What do Democrats and Republicans want to change in 2024? The case of abortion and gun laws in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and the U.S. Senate

Donald Trump may be getting all the headlines, but partisan struggles in state capitals across the country may do far more to change America than the drama surrounding the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

Clashes between Democrats and Republicans over issues like abortion and guns, which could also shape future voting laws and electoral maps, foreshadow the great debates to come in the 2024 presidential campaign. The nation is divided over its political identity and the conflicts show how often small shifts in the balance of power can have huge consequences.

The frustration with threats to abortion access hasn’t faded, Democrats – from Biden’s close advisers to organizers across the country – agree. Tuesday was a big day for Democrats, as they won the preferred candidate in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court race came with high stakes for abortion access given the court is expected to decide the fate of the state’s 1849 ban, which had been dormant for decades but snapped back into place with last year’s US Supreme Court ruling.

Republicans were celebrating after a democrat who was re-elected by a 20 point margin switched parties and gave the GOP veto-proof majority in the state legislature.

America’s tortured divide on firearms is driving an extraordinary showdown in Tennessee. Republican state legislators want to get rid of three Democrats who joined a gun control protest after last week’s Nashville school massacre.

Brandon Johnson, a member of the progressive flank of the party, won the Chicago mayoral election on Tuesday. He beat a moderate with a tough-on-crime message by making a more nuanced pitch than he had in the past. Johnson said during the campaign that he wouldn’t want to cut police funding.

The Republican control of the state legislature as well as a reelection win by Ronis last November gave them total conservative power in Florida, where Democrats have had trouble in recent years. As he seeks to appeal to Republican grassroots voters ahead of a possible presidential run, DeSantis this week further loosened Florida’s already permissive gun laws. The state Senate just passed a bill that would ban most abortions in the state after four weeks of pregnancy, after he signed a 15-week abortion ban last year.

Wisconsin is a fight for democracy: a case study of Donald Trump in the wake of 2016 U.S. Senate District Court Justice Dan Knodl

This remarkable series of local battles is not always noticed in Washington, where lawmakers are gearing up for a looming debt ceiling crisis and arguing about aid to Ukraine.

The intensity of exchanges on issues like abortion, gender and guns raises another possibility. For all of Trump’s appeal to grassroots Republican voters, he is running a campaign that is almost exclusively rooted in his fury at his worsening legal problems and his claim that he is being politically persecuted to keep him out of the White House. The fights in the states suggest there’s more than one thing on voters’ minds.

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

Sean Eldridge – the founder and president of Stand Up America, a progressive advocacy group – said Protasiewicz would act as a check on “conservative efforts to take away reproductive freedom, disenfranchise voters of color through racial gerrymandering, and overturn election results they don’t like. Her victory helps build a firewall for our democracy and the freedom to vote ahead of 2024.”

The lesson of Wisconsin’s political upheaval is that local Republicans, some of whom are in favor of Donald Trump, are likely to fight back hard. The GOP won an open Senate seat on Tuesday and now have a veto over top office holders, such as Tony Evers, who could theoretically be impeached. In an interview with WISN in Wisconsin last month, Dan Knodl – the Republican who won on Tuesday – said he would consider a move to impeach Protasiewicz. At the time, she was serving as a Milwaukee circuit court judge. It is not clear if the legislature could remove her from the Supreme Court.

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

Rep. Justin Pearson and the 2024 Abortion Protest: The Case of a Minority-Scale State Representative and an Old Republican Nesis

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

Pearson told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the trio knew they were breaking a House rule on decorum. “But we did not know and did not think we were doing anything that could get us expelled by exercising our First Amendment rights and encouraging those protesters and children and adults and grieving parents to do the same in the House.”

Democrats accused Cotham of betraying her voters, and Cooper warned that her actions would have grave consequences. “Rep. Cotham’s votes on women’s reproductive freedom, election laws, LGBTQ rights and strong public schools will determine the direction of the state we love,” Cooper told CNN in a statement.

