U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, is resigning early from Congress, leaving the Pinellas County-based seat vacant until after the November election.

Crist said the resignation will be effective at the end of the day Wednesday. In a statement, he said serving as a representative has been “an honor and a privilege.”

His statement did not mention why he was resigning — though there’s only a handful of weeks left for Crist to campaign before he faces Gov. Ron DeSantis in the November gubernatorial election.

Crist thanked his constituents and said he was proud of his work to support veterans, expand solar energy and secure funding for community initiatives.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, is resigning early from Congress, leaving the Pinellas County-based seat vacant until after the November election.

Crist said the resignation will be effective at the end of the day Wednesday. In a statement, he said serving as a representative has been “an honor and a privilege.”

His statement did not mention why he was resigning — though there’s only a handful of weeks left for Crist to campaign before he faces Gov. Ron DeSantis in the November gubernatorial election.

Crist thanked his constituents and said he was proud of his work to support veterans, expand solar energy and secure funding for community initiatives.

Greetings from Florida’s gubernatorial campaign trail, Hialeah edition.

Joining us today, as Democrat Charlie Crist names his lieutenant governor in the “City of Progress,” is the ghost of Fidel Castro.

His youthful, bearded rebel face appears, along with the hammer and sickle, on a mobile electronic billboard — propped up by Republican supporters of Gov. Ron DeSantis outside of Hialeah Middle Community School, where the official announcement is being made.

This is where Karla Hernández-Mats has taught for a decade and where Crist has come to announce the charismatic leader of the Miami-Dade County teachers union as his running mate, affirming that the dismal state of education in Florida will be on the ballot.

The GOP responds with the only trick this elephant knows: insinuating that Crist’s pick is a Castro sympathizer — and so is he.

But it’s remarkable that it took a nanosecond for Team DeSantis to raise from the dead the comandante, after word spread that Crist would reveal his Hialeah-raised, wild-card choice in the largest Cuban city after Havana.

With the nomination of Florida’s 2010 Teacher of the Year, Crist catapults DeSantis’ controversial education policies and his questionable portrayal of teachers as less-than and, worse, “groomers,” to the top of the ballot.

If elected, Crist would have an education insider who embodies what we know the American Dream means in this part of the country.

In Miami-Dade, Republicans couldn’t possibly go an election cycle without throwing their Democratic opponents into a made-up pro-Castro pool. It’s so much easier than having to actually discuss issues, especially policy dooming our children to a lesser education and poorly preparing them for competitive college admissions, issues on which Hernández-Mats can campaign.

If it were not for Fidel, Republicans would have to explain, for example, why lawmakers who get a paycheck from the private education industry have siphoned billions of our tax dollars to their employers — with the blessing of DeSantis and his predecessor, Rick Scott.

They would have to address the teacher brain drain, their flight from the profession and Florida, disgusted with unsafe working conditions, low pay, long hours and ingratitude from the likes of DeSantis.

But Fidel Castro’s ghost serves them well.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled two Trump-era Interior Department oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico were unlawful.

In the ruling, Judge Gregory C. Katsas of the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals found the department in 2018 leased more than 150 million acres for oil exploration without properly analyzing the risk under the National Environmental Policy Act. The lease sales, 250 and 251, were among 11 proposed by the department in its 2017 five-year plan.

In a lawsuit following the sales, a coalition of environmental groups argued the Trump administration’s evaluation had erroneously presumed adequate endorsement of safety and environmental procedures in the Gulf. A D.C. court sided with the Interior Department on April 20, prompting an appeal by the plaintiffs.

Ozzy Osbourne's American dream is coming to an end.

While the Black Sabbath rocker and his family's L.A. antics brought them early reality TV fame on MTV's The Osbournes, Osbourne is ready to move back to his native England. In a new interview with the Observer, the 73-year-old cited gun violence in the United States as a factor in his decision to leave.

“Everything’s f***ing ridiculous there," Osbourne told the U.K. newspaper. "I’m fed up with people getting killed every day. God knows how many people have been shot in school shootings. And there was that mass shooting in Vegas at that concert. … It’s f***ing crazy."

Elissa Slotkin
@ElissaSlotkin
US House candidate, MI-07

My opponent recently removed any mention of choice from his website, hiding his 100% pro-life stance. According to him, it’s not an issue that’s important to voters, saying the update was likely “based upon the issues that were most salient right now.”

