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Republicans, Democrats, comedians, and the sitting governor of New Jersey walk into a bar ...

Actually, it was a backyard in Westfield.

State Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, one of the states top Republicans, held an outdoor cocktail party at his home to draw attention to the pain the coronavirus pandemic has caused live comedy and other entertainment. Bramnick moonlights as a standup when hes not pushing legislation.

A bunch of Jersey comics shared drinks on his patio former Saturday Night Live castmember (and almost-gubernatorial candidate) Joe Piscopo, Vinnie Brand, Rich Vos, Mike Marino, Vic DiBitetto, Steve Trevelise, among others. Former governors Richard Codey, a Democrat, and Donald DiFrancesco, a Republican, were also there.

But the opener was current Gov. Phil Murphy, who made a bipartisan appearance.

The past 14 months have sucked, the Democratic governor, holding a cocktail, told the small crowd gathered in the backyard. But its been particularly tough on performers.

Murphy, who is running for re-election this year, has faced relentless criticism from Republicans for his handling of the pandemic. Many say hes been too strict with restrictions, causing business like comedy clubs to suffer though the governor insists hes trying to save lives.

Entertainment venues have faced capacity limits for more than a year, though the state is easing them Wednesday. About a third of the states small businesses have closed during the pandemic.

But Bramnick, who represents a part of Union County that has a moderate, said one goal of Tuesdays event was to show the two parties arent immediate enemies.

I wanted to throw a bipartisan thing that showed people can get together and try to help them through as much as possible, said the lawmaker, who is running for state Senate this year. Just because I disagree with you, why cant we have some laughs?

Bramnick faced some backlash on social media for having Murphy at the event.

Murphys appearance came just hours after he stood firm on keeping New Jerseys indoor mask mandate in place even as neighboring states adopt new federal guidelines that say fully vaccinated people dont need to wear masks or social distance anymore in most cases.

Republicans including Bramnick have lambasted the governor for the move, arguing hes ignoring science at a time when the states COVID-19 numbers keep improving as vaccinations continue. But Murphy said its too soon to drop the mandate, though that may happen in the coming weeks.

Murphy also signed an order Monday eliminating the order that people have to wear masks outdoors in public in New Jersey.

People were maskless at Bramnicks event, though they were gathered outdoors.

The top joke of the event may have been a passing remark by Piscopo.

At one point, Bramnick mentioned something about Murphy being there.

I thought he meant Eddie, the SNL alum quipped.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com.

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Republicans and Democrats laughing together? It happened in N.J., and were not joking! - NJ.com

Republican candidates in states across the country are seizing on critical race theory as a talking point in their effort to appeal to cultural conservatives.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin vowed to expel the academic movement from schools, while Ohio GOP Senate candidate Jane Timken took it on as part of a statewide listening tour.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisPalm Beach prosecutor says DeSantis could delay hypothetical Trump extradition Republicans seize on conservative backlash against critical race theory Journalism dies in newsroom cultures where 'fairness is overrated' MORE (R) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi NoemKristi Lynn NoemRepublicans seize on conservative backlash against critical race theory Government indoctrination, whether 'critical' or 'patriotic,' is wrong Montana governor approves restrictions on transgender athletes in schools MORE (R), both potential presidential candidates in 2024, have also knocked critical race theory. Noem recently started a petition on her campaign website to keepit out of classrooms.

It offers Republicans a great opportunity to educate people about what we actually believe about race, said Terry Schilling, the executive director of the conservative think tank the American Principles Project.

Schilling added that his organization was considering wading into the fight over the academic movement by running and testing the effectiveness of ads ahead of 2022.

The Republican effort comes after the party exceeded expectations in the 2020 elections, holding on to a number of crucial Senate seats and gaining seats in the House. Some Democrats argued the GOPs unexpectedly strong performance was due in part to conservatives tying Democrats to progressive policies like calls to defund the police.

Now, Republicans are looking to tie Democrats to critical race theory in an effort to paint them as radical.

Critical race theory was developed in the 1970s and 1980s by a number of American legal scholars who argued racism is rooted in the nations founding and that systemic racism continues to have a negative impact on the opportunities and treatment of people of color at all levels of society today.

