by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Daily Kos
Watch him pledge his allegiance to … um … uh …
What’s that definition of insanity again?
Oh, Arizona.
Maybe telling them to take a hike wasn’t the best plan after all.
And wouldn’t you know it—Trump just got involved.
If you think things are bad now …
Why do they keep picking fights they can’t possibly win?
This will definitely get under his skin.
Bad news for Trump if Republican voters would rather vote for someone who’s not even on the ballot.
It’s about damn time.
Campaign Action
by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Daily Kos
Donald Trump has had a lot to complain about since his first day in court. Whether it’s
or
for bringing dozens of charges against, one thing is clear: He’s very uncomfortable about it all. Like, physically uncomfortable.
At the end of his first day in court, Trump claimed that “everybody was freezing” in the “freezing room” of the New York City courthouse.
On Thursday, Trump’s kvetch session to the media included complaints of having to sit as “straight as I can all day long,” in a courtroom that is “freezing, by the way.”
And on Friday, ornery old Trump wondered aloud why someone couldn’t “get the temperature up” in the courthouse, because “it shouldn’t be that complicated.”
If Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis
, Trump will be complaining about how hot his
courtroom is this summer. Fingers crossed!
Campaign Action
by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Daily Kos
by Gloria Rebecca Gomez,
Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes, both staunch reproductive rights advocates who ran on promises to protect abortion access, unveiled a
on Thursday that includes information on Arizona’s changing abortion laws and connects women seeking a procedure with providers.
The website’s launch follows a month of turmoil in the political arena and uncertainty for healthcare providers across the state after the Arizona Supreme Court
.
The law, which was passed before Arizona became a state, threatens doctors with a minimum of 2 years in prison for performing an abortion for any other reason than saving a woman’s life. That punishment isn’t expected to be enforceable until June 8 due to court orders that delay the ruling’s effect. Until then, a 15-week limitation on abortion is the law of the land.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Hobbs said the new website, which is a part of her official Arizona governor’s website, serves as an educational tool to keep Arizonans informed amid the shifting legal landscape.
“The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the 1864 total abortion ban left millions of women and doctors wondering what their rights are when seeking or providing reproductive health care. I’m proud to deliver this comprehensive website to provide timely updates, trusted resources, and a safe venue to seek reproductive health care options,” she wrote.
“In the wake of the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to reimpose a near-total abortion ban from 1864, it is important for us to provide accurate, up-to-date information to Arizonans,” echoed Mayes.
The website acknowledges that the legal status of abortions in Arizona is not yet settled.
“The earliest the 1864 near-total abortion ban could take effect is June 8, 2024. This page will be updated as we learn more,” reads a banner at the top of the FAQ webpage.
While the state Supreme Court upheld the 1864 law, litigation in the case is still ongoing. Earlier this week,
, and Planned Parenthood Arizona, which has led the court challenge against the law, has until the end of the month to file an intent to pursue arguments that the law is unconstitutional.
Democratic lawmakers in the state legislature, with the help of a handful of Republicans, are also
that could mean the 1864 law will only be temporarily enforceable after it goes into effect over the summer. And Arizona voters will likely get a chance to weigh in on the legality of abortion in November, when a pro-abortion initiative enshrining the procedure as a right in the state Constitution is expected to appear on the ballot.
In the meantime, however, access to abortion is uncertain. Reproductive rights groups fear a repeat of 2022, when the state’s abortion clinics shuttered while the 1864 law was briefly in place after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and women seeking help were left in the lurch.
An executive order issued by Hobbs last year may prevent the criminalization of any doctor. The order
in the attorney general’s office, preemptively blocking any attempt from county attorneys to take doctors to court. And because Mayes has repeatedly stated that she won’t prosecute any abortion law violation, the 1864 law may never be enforced even if it goes into effect.
But the legal strength of the order has yet to be tested in court, and county attorneys protested its passage, warning they would launch a lawsuit against it. So far, no such challenge has materialized, though at least one county attorney, Yavapai County’s Dennis McGrane, has
.
The website includes information on reproductive health clinics in the state, how to obtain free or low-cost birth control, mental health helplines and a link to a search engine to find a nearby abortion clinic. Also included is information on how to cover an out-of-state abortion. The rates of women who seek abortion care in other states have spiked in the post-Roe world. As many as 21 states currently ban or restrict the procedure.
“It’s more important than ever to know how to find the care you need,” reads the title of the website’s list of resources.
In their written statements, Hobbs and Mayes vowed to continue working to safeguard abortion access.
“I refuse to accept a future in which my 22-year-old daughter has fewer rights than I did when I was her age, and I refuse to let radical extremists take control of women’s bodies,” Hobbs said.
“Rest assured, I’ll do everything I can to prevent this 160-year-old law from ever taking effect,” added Mayes.
is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on
and
.
Campaign Action
by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Daily Kos
If you’re a
trying to catch Donald Trump’s eye, there are worse ways to do it than bragging about killing your dog for doing ordinary dog things.
