Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even with their threadbare House majority, Republicans doubled down this week on using their new power next year to investigate the Biden administration and, in particular, the president’s son.

But the midterm results have emboldened a White House that has long prepared for this moment. Republicans secured much smaller margins than anticipated, and aides to President Joe Biden and other Democrats believe voters punished the GOP for its reliance on conspiracy theories and Donald Trump-fueled lies over the 2020 election.

They see it as validation for the administration’s playbook for the midterms and going forward to focus on legislative achievements and continue them, in contrast to Trump-aligned candidates whose complaints about the president’s son played to their most loyal supporters and were too far in the weeds for the average American. The Democrats retained control of the Senate, and the GOP’s margin in the House is expected to be the slimmest majority in two decades.

“If you look back, we picked up seats in New York, New Jersey, California,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and public affairs executive. “These were not voters coming to the polls because they wanted Hunter Biden investigated — far from it. They were coming to the polls because they were upset about inflation. They’re upset about gas prices. They’re upset about what’s going on with the war in Ukraine.”

But House Republicans used their first news conference after clinching the majority to discuss presidential son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, renewing long-held grievances about what they claim is a politicized law enforcement agency and a bombshell corruption case overlooked by Democrats and the media.

“From their first press conference, these congressional Republicans made clear that they’re going to do one thing in this new Congress, which is investigations, and they’re doing this for political payback for Biden’s efforts on an agenda that helps working people,” said Kyle Herrig, the founder of the Congressional Integrity Project, a newly relaunched, multimillion-dollar effort by Democratic strategists to counter the onslaught of House GOP probes.

Inside the White House, the counsel’s office added staff months ago and beefed up its communication efforts, and staff members have been deep into researching and preparing for the onslaught. They’ve worked to try to identify their own vulnerabilities and plan effective responses. But anything the House seeks related to Hunter Biden, who is not a White House staffer, will come from his attorneys, who have declined to respond to the allegations.

Rep. James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are “troubling questions” of the utmost importance about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and one of the president’s brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation. He said they were examining the president, too.

“Rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government is the primary mission of the Oversight Committee,” said Comer, R-Ky. “As such, this investigation is a top priority.”

Republican legislators promised a trove of new information this past week, but what they have presented so far has been a condensed review of a few years’ worth of complaints about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, going back to conspiracy theories raised by Trump.

Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Senate Republicans have said the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest, but they did not present evidence that the hiring influenced U.S. policies, and they did not implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.

Republican lawmakers and their staff for the past year have been analyzing messages and financial transactions found on a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. They long have discussed issuing congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that did business with him, and they recently brought on James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to assist with the investigation as general counsel for the Oversight Committee.

The difference now is that Republicans will have subpoena power to follow through.

“The Republicans are going to go ahead,” said Tom Davis, a Republican lawyer who specializes in congressional investigations and legislative strategy. “I think their members are enthusiastic about going after this stuff … there are a lot of unanswered questions. Look, the 40-year trend is parties under-investigate their own and over-investigate the other party. It didn’t start here.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the GOP focus on investigations as “on-brand” thinking.

“They said they were going to fight inflation, they said they were going to make that a priority, then they get the majority and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American family, but focusing on the president’s family,” she said.

Even some newly elected Republicans are pushing back against the idea.

“The top priority is to deal with inflation and the cost of living. … What I don’t want to see is what we saw in the Trump administration, where Democrats went after the president and the administration incessantly,” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York said on CNN.

Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months.

While he never held a position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”

Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president.

Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have advanced a widely discredited theory that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to protect his son and Burisma from investigation. Biden did indeed press for the prosecutor’s firing, but that was a reflection of the official position of not only the Obama administration but many Western countries and because the prosecutor was perceived as soft on corruption.

House Republicans also have signaled upcoming investigations into immigration, government spending and parents’ rights. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have been put on notice as potential witnesses.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, has long complained of what he says is a politicized Justice Department and the ongoing probes into Trump.

On Friday, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

Trump, in a speech Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate, slammed the development as “the latest in a long series of witch hunts.”

Of Joe and Hunter Biden, he asked, “Where’s their special prosecutor?”

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political strategist, said it’s one thing if the investigations into Hunter Biden stick to corruption questions, but if it veers into the kind of mean-spirited messaging that has been floating around in far-right circles, “I don’t know that the public will have much patience for that.”

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Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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As voting experts cheered the losses of election conspiracy theorists in numerous high-profile races on Election Day, Paddy McGuire prepared to hand over his office to one of them.

McGuire, the auditor of Mason County in western Washington, lost his reelection bid to Steve Duenkel, a Republican who has echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Duenkel, who invited a prominent election conspiracist to the area and led a door-to-door effort to find voter fraud, defeated McGuire by 100 votes in the conservative-leaning county of 60,000.

“There are all these stories about the election denier secretary of state candidates who lost in purple states,” said McGuire, referring to the state office that normally oversees voting. “But secretaries of state don’t count ballots. Those of us on the ground, whether we’re clerks or auditors or recorders, do.”

