State politics could shape America more than Trump’s legal troubles

Predictions for the fights over abortion and guns in the U.S. and across the nation: from Biden’s advisers to conservatives in Chicago, North Carolina, and Florida

Donald Trump may be getting a lot of the attention, but it’s not the story of the ex-president being charged that’s important, it’s what’s going on in state capitals across the country.

These sorts of fights over abortion and guns are likely to play a part in future voting laws, electoral maps and presidential debates. These conflicts show how sometimes small differences in the balance of power can have massive consequences for a nation that divides over its cultural and political identity.

Democrats from Biden’s advisers to organizers all agree that the threats to abortion access have not gone away. Their proof was Tuesday’s win by Democrats in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court race came with high stakes for abortion access given the court is expected to decide the fate of the state’s 1849 ban, which had been dormant for decades but snapped back into place with last year’s US Supreme Court ruling.

In North Carolina, Republicans were celebrating after a Democratic state representative, who was elected by a nearly 20-point margin a few months ago, flipped to the GOP this week, giving the party veto-proof majorities in both state legislative chambers as they seek new curbs on abortion and more restrictive election laws.

America’s tortured divide on firearms is driving an extraordinary showdown in Tennessee. Instead of working to combat mass shootings after last week’s massacre at a Nashville school, Republican state legislators want to kick out three Democrats who joined a gun control protest.

Brandon Johnson, the progressive who won Tuesday’s Chicago mayor’s race, is being looked at by the national Democrats. He beat a moderate with a tough-on-crime message by making a more nuanced pitch than his previous support for calls to “defund the police.” Johnson said during the campaign he didn’t want to cut police funding.

The Republicans have total control of the state legislature in Florida thanks to a thumping reelection win by Ron DeSantis last November. Florida loosened its gun laws this week as he tries to appeal to Republican grassroots voters who will be key to a possible presidential run. And after he signed into law a 15-week abortion ban last year, the state Senate just passed a bill that would ban most abortions in the state after the gestational age of about six weeks – or about four weeks of pregnancy.

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In Washington it’s not often seen that this remarkable series of local battles is unique to the area.

The intensity of exchanges on issues like abortion, gender and guns raises another possibility. For all of Trumps appeal to Republicans, his campaign is almost all about his anger at the legal problems he has and his claim that he is being unfairly kept out of the White House. The fights are suggesting that many voters have other issues on their minds.

Wisconsin has reeled from a conservative revival and a subsequent liberal backlash ever since Republican Scott Walker was first elected governor in 2010. It was critical to the victories of Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 and remains on a political knife edge heading into a new presidential election cycle.

Sean Eldridge, the founder and the president of Stand Up America, said Protasiewicz would act as a check on conservative efforts to take away reproductive freedom, disenfranchise voters of color, and overturn election results they don’t like. Her win helps build a strong foundation for democracy and the freedom to vote.

But the lesson of Wisconsin’s turbulent political decade is that local Republicans, some of whom are in thrall to Trumpism, are likely to fight back hard. Indeed, Tuesday’s election also saw Republicans win an open state Senate seat, giving the GOP a supermajority that could be used to impeach top office holders, theoretically including Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. In an interview with Wisconsin’s WISN last month, the Republican victor said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz. She was a circuit court judge at the time. It is not known if the legislature can remove her from the Supreme Court.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/state-political-battles-analysis/index.html

Turning a Wedge on Its Own: Reconciling the Propagation of Protest Measures for Abortion Rights

One of the Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. Justin Pearson, explained on CNN that he supported the protest by gun reform advocates in the public gallery because he believed voices were not being heard as they demanded action on red flag laws and other gun safety measures. The majority of Americans support tighter gun restrictions, according to polls, but they can be different depending on the measure.

Pearson told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the trio knew they were breaking a House rule on decorum. We did not know that we were doing anything that could lead to us being thrown out of the house for exercising our First amendment rights and encouraging those protests and children and adults and grieving parents to do the same.

Cooper warned that Cotham’s actions would have grave consequences, and Democrats accused her of betraying her voters. Cooper told CNN that the direction of the state will be determined by the votes of Rep. Cotham on issues such as women’s reproductive freedom, election laws, and strong public schools.

The hardline abortion policy might allow DeSantis to solidify a message that he’d be a more effective conservative leader than Trump. The kind of positioning that the Democrats would be offered should make the Republicans the one to beat.

