Politics

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden will visit Democratic National Committee headquarters on Monday as he looks to pep up staff and volunteers with just over two weeks to go before Election Day.

Biden is expected to deliver remarks that look to contrast his plan to lower drug costs for Americans while taking aim at a Republicans who he says will look to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits and look to make permanent the GOP’s 2017 changes to tax rates, according to a Democratic official.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview Biden’s remarks, said Biden will also discuss job growth, an unemployment rate that hovers near 50-year lows, and declining gasoline prices during his remarks to the DNC’s Washington offices.

Biden has stepped up his push in recent weeks to highlight his legislative wins for voters while trying to make the case that a Republican takeover of the House and Senate would lead to setbacks for American families.

Last week, he delivered a mix of policy and political speeches on gasoline prices, his bipartisan infrastructure bill, his push for student debt forgiveness, and the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June abortion ruling and efforts by Republican state legislatures to restrict abortion access.

But his legislative wins come as stubborn inflation — consumer prices are up 8.2% from a year ago — continue to weigh heavily on Americans. A federal appeals court on Friday also issued an administrative stay temporarily blocking Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans, throwing the program into limbo.

Republicans looking to wrest Democrats control of the House and Senate have sought to make the the election a referendum on Biden.

As a result, Biden has spent more time at fundraisers and touting his administration’s policy wins this election cycle as his approval ratings remain underwater, and many Democrats aren’t eager to stand by him on the campaign trail.

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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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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol riot won’t give Donald Trump the chance to turn a possible live TV appearance of his subpoenaed testimony into a “circus” and “food fight” as lawmakers try to ensure he complies with their demands, the panel’s vice chair said Sunday.

The committee is demanding Trump’s testimony under oath next month as well as records relevant to its investigation. To avoid a complicated and protracted legal battle, Trump reportedly had told associates he might consider complying with the subpoena if he could answer questions during live testimony.

When asked if the committee would consider taking his testimony live, Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday did not directly respond. She said the committee would not allow Trump’s testimony to turn into a “food fight” on TV — much as was seen, she said, in Trump’s broadcast appearances such as one of his 2020 presidential debates — and she warned that the committee will take action if he does not comply with the subpoena.

“We are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath,” Cheney, R-Wyo., said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves. We are not going to allow — he’s not going to turn this into a circus.”

“We have many, many alternatives that we will consider if the former president decides he is not going to comply with his legal obligation, a legal obligation every American citizen has to comply with a subpoena,” she said.

Her office made clear later that she and the Jan. 6 committee were not ruling out the possibility of live testimony. It did not indicate what form that might take to avoid the “food fight” or “circus” that Cheney said would not happen.

The subpoena, issued Friday, calls on Trump to hand over documents by Nov. 4 and provide testimony “on or about” Nov. 14.

It is unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond. He could comply or negotiate with the committee, announce he will defy the subpoena or ignore it altogether. He could go to court and try to stop it.

Last week, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, was sentenced to serve four months behind bars after defying a subpoena from the same committee. He remains free pending appeal. Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro also awaits a trial next month on similar contempt of Congress charges.

The subpoena includes requests for any communications referring to extremist groups who were coming to Washington, pressure on state legislators to overturn the 2020 election vote and messages about Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump was pushing to object to President Joe Biden’s victory.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sunday that she doubted Trump would appear for his deposition and that the public should know “that no one is above the law.”

“I don’t think he’s man enough to show up,” Pelosi said on MSNBC. “I don’t think his lawyers would want him to show up because he (would) had to testify under oath. … We’ll see.”

There remains little legal advantage for Trump to cooperate with the committee at a time when he faces other legal battles in various jurisdictions, including over his family business in New York and the handling of presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

It’s possible that Trump’s lawyers could simply opt to run out the clock on the subpoena if they go to court to try to squash it as the committee of two Republicans and seven Democrats is required to finish its work by the end of the year.

Cheney, in the television interview, made her position clear that Trump had committed “multiple criminal offenses” and should be prosecuted. She cited his repeated efforts as outlined by the Jan. 6 committee to undermine democracy by denying his election loss to Biden and by spurring his supporters in the violent attack on the Capitol.

“We’ve been very clear about a number of different criminal offenses that are likely at issue here,” Cheney said. “If the Department of Justice determines that they have the evidence that we believe is there and they make a decision not to prosecute, I think that really calls into question whether or not we’re a nation of laws.”

