K. Paxton: Running from a subpoena to protect my family in a state where abortion is almost completely criminalized

Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on the social media site. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. You can view opinions on CNN.

Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, left his house to avoid being served a subpoena in a case that had been filed by abortion rights groups to expand access in a state where abortion is almost completely criminalized. While Paxton denies he was running from the subpoena, his little sprint is the perfect metaphor for Republican politicians and abortion rights: Many of them are running away from the very scenario they created and the very laws they’ve promoted.

More than an hour later, as Paxton exited the home through the garage, Herrera said he approached him. “As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage.”

Minutes later, said Herrera, Paxton and his wife exited the house again, climbed into a truck parked in their driveway and drove off without taking the document.

Paxton, for his part, doesn’t dispute that he ran. He said he ran from a shady stranger outside of his house. “This is a ridiculous waste of time and the media should be ashamed of themselves,” Paxton tweeted. “All across the country, conservatives have faced threats to their safety – many threats that received scant coverage or condemnation from the mainstream media.”

The media is attacking me because they want to drum up another controversy around my work as Attorney General, so they are trying to show concern for the safety and well-being of my family.

It was frightening to have your privacy invaded and frustrating to have people try to interfere when you are trying to protect yourself and your family. Some women in Texas can relate.

The Unpopular Way to End Abortion: Reply to Blake Masters and J. Lujan Grisham during a 2020 New Mexican Presidential Debate

Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters used to champion fetal personhood laws, which would fully criminalize abortion and potentially IVF as well, along with some forms of contraception; recently, though, that information was deleted from his website.

Mark Ronchetti, who is challenging New Mexico’s Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, said that “life should be protected – at all stages” on his campaign website last election cycle; now, he is putting out ads saying, “I’m personally pro-life, but I believe we can all come together on a policy that reflects our shared values,” and saying he thinks New Mexicans would support outlawing abortion only after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Mr. Kildee’s opponent, Paul Junge, said during a 2020 Republican primary debate that Roe v. Wade extended “made-up rights” to women and that he was “pro-life” and “supports life at all times.” The comments were displayed in an advertisement by the House Democrats’ super PAC.

Americans do not support broad abortion bans. Polling voters, even those who identify as pro-life and vote GOP, doesn’t help when it comes to criminalizing abortion.

The unpopular laws may cost Republicans votes at the ballot box. The solution is simple: Stop penning and passing wildly unpopular laws. Republicans continue to do that, and then they start shouting “it wasn’t me!” When pressed on it, gestured.

In her primary race, Ms. Scheller said she would be willing to support legislation that would make it a criminal offense for a doctor to perform an abortion if he or she has knowledge that the woman’s life is in danger. She added that she would support abortion in cases of incest and rape. Democrats are still running ads against Ms. Scheller, who wants to make abortion illegal in cases of rape and incest.

Democrats have even extended the attacks against Republicans who are broadly supportive of abortion rights. A carefully worded television advertisement against George Logan, a Republican and former Connecticut state senator who is running against Representative Jahana Hayes, intones that he “refused to support Roe v. Wade” and would vote for a party leader in the House who would push a national abortion ban.

He said it should be up to the states at the Republican National Committee’s rally in New Britain. “Right here in Connecticut, we have codified a woman’s right to choose. That’s what I support.”

“Democrat politicians have done incredible damage to America, ruining our economy, causing chaos at our border, increasing crime in our cities. They changed the way in which we live. But one thing hasn’t changed: abortion in Nevada,” the spot says.

Abortion rights have been a flashpoint not only in Georgia, but in Pennsylvania, where Fetterman has looked to turn voters’ attention to Oz’s comments about the procedure in this week’s debate. The Republican said that local politicians ought to play a role in women’s medical decisions.

His opponent, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, is running an ad saying she will “always fight for a women’s right to make our own health care decisions,” while “Adam Laxalt won’t.”

Tiffany Smiley, a Republican Senate candidate in Washington state, is against a federal ban in her ads. In one of her spots, she says that Patty Murray has spent millions to paint her as an extremists. I oppose a federal abortion ban, but I am pro-life.

Shortly after Roe was overturned, Murray began airing a straight-to-camera ad, in which she says, “It is a horrifying reality: Extreme politicians across our country, now in charge of the most private health care decisions.”