But opponents of the theory say it teaches students to disparage the U.S. and works to sow racial divisions in classrooms.

White House press secretary Jen PsakiJen PsakiBiden's quiet diplomacy under pressure as Israel-Hamas fighting intensifies Overnight Defense: Administration approves 5M arms sale to Israel | Biden backs ceasefire in call with Netanyahu | Military sexual assault reform push reaches turning point CDC mask update sparks confusion, opposition MORE said that it was responsible to teach about systemic racism when asked about a proposal from Sen. Tom CottonTom Bryant CottonRepublicans seize on conservative backlash against critical race theory Tim Scott sparks buzz in crowded field of White House hopefuls Opposition to refugees echoes one of America's most shameful moments MORE (R-Ark.), another potential presidential candidate, opposing critical race theory.

I dont think we would think that educating the youth and next and future leaders of the country on systemic racism is indoctrination. Thats actually responsible, Psaki said at a White House briefing on Thursday.

The debate over the issue has already swept across the U.S., with GOP-controlled legislatures in half a dozen states taking up measures that would limit or ban the theory in schools.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a bill that would keep funding from schools that taught viewpoints that are often found in critical race theory, while the Texas state Senate approved similar legislation. Tennessees state House advanced its legislation on the issue earlier this month, and lawmakers in Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma are drafting legislation that would combat the movement being taught in classrooms.

Republicans are also pushing the issue at the federal level, with roughly 30 GOP representatives signaling their support for Rep. Dan Bishops (R-N.C.) Stop CRT Act, which would ban federal employees from having to receive racial equity and diversity training.

Particularly over the last year in lockdown, education has really rocketed to the forefront of definitely suburban mothers minds, said Nicki Neily, president of the conservative group Parents Defending Education.

A lot of this new stuff was sprung on them with no heads up, no buy-in, no introducing it to the community, she continued. They feel like theres sort of no input into the process.

A poll released last month from Parents Defending Education found that 58.3 percent of respondents said they did not believe students should be taught that the country was founded on racism and remains structurally racist today.

The debate reached a boiling point during a tense school board meeting this week in the Washington, D.C., suburban enclave of Loudoun County, Va., after the interim superintendent announced he was launching an equity plan. The superintendent has insisted that critical race theory is not a part of the school districts curriculum.

Virginia Republican candidates have taken the issue head-on ahead of the commonwealths elections later this year.

Its going to be detrimental to our schools and its not what we want, Virginia GOP lieutenant governor nominee Winsome Sears told Fox News on Thursday. It supposedly is to help someone who looks like me and Im sick of it. Im sick of being used by the Democrats, and so are many people who look like me.

Youngkin has campaigned frequently on education issues, including the reopening of schools and school choice, as well as critical race theory. He vowed during the campaign leading up to the state GOP convention that he would take critical race theory out of Virginias public schools if elected.

While the issue has shown its potential to galvanize the conservative base, some strategists say leaning into critical race theory may not be the right messaging move in growing and diversifying suburban areas, which could play a determining factor in upcoming races.

Conservatives also say they are unsure of how the issue will play in suburban enclaves, pointing to Democratic successes in those areas in the 2020 cycle.

I dont know how its going to play with suburban America, Schilling, of theAmerican Principles Project, said. Suburban America has been becoming more and more woke over the last four years.

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Republicans seize on conservative backlash against critical race theory | TheHill - The Hill

The COVID19 Hate Crimes Act passed the House Tuesday by a 364-62 vote. All 62 votes against the bill were cast by Republican members of Congress. The bill passed the Senate passed 94-1 last month, with only Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) as the dissenting vote.

The legislation, which will now go to President Joe Biden's desk for approval, passed in the Senate last month in a rare nearly unanimous display of bipartisan cooperation. Biden has already intimated that he will sign the legislation into law.

The main intention of the COVID19 Hate Crimes Act is to address and slow the notable and troubling rise in hate crimes directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. As the beginning of the act notes, between March 19, 2020 and February 28 of this year, there were almost 3,800 reported cases of anti-Asian incidents linked with COVID-19 throughout America.

The act also instructs the Justice Department to create a review process that expedites the processing of anti-Asian hate crimes related to COVID-19, designating an officer "whose responsibility during the applicable period shall be to facilitate the expedited review of hate crimes."

