Daily Archives: May 4, 2021

A Texas congressional district that had been trending leftward in recent elections performed a sudden about-face on Saturday in a special election for a U.S. House seat. Though Donald Trump won the states sixth district by just three points over Joe Biden in November, last weekend none of the Democrats even made it to the finals.

WSJ Joshua Jamerson and Eliza Collins report:

Republican candidates won more than 60% of the votes cast in the crowded primary, while Democrats won roughly 37%. Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez, who had finished just nine percentage points behind Ron Wright in the 2018 general election, placed third on Saturday. At least one incumbent U.S. House member is blaming fellow Democrats for not supporting Ms. Sanchez. The Washington Posts David Weigel and Amy Wang report:

Is the increasingly white Democratic coalition as bigoted as this elected Democrat suggests? Further south in Texas, Jennifer Medina reports for the New York Times on the Latinas who have been moving to the GOP:

Ms. Medina tells the story of Adrienne Pena-Garza, chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party and daughter of a former Democratic state legislator:

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Is Texas Becoming More Republican? - The Wall Street Journal

Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday and called a traitor and a communist as he tried to speak.

Arent you embarrassed? the Salt Lake City Tribune reported the Utah senator asking the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. Im a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last presidents character issues.

Romney was the sole Republican to vote to impeach Donald Trump twice for seeking political dirt on opponents from Ukraine and for inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, before which Trump told supporters to fight like hell in support of his lie that the presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden.

Six other Republican senators voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.

You can boo all you like, Romney told a crowd the Tribune said spat insults like so many poison darts.

Ive been a Republican all my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Romney, who will not face re-election in 2022, was also a governor of Massachusetts and would ordinarily be a member of the GOP establishment.

But the party is firmly in the grip of Trump and his supporters according to a CNN poll this week, 70% of Republicans believe the lie that Biden did not win enough legitimate votes to be president.

At the Utah convention, a motion to censure Romney failed narrowly, by 798 votes to 711. The author of the resolution, Davis county delegate Don Guymon, said Romneys votes to remove Trump from office hurt the constitution and hurt the party.

This was a process driven by Democrats who hated Trump, Guymon told the Associated Press. Romneys vote in the first impeachment emboldened Democrats who continued to harass Trump.

Some in the crowd applauded Romney and after the state party chair, Derek Brown, asked delegates to show respect, the senator ended with a plea to come together in strength and unity.

Emily de Azavedo Brown, a delegate from Salt Lake county, told the AP: If the point of all this is to let Mitt Romney know were displeased with him, trust me, he knows. Lets not turn this into a Trump or no Trump thing. Are we a party of principle or a party of a person?

On Sunday the Maine senator Susan Collins, like Romney a senior figure in the centre of the party, told CNNs State of the Union she was appalled by events in Utah.

Mitt Romney is an outstanding senator who serves his state and our country well, she said. We Republicans need to remember that we are united by fundamental principles we are not a party that is led by just one person.

Collins refused to say who she voted for in the presidential election. Romney has said he did not vote for Trump but not who he voted for instead. He has said that in 2016 he voted for his wife, Ann, rather than Hillary Clinton.

Cindy McCain, the widow of the Arizona senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, also spoke to CNN. She said refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election as in her state, where Republicans are carrying out a controversial audit of votes in the most populous county was just aloof and crazy.

Other speakers at the Utah convention faced dissent, among them governor Spencer Cox. He told a largely maskless crowd he knew some hated him for his Covid-19 mitigation measures but touted other moves such as banning vaccine passports in state government.

Private businesses in Utah can still demand proof of vaccination.

In one of many attacks on Bidens attempts to pass new spending bills on top of the $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill passed in March, Utahs other senator, Mike Lee, said Democrats followed one idea: unquestionable trust in government.

Chris Stewart, a congressman, told the crowd Biden was pursuing an agenda of radical socialism. He also said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, kind of sucks.

