Florida GOP will require 2024 candidates to sign loyalty pledge to qualify for primary ballot
Florida Republicans are requiring 2024 presidential candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to support the party's eventual nominee in order to qualify for the primary ballot next year.
2023-07-06 23:53
Exonerated Central Park Five member will win primary for NYC council seat in Harlem, CNN projects
Yusef Salaam, an exonerated member of the Central Park Five has won the Democratic primary for a New York City Council seat in Harlem, CNN projects, after a reallocation of ranked-choice voting results expanded Salaam's lead.
2023-07-06 23:47
Ohio voters are likely to decide the future of abortion rights
Voters in Ohio will likely decide if the state’s constitution should enshrine the right to abortion care, after abortion rights advocates collected tens of thousands of signatures on a petition to put the issue on ballots this fall. If certified, those 710,000 signatures – roughly 300,000 more than required by state law – will place a proposed constitutional amendment asking whether “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s reproductive decisions.” A statewide vote for abortion protections follows a wave of anti-abortion laws in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a constitutional right to care last year. More than a dozen states, mostly across the entire US South, have effectively outlawed most abortions. But the Supreme Court decision to overturn the half-century precedent under Roe v Wade also fuelled efforts to protect abortion rights across the country, including in neighboring Michigan and Kentucky, where voters in both states voted to support abortion rights in ballot measures last year. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Ohio lawmakers swiftly outlawed most abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, a law that is currently suspended by a state court injunction but could be reinstated by the Ohio Supreme Court. A vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution would effectively overrule any such law. Abortion rights advocates and providers have warned that Ohio’s ban, which does not include exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest, ignited a healthcare crisis that endangered patients and their families across the state, forcing people to seek care hundreds of miles out of state and navigate complicated legal and medical minefields while experiencing pregnancy complications. The petition launched by Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom and Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights will head to the secretary of state, which has until 25 July to determine the validity of the signatures. The campaign launched with an open letter on 7 July of last year signed by hundreds of physicians rejecting the state’s anti-abortion law. “Over the past year, support for the amendment has grown exponentially thanks to our partners at [Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom], the thousands of volunteers who gathered signatures in communities across the state, and the hundreds of thousands of people who added their names to our petitions,” according to a statement from Dr Lauren Beene and Dr Marcela Azevedo, co-founders of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights. “Today, the message we and they are sending is loud and clear: ‘let the people decide,’” they said. The campaign will magnify the role of Ohio – a state that voted for Donald Trump by more than 8 percentage points over Joe Biden in 2020 – in the 2024 presidential campaign and the renewed battle for abortion rights surrounding it, as Republican candidates and members of Congress weigh federal legislation that would outlaw or severely restrict abortion access nationwide. President Biden and Democratic candidates have signalled the central role that abortion rights protections will play in upcoming campaigns, alongside their warnings of a GOP-controlled White House and Congress legislating on abortion at the national level. Last year, a record number of voters in Kansas – a state that Mr Biden lost by more than 15 percentage points in 2020 – turned out for an election to reject a Republican-drafted amendment that would strip abortion rights from the state’s constitution, the first test for abortion rights put directly to voters after the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That measure was shot down by nearly 20 percentage points, sending a resounding message that underscored the immense unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s decision. The president has repeatedly invoked that election victory in remarks supporting abortion rights in the months that followed, stating that the Supreme Court “practically dared women in this country to go to the ballot box and restore the right to choose,” and that anti-abortion lawmakers vastly underestimated how Americans would respond. Following the outcome in Kansas, Mr Biden pointed to the justices’ own writing in the Dobbs decision: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” “They don’t have a clue about the power of American women,” he said. “In Kansas, they found out women and men did exercise their electoral political power with a record turnout.” Read More Man sentenced to life in prison for rape of 10-year-old girl in Ohio abortion case that drew national attention Senator who once worked at a Planned Parenthood warns that Republicans are planning a national abortion ban One year after Roe v Wade fell, anti-abortion laws threaten millions. The battle for access is far from over
2023-07-06 22:54
Democratic council member joins race for Indiana's open US Senate seat
An Indianapolis City-County Council member is looking to become the Democratic candidate for Indiana’s open U.S. Senate seat in the 2024 election
2023-07-06 22:50
Biden is heading to South Carolina to show his economic agenda is keeping even red states humming
President Joe Biden is heading to South Carolina to make the case that his economic agenda is helping keep even red states humming
2023-07-06 12:24
Kingmaker California? US House control could hinge on district battles in famously liberal state
California is again emerging as a critical battleground in the fight to control the U.S. House
2023-07-06 12:21
Former Arizona House speaker spoke with FBI in 2020 election probe
A former top Republican official in Arizona, who rejected pressure from Donald Trump and his allies following the former president's 2020 election defeat, told CNN Wednesday night that he has spoken with the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the vote.
