Archive by Author

Top Latino group, environmental group endorse South Texas Democrat for House

The Latino Victory Fund and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) on Tuesday endorsed Michelle Vallejo, a progressive Democrat running for the most competitive House seat in Texas.

“It’s an honor to have earned the support of LCV Action Fund and Latino Victory Fund,” said Vallejo. 

“As South Texas faces more severe weather every year and is on the verge of the worst water crisis in our history, our health and our economy are taking the hit.”

Vallejo, 31, is running in a district that was redrawn after the 2020 Census, shifting from a slight Democratic lean to a true purple district.

It is currently represented by Rep. Vicente González (D-Texas), who after redistricting and the retirement of former Rep. Filemón Vela (D-Texas), decided to run in the neighboring, more Democratic seat.

In May, Vallejo won her primary by 30 votes and in July she received the endorsement of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus campaign arm, an indication that Hispanic Democrats are betting she can win the increasingly competitive district.

Vallejo, a local small business owner, is running as an unabashed progressive while her opponent, Republican Mónica de la Cruz, is running as a Trump-backed conservative.

Vallejo is also the only Democratic Latina running in one of the three South Texas Hispanic-majority districts, and the only Democrat who’s not already in Congress.

González and longtime Rep. Henry Cuéllar (D-Texas) are running in the two neighboring districts against Republican Latinas – because González switched districts, he is also running against a House incumbent, Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas).

“Michelle Vallejo is the only Latina candidate running in the 15th District who supports issues and policies that will help South Texas families and Latinos across the country,” said Nathalie Rayes, Latino Victory Fund president and CEO. 

“She is a small business owner who will fight for jobs and higher wages and the daughter of immigrants who will advocate for a fair and humane immigration system,” added Rayes.

Although Vallejo is openly progressive, many of her positions are filtered through the lens of the staunchly moderate-to-conservative Rio Grande Valley communities in the south of the district.

For instance, Vallejo won the dual endorsement in part based on her environmental proposals, which focus on job creation through clean energy, rather than combative rhetoric on climate change.

“Michelle Vallejo will fight for every community in South Texas to have clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment, especially people in frontline communities facing the brunt of corporate polluters,” said LCV Action Fund Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld. 

“As a small business owner and family of farm workers, immigrants, and entrepreneurs in the Rio Grande Valley, she understands what is at stake. She is committed to protecting our environment, strengthening our democracy, and building a just and equitable clean energy future for all,” Sittenfeld added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrats’ increasing disregard for democracy

Progressive Democrats, including President Biden, constantly complain about threats to democracy. And yet, they are more than willing to disregard the democratic process if that’s what it takes to get their way. Biden’s half-trillion-dollar student loan “forgiveness” overreach is the latest and most egregious example.

Progressives have increasingly embraced the “one person, one vote, once” view of democracy. Once their candidate is elected president, it is his (or eventually her) job to implement the progressive agenda.

If the president has the votes in Congress to pass that agenda through the normal, constitutionally mandated process, fine. Go with that.

But if he doesn’t have the votes, progressive Democrats will demand that he do whatever it takes to implement the agenda anyway. Because the ends – that is, the progressive vision – is more important than the constitutionally-prescribed process.

You can hear progressives’ justifications for taking such anti-democratic steps in their stringent pleas for the president to act. Warnings like: “Climate change is too important to wait for Congress to act” and “The poor need help now.”

It didn’t start with Biden. There was President Obama’s “I have a pen and a phone” proclamation. If he could get Congress to pass his agenda, great. If not, he would act on his own. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was his biggest unilateral step.

But there were other overreaches: entering into what were essentially treaties with foreign nations such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other nations to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities and even Obama’s U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change. Obama declined to put those agreements to the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote of the Senate because he knew he would lose. To Obama and the left, trying to address climate change and imposing limits on Iran were more important than the Constitution.

Following the Obama executive-action model, Biden is taking even bigger and bolder steps.

Of course, that’s a process we criticize when other countries engage in it. Once voted into power (think, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and, of course, Vladimir Putin in Russia), these strongmen begin to consolidate that power so they can impose their agenda. If they can get their legislators to go along, so much the better. But in their (and the progressive) vision, the job of the elected representatives of the people is to validate the executive’s agenda.

