Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If Republicans win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections, they expect to use a powerful and potentially dangerous tool as leverage in their dealings with Democratic President Joe Biden: The federal debt ceiling.

The U.S. Treasury is expected to reach its mandated $31.4 trillion borrowing limit in 2023, and Republicans ranging from hard-line conservatives to moderates see that as an opportunity to curb Biden’s spending on Democratic initiatives such as climate change and new social programs.

“It’s critical that we’re prepared to use the leverage we have,” said Representative Scott Perry, chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, which could see greater influence if Republicans win control in the Nov. 8 election, as nonpartisan election forecasters say is likely.

Representative Buddy Carter, a contender for House Budget Committee chairman, said the debt ceiling would be key to a new Republican majority’s hopes of reining in federal spending.

“Getting people’s attention about our debt is very difficult. The debt ceiling is going to be an important tool,” Carter told Reuters.

Congress created the debt ceiling in 1917 to give the government greater borrowing flexibility, and must approve each increase to ensure that the United States meets its debt obligations and avoids a catastrophic default.

The system, in theory, is meant to control the rise in the nation’s debt, but has not been an effective tool in recent decades. Washington’s debt swelled from $3.2 trillion in 1990 to $31.1 trillion today.

But the approach has set the stage for regular flashpoints, with Republicans regularly threatening to block an increase to exact concessions.

One such effort in 2011 led to a budget-cutting agreement. But others failed to defund the Affordable Care Act in 2013 or complete construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border during Donald Trump’s administration.

There have also been harrowing consequences. The protracted 2011 standoff in Congress prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating for the first time, sending financial markets reeling.

The risks are arguably higher now, as global economies flirt with post-pandemic recessions and a looming European energy crisis.

Republicans approved additional spending during former President Trump’s years in power, but following Biden’s election returned to their focus on the deficit.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a moderate, told Reuters that the debt ceiling would allow Republicans to “take the credit card away” from Biden.

Democrats say they have no illusions about what could lie ahead.

“I not only have fears if the Republicans … take over the House, I have nightmares,” said Democratic Representative James McGovern. “I try not to think about it,” he said referring to a possible debt limit battle.

‘EXTENDED DEBATE’

Debate about the debt ceiling could flare again early next year, after the new Congress is sworn in.

Sometime in the first quarter of 2023 the nation’s line of credit is likely to be exhausted, said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The Treasury Department can take “extraordinary” steps to stave-off a default until the summer or even longer, depending on revenues and the economy.

“There is likely to be an extended debate” on the debt limit next year no matter who wins the midterms, said Akabas, who has seen several such battles waged. However, with a Republican-controlled House, “That perhaps makes negotiations a bit tougher,” he added.

The last standoff came in December 2021, when Congress raised the limit to its current $31.4 trillion only after a bitter fight in which Republicans protested Biden’s domestic spending agenda.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who vowed to avoid default, finally cut a deal allowing an increase and has since faced blowback from hardliners including former President Trump, who claims he knuckled under to Democrats.

“He is their lapdog! He didn’t stop trillions of dollars in spending by refusing to use the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool,” Trump said just last month.

McConnell avoided answering a question about the 2023 debt limit debate, saying: “We haven’t even finished 2022 yet.”

Some lawmakers want to free the country from chronic whiplash over borrowing by overhauling the process. Among the ideas are a new, multi-step plan for Congress and the president acting in tandem, while fostering debate on debt-reduction.

Senator Tim Kaine and fellow Democrat Jeff Merkley “shopped around” a bill last year that would allow the president to raise the limit while giving Congress an opportunity to overrule it.

A bipartisan bill has also been floated in the House.

“It’s likely we will be on another collision course unless there is a dynamic shift, or Congress implements a change,” predicted Akabas, whose Bipartisan Policy Committee has been trying to coax reform out of Congress.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Andrea Ricci)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rick Caruso, billionaire developer and underdog candidate for Los Angeles mayor, is mounting what might become the city’s largest-ever voter-turnout operation to try to defeat U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, who could be the first Black woman to lead the nation’s second-most-populous city.

Caruso is deploying several hundred paid canvassers and droves of volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls and send texts and emails. Their targets are identified by campaign staff who rely on demographic research and polling to ferret out potential supporters among undecided Latinos, Asians and independents.

Of particular interest are people who sat out the June primary when Bass topped the field and outdistanced Caruso by 7 points, setting up a runoff.

Latinos make up about half the city’s population of about 4 million and they tilted toward Caruso in the primary, but can be inconsistent voters. Bass has been fighting for their votes, too, and has lined up endorsements including former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Council President Nury Martinez and labor leader Dolores Huerta.

Longtime Democratic consultant Roy Behr sees an opening for Caruso if he can win over enough voters who would otherwise have skipped the election. The outcome is “really dependent on both the turnout and the choices of Latino voters,” Behr said.

Consultant Dveen Babaian, who oversees Caruso’s paid canvassers, said in lower-income neighborhoods typically overlooked by campaigns “our door knocks are the first door knocks some of these voters have ever gotten.”

