“The attempt of a radical minority to enforce their will on the rest of us, who constitute a majority, by stealing control of the states and then, through them, control of the federal government is precisely what the Confederates tried to do before the Civil War: it is no accident that one of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried a replica of a Confederate battle flag,” writes Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters from an American” this morning. She cites events Friday in North Carolina.
There’s a word for this sort of thing: Bad (CBS News):
In massive victories for Republicans, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday threw out a previous ruling against gerrymandered voting maps and upheld a photo voter identification law that colleagues had struck down as racially biased.
The rulings likely give the GOP-controlled legislature the ability to rework the state’s congressional map for next year’s election to help Republicans gain seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House. Under the previous map, Democrats won seven of the state’s 14 congressional seats last November.
The new edition of the court, which became a Republican majority this year following the election of two GOP justices, ruled after taking the unusual step of revisiting opinions made in December by the court’s previous iteration, when Democrats held a 4-3 seat advantage. The court held rehearings in March.
Goodbye 7-7 congressional delegation. Hello 10-4 in ’24.
Short version: North Carolina is one governor’s election away from being North Florida. And maybe closer than that with GOP supermajorities in both houses and Mark Robinson as Lt. Governor.
“So many people across the state are fed up. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m tired of losing,” Clayton said, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. “I’m tired of Republicans coming in and threatening my rights. … We all should be so tired and angry.”
Clayton was rather put out by the court’s decisions on Friday:
There’s never been a single-day rollback of racial progress as there was today in North Carolina.
The NCGOP and our Republican Supreme Court delivered on disenfranchisement of Black communities at the ballot box with 3 tragic rulings that make it harder to vote in our state. 🧵
We should be making it easier to vote – not harder. Today, the Republican majority court pushed their own partisan goals instead of defending our democracy and the freedom of North Carolinians to vote to choose their elected leaders — a shameful and un-American power grab.
Three boisterous baby Spider Monkeys have been thrilling visitors to Taronga Western Plains Zoo these school holidays.
Born over the space of a few months to mums Rosa, Hiccups and Jai, the three young females are thriving as they learn to eat, play and climb on the Primate Islands.
“It’s really exciting to have three new babies, and to see the whole troop pitching in, it’s a real family affair,” said Primate Keeper Sasha Brook.
Hiccups has always been a really good aunty to the other babies we’ve had in the troop, but hasn’t had offspring herself for a really long time, so it’s really nice to see her having a baby of her own.”
“The eldest of these babies in particular has been getting more and more adventurous, venturing away from mum, interacting with her keepers, experimenting with eating solid foods and even clambering over other monkeys. It’s really cute to see!”
The Spider Monkeys are very active throughout the day but the best time to see them is during feeding time, which occurs between 12.30pm and 1pm daily.
The three babies are yet to be named, however Keepers do have a shortlist of names that are South American in origin.
“Spider Monkeys are critically endangered thanks to factors like habitat loss, hunting and the pet trade, so breeding programs like ours are crucial,” Sasha said.
Every dollar spent at Taronga Western Plains Zoo has the Power to Protect. Tickets, Animal Encounters, Tours and even Zoo Friends annual memberships are a great way to support Taronga’s vital conservation work.
Visitors can also hire a four-seater Pedal Boat and venture out onto the Savannah Lake to see the Spider Monkeys, as well as critically endangered Black and White Ruffed Lemurs, like never before. Boat hire is situated outside of the Zoo’s main café, and boats can be hired between 10am-3pm Thursday to Sunday, with extra days available during the school holidays. A 30-minute boat hire is only $20 per boat.
For more information about planning a visit to Taronga Western Plains Zoo or to purchase your tickets online visit www.taronga.org.au/dubbo-zoo.
I wonder if the anti-abortion zealots will buy this one. Someone should remind them of this similarly vague promise:
There’s secret, top-secret, code-word-secret — and then there’s whatever President Trump’s health-care plan is.
It’s apparently so deeply classified that the people overseeing the plan don’t even know they’re involved.