Cheney, who lost in Wyoming’s August primary after becoming Trump’s fiercest GOP critic and has signaled a possible 2024 presidential run, expressed dismay over the number of Republican candidates in the Nov. 8 midterms who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. She acknowledged that the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation will be permanently ended in January if Republicans retake control of the House.

While saying it may take “a couple of election cycles,” Cheney insisted the Republican Party can find its way back as a defender of democracy and the Constitution, as she put it. She pointed to the 2024 presidential campaign as a pivotal moment.

“I think that the party has either got to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous, toxic place, or the party will splinter and there will be a new conservative party that rises,” she said. “And if Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party, the party will shatter and there will be a conservative party that rises in its place.”

She said Trump has shown “his willingness to use force to attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power. And there are simply many, many millions more Americans who, despite any party affiliation, understand how dangerous that is.”

On whether she could run in 2024, Cheney said: “I’m focused on what we’ve got to do to save the country from this dangerous moment we’re in … not right now on whether I’m going to be a candidate or not.”

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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Cheney did not rule out the possibility of live TV testimony by Trump.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In a telephone call days after the 2020 election, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes urged followers to go to Washington and fight to keep President Donald Trump in office.

A concerned member of the extremist group began recording because, as he would later tell jurors in the current seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and four associates, it sounded as if they were “going to war against the United States government.”

That Oath Keeper contacted the FBI, but his tip was filed away. He was only interviewed after Rhodes’ followers stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The defendants are charged with plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power, and their trial is raising more questions about intelligence failures in the days before the riot that appear to have allowed Rhodes’ anti-government group and other extremists to mobilize in plain sight.

“You don’t have to have been invited to a secret meeting of the Oath Keepers … to know that the Oath Keepers presented a threat,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.

It’s unclear to what extent authorities were tracking Rhodes and his militia group before Jan. 6. But it has since become apparent that authorities had plenty of intelligence warning that some Trump supporters were planning an assault to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

Despite that, police left unprepared on the front lines were quickly overwhelmed by the mob that engaged in hand-to-hand combat with officers, smashed windows and poured into the Capitol.

Additional details emerged this month when the House committee investigating the attack disclosed messages showing that the Secret Service was aware of plans for Jan. 6 violence.

Jurors in the Washington trial, which is expected to last several more weeks, have received a trove of evidence from prosecutors. That includes Rhodes’ secretly recorded call on Nov. 9, 2020, encrypted messages and surveillance footage from the Virginia hotel where the Oath Keepers stashed weapons for a “quick reaction force” that could quickly run guns into the capital if they were needed.

Much of the evidence, however, has come in the form of statements and writings that Rhodes made publicly in the weeks before Jan. 6. They show how the former U.S. Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate was openly broadcasting his desire to overturn the election and threatening possible violence to attain that goal.

Days after the election on Nov. 3, 2020, Rhodes announced on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show that his group was already mobilizing to stop the transfer of power.

“We have men already stationed outside of D.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally, we will step in and stop it,” Rhodes said.

Jurors also watched video of a speech Rhodes gave in December 2020 in Washington, where thousands of Trump supporters came to rally behind the then-president’s election lies. Rhodes urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives presidents wide discretion to decide when military force is necessary, to call up a militia and “drop the hammer” on the “traitors.”

“He needs to know from you that you are with him, that if he does not do it now while he is commander in chief, we’re going to have to it ourselves later, in a much more desperate, much more bloody war. Let’s get it on now while he is still commander in chief,” Rhodes told the crowd.

That day, Rhodes attracted the attention of a U.S. Capitol Police special agent who was doing counter-surveillance monitoring and had recently read a news article about the group. Rhodes was wearing a black cowboy hat, an eyepatch and an expired congressional badge from when he was a staffer for then-U.S. Rep. Ron Paul in the late 1990s. The agent took a photo and sent it to colleagues. Rhodes was also wearing a black cowboy as he roamed the exterior of the Capitol building as Oath Keepers entered on Jan. 6.

Two weeks before the Capitol riot, Rhodes published an open letter to Trump on the Oath Keepers’ website, suggesting that his followers may need to “take to arms” if Trump doesn’t act over what he viewed as a stolen election.

