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For Joseph Messerly, a Soda Springs business owner and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the decision to run for state office started with one issue: Idaho libraries.

His mother is a childrens librarian, and she even testified in opposition to one of the early iterations of this years legislation meant to restrict childrens access to library material, which ultimately passed the Legislature under House Bill 710 and was signed into law in April by Idaho Gov. Brad Little.

Messerly said one of the concerns he saw local librarians, like his mother, talk about was the impact that it was going to have on children in rural Idaho.

Were on a four-day school week in Soda Springs, and we can have up to 30 kids in the library on Fridays, he told the Idaho Capital Sun. With some of their parents at work, kids are waiting at the library before the doors even open to get out of the cold or to have somewhere to work on school projects.

Messerly, a Democratic candidate, is running for election for the first time to the Idaho House of Representatives to represent District 35, Seat A. The district is located in eastern Idaho and includes Bear Lake, Caribou and Teton counties as well as a portion of Bonneville County. Messerly is running unopposed in the May 21 Democratic primary election. He will run against incumbent Rep. Kevin Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, in the Nov. 5 general election.

Efforts to reach Andrus were unsuccessful.

The fact that librarians arent going to be able to help them in the way they need to for fear of civil or for liable actions isnt OK, Messerly said. We need to make sure that all voices are being heard at all times, and Idaho values really truly line up with the Idaho Democratic Party at the end of the day.

Messerly has entered Idahos 2024 legislative races along with 86 other Democrats who have said they are driven by concerns related to legislation affecting library materials, reproductive rights and public education. This surge nearly doubles the amount of democratic candidates running for legislative office in comparison from 2022.

Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University has noticed the increase in Democratic candidates, particularly compared to the field of 2022 candidates.

It is something that I had noticed and I think it reflects the hard work that the Democratic Party has done in recruiting candidates, Kettler said.

Kettler said having more candidates means more choices for voters, which can be a good thing regardless of which political party they support.

It is important for a few reasons, Kettler said. It helps build up a base, and it helps turn out more voters. If you dont have candidates on the ballot, its hard to demonstrate how much support you might have. But it is also important to have contested elections in more general ways. Having contested elections helps keep our elected officials more accountable through conversations about what the incumbent has done or hasnt done. It can bring opportunities for voters to express the types of issues or policies they would like to see their representatives work on, and it can also get more citizens participating and engaged with more campaign activity happening.

Kettler said a fuller field of candidates may also give Idahoans insights in how the state has changed since legislative and congressional districts were redrawn following the 2020 census.

Because we didnt see many Democrats on the ballot in 2022, we havent seen how our increasing population or population growth has affected some districts, Kettler said. Voter registration data indicates a lot of Republicans are moving to the state, but do we see some districts become competitive that previously werent? Or maybe districts that have previously been competitive wont be as competitive because of it.

Even with the large increase in Democratic candidates this year, Kettler doesnt expect a big shift in the balance of political power. Democrats in Idaho have history, numbers and lots of money working against them.

Republicans have held a supermajority in both chambers of the Idaho Legislature since the 1992 general election.

Republicans have won every statewide office since Democrat Marilyn Howard was re-elected superintendent of public instruction in 2002.

This year, there is at least one Democratic candidate in all 35 legislative districts in Idaho.

Candidate filings show:

Idaho Democratic Chairwoman Lauren Necochea said in a press release that Idahos Democratic candidates are parents, teachers, nurses and small business owners who stepped up as the Idaho Republican supermajority descends into extremism.

These Democratic candidates are running because they cannot accept the loss of our reproductive freedoms and the exodus of doctors from our state, they cannot accept relentless attacks on our libraries, and they will not accept the selling out of our public schools to costly voucher schemes, she said in the release.

Multiple efforts to reach Idaho Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon were unsuccessful. Moon also did not respond to a list of questions that a reporter from the Idaho Capital Sun sent her via email on May 1.

In a phone interview, Necochea told the Sun that the Democratic Party made thousands of phone calls to recruit prospects across Idaho. Another reason the party was able to recruit more candidates than in the past is because the party has grown its resource base, she said, even receiving funding from former Idaho Republicans.

Weve lost so much, so the will to step up and fight back is growing, Necochea said. We cant let things slide anymore. Weve lost too much already, and we need to work to get our freedoms back.

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Inside the halls of Post Falls High School, youll find class portraits of Loree Peery, along with photos of her grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The sixth generation Idahoan moved to California for 20 years before moving back to the Gem State in 2006 and settling in Spirit Lake.

