Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) shot again at a query requested throughout a governors panel by saying not all Republicans are bizarre.
Actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the Democratic Governors Affiliation hosted a panel with the eight Democratic ladies who’re state governors. On the finish of the panel dialogue, Louis-Dreyfus requested the governors questions that have been submitted by her podcast listeners, together with one asking why Republicans are so bizarre.
“They didn’t use to be weird,” Mills mentioned. “I grew up in a Republican family, and we have a solid group of Republicans in Maine who are not supporting Trump, who are supporting Kamala Harris because they know the traditional Republican Party is not about Trump and never was. He has purged anybody who was free-thinking, and the traditional conservative Republican, they don’t have a place to go anymore, so they’re not all weird. But the Trump MAGA Republicans are weird.”
Louis-Dreyfus, who is thought for her sitcom roles in “Seinfeld” and “Veep,” through which she performed a U.S. vp, opened the panel with a quip about Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), saying Donald Trump’s operating mate would name the panel “a coven of semi-menstruating witches.” She then gave the governors a pop quiz, asking them to call their state flower. (All of them handed.) Louis-Dreyfus spoke with the governors about quite a lot of matters, together with the standing of girls’s reproductive rights because the lack of Roe v. Wade’s protections in 2022.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul mentioned that after Roe was overturned, she went to a vigil at Prospect Park in Brooklyn and mentioned it was a “moment of pain” but additionally energy.
“I held sobbing women in my arms,” Hochul mentioned. “It broke my heart to know that something that my mother’s generation fought for, I certainly took for granted, that my daughter Katie’s generation now has lost and I’m going to fight like hell to get back for my granddaughter.”
A yr after the Supreme Courtroom determination, Hochul signed two payments into legislation to extend entry to abortion drugs and over-the-counter contraceptives for New Yorkers.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly praised her state for changing into the primary to vote to guard abortion rights after the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Health stripped away the nationwide proper. She mentioned the Dobbs determination has “awoken people” to not take reproductive rights as a right.
“I hope they remember this so their granddaughters don’t have to go through this,” she mentioned.
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The panel additionally had its lighthearted moments, comparable to when New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham spoke of how humor might be an “effective tool when things are hot and tense.” She recalled pulling a prank on a fellow member of Congress (who remained unnamed), taking all of the furnishings out of his workplace, laying down sod after which placing the furnishings again in place.
Louis-Dreyfus requested if there have been benefits to being a feminine governor, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer mentioned that though there are distinctive limitations and hurdles for a girl, a bonus is being underestimated.
“I think it’s a huge advantage to come in where people write us off, don’t expect us to be as deep on issues or as thoughtful at articulating a vision or as tough as everyone on this panel is,” Whitmer mentioned.
The governors additionally spoke about electing ladies throughout the poll, encouraging ladies to run for any and all workplaces. Hochul quipped that males usually don’t have any {qualifications}, so ladies shouldn’t fear about that both.
“We got a guy who’s like, ‘I’m a billionaire, I want to be president and run the country,’ and he did,” Hochul mentioned. “So women should not have to have the greatest résumé in the world to start getting into the game.”