The Republican Party has promised (and failed) to repeal and replace Obamacare for more than a decade — that is, the entirety of the law’s existence. Trump began teasing his own replacement plan during his first presidential bid, five years ago. Back then, he pledged to swap out the Affordable Care Act for “something terrific,” details TBD.
Over subsequentmonthsandyears, Trump boasted about the benefits of his plan. It would be cheaper yet somehow also more generous than Obamacare. It would be “so easy,” even though “nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” It would “take care of everybody,” even as it took literal care away from many.
Trump proclaimed the GOP will become “the party of healthcare,” but a conservative replacement to Obamacare would probably look something like…Obamacare. (Video: Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)
This plan was always “two weeks” away — coincidentally the timeline promised for most every Trump announcement,including thoseabout wiretapping, infrastructure and Melania Trump’s immigration history.
As the fortnights passed, suspense grew. Finally, an announcement came this week: This Godot-like plan, this girlfriend-who-lives-in-Canada of public policies — it exists!
“I have it all ready,” Trump said at a town hall Tuesday, “and it’s a much better plan for you, and it’s a much better plan.”
Alas, Trump remains unable to share this “much better plan” with the public. Or, it seems, anyone within his administration.
A day after Trump’s town-hall statement, several senior health officials testifying before the Senate were asked whether they were aware of any specific administration proposal to replace Obamacare.
“I’m not involved in the replacement plan,” said Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. “I don’t know what that is. I supply public health advice as much as I can for whatever that plan would be.”
His colleague Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response, likewise said the mythical proposal is “not in my portfolio” and “I have no awareness of that.” The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, echoed that an Obamacare replacement plan is “really not in my main lane, but I’m not aware of one.”
Now, it might seem improbable that Trump wouldn’t clue in his most senior health officials about a health–care program they would oversee. But it’s less strange when considering other tasks explicitly in these officials’ portfolios that they also apparently know nothing about.
On Thursday, for instance, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that Redfield’s testimony about when the public would have access to a covid-19 vaccine — a timeline the president had criticized — was wrong. The CDC director, Meadows explained, hasn’t had “intimate discussions” with those involved in vaccine distribution. Never mind that just a day earlier, the CDC had published a playbook for vaccine distribution.
Asked who was working on the Obamacare replacement, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany explained that planning involved “a wide array of people.” Also: “I’m not going to give you a readout of what our health-care plan looks like and who’s working on it.”
Finally: “If you want to know, come work here at the White House.”
In other words, Trump’s brainchild is so sensitive, so secret, it must remain within the cone of silence. There it will stay, under lock and key, presumably alongside evidence from Area 51, the names of the real Kennedy assassins and the nuclear codes. (But not the country’s secret new weapons system; that Trump is happy to blab about to Bob Woodward, unprompted.)
I guess this must be yet another one of the great “policies” that the Republicans who hem and haw about Trump are always saying were so great. I would expect that Trump will start saying that he did pass a great health care plan and everyone loves it just as he says he built the wall.
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the right-wing book-purging organization Moms for Liberty, offered a righteous-sounding answer when asked this past weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning” what sort of book she wants to see remain in schools.
“Books that don’t have pornography in them,” she piously declared. “Let’s just put the bar really, really low. Books that don’t have incest, pedophilia, rape.”
That’s hard to square with what just happened in Martin County, Fla. The school district there recently decided to yank from its high school library circulation eight novels by Nora Roberts that are not “pornography” at all — largely prompted by objections from a single woman who also happens to be a Moms for Liberty activist.
“All of it is shocking,” Roberts told us. “If you don’t want your teenager reading this book, that’s your right as a mom — and good luck with that. But you don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”
This signals a new trend: Book banners are increasingly going after a wide variety of titles, including romance novels, under the guise of targeting “pornography.” That term is a very flexible one — deliberately so, it appears — and it is sweeping ever more broadly to include books that can’t be described as such in any reasonable sense.
Martin County is where 20 Jodi Picoult novels were recently pulled from school library shelves. This, too, was largely because of objections from that same Moms for Liberty activist, Julie Marshall, head of the group’s local chapter.
