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Democratic State Senate candidate Andrea Hunley said abortion is an economic issue as she spoke to reporters on Sept. 15, the day Indiana's near-total abortion ban took effect.

Democratic state legislative candidates say the only way to repeal Indianas near-total abortion ban is by electing Democrats to the Statehouse.

Candidates issued a call to action Thursday, the day the ban took effect.

Joey Mayer is running against Rep. Donna Schaibley (R-Carmel), an incumbent in a suburban district north of Indianapolis. She said shes been shocked how, even when she goes door-to-door to talk about economic issues, voters of both parties turn the conversation back to the abortion ban.

If the Indiana GOP had bothered to listen to their own polling or actually talk to the people they represent like were doing, they would know how far out of step SEA 1 is from what the people of Indiana want, Mayer said.

Republicans insist inflation and the economy are the biggest issues this election. Democratic Senate candidate Andrea Hunley said abortion is an economic issue, too.

When families are concerned about how they are going to pay for gas and how they are going to pay for groceries, they cannot also be concerned about how they are going to feed another mouth in their home, Hunley said.

Republicans are largely expected to maintain their supermajorities in the Indiana House and Senate.

Contact reporter Brandon atbsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.

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Indiana Democrats issue call to action for voters on first day of abortion ban - WFYI

Four top progressive advocacy groups are calling on Democrats to campaign affirmatively on immigration, countering Republican rhetoric on the issue rather than pivoting away from it.

In a memo released Tuesday by Community Change Action, Mi Familia Vota, SEIU and United We Dream Action, the groups shared internal message testing they hope will encourage Democrats to take a more positive stance on the issue.

Community Change Action, Mi Familia Vota, SEIU, and United We Dream Action envision a future where our society treats immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers with dignity and respect, wrote the groups in the internal memo reviewed by The Hill.

We know this vision is in jeopardy if the GOP gains control of Congress and other state and local seats across the country as they continue their dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric that leads to bad policies and even worse outcomes for our communities, they added.

The memos release two months before the midterms comes as many Democrats have shied away from immigration, although some high-profile Democrats in tight races have already leaned in.

Bruna Bouhid, communications director for United We Dream, pointed to campaigns in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas, where Democrats Charlie Crist, John Fetterman and Michelle Vallejo have released ads countering the Republican narrative on immigration.

Thats what they should be doing, going on the counteroffensive. What Charlie Crist is doing is effective. Using something thats quite popular and has majority support to remind voters what hes about, said Bouhid.

Crist is running for governor against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Fetterman is running for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat, and Vallejo is running for a House seat in South Texas.

Still, many Democrats see immigration as a risky issue, particularly as Republicans merge border security issues with immigration policy.

Using the motto Bidens Border Crisis, GOP candidates have sought to paint the Biden administration as opening the border to smuggling, cartel crime and unfettered migration, often jumping from criticism of Bidens asylum policy to domestic drug overdose statistics.

You have people coming across illegally from countries all over the world. And so what has that gotten us? We now, in this country, have the leading cause of death for people 18 to 45 as fentanyl overdose, said DeSantis in June.

While both immigration and fentanyl seizures remain high, most experts agree migration flows and drug smuggling are separate phenomena.

The probability [that migrants are] going to carry some kind of illicit narcotic is probably close to zero, Victor Manjarrez, director for the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas, El Paso, told NPR last month.

And thats a distinction the four groups underwriting the memo believe voters can make.

There are a lot of different things the Democratic Party can point to in a positive way to counter these attacks, but were hearing silence, said Bouhid.

The most accessible issue for Democrats laid out in the memo is a defense of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

That program is popular with voters across the political spectrum, and its popularity resisted a Republican push to frame it as executive overreach by the Obama administration, and a concerted effort to shut it down through the court system and through administrative action by the Trump administration.

The groups tested a variety of messages in different states, measuring their power to mobilize certain groups of voters and noting where other groups were discouraged from voting.

In Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Texas, the following message helped encourage Latino youth voters to openly support pro-immigration policies, while discouraging moderate-to-conservative voter participation, according to the memo.

