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A bill to enshrine the right to abortion in federal law was blocked by Senate Republicans on Monday. Although Democrats expected the bill to fail, they brought the measure forward at a perilous moment for abortion rights, to ensure votes were recorded.

The supreme court is expected in June to decide a Mississippi case which could severely curtail or gut abortion rights nationally.

On Monday, Democrats were 14 votes shy of the 60 needed to bring the bill to the floor for debate. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, was the only Democrat to join Republicans.

Abortion is a fundamental right and womens decisions over womens healthcare belong to women, not to extremist rightwing legislators, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters.

Every American deserves to know where their senator stands on an issue as important as the right to choose.

In 1973, the supreme court invalidated dozens of state abortion bans in its landmark Roe v Wade ruling, which found a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Since then, Roe has protected womens right to abort a pregnancy to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, generally regarded as 22 to 24 weeks gestation.

The bill brought before the Senate on Monday, the Womens Health Protection Act (WHPA), would codify the rights provided by Roe in federal law. Last September, it was passed by the Democrat-controlled House.

Tonight we voted in the Senate to say that Roe v Wade is the law of the land, said Patty Murray of Washington state, a lead sponsor of the bill, after it failed.

Democrats stood up and said women should make their own healthcare decisions. We trust women. We trust patients. We trust their doctors.

In oral arguments in the Mississippi case, justices showed an interest in undermining or overturning Roe. If the conservative majority were to reverse Roe, abortion would effectively become a state issue. In that scenario, 26 states are expected to ban abortion immediately or as quickly as possible.

The 6-3 conservative court has already permitted severe restrictions in Texas, which it allowed to enact a ban at six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.

The WHPA would codify a right American women have had for generations and block medically unnecessary restrictions. That would undo hundreds of laws passed by right-leaning states that have sought to make abortion more expensive and difficult to obtain, often without any medical benefit to women.

Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, called the WHPA extreme, adding: Its an egregious violation of the most fundamental of all human rights, and that is the right to life.

Young women, poor women and women of color disproportionately seek abortion. Abortion bans would fall heavily on such populations, forcing millions to travel hundreds of miles to seek abortion and leaving others with few options except clandestine providers or unwanted pregnancy.

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Republicans and Joe Manchin block Senate bill to secure abortion rights - The Guardian

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, U.S. February 26, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello

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WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - A prominent Senate Republican said on Saturday that his party would not deserve to govern after November's midterm elections unless it was willing to adopt his controversial agenda that has rankled some Republicans and drawn attacks from Democrats.

Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told an audience of conservatives in Orlando, Florida, that his 11-point "Rescue America" plan is needed to preserve the country against what he described as an onslaught of "woke" policies from the left.

The plan, which Scott launched earlier this week, includes proposals that would impose income taxes on Americans who currently pay none and require all federal legislation to sunset after five years.

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"If the Republicans return to Washington's business as usual, if we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to America's collapse, we actually don't deserve to govern," Scott told the Conservative Political Action Conference.

His plan is "going to be ridiculed by the left, mocked by Washington insiders and strike fear in the heart of some Republicans," Scott said. "This is not the time to be timid. This is the time to be bold."

The initiative puts him at odds with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has avoided issuing a legislative plan in an effort to focus Republicans on criticism of President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies.

The Senate is currently split 50-50, with Democrats in control because Vice President Kamala Harris wields a tie-breaking vote. To retake the majority, Republicans would need support from independent voters, who party strategists fear could be put off by the Scott proposal.

Scott spokesman Chris Hartline said the senator is pushing the plan on his own, not as head of the Senate Republican campaign arm.

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Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S. senator says Republicans only deserve to govern if they adopt his agenda - Reuters.com

(The Center Square) High oil prices could be a good thing for Alaska residents.

Alaska's House Majority is proposing a $1,300 payment to state residents to deflect high energy costs and inflation. It says it can afford it because oil is climbing to more than $100 a barrel, which means more oil and gas revenue for the state's general fund.

The money would be in addition to the state's Permanent Fund Distribution (PFD).

Between the negative economic effects of COVID and escalating energy costs, our residents are suffering, House Speaker Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, said. With the influx of new revenue, we are in a position to provide an Energy Relief Check to Alaskans, and that is exactly what the House Coalition intends to do."

High fuel prices may be good for the state's coffers but it hurts consumers.

Fuel prices could very well double by the end of the year, Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a Twitter post he agreed with the House Majority's proposal, citing it as an increase to PFD payments.