The framers of the Constitution took steps to stop such efforts. While there are three equal branches of the government (the legislative, executive and judicial), the Constitution makes the legislative branch, Congress, the first among equals.

Tax and spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, or at least they’re supposed to. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would cost the federal government (i.e., taxpayers) about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. And that’s only if Biden stops there. Progressives will push him to do more, and there are always more votes to buy.

As for the Senate, it provides its advice and consent on treaties. But Obama decided to call some treaties by a different name and never submitted them to the Senate.

Fortunately, there is still one roadblock on this executive overreach: the judicial branch.

Unlike the banana republics, the United States still has an independent judiciary. And even though many judges have strong political leanings, no one knows, or controls, in advance how the courts, and especially the Supreme Court, will decide.

That judicial independence is precisely why progressive Democrats called on Biden to pack the court with at least four additional justices. And why they suggested imposing age and term limits on the Supreme Court.

None of them cared about age or term limits if that would have cut short the career of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Supreme Court isn’t broken, as they claimed. It just stood in the way of the all-powerful president model.

The real problem created by the progressives’ demand for executive overreach is it vastly increases the importance of the presidential election. If an all-powerful president can singlehandedly implement a party’s agenda, that added importance increases the incentive to engage in election fraud or to challenge elections. Just as President Trump challenged, and still rejects, the 2020 election.

But remember that before Trump rejected the 2020 election results, Hillary Clinton and many of her fellow Democrats rejected the 2016 election results.

Encouraging a sitting president to bypass the democratic process that requires passing bills and treaties through Congress sets a terrible precedent. It will only make the fight for the White House more important and costly, and will likely result in even more claims of a stolen election.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump’s document dump: An intelligence community debacle?

Can Americans sleep soundly at night, confident that our national secrets are safe from falling into the wrong hands? The same for our allies?

With all due respect to former President Trump and his aides, along with the leaders of America’s intelligence community in Congress, the CIA, the FBI and other high federal officials, both sides in the battle over the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago have been insulting our intelligence.

We reach this conclusion most regrettably. But unlike Col. Nathan R. Jessup (a.k.a Jack Nicholson) in “A Few Good Men,” we think Americans can handle the truth.

When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he and his aides knew that he no longer had the right to possess certain sensitive intelligence information. The now former president says that prior to leaving the presidency, he issued an oral order declassifying any previously classified documents later sent to his residence, or already kept there. But this explanation is not consistent with other statements by the former president, including his claim that documents may have been planted to frame him.

The White House has procedures to ensure that sensitive classified information is secured. That system apparently collapsed in the Trump White House. The staff secretary and the National Security Council executive secretary offices should have had records of what documents went where during the four years and then worked to retrieve them well ahead of time. The presidential daily briefer (PDB) and staff are supposed to keep tabs on anything not returned with the briefing book.

Thus, Trump had no legal right to hold in his personal possession, into his post-presidency besides, classified, and much of it extremely sensitive, information posing a potentially serious, if not grave, danger to our national security. He lacked the required security clearance. This information was furthermore not kept in the secured, restrictive access environment required by law.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Trump only wanted the information to help write his memoirs. Unfortunately, motivation is irrelevant to the intelligence matter at issue: To wit, he had no legal right to possess such sensitive information in written form. 

The former president needs to own up to his mistake.

But our intelligence community, starting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, needs to do the same. One member of the committee claimed he had no idea that Trump had this information until recently. This defies a reasonable interpretation of the known facts. Committee members, at least some, knew well before.

It’s too easy to put all the blame on the former president and the failures of his administration to follow established protocols for securing classified materials.

The intelligence community had long complained about President Trump’s cavalier handling of classified information. Just about everyone in the Washington, D.C., political community knew he had taken boxes of documents to Florida. The intelligence community’s criticism of Trump convinced President Biden to deny his predecessor the regular intelligence briefing given all other former presidents.

By the middle of last year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had alerted the White House and others about the probability that Trump possessed documents he longer had the right to keep, much less allow others without proper clearance to see. NARA earlier this year made this point again in a letter to key government officials. Were congressional intelligence committees, among others, kept totally in the dark?

Federal law limits access to the previous Oval Office occupant’s presidential documents for several years. But facts already known make this clear: the intelligence community might not have seen the actual documents, but it has been long aware of the classified nature of the information therein.