In addition to eight Roberts novels, the latest books removed from some Martin County high schools include Judy Blume’s 1975 classic “Forever …” featuring a high school couple extensively debating whether to have sex. Also purged: “The Fixer” by Bernard Malamud, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
The basis for Marshall’s objections to Roberts’s books, according to parental objection forms obtained and provided to us by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, is this: “These books are adult romance novels. They have absolutely no reason to be in school libraries.”
One can debate whether “adult romance novels” belong in high school libraries, but this process is absurd. That sole objection, with no elaboration, was lodged against a bunch of books written by a single author, leading to their removal.
What’s more, the objection to Roberts’s books appears extremely flimsy. Four of those books, which make up “The Bride Quartet,” are about friends seeking love as they build their wedding-planning business.
The books have some sex scenes, but the language is often vague enough that a child would have little idea what was happening. (“He touched, he tasted, he lingered until her quivers became trembles.”) And — spoiler alert — each book ends with a marriage proposal.
Roberts allowed that the books contain “sex” but noted that it is “monogamous” and “consensual.” Speaking of the censors, Roberts told us: “I’m surprised that they wouldn’t want teenagers to read about healthy relationships that are monogamous, consensual, healthy and end up in marriage.”
I guess those Moms for Liberty hide their Nora Roberts novels in their underwear drawers because you can be sure some of them read her. If it’s pornography then there are a whole lot of women, hooked on porn. Roberts has sold over 500 million books.
NOT. READY. FOR. PRIME. TIME.
Desantis melts down today outside the protective bubble of his carefully controlled, scripted FL events.
At the Museum of Tolerance, of all places.
The question that set DeSnowflake off was about this.
Desantis recently denied to Piers Morgan that he had anything to do with force feeding detainees at Guantanamo. Democracy Now found an old interview of him where he admitted recommending it for hunger strikers, then interviewed detainee who said Desantis was watching & laughing. pic.twitter.com/QUG1gjfHyL
I wrote about this before but I think it’s important. There is evidence that Ron DeSantis covered up torture at Guantanamo. He refuses to talk about it. And if you think the guy in that video up top is incapable of being complicit in torturing you aren’t paying attention.
Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian today. If you are interested in this story, you should read the whole thing:
“DeSantis and his group, the JAGs people were there. They were conducting the investigation,” Aziz said. “They were coming the same day the people died. They came to the cells.”
What DeSantis saw and heard in the hours and days after the three deaths could be key to an enduring mystery that has hung over Guantánamo ever since: how did Ahmed, Utaybi and Zahrani die?
Before the investigation even began, Harris, who would also later serve as US ambassador to Seoul, declared the three prisoners had killed themselves, describing it as “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us”. An official inquiry by the Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS), who DeSantis had been detailed to support, concurred with Harris’s verdict within 11 days, though its findings were only made public two years later, in a report that was rife with contradictions and literal holes, with multiple pages missing.
Anyone who was on the scene would have known there were serious questions about the official account. According to that narrative, the dead men bound their hands and feet, stuck cloth deep down their own throats, fashioned nooses from strips of material, climbed on their washbasins with the noose around their neck and stepped off.
They had only been in the same prison block, Alpha, for 72 hours, in separate cells with empty cells in between. Alpha block was for high-security prisoners who were forbidden to mingle or even talk to each other. Yet the three men were alleged to have conspired to kill themselves in exactly the same manner at exactly the same time.
By the time they were brought to the clinic, Ahmed and Utaybi’s bodies already had advanced rigor mortis, setting the time of death to before 10.30pm. That meant that, according to the official version, they would have been hanging for more than two hours in cells with transparent wire mesh sides, in a block holding about 15 prisoners that was meant to be continually patrolled along a central walkway by a team of six guards.
Mark Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall law school, who led to forensicanalyses of the three deaths, said it was hard to imagine that anyone with DeSantis’s legal training would fail to spot the inconsistencies in the official version.
“Any JAG would want to know how guys would die while they’re in a cell guarded by five guys, and how they could have been hanging long enough for rigor mortis and with a rag shoved down their throats,” Denbeaux said.
