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Tag: societal issues

  • ‘Our city is heartbroken’: Louisville holding vigil today to mourn 5 killed in bank shooting | CNN

    ‘Our city is heartbroken’: Louisville holding vigil today to mourn 5 killed in bank shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Louisville is set to host a vigil Wednesday to let community members grieve the five people killed this week in a downtown bank shooting, as the public absorbs fresh details that investigators are releasing about how the massacre unfolded.

    The vigil comes a day after police released dramatic police body camera footage of Monday’s shooting at Old National Bank, in which authorities say a 25-year-old employee opened fire on his colleagues who were in a staff meeting and then engaged in a shootout with police before he was shot dead.

    The attacker killed five of his coworkers around 8:30 a.m. in Kentucky’s most populous city, about 30 minutes before the facility was to open, a gruesome assault that the shooter livestreamed online, authorities said. Several others were hospitalized, including a rookie police officer who was shot in the head and was in critical condition Tuesday.

    “Our city is heartbroken,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday evening. “These five victims should not be dead – just like everyone else who was killed by gun violence in our city, in our country, should not be dead.”

    Police say they’re still trying to determine the shooter’s motive. As an investigation continues, officials expect to release audio Wednesday of 911 calls about the shooting, the mayor said.

    And the city will hold a vigil at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, the mayor said.

    The vigil will “acknowledge the wounds, physical and emotional, that gun violence leaves behind,” Greenberg told reporters Tuesday. “It will be an interfaith opportunity for our entire community to come together – to grieve, to heal, to begin to move forward.”

    On Tuesday, Louisville police released bodycam video from the officers who responded to yet another mass shooting in the US.

    The public footage begins with a video from Officer Nickolas Wilt – a 26-year-old rookie who’d graduated from a police academy just 10 days prior – who drove up to the scene with his training officer, Cory “CJ” Galloway.

    As Wilt ran toward the gunshots that officers faced upon arrival, Wilt was shot in the head, police said. The released version of Wilt’s footage cuts off before he is shot.

    Body camera footage from Galloway shows him taking fire, and then retreating to a safe position behind a planter as officers talk about how they can’t see the gunman, and that the gunman is shooting through windows in the front of the bank. At some point, Galloway was also shot.

    Police eventually took down the shooter after he broke the bank’s lobby glass windows, giving officers a vision on his location, Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said.

    The entire situation – from when the gunman began firing his assault weapon to when he was killed by police – lasted for about nine minutes, according to Louisville police Lt. Col. Aaron Cromwell.

    Those killed in the shooting were Joshua Barrick, 40; Juliana Farmer, 45; Deana Eckert, 57; Tommy Elliott, 63; and James Tutt, 64, police said.

    Nine people – including Eckert, before she died Monday – were hospitalized after the shooting, officials said. Among the eight current survivors, five had been discharged as of Tuesday, a hospital spokesperson said.

    The three victims who remain hospitalized include Wilt, who underwent brain surgery and was in critical condition Tuesday, and two others who were in fair condition, the hospital spokesperson said.

    Monday’s massacre in Louisville was one of at least 147 mass shootings this year in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which like CNN defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not including the shooter.

    It took the assailant one minute to complete the bloodbath before he stopped and waited for police to arrive, according to footage of the massacre described by a city official to CNN.

    The shooter, identified by police as 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon, had livestreamed the gruesome attack on Instagram – the video has since been taken down.

    The Instagram video begins by showing an AR-15-style weapon, followed by a worker in the bank saying good morning to the gunman, the official said.

    The gunman then tries to shoot her in the back but fails because the safety is on and the weapon still needs to be loaded, the official said. Once the shooter loads the weapon properly and takes the safety off, he shoots the worker in the back, the official said.

    The assailant then continues his rampage, firing at workers while they tried to outrun him, the official said. The shooter does not go to other populated floors of the bank, the official said.

    Once the shooter finishes firing, he sits in the lobby area that looks out onto the street, apparently waiting for police, the official said.

    Police arrive about a minute and half later, the official said, at which point a gunfire exchange ensues before police eventually shoot and kill the gunman.

    Sturgeon used an AR-15-style rifle in the shooting, police said. Six days before the killings, he legally purchased the rifle from a local gun dealership, the interim Louisville police chief said Tuesday.

    Sturgeon had interned at the bank for three summers and been employed there full-time for about two years, his LinkedIn profile showed. The assailant had been notified that he was going to be fired from the bank, a law enforcement source said Monday.

    The mayor, however, said doesn’t believe the shooter was given a notice of termination.

    “From what I have been told from an official at the bank, that is not accurate,” Greenberg told reporters Tuesday.

    A former high school classmate of Sturgeon’s who knew him and his family well said he never saw any “sort of red flag or signal that this could ever happen.”

    “This is a total shock. He was a really good kid who came from a really good family,” said the classmate, who asked not to be identified and has not spoken with Sturgeon in recent years. “I can’t even say how much this doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe it.”

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  • Iowa’s attorney general has paused funding for sexual assault victims’ Plan B and abortions | CNN

    Iowa’s attorney general has paused funding for sexual assault victims’ Plan B and abortions | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Iowa’s Attorney General has paused funding for emergency contraception and abortions for sexual assault victims, according to an email Iowa’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault received that was also shared with CNN.

    The email was sent from Chief Deputy Attorney General Sam Langholz. Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Langholz told the nonprofit that a review of victim’s services is ongoing and the Attorney General has not made a final decision on whether the payments will resume.

    “While not required by Iowa law, the victim compensation fund has previously paid for Plan B and abortions. As a part of her top-down, bottom-up audit of victim assistance, Attorney General Bird is carefully evaluating whether this is an appropriate use of public funds,” Bird’s Press Secretary Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement to the Des Moines Register. “Until that review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

    Langholz shared the same statement from Bird’s press secretary in the email obtained by CNN.

    Under the 1979 Iowa Sexual Abuse Examination Payment Program, victims of sexual assault in Iowa are “never responsible for a sexual abuse forensic examination or for medications required due to the assault,” according to Iowa’s Victim Assistance annual report.

    Though it was not explicitly required, it has been the state’s longtime policy to cover the cost of emergency contraception under the victim compensation fund, and in rare cases, the fund has also paid for abortions for rape victims, Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, director of the victim assistance division under the previous attorney general, told the Des Moines Register.

    After Bird took office, Tibbetts Murphy resigned at request of the new attorney general, the Des Moines Register reported.

    Funds for the program are entirely made up of fines and penalties paid by convicted criminals, rather than general taxpayer money – a point victim advocacy groups emphasize.

    “Victims of rape and child abuse have an acute need for timely access to health services, including contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy and abortion care. Cost should never be a barrier for rape victims seeking medical care,” Iowa’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault said in a statement Monday, urging the attorney general to continue the payments to sexual assault victims. “Using offender accountability victim compensation funds to cover the cost of forensic exams, incentivizes victims to undergo an invasive exam that can help prevent offenders from victimizing others and enhance access to medical care for crime victims.”

    Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, called Bird’s decision “deplorable and reprehensible,” saying it “further demonstrates politicians’ crusade against Iowans’ health and rights,” according to a statement.

    Bird, a Republican, won her election in 2022 in a race that largely focused on abortion after her Democratic opponent declined to defend Iowa’s “fetal heartbeat” law, which would ban most abortions after about six weeks.

    During her campaign, Bird said, “I am pro-life and I will defend the laws that are passed by the Legislature.”

    Iowa’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault says that ensuring victims are not responsible for the cost of a forensic exam or for needed medications after an assault is “key to encouraging victims to undergo this extremely invasive medical exam as soon as possible after a violent assault.”

    Juveniles accounted for the majority of sexual abuse victim costs paid for by Iowa’s state victim compensation funds, according to a 2021 Iowa’s Victim Assistance report.

    Nearly 2.9 million women across the US experienced rape-related pregnancy during their lifetime, according to a study published in 2018 by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

    “Emergency contraception should be provided to victims of sexual assault, requiring its immediate availability in hospitals and other facilities where sexual assault victims are treated,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says on its website.

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  • As Louisville police investigate what led up to bank shooting that left 5 dead, several victims remain hospitalized | CNN

    As Louisville police investigate what led up to bank shooting that left 5 dead, several victims remain hospitalized | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As Louisville investigators piece together what led up to a mass shooting inside a downtown bank that left five people dead, several victims remain hospitalized, including a police officer in critical condition after a shootout with the 25-year-old gunman.

    The gunman, identified by police as employee Connor Sturgeon, was livestreaming online as he carried out the shooting at Old National Bank, officials said. He opened fire inside a conference room during a morning staff meeting, Rebecca Buchheit-Sims, a manager at the bank, told CNN.

    Buchheit-Sims, who was attending the meeting virtually, watched in horror as the shooting played out on her computer screen, saying the incident “happened very quickly.”

    “I witnessed people being murdered. I don’t know how else to say that,” she said.

    One of the hospitalized victims, 57-year-old Deana Eckert, died later Monday, police announced, though it is unclear if she was among the three people in critical condition earlier in the day.

    The four other victims, who died Monday morning, were identified by police as Joshua Barrick, 40; Juliana Farmer, 45; Tommy Elliott, 63; and James Tutt, 64.

    Sturgeon, whose LinkedIn profile showed he had interned at the bank for three summers and been employed there full-time for close to two years, had been notified that he was going to be fired from his job at the bank, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.

    The source said the gunman left behind a note for his parents and a friend indicating he planned to carrying out a shooting at his workplace, though it is unclear when the message was found.

    The gunman, who was still firing when police arrived, was killed in a shootout with officers, police officials said. At least two officers, including one who was shot in the head, were injured during the gunfire.

    Monday’s massacre is the 146th mass shooting so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, as such tragedies continue to strike at the hearts of American communities while they go about their daily lives. It also falls exactly two weeks after three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a Christian school in neighboring Tennessee, fueling a fierce fight between Democratic and Republican state lawmakers over gun control.

    Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has ordered flags across the state to fly at half-staff until Friday evening in honor of the victims, but some Democratic lawmakers are concerned that the expressions of grief will come and go without meaningful gun violence solutions.

    “My worry is that everybody will raise their fists in anger and mourn and then in six weeks, eight weeks we go back to doing the same – nothing,” state Sen. David Yates told CNN Monday. “I hope that they all don’t have to die in vain like so many of the other victims of these mass shootings. Maybe something positive can come from it.”

    President Joe Biden also echoed his repeated push for gun reform legislation and called on Republican lawmakers to take action.

    “Too many Americans are paying for the price of inaction with their lives. When will Republicans in Congress act to protect our communities?,” the president said in a tweet.

    Members of the Old National Bank executive team, including CEO Jim Ryan, were in Louisville Monday on the heels of the shooting, the company said on Facebook.

    “As we await more details, we are deploying employee assistance support and keeping everyone affected by this tragedy in our thoughts and prayers,” Ryan said in a statement that morning.

    Two people embrace outside the building where a mass shooting happened in Louisville on Monday.

    The shooting began around 8:30 a.m., police said, about 30 minutes before the bank opens to the public. Bank staff were holding their morning meeting in a conference room when the shooter opened fire, Buchheit-Sims, the bank manager, said.

    One bank employee frantically called her husband as she sheltered inside a locked vault, the husband, Caleb Goodlett told CNN affiiliate WLKY. By the time he called 911, police were already aware of the shooting, he said.

    “Just a very traumatic phone call to get,” Goodlett told the affiliate, adding that he has since seen his wife and she is okay.

    The gunman died at the scene after being shot by police during an exchange of gunfire, officials said.

    Nickolas Wilt, a 26-year-old rookie officer, ran toward the gunfire and was shot in the head, interim Louisville Metro Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said. He had graduated from the police academy just 10 days before the shooting.

    Wilt underwent brain surgery and was in critical but stable condition as of Monday afternoon, the chief said.

    The gun used in the shooting was an AR-15-style rifle, a federal law enforcement source told CNN. The semi-automatic rifle is the most popular sporting rifle in the US, and 30% of gun owners reported having owned an AR-15 or similar-style rifle, according to the 2021 National Firearms Survey. The AR-15 and its offshoots have been the weapon of choice in many of the most horrific mass shootings in recent memory, including the Covenant school shooting in Nashville just two weeks ago.

    The bank sits on the fringe of Louisville’s developing downtown business district, state Sen. Gerald Neal, who represents the district where the shooting happened, told CNN. “You wouldn’t really expect anything to happen at this location,” he said.

