Politics

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed state Sen. Chris Cournoyer to be her lieutenant governor Monday, more than three months after her first and only No. 2 in elected office resigned to take over the state bankers association.

Cournoyer was elected to the Iowa Senate in 2018 and has a background in technology, having earned a computer science degree, done website design and worked for a tech company. In the Senate, she chaired the Education Budget Committee and was vice chair of the State Government Committee.

“She has the character, judgement, and ability needed to serve as governor in case I were ever unable to — qualities that also make her ideally suited to support our work on a day-to-day basis,” Reynolds said in a statement. “I can’t wait to deploy Chris’ extensive experience on key legislative committees, including Ways and Means, and expertise in technology, innovation, and artificial intelligence on a wide range of issues important to Iowans.”

Cournoyer is is from LeClaire, in eastern Iowa.

Reynolds’ initial running mate, Adam Gregg, resigned his position Sept. 3 after serving more than seven years in office, saying that “my time in public service must come to a close.” The Iowa Bankers Association on the same day announced Gregg as its incoming president and CEO.

Reynolds described Gregg as “a tremendous partner.”

Iowa law states that the governor must appoint someone to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term.

Reynolds told reporters in early October that she would make a decision on Gregg’s successor after the 2024 election, and the end-of-the-year rollout will allow Cournoyer a few weeks to settle in before joining Reynolds at her annual condition of the state speech after the legislative session begins in January.

“We want to get it right, you know, not only for the team, but for Iowans, and so I want to be very thoughtful in how I do that,” Reynolds said in October.

Up for reelection in 2026, Reynolds will likely be joined by Cournoyer on the ballot if she chooses to run again.

Reynolds, who was former Gov. Terry Branstad’s lieutenant governor, became governor in 2017 when Branstad was named U.S. ambassador to China. She was elected to a full term in 2018 and was reelected in 2022.

Reynolds in 2017 had named Gregg as her “acting” lieutenant governor after her own promotion. That followed legal questions over whether the Iowa Constitution gave an elected lieutenant governor the authority to appoint her replacement if she needed to step in as governor in the event the elected governor dies, resigns, or was removed from office. Until their inauguration in 2019, Gregg was left out of the line of succession.

In November’s election, Iowa voters approved a legislatively referred constitutional amendment to explicitly allow for that appointment.

source

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump joined SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son to announce plans by the Japanese company to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years.

Trump announced the planned investments, which are expected to focus on artificial intelligence, at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday, with Son at his side, along with Howard Lutnick, head of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s pick for commerce secretary.

“He’s doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country,” Trump said. The president-elect said that since his election, people have expressed interest in “coming in with tremendous amounts of money.”

The investments by SoftBank, Trump said, are “a monumental demonstration of confidence in America’s future.”

Son said he wanted to “celebrate the great victory of President Trump” and that he will “bring the world into peace again.”

“I am truly excited to make this happen,” he said.

After the president-elect noted the $100 billion was double an investment pledge Son made in 2016 on the eve of Trump’s first administration, the technology mogul said he was doubling down. Trump, appearing to joke, asked him at the microphone if he would double the investment again: “Would you make it $200 billion?”

Trump has in the past announced deals with companies overseas with much fanfare, though some companies in the end failed to deliver on those promised investments.

Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese company best known for producing Apple iPhones, won Trump’s praise after announcing plans in 2017 to build a $10 billion complex that would employ 13,000 people in a small town just south of Milwaukee. But Foxconn’s investment has been scaled back to a fraction of that after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Monday’s announcement, however, is a win for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, negotiate with foreign leaders and try to strike deals.

He had already threatened steep tariffs for Mexico and Canada, which prompted a visit from Canada’s prime minister aIn a post on his Truth Social site last week, Trump said anyone making a $1 billion investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”nd a call with Mexico’s president.

SoftBank was founded in 1981 by Son, a brash entrepreneur who studied at the University of California, Berkeley. SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together through its capital venture fund.

