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COLUMBIA A pair of far-right Republicans are challenging the results of South Carolina's June 14 primary in statewide races where they both lost by six-figure margins.

Lauren Martel who lost to incumbent Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson by nearly 109,000 votes filed a complaint with the S.C. Election Commission demanding its members refuse to certify the results citing vulnerabilities with the state's elections systems she believes could have impacted the final result.

Martel was joined by Harrison "Trucker Bob" Musselwhite, a populist conservative candidate for governor who lost his primary to incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster by more than 244,000 votes.

He filed an identical complaint with the S.C. Republican Party also on June 15.

The allegations include claims the states voter rolls were not up to date and that they included individuals registered to vote at commercial addresses.

Other charges are that poll watchers were harassed at several voting locations and that voting machines were connected to the internet, leaving them vulnerable to tampering.

Both letters include a claim the candidates personally knew a voter who had moved to Tennessee two years prior but was still included on South Carolina's voter lists.

"The races were overrun with multiple complaints and problems from many polling places, and filed by candidates all across the state," Martel wrote in her letter.

Martel, who could not be reached for comment, did not provide evidence to support the claims in her letter.

For the candidates to be successful they would have to make the case to the state GOP and the election commission the alleged discrepancies were great enough to impact the final result.

Some of the claims Martel presented don't mesh with standard election procedure, while others were challenged as wrong by the state party.

As for the voting machines being connected to the internet, the state says the check-in systems used by poll workers are connected to the internet but that individual machines are not, shielding them from the outside.

And while there were reports of incorrect ballots distributed in some districts, as well as difficulties in results being reported in Beaufort County, none appeared serious enough to have a tangible impact on the final result or undermine the legitimacy of the election, officials have said.

We didn't hear of any issues across the state, said Claire Brady, a spokeswoman for the state GOP. It was a very smooth election.

The candidates' claims underscore the mistrust among some conservatives in election systems nationwide following widely debunked claims by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters that the 2020 presidential election was systematically rigged against him.

In the wake of 2020, conservative activists pushed for state officials to conduct an audit of South Carolinas elections, while the General Assembly responded with sweeping reforms to the states elections systems this year.

The state GOP said this week's primary was fair and square.

South Carolina handled the elections the right way in 2020," Brady said. "We handled them the right way in the municipal elections in 2021. And they were handled the right way in 2022. And we stand by that. We believe it wholeheartedly.

Contact Nick Reynolds at 843-834-4267. Follow him on Twitter @IAmNickReynolds.

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2 Republicans from the far right challenge results of SC primaries they lost handily - Charleston Post Courier

Fourteen Republican Senators on Thursday voted against a proposed bill that would expand health care for veterans of the U.S. military.

The U.S. Senate passed the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 in a bipartisan effort to address health care, research, resources and more for veterans exposed to toxic substances during military service. All Democrats voted for the bill.

Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Steve Daines of Montana did not vote. The bill now heads back to the House before going in front of President Joe Biden.

A spokesperson for Daines told Newsweek he was not present to vote due to the catastrophic floods in Montana and assessing in-state damage with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The bill provides mental health services, counseling and other forms of medical care through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Veterans eligible for such care include those who "participated in a toxic exposure risk activity," which is designated as a required "qualifying activity" as part of an exposure tracking record system.

Other veterans made eligible include those who served in "specified locations on specified dates," or were "deployed in support of a specified contingency operation."

Heath Robinson was an Ohio National Guard soldier who was deployed to Kosovo and Iraq and died in 2020. His family has spoken out about what Robinson experienced, including developing stage-four lung cancer likely caused by prolonged toxic exposure, according to an oncologist.

Veterans who are likely to benefit from the legislation include those affected by Agent Orange, in addition to the approximate 3.5 million post-9/11 veterans exposed to burn pits during deployments.

The Senate Republicans who voted against the bill include: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mike Crapo of Idaho, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rand Paul of Kentucky, James Risch of Idaho, Mitt Romney of Utah, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Thune of South Dakota, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

Senators Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, and Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, introduced the bill. On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Tester said Congress had "a chance to do the right thing by their families and future generations of our all-volunteer military."

"Let me be clear: This bill isn't about Democrats versus Republicans," said Tester, chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. "It's not about political posturing. It's about Americans standing up for those who have served and sacrificed on behalf of this country and the freedoms we have today.

"In fact, it's even more than that. It's about righting a wrong that has been ignored for too damn long."

Moran, in his own statement released Thursday, called the legislation a "priority" for both he and Tester and thanked the senator across the aisle for his leadership. Moran also thanked Heath Robinson and all veterans for their input on the "long-overdue bill."