When I moved back, man, my state had changed, she told the Sun, adding that she had always been involved in Idahos Democratic Party.

Peery never saw herself running for office until the representative in her district, Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, presented a bill to expand the states cannibalism law this session.

I kept thinking, theres got to be someone running against her, but there wasnt, Peery said. I was like, thats it. I have to step up. So thats what Im doing. Im not a politician; Im a nurse.

Peery is running unopposed in the May 21 Democratic primary election. In November, she will run against Scott in the general election. Scott has served as a member of the Idaho House of Representatives since 2015. She is the co-chair of the Idaho Freedom Caucus, a group of Idahos most conservative legislators who have championed legislation such as legally redefining gender and sex, protecting public workers from having to identify people by their preferred pronouns and codifying procedures for libraries to follow if patrons request an items relocation.

Scott ran unopposed in the 2022 general election. She did not respond to the Suns questions about how an opponent impacts her campaign strategy, but she did respond to a question about why she thinks there are more Democrats running this election.

I believe we are seeing so many Democratic candidates running for office to provide cover for the Democrats they have running as Republicans in the primary, Scott told the Sun in a text. This is the next phase for the Gem State heist.

Supreme Court justices appear split over whether to protect abortion care during emergencies

As a nurse, Peery said reproductive rights are her top concern, especially as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide if Idahos abortion law violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Also known as EMTALA, the federal law prohibits hospitals from refusing to help patients that seek emergency treatment if they are unable to pay for the services.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Idaho for its strict abortion law that provides an exception to save a patients life, but not to preserve a patients health. Without health exceptions, Idaho doctors have sent pregnant patients needing stabilizing treatment to out-of-state clinics where abortion is accessible, States Newsroom reported.

Last month, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who is from Idaho, argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that without the ability to immediately treat a pregnant patient with an emergency medical condition in Idaho, a persons bodily functions, including their ability to have children in the future, could significantly be affected.

The fact that EMTALA is under threat terrifies me, Peery said. I was an operating room nurse for over 40 years, and I know what can happen to women when pregnancies go bad, and its really scary and dangerous. The fact that our law is so vague that physicians dont know what to do and are afraid of being sued is really scary to me.

Like Peery, Julia Parker, the Democratic candidate from Moscow running in District 6, said reproductive rights is also her top concern.

As a nurse, you really get a view of what people are struggling with, and how difficult health care systems and personal decisions can be, she told the Sun. Whether that is a pregnancy decision, or to spend money at a hospital, those decisions are so deeply personal and complicated. Theres no way the Legislature should be the ones making those kinds of decisions for people.

This is her first time running for state office, but Parker has been involved in local politics since 2021 as a Moscow City Council member.

I just really love Idaho, and I think that we just deserve better representation than we have, she said, adding that public education and health care are issues that inspired her to run. I think its just really important for regular people like me to stand up and run for office.

Parker is running unopposed in the May 21 primary election. She will run against the winner of the Republican primary election between incumbent Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, and GOP challenger Robert Blair, R-Kendrick.

Blair is a fourth generation Idahoan and farmer. He told the Sun he said is running because he is concerned about the direction of the Idaho Republican Party. The top three issues that inspired him include local control, agriculture and infrastructure.

Blair substituted for former Sen. Dan Johnson in 2021 in the Idaho Legislature, and has experience voting on bills related to abortion, education and libraries. He said he is not sure why there are more Democrats running in this election than in 2022, but he said those are the issues that separate the Republican and Democrat party.

I read every single bill and voted on the bill on its merits and what its going to do to the people in my district, he said. Thats how I approach things. I dont know how Ill vote on a bill until that bill is in front of me.

Blair ran in the 2022 election, but lost against Foreman. Right now he said he is focused on the primary election and not his Democratic opponent.

Foreman did not respond to the Idaho Capital Suns request for comment.

Mary Shea, a Democratic candidate running for election to the Idaho House of Representatives to represent District 29, seat A, has also served as a Senate substitute.

In the recent legislative session, she substituted for Sen. James Ruchti, D-Pocatello, and was outspoken in her opposition to legislation that changed Idahos legal definition of sex and gender, and legislation that protects public employees from punishment if they choose to misgender someone.

Shea has a background in law, and she said she felt compelled to run when in September 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Senate Bill 8, the Texas law permitting civil suits against abortion providers after approximately six weeks of pregnancy, to go into effect. Idaho now has a similar law that lets the family members of a person who had an abortion seek civil penalties of at least $20,000 from a provider. That ruling preceded the ultimate Dobbs decision in June 2022.