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Mitt Romney booed and called traitor at Utah Republican convention - The Guardian

The chair of the Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee on Monday condemned statements about the good aspects of slavery by Martha Huckabay, president of the Womens Republican Club of New Orleans and a vocal, far-right conspiracy theorist.

Parish Republican chair Adrian Bruneau denounced Huckabay, who over the weekend defended state Rep. Ray Garofalo, R-Meraux,after the lawmaker suggested thereweregoodaspects to slavery.

These are atrocious, Bruneau told Gambit regarding Huckabay's statements, adding, This is not what we stand for. We dont agree with her stance in fact, we vehemently disagree with her stance.

Huckabay told Gambit on Tuesday evening, "My comment is a series of statements taken out of context. Nobody believes there is anything good about slavery."

But on May 2 she lashed out at state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-New Orleans, after Hilferty correctly pointed out there are no good parts of slavery during consideration of Garofalos legislation to ban teaching critical race theory, which examines systemic racism.

In a rambling Facebook post, Huckabay, whose views often reflect the QAnon movement, claimed Hilferty and other conservative legislators were becoming indoctrinated by Communist beliefs. She also insisted slavery resulted in hard working ethics and love and respect between some enslaved people and slave owners.

In the United Statesand other parts of North America,millions ofAfricanswereraped, tortured andforced into labor. The United States was one of the last Western nations to end the practice during theCivil War. Since thattime,Jim Crow policies and other forms of institutionalized race-based discrimination have persisted in Louisiana and the rest of thecountry.

Huckabay argued Garofalo's words were appropriate and lamented that the Republican-dominated state legislature has been infiltrated with marxisum[sic] and said the topic of slavery is a one-sided leftist trap.

She wrote, Slavery goes all they [sic] way back to biblical times, and if youve read your Bible, you would know that many of the slaves loved their masters, and their masters loved them, and took very good care of them, and their families.

The post captured the attention of lawmakers and political organizations after the Twitter account,@HellOrBywater which frequently tracks Huckabays online activity sharedscreenshotsof it that went viral.

On May 4, Huckabay postedSlavey[sic]is an evil stain on humanity on her Facebook page after Bruneau posted a message condemning her comments.

Bruneau says the official committee stands with Hilferty, and sought to distance his party from Huckabay, saying the conspiracy theorist has zero clout with the GOP.

This lady Id never heard of her; I dont know her. I know there are two Republican womens groups in New Orleans, possibly three. Im not familiar with her group, Bruneau told Gambit.

However, Huckabayis clearly a fixture in Republican circles.Her personalFacebook page and the page for the WRCNO arelitteredwith grip and grin photo op shots with most of the states leading Republicans, including House Minority Whip SteveScaliseand Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Martha Huckabay's Facebook rant

But while those sorts ofpicturesarefairly routine virtually anyone can get in line for a picture with Scalise at a public event, for instance lawmakers and party leaders have clearly made it a point to attend her events, which the name of the organizationnotwithstanding, are typically held in Metairie. TheMetairieCountry Club and DesiVegas Steakhouse which has had itsownproblems with racismin recent months have served as venues.

These events regularly draw Republican elected officials, candidates and party leaders as guest speakers.According to the groups Facebook page, since 2019 guest speakers at WRCNO lunches have includedlosinggubernatorial candidateEddieRispone, Lt. Gov.Billy Nungesser, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, state Sen. Kirk Talbot, and Jefferson Parish Judge Scott Schlegel and his wifeLaurie,aswell as representatives for other politicians, including U.S. Sen.Bill Cassidy who has since been denounced by Huckabayas a traitorafter he voted to convict former president Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial.

Nungesser on April 29 was also a guest on her conspiracy talk radio show Liberty or Lockdown." His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Additionally, Huckabay has long been an early adopter of many of the dangerous ideas that have become articles of faith for some of Bruneaus party.

She has encouraged flouting public health guidelinesthroughout theCOVID-19 pandemic, claimedthere has been widespread voter fraud favoring Democrats and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.She also believes the government is exerting controlby distributingFDA approved coronavirus vaccines, which weregreen-litunder the Trump administration.

