stand now to protect a woman’s right to choose, then mark my words, it will be open season, open season on our God-given freedoms,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. He called “one of the most consequential we will take in decades”.If passed, the bill would have codified Roe v Wade into federal law, ensuring the right of healthcare providers to perform abortions and the right of patients to receive them. But it would also go further, in some cases invalidating state-level restrictions on abortion access enacted after the Roe decision in 1973.As such, Republicans cast the bill as a “radical” attempt to expand reproductive rights that goes far beyond Roe and would legalize “abortion on demand”.“We will stand with the American people, stand with innocent life, and block the Democrats’ extreme bill,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday.Republicans are betting the economy will take precedence over abortion this November. Polling shows Republicans are well positioned to make significant gains in the midterm elections, buoyed by historical headwinds, discontent with the party in power and widespread concern over the rising cost of gas, food and rent.But there are signs that Republicans do worry about a potential political backlash if Roe is overturned and states move swiftly to outlaw abortion, as many are preparing to do.A day ahead of the vote, McConnell sought to tamp down conservative calls for a nationwide ban on abortion if they take control of the chamber in November, telling reporters: “Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes.”The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the bill, instead urging support for an alternative measure that they say is tailored to reflect the landscape of abortion rights. But many Democrats see their proposal, which is not expected to receive a vote, as too weak.“Unlike some far-left activists, Senator Murkowski and I want the law today to be the law tomorrow,” Collins said on Wednesday, objecting to the lack of protections for religious exemptions in the Democrats’ bill.0In a dramatic shift, one of the only other Democrats in Congress with conservative views on abortion rights, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, said he would support the measure and voted in favor of advancing it. In a statement citing the leaked supreme court ruling, Casey said the “circumstances around the entire debate on abortion” had changed since the last time the Senate voted on the measure.Without a clear legislative path forward, Democrats are turning to the fall elections, urging Americans to elect them as the “last lines of defense” against the end of Roe.Abortion is also likely to be a major issue in races for governor and state offices, as the battle lines shift to the states.The show vote on Wednesday only intensified calls from progressives and abortion rights groups for Democrats to eliminate the filibuster. The long-simmering debate has divided the party, which does not have enough votes to end the rule. It has also energized efforts to reform the supreme court, including controversial proposals such as expanding the number of justices on the bench or imposing term limits.TopicsUS SenateAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court overturning Roe allows 'open season' on American freedoms, warns Schumer – video

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      The supreme court overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects women’s rights to abortion in the US would create an open season on Americans’ freedoms, majority leader Chuck Schumer has said.
      Schumer was speaking before a vote in which the US Senate rejected legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law 51-49.
      On 2 May, a draft decision by the United States supreme court to overturn Roe was published by Politico, which has been verified as genuine by the justices but it ‘does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.’

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rights 49-51 – as it happened

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      Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.We’re ending the live US politics blog now, but look out shortly for the Guardian’s full coverage of Wednesday’s historic vote in which Democrats’ efforts to enshrine abortion rights into federal law fell well short in the US Senate.The day was dominated by the vote on the women’s health protection act, which Democrats knew was doomed to failure, but which they hope can now be used against Republicans who went on record to defeat the legislation.Here are the day’s highlights:
      Senators voted 51-49 to reject the women’s health protection act, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans.
      Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to abortion rights but promoting instead more restrictive legislation.
      Arizona ended an eight-year death penalty hiatus when it executed convicted murderer Clarence Dixon by lethal injection.
      A New York district judge said he would lift a civil contempt order against Donald Trump for failing to cooperate with a criminal investigation into his business activities if the former president paid $110,000 and met other obligations.
      Joe Biden hailed American farmers as the “backbone of freedom” during a speech in Illinois and announced measures to support the agriculture industry and reduce food prices.