This year will be her second time running for the same office. In 2022, Shea ran against Rep. Dustin Manwaring, R-Pocatello, losing by about 640 votes. Shea is running unopposed in the May 21 Democratic primary election, but will again run against Manwaring in the Nov. 5 general election.

Manwaring said his experience, his Republican values and his ability to work with both political parties differentiate him from his opponent.

What makes me different is while I believe in and strive to uphold the traditional values of the Idaho Republican Party, I also try to find a middle ground on issues and that means working with all sides of my party and across party lines to solve problems, Manwaring said. I believe it is a winning ingredient for a legislative district like mine. District 29s leadership is comprised of both parties, and I have served as the sole Republican representative in this district since I was first elected in 2016.

Shea said she is concerned that Republicans are not allowed to think for themselves anymore, adding that she is also concerned about public education and efforts to fix school maintenance issues and attempts to create school vouchers.

The fastest and best way to turn things around in Idaho is to get more good Democrats in the seats, Shea said.

Manwaring has taken notice of the increase in Democratic candidates filing for legislative offices this year, but he doesnt think the increased number of candidates will flip any seats in the Idaho Legislature or shift the balance of power away from the Republican supermajority.

According to data obtained from the Idaho Secretary of States Office, the breakdown of candidates running in the general election for the Idaho Legislature has shifted over the years, for example:

In the 2024 primary, there are 158 Republican candidates and 87 Democratic candidates running, according to candidate filings on voteidaho.gov.

My take on the numbers of candidates filing this year is the Rs are about average, or down very slightly, and the Ds have recruited substantially more candidates than usual to appear on the general election ballot, Manwaring said. I do not believe this will translate into more real competition in November because it does not change the demographic of electors who are likely to vote in each of the legislative districts.

Of course, there are always exceptions and if one party does not field a good candidate and there is an alternative available it is possible the race becomes more competitive, Manwaring added. I do not see this as likely to happen in any of the districts in Idaho that have not been historically competitive between the two major parties. I also believe the districts are getting more set in the Democrat ones being more solid blue and the Republican ones being more solid red as our state continues to add population with much of the migration coming into rural Idaho being conservative voters.

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The rest is here:
Idaho Democratic Party doubles legislative candidate numbers in the face of GOP supermajority Idaho Capital Sun - Idaho Capital Sun

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It almost sounds like a bad joke: What did the 78-year-old male senator say to the 69-year-old female justice?

RETIRE!

Thats effectively what happened recently when U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut suggested that Sonia Sotomayor the first Hispanic and third woman Supreme Court justice retire so that President Joe Biden could appoint a younger and presumably healthier replacement.

Blumenthal is not alone. Fearing a repeat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs death in September 2020 just weeks before Election Day progressives such as Josh Barro, Mehdi Hasan and Nate Silver want to ensure that if Donald Trump does defeat Biden in November, he would not have another opportunity to replace a departed liberal justice with a young conservative ideologue.

If Sotomayor is indeed ill, she could justifiably choose to retire. But such calls are not clear-eyed assessments of the justices health. Blumenthal and the progressive columnists calling for Sotomayors retirement arent medical doctors who have reviewed the justices records.

Instead, in my view as a political scientist who studies the Supreme Court, these calls are gimmicks really designed to keep a seat on the Supreme Court in the hands of a liberal justice.

Dont get me wrong. As I write in my new book, A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People, the increasingly long tenure of justices is a serious problem for American democracy. The confirmation of younger justices who stay far longer than they once did prevents the courts membership from changing organically.

Consider, for example, a hypothetical I pose in my book. Justice Clarence Thomas once said that he intends to serve until he is 86 years old because, as he put it, The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and Im going to make their lives miserable for 43 years.

If Thomas, who at 75 is the oldest sitting justice, is able to fulfill that promise and no younger justice leaves the court before him, the U.S. would not see another vacancy until 2034.

A court unchanged for 12 years would be unprecedented in American history. This is just one of the factors that has deepened the democracy gap between the justices and the people, which I define in the book as the distance between the court and the electoral processes that endow it with democratic legitimacy.

Some reforms would prevent justices from remaining on the high bench for three-plus decades, on average. But publicly requesting an ideologically aligned justice to retire isnt one of them. It isnt likely to work, and in the case of Sotomayor, it has been viewed as sexist.