Manyof her positions are extreme, even for the modern Republican Party.

In recent weeks shehas alsosuggested White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are the same person andclaimedGeorge Soros funds Gambit, which she believesemploys nefarious operativesattempting to destroy New Orleans.

Gambit is owned by Dathel and John Georges, who are of no relation to Soros.

This story has been updated to include a follow-up statement from Martha Huckabay.

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It's 2021, but Louisiana Republicans are still fighting over whether slavery is evil - NOLA.com

A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party's presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party's nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was "100%" considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Members of the Texas congressional delegation will interview each speaker at the event, which is being organized with the help of long-time Republican operative Karl Rove.

For example, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, a top Republican on the House of Representatives foreign relations committee, will interview Pompeo, and Cornyn will interview Pence.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Pence emerged from seclusion for the first time since he and Trump left office on Jan. 20 and gave a speech in Columbia, South Carolina, on Thursday, to the Palmetto Family Council, a Christian conservative group.

He gave no indication that he was planning to run in 2024.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Eight Republican 2024 candidates speak in Texas next week, but not Trump - Reuters

The latest entrant in the Republican effort to recall Gavin Newsom and west control of the Golden State is a bear.

Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox, who ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2018, is campaigning with a live, 1,000-pound bear and promising to make beastly changes if elected.

The Cox campaign is spending $5 million on an advertising campaign that portrays Newsom as the beauty who needs to be replaced by a beast.

The beautiful politicians have failed California, Cox said. We need big beastly changes to save it. Ill cut taxes, make California more affordable, and shakeup Sacramento.

Cox also began a six-city bus tour with the bear in tow. The first two stops are on Tuesday on the waterfront in Sacramento and outside the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville where Newsom dined during the coronavirus lockdown.

The bear is described as tame, and Cox advertising describes the candidate as the nicest, smartest beast youve ever met.

The field of Republicans vying to be elected if a majority of votes agree to recall Newsom also includes former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Olympic athlete and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, and former Rep. Doug Ose.

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Republican John Cox Campaigning for California Governor with 1,000-Pound Bear - Times of San Diego

Donald Trump incited a riot in order to overturn an election he lost. Hes responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths, as well.

Trump was never popular. He never came close to winning the popular vote in 2016 or 2020. But if voter suppression laws recently passed by Republican state legislatures stand, he could become even more unpopular and still capture the presidency again.

The Republicans motivations are clear. They believe that if you wont vote for them, you shouldnt vote at all. They are threatened by the multi-racial majority in this country. When they suppress the votes of my Black and Brown sisters and brothers, they harm us all. We cant let that happen.

Saving our democracy is much easier than people think. But our senators must hear from us.

Step 1: Get rid of the filibuster

Step 2: Pass the voting rights legislation known as the For the People Act.

All it will take is 50 votes in the Senate to get it done. Call Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Demand that they stand up for people of color and our democracy.

Neal Waltmire, Berwyn

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Firearm Owners Identification cards popularly called FOID cards do not prevent any law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm. The ID acts only as a barrier to people who should not own a firearm from owning one. And the cards $10 fee impedes firearm ownership no more than the price of a gun charged by a firearms dealer.

Yet the Illinois Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether FOID cards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment was penned in the 18th century. No one can seriously argue that the Founding Fathers were so wise they could predict the advances that would be made in the science of firearms more than 200 years into the future. The Second Amendment needs an update, not revocation.

Warren Rodgers, Jr., Matteson

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End filibuster to save democracy from Republican schemes to suppress the vote | Letters - Chicago Sun-Times

Superheroes Are Everywhere, a childrens book celebrating ordinary people, by Vice-President Kamala Harris, has landed, like so many things in American politics today, in the middle of a very childish controversy. It began when residents of Long Beach, California, organized a toy-and-book drive for unaccompanied child immigrants being housed in a convention center there. Someone donated a copy of Harriss book, and a journalist touring the facility saw it on a cot and took a picture of it. Partisan mayhem ensued, with headlines in the New York Post and on Fox News and complaints from sundry Republicans about an imaginary scheme to put a copy in a welcome kit for every immigrant, as if it were the Little Red Book, or an enrollment brochure for the Democratic Party. Was Harris paid for these books? Is she profiting from Bidens border crisis? Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, asked on Twitter.