Republicans who supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election lost bids for statewide offices that play key roles in overseeing voting in the six states that decided the last presidential election, as well as in races across the country.

But an untold number won in local elections to control the positions that run on-the-ground election operations in counties, cities and townships across the country.

“Without a doubt, election denial is alive and well, and this is a continuing threat,” said Joanna Lydgate of States United, a group highlighting the risk of election conspiracy theorists trying to take over election administration.

Of the nine Republicans running for secretary of state who echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election or supported his efforts to overturn its results, three won — all in Republican-dominated states.

In Alabama, state Rep. Wes Allen isn’t even waiting to take office before making waves. Last week, he announced that once he becomes secretary of state he will withdraw from ERIC, a multistate database of voter registrations. The system is designed to notify states when voters need to be removed because they’ve relocated, but it’s become a target of election conspiracy theorists.

Allen echoed those conspiracy theories during his campaign, but in a statement last week he instead said he was motivated by a desire to protect the privacy of Alabama voters. His call to exit ERIC drew a stark rebuke from the state’s outgoing secretary of state, John Merrill, a fellow Republican.

“So, if Wes Allen plans to remove Alabama from its relationship with ERIC, how does he intend to maintain election security without access to the necessary data, legal authority, or capability to conduct proper voter list maintenance?” Merrill’s office said in a statement, referencing how ERIC flags when a voter has moved out of state and can be removed from Alabama’s rolls.

In deeply conservative Wyoming, Republican Chuck Gray was the only candidate for secretary of state on the ballot. Once he won the GOP primary in August, his ascension was guaranteed.

In Indiana, Diego Morales ousted the incumbent secretary of state, a fellow Republican, during the party’s nominating convention by echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He reined in his rhetoric during his successful general election campaign.

Morales did not respond to a request for comment. He was the only one of 17 Republican election conspiracists in a group called the America First Secretary of State Coalition to win his general election race.

The record is far murkier at the local level, where elections are actually run and ballots are counted.

There are thousands of separate election offices in the U.S. In many states, elections are conducted by county offices overseen by clerks or auditors, though in some they are administered at the municipal level in cities or even townships.

No organization tracks local election offices. The Democratic group Run for Something, alarmed at the prospect of election conspiracists occupying these posts, started an initiative to support candidates it dubbed “defenders of democracy” this year. It estimated 1,700 separate elections were being held either for posts to run elections, or for bodies such as county commissions that appoint election directors.

Amanda Litman, co-founder of the organization, said the group was tracking 32 races where they supported candidates. Their candidate won in 17 races and lost in 12, while three have yet to be called. Most significantly, she said, they won eight races against election deniers, and lost only three.

“It’s generally a good sign that when you’re able to make the stakes of the race about democracy, you win,” Litman said.

Still, she added, it’s hard to track all the potential election conspiracy theorists who got into local office: “It’s a little bit unknowable.”

Some prominent election conspiracy theorists did win local posts.

In the Atlanta area, Bridget Thorne, who attended numerous meetings of the Fulton County Commission to talk about conspiracy theories revolving around the 2020 election, won a post on the commission. However, it’s dominated by Democrats, so she likely will have limited ability to bring pressure on the county’s elections department.

In Washoe County, the swing area in Nevada that includes Reno, Republican Mike Clark won one of the five county commission seats. He told a local newspaper that “I don’t have any personal knowledge” of whether President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.

And in Mason County, Duenkel spread conspiracy theories about local and national elections. He helped lead a group of volunteers who went door-to-door checking for voters who didn’t live where they were registered, and claimed they had found thousands. A local television station retraced their steps and found numerous errors by the group.

Still, every Republican on the ballot won Mason County this election. McGuire said he called Duenkel to congratulate him and left him a voice mail, but never got a call back. Duenkel also did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

“He got more votes than me and he won,” McGuire said. “That’s what an election professional does — respect the will of the voters and stand behind the results, whether one is happy about the outcome or not.”

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Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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SMYRNA, Ga. (AP) — Fresh off his commanding reelection, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Saturday played the role of dutiful Republican soldier as he campaigned for the first time alongside Senate hopeful Herschel Walker after spending months steering clear of his ticket-mate.

The joint appearance reflects how important Kemp’s broad coalition will be in determining whether Walker can unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock in a Dec. 6 runoff. The fact it occurred only now underscores the challenges that Walker, a celebrity athlete turned politician, has had appealing to many independents and moderate Republicans amid an intense focus on his rocky past.

“We cannot rest on our laurels, everyone,” Kemp told a few hundred supporters standing in the parking lot of a gun store in suburban Atlanta, urging them to cast one more ballot in a midterm election year that was underwhelming for Republicans nationally.