    Despite the shock of the shooting in Kentucky’s most populated city, Neal believes discussions about gun control in the state will still be an “uphill battle.”

    “This is not a state that’s friendly to those who would think about gun reform … or gun control in some way or even reasonable, as you might consider, gun steps that we could take in terms of restricting them. This is not that state. However, the effort continues.”

    Thomas Elliott

    One of the shooting victims, bank senior vice president Tommy Elliot, was remembered by several local and state leaders as a close mentor and beloved community leader.

    “Tommy was a great man. He cared about finding good people and putting them in positions to do great things. He embraced me when I was very young and interested in politics,” state senator Yates told CNN. “He was about lifting people up, building them up.”

    Elliot was also close friends with Gov. Beshear and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who said he spent Monday morning at the hospital with Elliot’s wife.

    “It is painful, painful for all of the families I know,” Greenberg said while speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “It just hits home in a unique way when you know one of the victims so well.”

    Beshear remembered Elliot an “incredible friend” and also called the others who were killed “amazing people” who will be missed and mourned by their communities.

    The city is setting up a family assistance center in collaboration with the American Red Cross to provide support for those impacted, Greenberg said.

    “To the survivors and the families, our entire city is here to wrap our arms around you,” Greenberg added.

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  • The GOP’s silence on guns and abortion is a short-term response with a long-term problem | CNN Politics

    The GOP’s silence on guns and abortion is a short-term response with a long-term problem | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Yet another mass shooting and a new blow to nationwide abortion rights left Republicans facing pointed questions on two of the most emotive issues dominating American politics.

    But the GOP had almost nothing to say, reflecting the way that it is locked into positions that animate its most fervent grassroots voters but risk alienating it from much of the public.

    A controversial ruling from a conservative judge in Texas that could halt the use of a popular abortion drug nationwide, and another shooting spree – this time in Kentucky – sparked outrage among Democrats and calls for strengthening gun safety measures and protecting abortion rights.

    Most Republicans stayed silent on the two issues on which they have achieved their political and policy goals but that are threatening the party’s long-term viability.

    After the shooting in downtown Louisville on Monday, Kentucky’s Republican senators issued condolences but offered no solutions about how the tragedy, which killed five people and injured eight others, might have been avoided. The gunman used a rifle in the attack after being notified of his impending dismissal from a job at a bank, a law enforcement official said.

    “We send our prayers to the victims, their families, and the city of Louisville as we await more information,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell wrote in a tweet that also praised first responders. And Sen. Rand Paul tweeted that he and his wife were “praying for everyone involved in the deadly shooting,” adding that “our hearts break for the families of those lost.”

    Democrats offered condolences too, but also had a more practical response. President Joe Biden called for the kind of gun safety reform that is impossible with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and without Democrats holding more seats in the Senate. “Too many Americans are paying for the price of inaction with their lives. When will Republicans in Congress act to protect our communities?” Biden asked in a tweet.

    Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who represents Louisville in Congress, called for action to tackle gun violence. “Thoughts and prayers for those we lost, those who are injured and their loved ones and families are appreciated, but today serves as a stark reminder that we need to address gun violence at the national level,” the freshman congressman said.

    Over the last few decades, Republicans have expertly used gun rights and a push to overturn a constitutional right to end a pregnancy to energize their most loyal voters. And on each issue, in a purely political sense, it’s hard to argue that they have not racked up considerable wins.

    There are more guns than ever in the US. Republicans around the country are leading efforts to slash firearms regulation and broaden citizens’ capacity to carry guns. Despite a murderous run of massacres in schools, nightclubs, places of worship and, on Monday, in a bank, the party has effectively closed down all significant attempts in Congress to make it harder to buy weapons – including the assault-style rifles used in recent shootings. A bipartisan effort to persuade states to embrace red flag laws, which could help authorities confiscate weapons from people thought to pose a risk, did pass Congress last year. But its success was all the more notable because of the paucity of other federal legislation in previous decades.

    On abortion, meanwhile, the 50-year conservative campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade ranks as one of the most stunning victories for a long-term political movement in history. It reached its apex with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

    Yet it’s possible that these famous wins could carry a significant risk for the party.

    South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace calls herself “pro-life,” but also warns that GOP-backed state laws that don’t provide exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother alienate large and vital sections of the US electorate. Mace was a rare Republican to publicly respond to Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s abortion drug ruling last week, which Democratic groups have seized on to renew claims Republicans want a national ban on abortion.

    “We are getting it wrong on this issue,” Mace said on “CNN This Morning” on Monday. “We’ve got to show compassion to women, especially to women who’ve been raped. We’ve got to show compassion on the abortion issue, because by and large, most of Americans aren’t with us on this issue.” She called for the US Food and Drug Administration to ignore the judge’s ruling, aligning her with progressive Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

    One reason Republicans have been successful in tightening abortion restrictions and loosening those on guns has been that their voters have embraced these two issues. They are make-or-break for many activists, and candidates have shaped their platforms as a result. Democrats, however, have traditionally been less successful in energizing their core supporters on both. The disparate intensity level among the parties was one factor in the sequence of events that led to a new conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe. For years, Democrats trod carefully around the guns issue, wary of alienating more moderate or soft conservative voters.

    But there are signs this could be changing. Abortion was a huge motivator for Democratic voters in last year’s midterms and the Supreme Court’s ruling clearly hamstrung Republican candidates in several key swing races. In Wisconsin, which reverted to a pre-Civil War law banning almost all abortions once Roe was overturned, the issue was critical to the victory of a liberal candidate in last week’s state Supreme Court race, which flipped the conservative majority.

    Liberal fury over the failure to enact new gun laws stoked a political storm in Tennessee last week. Republicans expelled two Black Democratic lawmakers from the state’s House of Representatives for leading a gun reform protest inside the chamber after a mass shooting at a Nashville school the week before that killed six people, including three nine-year-olds. This highlighted a growing frustration among Democrats at their impotence in the face of endless mass shootings. (One of the lawmakers, Justin Jones, was sworn back into the chamber on Monday on an interim basis after the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted to appoint him.)

    Despite this shifting political terrain, there are few signs that top Republican leaders are willing to change the party’s tack on guns or abortion. Or that they have the political room to do so. Even though it makes sense for Republicans to appeal to a more general audience to avoid alienating crucial suburban, moderate and female voters, the vehemence of their core supporters makes this an impossible straddle. It’s a similar dynamic to the one many GOP power brokers have long faced with Donald Trump. The former president remains so popular with base voters that his GOP critics risk their careers by publicly opposing him. And yet, he has long been a liability among general election voters – as proved by the GOP’s performance in 2020 and 2022.

    The party’s failure to align with most Americans on abortion and on some aspects of gun safety may not be sustainable. Polls show that many voters, including younger Americans, are being driven away from the party because of its positions.

    In a Harvard Youth Poll released last week, which was completed before the shooting in Nashville, 63% of 18-to-29-year-olds said that gun laws should be made more strict, with 22% saying they should be kept as they are, and 13% that they should be made less strict. Young Americans are generally on the same page as the public as a whole. In October 2022, 57% of all Americans said that laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, with 32% saying laws should be kept as they were and 10% that laws should be made less strict, according to a Gallup survey from October 2022.

    On abortion, only 26% of Americans favor laws making it illegal to use or receive through the mail FDA-approved drugs for a medical abortion, while 72% oppose such laws, according to a PRRI report that analyzed polling on the issue over the last year. While 50% of White evangelical Protestants favor making it illegal to use or receive those drugs, less than half of any other racial, gender, educational or age group agree.

    In a Gallup poll in January, 46% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with US abortion policies and would prefer to see less strict abortion laws. That’s a record high in the firm’s 23-year trend, up from 30% in January 2022 and just 17% in 2021.

    Given these numbers, and recent election results, it’s not surprising that some Republicans not actively courting the base may choose not to speak at length on guns and abortion. And such data may also help to explain the GOP’s increasingly anti-democratic turn as it seeks to cling onto power – whether in efforts to expel Tennessee lawmakers for disturbing decorum with their anti-gun protests or through Trump’s insistence he won an election he actually lost.

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  • Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

    Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Kari Lake – the unapologetic supporter of former President Donald Trump and vanquished candidate for Arizona governor – privately made a trip to National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters in February where she discussed the prospects of shaking up the map and running for Senate.

    But Lake, who has faced blowback over pushing baseless accusations of election fraud, was given this suggestion from NRSC officials: Shift to more effective messaging and away from claims about a stolen election, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    The meeting, which was described as a positive one, focused on how Senate bids often turn on issues that are different than governor’s races, multiple sources said. Top Republicans quietly acknowledge Lake could become a frontrunner if she runs in the primary, hoping to steer her towards a viable campaign if she mounts one, even as Arizona’s Pinal County sheriff is expected to soon jump into the race while independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema actively prepares a reelection bid herself.

    And that’s just one state.

    The Arizona race is one of several landmines that Republican leaders are navigating as they work behind the scenes to avoid a repeat of the 2022 debacle that saw weaker candidates emerge from contested primaries – only to peter out and collapse in the general election and hand Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority. Several of those candidates were backed by Trump as the NRSC – run at the time by Florida Sen. Rick Scott – opted to stay away from Republican primaries.

    Now, the NRSC – run by Sen. Steve Daines of Montana – has taken a much more hands-on approach to primaries, actively working on candidate recruitment and vetting. And the committee is weighing whether to spend big bucks in primaries to help root out weaker candidates, a move that risks setting up a clash with hard-right candidates aligning themselves with Trump.

    “You need to learn from your past mistakes,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told CNN. “If you don’t make adjustments, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, it’s insanity.”

    Privately, Daines has spoken multiple times with Trump and has been in touch with his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., while national Republicans point to the NRSC’s early endorsement and fundraising for Rep. Jim Banks in the Indiana Senate race as an example of how the party’s warring wings can try to avoid messy primaries.

    The goal, GOP sources say, is to keep Trump aligned with Republican leadership – even as the former president has furiously attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the aftermath of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, and as the Senate GOP leader has stayed silent amid the former president’s indictment on 34 felony charges in New York. Daines, however, has been vocal in his defense of Trump.

    “I have a very good relationship with the president. We talk, and it’s no secret we’ve been friends for a long time,” Daines told CNN when asked about the Senate races. “And he provides great insights. And I also provide my thoughts as well. And we have open lines of communication.”

    Daines added: “Wherever we can find common ground is a good thing.”

    That relationship could be put to the test in key battleground states. In West Virginia, Republican leaders are preparing to close ranks behind Gov. Jim Justice, who is seriously weighing a run for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. A Justice bid would put him against Rep. Alex Mooney, who had won Trump’s backing in a competitive House race in the last cycle but now has the support of the conservative Club for Growth’s political arm.

    In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano – the controversial candidate who lost a bid for governor last fall but had the support of Trump in the primary – says he’s “still praying” on whether to mount a bid for the Senate, something Republicans in Washington fear. The NRSC plans to put its muscle behind the potential candidacy of David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who narrowly lost the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary in 2022, according to Republican sources who view him as their best bet at picking up the seat next year.

    “I haven’t decided yet on 2024. I’m thinking about it,” McCormick told CNN. “You run for office … because you think you have something to contribute. You think it’s a moment where you might be able to serve, and if you lose, that motivation doesn’t necessarily go away.”

    And in Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, is weighing a run in a race that could put him up against two other potential candidates viewed by senior Republicans as more electable – Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen and businessman Tim Sheehy – against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Rosendale attended an event last Tuesday in Mar-a-Lago following Trump’s arraignment in New York, a sign one Trump adviser saw as an effort to secure an endorsement ahead of a potential bid.

    Rosendale told CNN he’s in no rush to make a decision.

    “We’re just taking a nice slow time to let the people in Montana decide who they want to replace him with,” Rosendale said of Tester. “I feel very sure he will be replaced.” He added that Daines “is my senator” and that “I see him regularly.”

    Tester contended that the Republican nominee makes little difference to him.

    “I think the person who runs against me is the person McConnell chooses,” Tester said. “Whoever that is, I don’t think it matters much: Same election.”

    Top Republicans say they will have to make key strategic decisions on how to engage in some of these races – or whether to stay out altogether, as they might in Ohio as party leaders view the emerging field as full of electable candidates against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

    If they come in too aggressively, it could prompt blowback and rally the right behind a potentially weaker candidate. But if they disengage, they could see their favored candidate struggle to gain traction.