Rhodes and his associates are the first Jan. 6 defendants to stand trial on seditious conspiracy charges. On trial with Rhodes are Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia; Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida; Jessica Watkins of Woodstock, Ohio; and Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida.

Abdullah Rasheed, the Oath Keeper member who recorded Rhodes’ call on Nov. 9, 2020, told jurors that that he tried to reach out to the FBI and others to share his concerns about Rhodes’ rhetoric. When asked whether anyone called him back, Rasheed responded: “Yeah, after it all happened.”

An FBI agent acknowledged on the stand that the bureau first received a tip about the call in November 2020. Pressed by a defense lawyer about why the FBI didn’t investigate at the time, another agent said the FBI receives thousands of tips a day. The tip wasn’t ignored, but was “filed away for possible future reference,” the agent said.

The Nov. 9 call appears to have been to discuss plans for a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington that would happen days later, not the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Rhodes throughout the meeting repeatedly tells his followers to prepare for violence, instructing them at one point to make sure Trump knows they are “willing to die for this country.”

Defense lawyers are not challenging many of the facts in the case, but say prosecutors have twisted the defendants’ intent. The lawyers have acknowledged the group had a “quick reaction force” stationed outside of Washington, but say it was a defensive force to be used only in the event of attacks from left-wing antifa activists or if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.

The defense team has hammered on prosecutors’ lack of evidence of any specific plan to attack the Capitol before Jan. 6. Rhodes’ lawyers say their client will testify that all his actions were in anticipation of Trump calling up a militia under the Insurrection Act. Trump never did that, but Rhodes’ lawyers say what prosecutors have alleged is seditious conspiracy was merely lobbying a president to use a U.S. law.

Prosecutors recently showed jurors jurors a map pointing to where Rhodes made several stops to purchase guns and other gear on his trip from Texas to Washington before the riot. He spent thousands of dollars on weapons, including a AR-rifle, ammunition, sights, mounts and other items, according to records shown to jurors.

Rhodes and the others are not charged with violating gun laws. Authorities have acknowledged there is no evidence that any of the weapons stashed at the Virginia hotel that housed the “quick reaction force” were brought into the District of Columbia.

“So the armed rebellion was unarmed?” defense lawyer James Bright asked an agent.

“The armed rebellion was not over,” the agent responded.

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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.

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For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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(Reuters) – The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google on Friday for allegedly sending its emails to users’ spam folders.

The U.S. political committee accuses the tech giant of “discriminating” against it by “throttling its email messages because of the RNC’s political affiliation and views,” according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California.

“Google has relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building,” the RNC said in the lawsuit.

Google rejected the claims.

“As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement. “We provide training and guidelines to campaigns, we recently launched an FEC-approved pilot for political senders, and we continue to work to maximize email deliverability while minimizing unwanted spam,” he said, referring to the Federal Election Commission.

Spam filters on email services typically weed out unsolicited “spam” messages and divert them to a separate folder.

The RNC said that for most of the month, nearly all of its emails end up in users’ inboxes but at the end of the month, which is an important time for fund-raising, nearly all of their emails end up in spam folders.

“Critically, and suspiciously, this end of the month period is historically when the RNC’s fundraising is most successful,” the lawsuit said, adding that it does not matter whether the email is about donating, voting or community outreach.

The committee said the “discrimination” had been going on for about 10 months despite its best efforts to work with Google.

It said the alleged routing of its emails to spam folders had eaten up revenue and that more money would be lost in coming weeks as midterm elections loom.

Republicans have long accused big tech companies of discriminating against conservative views and suppressing free speech, an assertion tech companies strongly deny.

(Reporting by Rhea Binoy in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Rehoboth Beach, Del.; Editing by Robert Birsel and Matthew Lewis)

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By Richard Cowan and Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump is too much of a coward to obey a subpoena from the U.S. Congress compelling him to testify to a special committee investigating his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Sunday.

“I don’t think he’s man enough to show up. I don’t think his lawyers will want him to show up because he has to testify under oath,” Pelosi said in an interview with MSNBC.

“We’ll see if he’s man enough to show up,” she added.

On Friday, the select committee announced that it had issued the subpoena to Trump, giving him until Nov. 4 to submit a wide range of documents related to his activities before and after the deadly Jan. 6 attack by the former president’s supporters. The panel also informed Trump that it wants him to appear for testimony on or about Nov. 14.