A coalition of national abortion rights groups is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads in this campaign season to put pressure on politicians to back legalized abortion.

Republican groups have urged their candidates to not allow opponents to define them on abortion, but they should also fight the election on that issue.

It’s a fine line to walk for the Republican. O’Dea has taken a more moderate stance on abortion but he was attacked in an August spot by Bennet that featured Colorado women who were opposed to the repeal of Wade. The spot also noted O’Dea’s past remarks that he would have voted to confirm the conservative justices who decided the Dobbs case.

In an ad, the first time candidate and businessman promoted his outsider credentials, and his support for abortion for the first five months of a woman’s pregnancies.

(O’Dea has also said he would have voted for Obama nominee Elena Kagan, a liberal justice who dissented in the Dobbs ruling, as he wants to end the “blood sport” over the Supreme Court confirmation process.)

The Case of Budd and Mastriano: A Washington, not a Raleigh, decision made by the Supreme Court of November 2015, and a CNN political commentator

“If it is an issue in the district and it is showing up in your polling, talk about. If it is not an issue that shows up in your polling, talk about issues like the economy that are more advantageous to you,” the operative said.

“The Supreme Court made it clear: This is a Raleigh decision, not a Washington decision,” North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Ted Budd said in a local interview in September.

The congressman co-sponsored the House companion bill which would allow elected officials in Washington, and not Raleigh, to decide how to regulate abortion.

Editor’s Note: Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who was chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 until 2017 and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies from 2015 until 2018. He is a CNN political commentator. The views expressed in this commentary are of his own. You can find more opinions on CNN.

Pennsylvania has two statewide, open seat races, with US Sen. Pat Toomey retiring and Gov. Tom Wolf finishing the second of his two terms. It is a highly unusual occurrence in the commonwealth.

The governor’s race has featured Democrat Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano. The campaign was well-funded and error-free. He maintains a nearly 9-point lead in most polls over the election-denying, underfunded Mastriano, who embraces wild conspiracy theories and shuns traditional media.

Shapiro has dominated the airwaves. What’s more, during an interview last week on the Real America’s Voice network, Mastriano falsely claimed the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia “is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning, something that is irreversible.”

The 2011 Pennsylvania Senate Race is a Torss-Up for Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Man Who Shot Me

The US Senate race, on the other hand, is a toss-up between Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Oz and Fetterman will debate on Tuesday for the first and only time, and the stakes couldn’t be higher for Fetterman, who suffered a near fatal stroke days before the primary election in May.

Fetterman had a stroke, and there are questions about his ability to perform his duties as a senator. All eyes will be on Fetterman, who will use closed captioning during the debate. Neurological specialists say people with hearing issues use closed caption.

Polling remains tight. Oz had high unfavorable ratings among Republicans, Democrats, and independents when he emerged from the GOP primary. The Republican voters have returned to Oz.

He and his allies have been attacking Fetterman on various issues, from inflation and taxes to the Green New Deal, a plan to remove the United States from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Fetterman was attacked as a radical socialist, despite his early support for the senator.

But Republicans are counting on crime to resonate as a concern among Pennsylvania swing voters. Charles Goldblum, who was convicted of murder after he was stabbed with garden shears 26 times, was one of the people Fetterman voted to release from prison.

Fetterman has waged aggressive attacks against Oz, cleverly trolling him over social media and paid advertising on issues such as carpetbagging, crudité, health care and Social Security in an attempt to portray the wealthy GOP candidate as out of touch with ordinary Pennsylvanians.

There is a reason for Republican optimism. Republican momentum is building nationally as likely voters express concerns about inflation and the economy, and Oz is well-positioned to win. Republicans are surging on economic issues, despite candidate quality problems and the abortion decision of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Three House seats in Pennsylvania are in jeopardy, one in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and one in suburban Pittsburgh. In particular, watch the Lehigh Valley race between incumbent Democratic Rep. Susan Wild and Republican challenger Lisa Scheller, who runs a family-owned manufacturing business. It’s the seat I held for nearly 14 years and is among the most competitive swing districts in the country. A report by CNN’s John King on the Northampton County may help determine the fate of statewide races and control of Congress.

Schumer was worried about Democratic prospects in Georgia and remained hopeful about Pennsylvania even after his nominee did poorly in the debate.

