Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category

Setting Missouri Republicans straight on MLK and abortion – St. Louis American

Missouri Republicans are no strangers to inaccurate and offensive language, especially when it comes to abortion. Just like former U.S. Rep. Todd Akins now infamous line, If its a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down, conservatives in the Missouri legislature have made similar horrifying statements.

State Senators Bob Onder (R-Lake St. Louis) and Wayne Wallingford (R-Cape Girardeau) recently gained national attention when they spoke in opposition to a proposed tax increase benefitting the St. Louis Zoo, because they oppose St. Louis Board Bill 203, the reproductive nondiscrimination ordinance, which was signed into law in February. Onder, whose bill targeting abortion clinics had been opposed through filibuster the night before, said falsely that zoos are more heavily regulated than abortion clinics in Missouri. Missouri is currently the third most restrictive state in the country specific to abortion access, with only one remaining clinic serving over 3 million women.

What was not mentioned in all of the media coverage of Onder was the exchange between Onder had state Sen. Ed Emery (R-Lamar) while debating a bill that would extend SNAP (food assistance) benefits to the elderly at farmers markets.

During that exchange, Emery said that since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, Fifteen and a half million African American babies have been slain in abortions in that same period of time. He went on to compare, as Rep. Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) had previously done, the abortion rates in the African-American community to the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, Emerys inaccurate rant did not stop there. He went on to misappropriate quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his stance on abortion.

Emery: Martin Luther King said, The negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety. That was Dr. Martin Luther King, great man.

Onder: Now when the Reverend King said that, was he talking about abortion?

Emery: He was talking about abortion.

In fact, in 1960, King served on a committee for a Planned Parenthood study on contraception, explaining, I have always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation. He repeatedly wrote about why family planning programs are important, and why they need to be funded by the government. In 1966, King received a Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights.

King saw a clear link between the struggle for racial equality and the struggle for reproductive justice. In the acceptance speech he wrote for his award from Planned Parenthoodwhich his wife, Coretta Scott King, accepted in his placehe explained that reproductive rights activists like Planned Parenthoods Margaret Sanger help further broader movements for equality.

Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning, King wrote. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. He went on to say that the African-American community has a special and urgent concern with issues of family planning.

The attempted link between race and abortion to justify opposition to legal abortion is inherently racist. There is no evidence that the reproductive rights movement targets black women, and reproductive justice leaders like Loretta Ross and Dr. Willie Parker say the notion is simply a right-wing effort to drive a wedge into the African-American community. We see evidence of this anti-choice agenda in bills like House Bill 252, which would criminalize pregnant women, like they have in Indiana and Tennessee, or by not expanding Medicaid.

Of course, black women have had very little reproductive choice, historically. During slavery, black women endured forced childbirth. Later, many black women were ordered sterilized by state or local agencies, often without their consent or knowledge. More recently, black women have had to bear the burden of the racist welfare mom stereotype.

The continued dehumanizing debate by white male legislators on womens bodies and the black community continues the trend in Missouri of anti-abortion legislators attempting to make the case that women should not make their own reproductive decisions. Again, the lives of women and especially black women do not matter to these legislators.

The leadership in Jefferson City needs to stop the racist lies about abortion and start working in ways to increase health care access for all Missourians.

Alison Dreith is executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri.

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Setting Missouri Republicans straight on MLK and abortion - St. Louis American

California Republicans push plans to punish Sanctuary Cities – Fox News

Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento want California to become the nation's first sanctuary state. Republicans tried to stop it Tuesday with legislation of their own.

"California's Democrat politicians have been promoting a policy of sheltering criminals in our state who are in here illegally," said California Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach. "Californians don't want criminals who are here illegally to be sheltered in their communities."

Allen's bill did three things. First, it stopped state funds from going to any jurisdiction that claims to be a sanctuary or has sanctuary policies in place. Secondly, it mandated state law enforcement to cooperate directly with federal immigration officials. Third, it prohibited the use of tax money to defend criminal aliens.

Allen unveiled the bill alongside Agnes Gibboney, whose son Ronald da Silva was fatally shot by a previously deported illegal immigrant in 2002.