The attack on the Capitol erupted as Trump supporters attempted to stop Congress from formally certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s decisive win in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump and Pelosi have had a long, stormy relationship.

She guided two impeachment proceedings against him and their dislike of each other sometimes was on public display during his presidency.

At the conclusion of Trump’s 2020 “State of the Union” speech to Congress, Pelosi disdainfully tore in half a printed copy of that address as she sat behind him during the nationally televised event. That came after Trump arrived at the House podium to begin the speech and refused to shake Pelosi’s hand.

The previous year, a White House meeting between Trump and congressional leaders on U.S. policy in Syria erupted in anger when Trump reportedly called Pelosi a “third-rate politician” and later said she was “unhinged.”

Outside the White House following the meeting that Democrats stormed out of, Pelosi told reporters Trump had suffered a “meltdown.”

Also on Sunday, Republican Representative Liz Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump likely has committed several criminal offenses that the U.S. Department of Justice potentially can prosecute him on.

“We have been very clear about a number of different criminal offenses that are likely at issue here,” said Cheney, one of two Republican members on the select House panel.

“He has demonstrated his willingness to use force to attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power,” Cheney said.

She did not lay out specific criminal charges the committee could recommend in an upcoming report following a more than year-long investigation.

Cheney, who lost her Republican leadership role over her criticisms of Trump, as well as her 2022 primary election, said, “We have put on testimony that he admitted that he lost (the 2020 presidential election).

“But even if he thought that he had won, you may not send an armed mob to the Capitol. You may not sit for 187 minutes and refuse to stop the attack while it’s underway. You may not send a tweet that incites further violence,” Cheney said.

Cheney did not say what the panel would do if Trump refuses to cooperate with the subpoena. If he testifies, she said, “he’s not going to turn this into a circus.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Just weeks before the Nov. 8 vote, Utah’s senior senator, Republican Mike Lee, is now acknowledging a real reelection threat from Evan McMullin, an anti-Donald Trump independent and former Republican challenging him in the state’s most competitive Senate race in decades.

Lee’s campaign insists it is confident heading into Election Day, but there are unmistakable signs of anxiety in a race shaping up as a referendum on the direction that Trump has taken the Republican Party.

Lee recently sent out fundraising emails with the subject line: “I’m losing.” In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Lee begged the state’s other Republican senator, Mitt Romney, to “get on board” and endorse him. And speaking to reporters after a debate, the two-term senator said what his campaign had previously avoided saying: “It’s close.”

In reliably Republican Utah, the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has emerged as a potent issue after the House committee investigating the riot published Lee’s text messages with then-President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

In the exchange, Lee discussed ways to challenge the 2020 results in the days and weeks after the election. Lee has claimed he was merely doing due diligence and he notes that he did not join congressional Republicans who objected to the results when they were certified on Jan. 6, the day of the insurrection. Lee has not leaned into claims of widespread election fraud and manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 election that have been debunked by repeated audits, court cases and Trump’s own Department of Justice.

Shortly after the text messages were released, Utah Democrats aiming not to split the anti-Lee vote decided to back McMullin rather than nominate a Democrat. While Lee has tried to categorize McMullin as a Democrat, McMullin, who ran for president in 2016 as an independent and won Lee’s vote as a protest of Donald Trump, has said he would not join either party’s caucus if elected to the Senate.

“I’m not going to Washington to play the party power game,” he said.

Laura Knowlton, a Republican from right-leaning Davis County, cites the text messages as one of her reasons for voting for McMullin. She is certain they indicate further involvement from Lee in efforts to overturn the election.

Knowlton doesn’t understand how voters could ignore that. Yet in an election year where many Republicans remain captivated by Trump and the voting fraud claims at the basis of his pursuit to overturn the 2020 outcome, she predicts some — including in her family — will vote for Lee out of party allegiance. “This will be a test,” she said. “Can you just excuse the things we know about Lee and blindly vote for him because he has an ‘R’ next to his name?”

McMullin has tried to use the texts to puncture the reputation Lee has worked to cultivate as a principled conservative deeply committed to the Constitution. McMullin has framed them as proof of how Lee’s transformation from onetime Trump critic to loyal supporter puts him at odds with Utah voters yearning for an alternative to the direction that Trump has taken the Republican Party.

