Donald Trump's visit and anti-abortion bill dominate South Carolina this week
Welcome back!
Is it normal for temperatures to drop as low as it did over the weekend? Clearly, thousands of people who attended former President Donald Trump's rally in Florence didn't get the memo. That's the coldest I've been in sunny South Carolina!
I will say this week was dominated by the complicated nature of the national and state Republican Party, and don't even get me started with the fun state lawmakers had in the Statehouse. Let's dive into what happened:
The power struggle in the GOP continues
Ahead of Trump's visit, I had a few sources who reached out and said that the March 7 Greenville County GOP meeting would be one to hang around. I noticed that I hadn't done my usual lurking in local GOP matters and thought I'd go check it out. True to the tip, there were oodles of drama, which I wrote about in the story below.
Read: 'The house is on fire': Greenville County Republican Party members resign during meeting
There's a tussle between far-right activists who are against party members they refer to as RINOs, short for "Republican in name only." They think that RINOs are actually Democrats in disguise and are not true to the Republican platform.
Since last year, the fight for control in the GCGOP has been illustrative of this tussle that is happening all over the country since the Jan. 6 insurrection. With Trump's visit, this tussle just became more complicated.
As I've mentioned before Trump is endorsing two GOP challengers to oust South Carolinian incumbents, Nancy Mace and Tom Rice, who had been critical of him after the insurrection. Further, he had already endorsed Gov. Henry McMaster last year. But every time these rallies end, another question comes to the forefront: is he going to run again?
The power struggle marches on: Trump hints at running for president again, backs candidates in SC while criticizing Biden
Abortion pill bill advances
The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would compel doctors to tell women taking abortion drugs about a non-FDA approved "abortion reversal treatment," which involves a drug called progesterone. Progesterone is a hormone steroid and is often used in sex reassignment therapy for transwomen.
Amy McWatty, with South Carolina Citizens for Life, an anti-abortion group, said that 14 states, including Arizona, Tennessee, etc., had enacted an anti-abortion law. She said that research that reversal of pregnancy is possible if the mother regrets their decision.
The majority of the doctors said that suggesting an abortion could be reversed is false because there's no evidence for it and asked the senators to shelve the bill. Claims of whether progesterone can continue an abortion after using the first of two abortion pills was false, the doctors said.
Allison Terracio, a volunteer outside Planned Parenthood in Columbia said that anyone who stands outside the clinic and wants to access services knows exactly what they want.
Terracio said that bill would not protect maternal health. Instead, it would shame people from accessing important medical services.
Meanwhile other testifiers against the bill said that none of the lawmakers in the committee had medical degrees and had more expertise in medical affairs than actual doctors, and yet this legislation had the potential to "dictate physician speech," they said.
As most of you know, there's a bill in the Senate Medical Affairs Committee and there was a push by a small group of senators to block the bill from advancing. However, the House Judiciary subcommittee passed the bill with a majority of 3-1, with all the Republicans voting for it.
Convention of states
Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, said that this bill was about the division of power between states and federal governments and said that U.S. constitution framers had introduced Article V to act as a "check" against the federal government.
The bill's supporters say that the "federal government is out of control" and that the states need to step up and stand up to decisions made by Washington D.C. Generally, convention of state supporters have demanded three specific things:
Limiting the power of the federal government.
Pushing for a balanced budget amendment, which would mean that the federal government shouldn't spend more than the revenue collected that year. Left-leaning experts say that this amendment might limit the government's capacity to respond to a crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic where the federal government released trillions of dollars in aid. Meanwhile, right-leaning experts ask why the burden of paying past debt should fall on the future generation.
Establishing term limits for Congressional members. This particular demand has generally had bipartisan support. No one wants to see the same politician in office for 30 years.
Greenville Republican Sen. Tom Corbin asked in the beginning if the Article V had any ground roles to conduct a convention and if it was established what the convention was going to talk about before the convention was put together?
Those who were against the COS bill, majority of the Black lawmakers, said that in the present political climate, a convention of states could attack civil rights protections put in place.
Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Harpootlian, a Democrat, said that if states really wanted to do something about "term limits", they just needed to conduct competitive elections where challengers could "beat" incumbents who had been in the U.S. Congress for a long time. He referred to the bill as an "irresponsible legislation."
Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, asked questions to see whether the idea that a COS could lead to a rogue, runaway convention, where states could "shred up" the constitution. Both Kimbrell and Campsen said that that concern was overblown, since 38 states would have to ratify what the states would talk about.
The bill passed 27-13 on party lines.
So here's what you need to know for the upcoming week:
Starting this week, the House will start budget deliberation and introduce a bill about general appropriation for the fiscal year 2022-2023.
Tuesday, Mar. 15, 10:00 am: A Senate Education Subcommittee would listen to a bill called "save women's sports" act, an anti-LGBTQ bill, which would ban "biological males", language for transgender women or women with high testosterones levels from competing in women's sports. A similar bill was heard by a House subcommittee last week.
At 12:00pm, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear discuss a bill that would create an "illegal immigration enforcement unit" within SLED, which will work in tandem with the federal agency, immigration and customs enforcement.
Wednesday, Mar, 16, 9:00am: The Senate Education Committee will discuss a bill about "open enrollment", which would allow students to enroll in a program based on their preference and not by the address of their homes and zones. This bill is introduced by Greenville Sen. Dwight Loftis.
That's all from me this week!
I'll be back next week with more updates on how everything goes. In the meantime:
If there’s something I’m missing, don’t hesitate to reach out. I welcome any feedback, news tips and ideas you have. Contact me at dchhetri@gannett.com via email, @ChhetriDevyani on Twitter or call me at 864-549-8465.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Donald Trump's visit and anti-abortion bill dominate SC this week