Kemp was the top vote-getter in Georgia’s general election, drawing 200,000 more votes in his matchup with Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams than Walker did in his challenge to Warnock. The result: Kemp defeated Abrams by 7.5 percentage points, while Walker trailed Warnock by about 36,000 votes or almost 1 percentage point. Warnock fell just shy of a majority, however, triggering the four-week runoff blitz.

The governor campaigned throughout the fall mostly for his own reelection, though he made appearances with several of GOP nominees for lower statewide offices. All of them won without runoffs. The notable absence was always Walker, with Kemp sometimes avoiding even saying his name when reporters asked about the distance between the two campaigns. Kemp would often say only that he backed the “entire ticket.”

Since securing a second term, Kemp has become more explicit in his support, even if still calculated. He’s signed over his voter turnout operation to a Republican political action committee aligned with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and endorsed Walker anew in recent interviews. On Saturday, he pitched Walker as a fiscal and cultural conservative who would back tax cuts and support law enforcement and the military, and he repeated Republicans’ principal attack on Warnock: That he votes with President Joe Biden “96% of the time.”

“I know that Herschel Walker will fight for us,” Kemp said. “He will go and fight for those values that we believe in here in our state.”

Yet Kemp also used his brief time on stage as a personal victory lap, nodding to his coming second term and mentioning Abrams before he said anything about Walker or Warnock. “I’ve never been more optimistic about the future of our state, and we’re going to keep our state moving in the right direction because we stopped Stacey and saved Georgia,” he said.

Republicans see Kemp as a critical validator for Walker, especially since the Georgia runoff is now more locally focused because Democrats already have secured 50 seats and hold Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.

For much of the year, Walker and Republicans tried to nationalize the race because it was among the battlegrounds that would determine Senate control, as Georgia did two years ago with concurrent Senate runoffs won by Democrats Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff.

The strategy was partly about tying Warnock to Biden because of the president’s lagging approval ratings and generationally high inflation. But it was also seen as a necessity because of some of Walker’s liabilities.

Walker has on multiple occasions exaggerated his academic achievements, business success and philanthropic activities. He’s faced accusations of violence against his first wife. During the campaign, he acknowledged multiple children he’d not previously talked about publicly, doing so only after media reports on their existence. In October, two women Walker once dated alleged that he encouraged and paid for their abortions despite his stance as a candidate for a national abortion ban with no exceptions.

Walker denies he ever paid for an abortion and has answered with a withering assault on Warnock, focusing in recent weeks on the poor living conditions at an Atlanta apartment building owned by a foundation of the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Warnock serves as senior pastor. Walker has used apparent eviction notices issued to some tenants and complaints by its residents to cast Warnock as a “hypocrite” and “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Still, the cumulative effect has fed Warnock’s efforts to tag Walker as “not ready” and “not fit” for the Senate, and it’s made Walker much less popular than Kemp, especially among independents and moderate Republicans. That’s more concerning in an environment where the GOP can’t use Senate control as the incentive for wary GOP-leaning voters to back Walker.

Walker’s electoral shortcomings were especially acute in suburban Atlanta. While Walker ran about 5 points behind Kemp statewide, that gap was almost 7 points in Cobb County, where Saturday’s rally was held, with similar gaps in several other metro area counties that are critical to Republicans’ statewide coalition.

Indeed, an AP VoteCast survey of the general electorate found that 7 in 10 voters who backed Kemp said they did so enthusiastically, but only about half of Walker’s voters said the same. Among Walker supporters, about 4 in 10 said they backed him with reservations and about 1 in 10 said they were opposing the other candidates.

Further, Kemp seems to have reaped benefits from having resisted former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and nationally. Only 29% of Georgia’s voters said Kemp supports former President Trump too much, according to AP VoteCast, while 43% said that of Walker, who is a friend of Trump and is running with his endorsement.

“Brian Kemp is clearly the most popular Republican in Georgia, and he clearly has the most significant organization,” said Josh Holmes, an influential Republican strategist in Washington and former chief of staff to McConnell.

Even Democrats concede the point, holding a press conference earlier Saturday featuring voters who said they voted for Kemp and Warnock.

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Associated Press reporter Hannah Fingerhut contributed from Washington.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania judge has recommended the state’s high court impose civil contempt penalties against a Republican-majority county government that this summer secretly allowed a third party to copy data from voting machines used in the 2020 election lost by former President Donald Trump.

Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer’s 77-page report issued late Friday said the July inspection and copying of computer data from machines rented by Fulton County was a willful violation of a court order designed to prevent evidence from being spoiled.

She recommended that the justices find that the county, based on the actions of Republican Commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch, “engaged in vexatious, obdurate, and bad faith conduct” in their lawsuit against the Department of State over whether a 2021 inspection by another outside group meant the machines could no longer be used.

Cohn Jubelirer, an elected Republican, recommended that the county be ordered to pay some of the state’s legal fees and that the Dominion Voting Systems Inc. machines in question be turned over to a third party for safekeeping at the county’s expense.

