Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy won’t seek reelection
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the longest-serving current member of the Senate, said Monday he will not seek reelection next year to the seat he has held for eight terms.
Leahy, 81, said he and his wife, Marcelle, have concluded that “it is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter who will carry on this work for our great state. It’s time to come home.”
The announcement marks the end of a political era. First elected to the Senate in 1974, Leahy is the last of the so-called Watergate babies who were elected after President Richard Nixon’s resignation. During his nearly half-century in the Senate, Vermont shifted from one of the most solidly Republican states in the country to one of its most progressive.
That transition will be critical to Democrats who hope to maintain control of the Senate after next year’s midterm elections. With the chamber evenly divided, the party can’t afford to lose any of its current seats.
Leahy will leave the Senate with a record of promoting human rights, working to ban land mines and protect individual privacy rights. He has been a champion of the environment, especially of Lake Champlain, the body of water that separates northern Vermont from upstate New York.
By retiring and creating the first vacancy in Vermont’s congressional delegation since 2006, Leahy sets up a scramble to succeed him among a number of the state’s up-and-coming politicians.
Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said a likely choice to succeed Leahy would be Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, the state’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
It’s uncertain which Republican Party candidates might seek their party’s nomination to run in the November election. Phil Scott, the state’s Republican governor who frequently criticized former President Donald Trump and has called for civility in politics, reiterated Monday that he is not interested in running.
Britain car explosion: British authorities raised the country’s threat level to its second-highest rung on Monday, after police said a blast in a taxi outside a Liverpool hospital was caused by a homemade bomb.
Investigators said they were treating Sunday’s explosion — which killed the suspected bombmaker and injured the cab driver — as a terrorist incident, but that the motive was unclear.
Counterterrorism police named the dead man as 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen. They did not give further details, though Britain’s Press Association news agency and other media reported that he had not been on the radar of the security services.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the U.K. threat level from substantial — meaning an attack is likely — to severe, meaning it is highly likely, following the U.K.’s second fatal incident in a month.
Film crew union contracts:
Film industry crew members have narrowly voted to approve a pair of contracts with Hollywood producers after a standoff that came within days of a strike that would have frozen productions across the U.S., union leaders said
Monday.
The agreements passed 56% to 44% among delegates from the 36 local unions of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees in the voting system that resembles the U.S. Electoral College.
But in the popular vote, 50.3% said yes and 49.7% no of the approximately 45,000 members who cast a ballot in voting held from Friday through Sunday.
A victorious “no” vote would have reopened negotiations and brought back the possibility of a strike.
Philippine elections: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday filed his candidacy for a senate seat in next year’s elections, walking back on his vow that he would retire from politics when his term ends and prompting rights groups to say the leader is working to evade accountability for his deadly anti-drug campaign while in office.
A lawyer for the 76-yearold
Duterte filed his senatorial candidacy at the Commission on Elections before the deadline for last-minute contenders in May’s nationwide elections.
Duterte announced early last month that he was retiring from politics after dropping plans to run for vice president due to what he said was widespread public sentiment against the move.
Legal experts say that could violate the Philippine constitution, which limits presidents to a single six-year term, as the vice president replaces the elected president if the latter dies or gets incapacitated for any reason.
Texas governor: Democrat Beto O’Rourke is running for governor of Texas, pursuing a blue breakthrough in America’s biggest red state after his star-making U.S. Senate campaign in 2018 put him closer than anyone else in decades.
O’Rourke’s announcement Monday kicks off a third run for office in as
many election cycles. He burst into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary as a party phenomenon but dropped out eight months later as money dried up.
“It’s not going to be easy. But it is possible,” O’Rourke said in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of his announcement.
O’Rourke’s return sets up one of 2022’s highest-profile — and potentially most expensive — races for governor. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is seeking a third term and has put Texas on the vanguard of hardright policymaking in state capitals and emerged as a national figure. A challenge from O’Rourke, a mediasavvy former congressman with a record of generating attention and cash, could tempt Democrats nationwide to pour millions of dollars into trying — again — to flip Texas.
India opens to vaccinated:
India began on Monday allowing fully vaccinated foreign tourists to enter
the country on regular commercial flights in the latest easing of coronavirus restrictions as infections fall and vaccinations rise.
Tourists entering India must be fully vaccinated, follow all COVID-19 protocols and test negative for the virus within 72 hours of their flight, according to the health ministry. Many will also need to undergo a post-arrival COVID-19 test at the airport. However, travelers from countries that have agreements with India for mutual recognition of vaccination certificates, such as the U.S., U.K. and many European nations, can leave the airport without undergoing a COVID-19 test.
This is the first time India has allowed foreign tourists on commercial flights to enter the country since March 2020, when it imposed one of the toughest lockdowns in the world in an attempt to contain the pandemic. Fully vaccinated tourists on chartered flights were allowed to enter starting last month.