“This campaign will be won by engaging marginalized communities,” Babaian said.

On a recent afternoon in a heavily Latino neighborhood of modest homes in the city’s San Fernando Valley, a Caruso canvasser was knocking on doors and distributing flyers in English and Spanish.

The results were mixed. At some homes no one came to the door, but she was able to get others to pledge support for Caruso and agree to post yard signs.

In a conversation that jumped from English to Spanish, one woman said she was supporting Caruso because of frustration with high crime.

“I don’t believe that he is a Democrat,” she said of Caruso. “But I don’t care if you are going to do something.”

Caruso, in his first race for elected office, was a longtime Republican who switched and became a Democrat near the deadline to enter the race in a city where the GOP is virtually invisible.

He’s tapped into his estimated $5.3 billion fortune to build a $60 million war chest, most of it his own money, an amount that easily eclipses fundraising by all candidates in the previous three mayoral races.

Despite the financial advantage, even his internal polling shows he’s trailing.

Time is running out and the race has taken on an increasingly hostile tone as mail-in ballots go out for an election that concludes Nov. 8.

“It’s not the power of the money, it’s the power of the people,” Bass, a lifelong Angeleno and former state Assembly speaker, told cheering supporters at a recent outdoor rally.

The contours of the race have been set for months: finding solutions for the long-running homeless crisis, rising crime and runaway rents and housing prices.

The centrist Caruso, the son of Italian immigrants, is testing if the famously liberal city might swing to the political right for the first time in decades. He’s promising to expand the police department and quickly get homeless encampments off the streets.

The progressive Bass has positioned herself as a coalition-builder and emerged as the Democratic establishment pick, with her supporters including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a former California U.S. senator and attorney general.

The winner will replace outgoing two-term Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been largely absent in the contest. His nomination to become U.S. ambassador to India — made by Biden more than a year ago — appears stalled in the Senate over sexual harassment allegations against a former Garcetti top adviser.

Bass, who was on Biden’s short list for vice president, has been sharpening her attacks on Caruso, lampooning his decision to become a Democrat. She calls the campaign “a fight for the soul of our city,” echoing a line Biden used against then-President Donald Trump.

She also is underlining donations he has made to candidates who oppose abortion rights, including congressional Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. Caruso says he’s a supporter of reproductive rights.

Along with her own campaign infrastructure, she’s counting on the support of powerful labor unions that are working to turn out voters for her.

Bass “is actively reaching out to pro-choice Democrats,” campaign spokeswoman Sarah Leonard Sheahan said.

At the rally, a long line of speakers described Bass as the only authentic Democrat on the ballot and the only one with an unquestioned record defending reproductive rights.

In the crowd, Bass supporter Jennifer Yi, a Democrat who works on homeless initiatives at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, recoiled at Caruso’s campaign spending.

“I think he is trying to buy Los Angeles,” Yi said.

Caruso has resumed relentless TV and digital advertising, which include attempts to raise doubts about Bass’ character.

Bass has faced questions over a roughly $100,000, full-tuition scholarship she received from the University of Southern California’s social work program.

Last October, a longtime Bass friend, suspended City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, and a former USC dean were charged with a bribery scheme in which Ridley-Thomas promised to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the school if his son got a scholarship and a teaching job. The former dean has pleaded guilty.

Federal prosecutors have said Bass is not a target of their investigation. But the Los Angeles Times reported in September that prosecutors said Bass’ scholarship and her dealings with USC are “critical” to their case.

Caruso said he was “troubled” and warned Bass would bring “corruption” to City Hall. Bass has said the case “has nothing to do with me.”

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By Brian Ellsworth

(Reuters) – Activists on Sunday rallied at the White House to call on the Biden administration to end support for the government of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, as the Caribbean nation faces a humanitarian crisis due to gangs blocking the distribution of fuel.

Haiti’s dire situation has gotten increased attention from around the world in recent weeks as severe fuel shortages have forced many businesses and hospitals to shut their doors, just as health authorities confirmed a surprise cholera outbreak.

A broadcast of the rally showed several hundred people gathered outside the White House, holding signs bearing Haiti’s flag or with messages including “Let Haitians decide their own future.”

“Many Haitians are convinced that the United States is actively sustaining Henry in power,” said a statement prepared for the rally by U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, who was not present. “The repression in Haiti must stop.”

Henry, who has run the country since shortly after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise last year, last week asked for military assistance to confront gangs.

He has said he is seeking to hold new elections as soon as possible. Many in Haiti say that rampant violence by armed gangs, which control vast portions of the country’s territory, make a vote impossible under the current conditions.

The Biden administration has not signaled that it plans to change its stance with respect to Henry.

“There has been a lot of misunderstanding and distorted information about the current Government, in testimony before Congress and in lawmakers’ letters circulating on the internet,” said an advisor to Henry when consulted about the rally.