Perhaps more importantly, it misses the point.

When it comes to the Supreme Court, progressives are now in the position where conservatives found themselves for many years. Theyre on the outside looking in.

Instead of advancing gimmicks that are unlikely to work, progressives could take a page from the playbook of conservatives who learned from liberals of the previous era: Take the argument to the people.

Winning on Election Day is the best path for any party to remake the court. Recall how the conservatives came to dominate the court. In election after election, Republican presidential nominees rallied conservative voters to the polls by critiquing the courts most politically divisive decisions, such as Roe, and promising a different type of justice if given the opportunity to fill a seat.

Democrats often stayed silent about the Supreme Court during these campaigns, preferring to motivate voters to the polls with other issues. A 2016 exit poll question asked respondents about the importance of Supreme Court appointments in determining their vote for president. Twenty-one percent answered that it was the most important issue for them. And significantly, 56% of that 21% supported Trump, 15 percentage points more than those who backed Hillary Clinton.

In fact, when Trump named Neil Gorsuch as his first high court nominee mere days after his presidential inauguration, he highlighted this data, saying that millions of voters had supported him based on his promise to appoint conservatives to the court.

Progressives have already shown that the politically astute response to the conservative Supreme Court and its decisions isnt to go after one of their own. It is to take advantage of the great distaste many Americans have toward some of the courts decisions, particularly its 2022 Dobbs ruling uprooting Roe.

Just weeks after the Dobbs decision, Kansans overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have denied women a right to obtain an abortion in their state. In the 2022 midterm elections, the expected red wave turned into a ripple as Democrats highlighted the abortion issue. And as the 2024 campaign season heats up, Democrats are primed to highlight their pro-Roe views to rally voters to the polls.

History shows that parties can win elections after losing the Supreme Court. Those parties have done so by strategically focusing on convincing voters to support them, not persuading justices to retire.

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Justice Sotomayor's health isn't the real problem for Democrats winning elections is - The Conversation

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Ludwig van Beethovens ninth and final symphony was first performed on May 7th 1824 at Krntnertor Theatre in Vienna. By then deaf, the composer took to the stage for the first time in 12 years to help conduct it, to a thunderous ovation. Since then, the roughly 70-minute symphonyand in particular its triumphant choral finale, Ode to Joyhas been admired by all kinds of audiences: left and right, democrats and totalitarians, capitalists and communists.

In Nazi Germany, Ode to Joy was trotted out each year to celebrate Adolf Hitlers birthday. Josef Stalin ordered it played in every Soviet village.The symphony was performed for the tenth anniversary of Mao Zedongs victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949, and in 1974 the white-supremacist regime of Rhodesia made Ode to Joy its anthem.

Read the rest here:
Why Beethoven's ninth appeals to democrats and despots alike - The Economist

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WASHINGTON Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday easily batted down an attempt by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats linked arms with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by GOP hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.

The vote to kill the effort was an overwhelming 359-43, with seven voting present. Democrats flocked to Johnsons rescue, with all but 39 of them voting with Republicans to block the effort to oust him.

Members of the minority party in the House have never propped up the other partys speaker, and when the last Republican to hold the post, Kevin McCarthy, faced a removal vote last fall, Democrats voted en masse to allow the motion to move forward and then to jettison him, helping lead to his historic ouster.

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This time, the Democratic support made the critical difference, allowing Johnson, who has a minuscule majority, to avoid a removal vote altogether. While for weeks Greene had appeared to be on a political island in her drive to get rid of yet another GOP speaker, 11 Republicans ultimately voted to allow her motion to move forward.

That was the same number of Republicans who voted in October to allow the bid to remove McCarthy to advance but back then, they were joined by every Democrat.

I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort, Johnson told reporters shortly after Wednesdays vote. As Ive said from the beginning and Ive made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and Ill let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.

Hopefully, he added, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress.

The lopsided vote solidified the dynamic that has defined Johnsons speakership, like McCarthys before him: Each time the Republican leader has been faced with a critical task, such as averting a government shutdown or a catastrophic default on the nations debt, he has relied on a bipartisan coalition of mainstream lawmakers to steer around far-right opposition and provide the votes to accomplish it.

The result has been the empowerment of Democrats at the expense of the hard right, the very phenomenon that Greene raged against as she rose on the House floor Wednesday drawing boos from some of her colleagues to lay out a scathing case against Johnson and what she called the uniparty he empowered.

