RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Mere weeks before North Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature enacted a 12-week abortion limit over the Democratic governor's opposition this week, state Republican lawmakers appeared just one vote shy of an override.

But one House Democrat — formerly a strong advocate for women's reproductive rights — unexpectedly switched to the GOP and then voted to squash Gov. Roy Cooper's veto of the bill to limit abortion access.

The switch by Charlotte-area Rep. Tricia Cotham gave Republicans veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate, upending the state's fragile power balance and perhaps opening the floodgates to a new wave of conservative policies.

Republican bill sponsors also could use their newly attained veto-proof majority to propel some GOP-backed education policies and transgender restrictions across the finish line — several of which they introduced the same week Cotham announced her party change.

She ran last fall on a platform supporting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights but has since supported bills that critics say are at odds with those stances.

“Some call me a hypocrite since I voted for this bill," Cotham said after supporting the abortion override Tuesday. The former Democrat, who has strong familial ties to the party and was known for giving an emotional House floor speech in 2015 about her own ectopic pregnancy, said she thought the bill struck “a reasonable balance” and represented the “middle ground" of two extremes.

It was less than a day after the 2012 presidential election and Florida Republicans were already suffering from a particularly painful post-election hangover.

The state GOP had outspent the Florida Democratic Party by a 3-to-1 margin, while Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had visited the state nearly 40 times — far more than then-President Barack Obama.

Yet Obama still came out on top, eking out a narrow 1-point victory that earned him Florida’s 29 electoral votes and helped propel him to a second term in the White House. The details of that win were even more alarming for Republicans.

Florida’s politically influential Cuban community, which had favored Republicans for decades, split its vote almost evenly between Romney and Obama, according to exit polling at the time. The GOP had even gone as far as to hold its 2012 national convention in Tampa in an effort to show its commitment to the state.

For Democrats, it was a momentous occasion; a show of how discipline, data and long-term organizing efforts could win over even the toughest and most expensive of battleground states.

“The feeling was that Democrats had picked the Republican lock on Florida,” recalled Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who helped Obama win the state in 2008 and 2012. “Almost like a video game cheat code.”

Given the strong Republican performance in Florida in recent years, it’s easy to think that this once-ultimate swing state is now solidly red. Here’s why the conventional wisdom may be wrong.

Thirty years ago, California was a reliably red state governed by Pete Wilson, one of the country’s most prominent conservatives of the time. Many saw Wilson as a future president, and as Wilson looked to burnish his conservative credentials for a national run, he threw his weight behind the now-infamous Proposition 187, one of the most egregiously anti-Latino and anti-immigration laws in U.S. history.

The policy aim of Proposition 187 barred undocumented immigrants from receiving government services, but its practical impact was that Latino Americans all across California became profiled, harassed and abused. Latinos felt less safe in their own communities and deeply disrespected by the Republican Party.

So they voted. The mobilization of Latino voters to the polls in the aftermath of Proposition 187 was largely responsible for turning California — the nation’s biggest electoral prize — from red to reliably blue.

With that history in mind, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ highly calculated decision to champion and sign the similarly anti-immigrant SB 1718 into law may be seen years from now as one of the great political blunders of our time.

Similar to Proposition 187, SB 1718 requires hospitals to collect data on citizenship, which could discourage immigrants from accessing vital community resources like hospital emergency rooms. It gives law enforcement (and, let’s face it, racist vigilantes) permission to harass anyone they deem to be an immigrant.

Rebekah Jones.
@GeoRebekah

FLORIDA VOTERS!!! HELP US PUT ABORTION ON THE BALLOT!

You can download the petition at the site below, which also includes instructions on where to send it or drop it off once completed!

https://missinformational.com/post/attn-florida-voters


Follow @flprotectfree for updates and volunteer opportunities.

Leaders of the antiabortion movement gathered in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago office last week to head off what they viewed as a potential crisis.

The former president's reelection campaign had recently said that abortion restrictions "should be decided at the state level." Days later, his rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, delivered a speech arguing against federal abortion limits that did not have enough votes to pass both chambers of Congress.

Trump's guests, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), showed him polling from the GOP firm On Message Public Strategies suggesting that a majority of Americans supported limiting the procedure after 15 weeks.

They insisted that the federal government must still have a role. They reminded Trump of his performance at the 2016 Las Vegas presidential debate, when he used shocking language to describe Democratic support for exceedingly rare abortions in the latest stages of pregnancy, which are typically conducted only in cases of fetal anomaly or threats to the life of the mother.

Multiple people involved in the conversation say Trump got the message. Two days later, during a CNN town hall, he repeated almost word for word what they had discussed in his office, reframing the debate away from Republican plans and onto misleading claims of Democratic extremism.

A Lewis and County District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking the newly signed bill that puts a ban on most dilation and evacuation abortions in Montana and set a hearing for next Tuesday to consider a preliminary injunction in the case.

Judge Mike Menahan wrote in his ruling Thursday morning that the plaintiffs in the case – Planned Parenthood of Montana and its chief medical officer Dr. Samuel Dickman – had shown that the main three sections of House Bill 721, which Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed on Tuesday, would cause them and their patients immediate irreparable harm.

A Lewis and County District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking the newly signed bill that puts a ban on most dilation and evacuation abortions in Montana and set a hearing for next Tuesday to consider a preliminary injunction in the case.

Judge Mike Menahan wrote in his ruling Thursday morning that the plaintiffs in the case – Planned Parenthood of Montana and its chief medical officer Dr. Samuel Dickman – had shown that the main three sections of House Bill 721, which Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed on Tuesday, would cause them and their patients immediate irreparable harm.

As Missouri girds for an anticipated fight at the ballot box next year over an amendment overturning its near-total abortion ban, some Republicans have begun saying they expect a majority of voters to support restoring access to the procedure.

The stark admissions have also been accompanied by intense efforts to make it harder for Missourians to amend the state constitution – an extraordinary acknowledgment that the Republican-controlled General Assembly must erode direct democracy in the state or risk decades of anti-abortion policy unraveling in a single election.

“I think we all believe that an initiative petition will be brought forth to allow choice,” House Speaker Dean Plocher, a St. Louis Republican, said Friday. “I believe it will pass. Absolutely.”

Plocher’s remarkable comments come near the beginning of what is almost certain to be a furious 18-month race to the November 2024 general election, when an abortion rights amendment is likely to appear if one qualifies for the ballot.

Missouri, the first state to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, could also potentially become the first state where voters reverse an abortion ban.

Three Florida families with transgender children are challenging a new state law that bans gender-affirming health care for transgender youths and places heavy restrictions on adult transition-related care in federal court, arguing in a motion filed Wednesday evening that Florida’s Senate Bill 254 violates the U.S. Constitution and “will cause irreparable harm” to each of the plaintiffs.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is widely expected to jump into the 2024 presidential election, signed the bill into law Wednesday before a crowd of supporters and conservative state lawmakers in Tampa. The law, which went into effect immediately, prohibits medical professionals in Florida from administering puberty-blocking medications, hormone replacement therapy and surgeries to transgender minors.

Those who violate the law risk being convicted of a third-degree felony crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, according to Florida’s criminal code.

The law also gives Florida courts temporary jurisdiction over a child that “has been subjected to or is threatened with being subjected to sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures” and makes it easier for minor recipients of gender-affirming health care to sue their providers.

Unlike other, similar measures, the new Florida law also places restrictions on adult access to gender-affirming health care, including by requiring patients older than 18 to sign an informed consent form that does not yet exist before care is able to be legally administered.