Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden is the consummate Washington insider. Jimmy Carter was anything but.

Yet the 46th and 39th U.S. presidents had a decades-long friendship starting when Biden, as a young Delaware lawmaker, became the first sitting senator to endorse Carter’s outsider White House bid in 1976. Their bond will be on display one final time Thursday as Biden eulogizes Carter during his state funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

It marks quite a bookend for both men. Carter and Biden each had notable evolutions as the Democratic Party and the country changed over their long public lives. Both were presidents who endured four rocky years in the Oval Office before being forced out under terms that were not their own — and handing power to larger-than-life Republican figures in the process.

“America and the world in my view lost a remarkable leader. … He was a statesman and humanitarian. And Jill and I lost a dear friend,” Biden said hours after Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100.

For Biden, the spotlight provides an opportunity not simply to praise the late president’s work after leaving office but perhaps also to amplify reassessments of Carter as president. That framing could, not so subtly, be something the 82-year-old Biden hopes for himself as he prepares to hand power over to President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

Trump’s presence at Carter’s funeral intensifies the dynamics. The former and incoming president spent the 2024 campaign lampooning Biden and Carter together, playing up Republican caricatures of Carter as an incompetent steward of an inflationary economy and directing the same indictment at Biden’s administration.

“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump would say, even using some version of the attack when former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed in 2023 and on Carter’s 100th birthday on Oct. 1, 2024. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump would say, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”

But some Democrats say the timing of Carter’s funeral, so close to Trump’s second inauguration, makes for a favorable comparison with the Republican’s bellicose tone.

“Jimmy Carter is a fundamentally decent man, and Joe Biden is a fundamentally decent man,” said Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic power broker who got her start on Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign.

Biden has focused on the same idea.

“When I endorsed him for president … it was not only his policies but his character,” Biden said after Carter’s death. Asked specifically what Trump could learn from Carter, the president replied: “Decency, decency, decency.”

Biden, who served 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president before winning the presidency on his third try in 2020, had not yet become a Washington careerist when he aligned with Carter. Elected senator at 29, Biden was in his first term when Carter, then Georgia governor, mounted a White House bid as a Beltway afterthought.

“He grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘I need you to help me with my campaign,’ and I said, ‘I’ve only been around a couple years, Mr. Governor,’” Biden recalled. “He said, ’No, it will make a difference.’”

Biden chose Carter over powerful Senate colleagues and campaigned across the country for him during primary season and the general election campaign.

Both were moderates on fiscal issues and social issues. Both were outspoken about their religious faith — Biden the Roman Catholic, Carter the evangelical Baptist.

Their relationship, however, was not seamless once Carter won.

Both had opposed federally mandated busing to make public schools more racially diverse. Still, in 1977, Carter opposed a Biden Senate bill that would have limited courts’ authority on the topic. Carter viewed it as an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers.

The young senator quipped: “Nixon had his enemies list, and President Carter has his friends list. I guess I’m on his friends list, and I don’t know which is worse.”

Still, Biden was one of the Democrats who warned Carter that his liberal rival, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, might challenge the president in the 1980 primary. When Kennedy, an Irish Catholic like Biden, did run, Biden stuck with Carter even as his fortunes lagged.

When Biden ran for president the first time ahead of 1988, Carter was busy building his post-White House Carter Center, a nonpartisan human rights organization, and he was still a pariah for Democrats after losing to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Carter took private meetings with aspiring presidents but generally did not appear publicly with them.

When Biden ran a second time, he assessed Carter in a 2007 book with a calculated realism, writing that Carter’s values were not enough: “That’s the first time I realized that on-the-job training for a president can be a dangerous thing.”

He even took issue with the former president’s religiosity: “I campaigned hard for Carter in two elections, but I thought he had a dangerous penchant for moralizing. ‘You thump that Bible one more time,’ I told him once, ‘and you’re going to lose me, too.’”

Biden’s second campaign also flopped, but nominee Barack Obama tapped him for the vice presidential slot. The Obama campaign did not invite Carter to speak at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

As Biden was running for president a third time, Carter, then almost 95, threw an unintentional curveball.

“I hope there’s an age limit,” Carter said with a laugh as he answered audience questions at the Carter Center in 2019. “If I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.”

