09 November 22
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Democrat John Fetterman is projected to win the race for Senate in Pennsylvania, defeating Republican Mehmet Oz. Other Senate races remain uncalled in: Wisconsin, between Sen. Ron Johnson (R) and Democrat Mandela Barnes; Georgia, between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R); Arizona, between Sen. Mark Kelly (D) and Republican Blake Masters; and Nevada, between Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Republican Adam Laxalt.
Here’s what to know
- Republicans J.D. Vance of Ohio and Rep. Ted Budd of North Carolina were projected to win their Senate races, fending off Democratic efforts to flip those seats. Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Michael F. Bennet (Colo.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) were projected to win reelection, keeping those seats in Democratic hands.
- In a strong night for incumbent governors, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer (D) was projected to win a second term. Democrats Kathy Hochul of New York, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and Janet Mills of Maine, along with Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, were also projected to win. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Josh Shapiro was projected to win, defeating Republican Doug Mastriano.
Abortion rights campaigners in Michigan have declared victory on a ballot initiative to secure abortion rights. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Vermont, Michigan and California deliver blows to Republican agenda bent on dismantling the right to choose
In Michigan, abortion rights campaigners declared victory on a ballot initiative looking to secure a constitutional right to abortion, meaning the state will now escape the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban that was on the books.
The state is the first in the US to fight off a pre-existing abortion ban with a ballot proposal, called Proposal 3, in a move that campaigners across the country see as a possible road map for other states.
“Proposal 3’s passage marks an historic victory for abortion access in our state and in our country – and Michigan has paved the way for future efforts to restore the rights and protections of Roe v Wade nationwide,” Darci McConnell, the communication director for Reproductive Freedom For All, wrote in a statement, announcing the news after it was called by ABC and NBC.
The news broke as other US states too saw victories for abortion rights initiatives.
Vermont became the first state in America to protect abortion rights in its state constitution just before Michigan, calling their result on Tuesday after its voters resoundingly backed a ballot initiative by a huge margin. And in California, voters were on track to overwhelmingly pass a measure to enshrine into the state’s constitution the right to an abortion and contraception.
“Vermont voters made history tonight,” said the Vermont for Reproductive Liberty Ballot Committee, which campaigned for the amendment, according to local news. All votes had not yet been counted at 11pm ET, but the yes campaign was leading by 77% to 22%.
“Vermonters support reproductive freedom in all four corners of the state … and they believe that our reproductive decisions are ours to make without interference from politicians,” the committee said in a statement.
In Vermont, the outcome was always expected, in a New England state so pro-choice that even the Republican governor backed Proposal 5. The proposal, brought by pro-choice advocates, means the constitution now determines that an “individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course”.
California’s Proposition 1, meanwhile, was positioned as a direct response to the US supreme court’s decision that overturned decades of established access and thrust the country into turmoil. Voters’ decisive support for Prop 1 will further enhance the state’s reputation as a haven for reproductive care just as restrictions – and political divisions – deepen across the country.
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom – who won re-election on Tuesday with a large majority – joined in the celebrations at a Prop 1 rally.
“Governor Newsom made it clear that he wants California to be visible as a haven for people seeking reproductive healthcare and Proposition 1 is part of that,” said the constitutional law professor Cary Franklin, who also serves as faculty director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at the University of California Los Angeles. “It will get media attention and people will be made more aware that California is a place they can go.”
The measure had been expected to easily pass, and analysts said support for reproductive rights could draw even more women and young people to the polls, which could play positively for Democrats in California’s conservative pockets.
These wins deliver more blows for Republicans who are increasingly finding that, when put to a vote, Americans frequently do not agree with a sweeping agenda to dismantle abortion rights.
So far, the anti-abortion movement has relied on judges, state houses and Republican lawmakers to curtail reproductive rights.
But since the supreme court dismantled the constitutional right to abortion on 24 June, pro-choice advocates are increasingly looking to ballot initiatives as a way of shoring up rights. The anti-abortion movement suffered a huge blow over the summer when Kansas – a usually reliably red state – slammed down a proposal brought by the Republicans, looking to confirm there was no right to abortion in the state constitution.
In Michigan the mood was already jubilant at the yes campaign’s watch party before they called the result, with voters screaming loudly, banging on tables and whooping in support of local voters, doctors and speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.