The NCIS report said that the three men had blocked the view into their cells with blankets and mattresses and stuffed other fabric into their beds to make it look as if they were asleep. It was never explained where they would have all acquired so much material, which was severely restricted. A routine search of all the Alpha block cells by a guard shift a few hours earlier found no evidence of any such banned material. The official report said “apparent suicide notes” were found, but the documents were never submitted for fingerprint or handwriting analysis.
The NCIS investigators did not formally interview the senior medical officer on duty that night, nor did they talk to the soldiers from a military intelligence unit in the guard towers with a clear sight of the camp, and whose version of events was quite different from the NCIS account.
According to Joseph Hickman, who was sergeant of the guard that night, no one was taken from Alpha block to the medical clinic. However, hours earlier in the evening, a white prison van came three times, and each time navy guards took away a prisoner and drove towards a secret site that appeared on no maps, hidden from view and surrounded by razor wire. Hickman and his fellow soldiers referred to it as Camp No as in “No such camp”. It was revealed much later to be a CIA black site, where inmates were subjected to “enhanced interrogation”.
Hickman and his unit were under standing orders not to interfere with the van or to record its movements. The vehicle returned at 11.30pm but Hickman did not see who was in it, because it backed up to the medical clinic where it was unloaded. The soldiers saw no other activity until about 12.15am, when the camp lights were suddenly turned on and the alarm was sounded.
In 2009, two years after he left the army, Hickman approached Denbeaux and together they approached the justice department, then under Barack Obama’s administration, and presented testimony of what he and eight other soldiers saw that night. Officials assured them the deaths would be investigated, but nearly a year of silence went by before Denbeaux got a call saying, without explanation, the investigation had been dropped.
If he testifies truthfully it could be helpful but it can’t erase his pushing of the Big Lie
On Wednesday night the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Donald Trump could not claim executive privilege to prevent his former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying before the Grand Jury that’s hearing evidence for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s activities leading up to January 6th. Immediately on Thursday morning Pence testified for more than five hours. I guess they didn’t want to waste any more time.
Pence and his team had negotiated with the Special Counsel for months to avoid having to do a voluntary interview and ended up filing a lawsuit to prevent testifying under subpoena. He claimed that as President of the Senate he could not be compelled to testify under the Speech and Debate clause of the constitution which protects members of congress and a judge partially bought the argument. Pence was told he must testify but he can avoid answering questions about his legislative role on Jan. 6.
In theory,Pence could have a boatload of first hand information to share with the Special Counsel, backing up other testimony and possibly offering new details to which only he was privy. He can’t that the 5th because he isn’t implicated in anything illegal and he’s not someone who flipped for special consideration. He would be a great witness before a jury.
The assumption seems to be that he will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but I have to wonder why. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that Mike Pence would lie? I know he is a very pious, prayerful man but he worked shoulder to shoulder with the greatest liar in history for four long years and lavishly praised him to such an extent he was known as the sycophant in chief. His adoring, puppy dog gaze toward the president spawned hundreds of memes. In one cabinet meeting he praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes straight. If he is really is as honest as the day is long, how did he last for four years with a man who lies as easily as he breathes?
On the other hand, while he hasn’t officially announced, he appears to be running for president — against Donald Trump. A ruthlessly ambitious politician in his position wouldn’t hesitate to air every bit of dirty laundry to the Grand Jury and since it’s secret, he could do that even as he presents himself to the MAGA crowd as a more or less loyal soldier. Unfortunately, they hate him anyway because Trump told them it’s his fault that Trump isn’t still in the White House so I don’t think any Machiavellian maneuvers would make a difference. MAGA will never forgive him for what he did. He can help to destroy Trump but it won’t redound to his benefit.
So maybe Pence is actually looking at his political legacy. He was right in the middle of one of the most famous political events in American history and he showed himself to be quite brave that day. The mob was coming for him after Trump held him to blame for the fact that his coup plot didn’t work and he stayed at the Capitol in order to certify the vote later that night. It was the only time Pence ever publicly stood up to Trump and it happened to be at a very crucial moment.