It gives state and local law enforcement more streamlined resources for collecting and acting upon information related to hate crimes, such as online databases. These instructions include provisions regarding how to remove barriers surrounding data aggregation, like language differences.

In the Senate, Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono who introduced the bill, and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine successfully worked together to "broaden support for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act while retaining the bill's core purpose to combat anti-Asian hate," Hirono said in a statement.

In the House, Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) introduced the bill to wide Democratic support.

Speaker Pelosi said on the House floor, "The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Bill will strengthen our defenses against any anti-AAPI violence, speeding our response to hate crime, supporting state and local governments as they improve reporting, and ensuring that they have crimes information and [that] it's more accessible to the Asian American communities."

After his "no" vote in the Senate, Sen. Hawley took to social media to explain his decision, saying: "My big problem with Sen Hirono's bill that Senate voted on today is that it turns the federal government into the speech police - gives government sweeping authority to decide what counts as offensive speech and then monitor it. Raises big free speech questions."

Newsweek has reached out to House Minority Leader McCarthy for comment and will update this story with any response.

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62 House Republicans and Josh Hawley Voted Against Bill to Fight Asian American Hate Crime - Newsweek

Our Climate: A series exploring a world of fear and promise.

Green power for red states. Photo: Carol Highsmith/Getty Images

Last week, after the Biden administration approved the nations first major offshore wind energy farm, the previous president was agitated enough to issue a statement denouncing the project. Wind is an incredibly expensive form of energy that kills birds, affects the sea, ruins the landscape, and creates disasters for navigation, he complained. Aside from the usual slew of lies, Trumps continued his odd habit of attacking the Democrats climate agenda at its strongest point. Wind power is plentiful, inexpensive, and so broadly popular that turbines appear in campaign ads by candidates in both parties so often theyre practically clich.

Moving up toward the loftier points in the Republican intellectual firmament, the objections to the Democrats climate agenda are less overtly comic, yet still very far from serious. National Review, as prestigious a conservative organ as can be found, still runs articles on the subject, making crank observations like Each human exhales about two pounds of the pollutant carbon dioxide every day and history shows that warmings of a few degrees Celsius which extended growing seasons have been good for humanity.

The only detectable change in the Republican Partys climate posture over the past decade and a half is that it has evolved from embracing fossil fuels to spite Al Gore to embracing fossil fuels to spite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And yet the need for a reality-based Republican policy on climate change is greater than ever. The emerging formation of the Biden administrations climate agenda is already revealing the strains of single-party policy-making. If Republicans were capable of thinking sensibly about climate policy obviously a purely hypothetical notion at the moment the space to do so is available.

The need for a conservative climate agenda is amply demonstrated by the shambolic failure of high-speed rail in California. In 2009, President Obama signed a stimulus bill that included partial funding for a project Californias voters had already approved: a rail network that would allow a trip between L.A. and San Francisco in two and a half hours. Even though the state has poured billions into the project, a dozen years later it has almost nothing to show for it. Republicans arent the problem. Democrats control the state government, but construction and approval have been snarled in endless local and environmental review.

The California rail debacle is not unique. The United States has gotten miserably bad at building new things. Our subways cost many times per mile what they cost in other countries, and even roads have gotten slower and costlier to construct. Authority to build large infrastructure projects is fragmented between national, state, and local governments. Even for local-scale building, the most provincial interests can easily veto new projects, or make approval so long and costly that its not worth the hassle.

When environmentalism became a mass movement in the United States, beginning around 60 years ago, global warming barely registered as a major concern. In recent decades, it has become humanitys central environmental challenge. But the movements DNA is still somewhat mismatched for the problem.

Some of those blind spots can be seen in specific issues. Nuclear power is the most obvious example. As a large source of zero-emission energy, nuclear power plays an important role in weaning the power grid off fossil fuel. Wind and solar energy have lots of room to expand, but will need a complementary source that doesnt require access to sun and wind.