      A judge in Florida struck down new congressional districts drawn by the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, saying they made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
      A reminder you can follow developments in the Ukraine war in our live 24-hour news blog here.Democrats criticize Republican Senators after doomed vote on abortion After leaving the chamber, the vice president, Kamala Harris, told reporters that the Senate is “not where the majority of Americans are on this issue”. “This vote clearly suggests that the Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue,” ⁦@VP⁩ Harris says after presiding over the failed vote on abortion rights. pic.twitter.com/BrEmO7yqvt— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) May 11, 2022
      A number of Senators from the Democrats also quickly reacted after the expected failure to advance their legislation to protect abortion.Ron Wyden, from Oregon, said the vote was a “punch in the gut” for those who “believe in liberty, privacy and equal rights. Now Americans know which side every Senator stands on.”Angus King, of Maine, said women across the country are worried the Supreme Court “may take away their basic right to make decisions about their own body,” adding “we cannot move backwards”. Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.Vice-President Kamala Harris has called the vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act and senators have begun voting. 60 Senate votes are needed for it to pass. Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski has issued a statement insisting that “I strongly support women’s reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion”.But she says she also “believes in limited government” and won’t be voting for the Women’s Health Protection Act in the imminent US Senate vote.Murkowski’s statement follows an earlier joint release with Maine Republican Susan Collins, in which they promoted their own reproductive rights act as an alternative.In her new statement, Murkowski says:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The legislation before the Senate today goes well beyond the precedent established in Roe and Casey. It does not include the Hyde amendment, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortions – and has been the law almost as long as Roe.
      It does not include conscience protections for healthcare providers that refuse to perform abortions based on religious beliefs. It explicitly overrides the religious freedom restoration act for the first time. It also allows late-term abortions without any notable restrictions.
      Instead of taking yet another failed vote on a wholly partisan measure, I urge Democrats and Republicans alike to recognize that what Senator Collins and I have offered is in line with the views of a strong majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose but believe that legal abortion should include reasonable limitations. The Senate is edging ever closer to the abortion rights vote. Members are currently finishing a vote on confirming Joe Biden’s pick Alvaro Bedoya to the federal trade commission, and will turn their attention to the Women’s Health Protection Act next, according to C-Span.Joe Biden has just wrapped up an address to agricultural workers in Kankakee, Illinois, in which he promised support for farmers and new measures to make food prices more affordable.The president hailed farmers as “the backbone of the country” and “the backbone of freedom” as he blamed soaring inflation and high prices on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}You feed America. You got us through a pandemic and you’re literally the backbone of our country. But you’re also feeding the world. And we’re seeing Putin’s war in Ukraine, you’re like the backbone of freedom.
      America’s fighting on two fronts. At home, inflation and rising prices. Abroad, it’s helping Ukrainians defend democracy, and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist.
      American farmers understand Putin’s war has has has cut off critical sources of food.On Tuesday, at the White House, Biden insisted that tackling inflation was “my top priority”. Despite a small lift this morning with news that inflation had slowed for the first time since August, it remains at a near 40-year high and is likely to remain uppermost on voters’ minds as November’s midterm elections approach.Biden laid out measures he was taking to “lower costs on farmers”, including doubling an investment in fertilizer production to $500m, and looking at extending crop insurance protection “to give financial security to farmers”.By protecting farmers, Biden said, food prices could stabilize and fall.“Every little bit matters,” he said as he went back over previous initiatives to tackle high prices, including issuing a summer waiver for ethanol-rich fuel which he said would reduce gas prices.The AAA, however, was reporting on Wednesday a new record high national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline at $4.40. The White House released a fact sheet setting out Biden’s proposals to “make food more affordable, and lower costs for farmers”.Arizona ended an eight-year hiatus on executions Wednesday when it put to death a man convicted of killing a college student in 1978. The state halted the death penalty in 2014 following an execution critics say was botched, and difficulties in finding lethal injection drugs, Reuters reported.Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona state university student Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022. Dixon’s death was announced late Wednesday morning by Frank Strada, a deputy director with Arizona department of corrections.Dixon’s death appeared to go smoothly, said Troy Hayden, an anchor for the Fox10 TV news program who witnessed the execution.