Backers, Opponents of Abortion Rights Recalibrate After Surprising Kansas Referendum

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A Republican-leaning state in America’s socially conservative heartland recently shocked both sides of the long-running battle over abortion, calling into question the conventional wisdom about how and where the procedure might be restricted or banned.    Voters in Kansas cast ballots last week on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have eliminated an existing right to abortion. The amendment was expected to pass handily in a state no Democratic presidential contender has won in nearly 60 years and where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 15 percentage points in the 2020 election.    Voters rejected the ballotmore

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January 6 Attack Dominates Debate in Wyoming Congressional Race

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Some 2,500 kilometers from Washington, D.C., the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol still looms large in the minds of Wyoming voters who will be heading to the polls on August 16 to decide if Republican Liz Cheney should keep her seat in Congress. Wyoming’s only representative in the U.S. House, two-term Congresswoman Cheney has staked her political career on being one of the few Republicans to openly criticize former President Donald Trump. But she has an uphill fight to win her party’s nomination in a state that delivered Trump his most lopsided win of the 2020 election, withmore

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Four Key Races in Wisconsin, Minnesota Midterm Primaries

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Voters in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota picked candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices in primaries on Tuesday, in another test of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the Republican Party ahead of the November 8 midterms. Vermont and Connecticut also held nomination contests, while Minnesota held a special election for its vacant 1st Congressional District. The following are four key races: Wisconsin Republican governor’s primary In its final stretch, the Republican nomination contest for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race became another proxy battle between Trump and his estranged former vice president, Mike Pence. Trump endorsed construction company owner Timmore

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Trump Cries Foul After FBI Searches His Home

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Former President Donald Trump claims he is being politically persecuted after the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday, in what appeared to be part of a long-running investigation of whether he has kept official documents instead of sending them to the National Archives when he left office. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at the political fallout of the search. …

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FBI, Justice Department Routinely Prosecute Misuse of Classified Documents

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Federal officials are saying little so far about Monday’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but Trump and one of his sons have said the move is part of an investigation into Trump’s removal of official documents from the White House. While such a search of a former U.S. president’s residence would appear to be unprecedented, investigations into the removal or unlawful retention of classified information is not. Since 2005, the FBI and the Justice Department have launched at least 11 such investigations, some targeting high-profile former U.S. officials, including a former national security advisermore

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Trump Facing Major Criminal Investigations as He Considers 2024 Presidential Run

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As he strongly hints at another campaign for the White House in 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump is facing major federal and state criminal investigations into his actions in the immediate aftermath of his failed reelection campaign in 2020.     Monday’s unprecedented FBI raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was the latest indication that investigators remain focused on the country’s 45th president. Reports say the investigators were seeking classified documents he may have taken with him when he left Washington last year.    The search was court-authorized and was likely sanctioned at the highest levels of themore

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Trump Says Mar-a-Lago Home in Florida Raided by FBI

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump said FBI agents have raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.   “My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in lengthy statement Monday evening. “After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”   The circumstances of the search were not immediately clear, according to media reports. The Justice Department, however, has been actively investigating the discovery of classified information in boxes of records that weremore

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Lawyer: Giuliani Won’t Testify Tuesday in Georgia Election Probe

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Rudy Giuliani will not appear as scheduled Tuesday before a special grand jury in Atlanta that’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia, his lawyer said.  A judge last month had ordered Giuliani, a Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, to appear before the special grand jury Tuesday.  But Giuliani’s attorney, Robert Costello, told The Associated Press on Monday that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, had excused Giuliani for the day.  Nothing in publicly available court documents indicatesmore

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Examining the Debate Over Native American Land Acknowledgments

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A civil rights lawsuit filed by a University of Washington computer science professor has called attention to a largely academic debate over land acknowledgments — formal statements that recognize Indigenous custodianship of geographic areas on which institutions stand or events take place. Evolving out of the work of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, land acknowledgments are becoming increasingly common at U.S. universities and sporting events. Yale University, for example, developed this statement: “Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, havemore

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US Warns Pacific Isles of ‘Struggle’ Against Coercive Regimes

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A top U.S. diplomat warned Pacific Islands of a new struggle against violent power-hungry regimes Sunday, as she visited the Solomon Islands to mark the 80th anniversary of World War II’s Battle of Guadalcanal. With China’s military carrying out war drills around Taiwan and Russia bombarding Ukraine, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman hit out at a new crop of world leaders reviving “bankrupt” ideas about the use of force. Visiting a battlefield memorial in the Solomon Islands, Sherman said “some around the world” had forgotten the cost of war or were ignoring the lessons of the past. She hitmore

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Senate Rules Referee Weakens Democrats’ Drug Plan in Economic Bill

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The Senate parliamentarian Saturday dealt a blow to Democrats’ plan for curbing drug prices but left the rest of their sprawling economic bill largely intact as party leaders prepared for first votes on a package containing many of President Joe Biden’s top domestic goals.  Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said lawmakers must remove language imposing hefty penalties on drugmakers that boost their prices beyond inflation in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own. more

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US Senate Preps for Landmark Climate Legislation

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Congressional Democrats appear to be on the cusp of passing legislation that would dedicate $369 billion to combat climate change through a combination of grants, tax cuts, subsidies and other measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In addition to its climate-related elements, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) makes it possible for Medicare, the government-sponsored health insurance program for older Americans, to negotiate certain drug prices with the pharmaceuticals industry, a move expected to lower drug costs for all Americans. It also creates a minimum tax on large corporations, raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and will reduce themore

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Native American News Roundup July 31 – August 6, 2022