Biden and his primary rival Bernie Sanders were old enough to turn 80 in the White House.

Still, Carter returned Biden’s loyalty with familiar language.

“We deserve a person with integrity and judgment. Someone who is honest and fair” and a president with “experience, character and decency,” Carter said in a message taped for Biden’s 2020 nominating convention.

On one of Biden’s first trips as president, he and first lady Jill Biden made a side trip to Plains, Georgia, to visit Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Biden told reporters afterward that Carter had asked him to speak at his state funeral. The Bidens visited privately with the former president ahead of his wife’s funeral in 2023.

Biden ultimately did reach 80 in the White House, and widespread worry over his age drove him to end his reelection bid. As pressure mounted on Biden after a disjointed debate against Trump, the widowed Carter, more than a year into hospice care, made no public statements or private maneuvers.

“He, like a lot of us, was incredibly gratified by his friend’s courageous choice to pass the torch,” said Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson. “You know, my grandfather and the Carter Center have observed more than 100 elections in 40 countries. So, he knows how rare it is for somebody who’s a sitting president to give up power in any context.”

Whatever Biden says Thursday, former Obama campaign architect David Axelrod noted that the outgoing president will not enjoy the same opportunities as Carter to recast his legacy.

“Jimmy Carter spent four years in Washington out of 100 years of his life,” Axelrod said. “Jimmy Carter is looked at differently (now) because he spent 44 years after losing the presidency doing extraordinary things all over the world. … Biden won’t have that luxury.”

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it will release special counsel Jack Smith’s findings on Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election but will keep under wraps for now the rest of the report focused on the president-elect’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The revelation was made in a filing to a federal appeals court that was considering a defense request to block the release of the two-volume report while charges remain pending against two Trump co-defendants in the Florida case accusing the Republican former president and current president-elect of illegally holding classified documents. Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case, granted the request Tuesday, issuing a temporary block on the report.

The Justice Department said it would proceed with plans to release the first of two volumes centered on the election interference case but would make the classified documents section of the report available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for their private review as long as the case against Trump’s co-defendants — Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — is ongoing.

“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the filing said.

It was not immediately clear when the election interference report might be released. The filing asks the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse Cannon’s order that appeared to at least temporarily halt the release of the entire report.

In its filing, the Justice Department said that the attorney general’s authority to publicly release the election interference section of the special counsel’s report is “clear” and that Trump’s co-defendants have no legal argument to block the disclosure of a section that has nothing to do with them.

“Indeed, with respect to Volume One of the Final Report, defendants are hardly differently situated than any other member of the public,” the department said.

The report is expected to detail findings and charging decisions in Smith’s two investigations.

The classified documents inquiry was dismissed in July by Cannon, who concluded that Smith’s appointment was illegal. Smith’s appeal of the dismissal of charges against Nauta and De Oliveira, who were charged alongside Trump with obstructing the investigation, is still active, and their lawyers argued this week that the release of a report while proceedings were pending would be prejudicial and unfair.

The election interference case was significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The court ruled then for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, all but ending prospects Trump could be tried before the November election.

Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s presidential victory, citing Justice Department policy that prohibits the federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

Justice Department regulations call for special counsels appointed by the attorney general to submit a confidential report at the conclusion of their investigations. It’s then up to the attorney general to decide what to make public.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has made public in their entirety the reports produced by special counsels who operated under his watch, including Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s Russian election interference investigation.

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By Jasper Ward

(Reuters) – Former U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz said he is “starting to think about running for governor” in 2026 in his home state of Florida.

“I have a compelling vision for the state,” Gaetz told the Tampa Bay Times. “I understand how to fix the insurance problem, and it’s not to hand the keys to the state over to the insurance industry. If I run, I would be the most pro-consumer candidate on the Republican side.”

The three-term congressman, who represented Florida, resigned in November, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump chose him as the next U.S. attorney general. He withdrew from consideration for that job amid a storm of controversy.

Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over alleged illicit drug use and of having sex with an underage 17-year-old girl. While he has denied wrongdoing, the committee found last month that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for drugs and sex.