“My name is Nicholas, and I live in Ingham county,” one campaigner took to the stage to say. Speaking about him and his girlfriend, he added: “We knocked on over 1,500 doors and walked over a hundred miles, talking to neighbors who – like the rest of us here – agree this is a fundamental right,” to screams and cheers.
Nicole Wells Stallworth, executive director at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan later added: “We are living in a time like no other. The US supreme court did something they have never done: They reversed Roe. They tried it. And as such, we needed a campaign like none other. This campaign turned out to be just that.”
In Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion in a state where a Republican-dominated legislature imposed a near-total ban on abortions and put the proposed constitutional amendment to voters expecting a win.
Instead Kentucky voters served up a huge moral victory for abortion rights advocates, though the amendment’s defeat will have no practical impact on the right to an abortion if the sweeping ban on the procedure approved by lawmakers survives a legal challenge presently before the state’s supreme court.
Rachel Sweet of Protect Kentucky Access said the outcome was a “historic win” against “government overreach” into the personal medical decisions of Kentuckians.
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Maxwell Frost, a democratic candidate for Florida's 10th congressional district, participates in the pride parade in Orlando, Florida. (photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
Winners include the youngest person ever elected to the chamber and a Pennsylvania candidate who was heavily targeted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
But one thing is for sure: A number of outspoken progressives were officially elected to the House Tuesday, growing the ranks of the Democratic Party’s left flank—including the informal group of House lawmakers known as the Squad—even as control of the House itself continues to unexpectedly hang in the balance.
Florida gun violence activist Maxwell Frost became the youngest person ever elected to Congress, Democratic Socialists of America member Greg Casar won election in an Austin-area seat, and a trio of left-wing state representatives—Delia Ramirez in Illinois, Jasmine Crockett in Texas, and Summer Lee in Pennsylvania—were easily elected to safe Democratic seats after winning contentious primaries earlier this year.
All these candidates were endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, perhaps the two most visible progressive politicians in the country—suggesting they’ll be allies of the left as Democrats navigate the next Congress.
Frost, 25, won election Tuesday to succeed Rep. Val Demings in an Orlando-based district, after Demings gave up her seat to run for U.S. Senate in Florida. (Demings lost by double-digits to Sen. Marco Rubio Tuesday.) Frost is a backer of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal who defeated a crowded primary field that included multiple state legislators and former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson.
“We made history for Floridians, for Gen Z, and for everyone who believes we deserve a better future,” Frost tweeted Tuesday night.
Frost has said school shootings motivated him to get involved in politics, and he worked as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives. “I started Organizing at [the age of] 15 because I didn’t want to get shot at school,” he said in a tweet last week.
Joining Frost will be Casar, a member of the Austin City Council for the past eight years. Casar championed paid leave in Austin, though the ordinance never took effect as the state Supreme Court said it violated the state’s ban on local minimum wage laws. He also led an effort to reduce the Austin Police Department budget by one-third, and has promised to prioritize housing affordability when he enters Congress next year.
Casar has been a member of the Austin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, though the group withdrew its endorsement of his congressional run at his request over Casar’s opposition to the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Lee also won her closely-watched race for an open seat in Pennsylvania. Though the seat is Democratic, Lee—a state representative who toppled a longtime incumbent in the 2018 wave—was running against a right-wing Republican, Mike Doyle, who has the same name as the retiring Democrat who’s represented the district for more than a quarter century.
Lee faced an avalanche of spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s political action committee this year, over her perceived opposition to Israeli interests. First, AIPAC spent more than $2 million to support the moderate Democrat who faced her in the primary; then, during the home stretch of the general election, AIPAC threw down another $1 million in support of Doyle in TV ads and mailers, Pittsburgh public radio station WESA reported.
Ramirez, a Chicago housing activist who in 2018 became the first Guatemalan-American elected to the Illinois Legislature, easily won her election in the state’s Third Congressional District Tuesday and became the first Latina elected from a Midwestern state.
Ramirez helped form the Illinois House Progressive Caucus and currently serves in the leadership of the Illinois House, where she led efforts to distribute emergency COVID funds for renters and homeowners, and for Chicagoans to be able to elect their own school board.
And Crockett, a first-term state representative in Texas, won her race to succeed retiring Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in Dallas.
A former public defender, Crockett stood out in the conservative Texas legislature for sponsoring bills to expand voting rights and reform policing and the criminal justice system, and for her opposition to laws restricting voting and banning abortion.