But with inflation concerns rising and Biden’s unpopularity, he’s kept the president at arm’s length. The Democrats chose former President Obama to appeal to Georgia voters and deliver a harsh case against Walker.

Schumer said that the debate did not hurt John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.

Schumer, Biden, and Hochul were talking on the tarmac of the National Guard base in New York. Biden gave a speech on Thursday in the state, as part of his closing message that depicted Republicans as a danger to Americans pocketbooks.

The Campaign for Democracy: Predictions for the November 13 Democrat Primary in Nevada and in Pennsylvania after Fetterman’s Staggering

Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Democrats are fighting to hold onto their narrow majority in the 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris has the tie-breaking vote. Georgia and Pennsylvania represent the best opportunities to flip a seat and are critical to the mission.

The Democratic leader said his party was “picking up steam” in Nevada, where Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents.

Walker, whose candidacy has endured a stream of gaffes on policy, has more recently been contended with allegations from two women who say he had pressured them to have abortions. Walker has denied the allegations and CNN has not independently confirmed them. The women claims are counter to past statements made in favor of a full federal abortion ban without exceptions. (He has, more recently, walked back those remarks and said he supports Georgia’s law, which bans abortions after about six weeks but makes exceptions for cases of rape or incest, pending a timely police report, and in some cases where the pregnant person’s health is at risk.)

In the most recent polls, Walker had the support of half of the likely voters but he was trailed by 50% who were in favour of him, which was within the survey margin of error. Another poll, from Fox News at the end of October, also found a remarkably close contest, with Warnock at 44% and Walker at 43%. A December 6 runoff is what the race would be decided on if neither candidate got a majority of votes.

“You can’t afford to give a clown a vote on Roe v. Wade,” Fetterman told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday, adding that Oz’s comment showed “what he actually believes about abortion.”

But while Democrats immediately seized on Oz’s comments in their paid advertising, most of the post-debate attention was focused on the effects of Fetterman’s stroke.

“We wanted to be and thought it was important to be there. The Democrat told the senator that they showed up. “And getting knocked down, I always got back up. And, to me, that’s really at the essence of our campaign, is that we’re running for any Pennsylvanian that ever got knocked down that has to get back up. And that’s really what we’re running on.”

For the second time in less than two years, the state of Georgia, home to two Democratic senators in the last election, is host to a contest that has gripped both national parties and could determine the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Republicans would lose their path to a majority in the Senate, which is currently split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, if Mr. Warnock were to win. That reality, coupled with headwinds – in the form of economic angst and Biden’s low approval ratings – familiar to Democrats across the country, has helped coalesce Republicans behind Walker.

Underscoring his party’s mix of ambivalence and political practicality, former Vice President Mike Pence, after not mentioning Walker during his remarks at a rally in Cumming, Georgia, on Tuesday for GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, told reporters he is “supporting the whole (Republican) ticket here in Georgia.”

The War in Ukraine: What Do We Know About Politics and What Happens When We Don’t Know What You’re Reading, And What Can We Say About It?

Warnock, meanwhile, initially sought to steer clear of directly addressing the controversy. The television ad was titled “Hypocrite.”

A narrator says that Herschel Walker wants to ban abortion, then plays comments the Republican made in support of a national abortion ban. “But for himself,” the narrator then asks before playing news reports about the allegations.

During his run for the US Senate and in his campaign for Congress, Warnock tried to convince undecided voters and moderates that he could expand access to health care and lower the cost of medicine.

In his only debate with the Republican, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church repeated a message he had sent to rallies and in his ads that “I’ll work with anyone if it means helping Georgia”.

Obama spoke about Walker at a college park rally last week and claimed that there was no evidence that he had shown any interest in public service or volunteer work.

Walker’s campaign has trafficked heavily in culture war rhetoric, along with criticism of inflation and crime rates under Biden, whom he’s sought to tie to Warnock to as tightly as possible.

Walker said during their debate that he wanted to make them aware of the damage politicians have done to the country.

Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.

The war in Ukraine is a classic example of VUCA. So is Tuesday’s midterm election in the US. The vote for the seats in the House and more than a third of the Senate is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Will it result in a verdict on the leadership of President Joe Biden and the Democrats? Will it strengthen or weaken the election denialism many Republicans adopted after former President Donald Trump refused to accept his 2020 election loss? How would GOP control of one or both chambers of congress affect America’s future and the final two years of Biden’s term?