"As a nation, we recognize the physical, obvious wounds of war," Moran said. "We are improving our ability to recognize and treat the mental wounds of war, though we still have a long ways [sic] to go. No longer can we ignore the wounds of war from toxic exposures. Veterans suffering from toxic exposures have been relying on a broken system cobbled together through decades of patchwork fixes that often leaves them without health care or benefits."

The White House also released a statement on behalf of President Joe Biden, commending the "remarkable work" of Tester and Moran and encouraging the House to "swiftly" pass the bill so it can be made law.

The president described the PACT Act as the "largest single bill in American history to address our service members' exposure to burn pits and other toxic substances."

"This bill will provide expanded access to health care and disability benefits for veterans harmed by certain toxic exposures, whether in the jungles of Vietnam or the mountains of Afghanistan," the statement read. "It will also let the Department of Veterans Affairs move more quickly and comprehensively in the future to determine if illnesses are related to military service, and it will offer critical support to survivors who were harmed by exposures, including from water contamination at Camp LeJeune."

The American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization, also praised the Senate for bill passage.

"Today, the U.S. Senate has saved lives and truly delivered for veterans," American Legion National Commander Paul E. Dillard said in a statement. "By passing the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act, the 117th Congress has put substance behind the phrase, 'Thank you for your service.'

"The American Legion is grateful for the service of millions of veterans who were exposed to burn pits, atomic radiation, Agent Orange and other environmental poisons. Thanks to the U.S. Congress, these men and women will be able to receive the care and benefits they have earned," the statement continued.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough previously said in a statement attained by Newsweek that the bill "would codify many of the ongoing efforts by the department to improve its process for establishment of presumptions of service connection due to toxic exposure, reducing the burden for veterans and increasing transparency."

"We support the expansion of access to VA health care in the PACT Act and will work to ensure that the expansion of eligibility for health care does not result in the delay or disruption of care for those Veterans already receiving health care from VA," he added.

Jon Stewart, who has been outspoken in providing veterans with assistance and benefits, last month questioned Americans' real affinity for veterans at a Memorial Day event in Washington, D.C.

Update 6/17/22, 12:37 p.m. ET: This story was updated with a comment from a Daines spokesperson.

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Fourteen Republicans Voted Against Bill Expanding Care for War Veterans - Newsweek

Drag queens are an easy target for the growing reactionary backlash taking place in America. Theyre loud; theyre irreverent; they clearly dont ascribe to conventional gender norms. They provide a simple shorthand about decadence and perversion for anyone with the all-encompassing need to punch down against anyone who isnt a straight white man.

For all those reasons, there has been a disturbing uptick in recent weeks of targeted harassment and threats of violence toward queens and the people who support them. There is no denying that the sirens are sounding not just for the most flamboyant members of the LGBTQ community, but for queer Americans as a whole, no matter how much bigots might argue otherwise.

As with most of the slippery-slope homophobia that were seeing these days, the mainstream opposition from the right hides behind children to launch their attacks. Since 2015, libraries and other public spaces around the country have held Drag Queen Story Hours, where performers come and read to small children while in full drag.

It is worth noting that there is nothing inherently sexual about these events. The queens arent reading selections from the Marquis de Sade to fidgeting kindergartners. Theyre reading childrens books like Families, Families, Families. They just happen to be doing so with their face beat and (potentially, depending on how comfortably they can sit) their waist snatched.

The outrage really makes you wonder what happened to the parental choice mantra that Republicans have been pushing lately.

These story hours have been the subject of protests and threats for as long as theyve been in the national news. What makes today different, though, is the vitriol we are seeing both from public officials and from hateful individuals. And their opposition, while framed around protecting children, makes no distinction between story time for children and drag shows for adults.

Particularly drawing their ire is a family-friendly Drag the Kids to Pride event that took place this month at a gay bar in Texas. Clips that have gone viral show performers showing the same amount of skin and suggestive dancing that the audience might see at a pop concert. Theres no evidence that any of the minors were there unattended nor has there been any similar videos of kids being snuck into late-night performances. The outrage that the show has spawned really makes you wonder what happened to the parental choice mantra that Republicans have been pushing lately.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been leading the charge in advocating parents rights as a reason to bar kids from learning about LGBTQ issues in schools, apparently thinks that they should also be banned from learning about LGBTQ tolerance outside of schools. Last week, he suggested that he might back a GOP state lawmakers proposal to punish parents that take their kids to drag shows. Texas lawmakers are also promising to file legislation protecting kids from drag shows.