But let’s remind ourselves of what else Pence did. From the day after the election pence joined with Trump in casting doubt on the election results. On November 9th he tweeted, “It ain’t over til it’s over. And it AIN”T over!” On January 5th at a big rally in Georgia for the runoff for the two Senate seats, he told the crowd, “We all got our doubts about the last election I want to assure you that I share the concerns of the millions of Americans about voting irregularities. I promise you come this Wednesday we’ll have our day in Congress.” Even after the horrifying events of January 6th, a couple of months later ,Pence wrote an op-ed calling the election results into question and railing against the Democratic initiatives to shore up the voting laws. He led with this:
After an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.
He spread the Big Lie right along with Trump all the way to the end and beyond.
More significantly, Pence gets tremendous credit for refusing Trump entreaties to either refuse to count the electoral votes or call for a “pause” as his hack legal advisers were advising. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book “Peril” he consulted with several lawyers and experts to see if it really was possible and even called upon his fellow Indianan, former Vice President Dan Quayle. Quayle told him, “Mike you have no flexibility on this. None, Zero. Forget it, Put it away.”
But he didn’t need to seek advice from any lawyer or former Vice President. Anyone with the tiniest bit of integrity would have said, “absolutely not” the minute it was brought up and that would be the end of that. He knew Biden won the election, they all did. And he knew that Trump was trying to steal it by first lying about the so-called “irregularities” which had been litigated in more than 60 lawsuits, and then concocting a scheme to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.
Keep in mind that others in the White House did the right thing. Even Trump’s accomplice, Bill Barr a man who believes in almost limitless executive power, finally called it a day at the end of December. But Pence kept questioning what he should do even though he certainly knew that what they were asking him to do was unconstitutional and wrong. He was looking for reasons to do it anyway and he just couldn’t find anyone but Trump’s looney legal freakshow to tell him should. It was only then that he decided once and for all that he couldn’t do it.
If his memory holds up, Pence could certainly shed light on some of the conversations he had with Trump leading up to January 6th. What we know of those conversations could be very damning for Trump, particularly if he let on that he knew he didn’t really win. And as far as the insurrection goes, according to Woodward and Costa, on the night of January 5th when Pence told him finally that he did not have the power to do what Trump was asking him to do Trump, looking out on to the noisy crowd that had gathered in front of White House, said to him, “well, what if these people say you do? If these people say you have the power wouldn’t you want to?” It certainly would be interesting to know what Pence thought he meant by that. The very next day Trump was telling those people he was going to lead a march to the capitol to let the US Congress know exactly what they wanted.
Mike Pence might do the right thing and testify truthfully and thoroughly to this Grand Jury.. He did finally do the right thing on January 6th. But he tried every way he could think of the find a way to do what his boss and mentor wanted him to do and he just couldn’t figure out how to get it done.
BREAKING: Trump tonight stopped at a diner, met a woman convicted in connection to Jan. 6, hugged her and signed the backpack she carried to the Capitol https://t.co/7BVS5qk3Dl
Former president Donald Trump hugged and consoled a woman who breached the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, the Washington Post first reported.
In a clear attempt to appeal to the further-right members of his base, Trump embraced 54-year-old Micki Larson-Olson, a Trump über-fan who’d driven 30 hours to see him speak in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
“President Trump, will you please sign my Trump backpack that I carried up to Jan. 6?” she shouted, donning a red-white-and-blue ensemble with a matching wig. “I went to jail for 161 days for Jan. 6. I’m an Iraq War veteran.”
Larson-Olson was found guilty last September of a misdemeanor for resisting police efforts to clear the Capitol complex after the breach. According to the Justice Department, U.S. Capitol Police approached the Texas woman, “who was dressed in a Captain America costume and holding two flags in the air,” and repeatedly asked her to leave. But she refused and attached herself to a scaffolding with her arms and legs before swearing at the officers and calling them “traitors.”
“It took six officers who were forced to physically carry her from the scaffolding area as she screamed at and fought them,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia said.
“Patriots, I hear this woman,” Trump said in Manchester Thursday. At one point, he said that he thought the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants was “so terrible.”
“It’s terrible,” he said. “What they’re saying is so sad, what they’ve done to Jan. 6.”
It’s worse than what they’ve done to Christmas.