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Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week: Supreme Court to Consider ICWA in Biggest American Indian Case in Decades The newly released U.S. Supreme Court schedule shows that the justices will begin hearing arguments November 9 in Haaland vs. Brackeen, a consolidation of three cases that challenge the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA): Cherokee Nation v. Brackeen, Texas v. Haaland and Brackeen v. Haaland. Congress passed the ICWA in 1978 to discourage states from placing Native American children in non-Native American homes. Before the ICWA, between 25% and 35% of allmore

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Women Gubernatorial Hopefuls Break Records with Primary Wins

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Even with several U.S. primary elections still to go, women candidates for governor are already shattering records. At least 20 female gubernatorial candidates have won their party’s nomination and will be on the ballot in November, breaking the previous high of 16, which was set in 2018. “It’s notable because this is an area where women’s underrepresentation has been quite persistent,” says Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP) and an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden. “This disrupts gendered perceptions about who can and should lead … we’ve had somemore

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Pelosi Visit to Taiwan May Prompt More High-Level Visits

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The impact of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whirlwind visit to Taiwan is beginning to be felt, experts say, as another group of high-profile politicians solidifies plans to drop in on the self-ruled island that China considers a breakaway province.  While China has been preventing Taiwan from sending its leaders to global forums, “they cannot prevent world leaders or anyone from traveling to Taiwan to pay respect to its flourishing democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement published after she concluded her Taiwan visit Wednesday. The visit has put China’s leadership in a lose-lose situation, said Ali Wyne, a senior analystmore

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Democrats Say They’ve Reached Agreement on US Economic Package

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Senate Democrats have reached an accord on eleventh-hour changes to their top-priority economic legislation, they announced late Thursday, clearing their major hurdle to moving the measure through the chamber in coming days. Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist who was seen as the pivotal vote, said in a statement that she had agreed to changes in the measure’s tax and energy provisions and was ready to “move forward” on the bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said lawmakers had achieved a compromise “that I believe will receive the support” of all Democrats in the chamber. His party needsmore

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Biden Pushes Inflation Reduction Act, Amid Divided Opinion

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The Biden administration on Thursday pushed Congress to pass its proposed $260 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which the White House says will “lower costs, reduce inflation, and address a range of critical and long-standing economic challenges.” “My message to Congress is this: Listen to the American people,” Biden said during a virtual roundtable of U.S. business leaders. “This is the strongest bill you can pass to lower inflation, continue to cut the deficit, reduce health care costs, tackle the climate crisis and promote America’s energy security, all while reducing the burdens facing working-class and middle-class families.”  Economists, politicians and ordinarymore

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Hungarian Prime Minister Shows Why American Right Embraces Him

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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban received a warm reception Thursday in Texas, where he was a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major event on the calendar of the right wing of the Republican Party.     In remarks that ran for approximately 30 minutes, Orban demonstrated why he has become popular among American conservatives, rattling off a litany of claims and accomplishments that dovetailed with many American conservative voters’ priorities.     Orban touted his country’s low crime rate, its success at preventing immigrants from crossing its borders, its crackdown on the political left, its restrictionsmore

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US Senate Committee Holds Hearing for 3 Women Nominated to African Ambassador Posts

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Three career diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service answered questions Wednesday from senators during a hearing examining their credentials to lead U.S. diplomatic missions in Africa. If confirmed, three of the toughest diplomatic missions abroad will be led by women, who told the lawmakers that serving on the diplomatic front lines is a privilege and that they are committed to doing what they can to further peace and prosperity in the region. Lucy Tamlyn, who currently heads the U.S. diplomatic mission in Sudan as chargé d’affaires, may soon head south to the Democratic Republic of Congo to serve as ambassador.more

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Biden Seeks to Federally Protect Abortion as States Vote on Issue 

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that the White House said would protect access to abortion care, part of the continuing fallout from a June Supreme Court reversal of its landmark 1973 ruling establishing a right to abortion. With each of the 50 states now free to write abortion laws as it sees fit, an early test came Tuesday when voters in the Midwestern state of Kansas voted decisively to keep that state’s right to abortion. But several states now outlaw the practice, sometimes even in the case of rape or incest. “This is just extreme,” Bidenmore

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US Senate Approves NATO Membership for Sweden, Finland  

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The U.S. Senate approved Sweden’s and Finland’s accession into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday by a vote of 95-1, sending a strong bipartisan message of support for expanding the Western alliance against Russia.      “The NATO vote is a very important vote — for American security around the world: Finland’s and Sweden’s membership will strengthen NATO even further and is all the more urgent given Russian aggression, given Putin’s immoral and unjustified war in Ukraine. Putin is strengthening the NATO alliance,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.   more

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US Congresswoman Killed in Car Crash

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U.S. Representative Jackie Walorski, a Republican, was killed Wednesday in a car accident in her northern Indiana district, according to her office.  “Jackie’s husband was just informed by the Elkhart County Sheriff’s office that Jackie was killed in a car accident this afternoon. She has returned home to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. We will have no further comment at this time,” her office said in a statement.  The Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said authorities were called to the scene of a two-vehicle crash shortly after noon. Policemore

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US Voters Cast Primary Ballots

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Voters in multiple U.S. states cast ballots Tuesday in primary elections ahead of the November general elections that will decide control of the U.S. congress.  In the state of Arizona, Karrin Taylor Robson led Kari Lake in the Republican race for governor with more than half the ballots counted.  Lake has the backing of former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose support is being closely watched ahead of the November vote.  The winner will advance to face Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in the general election.  A U.S. Senate seat will also be on the November ballot inmore

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