Ohio Voters Reject Measure That Would Have Paved Way for Minority Rule

Ohio voters have overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to raise the threshold for ballot initiatives to 60 percent of votes, which would have paved the way for minority rule in the state.

Decision Desk HQ, an election results reporting agency, called the race around 8:12 p.m. And the results are not even close: With about 33 percent of the votes in, the “no” vote on the amendment is leading by a 30-point margin.

Republicans argued the amendment was needed to protect the state constitution from the influence of special interest groups. But in reality, the measure was put forward to block another amendment, which goes up for a vote in November, to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution.

Abortion is currently legal in Ohio until about 22 weeks, although not for lack of GOP efforts after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The November amendment would allow people to decide for themselves about all reproductive health. The state could only restrict abortion access after a doctor determines the fetus is viable, or could survive outside the uterus. And even then, abortions can be performed if the patient’s health or life is at risk.

In response, Republicans tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote, instead of a simple majority. If they had prevailed, the new threshold would mean that just 40 percent of Ohio would have to vote against a measure, such as abortion, to reject it, allowing the minority of state residents to have the final say.

And when it comes to abortion, blocking reproductive rights is in fact a minority opinion. A USA Today Network/Suffolk University poll released two weeks ago found that 58 percent of Ohioans support enshrining abortion rights, while just 32 percent oppose it. The support crosses party lines, with a third of Republicans backing the amendment, as well as 85 percent of independent women—a crucial voter demographic.

Now that voters blocked raising the threshold, it will require only a simple majority to amend the state constitution to include abortion rights. But the issue of using abortion rights as a proxy for wars on democracy remains.

Ohio is not the first state to use abortion regulations as a way to circumvent the will of the people. In Kansas, after state residents overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion protections in the constitution, Republicans moved to implement laws that would still restrict access to the procedure.

President Joe Biden designated a new national monument near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday, protecting almost one million acres from uranium mining in a massive win for his environmental agenda and Indigenous rights.

The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument protects lands that are sacred to Native Americans, after tribes were forced off the land in 1919 when the Grand Canyon National Park was established. The land contains some of the most biodiverse habitats in the region and is home to bighorn sheep, bison, and bald eagles. Many of the streams in the area contribute to the Colorado River, a critical water source for the Southwest that is at an all-time low due to climate change.

“Today I’m proud to use my authority under the Antiquities Act to protect almost one million acres of land around Grand Canyon National Park as a new national monument—to help right the wrongs of the past and conserve this land … for all future generations,” Biden said during the designation ceremony at Red Butte Airfield in Arizona.

Tribal nations and conservationists had been calling for years to designate the land as a national monument. This is the fifth national monument Biden has designated, after Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, and Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both of which he restored as national monuments after Donald Trump stripped their protective status.

Although existing uranium mining claims on the Arizona land will be allowed to continue, the new designation protects the land from any future mining claims. Native tribes will be able to use the land for religious ceremonies, as well as for hunting and gathering. The designation is also an important sign, not just for Indigenous people, but for everyone.

Native American history “is American history,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, said Monday. “Feeling seen means being appreciated for who we are: the original stewards of our shared lands and waters.”

Haaland on Tuesday highlighted the importance of protecting such sacred lands, while Biden stressed the significance of acknowledging all parts of history.

“At a time when some seek to ban books and bury history, we’re making it clear that we can’t just choose to learn only what we want to know. We should learn everything that’s good, bad, and the truth about who we are as a nation,” he said.

Biden also said he would invest $44 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to “strengthen climate resilience across our national park system.” Climate change is especially pertinent to Arizona, which has borne some of the worst parts of a heat wave that has boiled the Southwest. The heat finally broke (relatively speaking) last week in Phoenix, when the city’s high temperature was below 110 degrees for the first time in a month.

Ron DeSantis is trying to invigorate his flailing campaign by reshuffling staffing for a third time.

Campaign manager Generra Peck will now become chief strategist. She will be replaced by James Uthmeier, who served as DeSantis’s gubernatorial chief of staff. The changes will take place “ASAP,” Uthmeier told Politico Tuesday.

The move comes just a few weeks after DeSantis cut more than a third of campaign staff, including two senior-level advisers and about 10 people on the event-planning team. No word on whether he kept the staffers who made a video of DeSantis with a Nazi symbol in the background or an aggressively homophobic and transphobic ad attacking Donald Trump.