“We invite Haitian citizens, wherever they are, to unite our energies to make Haiti a great country instead of repeating defamation found on the internet.”

U.S. Representative Val Demings last week introduced the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act of 2022, which calls for a new federal investigation into those who support Haitian gangs.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed that one or several countries send “a rapid action force” to help Haiti’s police, without suggesting that the force be deployed by the United Nations.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; editing by Diane Craft)

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(Reuters) – When voters in Jefferson County, Colorado, cast their ballots in the Nov. 8 midterm election, they will see security guards stationed outside the busiest polling centers.

At an election office in Flagstaff, Arizona, voters will encounter bulletproof glass and need to press a buzzer to enter. In Tallahassee, Florida, election workers will count ballots in a building that has been newly toughened with walls made of the super-strong fiber Kevlar.

Spurred by a deluge of threats and intimidating behavior by conspiracy theorists and others upset over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat, some election officials across the United States are fortifying their operations as they ramp up for another divisive election.

A Reuters survey of 30 election offices found that 15 have enhanced security in various ways, from installing panic buttons to hiring extra security guards to holding active-shooter and de-escalation training.

Reuters focused on offices in battleground states and offices that had openly expressed a need for security improvements, for example in congressional testimony. While the survey does not speak to how widespread such moves are, it does show how election officials are responding to threats in parts of the country where the election will likely be decided.

Election officials around the country said they were coordinating more closely with local law enforcement to respond quickly to disturbances. Many have also trained workers in de-escalating conflicts and evading active shooters.

Until recently, such threats to safety were seen as hypothetical in a country that has seen few instances of election-related violence since the civil rights battles of the 1960s, when the presence of armed officers sometimes intimidated rather than reassured Black voters.

Now those risks are seen as real, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan public-interest group founded by entrepreneur and Democratic donor Pierre Omidyar.

“The likelihood that they could occur has definitely increased, so everyone is taking that to heart,” she said.

Election officials in 12 states, including some who have paid for moderate security improvements, said they have not received enough money to make their desired upgrades due to bureaucratic hurdles.

In Champaign County, Illinois, clerk Aaron Ammons would like to install metal detectors at his office, where visitors have filmed staff and the layout of the space in what he described as a threatening manner.

“It makes us feel like we’re targets, or we’re not a priority in the same way our men and women in uniform are. And we’re on the front lines of democracy just like they are,” said Ammons.

Ammons gave testimony to Congress in August that he and his wife received anonymous messages threatening their daughter’s life ahead of the 2020 election, and he told Reuters he recently saw someone filming his house.

The Justice Department says it has investigated more than 1,000 messages to election workers since the 2020 election, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution. Reuters documented the campaign of fear being waged against election workers in a series of investigative reports.

Seven cases have been charged so far. The first sentence came Thursday, when a Nebraska man received 18 months in prison for threatening an election official.

SPOOKED WORKERS

One in five U.S. election officials said that they were unlikely to stay in their job through 2024, when Americans will go to the polls again to elect a president, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice that was released in March. They cited stress, attacks by politicans and impending retirement as reasons.

The lingering bitterness from the 2020 election has also spooked many of the temporary workers who check in voters, count ballots and perform other tasks that make elections possible, officials say.

Philadelphia has boosted pay for election day workers from $120 to $250 to help recruiting efforts that have been complicated by fears of harassment, as well as a tight labor market, said Omar Sabir, one of the city’s three election commissioners. After receiving death threats in 2020, he himself changed his travel patterns.

“You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel,” Sabir said. “Sometimes I have nightmares thinking about that, somebody walking up and causing me harm.”

PROTECTIVE MEASURES

Many election officials blame disinformation, such as Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud in the 2020 election, for the surge in threats.

Justin Roebuck, the Republican clerk of Michigan’s rural, conservative Ottawa County, said Trump’s rhetoric had “really poisoned the well,” inspiring other candidates to sow doubts about elections. In Michigan, Republican candidates for governor, attorney general and other positions have questioned the outcome of the 2020 election.

Roebuck’s office held a three-hour role-playing exercise with local emergency management officials this year to plan how to respond to violent incidents. They also printed a brochure explaining balloting procedures that workers can hand to people to de-escalate confrontations with anyone agressively questioning their work.

In addition to adding Kevlar walls, the Leon County, Florida, elections office has held active shooter trainings for its workers, installed bullet- and bomb-resistant glass, and invested in security cameras and video file storage, according to elections supervisor Mark Earley, who says he gets frequent hostile and profane calls from strangers.

“I’ve got to worry about my workers leaving the building and walking up to their cars after dark,” he said.

Earley paid to stiffen his facility’s security with a 2020 grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a non-profit group funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But Florida and 25 other states have since banned such outside funding.

FUNDING WOES

Election officials say they have struggled to get federal aid for safety measures.

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security said this year that funds would be available for election office security, but that money was claimed by local police departments and others more familiar with those programs, said Amy Cohen, the head of the National Association of State Election Directors.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said the agency’s Election Threats Task Force had worked since its launch in 2021 to steer federal aid to local election offices for security enhancements, and had urged Congress to provide more such funding.

