A Republican state lawmaker in Nebraska wanted to make a point about explicit content in school-approved books. But his decision to name two Democrats during the reading of a graphic rape scene has led to calls for his resignation.

During a debate Monday on legislation that would tighten restrictions on the contents of books used in schools, the lawmaker, Sen. Steve Halloran, read a passage from a book he said is in more than a dozen public libraries across the state could be found. .

The passage from the book, Alice Sebold’s memoir “Lucky,” described a sexual assault she experienced as a young woman. After giving a brief warning and asking parents to tell their young children to leave the room or mute the broadcast if they were watching online, Mr. Halloran stood on the floor of the State Capitol in Lincoln. and inserted the names of two of his Democratic colleagues. – Machaela Cavanaugh and her brother, John – in the text as he read it aloud.

At one point, he inserted “Senator Cavanaugh” as he read a passage in which Ms. Sebold described a man who demanded oral sex from her. It was not clear whether Mr. Halloran meant Mr. or Mrs. Cavanaugh.

Shortly after Mr. Halloran finished reading the passage with his interjections, Ms. Cavanaugh responded, tearfully calling his change to the passage unnecessary harassment that damaged the integrity of the legislation they were debating.

“Let’s have a real conversation,” she said to Mr. Halloran. “But don’t start reading rape scenes and saying my name over and over again. You know nothing about anyone else’s life and I can tell you that women in this body have been victims of sexual violence. I didn’t know you were capable of such cruelty.”

Afterwards, lawmakers adjourned the session prematurely. Mrs. Cavanaugh too posted about the incident on Xcalled it “gross, disrespectful and beneath the Nebraska Unicameral.”

Mr. Halloran apologized in a speech at the Capitol on Tuesday morning. But he also defended his comments, saying he did not mean to “trivialize” sexual violence and that he wanted to draw attention to explicit content read in schools. He added that his comments were initially directed at Mr. Cavanaugh. He mentioned the names of Mr. Cavanaugh and his sister, he argued Tuesday, because he felt they were not paying attention as he spoke.

“I apologize for interjecting the names of senators during the reading of a transcript – transcribed testimony at a public hearing with reference to a book that is required reading in some schools,” Mr. Halloran said.

He added, “Should I have interjected the senators’ names? No. Sometimes we do things on the floor and make a statement that we shouldn’t have done.”

A handful of state lawmakers in Nebraska quickly condemned his comments. One Republican senator, Julie Slama, called for Mr. Halloran’s resignation. On Tuesday, a group of protesters echoed those calls during demonstrations outside his office at the state Capitol.

“Interjecting a colleague’s name is far beyond the decency of a professional workplace,” Ms. Slama said in an interview. She called his apology “one of the most half-hearted, ingenious excuses I have ever seen.”

Mr. Halloran, Ms. Cavanaugh and Mr. Cavanaugh did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Halloran, the former president of the National Farmers Organization, a lobbying group for farmers, has served in the state Legislature since 2016.

During his time in office, he has largely aligned himself with the far-right flank of Nebraska politics, particularly in the area of ​​education. In 2017, he was one of a handful of senators to oppose a change that would have required schools to accommodate breastfeeding students. Later that year, a confrontation occurred at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln between a faculty member and a student involved with Turning Point USA, a conservative student group. Mr Halloran sided with the student, saying the university was hostile to conservatives on campus.

Senator John Arch, a Republican who chairs the Legislature, apologized Tuesday to Ms. Cavanaugh and the body’s female lawmakers, calling for more civility and “wisdom” when debating legislation.

“I do not condone the reading of the graphic rape scene in the workplace of the Legislature, nor do I personally condone referring that passage to another member or members of this Legislature, even if it is to make a point to make,” said Mr. Arch. “Despite the R-rating warning, we don’t know who is watching and listening on the other side of the television screen – especially children whom this bill is intended to protect, not to mention survivors of sexual violence.”

Nebraska seemed poised last month to become an unlikely counterbalance to the national trend of tightening drug laws. A coalition of liberal and conservative state lawmakers has passed a bill by a wide margin that would allow local governments to set up needle exchanges.

But Gov. Jim Pillen vetoed the bill, warning of “bringing here the failed policies of drug-ridden cities like San Francisco,” and on Tuesday, Nebraska lawmakers reversed course and narrowly upheld his veto.

The demise of the needle exchange law reflected growing skepticism among Republicans and some Democrats about its harm-reduction approach to illegal drug use. Oregon has taken steps toward recriminalizing hard drugs this year, lawmakers in Idaho introduced a bill that would ban needle exchanges and voters in San Francisco approved a ballot measure that would require drug screening for many welfare recipients.