"The House Coalition announcement is better late than never, but the work is not yet done," Dunleavy said. "For months now, I have been pointing out that rising oil prices are benefitting government finances but are hurting Alaskans, and for years I have been asking the Legislature to either follow the statutory PFD formula or to change it with the approval of the people."

The payment will be included in the state's fiscal year 2023 budget, which the House Finance Committee is beginning to craft this week. Lawmakers are still debating the amount of PFD payments for this year, however.

Dunleavy is pushing for a constitutional amendment that he said would split the oil and mineral dividends equitably between the PFD and state services.

Lawmakers are considering two bills, including one that would give 75% to the state and set aside 25% for payments to residents and another with a 50-50 split.

The House Finance Committee began budget hearings Thursday and will continue until Saturday.

Dunleavey revealed his $10.9 billion budget proposal in December. Lawmakers have been critical of the spending plan, which relies on oil prices.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich said in response to Dunleavy's state of the state address that basing a budget on the stock market and the volatile price of oil "is not a sustainable plan for our next generation."

Other lawmakers said they are concerned that Dunleavy wants to spend $3.75 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka,asked whether some of the money could be saved and said there was the possibility "we walk our state into significant taxes and huge deficits."

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Alaska Republicans want to give residents $1300 to cover energy costs - The Center Square

This latest congressional map coughed up by the Republican majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission is a joke.

Not a funny, ha-ha joke. A horrible joke of a map where five statehouse Republicans are once again trying to con the public and slip one by the Ohio Supreme Court.

It boggles the mind how they could, with straight faces, present a map that creates 10 Republican congressional districts, three Democratic districts and two that ostensibly lean Democratic but in fact could go either way and say it is not gerrymandered.

And then, in their meeting Wednesday where they passed this hash, they wagged their fingers at the two Democrats on the commission because they wouldn't go along with this nonsense; and pretended to have their feelings hurt by the Democrats' refusal to play along.

David Niven, a political professor at the University of Cincinnati who has advised the Fair Districts Coalition, made fun of the Republicans and their sham of being offended by the Democrats' opposition.

It was, Niven said on Twitter, as if the Republican members of the commission were saying, "The nerve of these Democrats; here we are trying to dig their graves, the least they could do is pick up a shovel and help."

They are so desperate to hold their grip on power in the Ohio Statehouse that they will throw the entire election system in Ohio into utter, absolute chaos and pretend they are blameless and the victims of a rogue majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, who have rejected their state legislative and congressional district maps at every turn.

This new one they came up with will almost certainly be challenged in court by the same voting rights groups who have successfully fought off the Republicans' previous attempts to ram through unconstitutional four-year maps with zero Democratic support.

The Republicans on the commission and their allies in the Ohio General Assembly are hoping against hope that Ohioans will blame the Ohio Supreme Court for the current mess and the uncertainty it has created for the May 3 Ohio primary.

Blame the court for what? Following the Ohio constitution? Following the mandates of the constitutional amendments passed by over 70% of the voters in both 2015 and 2018 setting new rules for drawing legislative district lines? For insisting that the maps follow the 54%/46% split between Republican and Democratic votes in Ohio elections over the past decade?

Well, the court is guilty of all of that.

The rest of the confusion and chaos you can lay at the feet of five Republican commissioners who seem determined to thumb their noses at Ohio voters, the Ohio Supreme Court, and anyone else who stands in their way.

These five people have names, by the way. If you follow Ohio politics at all, you probably know them.

They are the two ringleaders of the commission, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman and Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp; and three statewide elected officials Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and State Auditor Keith Faber.

DeWine, Jason Whitman

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All others AP

The two Democrats on the commission are State Sen. Vernon Sykes of Akron and State Rep. Allison Russo, the newly elected minority leader of the Ohio House.

LaRose, the chief elections officer of the state, has ordered the 88 count boards of elections to use the current state legislative and congressional maps passed by the redistricting commission as they prepare the ballot for the May 3 primary even though neither set of maps have been signed off on by the Ohio Supreme Court.

And, the fact is, the county elected officials who actually have to do the work of putting on elections, are not at all certain they can get it done in time. The Ohio Association of Election Officials sent a letter last week to legislative leaders pleading with them to postpone this election, in part so there is more time to sort out this mess with the maps.

At Wednesday's meeting of the redistricting commission, Russo offered the Republicans an alternative a map that created eight Republican congressional districts, six Democratic and one Democratic-leaner that could go either way. She said she was willing to work with the Republicans to hammer out the details.

The Republicans turned it down flat.

Instead, Huffman launched into a long, convoluted argument, using mile-long sentences that would have made my eighth grade English teacher's head hurt, which boiled down to this: At this stage of the process, we don't have to follow the rules and can do whatever we want.