Dominion has been the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories about the election supposedly being stolen from Trump. It has since filed a number of defamation lawsuits against his allies and right-wing broadcasters.

Messages seeking comment were left Friday and Saturday for Pottstown lawyer Thomas J. Carroll, who represents Fulton County, Ulsh and Bunch. Messages were left Saturday for Ulsh, and Bunch did not answer his phone.

The judge noted that during a three-day hearing earlier this month, Ulsh and Bunch invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination “in response to the vast majority of questions asked of them on direct examination.”

Cohn Jubelirer’s report was commissioned by the state Supreme Court after lawyers for acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman sought a contempt order. The request for the order was based on Bunch and Ulsh’s disclosure in separate litigation in September that Speckin Forensics LLC of Lansing, Michigan, had copied hard drives in July from Democracy Suite 5.5A voting machines that Fulton County had rented from Dominion.

The Department of State ordered the county to stop using its rented Dominion machines after Bunch and Ulsh allowed one group, Wake TSI, access to them as part of an effort to help Trump’s failed efforts to reverse his defeat. Fulton County, Bunch and Ulsh sued to challenge the state’s order that the machines could not be used in future elections, and Fulton County has since been using other machines.

“All chain of custody has been broken, and it is now impossible to determine what the state of the Dominion Voting Equipment was immediately after the Wake TSI Inspection,” Cohn Jubelirer wrote. “That is, the Speckin Inspection rendered the voting equipment unreliable as evidence of what Wake TSI did, and it is impossible to reverse that effect.”

The Department of State had told counties they were not allowed to provide others such access to voting machines. Ulsh and Bunch were moments away from permitting a third group, Envoy Sage LLC, to inspect the machines in January when the state Supreme Court put that on hold. The inspection planned in January was to involve computers, electronic poll books, ballot scanners and possibly more.

Litigation over the Envoy Sage inspection and the state’s order prohibiting outside access was planned for Supreme Court oral argument last month before the Department of State notified the justices of the Speckin inspection and sought penalties. The high court took the matter off its calendar and asked Cohn Jubelirer to investigate.

Cohn Jubelirer said the justices should not grant Chapman’s request that they dismiss the lawsuit that Fulton County, Ulsh and Bunch have pending against her. Instead, Cohn Jubelirer said that during the ongoing litigation any facts related to the machine inspections should be “conclusively established” in Chapman’s favor.

Rural Fulton County is overwhelmingly Republican and gave Trump more than 85% of its vote in 2020.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — People in their 80s lead countries, create majestic art and perform feats of endurance. One entered the record books for scaling Mount Everest. It’s soon time for Joe Biden, 80 on Sunday, to decide whether he has one more mountain to climb — the one to a second term as president.

Questions swirl now, in his own party as well as broadly in the country, about whether he’s got what it takes to go for the summit again.

The oldest president in U.S. history, Biden hits his milestone birthday at a personal crossroads as he and his family face a decision in the coming months on whether he should announce for reelection. He’d be 86 at the end of a potential second term.

Biden aides and allies all say he intends to run — and his team has begun quiet preparations for a campaign — but it has often been the president himself who has sounded the most equivocal. “My intention is that I run again,” he said at a news conference this month. ”But I’m a great respecter of fate.”

“We’re going to have discussions about it,” he said. Aides expect those conversations to pick up in earnest over Thanksgiving and Christmas, with a decision not until well after New Year’s.

Biden planned to celebrate his birthday at a family brunch in the White House on Sunday.

To observe Biden at work is to see a leader tap a storehouse of knowledge built up over a half century in public office as he draws on deep personal relationships at home and abroad, his mastery of policy and his familiarity with how Washington works or doesn’t. In short, the wisdom of the aged.

“There is something to be said for experience,” said Dartmouth College historian Matt Delmont as he noted the dozens of global leaders in their 80s.

But to observe Biden is also to see him walk now often with a halting gait, in contrast to his trotting on stage on election night 2020.

It is to see him take a pass on a formal dinner with other world leaders without a real explanation, as happened on his trip abroad this past week, when he twice spoke of visiting Colombia when he meant Cambodia. Some supporters wince when he speaks, hoping he gets through his remarks OK.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision, at age 82, to pull back from leadership and let a new generation rise may spill over into Biden’s thinking and that of his party as Democrats weigh whether they want to go with a proven winner or turn to the energy of youth.

Among the questions Pelosi’s move raises, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communications at the University of Pennsylvania: “Even if one is highly competent and successful, is there a point at which one should step aside to give others the opportunity to lead just as others stepped aside to make it possible for you to do so?

“Pelosi’s decision makes such questions more salient in the context of Biden’s 2020 statement that he was the bridge to a new generation of leaders.”

Biden’s verbal flubs have been the stuff of legend throughout his five-decade political career, so sussing out the impact of age on his acuity is a guessing game for “armchair gerontologists,” as Dr. S. Jay Olshansky, an aging expert, puts it.