The debate in Nebraska, a reliably conservative state, reflected the national conversation about tackling drug use. Proponents of the bill spoke about the bill’s opportunity to limit disease transmission and help drug users secure treatment, while Mr. Pillen, a Republican, asked lawmakers to “maintain my veto to prevent our government’s use of dangerous, illegal and dehumanizing drugs.”

The governor’s argument convinced enough lawmakers to change their minds. Twenty-seven of Nebraska’s 49 lawmakers voted Tuesday to override the veto, three short of the required thirty votes needed to pass a bill over Mr. Approve pills. When the Legislature sent the bill to the governor last month, 30 senators voted in favor.

“For people who are still using, who are still struggling with addiction, for whatever reason, this is a door,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Megan Hunt, a political independent who used to be a Democrat. “This is an opportunity for them to get treatment for the first time.”

The bill would have allowed cities and counties in Nebraska to set up programs in which drug users could throw away old needles and pick up clean needles, which supporters say would reduce the risk of spreading HIV or other diseases through needle sharing. Local governments would have been allowed, but not required, to set up the needle exchanges, known as syringe service programs. The exchange sites also would have provided access to substance abuse treatment.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to be addicted, but I can tell you, if no one reaches out, they’ll never get better,” said Sen. Mike Jacobson, a Republican who supported overriding the veto .

Sheriff Aaron Hanson of Douglas County, which includes Omaha, said in an interview before the override vote that he was initially skeptical of the bill, but came around to support it, with some reservations. Sheriff Hanson, a Republican, said he wanted lawmakers to also pass another bill — one that would increase criminal penalties for people who supply drugs that cause serious injury or death.

“I think we spend too much time debating between the pendulum swings of harm reduction and getting tough on crime when we should be implementing what works from both angles,” Sheriff Hanson said.

While drugs — particularly fentanyl, which is not usually injected, and methamphetamine, which often is — are an ongoing problem in Nebraska, the state’s situation compares favorably with other states. In 2021, Nebraska had the lowest rate of fatal drug overdoses in the country, according to federal data. But the number of new diagnoses of HIV, which can be transmitted through shared needles, has increased in Nebraska in recent years.

Opponents of Ms Hunt’s bill questioned the message needle sharing would send. In a column written before the override vote, Mr. Pillen said: “The bill would enable drug use by equipping addicts with free needles. If that sounds crazy to you, let me assure you, you’re not alone.”

Senator Kathleen Kauth, a Republican, said: “I think enabling addiction in any way is really dangerous.”

Nebraska, whose unicameral legislature is officially nonpartisan, would have been far from the only Republican-led state to allow needle exchanges. studies have shown that they can reduce disease transmission without increasing crime. According to KFFa nonprofit organization that tracks health data, more than 40 states had some form of needle or syringe exchange in 2022. When Mike Pence, a Republican, was governor of Indiana, he authorized a needle exchange in 2015 amid an HIV outbreak among drug users. users in a rural area of ​​the state, an example that came up in Lincoln on Tuesday.

But in recent years, as fentanyl has proliferated and concerns about crime and homelessness have emerged as potential political risks for Democrats, some coastal areas that had taken a permissive approach to drug use have retraced their steps.

In San Francisco, where overdose deaths have soared, voters and politicians have called for a tougher stance. City leaders in Portland and their counterparts in Oregon, who not long ago were at the forefront of decriminalization, have taken action to tackle drug use again.

Harm reduction advocates see criticism of such programs as a misguided response to the social problems exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I think a lot of people just come back and see all the public suffering around them,” said Kellen Russoniello, senior policy adviser at the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports decriminalizing drug use. “And all of that played into, ‘Well, it doesn’t look like what we have right now is working.’ And unfortunately, that energy is channeled toward harm reduction, and that’s one of the things that we know works.”

In 2021, when the first Halloween decorations came out in Omaha, Neb., a mechanic named Dan Osborn led 500 of his fellow union members out of the Kellogg's cereal factory on F Street and to the picket lines.

The strike, which involved more than 1,400 workers at several factories, would last a difficult 77 days. through brutal storms and imported strikebreakers and the threat of summary dismissal, which caught President Biden's attention. A first contract was rejected outright by the union, after which a second finally ended the strike just before Christmas.

Now Osborn, 48, is trying to do something considerably more difficult: win a U.S. Senate seat as an independent in the deep-red state of Nebraska.