    In Wisconsin, Republican officials are urging Rep. Mike Gallagher to run, though he could face a potential primary there as well, as former Senate candidate Eric Hovde and others weigh a run. Gallagher, who is chairing a House panel focused on China, said of a potential run against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin: “I’m not thinking about it at present,” citing his legislative work and family commitments. But he left the door open.

    “I’d never conceived of this as a long-term thing; I don’t think Congress should be a career,” Gallagher said, adding: “I’m going to weigh all those factors and see where I can make the best impact.”

    In interviews with roughly a dozen top senators, nearly all of them agreed they need to be hyper-focused this cycle on helping candidates who can win not only a primary election, but a general election — repeatedly referencing “candidate quality” as their 2024 motto.

    Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of Senate GOP leadership and former NRSC chairman, has long had to contend with primary fights between the party establishment and activist base – battles that had effectively cost them the chance at the Senate majority in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, in addition to 2022.

    “It never goes away,” Cornyn said of the primary complications. “Republicans need to make up their mind. Do we want to win, or do we want to lose? And I think that it’s that simple, and I think people are tired of losing.”

    Yet some on the right are warning against party leaders picking and choosing their candidates – including Scott, who defends his hands-off approach in the last cycle.

    “I believe the citizens of the state ought to pick,” Scott said, adding: “A lot of these weaker candidates often are the ones who actually win. I was not the establishment candidate.”

    Scott’s fellow Florida Republican, Marco Rubio, was not backed by the NRSC in the 2010 election cycle. But he galvanized the GOP base and defeated Charlie Crist, who later became a Democrat.

    “I’m not a big believer that you can determine who the weaker candidate is. A lot of people up here then would not have been their choice,” Rubio told CNN. “Obviously there might be some exceptions here or there, but generally the NRSC should be engaged in helping whoever the Republican nominee is to win the general election.”

    Unlike the last cycle — when the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund and the Rick Scott-run NRSC clashed publicly over the approach to expanding the Senate map — this time, the two committees are largely aligned. Republicans are betting that their preferred chances will vastly improve with the help of big donors and nationwide fundraising – and potentially an aggressive ad campaign in the primary to derail weaker opponents.

    “As we look across the country and look at different traces, it’s pretty straightforward,” Daines said. “We want to see candidates who can win a primary election and also win a general.”

    The map heavily favors the GOP – with 23 Democratic and independent seats in cycle compared to just 11 Republicans facing re-election. But Republicans, burnt by their past failures, are well aware that defeating an incumbent is a difficult task and could grow more challenging in a presidential election year, especially in swing states if Trump is the nominee. Behind the scenes, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to limit Democratic retirements.

    And Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was skeptical that a more aggressive GOP intervention from Washington would solve Republican woes.

    “I’m not sure who the Republicans will put forward as their nominees, but normally the folks who get to determine who the nominee is are the voters in those individual states in the primaries,” Peters said in an interview. “If we look at what happened last cycle, those primary voters tended to pick highly flawed candidates, and I expect that will happen again.”

    The fight for the seat occupied by Sinema has quickly emerged as the messiest affair – for both parties.

    Sinema’s recent change in party identification — switching from a Democrat to an independent — poses a fresh challenge that party leaders will have to navigate, as it could set up an unpredictable three-way race. Sinema has not yet said if she will run again, but she has been raising enormous sums in preparation for a potential bid and has been meeting with strategists and advisers to map out plans for a possible campaign.

    And Democratic leaders are worried that backing a fellow Democrat in the primary could end up alienating Sinema and potentially lead her to caucus with the GOP, forcing them to stay neutral for now.

    “She’s a very effective legislator,” Schumer, who so far is neutral in the race, said when asked about Sinema recently.

    On the GOP side, several candidates who tried — and failed — to win statewide races last cycle are also complicating that strategy, making it a key source of anxiety among many top Republicans and the Senate committees, according to Republican sources.

    Those candidates include Lake and the 2020 Senate GOP nominee, Blake Masters, two of the most Trumpian candidates who lost last year. Both Lake and Masters garnered enormous support among the GOP base for leaning into 2020 election denials and the populist ideals that Trump touted throughout his presidency. Masters has discussed a potential 2024 Senate bid with several Republicans, though it’s unclear whether he will run, GOP sources say.

    Lake met with the NRSC for roughly an hour in February and is expected to meet with them again in the coming weeks, sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The issue of focusing on claims of a stolen election was one point discussed at the meeting, the sources said.

    “The point that has been brought up, which Kari knows, is that the issue sets are different from a governor’s race. She knows you can’t run on that because it’s not something, as a senator, that you can fix,” a source close to Lake said, referencing her rhetoric around stolen elections. “The conversation was more about how the issues are different between a governor’s race and a Senate race.”

    Senior Republicans acknowledge that her ultimate decision on whether to enter the race could freeze out other candidates, particularly those wanting to run in the same lane, with the source close to Lake saying establishment-minded Republicans have been reaching out to her about a potential run. The source said Lake has a 200,000-plus donor list she could pull support from and believes she would have “widespread support” if she decides to run.

    But many in the top ranks are skeptical about her chances.

    “If you take a look at the race, where Sen. Sinema is probably going to take some of the right, left and center, it’s going to make for a difficult path for a Republican in that state in any scenario,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN. “The party there is, I think, set on Lake if she decides to run with it, but, I mean, we just have to see how well she performs.”

    Tillis added that, given the “three-way race dynamic,” Lake “is not going to be able to make a lot of headway there.”

    Cornyn said of Lake: “Her recent track record doesn’t indicate that she would be successful. We need candidates who can broaden their appeal beyond the base and win a general.”

    Masters, meanwhile, has quietly reached out to some advisers about what another Senate run would look like and has spoken with some senior GOP officials about a 2024 run.

    Other potential GOP candidates include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is expected to announce a Senate run as soon as this week and is viewed favorably by some top Republicans, according to GOP sources. Abe Hamadeh, formerly the Republican nominee for Arizona attorney general, is also weighing a run. And both Lamb and Hamadeh met recently with NRSC officials, but they have not met directly with Daines, according to a source familiar with the meetings.

    Two other Republicans, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, are also considering jumping into the race, sources familiar with the matter say. Lamon and Robson, who ran in 2022 for Senate and governor respectively, did not receive Trump’s support.

    Robson recently met with the NRSC, and many within the GOP committee “like her and see her as a quality candidate,” a source familiar with the meeting said. Lamon has not yet met with the NRSC, but is expected to set up a meeting in the coming months.

    Arizona’s Senate primary is not until August 6, 2024, and the filing deadline to enter is April 8, 2024 — giving them a long runway to decide whether or not to run — further complicating GOP leadership’s calculus on how to navigate the race dynamics.

    “I just think we’re, we’re more likely to get people elected if they’re focused on the future, as opposed to focusing on what happened in 2020,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, said when asked about a potential Lake candidacy. “I think the American people have made their judgment about the election and want to move on. So, let’s talk about the future and where we’re headed, and if we’ve got a candidate that is consumed with his or her past, it’s most likely a losing candidate.”

    Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told CNN, “There’s no doubt Kari Lake is a formidable force in the Republican party right now, but she’s still focused on her lawsuit in Arizona,” referring to her efforts to dispute her loss in the governor’s race.

    Rubio said that Lake could be a strong Senate candidate, despite her shortfall last year.

    “She was a very competitive candidate. I think I trust the Republican voters in Arizona to pick the nominee,” Rubio said. “I don’t think Washington should be stepping in to do it.”

    But Democrats believe that a Lake candidacy will only bolster their chances, even if Sinema decides to run.

    Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat running for his party’s nomination in the Senate race, suggested to CNN he was praying for a Lake candidacy.

    “I’m a practicing Catholic – so I have these votive candles for different things,” Gallego said. “I have a special candle for Kari Lake to jump in.”

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  • Northern Ireland’s ‘peace babies’ say sectarianism lives on, thwarting progress | CNN

    Northern Ireland’s ‘peace babies’ say sectarianism lives on, thwarting progress | CNN

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    Belfast
    CNN
     — 

    Cori Conlon grew up thinking Protestants were “the bad guys.”

    They went to different schools, played different sports, had different flags, and sang different songs. She said she was oblivious to the complexities of Northern Irish politics, but knew only one thing: to stay away from the Protestant children living at the bottom of the street.

    Raised in a predominantly Catholic area in west Belfast, she spoke Irish, sang Irish ballads and attended Irish Catholic school. Her routine was punctuated by “peace walls,” the towering metal barricades built during the conflict that separate communities into Catholic and Protestant. .

    Her views were shaped by the folklore of her family, tales that her “Great Granny Kitty” would tell of the violence between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists, or the British Army, known as the Troubles, that racked daily life for 30 years and left more than 3,600 people dead.

    In 1971, her grandparents provided a safe-haven to neighbors after the British army shot and killed 10 people in their district, a series of incidents known as the Ballymurphy massacre, she said. That and other stories left their mark on her.

    She didn’t meet a Protestant until she was 11.

    Conlon is one of Northern Ireland’s “peace babies,” those born after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1997, ending decades of violence and raising hopes of a brighter future for the next generation. But 25 years on, young people like Conlon are still exposed to the trauma of the Troubles, as clashes over identity and constitutional issues continue to dictate political discourse.

    The anniversary of the agreement comes as the power-sharing system of government it created, designed to end decades of violence, is failing. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) collapsed the government in protest against the Brexit settlement, which it says drives a wedge between Northern Ireland and Britain. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein, a political party dedicated to Irish reunification, is now the most popular across the island of Ireland.

    Caught in the middle of this constitutional tug of war are young people, whose minds are preoccupied with pressing social issues: a largely segregated education and housing system, poor health care and high levels of poverty. CNN spoke with three “peace babies” living in Belfast, who dream of living in a future free from sectarianism, and say that political discord is stifling their futures.

    “I grew up in a segregated society, in my own community. I went to an Irish primary school and an Irish Catholic secondary school. I thought Protestants were the bad guys – because that’s what you were told – through history, parents and the murals you see in your area,” Conlon, 22, an Irish-language campaigner who works in theater, told CNN.

    But Cori’s perception of Protestants began to change when she joined a cross-community performing arts project, learning to act and sing with young people from the other side of Belfast.

    “If it wasn’t for the Rainbow Factory, I wouldn’t have met a Protestant until I was an adult. Now as an adult, because of the Rainbow Factory, I have a lot of friends from all communities, but still anytime I go to east Belfast my parents are traumatized,” she said. “The older generations have not healed, and that’s why it keeps getting passed on to the younger generation.”

    Like many others in her generation, Conlon emigrated from Northern Ireland, moving away to study drama in England. But unlike the 88% of young people who never return home – she moved back to Belfast.

    Now, she works for YouthAction Northern Ireland, teaching theater to children from Protestant and Catholic backgrounds at the Rainbow Factory, the same performing arts school that she said opened her eyes to the fissures within Northern Ireland’s society. An advocate for better peace and reconciliation, she is adamant that another generation is not condemned to the same fate of sectarianism.

    Joel Keys, a 21-year-old loyalist activist from east Belfast, lives on the other side of the peace walls, where many curbs are still painted in the colors of the British Union Jack flag – red, white and blue – to mark out unionist territory.

    Many of the loyalist murals in the area were painted by his father. One pays homage to the east Belfast Protestant Boys Flute Band, who march through the streets of the city every year on July 12, celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when King William of Orange secured a victory over the deposed Catholic monarch James II – leading to the discrimination of Irish Catholics for centuries. The streets are lined with murals showing men wearing balaclavas pointing guns, with the words: “if you are attacked, defend yourself.”

    “There were no Catholics in my area or school. For most of my life, I thought, we are the good guys – and all of them Catholics were evil, scary and wanted to kill us,” Keys told CNN. “But it’s not that young loyalists are running around with a hatred of Catholics in their hearts.”

    These divisions are reinforced throughout society. Across Northern Ireland, 93% of children go to a school that is segregated by religion, per a UNESCO report from Ulster University in 2021. And more than 90% of social housing estates remain segregated into single identity communities, with that number rising to 94% in Belfast, according to 2016 figures from the Housing Executive.

    Joel Keys:

    In 2021, unionists held rallies and marches to protest the Northern Ireland protocol – recently rebranded as the “Windsor Framework – part of the Brexit deal that saw the United Kingdom leave the European Union, leading to a customs border in the Irish Sea in order to avoid having one across the island of Ireland. Loyalists’ anger boiled over and spilled into the streets. Adults cheered on children as they threw petrol bombs at police. Eight people were arrested for rioting, including Keys.