“I don’t think it’s hard to be progressive in the state of Texas,” Crockett told Politico earlier this year. “We are the state saying, “Hey, women, for the last 50-plus years, you have a right to do whatever you wanted to do with your body, but we think that’s stupid.’”
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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversees the Florida Department of State. (Thomas Simonetti/WP)
Federal monitors would need local permission to observe activity inside election sites
On Monday, the Justice Department announced that it would send monitors to 64 jurisdictions nationwide, up from 44 jurisdictions in 2020, to evaluate how elections are being conducted amid a wave of threats to election workers and politicians, and allegations of voter intimidation.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties were all slated to receive federal monitors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Federal monitors also were sent to some Florida localities in 2020, during the Trump administration, but they remained outside because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Brad McVay, the chief counsel for the Florida Department of State, said in a letter issued late Monday that those monitors would not be allowed inside polling places this year under Florida law.
McVay said the Florida secretary of state’s office — which is overseen by DeSantis, considered a likely contender for the 2024 presidential race — would instead send its own monitors to those three counties, which are among the most populous and Democratic-leaning counties in Florida.
“Florida statutes list the people who ‘may enter any polling room or polling place,’ ” McVay wrote. “Department of Justice personnel are not included on the list.”
While the Justice Department is permitted to place monitors inside polling locations, the department must receive permission from local election officials to do so, according to Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and public policy institute.
The Justice Department has said it followed standard procedure on Tuesday and has monitors positioned outside polling locations in Florida and Missouri, where state officials also said the federal representatives would not be welcome inside.
Morales-Doyle said it is typical for the Justice Department to position its monitors — all of whom are lawyers — either inside or outside polling locations, depending on what they are observing. A monitor observing whether a location is accessible to people with disabilities, for example, may be stationed inside. One focused on potential voter intimidation could be outside.
“The fact that Florida is saying they do not want monitors in their polling locations is not in conflict with how the law works,” Morales-Doyle said. “I do not think it is the right decision to say they cannot come in, but I do think that election officials can say who they want in their polling places.”
Before 2013, under the federal Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department had the authority to dispatch workers to observe voting inside polling places at localities that had histories of racial discrimination in their voting process. But the department lost that authority after a Supreme Court ruling that year that struck down portions of the voting rights law.
In a news release announcing where monitors would be sent this year, the Justice Department noted that it has observed local election procedures nationwide since 1965.
Republicans have waged a sustained campaign against alleged voter fraud over the past two years, despite scant evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Election officials in battleground states are anticipating delayed results and protracted fights once the polls close Tuesday night.
Missouri officials on Friday denied the Justice Department’s request to conduct Election Day inspections under the Americans With Disabilities Act and Voting Rights Act. Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft (R) reiterated that stance in a meeting Monday.
He told The Washington Post that the Justice Department’s presence amounted to a bid to “bully a local election authority” and could “intimidate and suppress the vote.”
Ashcroft and Cole County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer (R) told federal officials that they would not be permitted to observe polling places Tuesday. On Tuesday, Justice Department observers were stationed outside polling places in Cole County, home to the state capital, Jefferson City.
“This is not the Voting Rights Act. This is the Americans With Disabilities Act. What’s next? They’re going to want to be at elections because they want to check that insulation in the building was purchased from China in the 1970s? Give me a break,” Ashcroft said in a phone interview.
Ashcroft, whose father, John Ashcroft, served as attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, compared Justice Department officials from the U.S. attorney’s office of the Western District of Missouri to “jackbooted thugs” and to armed individuals in Arizona who have been seen patrolling ballot drop boxes.
“I think we’ve already had lawsuits around the country about individuals around polling places,” Ashcroft said. “And they were told that they had to stay away from them because they could intimidate voters.” Justice Department officials last observed Missouri elections in 2016 at polling places in St. Louis.
In other parts of the country, including red-leaning Texas, state officials were welcoming Justice Department help in dealing with potential voting issues. Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State John Scott (R), said his office was working closely with the Justice Department to monitor voting in Beaumont, Tex., where a Black voter and the NAACP have alleged harassment of Black voters by White poll workers.
Separate from the election-monitors program, FBI special agents serving as election crime coordinators are on duty Tuesday in the bureau’s 56 field offices to receive voting-related complaints from the public, according to the Justice Department.
Employees in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will also operate a hotline all day on Election Day, answering calls from people who spot possible violations of federal voting rights laws.