Republicans in Congress and in a number of state legislatures want to impose restrictions, including a ban on abortions after six weeks, which could be headed to the desk of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is in final deliberations about launching a presidential campaign. That will only be accentuated, they argue, if a Texas judge’s ruling in a pending case leads to a restriction in access to a common abortion medication, even in states where the procedure is legal.

Key Democrats hoping to keep abortion access a central part of the 2024 campaign are looking to the 2004 playbook of an old Republican nemesis: Karl Rove.

“In 2024, voters will be deciding whether to elect people who want a national abortion ban,” said Ben Wikler, the Democratic Party chair in the state. Republicans nationally will feel the anger that Wisconsin is feeling.

Even some conservatives are raising the alarm. Last summer, Ann Coulter made a reference to the US Supreme Court decision when she wrote ” pro-lifers: WE WON”. Abortion is not a right anymore. She suggested that new abortion restrictions are backfiring on the GOP. She told them to stop pushing strict limits on abortion or there would be no Republicans left.

Activists are also expecting Republicans to try get an abortion proposition on the ballot in Iowa, where state legislators are advancing a proposition that would impose new restrictions.

And they’ll do it, they say, by tapping into what they think is a more widely resonant argument about bringing people together to push back on government overreach and stripping them of their rights.

The ballot proposition are part of a patchwork strategy that is being worked out by activists, advocates and operatives as they wait for Biden to make a final decision about running for the presidency. More than 15 lieutenant governors have formed a coalition to share tactics and information in their efforts to protect abortion rights in their states. A group of Democratic state attorneys general from different states have joined together in a bid to derail a Texas judge’s decision on abortion pill.

The Democratic-dominated state legislature in New York has put a measure on the ballot for next year, and it will be a top target for the party because of the congressional districts where Biden won in 2020. Maryland legislators moved to add their own proposal to the 2024 ballot at the end of March.

The Democrat who convened the special session of the state legislature after the Dobbs decision said there was still a need for abortion rights politicians.

A representative of the billionaire governor said that he supported the Democrats in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and that he would support other ballot initiatives in other states.

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

In March, Harris traveled to Iowa to call attention to the Republican presidential candidates who had been landing in the state.

“People around our country are concerned, afraid, confused, desperate, in many ways feeling alone,” Harris said recently as she met with Iowa state legislators who support abortion rights in Des Moines.

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

It is a personal, emotional, important issue for people that my colleagues on the far right don’t understand.

Carolyn Ehrlich, a senior political strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the ballot propositions from last year are a “road map for protecting rights in states where the legislature is a roadblock to progress.”

“I don’t think we’re going to have to nuance anything to voters. LaphonzaButler, president of the EMILY’s List said that they will need to communicate to voters where the parties stand.

Every single candidate for public office next year will have no choice but to go on the record with their positions and Timmaraju will be there to hold them accountable.

A national abortion ban has been advocated by the former Vice President. Other prospective candidates have stopped short of that while making announcements of their own: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pushed a 15-week ban in his state – except in the case of rape, incest and the health of the mother – as he eyes a potential moderate lane in the race. The former UN Ambassador doesn’t support a full federal ban on all abortions, but has expressed willingness to support the 15 week federal ban on most abortions introduced by Lindsey Graham.

On Fox News, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott shut down the discussion about a bill that would allow the death penalty to be imposed if a woman were to get an abortion. A rep for Scott did not respond to a CNN interview request about the recent travel schedule that has looked like that of a likely presidential candidate.

There are bills being introduced in several states that would reclassify abortion as murder, as well as ones that could potentially apply ‘wrongful death’ to embryo frozen as part of infertility treatments.

Reply to the Comment on ‘The Future of Free Speech and Electoral Repression” by Yvonne Dannenfelser

That applies for candidates for other offices too, Dannenfelser warned. She said that she wants candidates to speak loudly and clearly about how they will support more restrictions. She said that it would be anostrich strategy to do otherwise.