A handful of Republican politicians are obsessed with uprooting our communities by deporting DACA recipients and their families. They are fueling fears about immigrants as a way to divide us. But, we know the truth, DACA recipients, and all immigrants, play a vital role in creating thriving communities. We need to elect politicians who will defend the right of DACA recipients to stay in our communities with a pathway to citizenship, it said.

The groups found that messages attacking Republicans for their stance on programs like DACA and messages heightening the dignity of asylum-seekers were most likely to discourage conservatives from voting.

The memo was released publicly by the four groups independent expenditure wings, meaning they are not allowed to directly coordinate or donate to campaigns.

Community Change Action is the political wing of Community change, a group founded in 1968 as a civil rights and low-income community organizer; Mi Familia Vota is one of the countrys largest grassroots Latino voter organizations; SEIU is a union that represents nearly 2 million workers in health care, property services and government; and United We Dream Action is the political wing of United We Dream, a youth immigrant advocacy organization.

The rest is here:
Progressive groups call on Democrats to lean in on immigration - The Hill

Democrats are questioning whether theyre missing former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), as Nevada now looms as Republicans best chance of picking off a Senate Democratic incumbent amid stumbles by GOP candidates in Arizona and Georgia.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) entered the 2022 election cycle as a strongly positioned incumbent who was viewed as holding a safer seat than several of her colleagues, including Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).

Less than two months from Election Day, however, Senate Republicans now view Cortez Masto as their most promising target, raising questions about how much Democrats strength has slipped in Nevada since Reids retirement and death.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) on Monday pointed to Ohio and North Carolina as other states where Democratic candidates are exceeding expectations, but he admitted that Nevada is a tough state for us.

And Catherine will tell you the same, he added, referring to Cortez Masto. Its been up or down 1 or 2 points for a long time.

Asked if Democrats are missing Reid, Durbin exclaimed, I miss him every day.

He also said that of course Democrats miss Reids political muscle in Nevada, acknowledging, Theres no replacement for Harry. He was Mr. Nevada, and he knew how to make it work.

Even so, Durbin insisted that Catherines the best and predicted that shell do very well.

But polls show that if Cortez Masto hangs on to win reelection, it will be by the slimmest of margins.

An AARP-commissioned poll conducted last month showed Cortez Masto leading her Republican opponent, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, by less than 4 points, within the surveys margin of error.

Another poll conducted last month by the Republican Trafalgar Group showed Laxalt leading by nearly 3 points.

The tight polling numbers are all the more concerning for Democrats because Cortez Masto has received significantly more support from outside groups than Laxalt.

Outside groups have spent$7.9 millionin support of Cortez Masto compared to$4 millionin support of Laxalt and$13.9 millionagainst Laxalt compared to$8.5 millionagainst Cortez Masto, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan research group.

Laxalts resilience in the polls also comes despite vulnerabilities as a candidate.

Like other Trump-backed candidates who won Senate primaries this year, Laxalt embraced former President Trumps false allegation that the 2020 election was stolen because of voter fraud. He has also claimed that ballots for ineligible and dead voters were fraudulently counted for President Biden in Nevada.

Jon Ralston, the CEO of The Nevada Independent and the most respected political commentator in the state, said, Harry Reids acolytes are still around and are still running the machine, so to speak.

Ralston said Cortez Masto has proved to be a formidable fundraiser.

Her campaign reported raising more than $7.5 million in the second quarter of this year after raising $4.4 million in the first quarter, giving her campaign $10 million in cash on hand to start July.

But Ralston added that if you dont have Harry Reid you cant raise as much money, and so you are handicapped to some extent.

Ralston said Reid and his political machine were huge factors behind Cortez Mastos victory in 2016, an otherwise a disappointing election cycle for Democrats. She won the seat that Reid held from 1987 to 2017.

He also argued that she ran against a much better candidate in former Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) than she is facing now.

