Politics

By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency on Friday in response to thousands of migrants bused to the city in recent months from the U.S. southern border in a political dispute over border security.

The city expects to spend $1 billion to manage the influx of the migrants, Adams said in a speech at City Hall. More than 17,000 have arrived in New York since April; an average of five or six buses each day since early September, with nine buses pulling into the city on Thursday, said Adams, a Democrat, straining the city’s homeless shelter system.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who is seeking a third term in November’s U.S. midterm elections has bused more than 3,000 migrants to New York. Adams criticized Abbott for failing to alert city officials when sending migrants to the city, calling it a “manufactured crisis.”

Abbott’s moves are part of a high-profile campaign by him and the Republican governors of Florida and Arizona to put a spotlight on record crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in the run-up to the midterm elections. They argue U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has failed to adequately secure the border.

Abbott has also bused more than 900 people to Chicago, while Texas and Arizona combined have bused over 10,000 migrants to Washington, D.C.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is seen as a possible presidential contender in 2024, recently flew a group of about 50 migrants to the wealthy enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Those aboard the plane have said they were misled.

Democrats have called the moves political stunts and accuse the governors of using people as pawns.

Many of the migrants sent to New York are Venezuelans, whom the U.S. cannot expel to Mexico under a COVID-19 related policy as it can other migrants.

The Democratic-controlled city of El Paso has bused roughly 7,000 migrants to New York since late August, though city leaders say they are coordinating with New York officials.

The increase in arrivals has set a record for the number of people in shelters across New York.

“Although our compassion is limitless, our resources are not,” Adams said, calling on the federal and state governments to provide support. “We are at the edge of a precipice.”

The state of emergency will make it easier for city agencies to coordinate their response more quickly, Adams said.

Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., declared a state of emergency in that city last month, creating a new office to handle incoming migrants.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax, additional reporting by Kristina Cooke.Editing by Alistair Bell)

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By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden has said he would pardon people convicted in federal court of simple marijuana possession, and that his administration is reconsidering the classification of cannabis, which has been in the most dangerous category of drugs.

The move has been welcomed by some as a long-overdue reform, but the effects of reclassifying marijuana are not clear, and could end up meaning more regulation rather than less.

HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL BE AFFECTED BY THE PARDON?

Relatively few people in the United States are convicted of simple possession in federal court. Most are convicted of more serious trafficking offenses, which are not covered by the pardon. A senior administration official said more than 6,500 people with prior federal convictions could be affected by the pardons. While none of them is currently in prison, clearing their convictions could remove barriers to finding jobs or housing.

The vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place at the state level, where each state has its own laws ranging from criminalization to full legalization, and will not be affected.

HOW COULD MARIJUANA BE RECLASSIFIED?

Marijuana is currently classified as a so-called Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, meaning its possession is almost entirely banned except for certain research purposes. The classification is the same as that of heroin used for drugs deemed to have no legitimate medical uses.

Moving marijuana to a lower tier on the Controlled Substances Act schedule would allow it to be prescribed by doctors. If it became a Schedule II drug, like most opioids used for pain management, those prescriptions would still be tightly controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration. If it were moved to Schedule V – the lowest tier – it would be minimally controlled, like cough syrups containing small amounts of codeine.

Biden has not expressed a view about where marijuana should fall. The decision is ultimately made by the DEA, with input from the Food and Drug Administration.

HAVEN’T MANY STATES ALREADY LEGALIZED MEDICAL MARIJUANA?

Yes. Thirty-seven states regulate cannabis for medical use, and 19 also allow recreational use.

However, existing state medical marijuana programs would still conflict with federal law if marijuana were rescheduled, according to Alex Kreit of the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University.

Doctors in some states are currently permitted to recommend, rather than prescribe, marijuana for certain medical conditions, since only the FDA can approve prescription drugs. The agency has not approved, and does not regulate, the products dispensed under state law.

Rescheduling marijuana as a prescription drug would mean marijuana products sold as medicine would be subject to FDA regulation, and doctors would have to follow the same regulations that apply to other drugs in their state. Though once approved by the FDA for any medical use, doctors can prescribe a drug for other conditions, so-called off-label use.

“Big pharma might be the big exciting player here, because they have the most to gain if we were to reschedule but it was still something that was very highly regulated,” said Douglas Berman, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

WHAT ABOUT STATES THAT HAVE LEGALIZED RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA?

Selling marijuana for recreational use would still be prohibited by federal law unless it were removed from the schedule entirely. Kreit said that was unlikely, since the Controlled Substances Act requires all drugs with potential for abuse to be scheduled, except alcohol and tobacco.

In recent years, federal authorities have declined to enforce marijuana prohibition within states where it is legal.

Even if marijuana were descheduled, Congress would likely intervene to impose some control, as it has for tobacco, Kreit said.

States could still ban marijuana even if the federal ban were lifted.

HOW COULD RESCHEDULING AFFECT HOW MARIJUANA BUSINESSES OPERATE?

