women’s health

Donald Trump cleaves the Christian Right

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One of the strangest occurrences in the 2016 election is how the fundie Christian Right chose to support Donald Trump, of all people, over one of their own in the GOP primary. What is even more difficult to believe is that many of them are standing by Trump even after the revelations of the past week.

The leaders of the fundie Christian Right have pledged their fealty to Donald Trump (hmmm, I’m pretty sure this violates the first two Commandments somehow). ‘Still the best candidate’: Some evangelicals still back Trump despite lewd video:

gop-elephant-w-flag-crossRalph Reed, a conservative Christian activist and the head of Trump’s religious advisory board, said that as the father of two daughters, he was disappointed by the “inappropriate” comments. “But people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” he said in an email. “I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of their concerns,” he said.

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David Brody from the Christian Broadcasting Network tweeted, “This just in: Donald Trump is a flawed man! We ALL sin every single day. What if we had a ‘hot mic’ around each one of us all the time?”

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Legislative District 9 races

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Legislative District 9 was considered a competitive district when it was redistricted in 2012. A Republican, Ethan Orr, was elected to the House that year, but lost to Democrat Dr. Randall Friese just two years later.

FarleyDemocratic Senator Steve Farley is unopposed in the general election, mostly because he is popular in his district, and he has risen as a leader in the Democratic Caucus in the Senate.  Farley was named by the Arizona Republic as one of 16 Arizonans to Watch in 2016, and voted Best Arizona Democratic Elected Official in 2016 by readers and reporters of the Arizona Capitol Times. His legislative priorities are public education, jobs and economic development, senior issues, public safety, transportation choices, sustainable growth, fiscal health, and quality of life. He has repeatedly been named Conservation Hero by the Arizona League of Conservation Voters, and Legislative Champion by the Arizona League of Towns and Cities.

If Democrats can pick up enough seats to gain a 15-15 tie in the Senate, Farley will be running for a leadership position.

ld9houseIn the House, there is one Democratic incumbent and a Democrat and Republican newcomer for the open House seat.

Dr. Randall Friese has proven to be quite popular in the district since his election in 2014. Dr. Friese joined the University of Arizona College of Medicine as a member of the Trauma Team. In this role he is a Professor of Surgery where he trains young doctors, he is the Associate Medical Director and he is one of nine UAMC Trauma Surgeons that care for the injured in southern Arizona. Dr. Friese was one of the Trauma Surgeons who cared for the victims of the Jan 8 shootings in Tucson.

Dr. Friese focuses on healthcare issues, including the epidemic of gun violence. Dr. Friese believes that gun violence is a public health issue. Most recently Dr. Friese was instrumental in adding Arizona to the National Violent Death Reporting System. This allows Arizona to gather, and share with the Centers for Disease Control, statistics concerning violent deaths in Arizona. This is an important first step towards finding real solutions to gun violence.

Arizona’s “citizen legislature” definitely needs a doctor with Dr. Friese’s knowledge, background and experience.

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LD 2 House Race: Gabaldón and Hernandez v. Ackerley

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Tea-Publicans in “blue” Pima County have a simple strategy for picking off House seats in Democratic voter registration districts: single-shot voting. If all Tea-Publicans vote for only their candidate out of GOP tribalism, and Democratic voters fail to do the same with their candidates — as they frequently do — it is statistically possible for a Tea-Publican to steal a seat.

ld2-houseThis is what happened in 2014 when John Christopher “Chris” Ackerley, in his second run for office, managed to defeat Demion Clinco, who had been appointed to the House seat earlier in the year to fill a vacancy. There were a number of reasons for Clinco’s loss, but better name ID and favorable reporting in the Green Valley News and Sahuarita Sun certainly were factors.

Ackerley is a math and physics teacher who runs on education issues. He is frequently cast by the media as a “moderate” because he is sane and occasionally departs from his party’s ideological leadership, e.g., referring to Governor Ducey’s and the GOP leadership’s budget for K-12 education funding and Prop. 123  as the “robbing Peter to pay Paul plan”; he was a sponsor of the bill to restore JTED funding slashed by the previous Tea-Publican legislature; he voted to restore KidsCare funding over the GOP leadership’s objection; and he voted against SB 1516, the GOP’s “dark money on steroids” bill, which was enacted into law.

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LD 2 Senate Race: Dalessandro v. Kais

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dalessandro-kaisThe Legislative District 2 Senate seat is currently held by Democrat Andrea Dalessandro, who previously served in the Arizona House.

(Dalessandro is the one in glasses).

Her Tea-Publican opponent, Shelley Kais, is a business woman who served as a campaign volunteer for Martha McSally during her 2012 run for Congress. Kais challenged McSally for the GOP nomination in 2014, finishing in a distant third place with less than eight percent of the vote, behind McSally and Chuck Wooten. You may recall that the local Tea Party raised a stink about McSally and Kais pulling out of a scheduled debate with Chuck Wooten in 2014.

Kais is now running for the LD 2 Senate seat as a Clean Elections candidate against Senator Dalessandro, also a Clean Elections candidate. LD 2 is a Democratic voter registration district.

Kais is backed by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which lists her in its “16 in ’16: Races to Watch,” Comprised of the RSLC’s Future Majority Project (FMP) and Right Women, Right Now (RWRN) candidates running for state-level office.

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SCOTUS strikes down Texas abortion TRAP laws; will affect other states’ TRAP laws

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AbortionProtestorsThe anti-abortion “Forced Birther” religious zealots have for years pursued a strategy of closing off access to safe, legal abortions through Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) Laws: TRAP laws require that abortions be performed in far more complicated and expensive facilities than are necessary to ensure the provision of safe procedures, such as in ambulatory surgical facilities. Another example is TRAP laws requiring that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges in a local hospital, a requirement that is not medically justified and severely reduces women’s access to abortion services.

The goal of their strategy is, “if we can’t overturn Roe v. Wade directly, we can at least impose onerous restrictions that will make it as hard as possible for women to have access to safe, legal abortions,” which renders abortion a legal right in name only.

Numerous red states, including Arizona, have passed TRAP laws in recent years. The most restrictive laws was the TRAP law passed by the state of Texas. The anti-abortion “Forced Birther” religious zealots believed that this law was the vehicle for the conservative activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to greatly curtail the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.

They badly miscalculated. Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion Restrictions:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down (.pdf) parts of a restrictive Texas law that could have reduced the number of abortion clinics in the state to about 10 from what was once a high of roughly 40.

The 5-to-3 decision was the court’s most sweeping statement on abortion rights since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. It applied a skeptical and exacting version of that decision’s “undue burden” standard to find that the restrictions in Texas went too far.

The decision on Monday means that similar restrictions in other states are most likely also unconstitutional, and it imperils many other kinds of restrictions on abortion.

Note: Arizona’s abortion restrictions are being challenged in the federal courts. This opinion further undermines the constitutionality and legality of Arizona’s abortion restrictions.

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