In the distorted mirrors of social media commentary, every slip is magnified into supposed proof of senility. A moment of silent reflection by Biden in a meeting is presented as the president nodding off. All of that went into Donald Trump’s quiver of falsehoods when he announced Tuesday he will seek the presidency again.

Some allies see Biden’s blunders as an increasing vulnerability in the eyes of voters as he’s grown older.

In an AP VoteCast survey of the electorate this month, fully 58% of voters said he does not have the mental capability to serve effectively as president. That was a grim picture of his standing now, not just looking ahead to another potential term. Only 34% said he’s a strong leader.

Those findings come alongside notably low approval ratings in league with Trump’s at this point of their presidencies.

Two months before the 2020 election, Olshansky, at the University of Illinois, Chicago, published a paper that predicted both Biden and Trump were bound to maintain their good health beyond the end of this presidential term.

Based on a scientific team’s evaluation of available medical records, family history and other information, the paper further concluded that both men are probably “super-agers,” a subgroup of people who maintain their mental and physical functioning and tend to live longer than the average person their age.

Nothing has changed Olshansky’s mind about either of them.

“While President Biden may chronologically be 80 years old, biologically he probably isn’t,” he said. “And biological age is far more important than chronological age.” He calls Biden a “classic example of everything that’s good about aging … and so his age, I think, should be almost completely irrelevant.”

Biden is already in the club of high achievers for people his age. Unlike 92% of people 75 and over in the U.S., he still has a job, not to mention a mightily demanding one.

And he’s been on a roll. The November elections produced the best result for a Democratic president’s party in midterms in decades — despite the poison pill of high inflation — as Democrats kept control of the Senate, narrowly lost the House in defiance of expectations of a rout, and won several competitive governors’ races in key states.

The president also sealed a string of consequential legislative victories in recent months, on climate, infrastructure, health care expansion, military aid to Ukraine and more.

Biden says he begins most days with an 8 a.m. workout, when he is usually joined by his personal trainer and physical therapist, Drew Contreras, if he doesn’t ride his Peloton bike.

“If I let it go for a week, I feel it,” he told the “Smartless” podcast recently. “I used to be able to go for a week and nothing would change.”

White House aides say Biden reads his briefing book deep into the night, holds intensive evening meetings with advisers and has never balked at their scheduling requests that may have him out late, though rarely up early.

Yet his aides are deeply protective of the president, especially with his public schedule, which is lighter than those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both far younger in office. They’ve shielded him from formal interviews and, until recently, press conferences.

To his doubters, he says: “Watch me.”

Biden has been diagnosed with several very common age-related health conditions, none causing him serious problems.

In his November 2021 summary of Biden’s health after the president’s first full physical in office, Dr. Kevin O’Connor noted Biden’s gait had become somewhat stiffer, something doctors watch for in older patients as it could signal a fall risk.

But after testing, the doctor concluded it’s mostly due to ongoing “wear and tear” arthritis of the spine, as well as compensation for a broken foot sustained a year earlier and the development of “mild peripheral neuropathy” or subtle damage to some sensory nerves in the feet.

Experts say age is not destiny; what matters is good health, fitness and functioning. Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura had enough of those attributes to make it to the top of Mount Everest in 2013 at age 80, setting a record that an 85-year-old Nepali man died trying to break in 2017.

Growing old is inexorable — at whatever pace, it comes.

It came at one pace for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for example, and it’s coming at another for Pelosi, who is another institution in town.

“What’s wrong with me?” Marshall asked upon his decision to retire from the Supreme Court at age 82, before answering: “I’m old. I’m getting old and coming apart.” (He died two years later.)

At the same age, Pelosi buzzes Capitol hallways in high heels, outpacing much younger people. And her cognitive abilities have never been in question.

The knock against her was that she blocked the highest ambitions of generations of younger lawmakers before her decision this past week not to seek reelection as House Democratic leader when Republicans take control.

Supreme Court justices, shielded from the electorate and bosses, can grow as old in the job as they want and as fate allows — and they tend to stick around. Justice John Paul Stevens retired in 2010 at age 90, attributing his decision to a small stroke while reading his Citizens United dissent from the bench.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a hugely consequential 80-something, fell three years short of her goal to be as old as Stevens on the bench. She died in September 2020.

In democracies, where voters are the boss, and in autocracies, where they’re not, plenty of people in power soldier on in their advanced years, even if few are up there like former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who became the world’s oldest leader at 92 and is running to get the office back, at 97.

Much of the leadership in the U.S. Congress is over 70, especially Democrats, and so were Biden’s main rivals in the 2020 Democratic primaries and Trump.

Attribute that, in part, to increasing longevity.

“Life expectancy back around 1900 in the United States was about 50,” Olshansky said, “and we added about 30 years” since.

In Cockeysville, Maryland, outside Baltimore, Nelson Hyman, 85, and his wife, Roz Hyman, 77, credit Biden with getting big things right and especially with appointing a strong team. To these Democrats, that adds up to an effective presidency that taps the value of age in a society that often doesn’t.