The company’s investment portfolio includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia. Earlier this year, it joined a partnership with Saudi Arabia to build a robot factory in Riyadh.

After Trump won the White House the first time in 2016, he met with Son before taking office. Son then announced plans to create 50,000 jobs and invest $50 billion in U.S. startups, which Trump celebrated on social media, saying it never would have happened if he hadn’t won the election.

Not all investments have panned out. The most notorious was SoftBank’s massive stake in the office-sharing company WeWork which sought bankruptcy protection last year. It also invested in the failed robot pizza-making company Zume.

Monday’s announcement comes days after Trump vowed to expedite federal permits for energy projects and other construction worth more than $1 billion.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, along with Paul Wiseman and Zeke Miller in Washington, contributed to this story.

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that the U.S. military should tell the American public about the nature of the drone sightings that have plagued the East Coast over the last several weeks.

“The government knows what is happening,” Trump said. “For some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows.”

Speaking at a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said, “I can’t imagine it’s the enemy” without going into specifics. He declined to answer whether he had received an intelligence briefing on the matter.

A spate of reported drone sightings that began in New Jersey in mid-November spread in recent days to include Maryland, Massachusetts and other states. U.S. officials said on Saturday that most of the sightings involved manned aircraft and that there was no evidence of a national security threat.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Editing by Franklin Paul)

source

The New York Democrat is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to immediately deploy special technology that identifies and tracks drones back to their landing spots, according to briefings from his office.

Schumer’s calls come amid growing public concern that the federal government hasn’t offered clear explanations as to who is operating the drones, and has not stopped them. National security officials have said the drones don’t appear to be a sign of foreign interference.

“There’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Fox News Sunday. “The answer ‘We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer.”

President-elect Donald Trump posted on social media last week: “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so. Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down.”

Certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security have the power to “incapacitate” drones, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But we need those authorities expanded,” he said, without saying exactly how.

The drones don’t appear to be linked to foreign governments, Mayorkas said.

“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter,” Mayorkas said.

Last year, federal aviation rules began requiring certain drones to broadcast their identities. It’s not clear whether that information has been used to determine who is operating the drones swarming locations in New York and New Jersey. Mayorkas’ office didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether they’ve been able to identify drones using this capability.

Schumer is calling for recently declassified radar technology to be used to help determine whether an object is a drone or a bird, identify its electronic registration, and follow it back to its landing place.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday said federal officials were sending a drone detection system to the state.

“This system will support state and federal law enforcement in their investigations,” Hochul said in a statement. The governor did not immediately provide additional details, including where the system will be deployed.

Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use, but they are subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must be FAA certified.

source

(Reuters) – Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi underwent a successful hip replacement surgery in Luxembourg and is “well on the mend,” her office said in a statement.

Pelosi was injured on a trip to Luxembourg and was admitted to a hospital for evaluation, her office said on Friday.

Pelosi, 84, was the first woman to serve as speaker of the House and had also been a longtime leader of the House Democratic Caucus.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Diane Craft)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will examine ways to impose higher costs on private actors and U.S. adversaries who wage cyber attacks on America, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz, said on Sunday.

The comments come after U.S. allegations of a sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that targeted and recorded telephone calls of senior American political figures.

The White House has said at least eight telecommunications and infrastructure firms in the United States had been affected and a large number of Americans’ metadata was stolen in the sweeping cyber espionage campaign.

Waltz did not say what the Trump administration would do in response to Salt Typhoon but spoke more generally about the incoming administration’s approach. He said Washington for too long had focused mostly on bolstering its cyber defenses.

“We need to start going on the offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us,” Waltz told CBS News’ Face the Nation.

He also said the private U.S. technology industry could also be helpful in making adversaries vulnerable as well as aiding in U.S. defense.

Chinese officials previously have described the allegations as disinformation and said that Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms.”

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, editing by Ross Colvin and Deepa Babington)

source

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Incoming U.S. Senate Republican leader John Thune will face the test of his career when Donald Trump returns to power next month, as he aims to shepherd the new president’s priorities through Congress while protecting his chamber’s authority over Cabinet picks and spending.