    The teenage supermarket worker-turned aspiring politician was released from jail after his arrest, and shortly after was invited to appear before the Northern Ireland affairs committee to discuss loyalist anger. He stunned members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, known as Stormont, and faced media backlash, after claiming that sometimes violence is “the only tool you have left.”

    But he has since spoken out against the renewed loyalist violence in his area, saying those who have accused him of supporting it misunderstood him.

    “The Northern Ireland Protocol is interesting because I think loyalism has a point – and I think there’s a legitimate argument to be made that a customs border between Northern Ireland and Britain – similar to the way a border across the island, is wrong. But is it the case that these are the issues that people in my community are discussing? No. If you went out and did a survey and asked people in loyalist areas what is the Protocol – I’d be willing to bet that over half of them wouldn’t be able to tell you – there’s more important issues,” Keys told CNN.

    More than anything, Keys is furious at how the current political impasse has left the people of east Belfast in poverty, adding that leaders of the Democratic Unionist parties need to understand that the new generation want better jobs and education, not the same tired sectarian politics pitting orange (Protestant) against green (Catholic).

    “People in my community, they’re not lazy or stupid – so why are they stuck in the position they’re in? Why are they struggling to find employment? Why are some of them struggling to find a house?” Keys queried. “Because our schools have failed, and our political system is failing. But instead of addressing these problems, people are still in war mode. The Good Friday Agreement may have taken away the bombs and the bullets, but all this means is that we’re now at war with our words instead.”

    In 2012, there were loyalist riots when the number of days that the Union flag flies over Belfast City Hall was limited from 365 days a year to 18 — the minimum required for UK government buildings. Protesters, angered over what they saw as an attack on British culture, threw petrol bombs, bricks and stones at police, burning the offices of political parties that voted for the decision.

    “I remember running down to Belfast city center with my friends to riot. I picked up a bin and threw it. I looked across the street and saw a woman looking at me, an ordinary person going about their day. She was so appalled at what was going on – and I remember thinking, what am I doing?” Andrew Clarke, a 27-year-old Protestant from east Belfast, told CNN.

    Andrew Clarke studies history at Queen's University Belfast.

    Clarke said that his identity at the time was firmly rooted in unionism, born out of his childhood and nurtured in a Protestant state school.

    But at 16, after the 2012 riots he said his view of the issues facing his generation shifted dramatically when he changed schools from a Protestant state school to an integrated college. The move opened his eyes to other, more pressing issues, which he says he feels aren’t represented adequately by politicians today.

    “I was a supporter of LGBT rights and abortion access for women, but the DUP opposed that. Growing up in a loyalist area, I’ve seen how loyalist communities are controlled by unionist politicians who don’t care about them – who use the constitutional question to ignore social issues, where social deprivation is tolerated because politics is seen as green and orange,” Clarke said, adding that he now aligns more with Irish Republicanism.

    “There is a cost-of-living crisis, homelessness crisis and Belfast is the suicide capital of western Europe. There is nothing here for young people – so they flee abroad.”

    In 2022, after the latest round of rioting subsided, the Democratic Unionist Party collapsed the power-sharing deal designed to stop the bloody conflict, in protest over the Northern Ireland protocol. It is the fifth time since the Good Friday Agreement was signed that sectarian politics has left the Northern Irish people without a government.

    Without a body to allocate funding, Youth Action Northern Ireland, which runs the Rainbow Factory, may be forced to close some of their cross-community projects, one less opportunity for Catholic and Protestant children to meet, according to Conlon.

    Northern Ireland has the highest levels of child poverty per head of population in the UK, with 100,000 born into poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree foundation. And, last week, Northern Ireland’s Department of Education announced that they were scrapping Holiday Hunger, a free school meal program, and a school counseling scheme due to budget cuts.

    “Youth organizations are crying out for government support. There’s funding there that can’t be given out – because there’s no government – and these youth services are going to close. Young people rely on it so much. I honestly can’t even begin to imagine the impact this will have on their lives,” Conlon said.

    “It feels like all these issues are more important than sectarian politics – but it feels like if we don’t address sectarianism – then we can’t deal with these issues.”

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  • Opinion: Expulsion of the ‘Tennessee Three’ is a chilling echo of Jim Crow | CNN

    Opinion: Expulsion of the ‘Tennessee Three’ is a chilling echo of Jim Crow | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Jemar Tisby, a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the books “The Color of Compromise” and “How to Fight Racism.” He writes frequently at JemarTisby.Substack.com. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    I teach African American history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college (HBCU) in Louisville. This week, we’ve been studying the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow period of US history.

    In the late 19th century, White, Southern Democrats (then the party of White supremacy and segregation) dubbed themselves the “Redeemers,” a group whose goal was to “save” the South from Northern carpetbaggers and newly freed Black people.

    The so-called Redeemers took over state legislatures with the primary goals of disenfranchising Black voters, barring Black people from holding political office, and establishing a politics that would render the White power structure impervious to disruption.

    When Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted this week to expel two Black members — Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — they revealed their resemblance to the anti-democratic, authoritarian Redeemers of more than a century ago.

    In 1868, White legislators in Georgia voted to expel the 33 Black men elected to state government.

    Henry McNeal Turner, a well-known leader in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination, was one of the men expelled from his position by the Georgia politicians.

    In remarks during the proceedings, he stated, “[White legislators] question my right to a seat in this body, to represent the people whose legal votes elected me. This objection, sir, is an unheard of monopoly of power. No analogy can be found for it, except it be the case of a man who should go into my house, take possession of my wife and children and then tell me to walk out.”

    Even though the Black lawmakers were soon reinstated, the actions of the White lawmakers in Georgia were just a foretaste of the political machinations to come.

    In 1890, the state of Mississippi called for a new convention to rewrite the state’s constitution. It had already adopted a new and relatively progressive constitution after the Civil War, but with the onset of Redemption, White lawmakers took control of the state government and began dismantling the rights Black people had only recently gained.

    In the newer version of the constitution that was later ratified, White Mississippi lawmakers installed measures to prevent Black people from voting. But because of the Reconstruction amendments to the US Constitution that guaranteed equal protection under the law and the right of Black men to vote, White Redeemers had to find new ways to repress Black people without making laws explicitly about race.

    So they used policies such as the poll tax, which most Black people could not afford to pay. They instituted the “understanding clause” — a selectively applied measure where potential voters had to interpret a passage from the state constitution to the satisfaction of a White registrar.

    The “grandfather clause” stipulated that a person’s grandfather had to be eligible to vote in order for their descendants to exercise the franchise. Of course, this excluded most Black people whose grandparents had been enslaved and thus, ineligible to vote.

    By the early 1900s, nearly all the former Confederate states had followed Mississippi’s example.

    In class, my students listened with stunned incredulity as they learned about the cruel and ruthless politics of the Redeemers. Unfortunately, the historical parallels to present-day events are too obvious to ignore.

    The actions of Republicans in the Tennessee legislature resemble the attempts of White Southern Redeemers to take back the South at the end of the 19th century.

    These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?

    Expulsion is the most severe consequence the legislature can enact against another member of that body. Since the Civil War, only three other members of the Tennessee state legislature have been expelled — and for much more serious offenses.

    The new Redeemers are not confined to one state, either.

    Attempts to strip local officials in the city of Jackson — where more than 80% of the population is Black — of their authority to monitor the city’s water system, police force and courts are underway in Mississippi.

    In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act” into law, which was intended to prevent teachings or mandatory workplace activities that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed based necessarily on their race, color, sex or national origin. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” DeSantis said.

    And, of course, the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 by supporters of former President Donald Trump was the most egregious example of how far right-wing factions are willing to go to subvert the political process.

    The era of Redemption cemented decades of Jim Crow segregation. More than 4,000 “racial terror” lynchings occurred throughout that period, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented.

    Substantial change only came with the onset of the Civil Rights movement. Years of nonviolent direct action protest, constant lobbying in state and political governments and the martyrdom of many activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., finally interrupted traditions of segregation and White supremacy.

    It could be that a similar movement is necessary to disempower the Redeemers of today.

    When all the standard means of change — namely the democratic process itself — have been co-opted and subverted by authoritarians, then the people are only left with protest.

    If the goal of the Tennessee GOP was to intimidate people into acquiescence with their expulsion of Pearson and Jones, their tactic backfired in a spectacular way.

    Far from instilling fear, their expulsions and their stirring words in response have raised them to national prominence.

    Instead of dissuading Tennesseans from their calls for gun control, Republican legislators seem to have energized the people and motivated them to resist even more vigorously.

    With the rise of social media and other digital forms of information sharing, movements can be mobilized in moments.

    Although there were constant attempts throughout the years, it took decades for people to mount the resistance necessary to topple Jim Crow. In today’s environment, action might occur more swiftly.

    Those words, redemption and redeemer, are significant.

    This is Holy Week in the Christian religion. Events such as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday culminate in the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. These liturgies commemorate the redemption — Jesus paying the price for humanity’s sin.

    In many Christian traditions, redemption is a sacred theological principle that undergirds the hope of salvation. It is likely that many of the Tennessee Republican lawmakers will attend church this Sunday to celebrate the redemption that Easter heralds.

    Easter provides the perfect opportunity for these lawmakers to ponder the true meaning of redemption and which redeemer they are following.

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  • Rival rulings on medication abortion hypercharge the post-Roe legal war | CNN Politics

    Rival rulings on medication abortion hypercharge the post-Roe legal war | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A pair of conflicting federal court rulings on Friday created arguably the most contentious and chaotic legal flashpoint over abortion access since the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the right to an abortion nationwide.

    Within less than an hour, two major rulings came down in separate, closely watched cases concerning medication abortion – in lawsuits that are completely at odds with each other.

    In one case, filed by anti-abortion activists in Texas, a judge said the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone – one of the drugs used to terminate a pregnancy – should be halted. But the court paused its ruling for a week so that it can be appealed, and that appeal is already under way.

    In the second case, where Democratic-led states had sued in Washington to expand access to abortion pills, a judge ordered the federal government to keep the drug available in the 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that brought the lawsuit.

    On their face, both cases deal with the administrative law that controls how the US Food and Drug Administration goes about regulating mifepristone. The disputes did not rely directly on the question of whether there is a right to an abortion – the question that was at the center of the Supreme Court’s ruling last June. But tucked in the Texas ruling, by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, was the idea that embryos could have individual rights that courts can consider in their rulings.

    Both cases emerge from a political environment that was unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal and a willingness to push the legal envelope that the Supreme Court ruling created. The abortion issue is now on a path back to the Supreme Court, as higher courts are asked to sort out the contradictory commands of Friday night’s decisions.

    Because the Texas judge has paused his ruling, it has no immediate impact on the availability of medication abortion drugs. But the next several days stand to be a dramatic and combustible legal fight over the order – a fight ratcheted up by the rival ruling in Washington.

    Besides pausing his ruling for one week, Kacsmaryk – an appointee of former President Donald Trump who sits in Amarillo, Texas – seemed to hold nothing back as he ripped apart the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and embraced wholeheartedly the challengers’ arguments the drug’s risks weren’t adequately considered.

    Kacsmaryk, whose anti-abortion advocacy before joining the federal bench was documented by a recent Washington Post profile, showed a striking hostility to medication abortion, which is the method used in a majority of the abortions in the United States.

    Leading medical organizations have already condemned his opinion and pushed back at the judge’s analysis of the safety of medication abortion.

    The judge said that the FDA failed to consider “the intense psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress women often experience from chemical abortion,” in what was a repeated invocation of “chemical abortion,” the term preferred by abortion opponents. Kacsmaryk suggested that the FDA’s data was downplaying the frequency with which the drug being mistakenly administered to someone who had an ectopic pregnancy, i.e. a pregnancy outside the cavity of the uterus. He repeated the challengers’ accusations that the FDA’s approval process had been the subject of improper political pressure.

    He said the FDA’s refusal to impose certain restrictions on the drug’s use “resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life-threatening adverse reactions.”

    “Whatever the numbers are, they likely would be considerably lower had FDA not acquiesced to the pressure to increase access to chemical abortion at the expense of women’s safety,” he said.

    Jack Resneck Jr., the president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement that Kacsmaryk’s ruling “flies in the face of science and evidence and threatens to upend access to a safe and effective drug.”

    “The court’s disregard for well-established scientific facts in favor of speculative allegations and ideological assertions will cause harm to our patients and undermines the health of the nation,” the AMA president said.