Florida has a limit of two consecutive four-year terms for governor. As a result, Florida will have to elect a new governor in 2026 once incumbent Ron DeSantis, who is already serving his second term, leaves office.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors said on Tuesday they have uncovered additional criminal conduct by Eric Adams as they prepare for the New York City mayor’s April corruption trial.

Adams, 64, was charged in September with accepting travel perks from Turkish officials and political donations from foreigners in exchange for taking actions to benefit Turkey. He pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, fraud and solicitation of a campaign contribution from a foreign national.

In a court filing, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan cited new information in urging U.S. District Judge Dale Ho to deny Adams’ request that they identify his alleged co-conspirators or provide early access to evidence for his April 21 trial.

The prosecutors warned doing so could lead to attempts to tamper with witnesses.

“Law enforcement has continued to identify additional individuals involved in Adams’s conduct, and to uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams,” the prosecutors wrote.

“The Indictment provides ample cause to believe that as potential witnesses became known to Adams and his allies, measures were taken to influence their testimony,” they wrote.

The prosecutors did not provide details about the alleged additional criminal conduct.

Asked to respond to prosecutors’ statement, Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro said, “This is amateur hour.”

“They are just looking for a headline instead of doing the right thing,” Spiro said in a statement.

Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, declined to comment.

Prosecutors said in a court hearing in October that a superseding indictment in the case was “quite likely.”

The initial indictment charged Adams, a Democrat, with accepting more than $90,000 in discounted luxury hotel stays and flight upgrades from Turkish officials in exchange for pressuring city fire officials to let Turkey open its new consulate despite safety concerns.

He was also accused of disguising contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign from Turkish sources by funneling them through U.S. citizens.

Prosecutors said last month that a New York construction executive accused of making illegal contributions to Adams’ campaign planned to plead guilty.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Cynthia Osterman)

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PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, as he declared U.S. control of both to be vital to American national security.

Speaking to reporters less than two weeks before he takes office on Jan. 20 and as a delegation of aides and advisers that includes Donald Trump Jr. is in Greenland, Trump left open the use of the American military to secure both territories. Trump’s intention marks a rejection of decades of U.S. policy that has prioritized self-determination over territorial expansion.

“I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said, when asked if he would rule out the use of the military. “It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.” He added, “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”

Greenland, home to a large U.S. military base, is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO. Trump cast doubts on the legitimacy of Denmark’s claim to Greenland.

The Panama Canal has been solely controlled by the eponymous country for more than 25 years. The U.S. returned the Panama Canal Zone to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership in controlling the strategic waterway in 1999.

Addressing Trump’s comments in an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the United States Denmark’s “most important and closest ally,” and that she did not believe that the United States will use military or economic power to secure control over Greenland.

Frederiksen repeated that she welcomed the United States taking a greater interest in the Arctic region, but that it would “have to be done in a way that is respectful of the Greenlandic people,” she said.

“At the same time, it must be done in a way that allows Denmark and the United States to still cooperate in, among other things, NATO,” Frederiksen said.

Earlier, Trump posted a video of his private plane landing in Nuuk, the Arctic territory’s capital, in a landscape of snow-capped peaks and fjords.

“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”

In a statement, Greenland’s government said Donald Trump Jr.’s visit was taking place “as a private individual” and not as an official visit, and Greenlandic representatives would not meet with him.

Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha said his government hasn’t had formal contact with Trump or representatives of the incoming administration but reiterated previous comments from the country’s president, José Raúl Mulino, who said last month that the canal will remain in Panamanian hands.

“The sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” Martínez-Acha said.

Trump, a Republican, has also floated having Canada join the United States as the 51st state. He said Tuesday that he would not use military force to invade the country, which is home to more than 40 million people and is a founding NATO partner.

Instead, he said, he would would rely on “economic force” as he cast the U.S. trade deficit with Canada — a natural resource-rich nation that provides the U.S. with commodities like crude oil and petroleum — as a subsidy that would be coming to an end.

Canadian leaders fired back after earlier dismissing Trump’s rhetoric as a joke.

“President-elect Trump’s comments show a complete lack of understanding of what makes Canada a strong country. Our economy is strong. Our people are strong. We will never back down in the face of threats,” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a post on X.

Justin Trudeau, the country’s outgoing prime minister, was even more blunt.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” he wrote.