Mr. Osborn's long term offer Defeating Deb Fischer, Nebraska's Republican senior senator, in November, or even coming close, will test whether the rising power of an energetic labor movement can translate into high elective office during an election year when working-class voters are likely will decide the next president. and the direction of the land.

Western Nebraska's railroad unions first approached him last year to make a bid December survey from a left-wing group called Change Research polled Mr. Osborn over Ms. Fischer, with 40 percent over her 38 percent. It's a dubious result, as even Mr. Osborn's supporters admit, but enough to capture the imagination in a one-party state that has long retreated from the national political conversation.

With no Democrat in the race, the Nebraska Democratic Party will likely endorse Mr. Osborn at a meeting on March 2, party chairman Jane Kleeb said, although Mr. Osborn said he was not sure he wanted to. The state AFL-CIO will endorse him at a meeting in late March, and national unions are watching him closely.

But can a union leader with no political experience find an agenda that transcends the two political parties and appeals only to the workers' portfolio? And can that leader find the money to spread that message further west, beyond the urban centers of Omaha and Lincoln?

“I'm up against a major American company,” Mr. Osborn said as he cut into a steak Tuesday evening. “I stood up for what I thought was right, and I won.”

The Fischer campaign appears to be treating Mr. Osborn as a nuisance, rather than a serious threat to its bid for a third term.

“Deb Fischer has real, strong and deep support across the state, including 93 bipartisan county chairs and more than 1,000 endorsements,” said Derek Oden, her campaign manager. “She is proud of her long-standing support of Nebraska union members and is willing to work with every Nebraskan to make life easier for working families in our state.” The campaign cited three firefighters unions and the carpenters and electricians who supported her six years ago.

Mr. Osborn's attempt to jump from leader of his local party to member of the U.S. Senate has little precedent and almost resembles the five failed presidential attempts of celebrated labor leader Eugene V. Debs early last century.

Union members in other states have made the jump to elective office, such as Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago. The New Jersey AFL-CIO has trained 1,300 members to run for office over the past 27 years, with a 76 percent success rate.

Those seeking office will receive instruction in campaigning, researching the opposition, election law, campaign finance, public speaking and dealing with the press, said Charles Wowkanech, the New Jersey president of the AFL-CIO. In a democratic state with many unions, the program identifies and contacts every union member in a given district, and they often account for more than enough votes to win.

That is not the situation in lightly organized Nebraska, where 9.4 percent of employees are represented. But even in New Jersey, where it is 17.3 percent, the highest office sought is the U.S. House of Representatives, where Donald Norcross, a union electrician who went through the program, holds the First Congressional District.

“We modeled the job candidate program after internship programs,” Mr. Wowkanech said. “You don't start as a journeyman and earn the highest rate. You work your way up.”

In 2018, Randy Bryce, known as “Iron Stache,” captured the liberal imagination and big bucks as an ironworker (and secretary of the Racine County Labor Council) running for retiring Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s seat in Wisconsin. He lost by more than 12 percentage points.

“There are certainly ways to reach the other side of the aisle, but it gets harder every year, that civil divide,” Mr. Bryce said. “We need to find reasons to talk to each other again, and working people running for office is a start.”

Mr. Osborn is not exactly gentle and serious Norma Rae, the brash protagonist of the 1979 film that dramatized the plight of workers and the struggle to organize in the South. Kellogg's management fired him a year ago, accusing him of watching Netflix while at work, a charge he and his friends made up. He is now an apprentice to the steam fitters' union, still works on heating and air conditioning systems as he kicks off his campaign. He is also the father of three children between the ages of 16 and 21. His wife is the general manager of a bar and grill in Omaha.

“He's not hitting his first one,” said Danny Begley, an Omaha City Council member and vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1483. “He's measured. He is calculated.”

Mr. Osborn, who said he was a Democrat until 2016, wants to run on a narrow platform with what he hopes will be extremely broad appeal: legalize marijuana (at least for medical use), raise the minimum wage nationally, secure abortion rights , protect gun rights and expand laws to facilitate union organizing. He condemns the inflation of the Biden era, but blames corporate greed and price gouging. He speaks in a distinctly Republican manner about the American border.

“Without borders you don't have a country,” he said, although he added that once the border is closed, Congress should explore ways to legalize undocumented workers already in the US.

Early in Israel's war in Gaza, campaign advisers told him he needed to make a statement taking a stand. He declined, saying it was not an issue he wanted associated with his campaign.

“Dan needs to send a message that transcends political boundaries and goes to their pockets,” said Josh Josoff, an ally of the International Union of Elevator Constructors. “Don't let the wedge problems pull you away.”