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Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan, listens to speeches during the conference. He took the stage today, as well, explaining the impact of catastrophic flooding in Pakistan this summer. (photo: Peter Dejong/AP)
The leaders of dozens of countries took the stage to describe how climate change is killing and injuring their citizens and hurting their economies. Scientists weighed in on how humans can adapt to a hotter planet. And the United Nations tried to crack down on companies that lie about how much they are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
Pakistan's Prime Minister sounded the alarm
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan took the floor to deliver an opening statement on behalf of his country. He opened with the grim details of catastrophic floods that hit Pakistan earlier this summer.
Thirty three million people were affected, he said, more than half of whom are women and children. In the southern part of the country, seven times more rain than average fell.
"This all happened despite our very low carbon footprint," Sharif told assembled world leaders. "And yet we became a victim of something with which we had nothing to do.
"This is simply unjust and unfair, to say the least," he continued. Sharif called on world leaders to come up with a fairer way for the wealthy countries responsible for current global warming to help pay for the costs of climate disasters.
U.N. takes aim at greenwashing
The U.N. is trying to prevent "dishonest climate accounting" by companies and local governments that have promised to eliminate or offset their carbon emissions.
Non-state actors like financial institutions and city governments will play a crucial role in getting the world to net zero emissions by midcentury, a group of experts working on behalf of the U.N. said in a report. To ensure they're delivering on what they promised, groups that have made net-zero pledges must publicly report on their progress with verified information, the report says.
The report also says groups that have made net-zero pledges should stop building or investing in new fossil fuel supplies, avoid buying "cheap" carbon offset credits instead of cutting their own emissions, and ensure their lobbying activities align with their climate commitments.
"A growing number of governments and non-state actors are pledging to be carbon free. And, obviously, that's good news," says António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general. "The problem is that the criterion benchmarks for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of rigor and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through."
American elections cast a shadow over global talks
Voters are heading to the polls to decide which party will control Congress, and the outcome could undermine the Biden Administration's negotiating clout in the climate talks over the next two weeks.
The U.S. has already committed to cutting its emissions 50-52% by 2030. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which spurs the adoption of electric cars and more efficient buildings, is a major part of reaching that target and is already underway.
"If there is change in leadership in Congress, Congress is not going to be able to pass a repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act," says Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute. "That is a key bedrock of federal policy and importantly, most of it is self-executing."
According to the new "America Is All In" report, the U.S. is on track to cut emissions 39% by 2030, but would need to phase out coal completely by then to achieve its goal. But a major negotiating item at COP27 is over how to increase funding for developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and pay for the damage from climate impacts. If Democrats lose Congress, Republicans will likely oppose any climate aid for poorer countries.
Scientists say more research is needed about places most at risk from warming
People who live in low-income and developing countries are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. That includes sea level rise, heavy rain and more extreme storms, droughts and heat waves.
"The impacts are here, they're now and they are impacting the most vulnerable," said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the adaptation section of a sweeping international climate report released last year, at a presentation today at COP27.
Roberts and other top climate scientists working for the United Nations warned that research about adapting to climate change focuses on wealthier nations. That disparity leaves millions of people without useful guidance, the scientists say.
Where are the protests?
Last year's conference in Glasgow saw crowds of thousands of people gathered outside the conference center to push for climate action. Their voices could sometimes be heard inside the building. This year couldn't be more different.
The Egyptian government said it would allow some protests. But it has limited demonstrators to a ring-fenced area several minutes drive from the conference center. And human rights groups say the government has heavily vetted those who have been given permission to protest.
When NPR visited the protest site, there were only a few dozen demonstrators, and the event felt carefully controlled. As one foreign TV crew approached, one of the organizers quietly warned the protestors, who had been asked to stand in a line, to be careful what they said, even to each other, because the correspondent "understands Arabic".
Rather than try to hold politicians at the conference accountable, people there seemed keen to voice their support for world leaders - in particular the Egyptian president Abdul Fattah El Sisi.
Taher Salem, an employee in the Ministry of Education, said he'd come to the protest site to join President Sisi in "welcoming people here from all over the world". "We are here to support the conference; to say welcome to Sharm el Sheikh; welcome to Egypt," he said.
This scene is in keeping with Egypt's record on freedom of expression. The country has a record for the widespread stifling of dissent, with an estimated 60,000 political prisoners. Human Rights Watch says dozens of environmental activists have been arrested in the lead up to this summit.