Some offices have paid for security enhancements by cutting back elsewhere. Jefferson County, Colorado, has scaled back mailings to voters to pay for four security guards who will monitor the busiest four voting locations in the weeks surrounding the election.

“It’s worth it for us, having the ability to be proactive rather than reactive,” said George Stern, the Jefferson County clerk.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington, D.C., and Julia Harte in New York; Additional reporting by Linda So, editing by Ross Colvin and Claudia Parsons)

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By David Shepardson and Philip Blenkinsop

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to implement a European Union-United States data transfer framework announced in March that adopts new American intelligence gathering privacy safeguards.

The deal seeks to end the limbo in which thousands of companies found themselves after Europe’s top court threw out two previous pacts due to concerns about U.S. surveillance.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters the executive order “is the culmination of our joint effort to restore trust and stability to transatlantic data flows” and “will ensure the privacy of EU personal data.”

The framework addresses the concerns of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which in July 2020 struck down the prior EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework as a valid data transfer mechanism under EU law.

European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said he was “quite sure” there would be a fresh legal challenge, but he was confident that the pact met the demands of the court.

“We have a real improvement relative to the Privacy Shield…. It’s totally different,” he told Reuters in an interview. “Maybe the third attempt will be the good one.”

The White House said “transatlantic data flows are critical to enabling the $7.1 trillion EU-U.S. economic relationship” and the framework “will restore an important legal basis for transatlantic data flows.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft welcomed the executive order, but digital rights activist group Access Now and European consumer organization BEUC said it did not appear that people’s rights were being sufficiently protected.

The White House said Biden’s order bolstered current “privacy and civil liberties safeguards” for U.S. intelligence gathering and created an independent, binding multi-layer redress mechanism for individuals who believe their personal data was illegally collected by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Reynders said it would take about six months to complete a complex approval process, noting the previous system only had redress to an ombudsperson inside the U.S. administration, which the EU court rejected.

Biden’s order adopts new safeguards on the activities of U.S. intelligence gathering, requiring they do only what is necessary and proportionate, and creates a two-step system of redress – first to an intelligence agency watchdog then to a court with independent judges, whose decisions would bind the agencies.

Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in March said the provisional agreement offered stronger legal protections and addressed the EU court’s concerns.

Raimondo on Friday will transmit a series of letters to the EU from U.S. agencies “outlining the operation and enforcement of the EU-U.S. data privacy framework” that “will form the basis for the European Commission’s assessment in a new adequacy decision,” she said.

Under the order, the Civil Liberties Protection Officer (CLPO) in the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence will investigate complaints and make decisions.

The U.S. Justice Department is establishing a Data Protection Review Court to independently review CLPO’s decisions. Judges with experience in data privacy and national security will be appointed from outside the U.S. government.

European privacy activists have threatened to challenge the framework if they did not think it adequately protects privacy. Austrian Max Schrems, whose legal challenges have brought down the previous two EU-U.S. data flow systems, said he still needed to analyze the package.

“At first sight it seems that the core issues were not solved and it will be back to the CJEU (EU court) sooner or later,” he said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Andrea Shalal and Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Mark Potter and Andrea Ricci)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and his Democratic challenger Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes stuck to their scripts — and their time limits — as they met for a debate Friday evening in a hotly contested race that could determine party control of the U.S. Senate.

In battleground Wisconsin, it was a welcome chance for both candidates to clarify their positions on a variety of issues, and though they disagreed on most subjects, their comments were similar to those they’ve made on the campaign trail. Here are the key takeaways:

THE ECONOMY

Inflation is one of the issues most felt by voters this midterm, with noticeable increases in the prices of everyday expenses like groceries, rent and utilities. It’s also among the top issues Wisconsin voters are concerned about, recent polling has shown.

Johnson was hesitant to commit to supporting increases in the minimum wage, saying he would “possibly consider it.” The incumbent also blamed Democrats for inflation, saying jobs and the economy were better under former President Donald Trump.

Barnes reiterated his support for a $15 minimum wage as well as an approach to job creation that includes technical and trade education. Johnson questioned several references Barnes made to his working-class background, saying he was unaware of what experience the lieutenant governor has in the private sector other than his parents’ jobs as a schoolteacher and a factory worker.

ABORTION

Barnes, who has made support for abortion rights central to his campaign, said he would “absolutely vote to codify Roe v. Wade” into federal law as a senator.

Johnson again voiced support for a statewide referendum on abortion — an option that seems unlikely after the state Legislature quickly ended a special session called by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers earlier this week to consider allowing ballot measures. Barnes accused Johnson of running from his record of supporting anti-abortion legislation, saying the senator knows a referendum won’t happen.

A 173-year-old law bans abortions in Wisconsin except to save the life of the mother. Doctors stopped providing abortions after the Supreme Court handed down its decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June. Polling has shown that a majority of people in Wisconsin support abortion rights.