Marijuana businesses have been in limbo for years. Despite the lack of federal enforcement, financial institutions have continued to shy away from them even in states that have fully legalized the drug for fear of running afoul of federal laws.

Jim Thorburn, a lawyer who represents marijuana businesses, said that would not necessarily change if marijuana were rescheduled.

“Recreational use would still be problematic because that could still be considered unlawful drug trafficking,” he said. Still, Thorburn said a regulatory regime that created more avenues for legal marijuana might ease access to the financial system.

Kreit also said that rescheduling the drug “could give more banks and financial operators more confidence and comfort” in dealing with marijuana businesses.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; editing by Amy Stevens and Bill Berkrot)

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By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Voters in five states will decide whether to legalize adult-use marijuana in November’s midterm elections, as 19 other states and the District of Columbia have done.

Public support for legalizing the drug has risen in recent years, and President Joe Biden on Thursday announced he was pardoning thousands of people who had been convicted of federal marijuana possession charges.

Here’s a summary of where things stand ahead of the Nov. 8 vote:

WEED ON THE BALLOT

Voters in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota will cast ballots on whether to allow adults to use marijuana recreationally.

South Dakota’s initiative is something of a do-over. Residents approved a prior marijuana referendum in 2020, but Governor Kristi Noem, a Republican, challenged the result in court. The state Supreme Court invalidated the amendment last year, ruling that it violated the constitution on technical grounds. This year’s initiative was more narrowly tailored to avoid a similar outcome.

An Oklahoma group also collected enough signatures for a referendum. After protracted legal challenges, the state Supreme Court ruled that there was too little time to put the question on November’s ballot. The initiative will likely go to voters in 2024.

Ballot referendum efforts for 2023 or 2024 are also underway in Florida, Nebraska, Wyoming and Ohio.

In addition to the statewide referendums, voters in some cities around the country will decide whether to decriminalize marijuana possession laws and whether to allow licensed cannabis retailers in their areas.

PUBLIC SUPPORT

Residents in New Jersey, Arizona and Montana voted to legalize marijuana in 2020. All told, 19 states and the District of Columbia allow recreational use of marijuana, and 37 states regulate cannabis for medical use.

Polls show a majority of Americans favor legalization. A Morning Consult/Politico survey released this week found 60% of respondents believe the drug should be legal, compared with 27% who disagreed.

Democrats are more likely to support legalization. The poll found 71% of Democrats in favor and 16% opposed, versus 47% in favor and 41% opposed among Republicans.

Efforts to pass federal legislation have stalled in the Senate, largely due to Republican opposition.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors will present fresh evidence as they bring forward new witnesses on Friday in the trial of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four associates for their alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol.

Prosecutors, in the first week of testimony, have so far called to the stand an FBI agent and three former members of the Oath Keepers as they focus on the group’s planning for Jan. 6.

Rhodes and his four co-defendants – Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins – are accused of conspiring to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory in a failed bid to keep Donald Trump, a Republican, in power.

The five defendants are charged with several felonies, including seditious conspiracy, a rarely prosecuted Civil War-era statute defined as attempting “to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States.” It carries a possible prison sentence of 20 years.

In a separate case involving another far-right group, Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino pleaded guilty on Thursday to seditious conspiracy over his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, making him the first member of that group to do so.

Prosecutors say some of the Oath Keepers defendants were among the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol building after the then-president falsely claimed the election had been stolen from him through widespread fraud.

Attorneys for the defendants have said the evidence will show that the defendants did nothing illegal and that the Oath Keepers are a peacekeeping group that has done security work at events around the country.

Text messages and audio recordings this week have shown the defendants vowing to reject Biden’s election victory, planning to go to Washington and discussing what weapons they could bring, with Rhodes talking of possible “civil war.”

One witness on Thursday, former Florida Oath Keepers leader Michael Adams, said he had decided to quit in December 2020 when he became uncomfortable with the “rhetoric” coming from the group, in particular open letters that Rhodes had sent to Trump vowing to take action if the former president did not do so.

“If you fail to do your duty, you will leave We the People no choice but to walk in the Founders footsteps, by declaring the regime illegitimate,” Rhodes wrote to Trump, according to a copy of a letter submitted to the FBI.

“We will take to arms in defense” of our liberty, the letter read.

(Reporting by Chris Gallagher, editing by Deepa Babington)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The graphic surveillance video shows a man on a sidewalk suddenly punching someone in the head, knocking them to the ground.

With muted screams and gunshots in the background, the video stitches together other surveillance clips of shootings and punching on streets and subway trains as a voiceover says, “You’re looking at actual violent crimes caught on camera in Kathy Hochul’s New York.”

That’s not exactly true.

The ad from Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in next month’s election, included video of an assault in California. Some of the footage depicted crimes that took place before Hochul took office last year. While acknowledging a mistake, Zeldin’s campaign defended the ad and said the message was clear: violent crime is out of control.

That’s a theme GOP candidates across the U.S. are sounding in the final month of the critical midterm elections. The issue of crime is dominating advertising in some of the most competitive Senate races, including those in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, along with scores of House and governors campaigns such as the one in New York.