“I’ve always felt the president is as good as the people that he appoints, and I think he’s appointed some very, very good people, very competent people, and he uses them,” said Roz, a retired counselor in a psychiatric hospital.

“Now, are you going to ask me, is he going to be competent in two years? Who knows? I don’t know.”

A president can only be conceptual, said Nelson, retired from an insurance career, “and the detail people will take care of the details.” When Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he said, Biden stepped up, ”spoke beautifully and strongly” and “has not been afraid to deal with Putin. Not at all.”

They recalled seeing Ronald Reagan struggle in his second term, before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after he left office, and felt that he, too, had surrounded himself with competence, as much as they disagreed with his direction.

Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said Reagan posted major achievements even when his memory may have been slipping, in part because his aides were strong and accomplished and Reagan retained the values that informed his judgments.

That’s true of many presidents, Biden included, she said. Trump, in contrast, preferred a team largely of acolytes.

But when a perception does take hold in the public, any slipup can feed it, whether it is relevant or not.

When Biden tumbled on his bicycle in Delaware in June, his foot or feet caught in the pedals’ cages, the mishap fed the perception of a president not at the top of his game physically.

“Those of us that know a little about aging were pretty impressed by the fact that he was on his bicycle to begin with … that you’ve got somebody who is really active and healthy for his age,” said Olshansky. Instead, the focus was on his injury-free fall.

Ageism pops up in campaigns even when opposing candidates are both old themselves; witness Trump’s references to “Sleepy Joe” in 2020 and Biden’s characterization of Trump as “mentally deranged.”

But it was particularly pronounced in the 2008 presidential contest between Obama, 47 in that fall’s campaign, and Sen. John McCain, then 72.

When Obama misidentified the city he was in, the flub was attributed to a long day by a nation-trotting barnstormer, Jamieson said. When McCain did that, it was his age.

The Obama campaign exploited the age gap in what Jamieson said were underhanded ways. She noticed and, with her technical team, confirmed that in at least two ads, recordings of McCain had been slowed down to make him sound mentally feeble.

But the sharpest cracks about age came from McCain himself.

“Good evening, my fellow Americans,” he said on “Saturday Night Live.” “I ask you, what should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old.”

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Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s Democratic congressional members in a Friday statement urged the Democratic National Committee to make the Western swing state the first stop of primary season and pointed to a strong midterm showing as evidence for why it should be in the top slot.

It’s the latest in a growing debate over who should gain the political clout of being first in the nation as Iowa’s half-century run stands on shaky ground. For months, that state’s delegates have fended off criticism that it does not have a diverse enough electorate and that it is not predictive of which candidate will win the primary.

The Nevada congressional members said the outcome of the midterm election — including Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election after many deemed her the most vulnerable incumbent — “cemented why we should hold the first presidential primary.”

“Nevada is a working class, pro-labor state with one of the most diverse populations in the country and a commitment to voting rights that is a model for the nation,” they said.

Four of Nevada’s five Democratic congressional members — Cortez Masto and Reps. Steven Horsford, Dina Titus and Susie Lee — all won re-election in what were considered toss-up races. Sen. Jacky Rosen is up for re-election in 2024. Rep. Mark Amodei is the state’s only Republican congressional member and easily won re-election for his seventh term last week.

Nevada is mainly competing alongside New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina as the party opened up its process for the first spot earlier this year. The party’s rules committee is set to meet at the beginning of December to decide the new calendar.

New Hampshire has hinged its argument on grassroots politics and the potential for Democrats to lose future elections if it ceases to be in one of the top slots. The Iowa delegation promised changes to its caucus, including expanded vote-by-mail after technical glitches extended the 2020 results. South Carolina delegates have touted the state’s size, diversity, affordability and accessibility to candidates.

Nevada has a large share of working class voters with a strong union presence and large Latino, Filipino and Chinese American populations. The letter cited a demographic diversity — from the Las Vegas and Reno metro centers to tribal and rural communities — that can be predictive of a primary win across the country.

“If you’re a presidential candidate and you can win in Nevada, you have a message that resonates across the country,” Cortez Masto said on MSNBC earlier this week, calling the state “a microcosm of the rest of the country.”

Nevada Democratic strategist Rebecca Lambe also outlined in a memo first reported by Politico that the midterms “underscore Nevada’s record of beating the odds to deliver for Democrats.”

“The voters who make up our electorate represent the future of the Democratic Party if we want to win national elections: working class Latino, Black, Asian American, Native American, and white voters,” Lambe wrote. “Simply put, we cannot win 270 electoral votes or Congress without prioritizing the diverse, blue-collar coalition that Nevada represents.”

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Stern 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. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site.

Musk made the announcement in the evening after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be restored. The “yes” vote won, with 51.8%. Previously, Musk had said Twitter would establish new procedures and a “content moderation council” before making decisions to restore suspended accounts.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”

Shortly afterward Trump’s account, which had earlier appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform complete with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. His followers were gone, at least initially, but he quickly began regaining them. There were no new tweets from the account as of late Saturday, however.

