Democratic House challenger Jessica Cisneros has generally stayed silent about her party leadership’s endorsement of Rep. Henry Cuellar in their primary. But Cuellar’s staunch anti-abortion stance is giving Cisneros another opportunity to boost her profile.

The progressive challenger on Wednesday called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants to withdraw their endorsement of Cuellar as part of the Democratic Party’s efforts to protect abortion rights. The party is looking into ways to enshrine abortion rights into law after POLITICO reported a draft majority Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v. Wade.

“I am calling on Democratic Party leadership to withdraw their support of Henry Cuellar who is the last anti-choice Democrat in the House,” Cisneros said in a statement on Wednesday. “With the House majority on the line, he could very much be the deciding vote on the future of our reproductive rights and we cannot afford to take that risk.”

Her statement came hours before Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) was set to rally in Laredo with Cuellar Wednesday evening, three weeks before the Democratic primary runoff for the South Texas district. Notably, Pelosi and other leaders also continued to support Cuellar after his home was raided by the FBI. Cisneros finished a point and a half behind Cuellar in the March primary, but neither reached majority support, triggering the one-on-one runoff.

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes tried to connect with then-President Donald Trump on the evening of Jan. 6, 2021, and urge him to ask the group to forcibly oppose the ascension of Joe Biden, according to a court filing posted on Wednesday in connection with a plea deal by one of Rhodes’ allies.

That evening, after Oath Keepers led by Rhodes departed Capitol grounds, Rhodes gathered members of the group at the Phoenix Hotel in Capitol Hill. There, according to the filing, Rhodes contacted “an individual over speaker phone.”

One of the other members of the group, William Todd Wilson, “heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” prosecutors say.

“This individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with President Trump,” according to the filing. “After the call ended, Rhodes stated to the group, ‘I just want to fight.’”

For two months after the 2020 presidential election, William Todd Wilson made preparations for an attack on the U.S. Capitol from his home in North Carolina, where he was a county leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group. On Jan. 5, 2021, according to court records, he drove to a hotel in Tysons Corner in Virginia with an AR-15-style rifle, a 9mm pistol, about 200 rounds of ammunition, body armor, pepper spray and a large walking stick “intended for use as a weapon,” according to court records filed Wednesday.

Wilson stashed the weapons as part of teams of “quick reaction forces” waiting in various hotels outside of the District, ready to be summoned if needed during the Jan. 6 riot, the court records state.

On Wednesday, Wilson admitted he traveled from Tysons Corner to the Capitol with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes that morning, entered the Capitol through the west side and then joined a mob of people who forced open the Rotunda doors on the east side of the building, enabling a column of fellow Oath Keepers to join the melee.

When the Capitol was finally cleared, Wilson joined Rhodes in a suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, just blocks from the Capitol, and listened to Rhodes call someone on a speaker phone, Wilson admitted. Wilson told investigators he heard “Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” the court records state. “This individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with President Trump. After the call ended, Rhodes stated to the group, ‘I just want to fight.’”

Stacey Abrams will pivot from fundraising for her Georgia gubernatorial race to redirect funds to abortion rights groups after the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision.

“This moment demands action, so I will be blunt: The abomination of that leaked opinion is coming to find every one of us,” Abrams said Wednesday in a campaign email, per Eugene Scott. “Women in Georgia and across this country. LGBTQ+ and disabled people. And particularly those of color or low-income. This is a terrifying time for our nation.”

“In response, we have a right to be angry, and a right to be right,” added Abrams, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary. “But my parents taught me that it is insufficient to be merely upset; you have to act.”

Abrams listed a number of abortion rights groups including Planned Parenthood Southeast and NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia that would benefit from her campaign’s funds. The announcement came a day after the former state lawmaker expressed her anger on Twitter about the draft opinion that could mean the end to a constitutional right to abortion.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn is battling an effort to keep him off the ballot in North Carolina, arguing that state officials cannot disqualify him based on his call for a “fight” on Jan. 6, 2021, to keep Joe Biden from taking office.

“Representative Cawthorn vigorously denies that he engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, a country he loves,” the lawmaker’s attorney James Bopp Jr. told a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. “But this is not about the facts, this is about the law.”

The law, Bopp asserted, allows only Congress to decide whether Cawthorn, a Republican first elected in 2020, is eligible for a second term. A group of North Carolina voters maintains that state election officials can and should find that Cawthorn, 26, is disqualified under a portion of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War to bar those who violated their oaths through “insurrection” from returning to office.

“Challengers have reasonable suspicion that Representative Cawthorn was involved in planning efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice President into rejecting valid electoral votes and subvert the essential constitutional function of an orderly and peaceful transition of power,” their attorneys wrote.

Dear Friends,
I hope you and your family are doing well. I am very honored and excited to invite you to an In-Person Reception with Vice President Kamala Harris at the 2022 Women's Leadership Forum in DC on Wednesday, May 25th - Thursday, May 26th and attend the Women's Leadership Forum.


The Democratic Party Presents the
2022 Women's Leadership Forum Celebrating Democrac
Conference and Gala
with
Vice President Kamala Harris

In support of the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund

Wednesday, May 25th - Thursday, May 26th
Time to be announced
Washington, D.C.

Please register using the link below

https://fundraising.democrats.org/a/5-25-wlf-conference-gala?attr=127241332

General Admission ($250)
1 Ticket to WLF Conference

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1 Ticket to WLF Gala, 3 Tickets to WLF Conference

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1 Ticket to Photoline Pre-Reception, 1 Preferred Seating Ticket to WLF Gala, 5 Tickets to WLF Conference

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1 Ticket to Photoline Pre-Reception, 2 VIP Tickets to WLF Gala, 8 Tickets to WLF Conference, Membership to National Finance Council



Ajay Bhutoria,
National Finance Committee, DNC
Vice-Chair Biden -Harris for President Inaugural Committee
National Finance Committee, BPF 2020
Co-chair Biden for President AAPI National Finance Committee.
National Co-chair AAPI Leadership Council, Biden for President 2020

Author, Entrepreneur, Political Activist.
www.ajaybhutoria.com
510-378-0698