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Massachusetts Republicans held their state party convention on Saturday as they wrestle with how far to the right they should move in a deeply blue state.

Members of the state GOP gathered in Springfield ahead of this autumn's elections to hear from candidates and party leaders as they hope to rebuild a bloc that's lost nearly all of the levers of political power in the state.

The top job for Republicans is hanging on to the governors office.

Gov. Charlie Baker, who has remained popular with voters throughout his two terms in the corner office, has decided not to seek a third, four-year term. Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito are the only statewide Republican officeholders in Massachusetts.

Neither planned to attend Saturday's convention, reflecting a rift between them and former state Rep. James Lyons, the state's GOP chairman, a stalwart supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Former GOP state representative Geoff Diehl and Wrentham business owner Chris Doughty are both vying for the chance to succeed Baker. The first hurdle both candidates faced at Saturdays convention was gathering the support of at least 15% of delegates a threshold needed to make sure their name appears on the Sept. 6 primary ballot.

Diehl won the support of 71% of the delegates, while Doughty came away with 29%.

Diehl has the backing of Trump, who endorsed his candidacy in October, calling him strong on crime, election integrity, the southern border and taking care of veterans.

Diehl was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018 and lost to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He also served as co-chair for Trumps Massachusetts 2016 presidential campaign.

Doughty has touted his success at creating jobs as the president of a company that manufactures metal machine parts.

Hes said he wants to protect businesses, recruit high-paying jobs to the state, make Massachusetts an educational leader from early education through college and trade schools, and make the state more affordable.

Following a Republican tradition in Massachusetts politics, both candidates have named their preferred running mate although candidates for lieutenant governor and governor run separately in the primary and only as a ticket in the Nov. 8 general election.

Diehl is teaming up with former Republican State Rep. Leah Allen Cole while Doughty is hoping for a ticket with former state Rep. Kate Campanale.

Shiva Ayyadurai, who in 2020 lost a Republican primary bid for the U.S. Senate, has also said hes running for governor.

Whoever wins will face the winner of the Democratic primary for governor, a race that includes Attorney General Maura Healey and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.

There is little Republican primary drama in other statewide races.

Rayla Campbell, a Randolph resident and Republican who has worked in insurance and claims management, is running for secretary of state. Republican Jay McMahon, a trial attorney and lifelong Cape Cod resident, is running for attorney general, a job he ran for and lost in 2018 to Healey.

Anthony Amore, the head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is running for state auditor. Amore ran for secretary of state in 2018 and lost.

Originally posted here:
Mass. Republicans gather for convention and decide guv hopefuls Diehl, Doughty will make ballot - WBUR News

A police officer patrols with his dog at the Federal Reservein Washington September 1, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

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DAVOS, Switzerland, May 23 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey said Mondayit is likely Michael Barr will be confirmed as the Federal Reserve's Wall Street cop, although he has not yet decided on whether to support the nomination.

Asked by Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about Barr's prospects for confirmation, Toomey, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said: "I think it does look like he's likely to be confirmed."

The comments from Toomey, who led an effort to sink President Joe Biden's first nomination for the post, Sarah Bloom Raskin, are significant because it suggests Republicans will not mount a similar effort to challenge the nomination of Barr, who was a senior Treasury Department official under President Barack Obama.

Barr testified before the Banking panel last week as part of his effort to serve as the Fed's next vice chair for supervision, which would see him take on a sweeping portfolio overseeing the nation's largest banks. There, Toomey expressed some skepticism but there was little evidence of the type of concerted campaign from Republicans that ultimately forced Raskin to withdraw. read more

Toomey said he planned to meet with Barr again in the future before deciding how he would vote on his nomination.

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Reporting By Dan Burns; additional reporting by Pete Schroeder in WashingtonEditing by Nick Zieminski

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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EXCLUSIVE U.S. Republican Senator Toomey expects Barr to be confirmed to Fed - Reuters

If the Democratic party is considered progressive, then surely the Maine Republican party must be considered regressive.

The photo on the front page of the Portland Press Herald April 30th reflects part of a slogan that presumably reads: Move Maine Forward. Yet the platform presented at the GOP convention is anything but forward-moving; e.g. banning teaching of sex education through high school, discussion in schools of transgender identification or critical race theory. If this platform were to be instituted by successfully elected Republican candidates for the Maine Legislature, Maine society would be put squarely back in the Puritan era of the 17th Century.

What truths are Republicans so afraid of that they continue to want to force American voters to bury their collective head in the sand?

Warner PriceHarpswell

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Letter to the Editor: Republicans would take us backward - Press Herald

January 21, 2017 Womens March Washington DCPhoto: Shutterstock

Congressional Republicans have introduced a resolution creating a Womens Bill of Rights that mentions just one right, but only for cis women: the right to not see trans women in a public restroom. The rest of the Womens Bill of Rights is about definitions and the governments powers.

The Democrats are erasing women and the spaces that are uniquely ours, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), who is trying to get the resolution passed in the House. Despite leading Republicans on the Womens Bill of Rights, she has been endorsed by Arizona Right to Life and the Susan B. Anthony List because of her staunch opposition to reproductive freedom.

Related: GOP lawmaker has meltdown in public & screams at voters

The House version of the resolution has 11 co-sponsors and the Senate version was introduced by Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MO), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who just got booed last week for mocking transgender people at a commencement speech and then lied about what she said, getting booed even more.