“Once the drugs started flowing, he went to sleep almost immediately,” Hayden said.Dixon’s lawyers asked to postpone his execution, but judges rejected his argument that he wasn’t mentally fit to be executed and didn’t have a rational understanding of why the state wanted to execute him. The US supreme court rejected a last-minute delay of Dixon’s execution less than an hour before the execution began. In another Arizona death penalty case, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reported last week that Frank Atwood, convicted for murdering an eight-year-old girl, has two weeks to decide whether to be executed with cyanide gas, the poison known as Zyklon B used by the Nazis to murder millions of people in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, or lethal injection.Atwood’s execution is set for 8 June.Last month, the Texas court of criminal appeals issued a stay of execution for Melissa Lucio, a Mexican-American woman set to be judicially killed for the death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah. A state judge struck down new congressional districts in north Florida on Wednesday, saying that the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who drew the lines, made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.“I am finding the enacted map is unconstitutional because it diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice,” circuit judge Lane Smith said on Wednesday, according to the Tributary. Lawyers for the state of Florida are expected to immediately appeal the ruling, and the Florida supreme court shaped by DeSantis could ultimately decide the case.The decision dealt specifically with DeSantis’ decision to dismantle Florida’s fifth congressional district, which stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, was 46% Black, and is currently represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat. DeSantis’ new district chopped the district up into four districts where Republican candidates would be favored to win.A coalition of civic action groups and Florida voters immediately challenged the map, saying that they violated a provision in Florida’s constitution that says new districts can’t “diminish” the ability of minority voters to elect the candidate of their choosing. Last month, plaintiffs asked the court to block the districts in northern Florida specifically from taking effect for the 2022 election. Smith ordered the state to adopt a map that maintained a 5th congressional district stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahasee, according to the Tributary.The Florida map is one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps in the US. Republicans currently have a 16-11 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation, but DeSantis’ plan would add an additional four GOP-friendly seats, increasing that advantage to 20-8 (Florida is gaining an additional US House seat because of population growth). It’s an effort that’s seen as a critical part of Republican efforts to retake control of the US House in the midterm elections.In a separate court on Tuesday, DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, won the opening legal round of his fight with Disney over the state’s “don’t say gay” bill that bans classroom discussions of sexual preference and gender identity issues.Three central Florida taxpayers alleged state laws were broken when DeSantis signed a new law dissolving Disney’s self-governing status, which critics said was in retaliation for the company attacking the “don’t say gay” law.But district court judge Cecilia Altonaga threw out the lawsuit, partly because the plaintiffs aren’t personally harmed, the Orlando Sentinel reports.The supreme court’s upcoming decision to reverse Roe v Wade (an early draft of which was leaked last week) doesn’t ban abortions. It leaves the issue to the states. As a result, it will put another large brick in the growing wall separating blue and red America.The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.One America is largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young. The other is largely rural or exurban, white and older.The split is accelerating. Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes bluer. Of 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties – where a presidential candidate won at least 80% of the vote – jumped from 6% in 2004 to 22% in 2020.Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two per cent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil”.Almost 40% would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3% of Democrats and 13.8% of Republicans responded in the affirmative.Increasingly, each America is running under different laws.The second American civil war is already happening | Robert ReichRead moreGood news, of a sort, for Donald Trump out of New York, where a judge has said the former president must pay the state attorney general $110,000 and meet other conditions to purge a contempt of court order, but also that the fine will not grow by $10,000 a day, as it had been doing.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, says her civil investigation of the Trump Organization has found evidence of fraudulent behaviour in tax filings. Trump says the investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt.The judge in the contempt case, Arthur Engoron, said the daily fine on Trump stopped accruing on Friday, when the former president filed affidavits about his search for requested information – and his inability to find four phones which investigators would like to look at. Engoron said the contempt order could be restored if certain conditions are not met.Here’s our report on Trump’s phones, from yesterday:Trump tells court he lost phones linked to alleged fraud by his companyRead more More