Adam Laxalt, who Ive told virtually anyone who will listen, is an absolutely terrible candidate, Ralston said, citing his embrace of Trumps election fraud claims and ethical issues related to his term as state attorney general.

Yet National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) on Monday pointed to Nevada and Georgia as the two most promising pickup opportunities for Republicans, pointing to the low approval ratings of Biden and the Senate Democratic incumbents.

If you look at the polls, it would suggest [in] those two states we have every opportunity, he said. Bidens numbers in all of our swing states are under 40 [percent] and all the Democratic candidates are under 50 [percent]. Its rightful to tie every one of those candidates to Biden.

Ralston said its somewhat easier to tie Cortez Masto to Biden, whose approval rating in Nevada stood at 41 percent last month, because she doesnt have as strong a brand as some other politicians.

[Because] shes much more of a work horse than a show horse, its easier to define her as a just a Biden clone, he said. I think that definitely has hurt her.

Democrats familiar with Reids famed political machine say its still a force to be reckoned with and will churn out large numbers of voters for Cortez Masto. But Democratic strategists also acknowledge theres been a major void in Nevadas Democratic power structure since Reid died in December at the age of 82.

Kami Dempsey-Goudie, a Nevada-based political consultant who mainly works with Democrats but has worked with Republicans as well, said Democrats miss Reid but are still benefiting from the political operation he built over the decades.

I think they miss him a lot, but I think they also feel a lot of his presence here. A lot of his original staff and what they call the Reid machine is functioning and working aggressively, she said, noting that former Reid staffers are still involved in state political races.

She cited Rebecca Lambe, who worked closely with Reid to rebuild the state party after 2002, and Megan Jones, a longtime Reid aide who recently joined Vice President Harriss staff, as two key political players active in the state.

But she said the machine doesnt run quite as efficiently without Reid.

I think hes missed in a way where one phone call from him to certain people got a job [advanced] further down the road in a quicker time frame, so thats really missed by Democrats, said Dempsey-Goudie.

Democrats dont have as big a lead over Republicans in voter registration as they have in past election cycles, which will make Laxalt more competitive, Democrats acknowledge.

Mike Lux, a longtime Democratic strategist, hailed Reid as a political mastermind.

Nevadas always been a close state, he said, noting that Reid won reelection in 1998 by fewer than 500 votes. A number of Harrys elections were quite close so this is a swing state. Its been a swing state for about 20 years.

If Harry were still around, it would make it easier to win because he was a brilliant political strategist and he was a great leader and he brought people together. Obviously he is sorely missed so that makes it tougher, he said.

When asked about Reids missing influence on the Nevada race, Cortez Masto told The Hill that voters would make up their own minds about who to support.

Nevadans are always going to decide their races, no matter what, she said, adding that Nevada is independent, strong and that ultimately, at the end of the day, its the voters who decide who theyre going to elect.

Asked whether the Democrats get-out-the-vote operation remains as strong as it used to be now that Reid is gone, Cortez Masto replied, Absolutely. Yup. Absolutely.

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Democrats wonder if theyre missing Harry Reid in Nevada - The Hill

Vice President Kamala Harris cant wait to end the filibuster. Surely, that could have no unforeseen consequences for Democrats in the coming years.

Speaking during the Democratic National Committees summer meeting, Harris said that she couldnt wait to end the legislative filibuster. You know, our president, Joe Biden, he's been clear, she said. He's kind of done with those archaic Senate rules that are standing in the way of those two issues. And, you know, for me, as vice president, I'm also president of the Senate. ... I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights. I cannot wait! Fifty-nine days.

Harris seems to think that the midterm elections will land Democrats a large-enough Senate majority that they can finally abolish the filibuster. She is ignoring the fact that Republicans have just as good of a chance to take the Senate as Democrats do to hold it. Also, Republicans remain the favorites to take the House of Representatives. Democrats may not even have an opportunity to both abolish the filibuster and pass legislation.

But even if all goes well for them, as Harris is anticipating, Democrats will come to regret this decision before long. Who can forget when, in 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gloated about abolishing the filibuster for most presidential nominations? Just one year later, Republicans flipped nine Senate seats for a 54-46 majority.

