Johnson’s bill would amend a state law preventing adult-oriented businesses like strip clubs from operating within 1,000 feet of schools, public parks or places of worship to include “adult cabaret performances,”including those of exotic dancers and male or female impersonators.”
The bill, titled the “Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act,” was introduced on Wednesday by Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson and House Majority Leader William Lamberth in their respective chambers.
Under the proposed measure, health care providers would be barred from providing treatments “performed for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex, or treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
In laymen’s terms, that means that any transition-related medications or procedures, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or gender confirmation surgery, would be off-limits to minor patients struggling with gender dysphoria.
Democrats in Michigan have made history for the first time in four decades by taking back control of both chambers of the state Legislature. Voters also reelected the entire Democratic ticket for governor, attorney general and secretary of state — who beat a slate of Republicans who repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election former President Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden. [emphasis added]
“As a party, we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the party, mostly within the donor class,” Paul Cordes, the Michigan Republican Party’s chief of staff, wrote in a memo on Thursday.
He continued: “That power struggle ended with too many people on the sidelines and hurt Republicans in key races. At the end of the day, high-quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns are still critical to winning elections. We struggled in both regards to the detriment of Michiganders across the state.”
A tax levy to fund the Patmos Library for the next 10 years failed in Jamestown Charter Township's August primary, meaning it lost 84% of its funding for operations.
The measure appeared on Tuesday's midterms ballot again in hopes that, with more residents aware of the issue, it would pass. It failed, again. Just 5,500 residents out of around 10,000 in the township just southwest of Grand Rapids voted on the millage, and 55.8% voted "no." Without taxpayer funds, the library will close. Exactly when that will happen is not yet known.It will come as no surprise that Ottawa County, where Jamestown Charter Township is located, voter overwhelmingly for the crackpot, Trump-endorsed GOP candidate for governor Tudor Dixon. 65.1%. Gretchen won the election with 54.6 % of the vote.
Reynolds claimed a decisive win, even as Democrats in numerous other states made gains in governors’ races. U.S. Sen Chuck Grassley won reelection by double digits. Republicans held three congressional seats and flipped a fourth. They bounced Attorney General Tom Miller and Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, two Democrats who hold the record as the nation's longest-serving politicians in those roles. And Republicans grew their already substantial majorities in the Legislature.
A bloodbath, in other words!
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) won reelection Tuesday by 3.4 points. That’s a landslide in a state where four of the past six presidential contests were decided by less than one point and the first time since 1990 that a Badger State governor was reelected from the same party that controlled the White House. For a Democrat, it’s the first time since 1962. [emphasis added]
The big picture: Two weeks out from the midterms, evidence points to a re-emerging red wave that could sweep in GOP control of both chambers. In the Senate, Republican officials are now bullish they'll gain at least the one seat necessary to regain the majority.
Why it matters: The national political environment shapes the trajectory of all the battleground races, meaning a big enough wave could touch some of the bluest districts.
More recent evidence, however, suggests that voter concern over inflation may trump abortion as a motivating issue. We are a multi-university team of social scientists that has been regularly polling Americans in all 50 states since April 2020.
Four times over the past six months we surveyed 22,000 to 27,000 Americans – in March and April, June and July, August and September, and then in more detail in October 2022 – to explore the likely effects of abortion politics on voter attitudes and behavior.
Following the Dobbs decision, we found no clear evidence of a change in Americans’ preferences for which party should control the House and Senate after the election. We conducted this research using generic ballots – polls that ask people about their political party preference, but not specifically about which candidate they support.
The problem the Democrats have is that there were too many months in between the historic SCOTUS decision and election day. And in those months, voters have been forced to participate repeatedly in exercises like buying groceries and filling their gas tanks to get to work each day. It has become almost unbearably painful for many families to make ends meet.
Additionally, Americans of all ages have watched their retirement account balances plummet in the last year. It’s disheartening to young workers to see prior gains evaporate into thin air and terrifying for those who hope to retire soon.
The book ["The Torn Skirt"], nearly a decade in the making, was published in 2005 and drew comparisons to Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
It was reissued in 2019 with an introduction by Mary Gaitskill, a longtime friend of Ms. Godfrey’s and the author of the acclaimed short-story collection “Bad Behavior” (1988). Ms. Gaitskill called “Under the Bridge” “a remarkable piece of investigative journalism,” adding that Ms. Godfrey “allows us to almost see what is essentially unseeable.”
The 50 member libraries of LINKcat
Vos also called for Republicans to move on from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Republican candidate for governor Tim Michels and has been tied to lackluster election performances for Republicans in a year that should have produced a GOP sweep.
"Some of the toxicity of Donald Trump, and the persona that he has made for the Republican Party, has turned off educated people," Vos said in a Thursday interview with conservative radio show host Jay Weber on WISN-AM.We'll see what Trump has to say about this.
Kerrigan Trautsch, a page at the Prairie du Chien Memorial Library, told the La Crosse Tribune that Derrick Van Orden came into the library on June 17 and complained loudly about a display of fiction and nonfiction books about homosexuality in the children’s section. The display was part of the library’s efforts to recognize Pride Month.
Trautsch, who was 17 at the time, describes herself as an advocate for the LGBTQ community. She said Van Orden was angry, and that he said the books offended him and that taxpayers shouldn’t have to see them. [emphasis added]
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not invest any money in Pfaff, and Pfaff was not on the committee's "Red to Blue" list, which puts a focus, along with extra resources, on the party's key races.
What's going on here? Well, Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly is a longtime Republican operative (one who, as you can see from the TV screenshot above, lends himself an air of intellectual authority by wearing a bow tie). Many Republicans believe that independent polling operations are among the mainstream institutions biased against conservatives. During the 2012 presidential election, that feeling gave rise to a concept called “unskewing the polls,” which were said to be understating support for Mitt Romney.
They weren’t—Romney lost, and most polls actually overestimated his support—but during the next presidential cycle, Cahaly’s operation began putting out its first polls, which consistently suggested Donald Trump had a very good chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Most other polls did not say this, and when Trump won, Cahaly became a polling celebrity.
In 2020, Trafalgar’s polls said the same thing—that Trump was going to win. Of course, Trump did not win, but Tralfagar retained much of its influence, including among mainstream reporters. This was partly because Nate Silver’s site FiveThirtyEight continued to give the group an A-minus rating for its overall accuracy despite some concerns about its transparency. (Many other polls in 2020 were off in the other direction, i.e., overestimating support for Joe Biden.) Cahaly’s outlier optimism about Republican chances continued unabated this cycle, and was arguably instrumental in creating the narrative of a rising red wave that never materialized. (Presumably, that A-minus is about to drop).