    Kacsmaryk’s opinion paid no heed to the argument made by the FDA’s defenders that cutting off access to medication abortion would put the health of pregnant people at risk and that it would force abortion seekers to terminate their pregnancies through a surgical procedure instead.

    Instead, the judge wrote that a ruling in the challengers’ favor would ensure “that women and girls are protected from unnecessary harm and that Defendants do not disregard federal law.”

    As he explained why the preliminary injunction – which was being handed down before the case could proceed to a trial – was justified, he said that embryos had their own rights that could be part of the analysis. That assertion goes farther than what the Supreme Court said in its June ruling, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

    “Parenthetically, said ‘individual justice’ and ‘irreparable injury’ analysis also arguably applies to the unborn humans extinguished by mifepristone — especially in the post-Dobbs era,” Kacsmaryk said Friday.

    Whereas Kacsmaryk had been asked by the challengers in Texas to block medication abortion, US District Judge Thomas Owen Rice, who sits in Spokane, Washington, was considering whether abortion pills should be easier to obtain.

    Rice, an Obama appointee, granted the Democratic attorneys general who brought the lawsuit a partial win.

    They had asked Rice to remove certain restrictions – known as REMS or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy – the FDA has imposed on mifepristone, with the blue states arguing the drug was safe and effective enough to make those restrictions unnecessary.

    While Rice is rejecting that bid for now, he granted a request the states also made that the FDA be ordered to keep the drugs on the market. But Rice’s ruling only applies in the 17 plaintiff states and the District of Columbia.

    His decision maintains the status quo for the availability of abortion pills in those places and he specifically is blocking the agency from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Mifepristone under the current operative January 2023 Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy.”

    Rice’s opinion was a striking split screen to Kacmsaryk’s. While the Texas judge said the FDA did not adequately take into account the drug risks, Rice showed sympathy to the arguments that the rules for mifepristone’s use were too strict and that the agency should be taking a more lenient approach to how the abortion pill is regulated.

    Ultimately, he said he would not grant the Democratic states’ request that he remove some of the drug restrictions at this preliminary stage in the proceedings, because that would go well beyond maintaining the status quo while the case advances. He noted that if he had granted that request, it would also undo a new FDA rule that allows pharmacies to dispense abortion pills. That would reduce its availability and would run “directly counter to Plaintiffs’ request.”

    If Kacsmaryk’s ruling halting mifepristone’s approval is allowed to go into effect, it will run headlong into Rice’s order that mifepristone remain available in several states. Kacsmaryk’s ruling is a nationwide injunction.

    The Justice Department and Danco, a mifepristone manufacturer that intervened in the case to defend the approval, both filed notices of appeal. Both Attorney General Merrick Garland and Danco said in statements that in addition to the appeals, they will seek “stays” of the ruling, meaning emergency requests that the decision is frozen while the appeal moves forward.

    They’re appealing to the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sometimes said to be the country’s most conservative appeals court. Yet some legal scholars were skeptical that the 5th Circuit, as conservative as it is, would let Kacmsaryk’s order take effect.

    Washington, where the blue states’ lawsuit was filed, is covered under the 9th Circuit, a liberal appellate court. But it’s unclear if the ruling from Rice will be appealed. Garland said the Justice Department was still reviewing the decision out of Washington. A so-called circuit split would increase the odds that the Supreme Court would intervene. But given how the practical impact of the two district court rulings contradict each other, the Supreme Court may have no choice but to get involved.

    The lawyer for the challengers in the Texas case, anti-abortion medication associations and doctors, said Friday evening that he had not reviewed the Washington decision, so he could not weigh in on how it impacted Kacsmaryk’s order that the drug’s approval be halted.

    “I’m not sure whether there’s a direct conflict yet and with the Washington state decision just because I haven’t read it yet, but there may not be a direct conflict,” Erik Baptist, who is an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, said. “But if there is a direct conflict then there may be – it may be inevitably going to the Supreme Court, but I’m not convinced that it’s necessary at this point to make that conclusion.”

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  • Tennessee House GOP expels 2 Democrats in retaliation over gun control protest, on ‘sad day for democracy’ | CNN

    Tennessee House GOP expels 2 Democrats in retaliation over gun control protest, on ‘sad day for democracy’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives were expelled while a third member was spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.

    Protesters packed the state Capitol on Thursday to denounce the expulsions of Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson and to advocate for gun reform measures a little over a week after a mass shooting devastated a Nashville school.

    Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon on “CNN This Morning,” Jones decried the actions of House Republicans.

    “What happened yesterday was a very sad day for democracy,” Jones said. “The nation was able to see we don’t have democracy in Tennessee.”

    Jones confirmed if he is reappointed to the seat by the 40-member Nashville Metro Council, he would serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents.”

    Nashville City Council Member Russ Bradford told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota he would be voting to send Jones back to the State House.

    “That is who the people of House District 52 elected this last November and so it’s very important that, unlike my state legislature, I will listen to the voice of my constituents and I will do what needs to be done to support democracy in this state,” Bradford said.

    Following their expulsion – which House Republicans said was in response to the representatives’ leadership of gun control demonstrations on the chamber floor last week – Jones and Pearson called for protesters to return to the Capitol when the House is back in session on Monday.

    Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White and wasn’t ousted, slammed the votes removing Jones and Pearson, who are Black, as racist. Asked by CNN why she believes she wasn’t expelled, Johnson said the reason is “pretty clear.”

    “I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said. She added that Pearson and Jones were questioned in a “demeaning way” by lawmakers before their expulsion.

    President Joe Biden on Thursday called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent,” and criticized Republicans for not taking greater action on gun reform.

    Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville Friday to advocate for stricter gun control measures and highlight the importance of protecting Americans from gun violence. She also privately met with Jones, Pearson and Johnson.

    “We understand when we took an oath to represent the people who elected us that we speak on behalf of them. It wasn’t about the three of these leaders,” Harris said in remarks after the meeting. “It was about who they were representing. it’s about whose voices they were channeling. Understand that — and is that not what a democracy allows?”

    After a shooter killed three 9-year-old students and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville last week, Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.

    Jones said he and the other lawmakers had been blocked from speaking about gun violence on the House floor that week, saying that their microphones were cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to CNN affiliate WSMV.

    Following the three representatives’ demonstrations last Thursday, Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton called their actions “unacceptable” and argued that they broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”

    On Monday, three resolutions were filed seeking the expulsions of Jones, Pearson and Johnson. The three members had already been removed from their committee assignments following the protest.

    The resolutions, filed by Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso and Andrew Farmer, said the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor” to the House.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN that the caucus believed the issue did not need to be considered by an ethics committee and accused Jones and Pearson of having a “history” of disrupting floor proceedings.

    “It’s not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor,” Faison said.

    The chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, Hendrell Remus, called the move a “direct political attack” on the party.

    “Their expulsion sets a dangerous new precedent for political retribution,” a statement from the party said. “The day that a majority can simply expel a member of the opposing party without legitimate cause threatens the fabric of democracy in our state and creates a reckless roadmap for GOP controlled state legislatures across the nation.”

    Historically, the Tennessee House had only expelled two other representatives since the Reconstruction, and the move requires a two-thirds majority vote of total members.

    The expulsions have been criticized by Democratic politicians and civil liberties groups who say voters in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts have been disenfranchised. Others, including Jones, have said the move distracts from the real problem of gun violence.

    “Rather than address the issue of banning assault weapons, my former colleagues – a Republican supermajority – are assaulting democracy,” Jones told CNN. “And that should scare all of us across the nation.”

    Rep. Sam McKenzie, chair of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, said the expulsion of Jones and Pearson overshadowed the issue they were protesting.

    “This was not about that kangaroo court that happened yesterday. This was about those three young children and those three guardians, those three adults, whose lives were taken away senselessly,” McKenzie said.

    “The world saw what happened yesterday,” McKenzie added, condemning the actions of House GOP leaders. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

    The NAACP also condemned the expulsions, calling them “horrific” but “not surprising.”

    “It is inexcusable that, while (Jones and Pearson) upheld their oath to serve Tennesseans who are grieving the loss of last week’s mass murder, their colleagues decided to use racial tropes to divert attention from their failure to protect the people they are supposed to serve,” NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

    “We will continue to stand with these champions of democracy, and are prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to ensure that this heinous attempt to silence the voice of the people is addressed in a court of law,” Johnson added.

    On “CNN This Morning,” Jones said, “I think what happened was a travesty of democracy because they expelled the two youngest Black lawmakers – which is no coincidence – from the Tennessee state legislature because we are outspoken, because we fight for our district.”

    Jones described the session as a “toxic, racist work environment,” and said he spoke out because the House speaker ruled him out of order when he brought up the issue of gun violence. “If I didn’t know this happened to me, I would think that this was 1963 instead of 2023,” he added.

    Justin Jones carries his name tag after he is expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives on April 6, 2023.

    Prior to the vote, Pearson publicly shared a letter he sent to House members in which he said he took accountability for “not following decorum” on the House floor but defended his actions.

    Following their removal, pictures and profiles of Pearson and Jones have been pulled from the Tennessee General Assembly’s website and their districts have been listed as vacant.

    More about the three representatives:

    Rep. Justin Pearson:

  • District: 86
  • Age: 28
  • In office: 2023-
  • Issues: Environmental, racial and economic justice
  • Of note: Successfully blocked oil pipeline from being built in south Memphis
  • Recent awards: The Root’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans (2022)Rep. Gloria Johnson:
  • District: 90
  • Age: 60
  • In office: 2013-2015, 2019-
  • Issues: Education, jobs, health care
  • Of note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion
  • Recent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:
  • District: 52
  • Age: 27
  • In office: 2023-
  • Issues: Health care, environmental justice
  • Of note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-in
  • Recent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)

According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

Tennessee law allows for the appointment of interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held by local legislative bodies.

In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

It is unclear if or when a special meeting might be called there.

According to Johnson, Jones and Pearson could be reappointed to their seats.

“I think we might have these two young men back very soon,” Johnson said Thursday. “It is my promise to fight like hell to get both of them back.”

Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature by the Shelby County Commissioners, and a lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

Speaking to a crowd following their expulsion, Pearson and Jones insisted they would persist in advocating for gun control measures and encouraged protesters to continue showing up to the Capitol.

The House has only expelled two state representatives in the last 157 years. The first expulsion, in 1980, was of a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent came in 2016 when another member was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move a “nuclear option.”

“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, Kathy Sinback, called the move in a statement a “targeted expulsion of two Black legislators without due process.”

She continued, “It raises questions about the disparate treatment of Black representatives, while continuing the shameful legacy of disenfranchising and silencing the voices of marginalized communities and the Black lawmakers they elect.”

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  • What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

    What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Just hours after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, their pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol of the vacant seats that now need to be filled.

    Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote Thursday. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber.

    All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” after they led a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

    In the wake of a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, Jones said he and other lawmakers were blocked from raising the issue of gun violence on the House floor, with their microphones being cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to WSMV.

    According to the expulsion resolutions, Jones, Pearson and Johnson “began shouting without recognition” during their protest, and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives.”

    Republican leaders in the chamber condemned the lawmakers’ actions and moved quickly to remove their committee assignments and schedule a vote for their expulsion. Jones, Pearson and Johnson decried the Republicans’ actions as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. Jones and Pearson are both young, Black men while Johnson is a White woman.

    As focus now shifts to filling the two new vacancies in the state House, local lawmakers in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts are working to determine their next steps, including possibly returning the ousted lawmakers to the chamber.

    According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

    In the time between when a seat becomes vacant and when a special election can be held, “the legislative body of the replaced legislator’s county of residence at the time of his or her election may elect an interim successor,” the state Constitution says.

    In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting on Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

    Nashville Mayor John Cooper has expressed his support for Jones and said on Twitter he believes the council will send him “right back to continue serving his constituents.”

    Jones told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday that if he’s appointed by the council, he will serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents,” he said.

    For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

    Commission chairman Mickell Lowery plans to call a special meeting regarding Pearson’s expulsion, CNN affiliate WMC reported, but the timing of the meeting isn’t yet known.

    Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature,” and referring to the Shelby County commissioners, he said, “A lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

    No date has been set for a special election but state law provides a time frame for when the governor should schedule them.

    A “writ of election” for “primary elections for nominations by statewide political parties to fill the vacancy” must be scheduled within 55 to 60 days, state code says. And a general election to fill the vacancy must be scheduled within 100 to 107 days.