Bottom line: For over a year, NARA had a reasonable suspicion of the nature of the documents that Trump continued to refuse to give back. For the past six months, NARA and the intelligence community had sufficient evidence to believe those documents contained information of potential grave harm to the nation.

Perhaps government officials are restrained from telling us all they did to ensure Trump’s documents were secure from prying eyes. Perhaps the FBI got a secret FISA warrant. Perhaps the government planted assets inside Mar-a-Largo. There can be endless speculation.

But this we know for sure: Instead of seizing the documents and ending the potential threat, our intelligence community, acting through the FBI, let an unauthorized person keep the documents in an unauthorized location in violation of mandatory protocols. 

Americans deserve better. Certainly from a former president. 

But the same is true for the actions of our intelligence community. They decided to give former President Trump unprecedented deference. Their defenders will say political reality left them little choice these past 18 months. 

We disagree. Consider that the intelligence committees of Congress are now demanding a damage assessment. If they had acted appropriately, there would be no need for one at this point.

There must be zero tolerance for actions capable of putting our national security at such risk. We need better protocols for ensuring certain documents can’t leave secure rooms. As soon as there is reason to believe someone has unauthorized access to classified information, the law must provide an immediate path to get it back. Our Constitution permits this.

The Trump document fiasco points to one of the greatest intelligence failures since the Cold War. We need a presidential commission to review the circumstances and propose laws to prevent a recurrence. This ensures future good will come from this debacle.  

Trump would be well advised to admit his mistake. The intelligence community also needs to own up to its failures. One of America’s greatest strengths is our willingness to give people who have accepted their punishment and atoned for their misdeeds a second chance. America is more important than any one person or any one group of people.  

Mark J. Rozell is dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Paul Goldman is a Richmond, Va., based attorney.

Source: TEST FEED1

Support for labor unions highest since 1965: Gallup

Seventy-one percent of Americans indicated support for labor unions in a Gallup poll released on Tuesday, the highest percentage since 1965.

The latest measure is a slight uptick from the 68 percent who supported labor unions when the survey giant polled the question last year.

Gallup has tracked union approval for decades, and support has gradually increased since 2009.

Support fell below 50 percent for the only time in 2009, but ever since has been improving to levels now not seen in more than a half century.

The increased support comes as workers at many major companies have pursued union campaigns.

A Starbucks store in Buffalo, N.Y., became the company’s first U.S. location to unionize in December, and more than 200 stores have since successfully held votes to join the union. Starbucks has battled many of those unionization efforts in court.

In April, workers at one of Amazon’s New York City facilities voted to become the first of the e-commerce giant’s U.S. locations to unionize.

Additionally, the first U.S. Chipotle store voted to unionize last Thursday in Lansing, Mich.

The new poll found that 6 percent of U.S. adults report that they are a union member, and 16 percent live in a household in which at least one resident is part of a union.

The results remain in line with Gallup’s range of between 14 percent and 21 percent of adults since 2001 who have said they live in a household with at least one union member.

President Biden has pledged to be the most pro-union president in history. He has hosted union leaders organizing at major companies and spoke at AFL-CIO’s convention in June.

“We’re seeing a resurgence of worker organizations and unionization,” Biden said earlier this month. “Where I come from, that’s a good thing, and it’s long overdue.”

The Gallup poll was conducted between Aug. 1 and 23 through a random phone sample of 1,006 U.S. adults. The sample is weighted to match national demographics, and the margin of error is 4 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Stop another Chernobyl from happening — in Ukraine and elsewhere

Has the immediate danger of a catastrophic explosion at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant concentrated our minds sufficiently to avert a disaster, and can we turn it into an opportunity to learn and reduce such risks everywhere? 

A United Nations team will visit the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, which in recent weeks has come under shelling that endangers the safety of its core nuclear functions. Ukraine and Russia blame each other for military action that threatens potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine, Russia, the region, and the world. Urgent international action is needed to stave off a catastrophe.

Serious damage to the supply of electricity to the plant could cause a nuclear meltdown, even if modern nuclear plants like those at Zaporizhzhia are considered better able to withstand equipment malfunction than was the Chernobyl reactor. Radioactive fallout would spread over a vast region — the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 impacted Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Sweden, among other areas. This time, the actual countries affected would be determined by upper atmospheric wind currents, but undoubtedly would include Ukraine and likely western Russia.

