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braun, mike Sen 13%

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https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/mike-braun

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21* 13%

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Indiana's General Assembly has had Republican supermajorities in both chambers since 2010, with Republicans holding 70 of 100 House seats and 40 of 50 Senate seats as of 2024, allowing them to override gubernatorial vetoes and pass legislation without Democratic support.

idsnews.com Wikipedia

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state level decap via supermajority

The bill that turned IDEM into an empty shell

SB 277, or “the IDEM agency bill,” should have sailed through both chambers of the general assembly during the 2026 session. In many ways, the bill was a state-level replica of what the Trump administration has been doing to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the policy equivalent of red meat served up in a red state.

Instead, SB 277 barely squeaked into law. On February 24, Pierce’s colleagues in the House passed the bill by just 8 votes; on February 25, the Senate passed it by 5. And, as the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported, even a margin of 5 wasn’t easy to achieve. “On the last vote on the night in the Senate,” the Chronicle said, the running tally on the vote board for Senate Bill 277 was 22 for and 25 against. To save the GOP bill, “four Republicans changed their no votes to yes, giving it a 26-21 victory.”

This is the story of how SB277 came to be, and how a handful of dedicated advocates and a few thousand engaged Hoosiers nearly derailed Governor Braun’s bid to make himself the chief deregulator in the Midwest.

How SB 277 Became Law

Early meetings with Commissioner Clint Woods

:{Organizations comprising Indiana’s environmental coalition, including HEC, met with Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) Commissioner Clint Woods twice after his appointment by Governor Braun in early 2025. Woods also made himself available for an individual meeting with HEC. During these meetings, the only mention of any upcoming environmental legislative initiatives were references to “cleaning up” outdated references and duplication in Title 13, the section of Indiana Code governing IDEM.

Woods gave no hint that substantive changes to Title 13 were in the works. In fact, as HEC discovered during the 2026 legislative session, the only people invited to contribute to the legislative effort that ultimately became SB 277 were a small, select group of industry representatives. Commissioner Woods chose not to involve any members of the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee, except the Chair, and did not consult with the Ranking Minority Member of that committee. Environmental advocates and the general public were entirely excluded from the process.}:

What we expected

Based on periodic agency internal reviews and on our meetings with the Commissioner, HEC anticipated a 2026 IDEM agency bill primarily comprised of ministerial “clean up” of outdated code citations and references to long-changed federal administrative code, along with some shuffling of duties among IDEM divisions. And, while SB 277 offered much of what we had expected to see, it offered much, much more that we had not.

What was delivered

Late in the day on Thursday, January 8, 2026 – just hours before the January 9 deadline for Senators to introduce new bills – SB 277 was filed; all 176 pages of the bill became publicly available on the Indiana General Assembly (IGA) website and SB 277 was immediately set for its first and only hearing in the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs at 9:30 a.m., Monday, January 12. Instead of a brief, ministerial clean-up bill, SB 277 proposed dozens of substantive changes to Title 13, every one of which could have serious consequences for all Hoosiers.

And HEC had a single business day (and a weekend) to digest and analyze it.

Since the Chair was the only member of the Environmental Affairs Committee (as far as we know) to have a copy of SB 277 prior to its filing on January 8, there was no meaningful opportunity for other committee members to draft amendments to be offered during the January 12 hearing. HEC was among a number of allied organizations to testify against the bill’s glaring and substantive changes to air water and land protections during that hearing. In our testimony, we noted that SB 277, as introduced:

Nevertheless, SB 277 passed out of the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs on a party line vote, 5-3.

On January 22, the bill made a brief stop in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it once again passed on a party line vote, 9-4, with minor amendments. The bill was debated on the Senate floor on January 28 and 29, with only one non-substantive amendment accepted. The first full Senate vote was close, 29-19, with 9 Republican senators joining all 10 Senate Democrats in voting against the bill.