Jonathan Cohn
@CitizenCohn

Looks like another Republican candidate has removed abortion language from his website.

This time it’s Tom Barrett, who is challenging Elissa Slotkin for a U.S. House seat in Michigan.

Via @nannburke @CraigDMauger https://detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2022/08/27/insider-top-michigan-democrats-may-not-need-debate-gop-opponents-lawmaker-suggests/7903424001/

Taking on the fossil fuel industry in West Virginia was always going to be a David v Goliath type battle, but after years of protests, lobbying and lawsuits, 68-year-old Becky Crabtree thought the community-led resistance had beaten the Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) in a fair fight.

So when news broke earlier in August that the state’s fossil-fuel friendly senator Joe Manchin had resurrected the beleaguered pipeline, Crabtree, a high school science teacher who teaches students about the climate crisis, felt “numb”.

Manchin, a conservative Democrat who receives more campaign financing from the fossil fuel industry – including pipeline companies – than any other lawmaker in Congress, had agreed to back his party’s historic climate legislation before the crucial midterm elections. But only after he negotiated a side-deal to fast-track the MVP.

“It’s the unfairness that makes me so angry. It’s a deal with the devil,” said Crabtree, 68, who owns a 30-acre sheep farm in Lindside, Monroe county.

The deal is a sweet one for the pipeline’s supporters. Democratic leaders agreed to advance separate legislation in September that would “require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the MVP and give the DC circuit jurisdiction over any further litigation”.

This could help the pipeline company circumvent judges who have suspended construction and overturned permits over environmental concerns, and have future legal cases heard in an appeals court in Washington, which is considered more favourable to developers.

HOUSTON (AP) — A man evicted from a Houston apartment building shot five other tenants — killing three of them — Sunday morning after setting fire to the house to lure them out, police said. Officers fatally shot the gunman.

The incident happened at about 1 a.m. Sunday in a mixed industrial-residential neighborhood in southwest Houston. Police and fire crews responded to the apartment house after reports of the fire, police Chief Troy Finner said.

The gunman opened fire on the other tenants as they emerged from the house, possibly with a shotgun, wounding five, Finner said. Two were dead at the scene, and one died at a hospital. Fire teams rescued two other wounded men, who were hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds, he said.

The man then opened fire as the firefighters battled the fire, forcing them to take cover until police officers spotted the prone gunman and shot him dead, Finner said.

We often think of abortion access through the lens of arbitrary gestational limits: at what stage of pregnancy does a person lose the right to terminate it?

The state already regulates the incidence of abortion, however, from the very moment a pregnancy begins. Patients face a dismal health care landscape and laws that create needless barriers to care. Despite this, it’s suggested that the United States has been some kind of liberal worldwide outlier on abortion.

But the state of abortion access in North Carolina and across the nation is fundamentally different than in other developed countries.

“We don’t often hear our health policies compared to European health policies here in North Carolina, at least not in a much more liberal kind of way,” Alison Kiser, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic, said. “There are significantly fewer financial and legal barriers to abortion throughout Europe.”

In France, for example, abortion is limited after 14 weeks, with exceptions. But birth control is free for people under 25, there is generous paid parental leave and child care is heavily subsidized. Denmark may appear to be stricter, since it draws the line at 12 weeks, but the law provides broad exceptions that consider a person’s social and economic circumstances. It’s easier to find a provider in most European countries, and the procedure is typically covered by universal health care.

Compare that to Mississippi, a state with just one abortion clinic, or North Carolina, where 15 abortion clinics serve more than 10 million people. Even a first trimester abortion typically costs upwards of $400. It may take someone a while to even confirm that they’re pregnant, because going to the doctor for an ultrasound is itself a burden.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday announced a $100,000 donation to the campaign of Rep. Charlie Crist, who earlier this week secured the Democratic nomination to take on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in November’s general election.

“Time to make Ron DeSantis a one-term governor. I’m pledging $100k right now to @CharlieCrist. Who will join me in helping Charlie become the next Governor of Florida?” Newsom tweeted.

Crist on Tuesday won Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary to take on DeSantis, who is seeking a second term. The Cook Political Report rates the race “likely Republican,” meaning the election analysis site predicts DeSantis is likely to win reelection.

The donation is the latest shot at Florida by Newsom, who has in recent months taken on a more national profile and spurred speculation about potential White House aspirations.