The obsession on the right is really questionable when you hold up drag to other performance art forms. Ive yet to see a lawmaker or activist up in arms claiming that the garish make-up of a circus clown as being confusing to young minds. Theres no outcry against children being taken to see even the most ribald of Shakespeares plays, even those that feature gender-bending as a core plot element.

Instead, the fierce denunciation toward drag queens is most similar to conservative campaigns against ciswomen dancers and singers throughout the years. Ironically, while patriarchal norms encourage the latter to earn a living off of their sexuality, both are accused of leaning too far into the feminine and are demonized for it. Its truly a lose-lose out here at times for the non-masculines of the world.

And it has to be said that the current campaign goes beyond political posturing. Members of the white nationalist Proud Boys interrupted a drag story hour last week at a library in Alameda County, California. The sheriffs office has opened a hate crime investigation after the crowd shouted "homophobic and transphobic slurs at the event organizer.

Kyle Chu, whose drag name is Panda Dulce, told Teen Vogue that they were sitting with librarians singing a song to welcome the kids when eight to ten Proud Boys marched in with their cameras outstretched. Chu said that one of them had an AK-47 shirt that said kill your local pedophile on it. After the police were called, and the Proud Boys escorted out, the event was allowed to finish but Chu said it was a traumatizing event that theyre still processing.

There are still men and women who want so badly to see gender norms rigidly enforced that they will harm others to do so.

Proud Boys and the group Protect Texas Kids also rallied last weekend outside of a Disney-themed drag brunch in Arlington, Texas. The event was clearly for people aged 21 and up and the group even acknowledged on Twitter that no children were actually present. That didnt seem to diminish their harassment of attendees and counterprotesters.

We know the kind of violence the Proud Boys and their ilk relish, as the recent Jan. 6 hearings have shown to brutal effect. Police in Idaho last weekend arrested members of the white nationalist Patriot Front militia before an attempted assault on a Pride parade. Its not a stretch to see how one of these confrontations could escalate further.

That all this is taking place during Pride Month is a stark reminder that no matter how many Emmys RuPauls Drag Race wins, no matter how ingrained drag culture has become in America writ large, the struggle is not over. There are still men and women who want so badly to see gender norms rigidly enforced that they will harm others to do so.

I somehow doubt that they will like what will happen if push comes to shove, though. Before Pride went corporate, Stonewall was a riot led in part by drag queens and trans women, as my activist friends like to remind people. History shows us that in the face of oppression and violence, the LGBTQ community will not go quietly. But its also worth noting that for all the emphasis on protecting children, it is more likely going to be a Proud Boys actions that hurt a child at story time than a drag queens.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

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Why Republicans can't win their war on drag queens - MSNBC

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The Texas State Board of Education Friday again rejected an application of a Houston charter school whose founder gave money to a political action committee that backed anti-critical race theory candidates for the board and whose board member accused organizers of the Womens March of trying to impose Sharia in America.

The Heritage Classical Academy, which had plans to open in 2023 using a curriculum developed by the conservative Christian Hillsdale College, was one of four applicants for charters that were rejected by the board this week. The elected body made up of nine Republicans and six Democrats did move forward with a new charter school in Fort Worth, the Academy of Visual Performing Arts for sixth to twelfth grade students.

The Heritage charters application has been vetoed multiple times, most recently in June 2021. Members voted 8 to 6 on Friday to deny its application after a lengthy debate on the issue the day before.

Two Republicans joined the Democrats in voting to reject the charters application, including Jay Johnson, who represents the Panhandle, and was defeated by a candidate endorsed by a PAC that had received money from Heritages board chair. The other Republican who voted against, Matt Robinson, is not running for reelection.

On Thursday, board member Aicha Davis, a Democrat from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, questioned Heritages board chair, Stuart D. Saunders, about his $52,500 political contribution to the Freedom Foundation of Texas PAC. That PAC has raised over $600,000 since Jan. 1 and supported state education board candidates who oppose critical race theory, which is a university-level discipline that studies the idea that racism is embedded in legal systems and not limited to individuals. It has become a catch-all phrase for conservatives worried about discussions and lessons about race in public secondary schools.

Two conservative candidates backed by the Freedom Foundation of Texas PAC won their Republican primaries in March: LJ Francis and Aaron Kinsey, who defeated Johnson. The PAC has also supported Will Hickman, Republican member from Houston, who made a last minute plea in support of the charter.

Im voting in favor to provide an opportunity to parents and kids in northwest Houston who want a public classical option that's not currently available, he said.