Promising a “Golden age of America,” Trump also said he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” saying that has a “beautiful ring to it.”

He also said he believes that NATO should dramatically increase its spending targets, with members of the trans-Atlantic alliance committing to spend at least 5% of their GDPs on defense spending, up from the current 2%.

In June, NATO announced a record 23 of its 32 member nations were on track to hit that target as Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has raised the threat of expanding conflict in Europe.

Trump also used his press conference to complain that President Joe Biden was undermining his transition to power a day after the incumbent moved to ban offshore energy drilling in most federal waters.

Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, used his authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing. All told, about 625 million acres of federal waters were withdrawn from energy exploration by Biden in a move that may require an act of Congress to undo.

“I’m going to put it back on day one,” Trump told reporters. He pledged to take it to the courts “if we need to.”

Trump said Biden’s effort — part of a series of final actions in office by the Democrat’s administration — was undermining his plans for once he’s in office.

“You know, they told me that, we’re going to do everything possible to make this transition to the new administration very smooth,” Trump said. “It’s not smooth.”

But Biden’s team has extended access and courtesies to the Trump team that the Republican former president initially denied Biden after his 2020 election victory. Trump incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles told Axios in an interview published Monday that Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients “has been very helpful.”

In extended remarks, Trump also railed against the work of special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw now-dropped prosecutions over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and possession of classified documents after he left office in 2021. The Justice Department is expected to soon release a report from Smith summarizing his investigation after the criminal cases were forced to an end by Trump’s victory in November.

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Associated Press writers David Keyton in Berlin, Robert Gillies in Toronto, Jill Colvin in New York and Juan Zamorano in Panama City contributed to this report.

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By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld an Oregon law banning most secret recordings of oral conversations, rejecting a First Amendment challenge by Project Veritas, a conservative activist group known for using covert recordings against opponents.

In a 9-2 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle said the so-called conversational privacy law did not violate Project Veritas’ free speech rights.

It also said the law was narrowly tailored to Oregon’s significant governmental interest in ensuring that residents know when they are being recorded.

The decision reversed a July 2023 rejection of the law by a divided three-judge panel of the same court.

Eight judges in Tuesday’s majority were appointed to the bench by Democratic presidents, while the dissenting judges and the earlier majority were appointed by Republican presidents.

Benjamin Barr, a lawyer for Project Veritas, said the group will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He said the decision “leaves undercover journalists with their hands tied in Oregon” by impeding their ability to investigate corruption and work with whistleblowers.

Barr also said the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should allow secret recordings “just as robustly as it has long shielded traditional practices, like safeguarding the venerable reporter’s notepad.”

Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s new attorney general, said in a statement he was pleased the court recognized the recordings ban as “an important safeguard” for people’s right to privacy.

Dating from 1959, Oregon’s law contains exceptions that allow recording during a felony that endangers human life, and recording a law enforcement officer performing official duties.

Project Veritas sued in 2020, saying the law made it impossible in Portland, the state’s largest city, to record protests about racial injustice following the killing that May of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The group frequently publishes edited recordings that portray liberal organizations and media negatively. Critics have called its tactics deceptive.

RECORDINGS NOT ‘INDISPENSABLE’

During oral arguments last June, Barr told the appeals court that secretly recorded conversations could have a big impact.

He pointed to a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video of President-elect Donald Trump boasting graphically about forcing himself on women, which drew wide attention during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

Oregon countered that the law did not discriminate based on content, and that recording private conversations was not constitutionally protected “expressive conduct.”

Writing for Tuesday’s majority, Circuit Judge Morgan Christen warned of the risk of secret recordings being shared across the internet, or selectively edited to create audio “deepfakes” where people appear to say things they never said.

Christen, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, said the law left Project Veritas journalists ample means to go undercover and report what they see and hear, as journalists have done for centuries.

“Powerful exposes authored by people like Nellie Bly, Gloria Steinem, and John Howard Griffin clearly demonstrate what our court has long recognized: ‘hidden mechanical contrivances’ are not ‘indispensable tools’ of newsgathering,” the judge said.

Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, appointed during Trump’s first White House term, dissented.