That set the stage for Republicans to confirm not one, not two, but three Supreme Court justices, shifting the balance of the court to the point that whiny Democrats have introduced court-packing as a solution. Democrats were powerless to object, especially after they had promised to abolish the filibuster against Supreme Court nominees just before a 2016 election they were so completely certain they were going to win.

Abolishing the legislative filibuster will lead to the same result.

Take abortion. Harris and Senate Democrats could legalize abortion up to birth by a 51-vote majority, sure, and then Republicans could outlaw it by the same threshold just two years later. Even an outright ban wouldnt be necessary: If Republicans limited abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, California and New York would be forced to restrict abortion regardless of how loudly activists screamed in protest.

We are potentially just two years removed from Republicans having unified control of Congress and the White House with a 53-47 Senate majority. With those numbers, Republicans could put federal restrictions on abortion, reform union membership, abolish gun control measures in liberal states, defund Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities, and much more. These arent simply guesses or suggestions: Most of this is what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has specifically promised.

McConnell lived up to his promise when he told Reid that Democrats would regret their decision sooner than they thought. He and Senate Republicans will do the same if they follow through on Harriss enthusiasm. Abolishing the filibuster will give Republicans the same power that Democrats themselves crave. If they haven't realized that by now, they will find out soon enough the next time Republicans take Congress.

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Democrats are aiming to score an own-goal by abolishing the filibuster - Washington Examiner

More than 30 congressional Democrats on Tuesday called on federal agencies to address what they deemed as misguided school safety policies aimed at preventing school shootings.

In a letter to the Department of Justice, Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services, House lawmakers said the government has failed to protect schoolchildren and families in the wake of at least 30 school shootings this year, including the May tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Schools are supposed to be safe havens for children, parents, educators, custodial and cafeteriastaff, and communities. But for far too many people they are not, the letter reads. We are deeply troubled by the inability to keep our children and communities safe, the bedrock on which any country rests. It is time to undo the harm and trauma tragedies like the Uvalde massacre leave behind in our schools and with our children.

The letter was signed by prominent House Democrats, including Reps. Cori Bush (Mo.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.),Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar(Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Andre Carson (Ind.).

House lawmakers said federal, state and local agencies have failed the American public by focusing school safety prevention efforts on hiring, retaining and funding school resource officers, an approach they called counterproductive and harmful.

Representatives pointed to the Community Oriented Policing Services in Schools Program (COPS), which has primarily supported community policing initiatives since 1995 but has also led to the hiring of 590 school resource officers (SROs) across 289 communities. For fiscal 2023, the Biden administration has requested increased funds for the COPS budget.

The Democrats argued that schools with armed SROs have higher rates of death and also more youth expulsions and arrests. They also pointed to the more than 300 officers who responded to the Uvalde school shooting, but who failed to act for more than an hour while a gunman had locked himself into two adjoining classrooms with children who were still alive.

Armed officers in schools are, at best, an inadequate response to violence that has alreadyoccurred, not a prevention strategy, lawmakers wrote.

Since the 1999 shooting at Columbine, school shootings have soared, reaching an all-time high of 251 last year, according to the K-12 school shooting database. Despite the rise, major gun control legislation was tied up until the first major federal gun control bill in decades was passed this year after the Uvalde shooting.

Over the years, school shooting prevention methods have largely revolved around bolstering school security, including security technology and emergency plans.

Gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety says among the most effective ways to prevent school shootings is to address violence at its earliest stages and block access to firearms.

Lawmakers on Tuesday proposed more programs to support students, including mental health resources, but they requested the federal agencies to conduct a review of what is most appropriate.

We urge you to break this cycle of violence and recommit to public health and safety strategies that will ensure our schools are safe for all students, they wrote in the letter. This requires thinking comprehensively about violence in our schools to ensure that we prevent violence by resolving the root causes of conflict that can escalate into violence not simply remedy its impact.

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Democrats call on federal agencies to address misguided school shooting prevention efforts - The Hill