No nuclear plant should be hostage in a conflict and then be turned into a fortress and staging ground for military action to gain strategic advantage. In Ukraine alone, there are nine other operating nuclear power reactors, three of which are near the frontline of Russia’s war. There are dozens more located in regions globally that are in potential conflict zones, including India and Pakistan.

International action is needed now to deal with the immediate challenge in Zaporizhzhia, as well as to set norms for the treatment of nuclear power plants in potential conflict zones. Ukraine, Russia and the international community all have an interest in replicating the India-Pakistan 1988 agreement banning attacks on each other’s nuclear installations and facilities.

For Zaporizhzhia, the central purpose must be to end all activities that threaten the integrity and stability of the nuclear plant and to permit its continued safe operation within the Ukrainian electricity grid. The necessary steps would include:

• Creating around the plant a 15-kilometer radius zone where neither side will take military activity of any kind — on land, in the air or from the sea.
• Monitoring and patrolling the secure plant zone by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force (PKO) of neutral states broadly acceptable to Ukraine and Russia. The IAEA would assure nuclear safety and integrity. The PKO would separate forces, monitor their presence, and verify reductions and locations of forces permitted.
• Managing the zone to assure the continued unhindered and safe operation of the facility by its Ukrainian employees. That must include the evacuation of all heavy weapons from the zone (artillery, anti-aircraft systems, missiles and tanks), a no-fly zone, and an open land connection to Ukrainian-held territory to facilitate the monitored passage by the UN of plant staff and equipment and experts to assure the continued safe operation of the facility. Any residual military forces should be withdrawn, two kilometers at least, from the periphery of the plant.

The recent agreement on grain shipments provides a model for negotiating such a deal. The negotiations should be conducted on a quiet basis between Russia and Ukraine, under the aegis of the UN and the IAEA, with the assistance of a potential neutral facilitator and the full support of the United States, the other P-5 members, and the European Union.

The agreement should be registered with the United Nations, and a mandatory Security Council resolution, ideally adopted unanimously, would authorize the peacekeeping force and establish the IAEA monitoring activities.

Similar arrangements should be put in place for Ukraine’s other nuclear power plants. IAEA and UN observers, with the cooperation of the Ukrainian government, should be stationed at all the plants to assure that any attacks against them are terminated and prohibited.

The UN Secretary General, with the full support of the UN Security Council, should sponsor a follow-on conference to be attended by all states where the more than 400 existing nuclear power plants are located. The purpose would be to adopt a strict code dealing with such plants in actual or potential conflicts.

Achieving these goals will not be easy. Russia has said it rejects a demilitarized zone around Zaporizhzhia. But on this they are losing the international information battle; they were hardly enthusiastic at first about the grain deal. As was true there, it will take insistent public pressure and the active engagement of the UN Secretary General to start serious negotiations. 

The international community has a genuine opportunity — not only to avert an immediate catastrophe, but also to further mitigate this dangerous conflict and, in the process, make the whole world safer. 

Thomas R. Pickering is a former Under Secretary of State and ambassador to Russia, India, the United Nations and Israel and Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment and Science.

William Ury  is a Distinguished Fellow with the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation and co-author of “Getting to Yes.”

Source: TEST FEED1

House conservatives prep plans to impeach Biden

Republicans hoping to seize control of the House in November are already setting their sights on what is, for many of them, a top priority next year: impeaching President Biden. 

A number of rank-and-file conservatives have already introduced impeachment articles in the current Congress against the president. They accuse Biden of committing “high crimes” in his approach to a range of issues touching on border enforcement, the coronavirus pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Those resolutions never had a chance of seeing the light of day, with Democrats holding a narrow control of the lower chamber. But with Republicans widely expected to win the House majority in the midterms, many of those same conservatives want to tap their new potential powers to oust a president they deem unfit. Some would like to make it a first order of business.

“I have consistently said President Biden should be impeached for intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “Congress has a duty to hold the President accountable for this and any other failures of his Constitutional responsibilities, so a new Republican majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.”