The Republicans say that their resolution, called the Womens Bill of Rights, even though it does not include important rights women have fought for decades to obtain, like reproductive freedom, equal education, anti-discrimination protections, or the vote.

The resolution lists six points that it affirms. The first three are definitions. The fourth is about the right of cis women to not see trans women in certain spaces. And the last two are about the governments actions, not womens rights.

The resolutions first point says, for purposes of Federal law, a persons sex means his or her biological sex (either male or female) at birth, without saying exactly how that should be determined. While several physical aspects of peoples bodies are associated with gender, like chromosomes, genitalia, and hormone levels, they dont necessarily align and have often been used to tell some women especially women of color that theyre not really women.

The second and third points add more gendered terms and say that they too are defined according to biological sex. They do not mention any rights.

The resolution moves on to more substantive matters, saying that there are important reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons, domestic violence shelters, restrooms, and other areas in its fourth point. Forcing trans women to be sheltered with cis men in many of those situations, though, has led to violence against trans women.

The fifth point gives the government the right to distinguish between the sexes, which isnt at all a right for women.

The sixth point is about data collection, saying that federal, state, and local governments are required to base such data on the biological sex of individuals at birth, which, depending on what the data is about, could lead to inaccuracies in order to advance the Republicans political agenda.

All told, the Womens Bill of Rights only protects one right for women: the right to be in a womens prison (or shelter, etc.) with trans men but without trans women.

Several weeks ago, a leaked Supreme court decision several weeks ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization which could overturn Roe v. Wade and end the federal right to an abortion in the U.S. made abortion one of the most talked about issues in the U.S., so its hard to see how Republicans could have simply forgotten to include it in their Womens Bill of Rights.

The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted by the U.N. that is often described as an international womens bill of rights. It includes 30 articles describing rights that member states agree to protect for women, ranging from taking measures to end human trafficking to citizenship rights to ensuring that women can freely choose a spouse.

While the U.S. signed the CEDAW, its the only country that signed it without implementing it. The Republicans backing the Womens Bill of Rights could have looked to that landmark treaty for guidance but apparently, their motives were not to actually improve womens lives.

The radical Left has launched an attack on biology because they want to put themselves above God and they want to brainwash our daughters with their woke-ism, said Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), another Congressmember leading the resolution.

The Republican resolution is another in a long line of cynical attempts by anti-LGBTQ extremists around the country to erase transgender and nonbinary people from our communities, said Olivia Hunt of the National Center for Transgender Equality. More than a century of science has shown us that biology is far more complicated than what the authors of this resolution describe, and that trans and nonbinary peoples genders are just as real and just as valid as everyone elses. Science simply doesnt support this attempt at making our existence a culture war.

Read this article:
Republicans introduce Women's Bill of Rights that includes only one right for women - LGBTQ Nation

In the midst of a full-blown crisis for parents who need formula to feed their children, more than 90% of House Republicans decided on Wednesday that the shortage that has led to panic and despair is not actually that big a deal, with 192 (out of 208) GOP lawmakers voting against an emergency spending bill meant to address the terrifying situation. Sorry, babies! Thems the breaks.

While the bill, H.R. 7790, ultimately passed, it was no thanks to the cartoonishly evil Republican lawmakers, whod reportedly been urged by House minority whip Steve Scalise to vote nay, having claimed that Nancy Pelosi pushed the bill in hopes of covering up the administrations ineptitude by throwing additional money at the FDA with no plan to actually fix the problem, all while failing to hold the FDA accountable.The legislationwhich was voted on the same day the White House said that Joe Biden hadinvoked the Defense Production Actto expedite the production and delivery of formulaprovides $28 million in funding to the Food and Drug Administration for inspections of formula manufactured at foreign plants and to prevent shortages stemming from supply chain disruptions. Among those shooting down the bill? Florida representative Kat Cammack, who last week tweeted a photo of formula at a U.S. border detention center and decried the fact that babies of migrants detained by the U.S. government were being fed, as is required by law. Cammack, of course, is just one of many Republicans, including the famously shameless Tom Cotton and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have been more than happy to highlight the formula shortage and blame Biden for itwhich, based on Republicans actions on Wednesday, was apparently purely for show.

But H.R. 7790 wasnt the only formula bill voted on yesterday that a contingent of Republicans tried to stymie. There was also H.R. 7791, which passed with 414 yes votes despite the nays of GOP representatives Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Greene, Andy Biggs, Thomas Massie, Clay Higgins, Chip Roy, Paul Gosar, and Louie Gohmert. The legislation, introduced by Representative Jahana Hayes, helps poor women access more formula through the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which is apparently a bridge too far for these supposedly pro-life conservatives. The formula crisis comes amid the news that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, a move Republicans have cheered, which fits with their long-time m.o. of only caring about the sanctity of life up until that life exits the womb, after which its on its own.

The bills will now go to the Senate, whereat least some Republican lawmakers have preemptively made clear they dont know how supply and demand, among other things, work:

On Thursday, Pelosi blasted her colleagues across the aisle, asking, Whats the objection? That we dont want to spend money on babies who are crying for food? Ok, lets have that debate.

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192 Republicans Decide Theyd Like Formula-Seeking Parents to Keep Suffering - Vanity Fair