Despite these efforts, human rights are becoming a growing focus at the conference. Sanaa Seif, the sister of one of Egypt's best known political prisoners, Alaa Abd El Fattah, is attending to spotlight the case of her brother, who has been in jail for almost a decade.
At the same time, Abd El Fattah has stepped up an ongoing hunger strike by now also refusing water. Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have all said they have raised his case in discussions with Egyptian officials.
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Women in Mexico City took to the streets in protest after Ariadna López's body was found. (photo: Reuters)
ALSO SEE: She Went Out With Her Friends. Hours Later,
She Was Found Dead on a Highway.
Anti-corruption officials in Mexico are investigating the attorney-general's office in the central state of Morelos after it was accused of covering up the murder of a young woman, Ariadna López.
Morelos's attorney-general's office said she had choked while being drunk.
But a second post-mortem done in Mexico City concluded she had died of multiple force trauma.
Mexico City's mayor said the Morelos attorney-general's office "wanted to hide the femicide, presumably because of links with the presumed killer".
In a statement, the attorney-general's office in Morelos "categorically" denied the accusations, saying that they lacked "any basis".
The disappearance of Ariadna López and the subsequent discovery of her body have again shone a spotlight on murders of women in Mexico and their handling by state officials.
Mexico has seen a surge in femicides - murders in which women or girls are killed because of their gender - in recent years. In 2021, a record 1,004 femicides were registered across Mexico.
What happened to Ariadna López?
The 27-year-old, who lived in Mexico City, disappeared on 30 October after meeting friends in the trendy Condesa neighbourhood of the capital.
Cyclists found her body two days later by a highway in neighbouring Morelos state.
The Morelos state attorney's office carried out a post-mortem on her body.
In a news conference, Morelos state attorney Uriel Carmona said that the cause of death was "severe alcohol intoxication" which led to "bronchial aspiration", ie that she choked on her own vomit while severely drunk.
He added that "we didn't find signs of violence; technically and forensically, the post-mortem does not match a femicide".
But a second post-mortem carried out at the request of the woman's family by Mexico City's attorney-general's office contradicts those findings.
The second post-mortem concluded that her body showed signs of blows and that the cause of death had been multiple force trauma.
Mexico City's mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented the new results in a news conference on Monday. She also played CCTV footage of a man in a parking garage carrying a body, which she said was that of Ariadna López.
Ms Sheinbaum added that the man in the footage had handed himself in to police. She also accused the Morelos state attorney-general's office of "covering up a femicide".
Shortly after Ms Sheinbaum's news conference, the office investigating corruption in Morelos state said it had opened an investigation into "possible crimes" committed by employees of the Morelos attorney-general's office.
Bayer said that lawyers representing those preparing a class action had withdrawn a request for court approval of the US$1.25 billion scheme. (photo: unknown)
The German company said that lawyers representing those preparing a class action had withdrawn a request for court approval of the US$1.25 billion scheme, part of a broader US$10.9 billion agreement to settle close to 100,000 US lawsuits related to Roundup.
The move would give the parties more time to address questions raised by Federal District Court Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California who presides over the federal Roundup litigation, Bayer said in a statement.
“Bayer remains strongly committed to a resolution that simultaneously addresses both the current litigation on reasonable terms and a viable solution to manage and resolve potential future litigation”, it added.
It declined to comment on the impact of the withdrawal on the timetable for the rest of the settlement. Bayer is seeking to end legal disputes it inherited with its US$63 billion takeover of Monsanto in 2018.
Bayer shares have fallen after Chhabria said that the court was inclined to oppose the part of the proposed settlement that deals with future claims. The case was due to be considered again on Jul 24.
Bayer had planned to create an independent panel of scientific experts to help assess whether glyphosate caused cancer. But in a filing published on Jul 6, Chhabria had questioned the idea of delegating the decision from judges and juries to a panel of scientists.
Chhabria also questioned whether potential claimants would want to remain bound by a ruling reached by the proposed scientific panel if research is still ongoing.
Regulators including the US Environmental Protection Agency and the European Chemicals Agency, have determined glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic, supporting Bayer's claim that the active ingredient in its Roundup product is safe for agricultural use.
However, in 2015, the World Health Organization's cancer research arm determined the herbicide to be a “probable carcinogen”, and since 2018, three consecutive US juries, who listened to scientific evidence from both sides during trials, found that Roundup causes cancer.
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