McMullin argues the country’s long-running partisan gridlock and the more recent threats to democracy are intertwined symptoms of a political culture that has veered toward extremes.

He and campaign allies such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., have urged voters to put aside their views on abortion, government spending and other issues so they can band together against what is portrayed as the existential threats to democracy posed by Trump and loyalists such as Lee.

“I would love to have the luxury to disagree on issues again. We’re gonna argue taxes forever. But right now, we’re fighting for the survival of this country,” Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House’s Jan. 6 committee, told an applauding audience at a campaign event for McMullin on Thursday in downtown Salt Lake City, one of Utah’s most liberal-leaning areas.

Lee has tried to focus the race on pocketbook issues such as the cost of living. He is aiming to appeal to Utah’s Republican majority, making a case about how important he thinks it is for the party to retake the Senate In a debate this past week, he cited what he said was his his libertarian voting record and willingness to break from Trump.

The senator said that “seriously entertaining the idea of supporting an opportunistic gadfly supported by the Democratic Party might make for an interesting dinner table conversation. But this is not an ordinary year.”

Republican voter Bill Lee, a longtime Lee supporter who is not related to him, said McMullin has been forced to obscure his real positions on some issues in order to keep together the disparate coalition of Republicans, Democrats and independents that he needs.

“He’s playing a fine-line game, where he’s trying to garner enough votes from three different groups to coalesce around some sort of margin of victory,” Bill Lee said. “But if he talks too much on where he actually stands, he’ll probably alienate one of those groups, so his game plan has been to stay as quiet as possible.”

Utah is a deeply conservative state, where the political culture borrows heavily from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A majority of the population — including Lee and McMullin — are members. The faith’s support for refugees and culture that teaches self-restraint often clashes with the direction that Trump has taken the GOP.

Members of the faith lean Republican, yet polling has shown Trump commands less robust support among them than other prominent GOP politicians.

Trump failed to win support from a majority of Utah voters in 2016 and Joe Biden lost but performed better with Utah voters in 2020 than any Democrat since 1964.

Lee’s 2020 remarks comparing Trump to Captain Moroni, a scriptural hero in the Book of Mormon, alienated some members of the faith and is the subject of a recent McMullin attack ad.

Unlike other competitive Senate races where Republicans have tried to play down and rebuff Democrats’ efforts to make abortion a central issue, both candidates in Utah identify as anti-abortion. McMullin says he is “pro-life” but opposes extreme policies that criminalize women. Lee said at the debate he was “deeply thrilled” with the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Though abortion is a key issue for her this election, Jenny Bech, one of the many Democrats who came to see McMullin and Kinzinger in Salt Lake City, said she plans to vote for McMullin.

“I think there’s a sense of desperation from the voters,” she said. “I’m a therapist and I can tell you people are very anxious.”

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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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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants to tame inflation. He wants Congress to protect access to abortions. He wants to tackle voting rights. And he’s taking on China, promoting construction of new factories, addressing climate change, forgiving student debt, pardoning federal marijuana convictions, cutting the deficit, working to lower prescription drug prices and funneling aid to Ukraine.

Biden is trying to be everything to everyone. But that’s making it hard for him to say he’s focused on any single issue above all others as he tries to counter Republican momentum going into the Nov. 8 elections.

“There’s no one thing,” Biden said Wednesday when questioned about his top priority. “There’s multiple, multiple, multiple issues, and they’re all important. … We ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. You know, that old expression.”

Biden’s exhaustive to-do list is a recognition that the coalition of Democratic voters he needs to turn out Election Day is diverse in terms of race, age, education and geography. This pool of voters has an expansive list of overlapping and competing interests on crime, civil rights, climate change, the federal budget and other issues.

The Republican candidates trying to end Democratic control of Congress have a far more uniform base of voters, allowing them to more narrowly direct messaging on the economy, crime and immigration toward white voters, older voters, those without a college degree and those who identify as Christian.

In the 2020 election, AP VoteCast suggests, Biden drew disproportionate support from women, Black voters, voters younger than 45, college graduates and city dwellers and suburbanites. That gave Biden a broader base of support than Republican Donald Trump and it also is a potential long-term advantage for Democrats as the country is getting more diverse and better educated.

But in midterm elections that normally favor the party not holding the White House, it requires Biden to appeal to all those constituencies.

