UPDATE: Wednesday, Mar 20, 2024 · 2:20:28 AM +00:00
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Irontortoise
From the AP today:
By Tuesday morning, video recordings of Halloran’s speech had made the rounds on social media and a handful of protesters appeared outside Halloran’s office before debate began Tuesday, calling for him to step down.
Lawmakers began the day by addressing Halloran’s reading. Arch apologized “to all the female lawmakers in the body,” and said he was not in the chamber when Halloran read the excerpt. Had he know Halloran planned to do so, Arch said he would have sought to dissuade him.
The most powerful remarks came from fellow Republican Sen. Julie Slama, one of the body’s youngest members at 27. She has been the target of sexualized speech on the legislative floor and accused a one-time Republican candidate for governor of assaulting her when she was just 22.
In 2020, Slama was the target of comments from then-Sen. Ernie Chambers, a Democrat, who implied she was appointed to her seat in exchange for sexual favors. In 2022, she was among several women — but the only one to come out publicly — to accuse then Nebraska Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster of groping her. Herbster, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, denied the accusations but lost the primary election to current Gov. Jim Pillen.
Slama said Tuesday it made no difference whether Halloran was invoking the name of Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh or her brother.
“It doesn’t matter the gender of the person you were trying to sexually harass,” she said.
If Halloran had interjected the name of a colleague into a graphic description of sexual assault in a business setting, she asked, “Do you think you would have your job the next day?”
“We can’t just let this go,” Slama said. “We owe it to the little girls who are watching at home wanting to be something like this when they grow up. We owe it to every Nebraskan because we are the most public workplace in the state, and we deserve for it to be a professional workplace.”
This isn’t the first time Halloran has made offensive and confusing remarks while trying to make a point. Last session, he argued that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. had its roots not in choice for women, but in a plot to “kill off the Black race.” He also attempted to highlight an exemption for rape and incest in a bill last year to limit abortions to about six weeks by stating that “no one’s forcing anyone to be pregnant. Pregnancy’s a voluntary act between two consenting adults.”
Halloran said he has no plans to resign and defended his reading of the “Lucky” excerpt by saying he was highlighting an example of a book he believes should be banned. He is in his eighth and final year as a lawmaker and unable to seek reelection due to term limits, meaning his remarks Monday night will be among the last floor speeches of his tenure.
First saw this at Raw Story, though it’s the number one item on Nebraska media today (trigger warning since it involves graphic descriptions of a rape scene):
State Sen. Steve Halloran (R-Hastings) read an excerpt from the novel "Lucky," by Alice Seabold, during a debate over an obscenity bill but apparently tried to make a point by substituting in the name of state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (D-Omaha) to graphic scenes of sexual violence, reported the Nebraska Examiner.
“That was so out of line and unnecessary and disgusting to say my name over and over again like that,” said Machaela Cavanaugh said.
“You don’t know anything about anyone else’s life, and I can tell you that women in this body have been subjected to sexual violence,” she added. “I didn’t know you were capable of such cruelty. That was so unbecoming of you and unbecoming of this.
Halloran did not use her first name and didn't make clear whether he meant Machaela Cavanaugh, who had spoke out in opposition to the bill seeking to crack down on supposedly obscene materials in schools, or her brother John Cavanaugh, who also serves in the state Senate, but others seemed to understand whom he meant and called for his resignation.
"Honestly, I think Halloran should resign," said state Sen. Megan Hunt (D-Omaha). "How dare he even form his mouth to say the words 'Give me a blow job Senator Cavanaugh.' He said that because he wanted to say it. It was beyond the pale. Pure aggression to read a rape scene out loud and put it like that. Broken brain."
State Sen. Julie Slama (R-Dunbar) also called on him to step down.
“Disgusting,” Slama wrote in a tweet to Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh. “No context makes this appropriate.”
This morning Halloran offered up a lame ‘apology’ about how it was a ‘mistake’ to have inserted Cavanaugh’s name into the passage he read, but otherwise remains defiant in his defense of the book banning bill he was supporting, and apparently has no intention of resigning. At least that’s a tiny bit better than his statement last night when he tried to claim he was actually referring to Machaela’s brother, John Cavanaugh, who also serves with her in the Nebraska state senate, and who had just spoken against the bill before Halloran’s malicious stunt — as if that would have made any real difference. From nbcnews today:
Sen. Julie Slama, a Republican and the youngest member of the chamber, spoke on the floor following Halloran's apology. She said Halloran's remarks Monday were "wholly inappropriate" and called on the legislature to take stronger action to prevent similar incidents.
"I don't care if it was John Cavanaugh, I don't care if it was Machaela Cavanaugh," she said. "It doesn't matter the gender of the person you are trying to sexually harass."
Sen. Wendy DeBoer, a Democrat, said in floor remarks Tuesday that she hopes Halloran will apologize and members shouldn't dismiss his remarks.
"If you have not been in a situation to experience harassment, sexual violence, you maybe don’t understand the ways in which those memories can be triggered," she said. "And when describing the reading from the transcript, and then inserting the senator's name in there, already, that’s a problem. But the additional, I think it was meant to be perhaps some sort of maybe a gotcha moment, or a moment of something, but there is aggression in it and that’s where the danger lies."
It looks like this story isn’t going away anytime soon, and has already been picked up by the international media. From The Telegraph a short time ago:
Steve Halloran, a Nebraska senator, read from the memoir – which is one of the most banned books in American schools – during a debate on restricting pupils’ access to obscene materials.
There was uproar in the State Capitol in Lincoln when he inserted the name “Senator Cavanaugh” into the text, suggesting the material was too extreme for children.
He edited a passage so that the aggressor in the book asks “Senator Cavanaugh” to perform a sex act on him.
The 75-year-old senator didn’t specify which Cavanaugh. Machaela Cavanaugh and her brother John are both Democrats also serving in the Nebraska legislature.
But Machaela Cavanaugh, 45, was reduced to tears, describing the incident as harassment and calling it “unbecoming” of Mr Halloran and “unbecoming of this body”.
“That was so out of line and unnecessary and disgusting to say my name over and over again like that,” she said, adding that there were women in the legislature who had experienced sexual violence.
There are full transcripts out there of what Halloran actually read, but I won't link to them here since they are way too graphic to include.