Rick Santorum Says Quiet Part Out Loud After Republican Election Losses

Former Senator Rick Santorum complained that the major election losses Republicans suffered are actually a sign of how “pure democracies” are a bad form of government.

Republicans faced devastating losses on Tuesday, as voters in Ohio overwhelmingly chose to legalize marijuana and enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. In Virginia, Democrats flipped the state House of Representatives, taking control of the entire legislature. While abortion was not explicitly on the ballot, the future of reproductive rights in Virginia hinged on which party controlled the government.

“You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio,” Santorum whined Tuesday night on Newsmax.

“Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot, because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

Putting aside Santorum’s weird choice of descriptor (sexy, really?), his actual complaint is laughable. Santorum is upset that democracy is working.

As Republicans across the country try to push more extreme agendas, many issues such as protecting abortion, legalizing marijuana, and raising the minimum wage are being put forward for ballot referendums. Republicans lose those votes every time.

But rather than take the actual lesson here and start proposing policies that voters like, Republicans are digging their heels in. Take, for instance, Santorum’s other gripe, that young voters turned out because the issues were “sexy” (again, ugh).

Maybe young voters didn’t want to just hop on some social trend. Maybe young voters actually care about protecting their rights.

Abortion is officially enshrined in Ohio’s state Constitution, with residents voting overwhelmingly Tuesday to increase protections despite Republicans’ last-ditch attempt to thwart them.

The Associated Press projected the victory of the Issue 1 ballot measure at 9:02 p.m. As of 9:14 p.m., the “yes” vote was leading at 57 percent.

Issue 1 will create a new amendment allowing people to decide for themselves about all reproductive health. The state can restrict abortion access only after a doctor determines the fetus is viable or could survive outside the uterus. And even then, abortions can be performed if the patient’s health or life is at risk.

State Republicans tried multiple times to block the measure. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority. Although they insisted the move was to protect Ohio’s Constitution from special-interest groups, Secretary of State Frank LaRose later admitted the measure was “100 percent” about blocking the abortion referendum.

An overwhelming 57 percent of Ohioans rejected that change, so Republicans tried again. The Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on Tuesday’s ballot. Instead of the full text, the ballot displayed a summary written by LaRose. LaRose’s version was littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language, such as using “unborn child” instead of “fetus,” likening abortion to infanticide, and making it appear as if state officials could still intervene.

Finally, LaRose ordered that 26,666 voter registrations be purged in late September. He did not publicly announce his decision at the time and only acknowledged it when local outlets began reporting it.

But even with all of their desperate attempts, Republicans could not prevent Ohioans from choosing abortion rights.

Representative Rashida Tlaib teared up while defending herself on the House floor in the face of numerous GOP attempts to censure and even expel her from the legislative body.

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable,” Tlaib said Tuesday, gripping the lectern as her voice cracked.

“We are human beings, just like anyone else,” she said.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has been the subject of intense debate since she spoke at a peaceful Jewish-led protest in D.C. last month that called for a cease-fire in Gaza. Since then, the Michigan Democrat has used her platform to amplify the plight and suffering of Palestine, where more than 10,000 people have perished while Israel’s military hunts for Hamas militants behind the October 7 massacre in which 1,400 civilians were killed.

In her speech, Tlaib argued that “no government is beyond criticism” and that the notion that criticizing a government could be antisemitic “sets a very dangerous precedent,” which is being used to “silence many diverse voices.”

“Speaking up to save lives, Mr. Chair, no matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this chamber,” Tlaib added. “The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all.”

In the waning months of 2020, Fox was in a bind. It had helped peddle Donald Trump’s election lies and built a hungry audience for the unfounded conspiracy. Ultimately, though, the news network needed to concede that Joe Biden had won the presidency—so, how were they supposed to feed their frenzied audience?

While parts of the network reversed course on the Trump train, Tucker Carlson decided to feed into the mystery around Trump’s stolen election by promoting a list of dead voters touted by the Trump campaign, according to Brian Stelter’s latest book, Network of Lies, a dissection of thousands of pages of texts and emails obtained from the Dominion v. Fox lawsuit.

With show producers, Carlson privately complained that Trump’s lies were “disgusting,” but in order to maintain competitive ratings he knew he needed to extend the yarn.

“Obviously [the Trump campaign needs] to do whatever they can to help us,” Carlson messaged producer Alex Pfeiffer on the eve of announcing the dead voter conspiracy, according to Stelter’s book.

“Do we have enough dead people for tonight?” Carlson asked in another text.

When Carlson went on air that night, he announced several names of voters that he claimed to be dead but who were, in fact, alive—they simply shared names with the deceased.

“What we’re about to tell you is accurate. It’s not a theory. It happened, and we can prove it. Other news organizations could prove it, too. They’ve simply chosen not to,” Carlson told his hungry audience on a segment bannered, “Yes, Dead People Did Vote In The Election.”