CRIME

A flurry of attack ads have from Johnson and other Republicans have branded Barnes as “dangerous” and displayed the lieutenant governor against footage of violent crime. Such ads are a likely reason the lead Barnes held over Johnson in midsummer has since eroded. Barnes supports ending cash bail, but he was clear Friday night that his plan would not allow dangerous offenders out of jail.

“Senator Johnson may not have encountered a problem he can’t buy his way out of, but that’s not the case for the majority of people in Wisconsin,” said Barnes, sneaking a jab in at the incumbent, who is also a multimillionaire and former businessman.

Johnson hit back by highlighting Barnes’ statements on police funding and accusing him of inciting riots during protests against racism in 2020. “He says it pains him to see fully funded police budgets,” said Johnson. Barnes doesn’t support defunding the police, but he has expressed support for redirecting police funding towards alternative community safety programs.

The candidates also addressed gun control. “If gun control were the solution, it would’ve already been solved,” said Johnson, who pinned the blame for gun violence on a lack of social and religious values. Barnes, a Milwaukee native, took the opportunity to decry gun violence and talk about his personal connections to victims.

CLIMATE CHANGE

“The climate has always changed, always will change,” said Johnson, denying that climate change is an issue. The senator also said the federal government should worry less about carbon emissions and more about “real pollution” like the state’s ongoing issues with a group of chemicals known as PFAS.

Barnes accused Johnson of protecting special interests in the fossil fuel industry and referenced his conversations with local farmers. Rural voters are a key group in Wisconsin that Barnes has been struggling to gain the support of.

When speaking about renewable energy, Johnson said wind and solar energy “make our grid very unreliable” and instead suggested, “If you’re concerned about climate change, you should be supporting nuclear power.”

JAN. 6 ATTACK

The incumbent senator has downplayed the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying it “didn’t seem like an insurrection to me.” On Friday, Johnson also downplayed his role in attempting to deliver a slate of false electors to former Vice President Mike Pence after the 2020 election.

“From my standpoint, this is a non-issue,” Johnson said, claiming he had no knowledge of an alternate slate of electors. Both candidates said they believed Pence did the right thing while certifying the results of the 2020 election.

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Harm Venhuizen 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 Venhuizen on Twitter.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman who says Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for a 2009 abortion claims he encouraged her to have another abortion two years later, according to a new report. She declined to have the second abortion, according to the report, and the relationship ended.

The New York Times, which published the report late Friday, said it withheld the name of the woman, who insisted on anonymity to protect her son. Walker’s campaign declined to comment to the Times.

The report was one of several new revelations that surfaced late Friday, capping a dramatic week in a campaign that could determine control of the U.S. Senate. Walker is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in one of the most closely watched races heading into next month’s midterm elections.

In a brief interview with NBC News, Walker said he didn’t know about an abortion.

“The first I knew about any of this was when some reporter asked me about an abortion. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s a lie.’ And then I was asked if I paid for an abortion, and I said: ‘No. I did not pay for an abortion,’” Walker told the network. “I’m not saying she did or didn’t have one (an abortion). I’m saying I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know.”

The Walker campaign provided NBC with text messages of the unnamed woman texting Walker’s wife about the abortion on Friday morning. That, Walker told NBC, was the first time he confirmed the woman’s identity. NBC, like the Times, withheld the woman’s name.

“Did you know Herschel paid for my abortion the first time? Or that he told me it wasn’t the ‘right time’ to have (their current child)?” the woman wrote in a 9:54 a.m. text message to Julie Walker, the candidate’s wife.

“This message makes me incredibly sad. You know I have continually tried to bridge a better relationship between you and Herschel putting (the child) first,” Julie Walker responded.

Meanwhile, the Daily Beast, which first reported earlier this week that Walker paid for the 2009 abortion, published details provided by the woman about the candidate’s involvement with their child. Walker, according to the Daily Beast, has not seen the child in person for more than six and a half years. He has met the child a total of three times, according to the report, which the outlet said it corroborated with photographs provided by the woman. Two of those instances, the report said, were related to child support proceedings.

The woman also provided the Daily Beast with screenshots of text messages Walker has sent to the child, including one from July in which the candidate didn’t tell the child about the existence of a third half-sibling.

“You have the brother and sister I told you about. Love you,” Walker wrote, according to the Daily Beast.

Walker later texted the child a picture of the other half-sibling, according to the report, saying “This picture never went.”

Walker frequently texted the child messages that read “love you.” The pace of the messages, the report said, increased as Walker prepared to announce his Senate campaign.

Walker’s campaign declined to comment to the Daily Beast.

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WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — When Michael Franken won the Democratic nomination for the Senate in June, many in Iowa’s disillusioned party thought they landed on a candidate who could maybe — possibly — reverse their humbling slide in the state.