On the one topic he certainly won't be able to avoid, the presidential campaign, he seemed genuinely confused. Nebraska overwhelmingly supports Donald J. Trump, as does Ms. Fischer. Mr. Osborn is not, a potential November campaign killer. But he doesn't support President Biden either.

“I think they're both too old; I think they're both incompetent,” he said, finally taking a stand. “There's a good chance I won't vote for president.”

“He has a tough economic agenda and he has a really unique profile,” Mr Kerrey said. “You can't say, 'Well, what do you know about what we're going through?' because he does. He knows the rules don't work for working people.”

But Nebraska faces Mr. Osborn. West of Lincoln are some of the nation's largest rail yards, but the freight railroad companies, backed by Nebraska Republicans, have battered the railroad unions, who were the first to ask Mr. Osborn to back a new contract fails to meet their demand for seven paid sick days per year. Such unions may have limited power to supply North Platte and westward.

The state's junior senator and former Republican governor Pete Ricketts is the other obstacle to Osborn's bid. He comes from a family of financiers worth billions of dollars, and he's more than willing to spend it.

Just ask Crista Eggers, who has been trying to legalize medical marijuana since 2019 to treat her son Colton, who suffers daily seizures that his doctors believe can be treated with cannabis. Only three states still ban medical marijuana, although polls show 70 to 80 percent of Nebraskans support it. One of those people who is against is Mr. Ricketts, who stated as governor: “If you legalize marijuana, you're going to kill your children.”

In 2020, Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana received 197,000 signatures, in more than enough counties to get a legalization referendum on the ballot. But the Nebraska Supreme Court threw out the case on technical grounds. Supporters tried again in 2022, but had no signatures. Ms. Eggers and her group are now at it again, hoping for some synergy with a ballot measure to protect abortion rights and with Mr. Osborn's campaign, though the group is banned from supporting him.

One problem for Ms. Eggers, and for Mr. Osborn, is money. Signature rides are expensive and 90 of Nebraska's 93 counties are rural, adding to the challenge. Mr. Osborn himself has little statewide name recognition and would need an introduction in the form of television advertising and a robust campaign schedule, both expensive endeavors. Union supporters are optimistic that Mr. Osborn's message will resonate to Ms. Fischer's detriment, if he has the money to get it out.

“We just have to get past the Republican and Democratic stuff, these teams that we're a part of,” said Josh Dredla, a friend of Mr. Osborn who was at the Kellogg's picket lines.

Mr. Osborn said the campaign should raise at least $2 million. So far he has raised just over $200,000.

Ms. Fischer ended 2023 sitting on a war chest of almost $3.3 million.

A federal appeals court the conviction was dismissed from former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, on Tuesday on the grounds that his trial should never have been held in Los Angeles in the first place.

Mr. Fortenberry, 62, had been convicted by a jury in March 2022 on three felony charges related to lying to federal authorities about illegal campaign donations he received during a 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles.

During interviews at his home in Nebraska and at his law office in Washington, D.C., he told federal investigators that he was unaware that $30,000 in donations came from a Lebanese Nigerian billionaire, Gilbert Chagoury. As a foreign citizen, he was ineligible to contribute to a U.S. candidate. But an FBI agent had previously listened to a telephone conversation in which a cooperating witness told the congressman about the source of the money.

In Tuesday’s opinion, a three-judge panel ruled that Mr. Fortenberry should not have been tried in Los Angeles because of his statements about campaign contributions to federal agents in Nebraska and Washington, D.C. Mr. Fortenberry was charged and convicted of making false statements, not of receiving the illegal contributions.

“The Constitution clearly requires that a criminal defendant be tried in the place where the criminal conduct occurred,” Judge James Donato wrote on behalf of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The court said Mr Fortenberry could be retried at a suitable location.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, said in a statement that a new trial was possible.

“We are evaluating possible next steps before deciding how best to proceed,” he said.

In a statement released by his attorney, Mr. Fortenberry said on behalf of himself and his wife: “We are pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s decision. Celeste and I would like to thank everyone who has supported and supported us with their kindness and friendship.”

Mr. Fortenberry, who was first elected to Congress in 2004, resigned days after his conviction. He was urged to do so by Nebraska’s Republican governor and by colleagues from both parties, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was the minority leader, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

In June 2022, Mr. Fortenberry was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine and perform 320 hours of community service.

The Nigerian billionaire in question, Gilbert Chagoury, has paid $1.8 million in fines to the US government for making improper donations to various campaigns.