He said Oregon’s “grossly overbroad” law imperiled journalists’ ability to report newsworthy events, whether involving conversations conducted loudly in public, abuses of power or “the privileged behaving badly.”

The case is Project Veritas et al v. Schmidt et al, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-3527.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Leslie Adler and Lincoln Feast.)

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s highest court blocked on Tuesday the certification of a November election result for one of its own seats so it can review legal arguments by a trailing candidate who contends over 60,000 ballots that were cast shouldn’t be counted.

The decision by the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court to issue the temporary stay is a setback for Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs. Election results show Riggs ahead of GOP challenger Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast.

The ultimate winner gets an eight-year term on a Supreme Court where five of the seven current justices are registered Republicans.

The State Board of Elections dismissed last month Griffin’s written protests challenging the ballots. That initiated a timeline in which the board would issue a certificate confirming Riggs’ election this Friday — ending the litigation — unless a court stepped in.

Tuesday’s order stops such certification and tells Griffin and the board to file legal briefs with the justices over the next two weeks.

Lawyers for Griffin, who is a judge on the intermediate-level state Court of Appeals, initially asked the state Supreme Court to intervene three weeks ago. But the elections board quickly moved the matter to federal court, saying Griffin’s appeals involved matters of federal voting and voting rights laws.

Griffin disagreed, and so did U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who on Monday returned the case to the state Supreme Court. Myers — a nominee to the bench by Donald Trump — wrote that Griffin’s protests raised “unsettled questions of state law” and had tenuous connections to federal law.

Hours later, Griffin’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court for the temporary stay, which the court granted.

“In the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election,” Tuesday’s order read.

The order said that Riggs recused herself from the matter and that Associate Justice Anita Earls, the other Democrat on the court, opposed the stay in part because the “public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”

Attorneys for the State Board of Elections and Riggs quickly filed appeals notices for Myers’ decision with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The state board later Tuesday asked the appeals court to direct Myers to take back the litigation from the state Supreme Court and block its return to the state court while the matter is appealed.

Barring intervention by federal appeals judges, the state Supreme Court would essentially be asked to decide the winner for one of its own seats — with the potential of the Republican majority reversing the outcome of the election results.

A Griffin legal brief said that he would anticipate winning the race if the ballots he contends are unlawful are excluded from the tally, which already has been subject to two recounts. The state GOP has said that Griffin and the party are seeking to ensure every lawfully cast vote is counted.

Democratic allies of Riggs have accused Griffin and the state GOP of trying to overturn legitimate election results.

Riggs “deserves her certificate of election and we are only in this position due to Jefferson Griffin refusing to accept the will of the people,” state Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a news release.

Most of the ballots that Griffin is challenging came from voters whose registration records lacked either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number — which a state law has required be sought in registration applications since 2004.

Other large categories of votes that Griffin is challenging were cast by overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. but whose parents were deemed North Carolina residents; and by military or overseas voters who did not provide copies of photo identification with their ballots.

Attorneys for Riggs and the state board have said removing these votes would violate federal and state laws and the U.S. Constitution, and they have stated that Griffin hasn’t presented evidence that a single voter that he has challenged from within these broad categories is ineligible to vote.

The state election board that dismissed Griffin’s protests is composed of three Democrats and two Republicans.

The Supreme Court in the nation’s ninth-largest state has been a partisan flash point in recent years in court battles involving redistricting, photo voter identification and other voting rights.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to close out her term with an around-the-world trip making stops in Singapore, Bahrain and Germany, her office said.

The trip, which is scheduled to last from Jan. 13 to Jan. 17, will be a final opportunity for Harris to address U.S. foreign policy challenges before Donald Trump takes office. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is expected to join the vice president.

Although she has not disclosed her next steps after losing the presidential election, the expansive travel suggests that Harris might want to continue playing a role on the global stage. There’s also speculation that Harris could run for governor of her home state of California.

Dean Lieberman, Harris’ deputy national security adviser, said in a written statement that “the vice president felt it important to spend some of her final days in office thanking and engaging directly with U.S. servicemembers deployed overseas, which as she has said, has been one of her greatest privileges as vice president.”

There are U.S. troops based at all three of Harris’ stops.