Last year, the Texas Legislature banned critical race theory in public schools, though the concept wasnt included in the Texas public school curriculum standards.

When we really look into [it], it's an effort to stop diversity and inclusion in our school and you can't stop that because Texas has more Black and brown kids and it's growing every year, Davis said. It's well documented that you are trying to do this politically. Youre trying to affect our kids through schools. Its a hard no for me.

Saunders pointed to the Legislatures decision to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools and said he supports the PACs other initiatives such as strengthening school boards and squeezing out sexually explicit materials from schools.

Robinson, a Republican from Friendswood, questioned Saunders' ethics, saying it seemed that he was trying to remake the board after his charter was denied before.

It speaks to your credibility, Robinson said.

Saunders in response said he wasnt involved in where donations went.

My family and I have a long history of supporting education initiatives and part of our involvement includes a history of supporting public policy and education initiatives, he said.

During the questioning of Heritage Classical Academy, state education board member Georgina Prez, a Democrat from El Paso, also read a Facebook comment of the schools board secretary, Kathryn van der Pol. She posted a comment five years ago about the Washingtons Womens March that said the organizers wanted to impose Sharia, Islamic law, on the United States.

Why would this person with these beliefs be your choice for school leadership? Prez asked.

Saunders told the board that van der Pol told him the comment was being taken out of context and she was actually quoting someone else. Board member Ruben Cortez Jr., a Democrat from Brownsville, said he was not buying it.

Clearly you want to defend your member and that's okay, I understand, but thats very telling to me, Cortez said on Wednesday. You guys have been here every time you've had an opportunity to fix anything that could have seemed just out of bounds for some of us, each time you all come back and it just seems like you'd dig a deeper hole.

Unlike traditional schools, charter schools cannot levy local taxes, and they receive all their funding from the state. Texas has 185 charter school operators that oversee 872 campuses across the state where 377,375 students are enrolled.

The board voted overwhelmingly on Friday to reject the other three charter school proposals for ONE Collegiate Charter School in Houston, Patterns High School of Technology in Del Valle and Spelligent in San Antonio.

Board members questioned the schools leadership and curriculums and said the charter hopefuls did not have plans to take care of children that were not to the boards standards.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath gave a glowing review of each charter school before the board spent the rest of the day Thursday and some of the night debating with the charter leaders and hearing public testimony.

[These are] the charters that we think are fit to have the opportunity to educate eager young minds, Morath said.

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Texas State Board of Education rejects conservative-backed Heritage Classical Academy charter school for third time - The Texas Tribune

On Monday, the House committee investigating Jan. 6 reconvened for its second public hearing with the apparent intention of establishing beyond doubt that former President Donald Trump had no reasonable expectation that his claims of election fraud were true. Indeed, almost everyone around him knew them to be false, and told him as much.

President Donald Trump had no reasonable expectation that his claims of election fraud were true.

One by one, administration officials and Republican election lawyers testified that the supposed irregularities Trump and his allies fixated on werent irregularities at all. The election was not close, as GOP election attorney Ben Ginsberg recalled. States like Michigan and Pennsylvania were not host to measurable election fraud certainly not anything that would change the results in those states. Indeed, former Attorney General Bill Barr found the claims made by Trump loyalists, like those in Dinesh D'Souzas film allegedly uncovering a massive plot to rig the 2020 election, 2,000 Mules, laughable (which is to say, he literally laughed at them during his deposition).

The committee presented a damning fact pattern, which is perhaps why Republicans who are invested in downplaying the events of Jan. 6 did not address that fact pattern. For the most part, Republicans who seek to undermine the salience of the committees proceedings or delegitimize the committee altogether have settled on three avenues of attack. All of which are unconvincing.

Viewers of Mondays hearing were privy to few new revelations about the events leading up to what occurred on the day the 2020 election results were certified. Thats partly because the committee committed itself to re-establishing what it had already alleged during its first hearing on Thursday night. Broadcast to the nation in prime time and capturing the attention of some 20 million viewers, that hearing did provide the public with new insight into how the attack on the Capitol unfolded.

The committees leaders alleged on Thursday night (and subsequently emphasized on Monday) that Trump acted with malice to incite a mob around claims of election fraud he had no reason to believe were true and, indeed, likely knew to be false. They found that organized insurrectionist groups functioned as shock troops ahead of the mob that ransacked the Capitol. The committees members alleged that the president abdicated his constitutional duties to protect the legislature against the founding charters domestic enemies, and they claimed that elected members of Congress sought presidential pardons for their role in the events leading up to the attack.