Peck and Uthmeier’s moves mark the third time DeSantis has tried to “reset” his struggling campaign. Before he announced he was running for president, DeSantis had positioned himself as the natural successor to Trump. But his campaign started on a whimper, not a bang, and has yet to pick up.

DeSantis is second to Trump in the polls, but by a massive margin. All of his attempts to galvanize his campaign have failed to pay off—literally. His super PAC is burning through cash, scaring off major donors, and yet he continues to slip in the polls.

Things aren’t helped by the fact that DeSantis himself is awkward and terrible at small talk. It remains to be seen whether the third time is truly the charm, but it’s not looking good so far for Team DeSantis.

Republicans are planning to begin an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in the fall, despite there being no proof of any wrongdoing on his part.

The GOP has for months accused the president and his son Hunter Biden of corruption, although they have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims. While the farthest-right Republicans have long been clamoring to impeach Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy previously hedged, saying they did not have a strong enough case yet.

But many House Republicans say that the inquiry will definitely happen in the fall, and could begin as soon as next month, CNN reported Tuesday. They are worried that if they don’t try to impeach him now, it will make it look like they have cleared him and Hunter of wrongdoing.

McCarthy has begun to compare Biden to Nixon, arguing that his actions alone merit an impeachment inquiry. He says that an inquiry is different from voting on articles of impeachment, because it would merely give House Republicans greater power to get access to documents or witnesses that could prove their case. (Although if they haven’t proven their case by now, the bigger question might be whether there is anything to prove.)

“That’s exactly what was played out during the Nixon administration in Congress. They voted to have an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told Fox News’s Sean Hannity Monday night. “I’ve raised it on this show not long ago, that because the actions of the Biden administration, withholding information, that that would rise to the level where we would need impeachment inquiry.”

“We will continue to follow the information and provide it to the American public,” McCarthy insisted. “The difference here is we don’t do it for political purposes. We follow the Constitution.”

Except, of course, all of the investigations into Biden are absolutely for political purposes. House Republicans have mobilized multiple committees to go after the Biden family. There has yet to be any proof of wrongdoing, but Republicans have used the investigations as excuses to trash Biden, attack policies they don’t like such as immigration, and share his son’s nude photos.

Supercharging those investigations via impeachment inquiry would be nothing more than Republican retaliation for Donald Trump’s two impeachments. But the move also could be highly unpopular—especially for those 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020. Several Republicans have expressed skepticism at the idea of impeachment, and CNN reported that some Republican donors are worried that an impeachment inquiry would not be a smart move.

There’s also the risk that impeachment proceedings would backfire completely. Republicans would be forced to lay out everything they have—which is really not that much.

A Trump-appointed Texas judge has ordered three senior Southwest Airlines lawyers to take eight hours of “religious-liberty training” from the far-right Christian hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.

In his late Monday ruling, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr specifically mandated the lawyers take the training as part of court-ordered sanctions for religious discrimination. He described ADF as one of several “esteemed non-profit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated ADF as an extremist hate group.

The mandated hate-group training is the latest phase of a lawsuit brought by flight attendant Charlene Carter, who sued Southwest for firing her in 2017 after she sent confrontational anti-abortion messages to her union’s former president. Carter argued she had been discriminated against based on her religious beliefs, and U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr sided with her in December, ordering she be reinstated.

Starr, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, also ordered Southwest to issue a statement telling its employees that the airline “may not” engage in religious discrimination against them. Instead, Southwest said that it “does not” do so, prompting Carter to demand additional sanctions against the company.

Carter had made no request for Southwest to undergo religious liberty training. ADF is not representing Carter, nor is it otherwise related to the case at all, so it’s unclear why Starr felt the need to involve the group.

It’s hard to overstate ADF’s role in rolling back civil liberties. One of its lead lawyers is Erin Hawley, who is married to far-right Senator Josh Hawley. ADF helped overturn Roe v. Wade and then sued to remove mifepristone, one of the drugs used in medication abortions, from the national market. That case is still in limbo, as the Fifth Circuit Court has yet to issue a ruling.

ADF also represented the plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court case 303 Creative v. Elenis. Web designer Lorie Smith was suing to have the right to refuse services to LGBTQ people. The design request she claims she received that prompted her suit appears to have been entirely fabricated.

Andrew Cuomo’s sister helped coordinate a campaign attacking the women who accused the former New York governor of sexual misconduct.

Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment. A report by New York State Attorney General Letitia James found that Cuomo sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, including current and former government workers, through unwanted touching and inappropriate comments. Cuomo and his aides also allegedly unlawfully retaliated against at least one of his accusers for going public with her complaints.