It’s clear that the two parties differ even on the issues the election is being fought over. Republicans emphasize inflation, crime and immigration while many Democrats think threats to democracy and the overturn of the Supreme Court’s decision on contraceptives are important reasons toelect their candidates.

That sharp contrast underscored the depth of the divide between red and blue America and points toward the further partitioning of the nation into divergent, and increasingly hostile, blocs living under fundamentally different rules for civil rights and liberties. In addition, last week’s results could emboldenred red state Republicans to continue pushing the militantly conservative social agenda they have pursued since 2021, while also making clear that such an agenda is not viable outside of those core GOP states.

Democrats think their warnings about the future of democracy are amply justified. Dean Obeidallah wrote that we all understand that inflation is temporary and that democracy could be lost. The Washington Post reported recently that a majority of GOP nominees on the ballot for the House, Senate and statewide office have questioned the results of the 2020 election. We have never seen anything like this in our lifetimes – if ever in the history of the United States.”

The former President talked about the problem of inflation while campaigning for the Democrats. Obama had a more effective message for turning out the Democrats, according to Dean Obeidallah.

Basic fights over who should have what, if there is a cause, and who is to blame are the things that get into battles over inflation. Should corporations earn bigger profits, should workers earn higher wages and should consumers shoulder the burden of both?”

Lower income Americans can’t afford energy as energy companies continue to rake in massive profits. The federal government should act now to make sure families have affordable energy in the winter. He argued that the US should follow the European Union by taxing the excess profits of fuel companies, directing the money toward consumers struggling to pay their bills.

An unneccessarily painful recession is on the horizon, warned Desmond Lachman. The reason: the “unusually rapid pace of monetary policy tightening” by the Federal Reserve Bank, which this week hiked interest rates by three quarters of a point for the fourth time in a row. Higher rates are rapidly slowing the housing market and putting pressure on companies to cut staffing, he argued. There is a lot of concern about the state of the world economy and high inflation, as well as the Feds’ stance on monetary policy. The pace of interest rate increases may be slowing, according to Fed leaders.

The Midterms Are Vuca Election: How Do You Get Your Freedoms? A Note to the Washington Post about a Desperately Voting President

The perfect ending question for voters was: Who will fight for your freedom? Obeidallah observed, “The answer clearly is the Democratic Party, and the former President delivered that message, pointing to threats to reproductive rights and same-sex marriage by some Republicans.”

Having Obama make the closing argument might not be a good idea according to a Republican in the Washington Post. Even though Obama’s record of helping down-ballot Democrat is less than stellar, it can be good. More of the seats in Congress, the Senate, and the governors were lost under Obama than under any other president. It is not surprising that many Democrats don’t want Biden to join them on the campaign trail. They may not be able to get Obama to save them. To the contrary, based on this disastrous record, he may be electoral kryptonite.”

A note to our readers: On Tuesday, pivotal races will decide who controls the House, Senate and dozens of governorships across the country. You can follow the contests that matter to you and build a custom dashboard with CNN’s My Election tool. If you log in, you will be able to create a CNN account.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The 50th anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol: President Fanone’s legacy of the 21st anniversary of Paul Pelosi’s death

Former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was injured in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, wrote, “When I speak privately with fellow officers who defended the US Capitol on January 6, the conversation often turns to why so many Americans remain indifferent about the insurrection. Most Americans don’t seem to care. It was an overt attempt to end our democracy. It is Meh…

“I’d like to believe that the violent attack on Paul Pelosi will be a turning point, but somehow I doubt it. … We are no longer talking about isolated incidents or seeing universal condemnation of violence by our leaders. The 82-year-old husband of the woman who is third in line to the US presidency was beaten in his own home for political reasons, and right-wing media and some Republicans reveled in the violence,” Fanone added.

“The momentum to regulate social policy is still really strong and perhaps growing in a lot of red states,” says Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a non-partisan think tank that studies Americans’ social attitudes. But, she added, “in states where the right to abortion was viewed as being threatened … I think that the pro-choice momentum really helped Democrats.”

Most of the states have initiative up for a vote. “Democracy itself is on the ballot in 2022,” wrote Joshua A. Douglas. “Not only do we have candidates who have questioned the 2020 election or refuse to say they will accept defeat this year, but numerous states and localities also will vote on measures to change how elections are run or who may vote in them.”