After all, the retired Navy admiral won 76 of 99 counties, in every region of the state, notably conservative northern and western Iowa. His hesitancy during the primary campaign to back weapons bans and college loan forgiveness were signs he aimed to appeal to moderate Democrats and even some Republicans tired of incumbent Chuck Grassley after four decades in office.

But those ambitions are beginning to fade as Election Day, Nov. 8, approaches. Franken’s quest to unseat the most senior Republican in the Senate has been wounded by allegations that the Democrat kissed a former campaign aide without permission. Franken’s campaign has denied the claim.

He’s defied skeptics before, beating the better known and better funded former Rep. Abby Finkenauer in primary. Nonetheless, many Democrats acknowledge that a race always considered a long shot is at risk of slipping firmly out of reach.

To Democrat Marcia Nichols, the former longtime political director for Iowa’s largest public employees union, the allegation, “whatever it is, it’s made it tougher now.” But she noted that Franken took on Finkenauer, “who was pretty popular, and beat her by a lot. I’m not writing him off.”

The obstacles seemed distant during a recent campaign stop as Franken, in his standard Navy ball cap, urged hundreds of supporters on a warm early autumn afternoon in suburban Des Moines to rally Republicans who might want a change after 42 years of Grassley in the Senate.

“Iowans wake up every day doing hard things,” Franken said. “That takes, in today’s environment, a lot of guts.”

To win, Franken would have to have to share voters with Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, a devout social conservative and fervent Donald Trump supporter who is favored in her reelection campaign. He would have to defy a decadelong Republican ascendency in Iowa, made harder in an election year when majority Democrats in Congress are facing economic headwinds and tepid approval of Democratic President Joe Biden.

Franken’s challenges are part of a broader reversal of fortunes for Democrats.

A decade ago, Grassley and five-term progressive Democrat Tom Harkin were Iowa’s senators. Democrats held three of five U.S. House seats and a thin majority in the state Senate. Today, Rep. Cindy Axne of West Des Moines is Iowa’s lone Democrat in Congress and she is considered among the most vulnerable in her party this fall. The GOP hold on the statehouse is the party’s longest in more than six decades.

Franken’s resounding primary victory offered a glimmer of a chance for Democrats.

A month after the primary, Franken trailed Grassley by just 8 percentage points among likely voters in a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll. That pointed to a potentially closer race than Grassley has faced since he defeated Democratic Sen. John Culver in 1980.

With no help from the Democrats’ national Senate campaign arm, Franken has raised a noteworthy $8.3 million this year, including $3.6 million in the third quarter. Grassley had reported raising $7.5 million through the end of July but had not released his total for July-September period. That report is due by Oct. 15.

The majority job approval that Grassley had owned for roughly two decades of Des Moines Register polling has recently fallen: It has hovered in unfamiliar territory and was at 46% in the July poll.

Also telling of the shift, 64% of likely voters said in a June 2021 Des Moines Register poll they did not want him to run again, given the choice of seeing someone else hold office or reelecting the senator for another term.

The change in mood comes as Grassley, who entered the Senate as a Ronald Reagan-era fiscal conservative, has tried to adapt to the hyper-partisan politics of the Trump era.

Facing pointed questions from voters last year about why he had declined to say Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Grassley parsed his language to obliquely suggest Biden is president as the result of the Electoral College vote count.

About two-thirds of Republicans nationally said they do not think Biden was legitimately elected, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July 2021.

A year ago, Grassley beamed when Trump endorsed him at a Des Moines rally that drew 10,000 to the Iowa state fairgrounds, where the former president argued falsely that he had won the 2020 election. “I’m smart enough to accept that endorsement,” Grassley told the audience, noting Trump’s comfortable victory in Iowa in that race.

Grassley has campaigned little in public. He has relied more on television advertising, much of it critical of Franken for comments he made about the direction of the state under Republican leadership.

Grassley turned 89 last month and says he has no concerns about being able to finish another six-year term — he would be 95 at the end of an eighth term. “Absolutely not,” he said during a Wednesday news conference.

He ticked through his daily schedule, which he said includes rising at 4 a.m., running 2 miles six days a week and arriving at his office by 6 a.m.

“Unless God intervenes, I’m going to be in the Senate for six years,” he added.

Franken has steered clear of Grassley’s age and instead has cast Grassley’s time in office as his chief liability. “We deserve better than a senator for life,” the Democrat said.

Franken has characterized Grassley’s praise of the Supreme Court decision stripping women of their constitutional right to an abortion as out of step with Iowa, where polls show a majority of voters support keeping abortion legal.

Franken, who supports enacting legislation making abortion a federal right, held a modest advantage with women likely voters in the July Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.

But the publication of a police report detailing the unwanted kiss with the former campaign staffer has prompted questions from some would-be Franken supporters. The campaign manager issued a public statement that the allegation in the report was untrue and the police called it unfounded.

Elizabeth Sibers, a 22-year-old Iowa State University student from Waukee who attended Franken’s rally, said she would like him, at a minimum, to speak out against harassment.