The conservative impeachment drive is reminiscent of that orchestrated by liberals four years ago, as Democrats took control of the House in 2019 under then-President Trump. At the time, a small handful of vocal progressives wanted to impeach Trump, largely over accusations that he’d obstructed a Justice Department probe into Russian ties to his 2016 campaign. The idea was repeatedly rejected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not least out of fear that it would alienate voters in tough battleground districts. 

The tide turned when a whistleblower accused Trump of pressuring a foreign power to find dirt on his political opponent — a charge that brought centrist Democrats onto the impeachment train. With moderates on board, Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry in September of 2019, eight months after taking the Speaker’s gavel. Three months later, the House impeached Trump on two counts related to abusing power.

The difference between then and now is that liberals, in early 2019, were fighting a lonely battle with scant support. This year, heading into the midterms, dozens of conservatives have either endorsed Biden’s impeachment formally, or have suggested they’re ready to support it. 

At least eight resolutions to impeach Biden have been offered since he took office: Three related to his handling of the migrant surge at the southern border; three targeting his management of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year; one denouncing the eviction moratorium designed to help renters during the pandemic; and still another connected to the overseas business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

Those proposals will expire with the end of this Congress. But some of the sponsors are already vowing to revisit them quickly next year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the lead sponsor of four of the impeachment resolutions, is among them. 

“She believes Joe Biden should have been impeached as soon as he was sworn in, so of course she wants it to happen as soon as possible,” Nick Dyer, a Greene spokesman, said Monday in an email. 

A noisy impeachment push from the GOP’s right flank could create headaches for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), the Republican leader in line to be Speaker, and other party brass just as the 2024 presidential cycle heats up. 

On the one hand, impeaching Biden could alienate moderate voters and hurt the GOP at the polls, as was the case in 1998 following the impeachment of President Clinton. Already, GOP leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are throwing cold water on the impeachment talk, suggesting it could damage Republicans politically in the midterms. 

On the other hand, ignoring the conservatives’ impeachment entreaties might spark a revolt from a Republican base keen to avenge the Democrats’ two impeachments of Trump, who remains the most popular national figure in the GOP. McCarthy knows well the perils of angering the far right: The Freedom Caucus had nudged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) into an early retirement in 2015, deeming him insufficiently conservative, then prevented McCarthy from replacing him.

McCarthy’s office did not respond Monday to a request for comment. 

The challenge facing Republican leaders in a GOP-controlled House will be to demonstrate an aggressive posture toward the administration, to appease conservatives, without alienating moderate voters in the process. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) appears to be walking that line. Last summer, she called Biden “unfit to serve as president,” but stopped short of endorsing his impeachment. 

Stefanik’s office did not respond to requests for comment. 

Another strategy GOP leaders may adopt is to impeach a high-ranking member of the administration, but not the president himself. Several resolutions have been introduced to do just that, separately targeting Vice President Harris, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

McCarthy, during a visit to the southern border earlier in the year, had floated the idea of impeaching Mayorkas if he is found to be “derelict” in his job of securing the border. And the concept has plenty of support among conservatives.   

“Mayorkas and Garland have purposefully made our country less safe, politicized their departments, and violated the rule of law. In some instances, they have instructed their subordinates to disobey our laws. That is unacceptable,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has endorsed a number of impeachment resolutions this year, said in an email. 

“Next January I expect the House to pursue my impeachment articles against Mayorkas as well as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment articles that I co-sponsored against Attorney General Merrick Garland,” Biggs added.

Still, conservatives like Biggs, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, also want to go straight to the top by impeaching Biden. And it remains unclear if anything less than that will appease the GOP’s restive right flank — one that’s expected to grow next year with the arrival of a number of pro-Trump conservatives vowing to take on anyone they consider to be part of Washington’s political establishment. 

Some Republicans said the decision whether to endorse impeachment next year will simply hinge on events. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), for instance, has endorsed two impeachment resolutions this cycle related to the Afghanistan withdrawal, but “has made no decisions yet on supporting impeachment articles next year with Republicans in the majority,” according to spokesman Austin Livingston. 

“He will wait to see what those efforts look like, specifically how they align with Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution,” Livingston said, referring to the section outlining Congress’s impeachment powers. 