2023-07-06 10:47
Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood gives up law license amid 2020-related disciplinary case
Lin Wood, a prominent right-wing attorney and election denier, has given up his law license in an apparent move to stave off disciplinary proceedings tied to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
2023-07-06 08:56
Trump fundraising doubles to $35m amid growing legal woes, report says
Donald Trump’s increasingly serious legal problems are translating into a cash boom for his third presidential campaign, a staffer told Politico this week. The campaign is due to release official fundraising numbers by the end of the month, per an upcoming Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadline. But a campaign official familiar with the matter provided the eye-popping sum to Politico: $34m, a haul that puts him firmly on top of the GOP primary field, dollars-wise, and depicts a campaign picking up steam as Mr Trump apparently solidifies his support base within the GOP primary voter population. In the first quarter of 2023, Mr Trump’s campaign had presented a fundraising total of $18.8m — impressive, but not nearly as high as his latest quarter. However, a greater share of donations is now being diverted to the Save America PAC, the twice-indicted former president’s vessel for outside spending that has fronted the bulk of his legal costs in recent months. Previous news reports indictated that the donation levers were pulled on Mr Trump’s WinRed donation page to divert as much as 10 per cent of every donation to the Save America PAC, up from just 1 per cent of every gift earlier this year. The total is likely to bolster Mr Trump’s argument against Republican candidates like primary rival Will Hurd who have argued that Mr Trump’s legal problems will jeopardise his chances of winning a general election against President Joe Biden. While polling backs up Mr Hurd’s assertion at present, the Trump campaign’s war chest will prove a counter-argument that paints the former president as the candidate with GOP voter enthusiasm and the funding necessary to wage an effective general election campaign. Mr Trump faces a growing field of GOP rivals, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and his former vice president, Mike Pence. But he has remained dominant across polling of the field for months, even amid his two criminal indictments for allegedly falsifying business records in New York and the alleged illegal retention of classfied materials at Mar-a-Lago. The legal pressure mounting against the former president is likely to escalate in the coming weeks, given the two investigations known to be currently ongoing involving him and his closest advisers. Officials in Fulton County, Georgia are weighing whether to bring criminal indictments against Mr Trump and members of his legal team over their efforts to alter the lawful election results in that state, while the Department of Justice has been reported by The Independent to be weighing a superceding indictment charging Mr Trump with dozens of offences related to the January 6 attack and his related efforts to block Joe Biden’s election victory. Read More Judge's order limits government contact with social media operators, raises disinformation questions Special counsel Jack Smith subpoenas Arizona Secretary of State’s office in January 6 probe Trump attorney who was key to election conspiracies retires from legal practice
2023-07-06 08:19
Ohio's showdown over abortion rights intensifies as group files signatures for ballot measure
Ohio is poised to become the next major abortion battleground after groups seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution on Wednesday submitted hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to the secretary of state's office.
2023-07-06 06:22
Amid indictments, Trump's fundraising nearly doubled in second quarter
By Jason Lange WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's main fundraising committee raised more than $35 million during
2023-07-06 05:29
Democrat Mondaire Jones seeks to win back House seat after losing out in NY's redistricting process
Former U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones is seeking to win back the suburban New York congressional seat he lost after redistricting last year
2023-07-06 03:26