    According to Tennessee law, a state representative must be at least 21 years old, a US citizen, a resident of the state for at least three years and a resident of their county for one year preceding the election.

    They must also be a qualified voter of the district, which requires a resident to be 18 years old and free of certain felony convictions.

    Both Jones and Pearson meet those qualifications.

    And while the state Constitution says members can be expelled for disorderly behavior with a two-thirds majority vote, they cannot be expelled “a second time for the same offense.”

    If Jones and Pearson are elected again, the Tennessee House Republican Caucus said in a statement it hopes “they will act as the thousands who have come before them – with respect for our institution, their fellow colleagues, and the seat that they hold.”

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  • A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.

    The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.

    A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.

    The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform – and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers – whom most Americans had never heard of – into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.

    The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.

    But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

    Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

    At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

    Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.

    In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.

    One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been “deeply, deeply painful.”

    And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

    The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

    The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

    The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.

    “You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!” he said.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. “The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says ‘not on this House floor, not this way,’” he said. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”

    Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.

    One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones – with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday – had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.

    “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

    The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.

    “I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.

    US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn’t rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.

    “I am not saying race wasn’t (the reason) – but I haven’t looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her,” Cohen told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.

    The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

    “I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

    Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.

    At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.

    The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.

    “It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

    More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.

    This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

    In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.

    “We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

    The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.

    Biden described the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

    “Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe,” he said in a statement.

    Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.

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  • Former Florida state employee’s son arrested for alleged school threats | CNN Politics

    Former Florida state employee’s son arrested for alleged school threats | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The 13-year-old son of Rebekah Jones, who claimed she was fired for refusing to manipulate state Covid-19 data while working in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ state Health Department, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening a shooting at a middle school.

    The boy, whom CNN is not naming because he is a minor, was charged with written or electronic threats to kill, do bodily injury, or conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism, a second-degree felony, according to a warrant issued by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office.

    In security camera video at the sheriff’s office, obtained by CNN, Jones can be seen accompanying the boy to the sheriff’s office on Wednesday afternoon, where he surrendered.

    Thursday evening, Jones, who has a sizable online following, tweeted, “My son is home with me now and sleeping.”

    She suggested, without evidence, that her son’s arrest was related to a lawsuit she filed on March 13 in Leon County, Florida, against the Florida Department of Health and a former supervisor, under the state whistleblower act, seeking to get her job back, lost wages and damages for her treatment as an employee.

    A spokeswoman for DeSantis referred questions about the arrest “to the diligent law enforcement of Santa Rosa Sheriff’s office.”

    Jones noted in a tweet that the sheriff’s office began investigating her son shortly after she filed the lawsuit. She claimed on Twitter that her son had sent “just memes” to his friends that she says were not threatening.

    But, according to police reports, multiple students at a Navarre, Florida, middle school told police that Jones’ son had told people he planned a school shooting and posted threatening memes and messages on Snapchat and Discord. One student told police that the boy told her on Discord he wanted to end his life and shoot up the school.

    After issuing a search warrant, officers said they found messages in February from the boy’s Snapchat account referencing guns and the Columbine High School massacre and plans to shoot and stab people at the school.

    During an interview with police on March 23, the boy told police he did not intend to carry out the shooting and police did not find any guns at his home. Jones told police the boy no longer attended the school and was being home schooled, according to police documents.

    CNN has reached out to the sheriff’s office for additional information on the case.

    Jones in 2020 accused the DeSantis administration of trying to cover up the extent of the pandemic and firing her for refusing to falsify numbers to minimize the scale of the outbreak. Last year, a state inspector general report said her claims were “unsubstantiated” and Covid-19 data was not falsified.

    Jones publicly shared the story of her dismissal before leaving the department in May 2020 and became a prominent online critic of DeSantis. She unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year against Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.

    In December 2020, state police executed a search warrant at Jones’ home while investigating whether she accessed a state messaging system without authorization to call for state officials to speak out about Covid-19 deaths. She was ultimately charged with one count of offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices. In December, Jones agreed to admit guilt and pay a $20,000 fee in a pretrial deferred prosecution agreement.

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  • Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN

    Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN

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    Nashville
    CNN
     — 

    A vote to expel Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson from Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has failed, a week after she and two other Democrats led a gun reform protest on the House floor. The House earlier expelled Rep. Justin Jones over that protest, which followed a deadly mass shooting at a Nashville school.

    The third Democrat involved, Justin Pearson, also faces a possible vote on his removal from office Thursday.

    The vote over rules violations for Johnson was 65-30. Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds majority of the total membership. The vote for Jones split along party lines, 72-25.

    Protesters flooded the state Capitol on Thursday as the legislators were set to take up three resolutions filed by GOP lawmakers Monday seeking to expel Jones, of Nashville, Johnson of Knoxville and Pearson of Memphis, a step the state House has taken only twice since the 1860s.

    “There comes a time where people get sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Jones said in a speech prior to a vote on his expulsion. “And so my colleagues, I say that what we did was act in our responsibility as legislators to serve and give voice to the grievances of people who have been silenced.”

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons,” he said, “and you respond with an assault on democracy.”

    Jones added: “How can you bring dishonor to an already dishonorable house?”

    Jones’ vote took place after two hours of debate that included Jones answering questions regarding his actions during a protest last Thursday over calls for gun violence legislation. Johnson’s vote followed about an hour and a half of discussion.

    Throughout the day, crowds have gathered outside and inside the building. Following the vote to expel Jones, those inside the Capitol gallery raised their fists and erupted in boos.

    After a Democratic motion to adjourn until Monday was voted down, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton admonished the people in the balcony for yelling, saying if their “disruptive behavior” continued they would clear the area of everyone but the media.

    “That’s the one warning,” he said.

    Cheers filled the Capitol following the failed vote to expel Johnson.

    “We did what we needed to do,” Johnson said to reporters outside the chamber.

    Johnson thanked the crowd that was gathered around the building and encouraged them to vote. “Keep showing up, standing up and speaking out and we will be with you,” she added.

    Johnson, who is White, was asked why there was a difference in the outcome for her and Jones, who is Black-Filipino.

    “I will answer your question. It might have to do with the color of our skin,” she said.

    President Joe Biden criticized the proceedings in Nashville in a tweet.

    “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” he wrote.

    The three lawmakers led a protest on the House floor last Thursday without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported, using a bullhorn as demonstrators at the state Capitol called on lawmakers to take action to prevent further gun violence after a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville left three 9-year-olds and three adults dead. Each lawmaker was removed from their committee assignments following last week’s demonstrations.

    Discussion Thursday began with Republicans playing footage of the protest last week, showing Jones, Johnson and Pearson standing in the well of the House and using the bullhorn to address their colleagues and protesters in the gallery.

    Democrats were opposed to having the footage played, arguing it was unfair because they had not seen the video themselves and did not know the extent to which it had been edited.

    Democratic Whip Jason Powell, who represents Nashville, said he was “outraged” and “expelling Justin Jones is not the answer.”

    He angrily said the House was spending too much time on the expulsion issue.

    “I had to leave here Monday night after this resolution was introduced and go to my son’s Little League field and see red ribbons surrounding the outfield in memory of William Kinney who was murdered and I am outraged, and we should all be outraged,” he said, his voice rising. “We need to do something and expelling Justin Jones is not the answer. It is a threat to democracy.”

    More about the three representatives:

    Rep. Justin Pearson:District: 86
    Age: 28
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Environmental, racial and economic justice
    Of note: Successfully blocked oil pipeline from being built in south Memphis
    Recent awards: The Root’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans (2022)Rep. Gloria Johnson:District: 90
    Age: 60
    In office: 2013-2015, 2019-
    Issues: Education, jobs, health care
    Of note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion
    Recent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:District: 52
    Age: 27
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Health care, environmental justice
    Of note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-in
    Recent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)

    “This is not just about losing my job,” Jones told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday, saying constituents of the three representatives “are being taken and silenced by a party that is acting like authoritarians.”

    As he left the Capitol on Thursday, Jones said he is not sure what his next steps are following his expulsion.

    “I will continue to show up to this Capitol with these young people whether I’m in that chamber or outside,” Jones told reporters.

    In the last 157 years, the House has expelled only two lawmakers, which requires a two-thirds vote: In 1980, after a representative was found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and in 2016, when another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

    This week, Sexton said the three Democrats’ actions “are and always will be unacceptable” and broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”

    Sexton said peaceful protesters have always been welcomed to the capitol to have their voices heard on any issue, but that the actions of the Democratic lawmakers had detracted from that process.

    “In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones,” Sexton said in a series of tweets Monday.

    “We cannot allow the actions of the three members to distract us from protecting our children. We will get through this together, and it will require talking about all solutions,” Sexton said.

    During the discussion Thursday, Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move to expel the “nuclear option.”

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    The move to expel the trio drew protesters to the Capitol Thursday morning, with many wanting to express both their opposition to the lawmakers’ removal from office – chants of “We stand with the Tennessee three,” were heard outside – as well as support for gun reform legislation.

    To some, the vote to expel Johnson, Jones and Pearson was a distraction from the real issue: Keeping children safe.

    “I want people to know this is not a political issue, it’s a child issue,” Deborah Castellano, a first-grade teacher in Nashville, told CNN. “If you wash away Democrat, Republican, it’s about kids and do we want them to be safe or not. I will stand in front of children and protect as many as I can with my body … but we shouldn’t have to, and those kids shouldn’t be afraid.”

    Paul Slentz, a retired United Methodist pastor, knows two of the lawmakers personally, he said, adding it was wrong for them to face a vote for their expulsion.

    “They’re good people,” Slentz told CNN affiliate WSMV in an interview outside the Capitol. “They have strong moral convictions. They are people of faith.”

    Each of the resolutions says the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” saying they “began shouting without recognition” and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives” for just under an hour Thursday morning.

    The resolutions seek to remove the lawmakers from office under Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution, which says, in part, the House can set its own rules and “punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

    Republicans control the Tennessee House of Representatives by a wide margin, with 75 members to Democrats’ 23. One seat is vacant.

    The code allows for the appointment of interim members of the House until the seats of the expelled are filled by an election.

    Pearson has acknowledged he and his two colleagues may have broken House rules, both in a letter sent to House members this week and in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, acknowledging they “spoke out of order” when they walked to the well of the House.

    “We broke a House rule,” he said, “but it does not meet the threshold for actually expelling members of the House who were duly elected by their district, who sent us here to serve, and now they’re being disenfranchised by the Republican party of the state of Tennessee.”

    House Democrats expressed solidarity with Johnson, Jones and Pearson in a statement, while Rep. Sam McKenzie, of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the move “political retribution.”

    “We fundamentally object to any effort to expel members for making their voices heard to end gun violence,” McKenzie said.

    The move to expel the lawmakers also drew condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, whose executive director, Kathy Sinback, called expulsion “an extreme measure” infrequently used, “because its strips voters of representation by the people they elected.”

    “Instead of rushing to expel members for expressing their ethical convictions about crucial social issues,” Sinback said, “House leadership should turn to solving the real challenges facing our state.”

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  • Death row inmate Richard Glossip’s murder conviction could be vacated after he avoided execution 3 times | CNN

    Death row inmate Richard Glossip’s murder conviction could be vacated after he avoided execution 3 times | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Oklahoma’s attorney general is asking for a new trial in the case of death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has spent a quarter of a century in prison for the death of his boss in 1997.

    “While the State has previously opposed relief for Glossip, it has changed its position based on a careful review of the new information that has come to light,” Attorney General Gentner F. Drummond wrote in a motion filed Thursday in an Oklahoma appeals court.

    The request was made after a special counsel report released Thursday recommended Glossip’s capital murder conviction be vacated and that he be granted a new trial.

    Glossip, 60, has insisted he was not involved in the killing of his boss, Barry Van Treese. He has narrowly avoided death three times, as previous execution dates ended with reprieves or stays of execution.

    It’s now up to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals to decide whether to grant or deny the request for a new trial. Glossip is currently scheduled to be executed on May 18.

    Glossip, a former motel manager, has been behind bars for 26 years. He was convicted of capital murder for ordering the killing of Van Treese.

    Another employee, then-19-year-old Justin Sneed, admitted to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat in Oklahoma City. But prosecutors told jurors Sneed killed Van Treese in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Glossip.

    Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Glossip.

    But recently revealed evidence proves Glossip’s innocence, his defense team says.

    “It is now clear that it would be unconscionable for the State to move forward with Mr. Glossip’s execution when there is so much doubt surrounding his conviction,” Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a statement Thursday.

