The Home’s Uncommon Transfer – The New York Occasions

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Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene earlier than the Home vote yesterday.

Virginia, shifting left quick, strikes to abolish the demise penalty.

With a giant vote anticipated at present in Virginia’s Home of Delegates, lawmakers are poised to make the state the primary within the South to abolish the demise penalty.

It could be a turning level within the area, after Georgia’s current blue flip put Republicans on discover within the Deep South. However in Virginia, the invoice is barely the most recent in a cascade of liberal insurance policies which have moved by the state’s Common Meeting since Democrats received full management in 2019.

Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who has embraced the state’s liberal flip, supported a ban on the demise penalty throughout his marketing campaign in 2017, when Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic governor on the time, drew criticism from the left for transferring ahead with the execution of a mentally sick man.

“It’s necessary that we shut down the equipment of demise right here in Virginia,” Northam advised our reporter Journey Gabriel in an interview for Journey’s article on the brand new invoice.

Since Congress reinstituted the demise penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed 113 folks, greater than any state besides Texas. Federal executions had been on hiatus lately, till Trump restarted them in 2020, giving the difficulty a contemporary urgency.

Coming after Virginia handed progressive legal guidelines on gun management, abortion entry and the removing of Accomplice monuments, the approaching demise penalty ban additional cements the state’s transition into Democratic stronghold standing.

Earlier than Barack Obama carried the state in 2008, Virginia had voted Republican for president since 1964. However final 12 months Biden beat Trump by 10 share factors, and Democrats maintained their grip on seven of the state’s 11 Home districts.

New York Occasions Audio

An appalled Republican considers the way forward for the celebration

What do G.O.P. politicians stand for in 2021?

The Republican tutorial and author Yuval Levin isn’t satisfied they even know. On at present’s episode of “The Ezra Klein Present,” he advised Ezra that “the Republican Occasion has come to be outlined far an excessive amount of by its opposition to the left.”

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