Musk restored the account less than a month after the Tesla CEO took control of Twitter and four days after Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race.

It is not clear whether Trump would actually return to Twitter. An irrepressible tweeter before he was banned, Trump has said in the past that he would not rejoin even if his account was reinstated. He has been relying on his own, much smaller social media site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.

And on Saturday, during a video speech to a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas, Trump said that he was aware of Musk’s poll but that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter.”

“I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it,” Trump said. “It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.

The prospect of restoring Trump’s presence to the platform follows Musk’s purchase last month of Twitter — an acquisition that has fanned widespread concern that the billionaire owner will allow purveyors of lies and misinformation to flourish on the site. Musk has frequently expressed his belief that Twitter had become too restrictive of freewheeling speech.

His efforts to reshape the site have been both swift and chaotic. Musk has fired many of the company’s 7,500 full-time workers and an untold number of contractors who are responsible for content moderation and other crucial responsibilities. His demand that remaining employees pledge to “extremely hardcore” work triggered a wave of resignations, including hundreds of software engineers.

Users have reported seeing increased spam and scams on their feeds and in their direct messages, among other glitches, in the aftermath of the mass layoffs and worker exodus. Some programmers who were fired or resigned this week warned that Twitter may soon fray so badly it could actually crash.

Musk’s online survey, posted on his own Twitter account, drew more than 15 million votes in the 24 hours in which it ran.

Musk conceded that the results were hardly scientific. “Bot & troll armies might be running out of steam soon,” he tweeted Saturday morning. “Some interesting lessons to clean up future polls.”

 

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Democratic Rep. Katie Porter was reelected Thursday after a bruising campaign in Southern California, where she spent over $24 million to defend her seat in a closely divided coastal district.

With nearly all the votes counted, Porter defeated Republican Scott Baugh, a former legislator, 51.6% to 48.4%, or a margin of about 8,200 votes.

On Wednesday, Republicans regained control of the House. With Porter’s victory, Republicans will hold 218 seats next year, Democrats 212. Counting is not yet finished in a handful of other undecided races.

Porter was running in a substantially redrawn district that included her hometown of Irvine but also included many voters who were unfamiliar with her. The campaign presented a stark choice.

Porter, a star of the party’s progressive wing known for grilling CEOs during Capitol Hill hearings, anchored her campaign on protecting abortion rights and expanding health care access while spotlighting her work as a consumer advocate, including fighting high credit card fees. She argued that oil companies were keeping supply low to earn record profits.

The conservative Baugh, a former head of the county GOP, blamed congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden for inflation, soaring gas prices and hefty taxes that cut into household budgets.

Both candidates depicted each other as extremists.

Porter’s win was another sign of the changing political complexion of Orange County, a place once known as “Reagan country” for its ties to former Republican President Ronald Reagan and conservative politics.

Once largely white and Republican, the county of more than 3 million has grown demographically diverse and increasingly Democratic. Biden carried Porter’s district by double digits in the 2020 presidential election.

The victory, although narrow, is unlikely to discourage talk about Porter’s political future — she’s often mentioned as a potential U.S. Senate candidate.

The tightest remaining contest in the state is playing out in the Central Valley, where Republican John Duarte seized a thin lead over Democrat Adam Gray in District 13, an open seat. The latest returns showed Duarte leading by just under 1,000 votes, with about 90% of the ballots tabulated.

Another undecided contest was in the state’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, which runs from the Sacramento suburbs down the interior spine of the state. Republican Kevin Kiley, a state assemblyman, was leading Democrat Kermit Jones, a physician and Navy veteran.

In the Central Valley’s 22nd District, where about two-thirds of the votes have been counted, Republican Rep. David Valadao, who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump, had a 5.6-point margin over Democrat Rudy Salas, or about 4,000 votes.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy announced Friday that he has decided not to run for Louisiana governor next year, opting instead to focus on his work in the Senate.

“When I was elected to the United States Senate, I was given a job to represent the people of Louisiana and serve the United States of America. For the last several years, I have been working on specific legislation that is critical for the future of our state and country. I don’t know if these will pass, but I know they will not pass if I decide to run for another office,” Cassidy said in a written statement that he tweeted Friday. “I have chosen to remain focused on the job I was sent here to do and to see these efforts through. Therefore, I will not be a candidate for governor.”

With Cassidy not entering the race, many are waiting to see if Louisiana’s other senator will.

On Monday, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy said he was “giving serious consideration” to a gubernatorial bid and will make an announcement “soon.”

Kennedy, a Republican who has mostly provided a safe Senate vote for Republicans and been a strong supporter of Trump, easily won reelection to Congress last week, fending off 12 challengers and securing himself a second six-year term.

The politician, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, proved to be popular in Louisiana and on Capitol Hill, raising $36 million in his reelection bid — 10 times as much as his Democratic challengers combined.