Many of Cuomo’s accusers faced vicious abuse online. Much of that abuse was due to Cuomo’s sister Madeline Cuomo, working in coordination with a pro-Cuomo grassroots group, The New York Times reported Monday.

Madeline Cuomo worked with a group called We Decide New York, whose members mostly consisted of women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. The group rallied behind Andrew Cuomo, galvanized to loyalty by how he had handled the Covid pandemic, in the spring of 2021 as more accounts of his sexual misconduct came to light.

More than 4,000 texts, emails, and voice memos acquired by the Times show just how much influence Madeline Cuomo wielded over the group and its social media presence. She helped WDNY plan social media posts and fed group members talking points for when reporters asked questions, but she insisted that her involvement be kept secret.

Madeline Cuomo regularly bashed her brother’s accusers, slut-shaming them and describing them as “despicable” and “unsophisticated.” Other choice words she used included “home wrecker,” “unauthentic,” and “bimbo photos.” The group followed her cues, often repeating her attacks word for word publicly. Last August, she told the group that two of Andrew Cuomo’s accusers “need to be frightened into shutting up right now.”

The group began to grow uncomfortable with Madeline Cuomo’s aggressive tactics, which would eventually lead to an irreparable rift. Members started to push back in September, after one of Andrew Cuomo’s accusers, Charlotte Bennett, sued him. “Even a slut has right to not be sexually harassed,” WDNY founding president Sandy Behan texted Madeline Cuomo.

The women compromised by sharing a photo of Bennett wearing lingerie at a bar. “No respectable woman would EVER pose like that,” Madeline Cuomo said over text.

Also in the spring of 2021, Madeline Cuomo got WDNY to hype up her younger brother Chris Cuomo when he filed an arbitration demand against CNN. Chris Cuomo was fired from the network for helping Andrew navigate the sexual harassment accusations, a violation of journalistic ethics.

Madeline Cuomo said she had worked with WDNY, but not recently, and that Andrew Cuomo was not involved at all. But the messages shared with the Times show Madeline Cuomo repeatedly said she kept her brother updated on the group’s work and that he appreciated all their efforts.

Andrew Cuomo gained national attention and praise for how he handled the Covid pandemic. But as the sexual harassment allegations came to light, it was also revealed that he had suppressed the number of Covid-related deaths in New York to make himself look better. He resigned in disgrace.

A judge on Monday dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation countersuit against E. Jean Carroll because her allegations that the former president raped her are “substantially true.”

Trump was unanimously found liable in May for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her about $5 million in damages. A few days later, Carroll gave an interview on CNN during which she said, “Oh yes he did, oh yes he did” when asked about the jury’s finding that Trump had not raped her.

Almost two months after that, Trump sued Carroll for her comments. His counterclaim alleged that she had defamed him by saying he raped her when the jury had found he only sexually abused her (which is so much better).

“Ms. Carroll’s statements were substantially true,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his ruling Monday dismissing Trump’s countersuit. “Unlike the jury’s finding on the Penal Law ‘rape’ question, its finding on the sexual abuse question—and specifically its implicit determination that Mr. Trump digitally raped her—is conclusive with respect to this case.”

Kaplan has made clear he will suffer no foolishness from Trump. In mid-July, he rejected Trump’s demand for a new trial. Trump’s lawyers had argued in court documents that the awarded damages were “excessive” because the jury determined Carroll had not been raped and that his assault had not caused her any mental injury.

But Kaplan called Trump’s argument “entirely unpersuasive” and noted that the New York penal law definition of rape is “far narrower” than in common understanding. As a result, not only would Trump not get a new trial, but he is definitely a rapist.

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan said in his ruling.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) lauded Monday’s ruling. “We are pleased that the Court dismissed Donald Trump’s counterclaim. That means that the January 15th jury trial will be limited to a narrow set of issues and shouldn’t take very long to complete,” she said in a statement, referring to Carroll’s second defamation lawsuit against Trump.

“E. Jean Carroll looks forward to obtaining additional compensatory and punitive damages based on the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made in 2019.”

Carroll accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She initially sued him twice for defamation: first in 2019, when he said she made up the rape allegation to promote her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media. Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault, but her first case was the first to make it to a courtroom.

Trump continues to vehemently deny all of the allegations and launched fresh vitriol at Carroll during the disastrous CNN town hall. She amended her second lawsuit, which is still pending, to include those comments.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly tried to thwart Carroll’s lawsuits, but he has been denied at every turn. And he will go into the second trial, which is scheduled to start in January, having lost a major asset: The Justice Department no longer considers him immune.