Such fantastical pettiness is not confined to the immigration debate. As the new Administration enters its next hundred days, children are poised to be at the forefront of President Joe Bidens agenda. The address that he delivered to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday night included the American Families Plan, a set of transformative programs, amounting to almost two trillion dollars, largely directed at children. With that move, Biden launched his next major legislative fight. In the months to come, the child wars are likely to grow more intense and, in some quarters, more detached from reality.

Bidens proposals include one that would make pre-kindergarten programs for three- and four-year-olds universally available. You know who else liked universal day care, Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted, before the speech was over. She linked to a Times story from 1974 about state-run nurseries in what was then the Soviet Union. Of course, our Western European NATO allies tend to like universal pre-K, too, and, in any event, nobody would force parents here to take advantage of the option. The question is not whether people will be allowed to raise their children as they wish, rather than handing them over to the commissars, but whether the U.S. will invest in children in the same way that other wealthy countries have.

The pandemic has made this a brutally hard year for American children, in large part because their situation was already precarious. One in every six children lives below the federal poverty level, which is an income of $27,501 for a family of four. For Black children, the rate is thirty per cent; for Latinx children, twenty-four per cent, according to the Childrens Defense Fund. (For adults, the rate is just under eleven per cent.) Biden said that his proposal to extend and increase the pandemic-relief child-tax credit to thirty-six hundred dollars for each child younger than six, and three thousand dollars for each child aged six to seventeen, would help more than sixty-five million children and help cut child poverty in half. Big gains like that are possible in a single swoop precisely because the numbers are so bad to begin with.

Children in this country are, in many respects, the focal point in a nexus of poverty. A lack of affordable, high-quality day care keeps women out of the workforce, and many people in the child-care field are also low-wage earners. The Biden plan would insure a fifteen-dollar-per-hour minimum wage for employees of the pre-K programs it envisions. Those programs would be developed in partnership with the states, a detail that does not jibe with Blackburns fears or with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthys warning, after the speech, that Biden wants to control your life. (McCarthy continued, Hes going to control how much meat you can eata reference to an invented claim that Biden will limit Americans to one hamburger a month.) Similarly, Senator Tim Scott, in the official Republican response to the address, complained that Biden wanted to put Washington even more in the middle of your lifefrom the cradle to college.

Biden will have to act quickly. The Democrats control Congress, but just barely, and the task of holding on to the House in the midterm elections became harder, last week, after the reapportionment of seats following the 2020 census. (New York and Pennsylvania each lost a seat; Texas gained two, and Florida one.) Turning the plan into legislation that can pass Congress will require a debate among Democrats about priorities; Biden also has a two-trillion-dollar infrastructure package to get through. Meanwhile, the implications of the conservative shift of the Supreme Court are becoming increasingly clear. Last month, the Court made it easier to sentence children to life without parole, meaning that they could die in prison. (Brett Kavanaugh wrote the 63 decision; Sonya Sotomayor wrote an angry dissent.) Like the discussion around young migrants, that decision alternately reflects a distorted fear of children and an indifference to them. The ruling may also be a harbinger of the Courts stance should elements of the American Families Plan appear before it, as was the case with Obamacare.

The Biden plan, in fact, includes tax credits to help reduce the cost of Obamacare premiums (although not an expansion of Medicare, which Senator Bernie Sanders had sought). There is also an investment of two hundred and twenty-five billion dollars, in the next decade, to build a program that provides twelve weeks of parental and family leave. Indeed, the plan addresses the problems facing children and families from so many directionsa hundred billion dollars to guarantee two years of community college; eighty billion dollars for Pell Grants; forty-five billion dollars to expand school-based anti-hunger programsthat it is hard for Republicans to protest that, while they would like to do something for children, that something isnt in this plan. So they are left with disingenuous attacks and warnings about socialism.