By the way:
To note: This J6 Defendant who was embraced by Trump last night is a member of Negative48 & when I interviewed her last year, she called for the execution of members of Congress who certified the 2020 election: https://t.co/eSkVCuomvQpic.twitter.com/JubqZb3LDF
Shake that man’s hand. I continue to be amazed that, Pulitzers or not, Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mike Luckovich hasn’t been run out of his swing state. Georgia is not that purple.
South Carolina State House. Photo: Fei Wang via Google Maps.
The conservative rush to turn post-Roe v. Wade United States into Gilead hit a couple of speed bumps on Thursday. The civil war against women halted first in South Carolina (of all places) and again in Nebraska hours later.
In lengthy and often impassioned speeches on the South Carolina Senate floor, the state’s five female senators — three Republicans and two Democrats — decried what would have been a near-total ban on abortion. One, Sen. Sandy Senn (R), likened the implications to the dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are treated as property of the state.
Senn seems almost peeved about that. She said abortion laws “have always been, each and every one of them, about control — plain and simple. And in the Senate, the males have all the control.”
South Carolina and Nebraska currently allow abortions for up to about 22 weeks.
Nebraska’s bill that would have banned most all abortions after 6 weeks faltered for lack of a single vote when two senators did not vote:
Merv Riepe, a longtime Republican who would have been the decisive vote to advance the bill to a final round of voting, abstained over his concern that the six-week ban might not give women enough time to know they are pregnant.
Riepe told the Flatwater Free Press that he was concerned the Nebraska bill would be viewed as a total ban. “At the end of the day, I need to look back and be able to say to myself, ‘Did you do the best?’” Riepe told the paper. “No group came to me, asking me to do this. This is of my own beliefs, my own commitments.”
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) seemed almost peeved that. He said it was “unacceptable for senators to be present not voting on such a momentous vote.”
What’s going on here? The 2024 elections may be 18 months away, but the growing fury of women over the Supreme Court’s unpopular 2022 decision overturning Roe is weighing on Republican minds. Especially after the party’s epic poor showing in the 2022 midterms.
Neighboring Kansas voters’ August 2022 rejection of a constitutional amendment stripping abortion protections there may have given a few Nebraska legislators pause to reconsider how Gilead they were prepared to go.
Your misogyny is showing
The five women in the South Carolina state Senate did not have to read between the lines:
“The total ban that’s being debated here today clearly places the rights of a fetus over the rights of the women and girls who will be forced by our male-dominated legislature to carry that fetus to term,” said Sen. Mia McLeod. “To be blunt, the majority has no frame of reference. There’s only five of us in this body who have actually given birth.”
“If this bill passes, a baby will be forced to carry and deliver another baby, even if it costs her her life,” added McLeod, an independent.
As other southern states have enacted near-total bans, South Carolina has become a destination for women seeking abortions, notes the New York Times:
Both states would have joined a growing list of Republican-dominated states with severe restrictions on abortion. So far, 14 states have active bans on nearly all abortions, though some allow exceptions for rape and danger to the life of the mother. Georgia and Florida also ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but Florida’s ban is on hold pending a court challenge.
The state’s Supreme Court ruled in January that South Carolina’s constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy extends to abortion. The 3-2 majority wrote that “the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private considerations imaginable,” but the state retained an “interest in protecting unborn life.”
South Carolina could still pass a ban in the remaining six weeks of its session.
It remains unclear whether the legislative failures conservatives encountered in South Carolina and Nebraska represent speed bumps rather than attacks of conscience, or reassessments of how the GOP’s rush to Gilead will land with voters in 2024.
Riepe, a former hospital administrator, addressed colleagues after an amendment he offered failed. It would have moved the Nebraska ban out to 12 weeks.
The Associated Press reports, “Riepe took to the mic to warn his conservative colleagues that they should heed signs that abortion will galvanize women to vote them out of office.”
They might not lose sleep over their attitudes toward women, but they might over women’s attitudes toward them.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Wednesday that President Joe Biden, 80, will likely die within five years and that his supporters would have to count on Vice President Kamala Harris if he were to win re-election next year.
“He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” Haley, 51, said in an interview on Fox News.
It’s even less like that Nikki Haley will be in politics in five years so …