Years later and long after other news organizations had knocked on doors and debunked the lie, Carlson would recall that moment as a turning point in his relationship with Trump, whom he later called a “demonic force.”

“And so I said to the Trump people, you know, ‘You’re saying the election was rigged. Send me some examples of it and I’ll put it on the air,’” Carlson told WABC’s Bo Snerdley’s Rush Hour.

“And one of them was these dead voters. Well, it turned out some of them were still alive. And I was so mad by the incompetence of that campaign, which was completely incompetent. I mean, completely, you know, I’m like the one guy who’s open minded about the election being unfair. And—and that’s what they send me? Anyway. Whatever. I was mad. That was a moment in time,” he added.

An American nurse who worked in Gaza for nearly a month is speaking out about the horrific circumstances in which Palestinian civilians are living.

Emily Callahan, a nurse activity manager for Doctors Without Borders, had been in Gaza since August. She was evacuated back to the United States last week.

“I obviously have a sense of relief that I’m home and I’m with my family and feel safe for the first time in 26 days. And I’m having a really hard time finding any joy in any of it,” she told CNN on Monday.

“Because me being safe is the result of having to leave people behind.”

Callahan described having to relocate with her team to a refugee camp in the south, which was already packed with 35,000 internally displaced people. The camp, which now has 50,000 people living there, was so short on resources that people only had access to water for two hours out of every 12.

Hospitals were so full that they were having to discharge people immediately after treating them, Callahan said, resulting in people, particularly children, walking around the camp with unhealed burns or fresh amputations.

Callahan also described the sacrifices that her Palestinian teammates made to make sure she and other foreign doctors and nurses survived. This included finding them food and water when supplies ran out, and working to get them on the evacuation buses.

“We would have died within a week without them,” she said.

Some of Callahan’s Palestinian colleagues chose to stay in Gaza rather than evacuate. She said when they got the evacuation orders, Callahan texted to ask if they would move south.

“The only answer I got was, ‘This is our community. This is our family. These are our friends. If they’re going to kill us, we’re going to die saving as many people as we can,’” she said.

Asked if she would return to Gaza, Callahan replied, “In a heartbeat. My heart is in Gaza. It will stay in Gaza.”

More than 10,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s first item on the menu should Republicans win control of the state: nixing abortion.

“To many voters, the topic of abortion is so important, so we have been completely straightforward and clear. I will back a bill to protect life,” Youngkin told Fox News on Tuesday.

Youngkin’s proposal will cut off access to abortion at 15 weeks, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest as well as people whose pregnancies put them at risk of death. Should that happen, Virginia would join 21 states that passed extreme abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

Current Virginia law bans abortion at 26 weeks.

“It’s one of the most divisive topics across Virginia,” Youngkin told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this week.

“I think this is a choice between no limits and reasonable limits, and I think this is one where Virginians come together around reasonableness,” Youngkin said.

Virginia is a hotly contested battleground at the moment, with both Republicans and Democrats fighting for a total takeover of the state legislature in Tuesday’s election. Currently, Republicans hold a very narrow, two-member majority in the House of Delegates, while Democrats hold the Senate. Should Republicans win, Youngkin will gain the power to enact a completely conservative agenda that would almost definitely raise his national profile and even open up a long-shot bid at the White House.

Other prospective policies under the conservative governor’s belt include tax cuts, climate deregulation, stricter criminal justice laws, and the rollback of gender-affirming policies in schools.

All 140 seats in the general assembly are on Tuesday’s ballot.

The Republican candidate for a Texas city council was arrested just hours before Election Day on federal child pornography charges.

Brad Benson, who was running for the Granbury City Council, was arrested at his home Monday morning. Benson was a small-business owner and the deputy fire marshal for the town, which is southwest of Fort Worth.

“I can confirm he was arrested by the District Attorney’s Office yesterday and charged with two felony child pornography charges,” Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds told Newsweek on Tuesday.

The Republican Party of Hood County was forced to withdraw its support for Benson one day before his name appeared on the ballot. “The Republican Party stands for conservative, family values and the protection of children,” the RPHC said in a statement on social media condemning Benson’s actions.

“These heinous acts are antithetical to what Republicans stand for.”

Republicans have repeatedly stated that they want to protect children from violent crime and sexual predators. In many GOP-led states, this has resulted in bans on drag performances in public.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country have worked to ease child labor laws, take away life-saving health care for transgender and nonbinary children, and even ban free school lunches. None of that sounds particularly in the best interests of children.

Republicans are working overtime to punish Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, for her objections to Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza.

So far, Tlaib is facing three separate censure efforts in the House with another backup in tow, but some Republicans are looking to skip the disciplinary measure and go straight to expelling the Michigan Democrat.

“Rashida Tlaib is a sitting member of Congress with alleged ties to Hamas terrorists. This should be investigated immediately, and if true, the House should move to expel her,” tweeted Senator Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday.