Kristi Noem, who’s best known as the
of one of America’s top rectangular states, has added capricious dog killer to her résumé. And while in another place, time, or universe it might have seemed outlandish to suggest she’s mentioning her dog-murdering bona fides in order to woo
, in this political climate, that theory seriously has to be considered.
In a new book to be released next month and shared with
, Noem says she killed her “untrainable” 14-month-old hunting dog Cricket after it ate a local family’s chickens. Yes, she wrote this down—and actually tried to use it as an example of her surpassing grit, determination, and wisdom.
According to Noem, Cricket was an incorrigible dog. So incorrigible that at one point, Noem used an electronic collar (
) to force the dog to behave. That didn’t work, and one day on the way home from a pheasant hunt—which Cricket ruined by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” (i.e., acting like a dog)—Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”
Noem, who had just gotten back from shooting at wild birds, decided Cricket, who’d killed some far-worthier domesticated birds, had behaved like “a trained assassin,” and she knew she had to get rid of her.
“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, claiming she was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
It was then that Noem realized she “had to put her down.”
Oh, but she wasn’t done. As it happens, her dog murder touched off a mini-killing spree. “It was not a pleasant job,” she wrote, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
And that’s when
.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.”
Of course, Republicans as a rule have a long and sordid history with dogs.
There was Richard Nixon and his horribly insincere and mawkish
. There was Mitt Romney—one of the “good” Republicans—
for a jaunty 12-hour road trip. And there’s Florida senator-cum-
Rick Scott, who adopted a dog in 2012 when he ran for governor, named him Reagan, and then
. (Unfortunately, when the real Reagan did disgusting Reagan things
, Republicans just clung to him harder.)
But as they say, the cruelty is the point. In fact, Republicans—particularly in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health—have lately been wearing their insensate evil as a badge of honor.
As Julie Alderman Boudrea of the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge
of Noem’s dog-killing confession, “This is absolutely part of the audition” to be Trump’s VP because he hates dogs and, “This is what Trump wants in a VP; someone who will literally murder a puppy if it gets in her way.”
Note
when she was recently asked about South Dakota’s near-absolute abortion ban.
“We rely on South Dakota, on the fact that I’m pro-life and we have a law that says that there is an exception for the life of the mother, and I just don’t believe a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy,” said Noem in response to a question from CNN’s Dana Bash.
In other words, a 12-year-old girl being brutally raped is a tragedy, but allowing her to choose whether to take her rapist’s baby to term is an equal, if not greater, tragedy.
The question is, if these kinds of outrages aren’t dealbreakers for Republican voters, what would or could be? Maybe nothing. After all, Trump bragged—
—about pursuing married women, and the GOP just loved him more.
The only conclusion? This is exactly the kind of cruelty GOP voters want. And they’re increasingly bad at hiding it.
Campaign Action
by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Daily Kos
Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee
Thursday that he plans to sign Republican-driven legislation that will let teachers carry guns in classrooms.
“What’s important to me is that we give districts tools,” Lee said of
that is predicated on the deranged theory that more guns in schools will somehow create less gun violence. “That’s what we want more than anything is to add an additional tool, an additional option, for our kids to be as safe as possible in schools.”
Passed by the state House on Tuesday,
allows teachers to carry concealed firearms in districts that choose the option and clear it with local law enforcement agencies. This is the latest attempt by members of the GOP-controlled Tennessee Legislature to pretend they are listening to increasing calls from their constituents to do something about gun violence.
Opponents of introducing more guns into schools question how arming teachers with very minimal training is going to stop potential mass shooters
, among many other concerns.
Surveys cited by nonprofit gun violence prevention group
show that most teachers and parents of school-aged children are opposed to arming teachers. No matter who has the guns, a long list of past incidents proves that the presence of
.
The Tennessee bill requires participating teachers to receive 40 hours of gun safety training. That is less than
—which was already being criticized for being far less than the requirement for police recruits.
In the wake of a March 2023
in Nashville that left three children and three staffers dead, Tennessee lawmakers have faced pressure from constituents to do something about the
—gun violence. Since that time:
-
Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett said,
”
-
Republicans in the state House
for protesting gun violence.
-
GOP legislators
on the floor of the state House during a special session tasked with creating common-sense gun laws.
-
And the GOP-controlled House
during gun law debates.
Tennessee Republicans’ belief that more guns in schools = safety is not simply delusional: It’s dangerous.
Here’s one way to avoid dealing with election results you don’t like: just wipe them from the record books. It’s not Orwell—it’s Arizona, and we’re talking all about it on this week’s episode of “The Downballot.” This fall, voters have the chance to deny new terms to two conservative Supreme Court justices, but a Republican amendment would retroactively declare those elections null and void—and all but eliminate the system Arizona has used to evaluate judges for 50 years. We’re going to guess voters won’t like this one bit … if it even makes it to the ballot in the first place.
Campaign Action