But others are eager to use a GOP majority to hold Biden’s feet to the fire. And that energy doesn’t appear to be fleeting, particularly when it comes to the border crisis, which could very well remain a hot topic six months from now. 

Rep. Mary Miller (R), a strong Trump supporter who recently won an Illinois primary over the more moderate Rep. Rodney Davis (R), said Biden should be removed “for purposely ignoring our immigration laws.”

“Biden and Harris have failed their most basic duty,” Miller said, “which is ensuring the safety of the American people through the security of our borders.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Republicans scramble to tweak abortion messaging ahead of November

Republican candidates are shifting their message on abortion after several recent elections have shown the issue energizing Democrats.

Some candidates for House, Senate and governor have either reworked sections on their websites or released ads that have sought to downplay, reverse or clarify some of their anti-abortion stances.

The shift started over the summer following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the change has become increasingly noticeable as more and more signs have emerged showing abortion can be a galvanizing issue for Democratic voters in key states.

“I think the concept that for decades, you know, a Supreme Court fight energized the conservative base because they wanted to overturn Roe, right?” Republican strategist Barrett Marson, who previously worked on Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters’s campaign, said.

“I think you’re gonna see a flip on that, that the liberal base will get more energized about this issue because they got it taken away from them,” he added.

Voters in the red state of Kansas earlier this month resoundingly rejected a ballot measure that would have given the legislature more authority to restrict the procedure. And last week, Democrat Pat Ryan won a New York special election seen as a bellwether after focusing his campaign on abortion rights.

In three other special elections since the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections, Democrats outpaced expectations even though they ultimately lost. And states such as Pennsylvania, Idaho and Wisconsin are seeing larger gaps open up between new female and male voter registrations since the Supreme Court decision, according to TargetSmart, the Democratic data services firm. 

Taken together, the developments have seemingly pushed Republicans to reassess how they approach an issue that has already shown it can help swing elections and for some to step back from support for outright abortion bans.

NBC News reported last week that Masters had changed some language on his website regarding his stance on the issue, including getting rid of the line “I am 100% pro-life” and support for “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”

The network, which took images of the website before and after it was updated, also reported the previous version said he supported legislation that would criminalize abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, while an updated version showed him supporting restrictions after the third trimester.

“He has moderated slightly on this issue, and I would still say he is pretty unabashedly pro-life,” Marson said of Masters. “I mean, I don’t think there’s a question that he is very pro-life. And so, has he, you know, backed away from maybe some of the harsher stances? Sure. But [I] don’t think that he’s, you know, all of a sudden, a moderate on the issue. He’s not.”

Masters’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but the campaign did direct NBC toward an interview he did earlier this month with The Arizona Republic after his primary in which he expressed his support for restrictions in the third trimester. He also supported the state’s 15-week ban on abortion that outlines exceptions for saving the patient’s life as “a reasonable solution.”

Other GOP candidates are finding themselves pushing back against Democratic attacks on their abortion stances.

In Washington state, Republican Senate nominee Tiffany Smiley, who is taking on Sen. Patty Murray (D) released a commercial last week that included the line “Patty Murray has spent millions to paint me as an extremist. I’m pro-life, but I oppose a federal abortion ban.”

The ad came after Murray’s campaign released an ad that hit Smiley over her previous support of Texas’s abortion law and accused her of supporting a nationwide ban. Smiley has previously said she did not support a federal ban and took a critical stance earlier this year on Texas’s law.

Smiley spokeswoman Elisa Carlson contended Smiley hasn’t changed her messaging, saying she issued the ad to reiterate her position on abortion and that she’s willing to work with both parties. While she acknowledged that Smiley did previously support Texas’s abortion ban, she said Smiley changed her opinion “when it became clear how far that law went.”

The latest moves are a continuation of a trend that started this summer.

Scott Jensen, the GOP gubernatorial pick in Minnesota, told Minnesota Public Radio in an interview in March, before the Supreme Court decision, that he would try to ban abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned.

“We have tremendous opportunities and availability of birth control. We don’t need to be snuffing out lives that if left alone will produce a viable newborn, that may go on to be the next Albert Einstein,” he said at the time.

Jensen in July released a video with his running mate, Matt Birk, following the Supreme Court decision, saying he supported some exceptions.