This brings us to the three avenues of attack. Republicans first objection to Thursday nights proceedings took shape even before the first hearing: The committee was going to be an unserious, glitzy production. We would be forced to witness what Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., demeaned as a Hollywood-paid political advertisement for the Democratic Party. They moved this thing to prime time. They hired a producer to put it on, he said. This is not a fact-finding mission. But at the outset of proceedings, led by the somnolent Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., it became clear that we were not privy to an overproduced spectacle.

At that point, Republicans predisposed to attacking the committee shifted to insisting that this sober, unadorned inquest was too languid for prime time. [I]f the Democrats wanted a flashy, compelling, engaging beginning to the hearing, they are failing miserably, former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney remarked. But even Mulvaney later conceded that the video presentation of the riots was stunning and powerful. In sum, the hearings interposed prosecutorial dispassion with galvanizing and dramatic visuals. If there was a sweet spot to hit, that was it.

The second Republican objection to these proceedings centered on the notion that this was a one-sided affair. All the lawmakers on the dais, regardless of their partisan affiliations, were of the same mind when it came to what happened on that fateful day. True enough, but thats not because there are no alternative views to express about what happened on Jan. 6. It is because this is what Republicans in Congress wanted.

As the trauma of the days events faded and Republican voters regrouped around the partisan imperative to absolve Trump of blame for any of it, a 2021 Morning Consult survey published about six months after the insurrection found that the rank-and-file GOP had begun convincing themselves of a series of fictions. The poll found that Republican voters increasingly blamed President Joe Biden more for the attack on the Capitol than they did Trump, and that the insurrectionists were not ideologically aligned with the American right. These voters and their representatives in Congress didnt want clarity; they wanted to move on from this episode with their preferred ambiguities intact. That sentiment led Republicans in the legislature to nix what would have been a more judicious, bipartisan inquiry conducted independently of Congress.

Republican voters increasingly blamed President Joe Biden more for the attack on the Capitol than they did Trump.

Republicans knew at the time that the alternative to a blue-ribbon commission of the sort that investigated the 9/11 attacks was a partisan committee that would be established by a simple majority vote of House Democrats. That is, in fact, their desired alternative. The GOPs apparent strategy was to close off every method of independent inquiry so that the one that remained could be denounced as a partisan spectacle. It is, therefore, no surprise that this committee came under attack for its partisan makeup; that was the GOPs preference.

Ah, the GOP will say, but what about the efforts by the Republican minority in the House to appoint pro-Trump Republicans to the committee? Initially, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to appoint two members to the committee Reps. Jim Banks Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio who were summarily rejected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That led McCarthy to pull the rest of the conferences appointees (save conscience-driven members like Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, despite the fatal blow their participation has or likely will deal to their political careers). This brings us to the GOPs last objection to the committees preceding: Everything it uncovered was previously known.

All. Old. News, insisted the House Judiciary Committee GOP, which Jordan leads. Unless Jordan was secretly deposing Trump administration officials, whose sworn testimony was presented for the first time to the public on June 9, he likely did not know the extent to which Trump was being regularly disabused of the notion that there was significant election fraud or that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was told to cover up the extent to which then-Vice President Mike Pence had simply assumed the powers of the presidency that the president himself had abdicated. And yet, this Clintonian method of dismissing new revelations as somehow dated, marking anyone surprised by them as out-of-touch rubes, is effective. After all, who wants to be thought of as out of the loop?

This tactic has the disadvantage of competing against genuine news. We did not know for certain that, as Cheney said, Donald Trump placed no call to any element of the United States government to instruct that the Capitol be defended, making no order to deploy the National Guard or contact federal law enforcement. We did not know that Republican lawmakers sought pre-emptive presidential pardons for their role in the days violent events. We did not know that Trump said, according to Cheneys direct quotes, that Trump reacted to the chants of hang Mike Pence by saying, Maybe our supporters have the right idea and that Pence deserves it. We did not know the number of occasions in which White House Counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign along with his team, which Jared Kushner described as whining.

Republicans cannot argue with the fact pattern the committee presented to the public, so theyre reduced to table-pounding. That behavior resonates only with those on the right who have already convinced themselves this investigation is a witch hunt. That describes the majority of Republicans, to be sure, but not even an overwhelming one, if polling is to be believed, and it applies to no other American partisan affiliation.

Republicans who continue to oppose an inquiry into that horrible day are reduced to shouting down the inquirers. But there is no decibel level they can achieve sufficient to drown out the truth. The facts speak for themselves.

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Day 2 of the Jan. 6 hearings keep the GOP on the defensive - MSNBC