On Tuesday night, Sarah McBride became the highest-ranking openly transgender state legislator in the United States after winning an election in Delaware to become a State Senator, the Washington Blade reports.
Widely expected to win, McBride will represent a heavily Democratic district that includes parts of the state’s largest city, Wilmington.
McBride previously worked as national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. She was the first openly transgender person to speak at the major party convention in the United States. Other openly transgender elected officials include Virginia State Delegate Danica Roem (D-Va.), Colorado State Rep. Brianna Titone, and New Hampshire State Reps. Lisa Bunker and Gerri Cannon.
The news comes after President Trump spent the past four years pursuing policies that would erode the rights of trans people. Shortly after taking office, the President sought to roll back a memo protecting trans students in schools. He has also banned trans people from serving in the military and ruled that in the majority of cases, trans prisoners should be assigned housing based on their assigned sex at birth.
New Jersey has voted to legalize marijuana.
On Election Day, voters approved Public Question 1, which means the state will legalize the possession and use of marijuana for adults 21 and older, with New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission in charge of marijuana production and sales, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press. The measure was open-ended on several fronts — including on taxes and whether home-growing will be allowed — instead of leaving it to the legislature to work out the details.
It was the legislature, with the support of Gov. Phil Murphy (D), that placed the measure on the ballot after it failed to pass its own legalization bill.
New Jersey already allowed marijuana use for medical purposes. The new law expands legalization to recreational and other nonmedical uses.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law. But starting with President Barack Obama’s administration, the federal government has generally allowed states to legalize cannabis with minimal federal interference.
Before Election Day, 11 states and Washington, DC, had legalized marijuana, although DC doesn’t allow recreational sales. Change has moved quickly across the US: A decade ago, zero states allowed marijuana for recreational purposes. Here’s what the map looked like before Election Day:
Supporters of legalization argue that it eliminates the harms of marijuana prohibition: the hundreds of thousands of arrests around the US, the racial disparities behind those arrests, and the billions of dollars that flow from the black market for illicit marijuana to drug cartels that then use the money for violent operations around the world. All of this, legalization advocates say, will outweigh any of the potential downsides — such as increased cannabis use — that might come with legalization.
Opponents, meanwhile, claim that legalization will create a huge marijuana industry that will market the drug irresponsibly. They point to America’s experiences with the alcohol and tobacco industries in particular, which have built their financial empires in large part on the backs of the heaviest consumers of their products. And they argue ending prohibition could result in far more people using pot, potentially leading to unforeseen negative health consequences.
In New Jersey, voters have sided with legalization supporters.
Will you help keep Vox free for all?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.
Elsewhere, Ron Weber, a West Point graduate and lawyer in Ohio who beat three different contenders in a main and has shared QAnon hashtags and conspiracy theories on social media, misplaced his race on Tuesday.
But it’s Ms. Greene, the victorious candidate in Georgia, whose candidacy has exemplified the celebration’s difficulties in dealing with its QAnon drawback. Now that she is headed to Congress, the celebration should determine what to do together with her.
“I think she will start off with a pretty short leash,” Mr. Buck stated.
Even so, he added, there’s an elementary drawback: “There is no real establishment or party leadership in the way that there used to be,” and so “members of Congress have realized that there is an open playing field to be whoever you want if you can get attention for yourself.”
Ms. Greene, who owns a building firm, has referred to as QAnon “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.” She has additionally made derogatory remarks about Black people, Jews, and Muslims.
Nearly each elected Republican in Georgia’s 14th congressional district, the place Ms. Greene was operating for an open House seat, lined up to oppose her after she trounced eight different candidates within the June main and compelled a runoff. But not everybody within the celebration was as unwelcoming. Mr. Trump posted a congratulatory tweet after Ms. Greene’s sturdy displaying in June, and two of his highest-profile supporters backed her: Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows, the previous congressman who’s now the White House chief of workers.
Whatever objections others had appeared to soften away after Ms. Greene received the runoff in August. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority chief, stated she can be given committee assignments if elected. Senator Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by the governor's final December and is in search of a full-time period in a particular election in Georgia, readily accepted Ms. Greene’s endorsement.
Ms. Greene, for her half, has not too long ago sought to distance herself from her most controversial views. Asked about QAnon in an interview with Fox News, she stated she had chosen one other path. She also tweeted that she had now accepted that the Pentagon had been hit by a hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, not a missile.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) has won re-election in New York's 14th Congressional District, AP projects.
Ocasio-Cortez is just one term has become the face of the progressive Democratic movement. She's often pushed issues in the Democratic-led House to the left, including co-sponsoring the Green New Deal.
- But she's faced criticism for sparking division within her own party, and she's become a talking point for conservatives on the alleged rise of socialism among Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez's district is nestled in the heavily blue Bronx, meaning she did not face a tough re-election bid. But her race still prompted massive spending.
- Her 2020 congressional bid was second-most expensive in the nation, with Ocasio-Cortez raising $17.3 million and her GOP challenger John Cummings raising $9.6 million.