With President Joe Biden expected to run for reelection and Democrats forecasting tough races for key Senate and House seats, several Democratic operatives say next year is the perfect moment to turn Rove’s wedge-issue strategy on its head and get swing voters excited about abortion rights – the same way an abortion rights ballot proposition in Michigan helped power a massive blue wave in the state last year.

A group of abortion rights activists are trying to get a measure on the ballot in Florida, as well as in Arizona and Colorado, which is a battleground state for abortion rights. Efforts are also underway in Montana, people advising them tell CNN, and in Nevada – each of which will have a Senate race that could determine the majority.

Talking about abortion has already proven complicated for the emerging Republican presidential field. Former President Donald Trump, whose three Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe v. Wade, lashed out after the midterms to say “‘the abortion issue’” was “poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions.”

Republicans are hoping to get an abortion proposal on the ballot in Iowa where they will have to contend with a measure that would impose new restrictions.

They say that they can do it by using the argument of bringing people together to push back on government overreach and stripping them of their rights.

A patchwork of ad hoc strategies is being used by a group of activists, advocates and operatives who are trying to figure out how to set the tone for a national campaign as they wait for Vice President Biden to make a decision about running. More than two dozen lieutenant governors have started a coalition to share tactics and information as they push to protect abortion rights in their states. And groups of Democratic state attorneys general have come together in joint lawsuits aimed at trying to undermine a possible decision from the Texas judge against the abortion pill.

In New York – where six Republicans who represent congressional districts where Biden won in 2020 are top targets for the party nationally – the Democratic-dominated state legislature has already put a measure on the ballot for next year. Maryland legislators moved to add their own proposal to the 2024 ballot at the end of March.

Hochul, a Democrat who convened a special session of the state legislature last year after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, said that even though abortion rights didn’t appear to move many voters in her very blue state last year, there’s still a need for abortion rights politicians to push for more.

The spokesman for the billionaire governor made a point of pointing out that he has funding for ballot proposition efforts in Michigan as well as the party’s preferred Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate.

Nationally, Biden advisers say that Vice President Kamala Harris will take the lead on the abortion issue – as she did in the 2022 midterms – in the plans for a reelection campaign while the president would also push to codify Roe v. Wade as part of his own pitch.

Harris aides say she has been keeping tabs on the medication abortion case out of Texas, warning fellow Democrats about the consequences for other medications if this Food and Drug Administration approval is reversed, but has also been reaching out behind the scenes – checking with legislators who’ve protected abortion rights in their states and with Virginia state Sen. Aaron Rouse about how talking about abortion rights helped him win a January special election that flipped a seat.

Harris met with legislators in DesMoines who supported abortion rights and she said they felt alone in their support of abortion rights.

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat who survived a tight reelection last year in which she spoke often about abortion rights, argues that the way to appeal to Republican voters and independents is to talk about how the GOP is being taken over by extremists.

“It is such a personal, emotional, important issue for people that my colleagues on the far right do not understand why it will continue to resonate,” Cortez Masto said.

Carolyn Ehrlich, senior political strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that ballot proposition last year was a way to protect rights in states where the legislature is a roadblock to progress.

I don’t think we’re going to have to change things for voters. The president of the Emily’s List stated that they need to communicate to voters where the parties stand.

“Every single candidate for public office next year will have no choice but to go on the record with their position, and we’ll be there to hold them accountable or lift them up,” Timmaraju said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence supports a national abortion ban. The governor of Virginia is the only one to push for a 15-week ban in his state and he is eyeing a potential moderate lane in the race. Haley doesn’t support a federal ban on most abortions, but has expressed openness to the 15-week federal ban introduced last year by Lindsey Graham.

Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, said it was a terrible idea for the state to allow the death penalty to be imposed on women who receive abortions after being asked on Fox News. A spokesperson for Scott, whose travel schedule in recent months has looked like that of a likely presidential candidate, did not respond to a CNN interview request to elaborate.

Similar bills have been introduced in several other states, including ones that would reclassify abortion as murder, and ones that could apply wrongful death to embryo frozen as part of IVF fertility treatments.

“The Wolf in the haystack”: Restrictions and ostrich strategies, a warning from Dannenfelser

That applies for candidates for other offices too, Dannenfelser warned. She said that she wants candidates to speak loudly and clear about how they would support more restrictions. To do otherwise, she said, would be an “ostrich strategy.”