The easy target for Republicans (and some moderate Democrats) is the new taxes that will be needed to pay for the plan, which would fall most heavily on the wealthiest Americans. Its a lot. Its a lot, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat whose vote is crucial, told CNN, speaking of the cost. Its a lot thats worth fighting for. The challenge for the Biden Administration will be keeping the true reality of childrens lives at the center of the fight. Superheroes arent everywhere in Washington.

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Joe Biden, the Republicans, and Kids Stuff - The New Yorker

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday urged the U.S. trade representative to continue opposing a waiver to loosen patent and intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines.

The Biden administration is facing pressure from the international community, drug pricing advocates and congressional Democrats to back a move that would waive an international intellectual property agreement that protects pharmaceutical trade secrets.

The waiver proposal is being spearheaded by India and South Africa,which argue it would enable lower-income countries to manufacture the vaccines themselves, especially in light of the record-breaking wave of COVID-19 infections in India.

The Biden administration is expected to set its position clearly at a World Trade Organization meeting on Wednesday.

In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine TaiKatherine TaiPressure builds for Biden to back vaccine patent waivers The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Biden sales pitch heads to Virginia and Louisiana On The Money: Breaking down Biden's .8T American Families Plan | Powell voices confidence in Fed's handle on inflation | Wall Street basks in 'Biden boom' MORE, the Republicans, led by Reps. Jim JordanJames (Jim) Daniel JordanBiden offers traditional address in eerie setting Britney Spears to discuss conservatorship in court McCarthy unveils House GOP task forces, chairs MORE (Ohio) and Darrell IssaDarrell Edward IssaRepublicans need to stop Joe Biden's progressive assault on America Mellman: Biden's smart bipartisan message Companies sidestep self-imposed bans on GOP donations MORE (Calif.), said the waiver would do little to improve public health.

"The requested waiver is extraordinarily broad and unnecessary to accomplish the goal of giving as many people as possible access to vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including in developing countries," they wrote. "Rather, the waiver would undermine the very innovation that has led to the record-breaking rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines already saving lives around the world, and it would not meaningfully improve vaccine availability."

The lawmakerssaid the international community should instead focus on overcoming "the real obstacles faced by developing countries in accessing vaccines and treatments, which does not require waiving intellectual property (IP) rights."

The Republicans suggested focusing on programs such as COVAX and the ACT Accelerator initiative.

"These efforts are providing real solutions for countries that need access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments without dismantling IP protections, even temporarily," the lawmakers wrote.

Democrats and international advocates argue President BidenJoe BidenGarland to emphasize national security, civil rights in first congressional appearance as attorney general Afghan president: 'Critically important' for US, NATO to fulfill security funding commitments Schumer 'exploring' passing immigration unilaterally if talks unravel MORE has a moral imperative to act and to help the world and that sharingvaccine IP is the best way to do it.

Administration officials have not tipped their hand,butWhite House chief of staff Ron KlainRon KlainPressure builds for Biden to back vaccine patent waivers The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Biden sales pitch heads to Virginia and Louisiana Sunday shows - Biden economic agenda dominates MORE suggestedwhen pressed recently that patents and other IP protections are not the main barriers to increasing global vaccine access.

Some experts similarly caution that simply waiving patents would not solve the problem, given that the vaccines are very difficult to produce. Having the recipe for a vaccine does not necessarily mean a drugmaker could produce it.

In an interview with the Financial Timeson Monday, top infectious diseases expert Anthony FauciAnthony FauciThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Can Cheney defy the odds and survive again? Overnight Health Care: WHO-backed Covax gets a boost from Moderna Experts say that herd immunity is unlikely soon, if ever MORE suggested he was "agnostic" to the idea of an IP waiver but did not want to spend time being tied up in court because of the inevitable pharmaceutical industry lawsuits.

If you take too long, people are going to die, Fauci told the paper. There are other ways to ramp up vaccine production around the world.

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House Republicans urge opposition to vaccine patent waiver | TheHill - The Hill