Louisiana’s highly anticipated 2023 gubernatorial race is expected to attract several strong GOP candidates because term limits prevent Gov. John Bel Edwards from seeking a third consecutive term. And though the state Legislature is dominated by Republicans, Louisiana is the only Deep South state with a Democrat for governor, opening a huge opportunity for Republicans hoping to capture the state’s top government post.

Although the election is less than a year away, so far the only person who has announced a bid is Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. A conservative Republican and staunch supporter of Trump, Landry has already received an early endorsement from the Louisiana Republican Party.

A list of other Republicans interested in the governor’s seat is slowly growing.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser confirmed to reporters that he plans to join the race. State Treasurer John Schroder told supporters in January he also plans on running. U.S. Rep. Garret Graves and state Sen. Sharon Hewitt have also indicated that they are considering.

It remains unclear who will emerge as a Democratic candidate.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party’s capture of the House majority, though narrow, will soon transform the agenda in Washington, empowering GOP lawmakers to pursue conservative goals, vigorously challenge the policies of Democratic President Joe Biden — and dash with relief to the other side of Washington investigations.

Come next year, Republicans have made clear, the Democratic-led Jan. 6 investigative committee will be no more. Instead, public probes into the president’s son, Hunter Biden, will begin. And GOP priorities including border security, parents’ rights and major IRS cuts will be on fast tracks to the House floor.

It’s a familiar whiplash, reminiscent of what took place after midterm contests in 2010 and 2018 that also ended one-party control of Washington — the first time to the Republicans’ benefit, the second to the Democrats’. This time, however, the Republicans’ weaker-than-expected showing in last week’s election will complicate plans to aggressively take Biden on with actual legislation.

Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy will have few votes to spare as he steers the House agenda, little room to maneuver if members of his conference — particularly the hard-right Freedom Caucus — withhold their support. And few of the House GOP’s goals, even if passed, are likely to have much of a chance in the closely divided but Democratic-led Senate.

But after two years on the receiving end of Jan. 6 and Donald Trump investigations, Republicans have made clear a top priority for their own majority is to investigate and then investigate some more — Democrats this time. They are preparing a wide range of probes of Democrats, from Hunter Biden’s business dealings to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border and billions of dollars in COVID spending they say was stolen or spent frivolously.

“It’s really about getting answers to questions that people all across this country have been asking for the last two years, and for various reasons, the administration refuses to be candid,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, who is about to become House majority leader, said an interview before the election.

Investigating the Biden family will be the first order of business, top Republicans indicated Thursday at a news conference just hours after clinching the House majority.

Rep. James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are “troubling questions” about the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter and one of the president’s brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation.

In fact, Republican lawmakers and their staff have been analyzing messages and financial transactions found on a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden for the past year. They have discussed issuing congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that did business with him, and they recently brought on James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to assist with the investigation as general counsel for the Oversight Committee.

Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months. While he never held a position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”

Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business. And there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president in any way.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who will lead the Judiciary Committee, said he intends to look into what he contends is an overly close relationship between the White House and the Justice Department

“The only way you can hold people accountable and hopefully stop the behavior is to present it to the country,” Jordan said. Both Jordan and Comer emphasized that they do not plan to investigate Hunter Biden’s personal life.

The White House has been preparing for months for possible investigations into Biden’s family, though comment on anything related specifically to Hunter Biden would come from his lawyers, who did not immediately return a request on Thursday.

“President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge,” Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement Thursday.

Even as the investigations unfold, Biden will have to find a way to work with McCarthy, a California Republican from a different generation known more for his political acumen than his ability to navigate legislative disputes. McCarthy is certain to find himself under intense pressure from his right flank to take on the White House, making it difficult to compromise.

Even before the election, Republicans talked about exerting leverage over Biden to influence must-pass legislation to fund the government and authorize more federal debt. Some Republicans have suggested that a temporary government shutdown might be acceptable if it is necessary to force Democrats into accepting spending and other policy changes.

“If it means that you have to stop the government from running its day-to-day operations so that we can actually fix the systemic and fundamental issues that are facing the American people, then so be it,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., on Fox Business. “That is what must be done.”

Scalise was careful on the topic, saying only that when the debt ceiling is reached, “you want to also work to address the problem that is causing us to max out the credit card.”

Republicans have been burned by brinkmanship before. They saw their standing in the polls plunge during a 16-day partial government shutdown in 2013, when they tried to use a spending bill to derail Obama’s health care law and demand more budget concessions.

Whit Ayres, a GOP political consultant, said Republicans should focus on inflation, crime and border security in the majority, but fears they will overreach once again.

“If past is prologue, the small House majority will govern from the right and we’ll get engaged in these investigations and cut off Ukraine aid and try to ban abortion and do all these other things that will repel a majority of the country and put Democrats back in charge,” Ayres said during a post-election forum at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Colleen Long contributed.

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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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