    “We thank (Attorney) General Drummond for his courageous decision to take a deeper look at this difficult case and urge the Court of Criminal Appeals to quickly grant the Attorney General’s request and remand Mr. Glossip’s case to the trial court for further proceedings,” Knight added.

    The international law firm Reed Smith spent more than 3,000 pro bono hours investigating Glossip’s case and published a 343-page report last year, commissioned by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers.

    The independent investigation “revealed the state’s intentional destruction of evidence before trial and an inadequate police investigation,” Reed Smith said.

    The law firm and Glossip’s attorney have since uncovered more evidence, including letters Sneed wrote in prison. The letters are part of an amendment to Reed Smith’s initial report.

    In one letter to his attorney, Sneed wrote in part, “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me. Somethings I need to clean up.”

    In another letter, Sneed wrote, “Do I have the choice of recanting my testimony at any time during my life …”

    In a separate letter shown to CNN, Sneed’s public defender responded to one of his letters saying, “I can tell by the tone of your letter that some things are bothering you … Had you refused (to testify against Glossip) you would most likely be on death row right now.”

    The Oklahoma County public defender’s office, responsible for Sneed’s attorney at the time, has declined to comment.

    “We always suspected that Justin Sneed really wanted to, at some point, tell the truth,” said Knight, Glossip’s attorney. “But from those papers, we could tell that even though he was trying to, his lawyer at the time was telling him, ‘Don’t do it.’”

    Drummond, the attorney general, said in a Thursday news release he “cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence” of Glossip.

    “This is not to say I believe he is innocent. However, it is critical that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty,” Drummond said. “Considering everything I know about this case, I do not believe that justice is served by executing a man based on the testimony of a compromised witness.”

    Glossip has been on the verge of execution three times before, even being served three separate last meals, Knight told CNN earlier this year.

    Richard Glossip's attorney, Don Knight, hands over documents inside the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in July 2022 as he files for a new hearing for his client.

    He was first convicted of capital murder and sentenced in 1998, but that was overturned in 2001 because of ineffective defense counsel.

    He was convicted again in 2004 and again sentenced to death. That year, Glossip was more than an hour past his execution time when the governor issued a stay based on the constitutionality of the state’s execution protocols.

    Glossip’s decades on death row have been punctuated by a spate of reprieves and stays of execution.

    In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Glossip said he’s still anxious as each execution date nears.

    “It’s still scary, it will always be scary until they finally open this door and let me go, or remove this from over my head completely, so I don’t have to worry about, ‘Are they going to kill me next month? Or the month after that? When does time finally run out?’”

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  • Maryland AG report into Archdiocese of Baltimore alleges 156 Catholic clergy members and others abused more than 600 children | CNN

    Maryland AG report into Archdiocese of Baltimore alleges 156 Catholic clergy members and others abused more than 600 children | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A report from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released Wednesday alleges 156 Catholic clergy members and others abused at least 600 children over the course of more than six decades.

    “From the 1940s through 2002, over a hundred priests and other Archdiocese personnel engaged in horrific and repeated abuse of the most vulnerable children in their communities while Archdiocese leadership looked the other way,” the report reads. “Time and again, members of the Church’s hierarchy resolutely refused to acknowledge allegations of child sexual abuse for as long as possible.”

    The report lists descriptions of graphic sexual and physical abuse allegations: It includes stories of how some alleged abusers provided victims with alcohol and drugs and describes in vivid detail how they coerced and forced victims to perform sexual acts.

    The report’s list of abusers includes clergy members, seminarians, deacons, teachers and other employees of the Archdiocese.

    Forty-three priests who “served in some capacity or resided within the Archdiocese of Baltimore” committed sexual abuse in locations outside Maryland, the report alleged. Of these 43 priests, 40 of them allegedly committed sexual abuse in only one other location, while the other three allegedly committed sexual abuse in two other locations outside Maryland, the report says.

    The investigation began in 2018 and has since received “hundreds of thousands of documents,” including treatment reports, personnel records, transfer reports and policies and procedures.

    The Maryland Attorney General’s Office said more than 300 people contacted the office after it opened an email address and telephone hotline for people to report information about clergy abuse, and investigators interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.

    “Today certainly in Maryland is a day of reckoning and a day of accounting,” Brown said during a news conference Wednesday.

    Brown said he met with survivors and advocates Wednesday morning to hear their stories.

    “While each of those stories is unique, together, they reveal themes and behaviors typical of adults who abuse children, and those who enable that abuse by concealing it,” Brown said. “What was consistent throughout the stories was the absolute authority and power these abusive priests and the church leadership held over survivors, their families and their communities.”

    Most of the abusers listed in the report are dead and no longer subject to prosecution, the attorney general said.

    “While it may be too late for the survivors to see criminal justice served, we hope that exposing the Archdiocese’s transgressions to the fullest extent possible will bring some measure of accountability and perhaps encourage others to come forward,” Brown said.

    Some victims waited to report their claims of abuse until later in life, according to the report. Because Maryland recognizes a statute of limitations defense in civil cases, “victims have no recourse if they are over the age of 38,” the report reads.

    Some victims did not come forward until their parents had died to “spare them the pain of knowing about the abuse,” the report reads, while others never intended to tell but were persuaded to come forward with the help of others. Others repressed their memories and recollections of abuse emerged only many years later, according to the report.

    The Archbishop of Baltimore apologized on behalf of the Archdiocese after allegations of abuse surfaced in the report.

    “To all survivors, I offer my most earnest apology on behalf of the Archdiocese and pledge my continued solidarity and support for your healing. We hear you. We believe you and your courageous voices have made a difference,” Archbishop William E. Lori wrote in a statement Wednesday.

    “The report details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese,” Lori added, and wrote it “will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”

    The Archdiocese began making “radical changes” in the 1990s to “end this scourge,” Lori wrote. Instances of abuse have fallen every year and every decade since cases of abuse peaked during the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote, saying, “The Archdiocese is not the same organization it was.”

    “Make no mistake, however: today’s strong record of protection and transparency does not excuse past failings that have led to the lasting spiritual, psychological and emotional harm victim-survivors have endured,” the Archbishop’s statement reads.

    The Archdiocese of Baltimore has paid $13.2 million to 303 victims of abuse since the 1980s, according to the Archdiocese’s office.

    The payments include money for both counseling and settlements, the Archdiocese’s executive director of communications, Christian Kendzierski, said in an email to CNN.

    The report contains “a full accounting” of abuse in the Archdiocese and “details of repeated tortuous, terrorizing, depraved abuse.” It lists and details 156 abusers “determined to have been the subject of credible allegations of abuse.”

    More than 600 children are known to have been abused by those 156 people, the report reads, but “the number is likely far higher.”

    The report reveals the names of all but 10 of the 156 alleged abusers listed in the report.

    Brown said those 10 names were obtained through the grand jury process and could not be disclosed without permission or a court order.

    “I should emphasize that because they’re redacted today doesn’t mean they will always be redacted,” Brown said.

    The report does not constitute criminal indictment, according to the attorney general.

    The report recommends that Maryland amend the statute of limitations for civil actions involving child sex abuse.

    “Our judicial system should provide a means for victims who have suffered these harms to seek damages from the people and institutions responsible for them,” the report reads.

    Maryland’s Senate passed a bill in March that would repeal the state’s civil statute of limitations in certain civil actions relating to child sexual abuse. The bill is working its way through the House.

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  • Florida Senate passes 6-week abortion ban | CNN Politics

    Florida Senate passes 6-week abortion ban | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Florida’s state Senate on Monday passed a bill that would ban most abortions in the state after the gestational age of six weeks, or about four weeks of pregnancy.

    The bill’s advance, which still needs to pass the state’s GOP-led House, comes one year after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week ban into law. The new legislation likely further burnishes the conservative credentials of DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, and it was met with outrage by state Democrats, two of whom were arrested during a protest near the state Capitol Monday night.

    The current bill would impose restrictions on telehealth abortions and medication. It would include exemptions for women facing life-threatening harm while pregnant and victims of rape, incest and human trafficking.

    The bill targets both physicians who perform abortions and those who “actively participate in” them, and should the bill become law, any person who violates it could be charged with a third-degree felony.

    The “Heartbeat Protection Act” passed the Florida Senate in a 26-13 vote.

    A protest over the bill near the state Capitol resulted in the arrests of 11 people who were charged with trespassing after a warning, Tallahassee police said. Florida Democrats said state party Chairwoman Nikki Fried and Florida Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book were among them.

    “As the Democratic leader in the Florida Senate, it’s my job to a lead this incredible group of 11 Democrats, other than myself, to fight against these extreme policies,” Book told CNN on Wednesday. ‘Women will die as a consequence of this piece of policy.”

    Other abortion rights advocates say the Florida bill unfairly seeks to ban abortions before many even know they are pregnant.

    “This bill will unfairly and disproportionately impact people who live in rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, and people of color,” Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said in a statement.

    “Hundreds of thousands of pregnant people will be forced to travel out of state to seek the care they need. Many people will not even know they are pregnant by six weeks, and for those who do, it is unlikely they will be able to schedule the legally required two in-person doctor’s appointments before six weeks of pregnancy,” Gross said.

    The White House has also criticized the pending bill.

    “The President and Vice President believe women should be able to make health care decisions with their doctors and families – free from political interference. They are committed to protecting access to reproductive care, and continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement when the bill was first introduced.

    State Sen. Clay Yarborough, one of the bill’s Republican sponsors, said “unborn children deserve the strongest protections possible under our laws.”

    The legislation underscores the ongoing efforts across the country to restrict access to abortion in a post-Roe world. Other Republican-led states have also pursued six-week abortion bans that have been met with legal challenges.

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  • Democrats optimistic about saving abortion access in Wisconsin after liberal’s state Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Democrats optimistic about saving abortion access in Wisconsin after liberal’s state Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The victory of a liberal judge in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election marks a significant political realignment toward the left in a crucial swing state, potentially closing the door on an era of Republican dominance with issues such as abortion rights at stake.

    With liberals now poised to effectively control the seven-judge court, Democrats are newly optimistic about saving abortion access in the state, establishing a firewall against any Republican challenges to the 2024 elections and potentially redoing GOP-drawn state legislative and congressional maps. That combination of issues proved a potent force in a race that attracted massive turnout and spending.

    And as they did in last year’s midterms in some places around the country, Democrats, once again, appear to have capitalized on a broad backlash to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a base still energized by the specter of another Donald Trump presidency.

    Republican-supported Daniel Kelly lost the technically nonpartisan contest to Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz, who will begin a 10-year term this summer, effectively flipping control of the divided bench to liberals. Conservative Justice Patience Roggensack’s retirement opened the seat, triggering a contentious race that attracted national attention – and donor dollars. It was the most expensive state judicial election in the country ever.

    “Anger about Roe hasn’t dissipated. Fear for our democracy remains. Voters are still alarmed by the MAGA extremism of candidates like Dan Kelly. And if this race is an early bellwether – we can safely say that Republicans didn’t learn their lesson in 2022,” said Sarah Dohl, the chief campaigns officer for Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group.

    Wisconsin has emerged as one of the country’s most competitive political fronts, with ground that’s expected to again be hotly contested in next year’s presidential and Senate races. But the state government – outside the governor’s office – has been bossed by Republicans. Since defeating GOP Gov. Scott Walker more than four years ago, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed roughly 150 bills and been hamstrung in pursuing large parts of his own agenda. Now, GOP policy gains at the state level – most notably its crushing of public sector labor unions – are in doubt.

    In the years before Trump’s emergence, the Wisconsin GOP ran roughshod over state politics and sought to export its national playbook around the country. Walker entered the 2016 GOP presidential primary as an early favorite, pitching his state as a model for the nation. But like so many others in that year’s Republican field, he never got off the blocks as Trump thundered to the nomination.

    That fall, Trump shattered the Democratic illusion of a “blue wall” in the Upper Midwest, defeating Hillary Clinton by fewer than 25,000 votes in the Wisconsin general election.

    But Trump’s victory also triggered a backlash – and a mini Democratic resurgence at the state level.

    Evers was first elected governor during the 2018 Democratic wave. He won a second term last year. And though Republican Sen. Ron Johnson held his seat in 2022, Trump had lost the state two years earlier by a little more than 20,000 votes. His false allegations of 2020 election fraud infuriated Democrats, along with many swing voters, and ultimately in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race hobbled Kelly, who faced blowback for his role in advising GOP officials in their efforts to hatch a fake electors scheme

    And while the court could find itself ruling on election laws again, abortion may the most immediate battle to reach the justices.