A 20-year Senate veteran, the 63-year-old South Dakotan is known as an affable negotiator skilled at finding common ground between opposing factions. He’ll step up as majority leader on Jan. 3, when his party’s new 53-47 majority is sworn in.

Thune will have to maintain a positive relationship with a sometimes petulant and unpredictable Trump who once sought his ouster and who has displayed little interest in the Senate’s role as a check on executive power.

He’ll be charged with overseeing the confirmation of a series of norm-shattering Cabinet nominees; delivering on Trump’s agenda of tax cuts, border security and energy deregulation, and averting a potential U.S. default on its more than $36 trillion in debt sometime next year.

“He’s entering the majority leader position during one of the most contentious and consequential years the Senate has had in a generation,” said Brian Riedl, a former Senate aide who is now a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute. “It’s really going to be a trial by fire.”

Thune’s first test will be overseeing confirmation hearings for controversial Trump Cabinet picks including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary and Kash Patel as FBI director.

Members of Thune’s conference have expressed quiet concern about all four, whose resumes are unlike those of prior candidates for the powerful jobs. Since one Trump pick, former congressman Matt Gaetz, dropped out of the running for attorney general, Trump allies have stepped up pressure on Senate Republicans to get in line behind his other nominees.

Thune for weeks avoided weighing on the candidates’ qualifications, simply saying that each candidate will have to answer questions at a public hearing and then face a Senate confirmation vote. Some Trump supporters say that stance is not firm enough for their tastes.

“The Senate majority leader’s job is to ensure that qualified cabinet nominees of his president’s party win confirmation,” said Mike Davis, a former Senate Republican aide who is founder and president of the Article III Project.

Davis said his Trump-aligned advocacy group has already directed tens of thousands of people to call and email wavering Senate Republicans and “light them up” on social media.

“If those qualified nominees fail, that is John Thune’s failure,” Davis said.

Thune sounded a deferential note on Trump nominees in a Fox News interview last week, saying, “I give wide latitude and wide deference to the president when he makes these selections. We have a job to do, advice and consent, and we will do it and make sure that there’s a process that’s fair.”

Thune has survived one pressure campaign by members of Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement, who had wanted Senator Rick Scott as the chamber’s leader instead.

That victory came in a secret ballot vote held behind closed doors, but the Cabinet votes will be held publicly in the Senate chamber.

‘AN INSTITUTIONALIST AT HEART’

Thune, whose current six-year term extends through 2028, has strong support in South Dakota, which insulated him against Trump’s hopes of putting up a primary challenger against him in 2022 after he criticized Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

He has said he plans to protect the Senate’s power and traditions, which include both the authority to confirm or deny a president’s Cabinet picks and its “filibuster” rule, which requires 60 of the 100 senators to agree on most legislation — meaning that he may at times need Democratic support.

“The Senate is here by design to be a place where things slow down, to be more deliberative and give voice to the minority,” Thune told reporters this month. “Obviously, as we’ve said before, the filibuster is non-negotiable.”

Trump, in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday, said he has “respect” for the filibuster and “a very good relationship” with Thune.

Thune entered the Senate in 2005 with the reputation of a giant slayer, after unseating then-Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who had led the chamber’s Democrats for the previous decade.

Daschle voiced respect for Thune in an interview.

“I have confidence in John Thune,” Daschle said. “He’s an institutionalist at heart.”

Thune’s allies say the former high school basketball star has the acumen to outmaneuver lawmakers unwilling to toe the party line on critical votes. That’s a skill that both Thune and his House of Representatives counterpart, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, who will start the year with a narrow 217-215 majority, will need next year.

“What you see in him occasionally is the competitive athlete. It’s the same sort of spirit,” Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told reporters. “I suspect he has pretty sharp elbows on the basketball court.”

Trump, and his supporters, may expect no less — and seem poised to push back if some Senate Republicans try to buck his priorities. Trump has already suggested he would turn to recess appointments to install nominees if the Senate doesn’t support his picks.