“I’m just gonna say it real clearly. Without question, rape and incest are exceptions that, with no hesitation on my part, I would want a pregnant woman to feel that they absolutely have the choice. You cannot bring a tubal pregnancy to fruition. What you would do is you would sacrifice the pregnant woman’s life, and as a physician, I would never go along with that,” Jensen said in the video.

The Hill reached out to the Jensen campaign for comment.

If there was any question that the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would galvanize Democrats and abortion rights advocates, it was the developments that came after the ruling that showed the issue of abortion could play a critical role in the midterms.

Only one week after the high court issued its ruling, ActBlue, the digital fundraising platform for Democrats, had hauled in more than $80 million. 

The Kansas referendum became a warning sign for Republicans — even in red states.

And even in several special elections that Democrats lost, such as in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District and Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, Democrats lost by single digits races that were supposed to significantly favor Republicans, a sign that the issue could be encouraging more voter turnout.

“I think they underestimated the power and the historical voice women have always carried in this 200-year-old-plus republic. And I think they also underestimate how they have been out of touch and out of step with how, not just women, but how the American people feel about a woman having the ability to make her own health care decisions and those decisions remaining between her and her doctor,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who believed Republicans were trying to reverse course. 

Mallory Carroll, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, argued that Republicans weren’t shifting their views on abortion, noting their messaging was simply “a reflection of the dynamics of the office that these people are running for.”

“While we would love to see every single human life protected from the moment of conception, you know, starting today, you know, from this moment moving forward, the reality is that the consensus is going to not necessarily look like what I, you know, what my dream policy would be like,” she said, adding that there’s a difference between what’s achievable at the state and federal levels.

Republican strategist Doug Heye said he didn’t think the Republican candidates’ reevaluation of their abortion message would hurt them with voters, but the issue is distracting from what Republicans wanted to make the midterms about: the economy, crime and a referendum on President Biden.

“In politics, you want to be talking about what you want to be talking about and you want your opponent to be talking about what you want to talk about, right? What they don’t want to talk about,” Heye said. “And so, if you look at Democratic messaging right now, they’re spending a lot more time on abortion than they are on inflation. And that should tell Republicans exactly what they need to know in a ‘don’t go there’ sort of way.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Oz stumbles fuel Democratic hopes in Pennsylvania

Democrats are salivating more than ever over a pickup opportunity in Pennsylvania’s closely watched Senate race as the Republican nominee and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz grapples with increasingly negative headlines.

Democratic nominee John Fetterman has been battering Oz for months, but the Republican Senate nominee is going on offense, trying to turn around his campaign and keep the seat in GOP hands.

The latest war of words between the two candidates was over crudités, or raw vegetable trays. Fetterman’s campaign made fun of Oz for his French reference to the appetizer, prompting a senior communication adviser from Oz’s campaign to mock Fetterman for a stroke he suffered earlier this year.

For weeks, Fetterman’s campaign and Democrats have sought to amplify questions over Oz’s ties to Pennsylvania and his residency while painting a picture of an out-of-touch celebrity-turned-politician.

Recent polling suggests that Fetterman is benefitting from the race’s current dynamics, with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifting the contest from “toss-up” to “lean Democratic.”

“I think it presents an opportunity that nobody envisioned when the calendar turned to ’22,” said T.J. Rooney, the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “But having said that, there’s still a lot of ground to cover.” 

Recent polls have varied, with an Emerson College poll released on Monday showing Fetterman leading Oz 48 percent to 44 percent, and a separate Franklin and Marshall College poll released last week showing Fetterman leading Oz 76 percent to 62 percent. 

Fetterman’s lead is likely lower than 13 points, with the Real Clear Politics polling average showing him leading Oz by 7.8 points. 

“They’ve got reason to be optimistic, but I wouldn’t put Fetterman in office just yet,” said Keith Naughton, a Republican consultant with experience working in Pennsylvania. 

“A lot of the Democratic optimism is based on a bunch of partisan polls that are just way out of line for some of the nonpartisan stuff,” he continued. 

The race has been unique in that, while both candidates have been on and off the trail, much of the battle has been fought in the media. Fetterman took a three-month hiatus from the campaign trail earlier this year after he suffered a stroke in May. But his campaign was able to garner a considerable amount of buzz online. 