"I don't want another family member to live the hell, with pain and suffering that I live with every day," Gibboney said. "There was no second chance for my son. Where is his sanctuary city? Where was his protection?"

Allen's bill countered SB 54, which probits local law enforcement from communicating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in almost all cases. The only exception involved is convicted violent felons. Allen believes that's troublesome because that means everyone else -- including those deported in the past, those convicted of prior or multiple misdemeanors, and those who plead guilty to lesser offenses -- would be protected.

"We're not talking about someone's grandmother sitting at home," Allen said. "Child abusers, drug abusers, stalkers, people guilty of sexual battery. These are serious, serious criminals and we shouldn't we be using state funds to protect those criminals in our communities."

Just hours after being introduced Tuesday in Sacramento, the Assembly Committee on Public Safety squashed an Allen's bill. He and others expected it. Republicans have almost zero power in the State Legislature.

Allen said he introduced the bill to influence public opinion and urge the Trump Administration to clarify who among the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants should be deported.

Hawaii has now introduced a nearly identical sanctuary bill that protects criminal aliens, save the most violent convicted felons.

William La Jeunesse joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in March 1998 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based correspondent.

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California Republicans push plans to punish Sanctuary Cities - Fox News

Republicans face a Trump problem as they look to 2018 contests – Los Angeles Times

With the first two elections over in a series of off-season special House races, the Republican partys biggest challenge is obvious:

President Trump.

Republicans had hoped the protests that marked Trumps inauguration and early presidency would peter out over time. So far, thats not happened. Instead, the fervor of opposition to the president has powered stronger-than-expected results for Democrats at the ballot box. Unless that changes, that opposition could torment the GOP through the 2018 elections.

How to manage Trump to appeal to the voters he attracts and the voters he offends now ranks as the premier challenge for Republican candidates, party strategists say.

Democrats face their own challenges this year and next. In the first two contests of the year, in Kansas and Georgia, theyve come close, but havent yet won a GOP-controlled seat. Theyll have to do that in significant numbers if they are to regain control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections.

Moreover, for now, they have been able to focus money and volunteer activity on a limited number of special elections. By next year, the targeted seats will balloon in number, diluting their focus.

At this point, however, its the Republicans challenge that appears to loom largest.

Conservative activist Erick Erickson on Wednesday offered a succinct wrap-up of Tuesdays House special election in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, where he is based. Several GOP hopefuls had competed to take on the leading Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff.

The more closely aligned a candidate was with President Trump, the worse that candidate did, Erickson wrote of the Republican field on his website, the Resurgent.

Republicans had a measure of success in that race, forcing Ossoff into a June 20 runoff. But the party is unable to ignore the warning signs.

In both places, Democratic turnout was proportionally better, a reflection of the intensity that is fueling the party out of power and lacking in the party fully controlling Washington. In both places, historically sites of easy wins for Republicans, Democrats improved their standing fairly dramatically.

The Democratic candidate in Kansass 4th District lost by seven points, about 20 points less than losses suffered by previous Democrats. In Georgia, Ossoff came within two points of winning a seat outright that Republicans have held for decades. A first place finish for the Democrat, a 30-year-old filmmaker and former congressional aide making his first run for elective office, would have been unthinkable mere months ago.

The distant second-place finisher, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, defeated other Republicans who had bragged of their affinity for Trump, about whom she offered measured support.

The special elections this year serve as warm-ups for 2018, when attention will turn to, at minimum, the nearly two dozen seats held by Republicans in districts won in 2016 by Hillary Clinton. Seven of those seats are in California. Only 12 House seats are held by Democrats in districts won by Trump.

Democrats would need to win nearly all of those Republican-held House seats or a strong majority of them combined with any open seats to take over control of the House. That will mean a large number of targets for Democrats to sort through.

Thats going to be one of the problems for Democrats next year, said Republican strategist Charlie Gerow, who is based in Pennsylvania. Which ones do you target? You cant put the resources that they put into Georgia into all those other races.