“All are highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again, and we expect members of the Senate will recognize that during the confirmation process,” Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Colton Snedecor said in a statement.

Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Thune may face pressure from hardline conservatives with no interest in the Senate’s traditions: “There’s an awful lot of folks going into the new administration who just think of Congress as a pain in the butt.”

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

source

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Before the November presidential election, Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general announced investigations into potential voter fraud that included people suspected of casting ballots even though they were not U.S. citizens.

It coincided with a national Republican messaging strategy warning that potentially thousands of ineligible voters would be voting.

“The right to vote is sacred,” Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said in a statement at the time. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal to vote -– whether you thought you were allowed to or not. You will be held accountable.”

In the end, their efforts led to just a handful of cases. Of the 621 criminal referrals for voter fraud that Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent to the attorney general, prosecutors have secured indictments against nine people for voting as noncitizens over the span of 10 years — and one was later found to have died. That total is a tiny fraction of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters and the tens of millions of ballots cast during that period.

The outcome and the stories of some of those now facing charges illustrate the gap — both in Ohio and across the United States — between the rhetoric about noncitizen voting and the reality: It’s rare, is caught and prosecuted when it does happen and does not occur as part of a coordinated scheme to throw elections.

The Associated Press attended in-person and virtual court hearings for three of the Ohio defendants over the past two weeks. Each of the cases involved people with long ties to their community who acted alone, often under a mistaken impression they were eligible to vote. They now find themselves facing felony charges and possible deportation.

Among them is Nicholas Fontaine, a 32-year-old precision sheet metal worker from Akron. He was indicted in October on one count of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony.

Fontaine is a Canadian-born permanent resident who moved to the U.S. with his mother and sister when he was 2 years old. He is facing a possible jail term and deportation on allegations that he voted in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

He recalls being a college student when he was approached on the street about registering to vote.

“I think in my young teenage brain, I thought, ‘Well, I have to sign up for the draft, I should be able to vote,’” Fontaine said in an interview.

Permanent residents such as Fontaine are just one of several categories of immigrants who must register for a potential military draft through the Selective Service but who cannot legally vote.

Fontaine said he received a postcard from the local board of elections in 2016 informing him of his polling place. He voted without issue. He even showed his ID before receiving his ballot.

“No problems. Went in, voted, turned my voter stuff in, that was it,” he said. “There was no, like, ‘Hey, there’s an issue here,’ or, ‘There’s a thing here.’ Just, here’s your paper (ballot).”

Fontaine said a Department of Homeland Security official visited him at his home in either 2018 or 2019, alerted him to the fact that his votes in 2016 and 2018 had been illegal and warned him not to vote again. Since then, he never has. That’s one reason why his indictment this fall came as a shock.

He said he never received notice that he was indicted and missed his court hearing in early December, being informed of the charges only when an AP reporter knocked on his door after the scheduled hearing and told him.

Fontaine said he was raised in a household where his American stepfather taught him the value of voting. He said he would never have cast an illegal vote intentionally.

“I don’t know any person, even like Americans I’ve talked to about voting, who would consider illegally voting for any reason,” he said. “Like, why would you do that? It doesn’t make sense. They’re going to find out — clearly, they’re going to find out. And it’s turning one vote into two. Even doing that, can you get a hundred? There’s how many millions of voters in America?”

Faith Lyon, the Portage County election director, said local officials in the county where Fontaine is charged would not have had any way to independently verify his immigration status. Each voter registration form includes a checkbox asking whether a person is a U.S. citizen or not and explaining that people cannot vote unless they are, she said.

In two other illegal voting cases moving through the Ohio courts, the defendants left that box unchecked, according to their lawyers, believing the omission would result in the election board not registering them if they were indeed ineligible. Yet they were registered anyway, and now face criminal prosecution for voting.

A day before Fontaine’s scheduled hearing, one of those defendants, 40-year-old Fiona Allen, wept outside a Cleveland courtroom when a public defender explained the charges she faced.