In July, Fetterman’s campaign enlisted former “Jersey Shore” cast member Nicole “Snooki” LaValle to highlight the question of Oz’s residency in a campaign video. Fetterman also started a petition last month to add Oz to the New Jersey Hall of Fame. 

“They were very smart with the Cameo videos from Snooki and Little Steven and all of that, and it’s a good message,” said national Republican strategist Doug Heye. 

Fetterman’s campaign also garnered attention on Monday when he publicly urged President Biden to move toward decriminalizing marijuana ahead of Biden’s visit to the state next week. 

Additionally, Fetterman has led in the fundraising game, outraising Oz by $8.7 million during the second quarter. Many point out that Oz was still embroiled in a brutal GOP primary against David McCormick in May, which fell in the middle of the reporting period. And Republicans argue that Fetterman should have a better lead given his impressive fundraising numbers. 

“John Fetterman had a spending advantage over the summer over Dr. Oz, and the fact that he’s only up a couple of points is bad news for him,” said Peter Towey, a Republican strategist with deep ties to Pennsylvania politics.

Republicans also point out that there have been flaws in Fetterman’s approach, arguing that it is too online and does not do a good enough job of reaching Pennsylvania voters. 

“Ninety percent of people, everyday Pennsylvanians aren’t on Twitter,” Towey said. “John Fetterman’s Twitter campaign has done very little to improve his standing in the actual election results come November.” 

Oz’s allies also point to his presence on the campaign trail in person as a plus. The celebrity doctor-turned-politician has also made a number of recent appearances on Fox News in an effort to rally the conservative base. 

And Republican leadership seems to be seeking to boost Oz from the national level. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters in Kentucky on Monday that he believes Oz has “a great shot at winning.”

“I have great confidence. I think Oz has a great shot at winning,” McConnell said. “I don’t think I would have had him here if I didn’t think that.” 

However, Fetterman has been making more frequent campaign stops since his return to the trail earlier this month. On Monday, Fetterman’s campaign touted weekend visits to Venango and Mercer Counties in rural Pennsylvania. 

“Do you think Dr. Oz could get over 400 people out in Mercer County on a Sunday afternoon? Dr. Oz didn’t even know that Mercer County existed a year ago,” Fetterman said during one of the events. 

Democrats also say they feel enthusiastic in the wake of recent legislation wins, including the Inflation Reduction Act. 

“The good news is that because of some of the unprecedented victories that the president has achieved, we have stuff to talk about now,” Rooney said. 

Democrats also point to abortion access as a potentially galvanizing issue, citing Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejecting an anti-abortion ballot initiative and Democrats like Pat Ryan in New York’s 19th Congressional District using it to gin up the base. 

“Mehmet Oz supports banning abortion even in cases of rape or incest and has embraced other unpopular, toxic positions during his GOP primary,” said Patrick Burgwinkle, a senior communications strategist at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Oz is a fraud and a scam artist who will do and say anything to help get rich or help himself, and that’s exactly why Pennsylvania voters will reject him in November.”

Oz said during the state’s Republican Senate primary that he is against abortion except in the cases of rape and incest or when the mother’s life is in jeopardy.

Republicans, on the other hand, say Fetterman is vulnerable due to the national mood, pointing to the state of the economy under Biden, as well as rising crime. 

“The Democrats are trying to distract from John Fetterman’s desire to be the 51st vote for every bad policy that has made gas cost more, a gallon of milk cost more, every other cost of living go up, inflation be unchecked,” Towey said. 

Looking ahead, questions have emerged about future debates between Oz and Fetterman. Oz has recently hit Fetterman for not committing to any future televised debate yet. 

“The reason he’s hiding is pretty obvious: he’s lying about his health. Fetterman is not capable of debating, and he is unlikely to be able to stand in front of a camera to answer questions for longer than 10 minutes,” said Lizzie Litzow, deputy communications director at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. 

Fetterman’s campaign has said that the Democrat is not opposed to debating Oz, but does not want to do it solely on the Republican’s terms. 

“One candidate had a stroke 3 months ago, and the other is a professional television personality, so our eyes are wide open about whose strengths this plays to,” Fetterman’s spokesperson Joe Cavello, said last week. “Still, John is up for debating Oz — we’re not going to do this on Oz’s terms and timeline.” 

Source: TEST FEED1