Our decision to stop Marjorie Taylor Greene from plunging the House of Representatives and the country into further chaos is rooted in our commitment to solve problems for everyday Americans in a bipartisan manner, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, told reporters shortly after the vote. We will continue to govern in a reasonable, responsible and results-oriented fashion, and put people over politics all day and every day.

Greenes move to oust Johnson came roughly three weeks after the speaker pushed through a long-stalled $95 billion national security spending package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies over the objections of Greene and other right-wing Republicans who staunchly opposed sending additional aid to Ukraine.

Lawmakers loudly jeered Greene as she called up the resolution and read it aloud. As she recited the measure, a screed that lasted more than 10 minutes, Republicans lined up on the House floor to shake Johnsons hand and pat him on the back.

Given a choice between advancing Republican priorities or allying with Democrats to preserve his own personal power, Johnson regularly chooses to ally himself with Democrats, Greene said, reading from her resolution.

She concluded with the official call for his removal: Now, therefore be it resolved that the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.

It marked the second time in less than a year that Republicans have sought to depose their own speaker, coming about seven months after GOP rebels succeeded, with Democratic support, in removing McCarthy.

Earlier in the week, Greene had seemed to hesitate over whether she would actually call the ouster vote. For two consecutive days, she met for hours with Johnson, flanked by her chief ally, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and floated a list of demands in exchange for not calling the vote.

Among the demands were cutting off all future U.S. aid to Ukraine, defunding the Justice Department and imposing a 1% across the board cut on all spending bills if lawmakers are unable to negotiate a deal to fund the government in September.

But Johnson had remained cool to their entreaties, and told reporters that he was not negotiating with Greene and Massie.

That put Greene, whose combative political brand is premised on her unrelenting appetite to fight with the establishment of her party, out on a limb. She had little choice but to call up a vote she knew would fail, but had been threatening for weeks. Even after Jeffries made it clear that Democrats would vote to block any ouster attempt, she was still determined to undermine Johnson publicly and force Democrats to bail him out.

This is exactly what the American people needed to see, she told reporters on the House steps after the vote. I didnt run for Congress to come up here and join the uniparty, and the uniparty was on full display today.

The Democrats now control Speaker Johnson, she added.

Just 32 Democrats voted to allow Greenes motion to move forward, while another seven voted present, registering no position.

Greene initially filed the motion against Johnson in late March, just as lawmakers were voting on a $1.2 trillion spending bill he pushed through the House over the opposition of the majority of Republicans. She called the move a betrayal and said she wanted to send the speaker a warning, then left the threat dangling for weeks.

Johnson plowed ahead anyway, putting together an aid package for Ukraine a move Greene previously said was a red line that would prompt her to seek his ouster, but which did not lead her to immediately make good on her threat.

Im actually going to let my colleagues go home and hear from their constituents, Greene said following the vote, predicting that Republicans would join her bid to get rid of Johnson after getting an earful from voters irate about the foreign aid bill. Instead, many of them heard just the opposite and returned to Washington voicing skepticism about removing Johnson.

If she had been successful Wednesday, Greene would have prompted only the second vote on the House floor in more than 100 years on whether to oust the speaker. When Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida instigated McCarthys removal in October, such a spectacle had not been seen in the chamber since 1910.

But this time, Greene had a more difficult time finding support for removing the speaker. House Republicans were wary of throwing the chamber into another period of chaos like the one that paralyzed the House for weeks after McCarthys ouster, and have privately seethed about the public disarray Greenes threat has sown.

Even ultraconservatives like Gaetz expressed uneasiness with firing another speaker, suggesting that the move risked handing over control of the House to Democrats given Republicans rapidly narrowing margin of control.

Former President Donald Trump also came to Johnsons defense, urging Republicans on social media minutes after the vote to kill Greenes effort, arguing that polling showed Republicans doing well in the November elections, and that a show of division would undermine the party.

If we show DISUNITY, which will be portrayed as CHAOS, it will negatively affect everything! he wrote.

He called Johnson a good man who is trying very hard, but did not slam the door altogether on the idea of removing him.

Were not in a position to do so now, with such a small Republican majority in the House, Trump wrote. At some point, we may very well be, but this is not the time.

c.2024 The New York Times Company

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Johnson Survives Greene's Ouster Attempt as Democrats Join GOP to Kill It - Yahoo! Voices

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Democrats impeached Trump for exactly what Biden is now doing to Israel  The Hill

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Democrats impeached Trump for exactly what Biden is now doing to Israel - The Hill

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