Dealings in the House

As the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs had done, the House Committee on Environmental Affairs gave SB 277 a single hearing, on February 11. During this hearing, the committee chair introduced an unexpected amendment to the bill to effectively prohibit IDEM from regulating thousands of PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” by narrowly defining the subset of PFAS-related compounds that would be subject to IDEM control. The amendment also prohibited IDEM from considering scientific findings made by EPA with respect to risk assessments of toxic substances. Concerns and amendments from the committee’s minority members were not considered, and SB 277 passed out of the House Committee on Environmental Affairs, 6-5.

Multiple House members made heroic efforts to amend or defeat SB 277 during its second reading on the House floor on February 23. In all, twelve amendments that HEC supported were offered; only two were accepted, resulting in slight improvements to the bill. SB 277’s House sponsor offered an amendment that prevailed, but it removed only part of the offending PFAS and risk language that he introduced into the bill in his committee. The bill passed the full House on February 24 by a vote of 53-45. Fifteen majority members voted to defeat the bill.

HEC and the Coalition nearly defeat the bill

Beginning on January 8 and continuing through the final vote on SB 277, HEC and coalition members Indiana Conservation Voters, Earth Charter Indiana, Conservation Law Center, Save the Dunes, Citizens Action Coalition and Sierra Club Indiana Chapter, made monumental efforts to educate legislators and advocate against passage of the bill. Tim Maloney (retired HEC Policy Director), League of Women Voters, Indiana Wildlife Federation and Stand for Health Freedom all offered important assists. In the end, 12 majority senators were convinced to vote against SB 277, for a final vote of 25-21. Four others majority senators initially voted against the bill, but switched their vote under pressure from leadership while the voting board was held open for a rare and extended period. Had those four held firm, our coalition would have defeated SB 277, 21-25.

These factors influenced the result

HEC was part of a strong and coordinated team across many environmental and conservation organizations, and we worked effectively with the MAHA movement (Stand for Health Freedom) because of the negative impact SB 277 will have on individual Hoosiers’ health. HEC also garnered early majority support, conducted excellent grassroots messaging and action, and worked relentlessly against the bill over the session’s eight weeks. Yet, the technical and legal complexity of this legislation, together with the short time frame for consideration, made our opposition more difficult. Ultimately, SB 277 was pushed by the Governor and his fast-talking IDEM Commissioner in a compressed legislative session where many other important bills also had to be considered.

As Senator Glick said in urging her colleagues to defeat the bill, cautioning against moving too fast with loss of significant protections, “This is our environment. This is the world we live in and the one we’re going to pass on to the next generation…This is the air we breathe, and the water we drink, and the land we share.” This simple but powerful message was sadly lost on many of Indiana’s leaders, including Governor Braun, who signed the bill into law on March 5.

HEC supporters sent more than 3,000 messages opposing SB 277 to their Indiana Representatives and/or Senators, joining the efforts of our coalition to sound the alarm on this bill early and often while providing sound scientific and legal analysis. Our combined efforts resulted in some improvements to the bill – and a growing awareness that, together, we can make a difference for Indiana. With the help of more thoughtful and forward-thinking Hoosiers, HEC and its supporters will continue bringing our message to the Statehouse with increasing power to prevail.

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President Donald Trump has publicly singled out one of the most senior Republican lawmakers in Indiana for failing to win over enough votes to support Trump's mid-decade redistricting proposal.

In a Monday post to his Truth Social platform, Trump called Indiana Senate president pro tempore Rodric D. Bray "a Complete and Total RINO [Republican in Name Only]" for his recent statement that "there are not enough votes" to redraw U.S. House of Representatives districts ahead of the next Census. He wrote in a subsequent post that he would support a primary challenger against Bray and anyone who supported him.

"Republicans must be TOUGH and SMART if we are going to WIN the Midterms," Trump wrote in his signature style of oddly placed capital letters. "The Rod Brays of Politics are WEAK and PATHETIC. I wish he cared about saving our Country as much as Democrats care about destroying it."