    The state’s high court is expected to decide a lawsuit challenging an 1849 law that bans nearly all abortions, which had been dormant for decades but snapped back into place with last year’s US Supreme Court ruling. Protasiewicz, Wisconsin Democrats and allied groups such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List all worked to frame the race as another referendum on abortion rights.

    “For over a decade, anti-choice ideologues have held their iron grip on Wisconsin’s highest court, leaving voters hungry for change,” NARAL president Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “Judge Janet’s resounding victory comes as abortion access faces an onslaught of attacks by extremist state courts determined to tear up our rights at every step.”

    Victory for abortion rights activists follows a similar result in neighboring Michigan, which voted last fall to enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights into the state constitution while reelecting Democratic women to its three most powerful executive offices. Those results continued a streak of successes for Democrats who dug in hard on the issue – a political winner in many swing states and legislative districts.

    Kelly, the conservative in Wisconsin, was coy about how he would rule on a slate of potential hot-button cases, but his past writings and work for anti-abortion groups allowed Protasiewicz, who signaled her skepticism about the ban, to attack him on the issue. Her past comments also suggest a new day’s dawning for the labor community and Democrats seeking to upend the state’s skewed legislative maps.

    “Everything from gerrymandering to drop boxes to Act 10 may be revisited to women’s right to choose,” Protasiewicz told Wisconsin Radio Network in February. (Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining for most public sector employees.)

    And with another presidential election on the horizon, her willingness to consider attempts to roll back or reverse restrictive voting laws or regulations could have clear national implications.

    The state’s voter ID laws, put in place by Republicans, are among the strictest in the country. Wisconsin’s high court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election, rejecting a Trump lawsuit aimed at invalidating Joe Biden’s victory – but only by a 4-3 margin with one conservative justice siding with the liberals.

    In the event of another challenge like that, Democrats would now only need their allies to hold the line to prevent a similar bid.

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  • Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

    Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to connect with a trained counselor or visit 988lifeline.org.



    CNN
     — 

    Investigators found a suicide note when they executed a search warrant at the home of the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville school last week, along with more weapons and ammunition, according to an inventory of items seized.

    The search warrant and the list of items found were released Tuesday, just over a week after the shooter, former student Audrey Hale, opened fire at The Covenant School, killing three 9-year-olds and three adults.

    The warrant, executed the same day as the shooting, shows authorities also found several Covenant School yearbooks and a school photo, in addition to the shooter’s journals. Some of the journals are described as being related to “school shootings; firearm courses,” the list indicates.

    A total of 47 items were seized, according to the list.

    Hale, 28, fired 152 rounds in the attack, which was planned “over a period of months,” police said in a news release Monday. Hale “considered the actions of other mass murderers,” that release said, and “acted totally alone.”

    Hale, who police said was under care for an emotional disorder, had legally purchased seven guns and hidden them at home, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake previously said.

    Hale was armed with three guns during the attack, which ended after Nashville officers arrived on the scene and confronted the shooter.

    Two officers opened fire – a moment captured in bodycam footage later released by police – and killed Hale at 10:27 a.m., 14 minutes after the shooter entered the private Christian school, according to Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron.

    Police continue to work to determine a motive for the attack, but they said previously that writings left behind by Hale – which continue to be reviewed by police and the FBI – made clear it was “calculated and planned.”

    Hale targeted the school and Covenant Presbyterian Church, to which the school is attached, police said, but it’s believed the victims were fired upon at random.

    Those victims were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9 years old, as well as school custodian Mike Hill, 61, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, who was head of the school.

    Four police officers who responded to the shooting described to reporters Tuesday how their training guided them as they hunted the shooter.

    Officer Rex Engelbert praised two staff members “who stayed on the scene and didn’t run.” They gave him the concise information he needed, as well as “the exact key I needed to enter the building,” he said.

    Engelbert and Detective Sgt. Jeff Mathes became part of a team that cleared classrooms and searched for the shooter. When they reached the first-floor atrium they took gunfire from the shooter.

    “We were still unsure where that was, but our job is to go towards it, so we went through a pair of double doors,” Mathes said.

    Detective Michael Collazo, who heard the shooter might be on the second floor, joined the group.

    “At some point around that time frame is when we started hearing the first shots … that’s when everything kind of kicked into overdrive for us, “Collazo said.

    After they went up a stairwell and down a second-floor hallway, they encountered a victim on the floor.

    “Doing what our training tells us to do in those situations and following the stimulus, all of us stepped over a victim. To this day, don’t know how I did that morally, but training is what kicked in,” Mathes said.

    Smoke was filling the building and the fire alarm was blaring, Collazo said. Then there was a gunshot to their right.

    He asked Engelbert, who had a scope on his rifle, to lead the team toward the gunshot. Engelbert said things were unfolding “very similar to the training we receive.”

    “We then proceeded continually towards the sounds of gunfire and then once we got near the shooter, the shooter was neutralized,” Mathes said.

    The school shooting – the deadliest since 21 people, including 19 children, were killed at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last May – renewed debate over the scourge of American gun violence, access to firearms and school safety, a fight that spilled over into the state legislature this week.

    Tennessee House Republicans on Monday took steps toward expelling three Democratic state representatives who participated in protests at the state Capitol last Thursday calling for more gun control in the wake of the deadly mass shooting.

    A vote on whether to expel the three members – Reps. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis – is slated for Thursday, according to The Tennessean.

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  • Wisconsin voters are deciding control of state Supreme Court in most consequential election of 2023 | CNN Politics

    Wisconsin voters are deciding control of state Supreme Court in most consequential election of 2023 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Wisconsin voters on Tuesday are deciding the outcome of a state Supreme Court race that could be the most consequential election of the year.

    The race between Democratic-backed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Republican-backed former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly could both break a decadelong era of Republican dominance in one of the nation’s most important swing states and prove pivotal in the fight over the future of abortion access. It’s the most expensive state judicial race ever.

    Conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin high court. But the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack has given liberals an opening to retake control for at least the next two years, and with it fundamentally shift the political landscape in a state that has been ensnared in political conflict for more than a decade. The race could also effectively decide how the court will rule on legal challenges to Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion – which took effect after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

    Wisconsin is one of 14 states that directly elect their Supreme Court justices, and winners get 10-year terms. The races are nominally nonpartisan, but political parties leave little doubt as to which candidates they support. Spending in this year’s race – which reached $28.8 million as of March 29, according to the Brennan Center – has far surpassed the previous record for spending on a state judicial contest: $15.4 million in a 2004 Illinois race.

    Republican sway in Wisconsin began with Gov. Scott Walker’s election in 2010 – a victory that was followed by the passage of union-busting laws and state legislative districts drawn to effectively ensure GOP majorities, all green-lit by a state Supreme Court where conservatives have held the majority since 2008.

    Walker lost his bid for a third term to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. But Evers has been hamstrung by the Republican-led legislature, with the conservative Supreme Court breaking ties on matters such as a 2022 ruling during the once-a-decade redistricting process in favor of using Republican-drawn legislative maps rather than ones submitted by Evers. The decision cemented Republicans’ solid majority in the state legislature.

    Revisiting those maps, which Protasiewicz has criticized, could lead to new state legislative districts that are less favorable to Republicans if she is victorious.

    The court has also shaped Wisconsin elections in other ways. It barred the use of most ballot drop boxes last year and ruled that no one can return a ballot in person on behalf of another voter. The court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin: Justices voted 4-3, with conservative Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals, to reject former President Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties.

    Tuesday’s election will set the stage for the 2024 presidential race, with the court likely to be asked to weigh in again on election rules, including the state’s voter identification law, and potentially sort through another round of legal challenges afterward.

    But the most immediate battle likely to reach the justices as early as this fall is over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances.

    Groups on both sides of the abortion divide have poured vast sums into the race and have attempted to mobilize voters ahead of Tuesday’s election.

    Though the two candidates have refused to say how they’d rule on the issue, they’ve left little doubt about their leanings.

    In a debate last month, Protasiewicz said she was “making no promises” on how she would rule. But she also noted her personal support for abortion rights, as well as endorsements from pro-abortion rights groups. And she pointed to Kelly’s endorsement by Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights.

    “If my opponent is elected, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books. I can tell you that,” Protasiewicz said.

    Kelly, who has done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life, shot back, saying Protasiewicz’s comments were “absolutely not true.”

    “You don’t know what I’m thinking about that abortion ban,” he said. “You have no idea. These things you do not know.”

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  • Morning after pill brand speeds up retail access, doubles supply per pack | CNN Business

    Morning after pill brand speeds up retail access, doubles supply per pack | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    One maker said it is responding to high demand for the morning-after pill, after the US Supreme Court last year ended a constitutional right to abortion, by speeding up availability of the emergency contraceptive in retail stores and introducing a new two-count pack.

    Julie launched as a one-step tablet of emergency contraceptive containing Levonorgestrel, the key ingredient in the popular Plan B emergency contraceptive that was approved by FDA in late 1990s without a prescription, at 4,500 Walmart stores nationwide last September.

    The startup experienced a surge in demand for its $42 tablet at launch amid an overall spike in purchases of emergency contraceptive following the US Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in on June 24, 2022.

    The FDA-approved morning-after pill can reduce the chance of pregnancy after unprotected sex or failure of another contraceptive method like a condom, and is ideally taken within 72 hours. The pill, which is legal in all 50 US states, works by delaying ovulation or preventing implantation and cannot terminate a pregnancy.

    While the plan from the beginning was always to make the product widely accessible as quickly possible, the Supreme Court’s ruling only compelled the startup to accelerate the timetable for Julie’s nationwide rollout.

    “The Dobbs decision and overturning Roe v. Wade last year rocked everyone’s world, our customers and our retail partners,” said Amanda E/J Morrison, cofounder of Julie. “It lit a fire under us to provide our product to more women and, more importantly, to educate women about emergency contraceptives.”

    In April, just seven months after hitting the market, Julie is now expanding into 5,600 CVS stores and 1,500 Target stores. The brand is also introducing a new 2-count pack of its emergency contraception (which has a three-year expiration period). The two-count pack rolled out at CVS locations over the weekend.

    “With the two-pack, we want to make it easier for women to keep extra emergency contraceptive at home, just like they would with other birth control options like condoms,” said Morrison.

    The price for two-count pack is $70. Morrison said the pill works most effectively the closer it is taken after unprotected sex, ideally within 72 hours.

    Dr. Colleen Denny, a clinical associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said she saw the upside to a two-count pack of emergency contraception, which she hasn’t seen before from other emergency contraception brands.

    “It generally makes sense for barriers to emergency contraception, prescription and over the counter, to be as low as possible,” said Denny,

    “Emergency contraception is incredibly safe and effective at preventing pregnancy when used in the right time frame,” she said. “Relationships are complicated. There can be situations where there isn’t access to emergency contraception or women might not ask the partner to use it. So being able to have access to one pill and a backup is a great idea.”

    Kelly Cleland, executive director of the American Society for Emergency Contraception, said emergency contraception brands, like Julie, still have to work harder at making the product not only more accessible, but also more affordable.

    “I am in favor of expanding access, but this is a missed opportunity when a generic brand comes into the market with a high price barrier,” Cleland said about Julie’s $70 price for the two-count pack.

    Cleland said a study done last year by the American Society for Emergency Contraception on access to emergency contraception in stores compared price at retail for branded and generic emergency contraception options. The report said some generic options were priced at $6 or less.

    Julie said it set the price for its single pill and two-count pack so it can fund its one-for-one donation program (in which the company donates one box for every box purchased) and to cover business costs tied to packaging and marketing.

    By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court revoked the notion that the constitutional right to privacy included an abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court expanded states’ authority to regulate or restrict abortion.

    A total of 26 US states have since implemented new abortion restrictions or all-out bans.

    In the rulings’ immediate aftermath, doctors and prescribers saw a sharp jump in demand for different forms of contraception, including emergency contraception, and longer-lasting forms of birth control. The rush on emergency contraceptives forced some pharmacy chains to impose temporary purchase limits.

    “Every time there is a new development on restrictions to reproduction health care, there’s a run on emergency contraceptive. Our retail partners confirmed this,” said Morrison, adding that news events continue to influence buying patterns for emergency contraceptive.

    “The current political climate has emboldened Julie,” Morrison said. This, according to the company, includes expanding Julie’s available within communities through unexpected places like bars, restaurants and coffee shops.

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