“Coherence and cohesion have always been a challenge for the modern Democratic Party that relies on a coalition that crosses racial, ethnic, religious and class lines,” said Daniel Cox, a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It takes considerable political talent to maintain a coalition with diverse interests and backgrounds. Barack Obama managed to do it, but subsequent Democrats have struggled.”

Biden devoted his public remarks this past Tuesday to abortion, Wednesday to gasoline prices, Thursday to infrastructure and Friday to deficit reduction, student debt forgiveness and historically Black colleges and universities. In most of his public speeches, Biden says he understands the pain caused by consumer prices rising 8.2% from a year ago and that he’s working to lower costs.

Cox said there are signs that Biden’s 2020 coalition is fracturing, with younger liberal voters not that enamored with him, and he does not appear to have done much to shore up Hispanic support.

But compared with 2016, when Trump won the presidency, Biden made relative progress with one prominent bloc that generally favors Republicans: white voters without a college degree, as he won 33% of their votes compared with 28% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to a 2021 analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Keeping those voters in the Democratic coalition could be essential for maintaining control of the Senate.

Biden has traveled repeatedly to Pennsylvania, campaigning on Thursday for Senate nominee John Fetterman with the goal of picking up a seat in the state. Fetterman, with his sweatshirts and shorts, exudes a blue-collar image, a contrast with the Republican nominee, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who rose to fame as a TV show host.

“Democrats need to hold on to as much of that bloc as possible, especially in key whiter states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The test for Democrats is how to address broader concerns about the economy and inflation that affect everyone, while also highlighting the specific issues that could energize various segments of their base.

That can involve trade-offs.

As Republicans have made crime a national issue, Biden’s message that he backs the police could help with those white voters. But it could also turn off younger voters in Senate races in Georgia and Florida who believe the police are part of the problem on civil rights, said Alvin Tillery Jr., a professor at Northwestern University and director of its Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy.

Tillery said he doesn’t know how the president can bridge those differences, though Biden could be in a better position to focus on the policing overhaul that Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans — only to be unable to reach a consensus that would be able to clear a GOP filibuster.

“Maybe they’ve blunted some Republican attacks, but they’ve also softened support for people who turned out for them in the 2020 election,” Tillery said. “I don’t know how they solve for that, except to say they need to be more vigorous in saying the things they wanted to achieve were blocked in the Senate.”

Tillery added the overarching challenge might be that people view inflation as a domestic phenomenon, rather than a global one. Republicans are blaming high prices on Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief from 2021, whereas recent months have also shown that inflation is a worldwide trend driven in part by the aftermath of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing prices for energy and food to rise.

“The reality is — like all presidents — he is a victim of things beyond his control,” Tillery said. “Inflation is a problem globally. It’s much worse in other parts of the world, but he can’t message that way.”

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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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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s plan to start counting absentee ballots early hit a roadblock Friday when a state judge ruled the law unconstitutional.

Saratoga County Judge Diane Freestone said the law clashes with an individual’s constitutional right to challenge ballots in court before they’re counted.

It was unclear immediately Friday if New York Democrats would appeal the decision. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

State GOP chair Nick Langworthy on Friday called the judge’s decision a win for election integrity.

In 2020, delays, litigation and mistakes by election boards that faced a flood of absentee ballots led to long waits for election results.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature eventually passed a law allowing for early counting of absentee voting.

Republicans sued in state court to strike down the law.

Democrats defended the law as crucial to ensuring the state can handle the number of people wanting to apply by mail because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans are also suing to strike down a law allowing voters worried about catching COVID-1-9 to vote by absentee.

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This story has been corrected to show that Freestone ruled the law unconstitutional, not constitutional.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alaska faces accusations he sexually harassed a former assistant while he was a borough mayor.

The lawsuit filed Friday accuses Charlie Pierce of “constant unwanted physical touching, sexual remarks, and sexual advances,” the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The case did not show up in an online court records system Saturday. The woman’s Anchorage-based attorney, Caitlin Shortell, said in an email to The Associated Press it was filed in the Kenai Superior Court, and she expected a judge to be assigned Monday.

“When an elected official abuses their power and position to sexually harass public servants, they must be held accountable,” Shortell said.

The AP does not normally identify alleged victims in sexual harassment cases.

