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South Carolina’s “Sister Senators” on finding common ground
If the walls of Sandy Senn’s office could talk, they might not have much to say anymore. The South Carolina State Senator is stripping them of their memories. Meanwhile, Senator Katrina Shealy has her 12-year political career all crammed into cardboard boxes. And we found freshman Senator Penry Gustafson sorting through emails from her soon-to-be former constituents.
All three lost in their primaries this past June.
Asked if she thinks she will get back into politics, Gustafson replied, “I don’t know.”
Earlier this summer the three said their goodbyes in the South Carolina Senate Chamber. “My farewell is conflicted, because I don’t want to go,” Gustafson said.
Shealy told her soon-to-be-former colleagues, “We’ve helped women and we’ve helped veterans, and what I’m so worried about is, who is going to do that now?”
Senn was firm: “I don’t regret a single vote that I ever took,” she said, “and I would make the vote again.”
That vote, in opposition of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, would be of little surprise if it came from Democrats. But these three are all members of the GOP.
“I’m a Republican, I think!” Shealy said. “I’m not sure right now, do they claim me or not?”
Gustafson said, “If you look at my voting record, there’s no doubt I’m a red R, but that one vote makes be a RINO baby-killer.”
“Republican In Name Only” – they heard that a lot. They didn’t just buck their party; they reached across the aisle to Margie Bright Matthews, a Democrat, and Mia McLeod, an Independent. “I’m super-proud of my sisters,” McLeod said, “because they knew what was at stake, they knew what they stood to lose, and they did it anyway.”
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This unusual coalition, on three separate occasions, successfully filibustered an abortion ban, halting its passage. Not that they agreed on everything (they didn’t), but as women and mothers, they agreed that banning an abortion at six weeks was time too little. Gustafson explained to the Senate, “We do not know when we’re pregnant, when we get pregnant.”
“If we didn’t say it on the floor, it wasn’t going to be heard,” Gustafson told “Sunday Morning.”
On the Senate floor Bright Matthews declared, “This bill is about control, using the Bible to say that you can control my body.”
“I’d say things just to rattle the men,” Bright Matthews laughed. “Like, ‘Wouldn’t you want your side piece to be able to get an abortion?’ And then all the older men just looked at me like, You don’t say things like that!“
Shealy told the 46-member Senate (41 of whom were male), “Maybe the men who wrote it know more about pregnancy than the women in this chamber who can actually get pregnant and give birth.”
Asked when they knew they were jeopardizing their political careers by filibustering the abortion bill, Shealy replied, “I knew it at the time I said it, because my party was, like, calling me and screaming at me.”
“Two hours before the vote, I was pulled off the floor, and had a very strong, intense conversation: ‘This could be a career-ending vote,'” Gustafson said.
Senn said, “I didn’t care. I had to look myself in the mirror.”
They were the only five women in the Senate, in a state that, they say, has often left women behind. Shealy said, “In 1920 they gave women the right to vote. Well, South Carolina didn’t ratify that ’til 1969, and then we didn’t put it into law until 1973. We are just a little behind.”
The filibusters were their versions of “mansplaining.” Bright Matthews said, “When someone makes a statement, ‘Well, if you’re raped or you get pregnant as the result of incest, it’s not the child’s fault; you just need to learn to love on the baby’?”
McCleod added, “That same senator held up a woman’s picture and said she told him she was ‘grateful’ to have been raped, because it was the only opportunity God gave her to conceive a child. And I almost lost it. As a survivor of sexual assault … there are no words.”
They didn’t have words for the level of anti-abortion pushback, either; taunts, personal attacks, odd gifts left in their offices, like spines that came with a note warning them to “grow one.”
Shealy took her gifted spine to the Senate floor and said, “I’ve got one hell of a spine already, but now I’ve got another backup!”
It got more intense, and even more disturbing. According to Shealy, “We had one gentleman – I’m not sure we can call him that – stands at the top of the escalator every day, and he preaches to us, he has his Bible.”
“Swings a baby around with a rope, noose around its neck,” added Senn.
The same man went to Shealy’s church, calling her a “baby killer.” “And she’s singing in the choir while he’s doing this,” Senn said.
Shealy also said she had her tires slashed, and a window in her home shot with a pellet gun. “My kids and grandkids were seeing that,” she said. “I’m glad I’m not going to be in politics, because politics are mean.”
In May of last year, the “Sister Senators” could no longer hold off the vote on what is now the state’s law: a six-week ban on abortion.
And yet, not all was lost. All five senators were recognized last year with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. At the presentation ceremony Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg said, “We’re fortunate to be able to gather to celebrate courageous leadership, which we need more than ever today.”
Noting her award during her goodbye speech on the Senate floor, Shealy said, “I am proud of losing this Senate race, just to get this. Because I stood up for the right thing. I stood up for women, I stood up for children, I stood up for South Carolina.”
According to Bright Matthews, the abortion restriction passed is not popular among the public. “The polling shows that 70+ percent of women in South Carolina do not want a total ban. All of us have stood up and agreed and tried to put forth a referendum to put it on the ballot; they said we can’t.”
Unlike 10 other states that will have abortion rights on the ballot in November (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota), South Carolina doesn’t allow voters that option.
What is clear is that post-Roe v. Wade, abortion rarely breaks down on clean partisan lines.
What the Sister Senators have shown is, it’s in that grey area where compromise, while costly, may not be as endangered as we all think.
“Instead of just attack someone for feeling differently on an issue, it’s better to ask why,” said Bright Matthews.
Gustafson said, “In a world of politics where we’re constantly being told we can’t do that, or we shouldn’t do that, and you’re expected to be this way, we’ve just broke that political, social mores right in half.”
“But, you paid the price for it,” said Cowan.
“We paid the price for it, but look what we have right now,” Gustafson said. “We have this national ear for the most wonderful thing of finding common ground, respect, civility in politics. That is what we gain, that is what America gains, from the Sister Senators of South Carolina.”
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Story produced by Deirdre Cohen. Editor: Ed Givnish.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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