Another challenge for Democrats, especially in those centrist districts, will be riding the enthusiasm of a party turning rapidly to the left without appearing to be out of touch with the demands of less partisan voters.

But the challenge for Republicans may be more complicated. In many cases, it may put candidates on a collision course with the president and party leaders.

The difficulty will be particularly acute in districts like the 6th in Georgia, where voters already had demonstrated an arms-distance relationship with the president.

With a highly educated suburban voter base, diverse and with large numbers of women, it represents the kind of district that posed problems for Trump all over the country.

Ossoff and his allies exploited that, casting the race as a referendum on the president. Millions of dollars poured in from sympathetic activists living elsewhere, especially California, financing a campaign that presented Ossoff as an antidote to the animosity and inaction of Washington.

Trump seized on Ossoffs outside fundraising when he tweeted about the race early Wednesday.

Dems failed in Kansas and are now failing in Georgia. Great job Karen Handel! It is now Hollywood vs. Georgia on June 20th, he tweeted.

But in the runoff, Hollywood is less likely to be the focus than Trump himself. That will present Handel with a series of dicey decisions that will be watched by Republicans elsewhere.

For one, she needs to bring together her own supporters, Republicans more in the Mitt Romney mold, with the staunch Trump supporters who backed other candidates. When businessman Bob Gray, the most vocally pro-Trump candidate, implored his supporters Tuesday to back Handel, the room went silent, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Attracting those bedrock voters would be best accomplished with Trumps help. Indeed, Handel on Wednesday said she would welcome the president to the district. (White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, said Trump would play a role if needed.)

But Trumps presence could backfire by inflaming voters in the district who dislike him. That is a balance that other Republican candidates in closely divided districts will also have to mind, strategists say.

For Republican candidates, a priority will be maintaining an image of loyalty to voters, not necessarily to Trump. Another solution is something out of their control: a positive shift in the way the country views Trump, who is the least popular president in decades at this point in his presidency.

I think what the presidents doing with regard to traveling around the country the event he had in Wisconsin yesterday was great for rallying the base is important, said Republican strategist Alice Stewart. But he needs to start having some success with regard to policy, whether its a healthcare bill passed, or tax reform.

Meaningful success, not just executive orders. If we are still here in a year and a half, and there havent been any meaningful successes, it will be challenging for Republicans, she said.

Much of the furor surrounding the 2017 special elections is about creating circumstances for improvement in 2018: keeping activists engaged, reaping money from enthusiastic donors and encouraging newly optimistic candidates to jump in and take a chance, as Ossoff did.

In Georgia and elsewhere, Democratic victories would make the Republican road more treacherous than it is at present.

Democrats are now aware that theres a pathway to victory for them, said University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III.

Republicans have a lot, I think, to look at and ponder. They cant feel particularly good.

For more on politics

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

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Republicans force a June runoff in a race seen as a referendum on President Trump

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Republicans face a Trump problem as they look to 2018 contests - Los Angeles Times

Even in red states, Republicans feel free to criticize Trump on his taxes and travel – Washington Post

Oklahoma may be Trump country, but that did not prevent James Lankford (R), the states junior senator, from criticizing President Trump this week by saying he ought to keep his promise to release his tax returns.

Nor did Trumps popularity in Iowa stop Sen. Joni Ernst (R) from telling her constituents there that she is perturbed by the presidents frequent jaunts to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

I do wish he would spend more time in Washington, D.C. That is what we have the White House for, Ernst said at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Wall Lake, Iowa. She said she has not spoken to Trump about the Florida issue, but it has been bothering not just me, but some other members of our caucus.

As Republican lawmakers face questions from their constituents back home, some elected leaders have been willing to break with their partys president. Although they generally support Trumps agenda on such priorities as a tax overhaul and health care, these Republicans are criticizing the president over his continued refusal to make public his tax returns, as past presidents have, and his costly trips to Florida.

Some of those criticizing Trump are not moderates eager to establish political independence, but rather conservatives from red states who are popular with the voters who propelled Trump into office.

The ease with which a GOP favorite such as Ernst has separated from Trump she has criticized his Florida travel and his defiance on taxes underscores the weak grip the president and his political operation have on the Republican Party.

