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Republican Heartland Embraces Abortion Rights Amid National Fight

Voters in seven states approved ballot amendments establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions, continuing a broad repudiation of the abortion bans enacted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Missouri, which was the first state to officially enact an abortion ban after Roe was overturned in 2022, became the first state where voters ended a ban at the ballot box, with 52 percent approving the measure. A similar amendment passed by 57 percent in Montana, another Republican-controlled state. In two battleground states, Nevada and Arizona, measures to enshrine a right to abortion passed, with more than 60 percent of the vote for each.

But the abortion rights movement also hit its limits, stalling in what had been a winning streak on ballot measures post-Roe, as voters in three Republican-controlled states, Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska, rejected amendments that would have established a constitutional right to abortion.

Even as they hailed their victories, abortion rights supporters warned that the second Trump administration could use federal power to essentially invalidate the new state-level protections.

President-elect Donald J. Trump boasted on the campaign trail of having overturned Roe — he appointed the three justices who helped swing the court majority. And anti-abortion activists have laid plans for a second Trump administration to use existing federal statutes to ban abortion pills, and to use the 14th Amendment to establish fetal personhood, which would effectively criminalize abortion at any stage…  

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO

Vetting Fiasco: Trump's Defense Pick Caught in Sexual Assault Allegation Storm

CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said President-elect Donald Trump’s team missed Pete Hegseth’s payoff to a sexual assault accuser when they vetted him to be secretary of defense.Hegseth is among a raft of cabinet picks facing tough confirmations, and who aren’t being subjected to the customary FBI checks, instead being vetted by private firms. Over the weekend, Hegseth’s attorney dropped the bomb that there was a confidential settlement with a woman who accused the former Fox News host of sexual assault. On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Haberman revealed that her sources in Trump world did not know about the payoff, which was missed in the vetting “because it was a private settlement”HABERMAN: There’s more concern from some people around Trump than there is from Trump himself, about this whole issue. Trump has really dug in, and has told advisers that he is going to stick with Hegseth. Now, we’ll see if anything else emerges.They did do a vet, we are told. This did not show up, this issue, because it was a private settlement, according to the people, who were briefed on what took place. Trump really likes Pete Hegseth. But this did introduce the thing Trump doesn’t like, which is an element of surprise and a negative headline. And so, we will see where this goes.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2mos2MO

Inside the Podcast Revolution: Trump’s Unfiltered Strategy and Harris’s ‘Meltdown’ Risk

Tech billionaire Elon Musk attributed President-elect Trump’s election victory, at least in part, to the lengthy podcast interviews he did during the campaign.In an interview late Tuesday with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk said Trump’s podcast appearances showed the American public that he was a normal person.“I think it made a big difference that President Trump and soon-to-be Vice President Vance went on lengthy podcasts,” Musk said in the interview.“I think this really makes a difference because people look at, like, Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is great, and Lex Fridman’s and the All-In podcast, and, you know, to a reasonable-minded, smart person — who’s not, like, hardcore one way or the other — they just listen to someone talk for a few hours and that’s how they decide whether, you know, you’re a good person, whether they like you,” he added, according to a clip highlighted by Mediaite.Trump conducted many interviews with new media during his campaign, as well as with legacy news organizations such as Fox News.Last month, he joined Joe Rogan’s podcast for a 3-hour long interview. The celebrity host later endorsed his candidacy.His opponent, Vice President Harris, did not appear on Rogan’s podcast because, according to “The Joe Rogan Experience” host, the Harris campaign only had an hour and required him to travel to her. Rogan said he felt “strongly” that the “best way to do” an interview with the vice president would have been in his studio in Austin, Texas.Musk recalled posting on his social platform X account that “nothing would do more damage” to Harris’s campaign than going on Rogan’s podcast, “because she would run out of non-sequiturs after about 45 minutes.”“You can’t hide for three hours,” Carlson replied.Musk added, “Yeah, like, hour two and three would be a complete melted puddle of nonsense. So it would just be absolute game over. That’s why she didn’t go on.”“But on the other hand, Trump, he’s there, and there’s no, there’s no talking points,” the Tesla CEO continued. “He’s just being a normal person who’s having a conversation, and doing three hours of Rogan, no problem.”

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Active 12hrs ago

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…6 days6D

Defense Bill Blocks Transgender Care To Minors

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.

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