Midterms Are Vuca-Election-Column-Gant: Trump’s Role in the Party of Culture and Politics

Friday brought word that former President Donald Trump could announce that he is launching another bid for the White House in the next few weeks. “Democrats should not underestimate the threat that Trump poses,” observed Julian Zelizer.

The Republicans are a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. … the ‘Never Trump’ contingent failed to emerge as a dominant force. The officials such as Liz Cheney were thrown out of the party.

“If Republicans do well next week, possibly retaking control of the House and Senate, members of the party will surely feel confident about amping up their culture wars and economic talking points going into 2024. And given the number of election-denying candidates in the midterms, a strong showing will likely create the tailwinds for the GOP to unite behind Trump.”

Zelizer claimed that Trump himself will feel like he’s been stepped on. Despite criminal investigations, Trump is still a viable political figure. … Trump will make prosecuting him more difficult once he becomes a candidate. Trump, a master of playing the victim, is sure to claim (as he has in the past) that any investigation is simply a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ intended to take him out of the running.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Outbursts of Elon Musk: Midterms Are Vuca Elections (column-galant/index.html)

“The chorus of outrage about West’s disgusting attack on Jews was for many days muted – even factoring in the businesses that severed relationships with him,” Carter wrote. There has been a steady increase in antisemitic comments in the alt-right online communities, despite some underestimation of the impact of someone as famous as West.

Elon Musk’s first few days of controlling Twitter have been tumultuous, with the Tesla CEO spreading misinformation, laying off a large share of the workforce and sharing the idea of charging users for blue-check verification status.

The Financial Times reported thatMusk was making the power of US tech executives painfully tangible to all.

There was a lot of racist and neo-Nazi posts on the site immediately after the sale was confirmed. Accounts marked as being linked to Russian and Chinese state media requested that the Twitter labels indicating as much be removed. Speculation was rife as to whether Musk would reverse the account ban for extremists or Donald Trump himself.

According to Rob Norman of the New York Times, Musk has put no limits on his speech and is likely to enable the inflammatory, provocative and sometimes verifiably untrue speech of others.

“I know from having represented the world’s biggest buyer of advertising space that advertisers worry about these things a lot. Advertisers worry could lead to them leaving en mass, which would cost the company all of its revenue. The future of the platform is at stake, and it could be a calamitous acquisition for Mr. Musk.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Banned Books Week 2021: The Worst Year Of Her Work: Martha Hickson, the Education Expert, and America’s Future Starts Now

Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in New Jersey for more than a decade, called it the worst year of her working life. In 2021, protesters showed up at the school board meeting and took issue with two books: a memoir in graphic novel form by Maia Kobabe, and a novel by Jonathan Evans. They spewed selected sentences from the Evison book, while brandishing isolated images from Kobabe’s.”

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. According to the protesters, it was a sinister plan to lure the kids to degradation.

“But the real sucker punch came when one protester branded me a pedophile, pornographer and groomer of children. After a successful career, with retirement on the horizon, to be cast as a villain was heartbreaking.”

“Even worse was the response from my employer – crickets. The board sat in silence that night, and for the next five months refused to utter a word in my defense.”

Hickson’s piece was the concluding personal essay in CNN Opinion’s series on midterm issues, “America’s Future Starts Now.” Nine education experts discussed how to move America’s schools forward.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

After Silva, Bolsonro vs. Netanyahu: The impact of a wrong-sided politician on Israel’s democracy and its future

Elections in Latin America and the Middle East brought back familiar faces. In Brazil, former President Silvaposted a stunning political comeback, defeating the incumbent, Jair Bolsonro, Arick said.

The end of the military dictatorship in 1980’s has not been enough for Brazilians to face a contrast between two candidates with different political views. It is clear that a majority of the voting population did not buy into either of their visions for the country.

Netanyahu is still the most consequential politician on the Israeli scene today despite his indictment and trial for bribe taking, fraud and breach of trust. For Netanyahu the election was very important. Had he failed to secure a governing majority – one that is likely to pass legislation to postpone or even cancel his trial – he may well have had to face the consequences of a guilty verdict or a plea bargain that would have driven him away from politics.”

