MOScout Daily Update: Ashcroft The Fighter - Scenes from House Gen Laws - Scharf Back to SCOTUS - Kander’s Rescue Mission and more…
Ashcroft the Fighter?
It’s Republican primary season, and everyone’s trying to prove that they’re a “fighter.” Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft upped the ante on that claim Tuesday night as he entered a reception in Jefferson City through a line of protestors. Columbia Missourian reports on a “physical altercation.”
· Photographs by a Missourian photographer show Ashcroft moving through a group of protesters who were blocking the entrance of Revel Catering, a place where a reception was being held for Israeli Consul General Maor Elbaz-Starinsky. As Ashcroft approaches the door, he gets in a physical altercation with a protester.
· A protester was detained on the scene downtown, police stated in a news release. No charges have been filed by either Jefferson City Police or Ashcroft. Protesters say Ashcroft instigated the incident.
Scharf Back to SCOTUS
Missouri attorney general candidate Will Scharf will be back at the U.S. Supreme Court today. The high court will hear oral arguments about Colorado tossing his client, Donald Trump, off the ballot for his 2020 post-election efforts to remain in power.
· If you’re asking, “Wouldn’t his time be better spent campaigning around Missouri?” The answer is very clearly: Nope.
Senate Spins Wheels
The Senate didn’t make a whole lot of progress yesterday. But it felt like progress nevertheless. It may have been largely spinning wheels, but at least the engine turned over.
After some hand-wringing, they moved through the formal calendar to bring up Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s bill to prohibit funding to Planned Parenthood. The plan is to pass a bill explicitly defunding PP in order to clear the way for a clean FRA renewal. This is to overcome the Freedom Caucus demand that the FRA include anti-PP language.
However, during the Senate hearing, Missouri Right to Life topper Susan Klein wouldn’t commit to opposing a clean FRA even with the separate stand-alone bill. And former Sen. Bob Onder tweeted yesterday that he felt the language was still needed on FRA regardless of whatever else is passed. Bottomline: it’s unclear if this road will lead the Senate out of its quagmire.
Meanwhile
The House has to be watching, wondering what’s the use of sending the Senate anything this year… One legislative observer: Based on the senate’s actions today on Hough’s and MEC’s bills, I don’t see any reason why the House would be motivated to move an abortion, FRA, or IP Reform bill to the Senate.
Videos from Tuesday’s Gen Laws Committee
A couple of moments from the long House General Laws Committee hearing on Tuesday about preventing minors from accessing pornography online…
· Rep. Ian Mackey starts his questioning of former Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler with a recitation of her anti-LGBT stances: There's so much I'd love to ask you about, you know, particularly why you shed tears on the floor of the United States House when I finally got some of my rights codified, why you've spent a substantial portion of your career trying to say my marriage of 10 years to my husband ought to be invalidated, why you and I as Christians who claim to be Christians have such a diametrically opposed views about how… See the video here.
· Expert witness Bartlett Cleland interrupts his answer to Rep. Keri Ingle with a bit of flirtation: By the way, great hair, and great specs. See the video here.
Kander Orchestrated Rescue
The Kansas City Star has an incredible story of former Secretary of State Jason Kander’s effort to rescue families of US military allies in Afghanistan after that country fell to the Taliban. Read it here.
Inside the ballroom, 383 Afghan men, women and children — fake guests invited to a fake wedding — waited in anxious hope that the ruse might work and they could escape the country with their lives. Meanwhile, just beyond their walls, armed Taliban fighters looking to kill or imprison them searched the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif. Afghanistan had fallen. It was September 2021, only three weeks after the United States military on Aug. 30 had pulled out of 20 years of war. Images of desperate citizens clinging to and falling from the wheels of planes fleeing Kabul remained indelible. The Taliban were now in control. Seven thousand miles away in Kansas City, Jason Kander — a former Army intelligence officer and former Missouri secretary of state who had turned private citizen — sweated out what last week he called “the craziest thing, the biggest thing and the most important thing I have ever done.” Code name: Operation Bella, a private Afghan rescue mission initiated by Kander and named after his then-infant daughter. Details of its safe houses and checkpoints, of a chartered aircraft escaping Taliban gunfire, are only now being revealed.
More on Remembering The Carnahans
Sen. Greg Razer presented SB 964 yesterday in the Senate Progress and Development Committee. It designates August 6 as “Chris Sifford Day.” Sifford was an aide to Governor Mel Carnahan who perished in that tragic airplane accident.
National Media With MO Connections
· Redstate looks at the MO AG primary. Read it here.
· Politico says that Speaker Mike Johnson has succumbed to Trump pressure and dropped Axiom. Read it here.
· And Politico also reports on Donald Trump getting friendly with Missouri brewer Anheuser Busch. Read it here.
Lobbyist Registrations
Catalyst added DJI Technology Inc.
Adam Rapert added Department of Sheriff/City of St. Louis.
Alex Tuttle added Bates County Memorial Hospital.
Birthdays
Happy birthday to Terry Swinger, and Kathie Conway.