Republican lawmakers hope to include a constitutional amendment on the April ballot stripping Gov. Tony Evers from having sole authority over how to spend federal funds.

If approved, spending would have to be approved by the GOP-led state Legislature, which has repeatedly clashed with Evers over how to allocate federal pandemic aid.

The spending amendment was introduced in January 2022. It passed the Assembly and Senate during the last session.

Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Racine, are circulating the bill for co-sponsorship until Jan. 13. A constitutional amendment must pass two consecutive legislative sessions and then be approved by voters.

Secret Agent Number Six.
@DesignationSix

Republicans should not get to seat the next Speaker of the House this close to an election.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Trump administration ban on bump stocks — devices that enable a shooter to rapidly fire multiple rounds from semi-automatic weapons after an initial trigger pull — was struck down Friday by a federal appeals court in New Orleans.

The ban was instituted after a sniper using bump stock-equipped weapons massacred dozens of people in Las Vegas in 2017. Gun rights advocates have challenged it in multiple courts. The 13-3 ruling at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals is the latest on the issue, which is likely to be decided at the Supreme Court.

It’s a firearm issue that involves not the Second Amendment but the interpretation of federal statutes. Opponents of the ban argued that bump stocks do not fall under the definition of illegal machine guns in federal law. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says they do, a position now being defended by the Biden administration.

The ban had survived challenges at the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; the Denver-based 10th Circuit; and the federal circuit court in Washington. A panel of three judges at the 5th Circuit also issued a ruling in favor of the ban, upholding a lower court decision by a Texas federal judge. But the full New Orleans-based court voted to reconsider the case. Arguments were heard Sept. 13.

A day after federal officials removed hundreds of migrants who landed on a remote island west of the Florida Keys, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an order to activate the Florida National Guard in response to the “alarming influx” of migrants.

The executive order dated Friday says the number of people attempting to come to the United States and interdictions in and near Florida “have risen to alarming levels not seen in decades,” citing the landings at Dry Tortugas National Park last weekend and a group of 45 migrants who landed Thursday in the Keys. The order says more boats are on the way to Florida’s shores.

Federal government officials removed over 400 people from the Dry Tortugas National Park, about 70 miles west of Key West, Wednesday and Thursday after they landed by boat over New Year’s weekend, with over 1,400 migrants at sea and on land between Dec. 30 and Monday.

The Chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky has, in a recent op-ed, proclaimed that the party’s electoral gains in 2022 demonstrate that a growing majority of our state’s electorate align themselves with the anti-slavery party which first formed in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854. He would have us believe that the legislature, in this past year, acted very much according to the principles which animated President Abraham Lincoln and his party in prevailing over the Confederate attempt to establish an independent nation whose cornerstone was the institution of slavery. Would that history were so linear!

According to Brown the Ripon upstarts chose “Republican” for their party name because they were motivated by the Founders’ “ideas about American liberty.” But this is to distort badly the republican (small r) roots of our nation. Republicanism was an ideology that valued community interests over individual liberties. In 1860 this republicanism was at the core of the northern-based Republican Party’s platform, the most notable plank being its goal of abolishing slavery in the country’s territories. In sharp contrast, the Southern Democrats (the party, like the Congressional Republicans today, was badly divided) stood for the absolute freedom of individuals to take their property, including their human chattel, wherever they chose.

Imagine the shock when Lincoln, in September 1862, announced that, unless the Confederacy returned to the Union by the beginning of the next year, he fully intended to free all the slaves within the territory controlled by the rebels. Kentuckians saw the handwriting on the wall: slavery was doomed everywhere in the country. That marked the beginning of the state’s identification with the Confederacy and the rise of the hegemony of the Democratic Party in Kentucky, whose collapse Mac Brown celebrates in his op-ed.

What he chooses to overlook is the inversion of the two parties in the course of the 20th century. The Democratic (not Democrat, thank you) Party, particularly under the pressure of the Civil Rights movement, shed its racist past to embrace diversity and social justice wrought by a strong central government. The Republicans, for their part, increasingly abandoned their Ripon heritage. No surprise then that the Republican Party embraced states’ rights and became increasingly white. The Solid South now became a Republican reality.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Here is the Idaho Supreme Court decision finding no right to abortion under the state constitution: https://isc.idaho.gov/opinions/49615xxx.pdf

ACLU of Idaho
@acluidaho

BREAKING: The Idaho Supreme Court voted 3-2 to uphold the state abortion bans and reject all legal challenges. We remain committed to fighting for reproductive health rights. Please contact @PPFA for your abortion healthcare needs. Stay strong with us. We will keep fighting.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Here is the Idaho Supreme Court decision finding no right to abortion under the state constitution: https://isc.idaho.gov/opinions/49615xxx.pdf

ACLU of Idaho
@acluidaho

BREAKING: The Idaho Supreme Court voted 3-2 to uphold the state abortion bans and reject all legal challenges. We remain committed to fighting for reproductive health rights. Please contact @PPFA for your abortion healthcare needs. Stay strong with us. We will keep fighting.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

This is huge news. The state Supreme Court has restored the right to abortion in South Carolina, and SCOTUS cannot reverse the decision because it's based on state law.

Read the ruling here: https://sccourts.org/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/28127.pdf

Kimberlee Kruesi
@kkruesi

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Supreme Court rules state abortion ban after cardiac activity, typically around 6 weeks, unconstitutional.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

This is huge news. The state Supreme Court has restored the right to abortion in South Carolina, and SCOTUS cannot reverse the decision because it's based on state law.

Read the ruling here: https://sccourts.org/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/28127.pdf

Kimberlee Kruesi
@kkruesi

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Supreme Court rules state abortion ban after cardiac activity, typically around 6 weeks, unconstitutional.

The flood-prone, working-class “streets of Hialeah” made it into Gov. Ron DeSantis’ inauguration speech Tuesday as he evoked swaths of the Florida we know and (mostly) love.

“From the Space Coast to the Suncoast, from St. Johns to St. Lucie, from the streets of Hialeah to the speedway in Daytona, from the Okeechobee all the way up to Micanopy,” DeSantis began, “freedom lives here in our great Sunshine State of Florida!”

The Hialeah contingent among the thousands at the Capitol steps witnessing the launch of DeSantis’ second term didn’t disappoint.

At the mention of Miami-Dade County’s second-largest city — and the most Cuban, after Havana — they hollered and applauded louder than anyone else. Political points well-scored. This is the kind of high-profile, public recognition that shapes party reputation and garners votes, on and off election cycles.

People remember flattery.

But in the real world, DeSantis’ words amount to little more than demagoguery.