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) later wrote on his official X account that he had a call with Trump, and encouraged Hoosier State lawmakers to not give up on mid-decade redistricting. Braun defended the plan by saying new maps were necessary "to ensure the MAGA agenda is successful in Congress."

"Indiana’s State Legislators must show up for work and take a public vote for fair maps to counter the gerrymandering in California and Illinois. But the Indiana State Senate is hiding behind closed doors and refusing to even bring redistricting to a vote," Braun tweeted. "Hoosiers deserve to know where their legislators stand and expect them to show up for work, not walk out and hide in the dark."

Braun's statement is misleading, as California and Illinois' redistricting measures were done in direct response to Republican redistricting in Texas and elsewhere. California's new maps – which were only put in place after Golden State voters approved a redistricting ballot initiative earlier this month — would likely give Democrats five new seats. Texas' maps are expected to tilt five Democratic seats toward Republicans. Ohio Republicans' redistricting map creates two likely new Republican seats, though Democrats are now more competitive in one GOP district. North Carolina Republicans are also likely to give the GOP one more U.S. House seat after their mid-decade redistricting effort.

Bray insisted last week that Republicans didn't have enough support in the Indiana state senate, even though the GOP controls 40 of 50 seats in the chamber. This means there are more than a 16 members of his own party who are willing to vote with the senate's 10 Democratic members against new redistricting maps.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/indiana-residents/

~ interracial marriage

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1119 dereg nat

With voter worries about Trump environmental rollbacks on the rise (“Surge in young Republicans worried about the environment,” Reuters, Aug. 29, 2019), GOP lawmakers are looking for ways to boost their green credentials.

First, in July, came the jointHouse-Senate “Republican Roosevelt Conservation Caucus.” This is a purely Republican effort to tout non-regulatory solutions to pollution, conservation, energy, and climate problems.

Now comes the “Climate Solutions Caucus,” a bipartisan Senate effort. Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, and Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told NBC News that they got the idea for the caucus “after meeting with constituents in town halls across both of their very different states…[T]he group will first meet with scientists, policy experts and business leaders to try to find common ground and move forward from there.”

Skepticism seems warranted. As my friends at Sludge report, both senators have received campaign donations from the fossil fuel sector and related industries:

It’s not inevitable that politicians take money from this sector. “All but one of the remaining major Democratic presidential candidates have signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge,” Sludge notes, “a commitment to reject donations of over $200 from PACs, executives, and lobbyists of fossil fuel companies. Coons has not made either commitment.”

On the other hand, Coons has co-sponsored (with Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.)) a carbon-pricing bill that, unlike many such proposals in the House and Senate in recent years, does not try to nullify the EPA’s Clean-Air-Act-granted authority to regulate carbon pollution, as InsideClimate News reported in July. The legislation also contains a provision stating that “nothing in this legislation preempts any state law or regulation.” Translation: It leaves open the door to suing Big Oil firms at the state level for climate-related damages, as some cities and counties are already trying to do.

It is hard to imagine climate legislation getting a vote while Trump is president. But the fact that lawmakers are hashing out their climate policy ideas despite Trump’s policy of climate denial is worth watching. It could lead to faster action under a different White House — or if senators challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s cynical legislative gridlock. (“No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government,” writes Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.“His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.”)

In either scenario, “winning” will probably involve getting some senators who’ve taken fossil fuel money on board with the plan.

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an 919

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/facebook-removed-doctors-fact-check-of-false-anti-abortion-video-because-ted-cruz-complained

no lnx

Facebook removed doctors’ fact-check of false anti-abortion video because Ted Cruz complained

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 14, 2019

Facebook removed a fact-check authored by three doctors rebutting an anti-abortion video’s false claims because Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans complained in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that it removed the fact-check pending a review after Cruz, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana accused the social media giant of being biased against conservatives.

