Kari Lake of Arizona warned supporters of ‘intense’ election year in which Democrats will come after them ‘with everything’

Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake has told supporters to “strap on a Glock” ahead of the 2024 elections as she struggles to gain ground against her Democratic rival in Arizona.

In a campaign speech made to a crowd in Arizona’s Mohave county on Sunday, Lake echoed Trump-like terms in calling Washington DC a “swamp” – and used a reference to carrying guns when she told people to prepare for an “intense” election year.

Continue reading...

Providers are optimistic for a different future for abortion in the state even as Republicans flounder in their response

The waiting room of the Acacia Women’s Center in Phoenix, Arizona, was calm and quiet on Friday. Patients sat with their mothers, friends or partners, paying no mind to the slapstick Tyler Perry movie on the TV and an arrangement of Vogue magazines resting on a table.

It had been three days since the state’s highest court reinstated an 1864 law that would ban almost all abortions and send abortion providers to prison for up to five years.

Continue reading...

In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town – and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has ‘opened Pandora’s box’

One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.

Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.

Continue reading...

Split reflects GOP’s identity crisis, as Republican politicians struggle to talk about increasingly toxic issue for them

Republicans are nearly evenly divided over the Arizona supreme court’s decision to uphold an 1864 law that would ban almost all abortions, new polling shows.

Forty-nine per cent of Republicans strongly or somewhat disapprove of the decision, while 46% of Republicans strongly or somewhat approve of it, according to polling of more than 1,000 likely voters released on Tuesday by the left-leaning thinktank Data for Progress. That split reflects the GOP’s identity crisis over post-Roe v Wade abortion politics, as Republican politicians have struggled to talk about an issue that was once their bread-and-butter but has become increasingly toxic for them.

Continue reading...

The Republican former TV anchor is trying to soften her election-denying image against the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego in one of the year’s most closely watched races

On a recent Tuesday morning, at a retirement community on the western edge of Phoenix’s sprawling desert metropolis, Kari Lake beamed at the graying crowd and introduced her guest, the Montana senator Steve Daines, the Republican charged with winning back the party’s Senate majority in Washington.

His presence sent the message that establishment Republicans were fully behind Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix whose embrace of election denialism and fealty to Donald Trump made her a darling of his Maga movement but probably cost her the 2022 race for Arizona governor, a loss she has never formally conceded.

Continue reading...

‘They’ve turned the clock to the 1800s’, said the US vice-president as she excoriated ex-president as ‘architect of healthcare crisis’

Kamala Harris pinned the blame for Arizona’s abortion ban squarely on Donald Trump, who she described as the “architect of this healthcare crisis” in a speech at a campaign event in Tucson on Friday.

The state was left reeling after the Arizona supreme court ruled earlier this week that a civil war-era law banning abortion in the state with almost no exceptions is now enforceable.

Continue reading...

Vice-president will stage campaign event in state after its supreme court ruled 1864 ban could go into effect

Ahead of her campaign trip to Tuscon, Arizona, on Friday, where she is expected to blame Donald Trump for the country’s abortion rights crisis, Kamala Harris tweeted:

Women across our country are suffering at the hands of extremists who say they’re motivated by the well-being of women and children but ignore the crisis of maternal mortality.

The House Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, will meet with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, where they plan to deliver remarks on “election integrity”, NBC reports .

The House is set to vote on the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the controversial legislation that failed two days ago in the Republican-led chamber.

Biden is set to deliver a virtual keynote address at Rev Al Sharpton’s annual racial justice conference in New York.

Continue reading...

Far-right US Senate candidate joins Republicans who have decried state supreme court ruling but who blocked appeal effort

Kari Lake, the far-right US Senate candidate and Donald Trump ally, denounced Arizona’s abortion ban on Thursday, arguing that the strict legislation she previously praised does not have the support of the state’s residents.

“This total ban on abortion the Arizona supreme court just ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” she said in a video on Thursday. “I agree with President Trump – this is such a personal and private issue.”

Continue reading...

Republicans haven’t ‘moderated’ their extreme stance on abortion, but much of the media is eager to give that impression

Sometimes, in 2024 America, you have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not in a long-running dystopian nightmare. Then again, maybe we all are. And no amount of pinching will help.

Two scenes from this week stand out.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Continue reading...