And then they proceeded to do so.

Russo seemed flabbergasted by Huffman's long-winded assertion.

"That is like me robbing a bank and saying it is my money," Russo said.

Is there any good news for Democrats in this new congressional map?

Well, maybe in Hamilton County. Maybe.

Congressman Steve Chabot's backside was protected back in 2011 when the Republicans in the legislature grafted heavily Republican Warren County onto his 1st Congressional District, connected by a tiny land bridge.

The land bridge is still there, but the district now includes the entire city of Cincinnati, a very, very blue place where Joe Biden won 76% of the vote in 2020. The partisan split under the new map is at 51% Democratic, giving the Democrats a slight advantage. But, in fact, it is a toss-up district the only real jump ball district on the GOP map.

There is no doubt this silly map will end up being challenged before the Ohio Supreme Court, as have the others.

But, unlike the state legislative maps, there is nothing in the language of the 2018 constitutional amendment that would prevent the Ohio Supreme Court from drawing its own map or hiring a special master to do so.

In the meantime, Ohioans are subjected to this seemingly endless charade yet again.

It's like being stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, without Bill Murray around to provide some humor.

There's nothing funny about this disaster.

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Commentary: Ohio voters get an encore presentation of Republicans thumbing their noses at them - WVXU

The South Carolina House on Wednesday unanimously approved allowing two weeks of early voting and other smaller changes to state election laws, uniting Democrats and Republicans on issues that have been contentious in other states.

The 114-0 vote sends the bill to the state Senate.

Democrats praised Republicans for listening to them and crafting a bill they could support, even if there were a few partisan votes on alterations like making voter fraud a felony and requiring audits of at least 5% of all votes in a county in the days after an election.

The subcommittee that crafted the bill did a great job in a bipartisan effort to put a good bill together that we can all live with. I would ask you to please consider not messing the bill up with all these crazy amendments, Democratic Rep. Leon Howard of Columbia asked his Republican colleagues.

And Republicans did help defeat changes that might have had Democrats vote against the entire bill like closing primaries to only party members or requiring a driver's license or voter ID number for witnesses who sign absentee ballots.

The biggest change in the bill would be to make South Carolina the 45th state to allow anyone to vote outside of Election Day without an excuse.

The state would have two weeks of early voting with polls open from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. A formula that takes into account the number of registered voters and the size of the county would decide the number of early voting sites.

For many years, South Carolina has allowed people to cast absentee ballots in person, but they had to include an excuse for why they couldn't be at the polls on Election Day. Under the proposal, the state would go back to mail-in absentee ballots and voters would now have to include the last four digits of their Social Security numbers when requesting the ballots.

The bill allows poll workers to open absentee ballots earlier with penalties if they report results and bans fusion voting where candidates can appear on the ballot under multiple political parties.

This was truly the work of a lot of different people, said Rep. Brandon Newton, the Lancaster Republican who helped shepherd the bill through the House.

The bill also would make voter fraud a felony, increasing fines and possible jail time for people who try to vote under a false name, vote more than once or poll managers who intentionally break the law.

The House did defeat an effort to eliminate voters from clicking on one box and voting a straight ticket for all their party's candidates. But the biggest fight came over whether to only allow voters registered with a political party to vote in that party's primary.

Currently, primaries are open, so any registered voters can cast a ballot in the Democratic or Republican primaries.

If you want to vote for a Republican nominee, you need to be in the Republican party, said RJ May, a Republican from West Columbia. He said he was motivated by stories of members of the opposite party trying to cause chaos in open primaries.

But several Democrats and Republicans said in a state where the GOP dominates and the party divisions in counties are sharp, open primaries are key to keeping some sense of bipartisanship. In many races, the primaries are contested, while the major party candidate has no opposition in the general election.

Republican Rep. Kirkman Finlay said his mother is a staunch Democrat in very Democratic Richland County but she sure would like to vote for her son in the primary.

Republican Rep. Micah Caskey said his father also lives in Richland County, but is a supporter of Republican Rep. Nathan Ballentine and Democratic Sheriff Leon Lott.

Caskey said his dad would be disappointed to know when either of them leave office with closed primaries he would have no say in one of their replacements.

Im a Republican because of my value and I think in those terms because I'm a legislator," said Caskey of West Columbia. There are a lot of people out there who dont live in this isolated bubble where we think in partisan terms.

The rest is here:
In the SC House, Democrats and Republicans are united on allowing 2 weeks of early voting - WFAE