She had moved to the U.S. from Jamaica nine years ago. After turning in the voter registration form and receiving her registration, Allen voted in 2020, 2022 and 2023, prosecutors say. The mother of two, including a son in the U.S. Navy, and her husband of 13 years, a naturalized citizen who also is a serviceman, declined to comment at the courthouse. Allen has pleaded not guilty.

Another, 78-year-old Lorinda Miller, appeared before a judge over Zoom last week. She appeared shell-shocked about facing charges.

Her attorney said Miller, who arrived in the U.S. from Canada as a child, is affiliated with an indigenous tribe that issued her paperwork identifying her as “a citizen of North America.” She was told that was sufficient to allow her to register and vote. She’s even been called for jury duty, said lawyer Reid Yoder.

He plans to take the case to trial after Miller pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“I think the integrity of the vote should be protected, wholeheartedly,” Yoder said. “I think the intent of the law is to punish people who defrauded the system. That is not my client. To really defraud the system, you have to know you’re doing it. My client’s nothing like that. She believes in the sanctity of the vote, which is why she participated. She didn’t know she was doing anything wrong.”

The Ohio cases are just one example of what is true nationally — that the narrative of widespread numbers of immigrants without the necessary legal documents registering to vote and then voting is simply not backed up by the facts, said Jay Young, senior director of the Voting and Democracy Program for Common Cause.

State voter rolls are cleaned regularly, he said, and the penalties for casting an illegal ballot as a noncitizen are severe: fines, the potential for a prison sentence and deportation.

He said the role of such immigrants and their potential to sway the election “was the most enduring false narrative that we saw throughout this election.” But he also said it served a purpose, to keep the country divided and sow distrust in the election system.

“If your guy doesn’t win or you’re a candidate that doesn’t win, you have an excuse that you can tell yourself to justify it,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

source

(Reuters) -ABC News has agreed to give $15 million to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving the civil case brought against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, a court document filed on Saturday showed.

The lawsuit, filed on March 19 in U.S. District Court in Southern Florida, accused Stephanopoulos of making the statements with malice and a disregard for the truth. It said the statements were distributed widely to third parties and repeated.

“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement.

The lawsuit cites a March 10 interview with U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager. During the interview, Stephanopoulos said Trump was found liable for rape and asked her how she could endorse the candidate.

According to the settlement, ABC News must publish by Sunday a statement at the bottom of a March 10 online article that accompanied the interview.

“ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024,” the statement must say, according to the court document.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Susan Heavey and David Gregorio)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday named his social media platform CEO Devin Nunes to lead an intelligence advisory panel and said his former intelligence chief Richard Grenell would run “special missions” in places such as U.S. adversaries Venezuela and North Korea.

“Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST.”

Trump did not name any other specific countries such as Iran in his post naming Grenell as the “Presidential Envoy for Special Missions.”

Grenell previously served as acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s 2017-2021 term and was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and a special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.

Nunes, a former U.S. lawmaker who runs Trump’s Truth Social platform, will serve as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which offers independent assessments of intelligence agencies’ effectiveness and planning.

A longtime Trump defender who led the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee during part of Trump’s first White House term, Nunes will remain CEO while also serving on the White House panel, Trump said in a separate post on Truth Social, which is part of Trump Media & Technology Group.

As committee chair, Nunes alleged that the FBI had conspired against Trump during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, served as an aide to Nunes in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A 2017 U.S. intelligence report said Russian President Vladimir Putin had directed a sophisticated influence campaign to denigrate Clinton and support Trump in the 2016 election campaign. The Kremlin denied meddling and Trump denied any collusion with Russia.

Trump has vowed to pursue political adversaries and officials who investigated him when he begins his second term on Jan. 20.

Trump on Saturday also named IBM executive and former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official Troy Edgar to serve as the department’s deputy secretary. He also said he would nominate businessmen Bill White and Edward Walsh to serve as U.S. ambassadors to Belgium and Ireland, respectively.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Doug Gillison and Michael Martina; Editing by David Gregorio)

source