“It does trouble me. He needs to take the time to address it,” she said. Sibers remains open to voting for him and said she wants to “give Franken the chance to grow from this, and not just look past it.”

Grassley said he does not plan to raise it as a campaign issue. But when Franken called him “anti-woman,” for supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Grassley replied quickly and curtly.

“You’re in no position to lecture me about women,” he said. “You’re in no position to do that.”

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EMERSON, Ga. (AP) — Herschel Walker pitches himself as a politician who can bridge America’s racial and cultural divides because he loves everyone and overlooks differences.

“I don’t care what color you are,” Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee, who is Black, told an overwhelmingly white crowd recently in Bartow County, north of Atlanta. “This is a good place,” Walker said of the United States, “and a way we make it better is by coming together.”

Yet the former University of Georgia football star who calls all Georgians “my family” has staked out familiar conservative ground on the nation’s most glaring societal fissures, seemingly contradicting his promises of unity. Walker says those who do not share his vision of the country can leave and he blasts his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and the Democratic Party as the real purveyors of division.

Their “wokeness” on race, transgender rights and other issues, Walker insists, threatens U.S. power and identity.

“Sen. Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people,” Walker says in one ad. It’s a claim based on the fact that Warnock, who is also Black, has acknowledged institutional racism during his sermons as a Baptist minister. “I believe we’re a great country full of generous people,” Walker concludes.

That approach is not surprising in a state controlled for most of its history by white cultural conservatives and it aligns Walker with many high-profile Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But Walker’s arguments make for a striking contrast in a Senate contest featuring two Black men born in the Deep South during or immediately following the civil rights movement.

The strategy will face its fiercest test in the closing weeks of the campaign as Walker vehemently denies reports from The Daily Beast that he encouraged and paid for a woman’s 2009 abortion and later fathered a child with her. The New York Times reported Friday that he urged her to have a second abortion, a request she refused. The Daily Beast also published new details provided by the woman about Walker’s lack of involvement with their child.

Such developments would typically sink a Republican candidate, but Walker is betting the conservative ground he has staked out throughout the campaign will ultimately win over voters who are singularly interested in flipping a Democratic seat and retaking the Senate majority.

His advisers believe Walker’s rhetoric reflects the views of many Georgians, at least most who will vote this fall. Most specifically, it is an appeal to whites, including moderates who may be wary of the first-time candidate yet believe Democrats push too much social change. The outcome could turn on how Walker’s pitch lands in an electorate that’s gotten younger, more urban, less white and less native to Georgia since Walker, 60, and Warnock, 53, grew up in the state.

Mark Rountree, a Republican pollster, said a narrow but solid majority of Georgia voters “responds favorably to Republican messaging broadly,” including socially conservative rhetoric.

“I don’t know that they all use that ‘wokeness’ terminology but they’re not completely happy with all the cultural changes that have gone on in America,” he said, stressing that group includes metro Atlanta white voters who helped President Joe Biden win Georgia in 2020.

Warnock, as minister of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, has long linked the civil rights leader’s vision of a “beloved community” to 21st century discussions of diversity and justice, including religious pluralism, LGBTQ rights, ballot access, racial equity, law enforcement and other issues.

But in Warnock’s paid advertising, where most of the state’s 7 million-plus registered voters encounter the candidates, the pastor-politician casts himself mostly as a hardworking senator who has delivered results and federal money for Georgia.

Walker saves his hottest rhetoric for campaign events, where crowds are measured in dozens or hundreds, rather than the thousands and millions watching carefully cultivated ads.

In one such ad, a smiling Walker talks of unity after a string of Democrats — Warnock, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — are heard discussing racism.

Addressing fellow Republicans, Walker maintains the smile but goes harder at the left, especially on transgender rights.

“They’re bringing wokeness in our military,” Walker said during a stop in Cumming, part of the critical northern suburbs of metro Atlanta. It was an apparent reference to the Pentagon allowing transgender people to serve and have access to medical care.

“The greatest fighting force ever assembled before God (and) they’re talking about pronouns,” Walker said. “Are you serious? How do you identify? I can promise you right now China ain’t talking about how you can identify. They’re talking about war.”

Walker sometimes presents his mores as humor.

“Y’all see it. They telling you what is a woman. Think about it,” he said in Bartow County, drawing laughter from voters. “That’s right,” he continued with a broad smile. “They’re telling you a man can get pregnant. Hey, I’m gone tell you right now, a man can’t get pregnant.”

Warnock, Walker says, “wants men in women’s sports.” Walker’s campaign aides point separately to a Senate vote on a Republican amendment that would have limited federal money for any educational institutions “that permit any student whose biological sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity designated for women or girls.” The amendment failed on a party-line vote.

“That’s sort of like saying you want Herschel Walker to compete against your daughters,” Walker said in Norcross, eliciting more laughs.

Children, Walker argued in Emerson, are especially vulnerable: “Our kids are behind because they want to be woke. What about teaching them how to write? … How to read? … How to spell?”