“Likud is the most stable and durable political party in Israel’s system. Netanyahu is its master and Israel is a nation now shaped more by the right wing – and perhaps its most extreme elements – than at any point in its history.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Why Do We Live in Los Angeles? Why Do Families Smell at the Elections? Why Does Congress Need to Adopt a No-Abortion Law?

The man made clear that this wasn’t only about the couple. “Celebrities wind up as avatars for our own desires, jealousies, ambitions, and insecurities. We don’t actually know why Bündchen and Brady are splitting,” but the story could “tell us a little bit about their marriage – and a whole lot about the still-unfinished business of equality in American marriages.”

After years of sacrifice, Brady wants to spend more time with their family because he wants to play a dangerous sport and worry about his health.

This is “a familiar and frustrating” dynamic: “The woman who steps back to care for children and make sure her husband succeeds – and the husband who doesn’t quite seem to appreciate that sacrifice and continues to push professionally far past when he needs to, at the expense of his family.”

The question for Democrats — who are in a historically unfavorable position as the party in charge of the White House and facing growing concerns about inflation and the rest of the economy — is to what degree the energy unleashed by this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade can be harnessed at the polls, and to what extent that energy can overcome voters’ economic worries.

Congress should pass the Women’s Health Protection Act to codify protections for abortion rights in federal law. The legislation that passed the House last year failed to get the votes to overcome the Senate filibuster.

When it comes to travel from states that have restrictions on abortion, Marilyn Musgrave, SBA Pro-Life America’s vice president of government affairs, said without a nationwide abortion ban, people will continue to travel.

President Biden has promised he would veto any such anti-abortion legislation that might pass while he’s in office, but NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said that would be too close for comfort.

Democrat’s Choices in a Democratic Campaign to Protect Righted Proton From Disturbing Our First Amendment Rights: A Spectator’s View

We don’t want to get that far. “That’s a bad precedent,” Timmaraju said. “That’s our goal, and we won’t let it get to that point.”

While abortion rights may be top of mind for some voters in this year’s election, they may be a difficult decision for Democrats, according to the Emily’s List.

“Voters are the whole people; they put their whole selves into the ballot box,” he said. Our economy ebbs and flows but we don’t know if we will ever be able to get it back when our fundamental freedoms are taken away.

Meanwhile, SBA Pro-Life America’s Musgrave says the group’s Women Speak Out Pac has contacted some 8 million voters nationwide on behalf of anti-abortion rights candidates and related ballot measures.

Democrats did well in Pennsylvania. They ran as well as Mr. Biden did in 2020 or even better. They swept every competitive House seat. John Fetterman won the race for U.S. Senate by a wider margin than Mr. Biden had won the state. Josh decided to be the Democratic nominee for governor.

On the other side of the line, in New York, Republicans won big. The candidates for Congress did better than Mr. Trump did. Republicans won all but one of the state’s congressional districts. The governor’s race in a normally blue state was fairly close, though the Democratic incumbent, Kathy Hochul, held off her Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin.

There are exceptions, of course — like Democratic strength in Colorado or Republican durability in Texas. Most of the impressive showings fit together.

In Florida, the Republican win was never in question because the stop-the-steal movement never sought to overturn the election result and the Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to go beyond a 15-week abortion ban. There are the Democratic successes in Kansas and Michigan, where abortion referendums were on the ballot at different points this year, and where Democrats swept the most competitive House districts.

One of the first out lesbian governors will be Tina Kotek, a Democrat, who will win the open governorship race in Oregon, according to CNN.

I want to give my thanks to the people who supported me and put their trust in our campaign. I also want to assure Oregonians that every vote will be counted and that their voices were heard in this election. Unfortunately, given what we know about the ballots outstanding, the math for a comeback simply does not add up,” Drazan said in a statement.

Oregon, a state where President Joe Biden won 16 percentage points in 2020, has been tough terrain for the Democrats, especially since Republicans haven’t won the governor’s office in more than 30 years. Business leaders gave Johnson money, including Phil Knight of Nike, who is a contender in the three-way all-women contest.

The rise in violent crime in Portland has Oregonians unnerved. The more than 100 days of protests against police brutality, some of them violent, that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 has not been completely recovered from the impact of the business closings during the Pandemic-era.