The videos in question featured Lila Rose, the founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action. Both videos falsely claimed that “abortion is never medically necessary.”

Three doctors authored a fact-check for Health Feedback, an organization that seeks to debunk misleading medical coverage. The fact-check deemed the video “inaccurate,” noting that “certain medical conditions such as placenta previa and HELLP syndrome can make abortion a necessary medical procedure in order to prevent the mother’s death.”

“Certain life-threatening conditions during pregnancy can make abortion medically necessary in order to save the mother’s life,” the fact-check said. “Preserving both the life of the mother and child by inducing early delivery, as the video suggests, is only possible if the fetus’ gestational age is advanced enough that it stands a chance of survival outside the womb. As this is not always the case, early delivery is not always a suitable alternative to abortion.”

Facebook flagged the videos on Aug. 30, BuzzFeed News reported, adding a link to the fact-check next to the videos and notifying followers of the Live Action page that the videos had been rated as false.

The social network also told Live Action administrators that it would throttle their reach “because of repeated sharing of false news,” according to a screenshot published by the group.

Rose lashed out on Twitter, calling the doctors behind the fact-check liars and “abortionists.”

Two of the doctors have ties to reproductive rights organizations, BuzzFeed News noted. Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at the University of California, San Francisco,sits on the board of the NARAL Pro-Choice America foundation. Dr. Robyn Shickler is a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, which says its goal is to “improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion, especially to meet the health care needs of economically disadvantaged patients.”

Cruz and the other Republican senators cited these affiliations to complain to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that his social network was behind the “censorship” of conservatives and suggested that doctors who “perform abortions” are not qualified to discuss abortion.

The four Republicans sent a letter to Zuckerberg claiming that the fact-check was “performed by two pro-abortion activists with significant ties to to abortion-rights advocacy organization, both of whom are paid to perform abortions.”

“No reasonable person would describe Grossman or Schickler as neutral or objective when it comes to issues of abortion,” the senators wrote of the doctors, “yet Facebook relied on their rating to suppress and censor a pro-life organization with more than 3 million followers.”

The letter went on to allege that Facebook has been repeatedly “biased” toward conservatives on Facebook, especially when it comes to anti-abortion views.

The senators claimed that the fact-check violated the code of conduct created by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which BuzzFeed News noted had certified Health Feedback’s parent organization, Science Feedback, which relies on scientists and doctors to fact-check media coverage.

Facebook told BuzzFeed News that it took down the fact-check on Wednesday pending a review by the IFCN.

“We have been in touch with the IFCN which has opened an investigation to determine whether the fact checkers who rated this content did so by following procedures designed to ensure impartiality,” a company spokesman told the outlet. “While the IFCN investigates, we are removing the relevant fact checks and have communicated this to the members of the US Senate who brought this specific concern to our attention.”

The IFCN said in a statement that it will review materials related to the fact-check and determine if anything violated its code of conduct. In the meantime, the video pushing false information debunked by actual doctors who are experts in their field will continue to circulate on Facebook without restriction.

Grossman told BuzzFeed News that his work “doesn’t make me biased — it makes me a well-informed expert. If the question were about cardiac care, we would expect the answer to come from a well-respected cardiologist, and this should be no different.”

Schickler told the outlet that she doesn’t have a “political agenda.”

“I’m an advocate because it’s part of a physician’s job to advocate for the health and well-being of our patients,” she said.

Both doctors agreed that removing the fact-check was a dangerous precedent for the social network to set.

“It is very concerning that a letter from a group of senators can silence the voices of medical and scientific experts,” Grossman said. “This sets a precedent where politics matter more than scientific evidence.”

Grossman said in a tweet that it is “reasonable” for the fact-check to be investigated further.

“But in the meantime they should take down [Rose’s] videos, too,” he wrote. “They’re so full of misinformation that they’re really dangerous.”

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