Pierce is one of four candidates running for governor in Alaska, and all appeared at a forum Saturday morning in Anchorage.

“I have no comments on future litigation,” Pierce told the AP following the debate.

He said he also had no plans to end his campaign just a few weeks before the Nov. 8 election. “I’ll be in the race,” he said.

The lawsuit also names the Kenai Peninsula Borough south of Anchorage as a defendant in the case, claiming the local government failed to protect the woman. She also claims the borough provided no way to report harassment or discrimination without fear of reprisal.

An email seeking comment was sent to the borough’s attorney, Sean Kelley.

According to the lawsuit, the woman was Pierce’s assistant for about 18 months, until June 2022.

Pierce announced in August he would resign in September to focus on his campaign for governor. The borough assembly later released a statement stating Pierce was asked to consider voluntarily resigning after an employee made what were deemed to be credible claims of harassment against him.

In the lawsuit, she claims Pierce touched her breast, made sexual remarks, falsely imprisoned her in his private office, kissed her neck and face, asked questions about her sex life and made unwanted and unsolicited embraces and massages.

The borough has paid two other former employees a combined $267,000 in settlements for separate complaints against Pierce, the Daily News reported.

In one, the borough paid former human resources director Sandra “Stormy” Brown $150,000 in a settlement after she claimed in a lawsuit that Pierce fired her after she told him she had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She claimed gender discrimination, disability discrimination and creating a hostile work environment.

The borough also paid $117,000 to settle a complaint from a subsequent human resources director if the employee agreed he would not make “further allegations of ‘illegal acts’ by Mayor Pierce” and rescind his allegations of bullying, the Anchorage newspaper reported.

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By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump was ordered on Friday to testify under oath and provide documents to the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

The committee said it had sent a subpoena to Trump requiring documents to be submitted to the panel by Nov. 4 and for him to appear for deposition testimony beginning on or about Nov. 14.

Deposition testimony often refers to closed-door, videotaped questioning of a witness on the record. Such testimony could be made public and become part of a final report by the special panel.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the committee wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday.

The committee is seeking a wide range of documents from Trump that would detail communications he may have had over a period of several months leading up to the Jan. 6 riot and beyond with lawmakers, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members, as well as associates and former aides, including Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani.

Additional documents, text messages and other communications being sought relate to information detailing possible travel of people to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, communications relating to efforts to encourage state legislatures or lawmakers to take actions that would have delayed Congress’ certification of the presidential election or changes in states that would have certified an alternate slate of “electors” that would support naming Trump as the winner of the 2020 election.

Trump, who regularly refers to the panel as the “unselect committee,” has accused it of waging unfair political attacks on him while refusing to investigate his charges of widespread election fraud.

He is not likely to cooperate with the subpoena and could simply try to run out the clock on a committee whose mandate will likely end early next year if Republicans win a majority in the House in November’s midterm elections.

Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump delivered a fiery speech at a rally near the White House featuring false claims that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by Democrat Joe Biden was the result of fraud.

The assault saw rioters smash through glass and battle police. Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot, more than 140 police officers were injured, the Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage and Pence, members of Congress and staff were sent running for their lives.

The committee announcement came hours after Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump, was sentenced to four months in federal prison for refusing to cooperate with the panel’s investigation. He is free, however, pending his appeal.

PRIOR PRESIDENTIAL TESTIMONY

The committee made clear that congressional testimony by a former or sitting president was not unprecedented. The letter listed seven former presidents — most recently Gerald Ford — having testified after leaving office. “Even sitting presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford” also appeared while still in the White House, it said.

“In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney wrote Trump.

Committee members have not said how they will proceed if Trump disregards his subpoena.

Federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena is a misdemeanor, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment. If the select committee’s subpoena is ignored, the committee would vote to refer the issue to the full House. The House then would vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide whether to bring charges.

The rioters were attempting to stop Congress’ formal certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

The House Jan. 6 select committee has held a series of hearings making its case – via documents, live witness testimony and recorded testimony from interviews conducted behind closed doors – that Trump was largely responsible for the deadly assault on the Capitol.

They argued that the Republican planned in advance to deny his election defeat, failed for hours to call off the thousands of his supporters who stormed the Capitol and followed through with his false claims that the election was stolen even as close advisers told him he had lost.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis)

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