The State of the Game: Why Democrats Haven’t Done Right, but Republicans Do Embrace Democratic Issues: The Case of Oregon

The state’s problems stem from single-party control over the last 10 years and have led to a lack of accountability according to Drazan.

But Kotek argued that Drazan was too extreme for Oregon – highlighting her opposition to abortion rights, for example. Drazan demonstrated obstructionist tendencies when sheled a legislative walk out in 2020 to protest a climate bill. Drazans move killed legislation that would have advanced the state’s efforts to improve homelessness. The accusation was an excuse according to Drazan’s campaign.

Biden campaigned for Kotek during a swing through the western states, urging voters to “stay ahead of the curve” as a progressive state by electing the former House speaker.

In Democratic-leaning and swing states, voters last week delivered an unmistakable cry of resistance to the restrictive Republican social agenda symbolized by the drive to ban abortion.

But in red states where Republicans have actually imposed that agenda over the past two years, GOP governors cruised to reelection without any discernible backlash.

The exit polls show the Democratic performance was not good for each of the groups compared to 2020. It was not surprising that erosion had occurred, given that huge majority of the groups had negative opinions about the economy and many gave President Joe Biden a failing grade for his performance so far.

Democrats had enough support from major voting blocs to post a series of unexpected victories despite the undertow. In the national exit poll results, Democrats, stunningly, even won a narrow plurality of independent voters, who have almost always voted in big numbers against the party holding the White House at such moments of national discontent. Democrats carried independents across the board in blue and purple state governor races, according to the exit polls.

A vice-president of a liberal group says that there is a pro-freedom and anti-MAGA majority in the party. “We weren’t sure if it was going to show up again as it did in 2018 and 2020 … but we saw a really resounding answer from American voters: which is we don’t want these MAGA Trump Republicans to take us backward, we want to go forward.”

When it came to economic perception, voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the most pessimistic in the country, with three-fourths of voters describing the economy as fair or poor.

Voting against extremism in the red citadel: How the late-breaking GOP pushed back against abortion laws and sexism

There’s a risk of people getting used to having these rights and freedoms being taken away from them.

But the “Roe wave” failed to breach the Republican defenses in the states that constitute what could be called “the red citadel” – the 23 states where Republicans held unified control of the government heading into the midterm election. Since 2021, those states have moved with startling speed to approve a conservative social agenda that includes restrictions or outright bans on abortion rights; laws making it more difficult to vote; bans on transgender girls playing school sports and on transgender minors receiving gender affirming treatment; censorship of classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation; measures empowering parents who want to ban books from school libraries; and statutes eliminating permitting and training requirements for people who want to carry concealed weapons.

In Ohio and Florida, DeSantis and DeWine each even won about one-third of women who supported legal abortion; that was about double the share of women with such attitudes who backed Republican governor candidates Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. (Abbott and Kemp finished in between, winning about one-fourth of women who supported abortion rights.) Overall, after signing abortion bans, DeSantis, DeWine, Kemp and Abbott all won White women in their states by big margins; Kemp and DeWine each carried about seven-in-ten of them.

“It’s not just abortion,” says Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who served as one of Biden’s lead pollsters in the 2020 campaign. Their views on abortion are a signal to these voters that I also have to be very extreme on a lot of other things. I think those late-breaking voters … really did vote against extremism.”

Yet red state Republicans will likely feel emboldened to push further on their path. With voters increasing their majority in the Florida state legislature Republicans are already talking about tightening the 15-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis. Texas state legislators have proposed to bar companies from doing business in the state if they allow workers in other states to travel for abortions.

According to a veteran GOP pollster, this separation shows the value of allowing states to set their own rules on controversial social issues. This “is exactly why allowing the states to follow their own cultural values on such an emotionally fraught issue is a wise decision in a federal political system,” Ayres says. “That’s why Roe v. Wade was so problematic as a national policy because values differ so dramatically among the states that it is impossible to adopt a national abortion policy that will be supported in each of the states.”

It is possible for us to have this coalition mobilize again in 2024, according to Fernandez Ancona. She notes that young voters will constitute a larger portion of the electorate in 2020 than they did this year, because they voted last week for Democrats who supported abortion rights.

There are some reasons for optimism for the Democrats, but they acknowledge that it will take a lot longer to build the kind of power they need to challenge Republicans in red states.

The results of this years election show red and blue America in a state of disrepair that threatens to destroy the country.