It is hard to defend in todays world not releasing your tax returns, and its hard to defend playing golf at a seven-star resort when its a busy time and people are anxious about problems being addressed, said Ed Rogers, a GOP operative and lobbyist.

David Carney, a GOP strategist, said finding ways to break with Trump on issues such as tax returns and travel is a smart strategy especially at a moment when Trump opponents are galvanized.

Back in 2009 and 2010, if Democrats had not been drinking Kool-Aid, saying Obama makes no mistakes, and actually called him out on a few things, they would have had a better chance to survive the onslaught in the midterm elections, Carney said.

White House officials say that although they wish GOP lawmakers would be fully supportive of Trump, it matters more that they back him on policies.

The president has been pretty clear about where he is on releasing his tax returns, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. People knew that before they voted in November, and he still won overwhelmingly. The American people are a lot more concerned about their own taxes than President Trumps, and thats what hes focused on.

Democratic leaders are connecting the two issues, however, threatening to block Trumps efforts to overhaul the tax code unless he releases his tax returns so the public can determine whether he would personally benefit from the legislative changes.

Trump has had plenty of defenders, of course. At a town hall meeting Monday in Little Rock, one man asked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to demand Trump release his tax returns so we can see what kind of connections he has to different countries.

Cotton responded by repeating the talking points employed by White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

As far as Im aware, the president says hes still under audit, Cotton said, drawing loud boos in the crowd.

Cotton continued by noting that the president filed a personal financial disclosure as a candidate and arguing that because Trump puts his names on buildings where he has them, his foreign connections are well known.

Cottons defense drew applause from some in the audience but more jeers and shouting from others. One woman stood and shook her head as the senator finished his response.

Some Republican campaign operatives said their partys politicians would be wise to move on from the tax returns debate, recognizing that it may be nearly impossible to persuade Trump to do something he has steadfastly refused to do.

Anyone who thought Trump would ever release his taxes is mistaken, said Alice Stewart, a GOP consultant. Its not going to happen no way, no how. Everybody has to get used to that idea.

Still, the list of Republican senators and House members saying Trump should release his tax returns has grown to at least a dozen.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said this week on CNN that releasing his tax returns is the right thing to do. Several other GOP House members including some House Freedom Caucus conservatives have either signed a letter calling on Trump to release his returns or backed a Democratic measure to force their release.

On Tuesday in rural Rogers County, Okla., where Trump won 76 percent of the vote last November, Lankford was asked at a town hall meeting about Trumps decision not to release his tax returns.

He promised he would, Lankford responded, according to the Tulsa World newspaper. He should keep his promise.

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) was quick to join her colleagues, saying in a statement Wednesday that Trump should release his taxes voluntarily like his predecessors did before him. She went on to say, If the investigative committees believe that they need the presidents taxes during the course of their investigations [into Russias role in the 2016 campaign] then it is in their right to subpoena them.

Trumps frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago have also been raising concerns in the GOP. He has spent seven of the 13 weekends since he has been president at his Florida resort, often combining golf outings and leisurely meals with official business, such as the visits of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

I dont like him going down to Mar-a-Lago, or wherever it is, Rep. Steve Knight (R-Calif.) said during a Tuesday town hall meeting.

Comstock posited, Camp David would be a better weekend retreat and save the taxpayers money, referring to the official presidential retreat in Maryland that is already outfitted to secure the commander in chief and his visitors.

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Even in red states, Republicans feel free to criticize Trump on his taxes and travel - Washington Post

Why Are Republicans Making Tax Reform So Hard? – New York Times


New York Times
Why Are Republicans Making Tax Reform So Hard?
New York Times
President Trump speaking with small business leaders at the White House in January. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. In the aftermath of the health care blowup, President Trump and the Republicans need a legislative victory. Tax reform ...
Republicans Prepare To Lose On A Government Funding BillHuffington Post
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Paul Waldman: Trump's tax returns will keep causing Republicans headachesAllentown Morning Call
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Why Are Republicans Making Tax Reform So Hard? - New York Times