Donald Trump—who apparently hates both America and women—went on a wild rant after the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was knocked out of the World Cup, mocking the players and inexplicably blaming their loss on “wokeness.”

The top-ranked team lost Sunday to Sweden, the U.S. team’s earliest exit ever and a shocking disappointment. Trump has disliked the team, particularly its star player Megan Rapinoe, for years and lost no time in throwing salt on the wound.

“The ‘shocking and totally unexpected’ loss by the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to the our [sic] once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden. Many of our players were openly hostile to America,” he said Sunday night on Truth Social.

“No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot, Megan, the USA is going to HELL!!! MAGA.”

It should go without saying that (1) Joe Biden had nothing to do with the team’s loss, and (2) nothing will happen to the United States just because its team was knocked out of the Women’s World Cup.

The simple answer is that the team failed to perform to its usual standards throughout the entire tournament. The loss is particularly bitter for Rapinoe, who plans to retire at the end of the domestic season in November.

But Trump couldn’t pass up the opportunity to blame something on a queer woman. He and Rapinoe have traded barbs for years, starting in 2019 when Rapinoe said she considered herself a “walking protest against the Trump administration” and would not be “going to the fucking White House” if her team won the World Cup that year (they did). Trump has repeatedly mocked Rapinoe ever since.

Spectators drowned out Mitch McConnell’s attempts to give a speech over the weekend with boos and demands he retire, a week after the Senate minority leader froze during a press conference.

McConnell appeared at a church picnic in his home state of Kentucky on Saturday. But when he got up to give a speech, he got probably the exact opposite reaction he was expecting.

Picnic attendees booed him and chanted, “Retire!” They also called out, “Shame on you, “Ditch Mitch,” and “Lost the Senate!” McConnell futilely attempted to keep speaking, but the chants were far too loud for him to be heard.

The heckling comes about a week after McConnell froze during a news conference and appeared unable to continue speaking. He was escorted away from the cameras, and when he returned later, McConnell declined to comment on what happened or whether it was related to the fall he suffered in March, which resulted in a concussion and his weeks-long absence from the Senate.

In addition to his concussion, McConnell reportedly fell while at the airport just three weeks ago, and he has been using a wheelchair to get around crowded areas. His physical condition isn’t actually that surprising: At 81, he’s the longest-serving Senate party leader, and he’s a member of the second-oldest Senate in history.

His fellow Republicans are also starting to make noise about his stepping down. Another Republican senator told NBC anonymously last week that McConnell is “definitely slower with his gait” and that he declines to discuss his health in private. Another Republican senator, again speaking anonymously to NBC, said that McConnell doesn’t speak nearly as much during the weekly party meetings.

“I think that he is just not processing,” the senator said.

Even those who are brave enough to go on the record seem concerned about McConnell’s ability to remain in leadership.

“He suffered a really bad fall, and that’s actually had an impact on him,” Senator Ron Johnson said last week, without going into more detail about McConnell’s ability to keep working. “Obviously, that fall affected him.”

“Age affects us all,” Johnson said. “You can’t deny that reality.”

McConnell, however, has given no indication that he is leaving anytime soon.

Everyone knows that Aileen Cannon, the Florida federal judge who will oversee Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he illegally kept classified documents, is in the tank for him. Cannon has already gone out of her way—and broken with long-standing precedent—to show her loyalty to the man who appointed her to the federal bench. But other aspects of her judicial record are now being scrutinized.

According to a Friday morning report from Reuters, Cannon has made a number of costly errors on the federal bench. This is not especially surprising given her overall lack of experience—she was appointed to her current position after only 12 years as an attorney. In a June trial, that lack of experience caused significant problems. While overseeing the trial of an Alabama man who had been accused of spreading images of child sex abuse online, Cannon closed jury selection to the public—a violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. In the same case, Cannon also forgot to swear in the jury pool, a mistake that forced the judge to restart the jury selection process. The case ended with the defendant pleading guilty before it could go to trial.

The errors, however, only underscore Cannon’s lack of experience. The earlier mistake, Stephen Smith, a professor at the Santa Clara School of Law told Reuters, was “a fundamental constitutional error.”

“She ignored the public trial right entirely. It’s as though she didn’t know it existed.” The mistake suggests more trouble ahead as the former president’s second criminal trial moves forward.