Nuclear power was one of the primary targets for the movement a generation ago. Theres a reason the villain in The Simpsons operates a nuclear power plant; in the 80s, nuclear power seemed far more dangerous than coal. Many environmental activists got into the movement in the first place to stop nuclear power. As global warming has become its primary concern, the movement has moved toward embracing nuclear power, but it hasnt fully jettisoned its anti-nuclear roots. Environmental groups remain split on nuclear power, and Democratic administrations have had little success promoting it. Just this month, Indian Point nuclear plant in New York shut down, throwing the states progress toward zero emissions into reverse.

Another example is the development of devices to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere. The technology to do this is still in its infancy, but has showed real promise and yet both environmental activists and Democrats have met the notion with indifference, or even hostility. To prevent dangerous levels of climate change, its likely that humanity will need to start pulling carbon out of the air, reported Grist. The leading Democrats running for the White House, however, dont seem so sure.

Labor is another source of friction between Democrats and environmental goals. Putting unemployed coal miners to work building wind turbines sounds nice in theory. In practice, it often means shutting down unionized jobs and replacing them with non-union jobs. The Biden administration has prioritized building its new green-energy infrastructure with domestically manufactured components, pushing up the cost. Democrats have tried to smooth over the friction, but there are important tensions within their coalition between preserving current jobs and transitioning the economy, and between paying high wages and building new infrastructure as cost effectively as possible.

Transitioning to a zero-carbon economy will require huge amounts of change, disruption, innovation, and profit all things that can make progressives uncomfortable. Many cities have blocked looser zoning rules that would allow denser construction near mass transit precisely the kinds of changes to the built environment needed to reduce fossil fuel use only to be stymied by local activists who associate change with the financial interests of developers. The old environmental movements instinctive veneration of the old, and distrust of change in general and profit in particular, is an impediment that conservatives ought to be able to avoid.

A reality-based Republican Party could be offering cheaper, better ways to decarbonize the economy. Stop trying to own the libs by propping up coal plants. Start trying to own the libs by promoting dynamism and economy: More nuclear power, less concern for the wages of the people employed in the energy sector and more concern for holding down costs, and a willingness to identify and cut through red tape to get things done.

In the absence of such an alternative, the Democratic Party is the only game in town for people who take climate change seriously. You go to war with the political coalition you have, and Democrats have no margin for error in Congress. Every policy design has to optimize for party unity rather than maximum impact. The only hurdle a Democratic climate agenda needs to clear is the question, Does this plan make more sense than allowing polluters to dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at no cost, forever?

A practical Republican climate agenda would have its own real-world constituencies to deal with and limits of its own. But that kind of party could still play off the Democrats in a helpful way if nothing else, by expanding the potential voting coalition for pro-climate policies, and giving Democratic administrations more flexibility to replace the bad ideas on their side with good ideas from the other. At the moment, those ideas scarcely exist and have no meaningful Republican support. A better world will require a better opposition.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

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America Needs a Climate-Sane Republican Party. Heres What One Would Look Like. - New York Magazine

UNIONTOWN In Fayette County, voters casting ballots in the Republican primary were informed voting machines were not accepting their ballots due to an issue with barcodes located on their ballot.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Fayette County Board of Election delivered new ballots with barcodes, so precincts could scan and count ballots being cast following the barcode issue.

The scanning machine was not scanning. At first, we thought it was all ballots, but then realized it was only Republican ballots, said Chris Varney, Fayette County Judge of Elections.

According to Varney, poll workers began noticing scanning programs shortly after their precinct opened.

Just to make it fair, because if someone has a ballot and they miss mark it, you know the Republicans wouldnt have a chance to correct it, but the Democrats do. So, now were not scanning any of them. Were just putting them in the back, said Varney.

It does seem to be an issue with how the barcodes were printed, said St. Rep. Matt Dowling, R Fayette County.

Dowling told Channel 11, the board of elections informed his office, the barcode issue was impacting both Republican and Democratic voters.

Because of the issue, the Fayette County Republican Party filed an emergency petition for a judge to order all ballots not to be scanned, and instead, have the Judge of Elections and poll workers tally the ballots at the end of the day.

Dowling tells Channel 11 he is satisfied with the decision.

I think that it is the best outcome we can have, but moving forward, we have to investigate how an error like this takes place, said Dowling.

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Ballots in Republican primary to be hand counted in Fayette County due to processing problem - WPXI Pittsburgh