Harris plans to visit Changi Naval Base in Singapore and meet with leaders of the city-state. Singapore’s location in the Indo-Pacific region makes it a key partner for addressing issues involving China, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

The next stop is Bahrain, where Harris will visit the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which operates in the Persian Gulf. The fleet has been engaged in efforts to protect Israel from Iranian attacks and regional shipping activity from the Houthis in Yemen.

Harris’ final stop will be Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, home to a deployment of U.S. Air Force fighter jets. She plans to talk about the importance of NATO in deterring Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

Harris has previously visited Germany and Singapore. Bahrain will be the 22nd country she’s visited during her term.

“The vice president continues to believe in a strong U.S. global leadership role because it benefits the security and prosperity of the American people, and she will reaffirm this throughout her trip,” Lieberman said.

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Three special elections taking place on Tuesday to fill seats in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates will determine whether Democrats or Republicans have control of the Statehouse in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s final year as governor.

In northern Loudoun County, Republican Tumay Harding and Democrat Del. Kannan Srinivasan are vying to succeed Suhas Subramanyam in the state Senate after the Democrat was elected to the U.S. House in November. Also on the ballot are Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam, who are racing to replace Srinivasan in the state House of Delegates after he vacated his seat to run in the special Senate election.

In central Goochland County, Republican Luther Cifers is up against Democrat Jack Trammell, a college professor, in a state Senate race. They hope to succeed U.S. Rep. John McGuire, who clinched Virginia’s 5th Congressional District after narrowly defeating former U.S. Rep. Bob Good by less than a percentage point in a bitter primary, which led to a recount in August.

The special elections are being closely watched by outside observers to gauge voters’ moods after November’s presidential race, which left many Democrats reckoning with the party’s losses in federal elections. In Virginia, Senate Democrats have a narrow 20-18 majority since McGuire and Subramanyam’s resignations, making the special elections key to the party’s efforts to preserve a majority in both chambers. In the House of Delegates, Democrats have a 50-49 lead following Srinivasan’s departure.

Srinivasan, the first Indian American immigrant elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and Singh, a Virginia native and the son of Indian immigrants, are hoping to hold the Democratic seats within a county where data shows that Vice President Kamala Harris received 57% of the vote in her failed bid against President-elect Donald Trump. Both Singh and Srinivasan have largely centered their campaigns around abortion rights in Virginia. It comes at a time when state Democrats are working to enshrine a constitutional right to an abortion in the state.

“What motivates me is the high-stakes election,” Srinivasan said. “The Senate majority is on the line. The constitutional amendment is on the line.”

Harding, the daughter of Turkish Uzbek immigrants and Venkatachalam, an Indian American immigrant, aim to flip the senate and house seats from Democrats. Both candidates, who each unsuccessfully ran for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2023, have centered their state campaigns along party lines, such as parents’ rights, crime and the economy.

“Our schools are faltering and riddled with politics and division, our neighbors have been made victims of illegal migrant crime, and our families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, and housing,” Harding said in a statement when launching her campaign. “All of this could change if we win this election and give Governor Youngkin a new majority in the Senate.”

In the 10th State Senate district, conservatives are putting their weight behind Cifers to succeed McGuire following a lengthy, multi-ballot primary among Republican voters last month. Cifers, a Prince Edward County resident and president of a Virginia kayaking business, said he never envisioned himself running for office but wanted to bring a different perspective to the legislature, particularly regarding housing and the economy.

“I’m much more concerned about doing the right thing, making sure that we’re constitutionally minded and respecting the will of the voters before I’m super interested in getting into party politics,” Cifers said.

Trammell, who unsuccessfully ran for the 7th U.S. House District in 2014, is hoping to flip the Republican stronghold, which supported Trump by more than 25 points in November, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. Trammell said he partly decided to run for office because he believed his community should have a competitive electoral process.

“There are factors that are transforming District 10,” he said. “To call it a monolithic, traditional-rural Republican district is a little bit of a disservice to the people who are actually living there, working there and raising families there now.”

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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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(Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said he was choosing Joseph Nocella Jr. as his pick to become U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

“Judge Nocella has a strong record of bringing Law and Order to the incredible people of New York, serving as a Nassau County District Court Judge, and Family Court Judge,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones)

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