Should all the censure bills against Tlaib fail, Representative Derrick Van Orden also hinted at potential expulsion. Van Orden said he will move to introduce yet another against Tlaib, who he believes no longer “belongs in this body,” reported Punchbowl News’s Mica Soellner.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to censure Tlaib last week but failed after 23 of her Republican peers voted to table it, criticizing the resolution as “feckless” and filled with “legally and factually unverified claims.”

But then, on Thursday, Representative Max Miller, one of the House’s two Jewish Republicans, threw his hat into the ring, filing his own censure resolution against Tlaib.

Greene has also returned with another censure resolution using retooled language to go after the Michigan representative.

By now she’s not the only one drafting censure efforts against Tlaib. Representative Rich McCormick introduced a “privileged” censure on Monday, which forces a vote within two legislative days.

While introducing the new censure resolution, McCormick railed against Tlaib for describing the chant “from the river to the sea” as an “aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence,” and lambasted her for allegedly promoting the destruction of Israel. McCormick’s effort has faced more support from the Republican caucus than Greene’s, winning over the votes of several members who voted to table hers, including Miller, Van Orden and Representatives Darrell Issa and Austin Scott.

In a statement issued last month, Tlaib called the efforts to silence her “unhinged” and “deeply Islamophobic,” adding that she will not be bullied or dehumanized.

“It’s a shame my colleagues are more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives, as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 10,000,” Tlaib wrote in another statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Many of them have shown me that Palestinian lives simply do not matter to them, but I still do not police their rhetoric or actions. Rather than acknowledge the voice and perspective of the only Palestinian American in Congress, my colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies,” Tlaib added.

The United States is a little more than one week away from a government shutdown, and Republicans are responding by … talking about gas stoves.

The House Committee on Small Business is holding a hearing this week on the effects of supposedly “burdensome” energy regulations, part of the GOP’s ongoing insistence that Democrats are unfairly trying to ban gas stoves. Republican Representative Roger Williams lashed out Tuesday at his own party for its mismatched priorities.

“It’s almost embarrassing that we’re going to have a hearing tomorrow on gas stoves and ceiling fans when we’ve got everything happening in this world,” Williams said on Fox Business.

The House managed to pass a continuing resolution in September to keep the government open. That deal ultimately resulted in Kevin McCarthy getting ousted as speaker.

His successor, Mike Johnson, said Tuesday that he has a plan to keep the government funded, but Republicans are once again struggling to come together. Their inability to agree on a budget is what brought the U.S. to the brink of a shutdown multiple times this year alone.

Congress has 11 days to figure out the budget. If it hasn’t passed a solution by 12:01 a.m. on November 18, then the government will shut down.

If this exact situation seems familiar, that’s because it has somehow already happened. In May, as the country hurtled toward a national default, the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee held a hearing on … gas stoves. During the hearing, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz called out Republicans on their weird priorities.

“I got it, I get the bravado. We can pry your gas stoves from your cold, dead hands,” Moskowitz deadpanned during the hearing. “I have a six-burner, double-oven range. It sits on legs. I mean, I miss her, right now, as we’re talking about it.”

“You might own a small business, and you are worried about how you’re going to pay your employees if we default. The good news for you today is that, if you have to shut your business because the country defaults, your gas stove will still be there.”

The Republican candidate in one of Virginia’s closest state Senate races once joked about how many rape cases he failed to solve while working as a sheriff.

Danny Diggs faces off Tuesday against Democratic incumbent Monty Mason. Diggs served as a county sheriff from 1999 until the end of 2022. And by his own admission, he didn’t have the best track record when it came to sexual assault cases.

During his sheriff retirement speech in January, Diggs spoke about how special it was to meet people years after he had helped solve their issues.

“It must have been 30 years ago.… We solved a rape case,” Diggs said. “The lady saw me a few years ago, and it had been 30 years, and she remembered me and remembered that we had solved her case and how much that meant to her. How she was able to get her life together and move on.”

Diggs then asked his successor, Sheriff Ron Montgomery, “Was that the only one we ever solved?”

The two men laughed as Diggs said, “We don’t want to get into that!”

Diggs’s joke is horrifying, as it shows how little regard he has for certain types of crime. Most rape cases in Virginia go unsolved. A 2019 study found that fewer than 20 percent of sexual assault cases in the state end with an arrest. Diggs’s callous comment is a sign that he is a part of that problem.

But Diggs’s disregard for sexual rights and autonomy goes further. In a September interview with conservative podcaster John Fredericks, Diggs said he wanted to crack down on “crime” by jailing doctors who perform abortions.

“You can’t have doctors doing illegal abortions with no sanctions!” Diggs said, accusing Mason and other state Democrats of being soft on crime.

Abortion is currently legal in Virginia up to 26 weeks and six days, although the state has tried to limit access. For instance, minors who need an abortion have to get permission from their parents or guardians first.

Virginia is currently the last southeastern state to allow abortion access, after state Republicans implemented cruel bans in the Carolinas and Florida. Tuesday’s election will determine which party has control of the state legislature and will thus shape the future of reproductive freedom in Virginia.