Walker rarely identifies the policies he opposes or explains counterproposals. He sticks instead with broader cultural branding, and in perhaps the most direct contradiction of his unity messaging, recommends that those with a different vision for America consider moving. “If you don’t like the rules under our roof, you can go somewhere else,” he said in Bartow County, after recalling a similar message his father once delivered to him.

Warnock seems reluctant to answer Walker’s broadsides directly. “My job is to represent all the people of Georgia across racial and ethnic and religious line, and all corner of this state,” he told reporters last week.

Asked specifically about Walker’s emphasis on transgender politics, Warnock said: “People love their children and they want to make sure that their children are safe from hatred and bigotry. So, you know, I will remain focused on all our young people and, at the same time, creating opportunities for young people.”

Geoff Wetrosky, campaign director at the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, said Walker is recycling the well-worn political strategy of scaring voters using a marginalized minority.

“He is spreading propaganda and creating more stigma, discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people,” Wetrosky said. “Their rhetoric is not about keeping kids safe, it’s about riling up a small number of base voters while interfering with the rights of parents of LGBT kids to provide stable, happy and healthy homes for the kids.”

Walker does not link every cultural complaint to Warnock but comes at the incumbent aggressively on race and racism, even invoking King to suggest Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator is subservient to a white president.

“Martin Luther King, he said when your back is bent, people can ride your back. Straighten up and quit letting people ride your back,” Walker said in Cumming, loosely quoting Warnock’s iconic predecessor at Ebenezer. “That’s what (Warnock) been doing all the time, 96% of the time he voted with Joe Biden.”

After a recent campaign stop in suburban Atlanta, Walker told reporters “institutional racism still exists because you continue to talk about it.” He added, “It always exists (but) things have changed from years ago.”

Pressed on whether government should combat racism and other discrimination, Walker insisted the Constitution already does. “If you do what it says on the paper, that means every man would be treated fair,” he said without elaborating. “Do we need to get better? Yes,” he allowed. “But right now we’re talking about separation. … You have to bring together.”

Walker’s methods, especially trying to use King against Warnock, rankle the senator’s aides and allies. Campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Warnock has “brought people together from the pulpit and in the U.S. Senate to get things done,” adding that Walker has “no vision” for Georgians. That’s a twist on a line from Warnock’s standard campaign speech: “People who have no vision traffic in division.”

At the Human Rights Campaign, Wetrovsky argues that sweeping attacks on “wokeness” will not sway the middle of the electorate and could ultimately backfire.

“We see this as a desperate attempt by politicians to either hold on to the power that they have or gain power by trying to rile up extremists in their base,” he said.

Nonetheless, Walker’s rhetoric solidifies strong support from voters such as Roy Taylor, a Canton resident who came to hear the GOP nominee speak in Cumming. Taylor said his opposition to “huge, massive government” drives his support for Walker. But his loyalties are intensified because he is “tired of Democrats trying to make Republicans out … like we’re all bigots.

“That,” Taylor said, “is just not true.”

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The Russian government on Friday designated a chart-topping rapper as a “foreign agent,”a label that has been widely seen as part of authorities’ efforts to muzzle critical voices.

Oxxxymiron, whose real name is Miron Fyodorov, was added to the justice ministry’s “foreign agent” list alongside Dmitry Glukhovsky, a veteran science-fiction writer, and Alyona Popova, a prominent feminist and one-time face of Russia’s campaign for a domestic violence law.

Oxxxymiron, a dual Russian-British national, has called the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine “a catastrophe,” and publicly called for the creation of an anti-war movement. He cancelled a sold-out Russian tour shortly after Moscow’s troops rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24, and organized benefit concerts in Western Europe and Turkey, with proceeds going to Ukrainian refugees.

In August, authorities said they were investigating the rapper’s work under Russia’s anti-extremism laws, which have been expanded several times to cover a broadening spectrum of dissenting speech.

Russian law allows organizations and individuals deemed to be involved in political activity that receive funding from abroad to be declared foreign agents. The term carries a strong pejorative sense and implies additional government scrutiny.

The rapper, whose lyrics are often political, has previously attended rallies in support of jailed Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny.

Glukhovsky, the author of the 2002 post-apocalyptic novel “Metro 2033″ who is believed to be abroad, has also hit out at Russia’s war in Ukraine. He was put on a wanted list in connection with critical social media posts and columns in Western media.

In June, a Moscow court ordered his arrest in absentia on the charge of “discrediting the Russian army,” amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissenters. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

One of Russia’s most ardent rights campaigners, Popova has fought for years to lobby Russian lawmakers to adopt legislation to protect women from domestic violence. Her social-media campaign at one point encouraged Russian women to post images of themselves with make-up resembling bloody cuts or bruises, along with the hashtag “I didn’t want to die.” The viral response prompted a surge in discussions around attitudes towards abuse survivors.

In 2021, Popova made countering domestic violence the central plank of her ultimately unsuccessful bid to join the State Duma. She has repeatedly voiced her support for women running for political office in order to address social issues in Russia.

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