The rhetoric is sometimes alarmist or of questionable veracity, closely echoing the language of former President Donald Trump, who honed a late-stage argument during the 2020 campaign that Democratic-led cities were out of control. That didn’t help Trump avoid defeat, but experts say Democrats would be wrong to ignore the potency of the attacks.

“When violence is going up, people are concerned, and that’s when we tend to see it gain some traction as a political issue,” said Lisa L. Miller, professor of political science at Rutgers University, who focuses on crime as a political issue in countries across the world.

The FBI released annual data this week that found violent crime rates didn’t increase substantially last year, though they remained above pre-pandemic levels. The report presents an incomplete picture, in part because it doesn’t include some of the nation’s largest police departments.

More broadly, rates of violent crime and killings have increased around the U.S. since the pandemic, in some places spiking after hitting historic lows. Non-violent crime decreased during the pandemic, but the murder rate grew nearly 30% in 2020, rising in cities and rural areas alike, according to an analysis of crime data by The Brennan Center for Justice. The rate of assaults went up 10%, the analysis found.

The rise defies easy explanation. Experts have pointed to a number of potential causes from worries about the economy and historically high inflation rates to intense stress and the pandemic that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S.

There is a history of candidates relying on racist tropes when warning of rising crime rates. During the 1988 presidential campaign, supporters of George H.W. Bush released the so-called Willie Horton ad that has become one of the most prominent examples of race-baiting in politics.

In this year’s elections, Republicans often blame crime on criminal justice reforms adopted after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, including changes to bail laws that critics had long contended disproportionately impacted communities of color, along with accusations that Democrats have not been sufficiently supportive of law enforcement.

Some GOP candidates are trying to make their case in communities of color. Zeldin, for instance, has delivered his anti-crime message while speaking at buildings and bodegas in diverse New York City neighborhoods.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for Senate, heart surgeon-turned-TV talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz, has toured the state holding “safe streets” forums in Black communities.

Asked by a reporter about his focus on crime, Oz pointed to a conversation he had with Black Republican ward leaders in Philadelphia that turned from economic issues to struggling Black-owned businesses.

“The African Americans in the group said, ‘Well, the deep problem is … people don’t feel safe,” Oz said in an interview.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state lawmaker from Philadelphia, said Oz is using crime victims to get votes but rejects steps like limiting the availability of firearms that would reduce gun violence.

“Oz does not live in a community that is struggling with this kind of crime and nobody, nobody believes that he actually cares and would actively advance policy solutions that would help deal with this problem,” Kenyatta said.

Despite the GOP messaging, it’s not clear that crime is a top priority for voters.

In an AP-NORC poll conducted in June that allowed U.S. adults to name up to five issues they consider most important for the government to be working on in the next year, 11% named crime or violence, unchanged since December and well below the percentage naming many of the other top issues for Americans. A September Fox News poll asking people to name one issue motivating them to vote this year found just 1% named crime, even as most said they were very concerned about crime when asked directly.

Still, Democrats are responding to Republican efforts to portray them as soft on crime.

Hochul in recent days announced the endorsement of several law enforcement unions and released her own ad with a public safety message titled, “Focused on it,” to remind voters that she toughened the state’s gun laws.

During a debate last week in Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis responded to his Republican opponent Heidi Ganahl, who has repeatedly portrayed him as soft on crime, by suggesting her plan to cut taxes would “defund the police” by cutting prison and police budgets.

Ganahl denied that, calling herself a “law-and-order girl,” and blamed Polis for rising crime rates.

In Oregon, the Republican candidate for governor is making crime a top issue in a three-person race, where an independent candidate who is a former Democratic state lawmaker could take enough votes from the Democratic nominee to help the GOP win the top office in a blue state.

Democrat Tina Kotek has joined her opponents in pledging to increase police funding but has also backed tougher gun laws as part of a plan to tackle crime.

That approach is one embraced by gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, which is spending $2.4 million combined on ads in Wisconsin and Georgia to convince voters that Republicans who don’t support tougher gun laws are actually the ones “soft” on crime.

“We can reset this narrative and neutralize the GOP’s, what I would call, artificial advantage on the issue,” said Charlie Kelly, a senior political advisor to Everytown.

In some states, candidates are raising alarm about crime rates that remain relatively low or have even fallen.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said in a recent debate as he runs for reelection that the state’s crime is “going down despite some of the fearmongering you hear.”

State data shows violent crime rates in Connecticut dropped 9% in 2021 from 2020, which Lamont pointed out in a recent debate with his Republican challenger, Bob Stefanowski, who has made “out of control” crime a central plank of his campaign.

When asked how he can keep making the argument that crime is on the rise when the numbers tell a different story, Stefanowski said people are afraid of rising crime, but he denied stoking those fears.

“If we weren’t highlighting this, we wouldn’t be doing our job. I can tell you when we’re out there, people are afraid. I’m not trying to make them afraid,” he said. “They’re coming to me afraid and saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

___

Bedayn reported from Denver, Colorado. Associated Press writers Sara Burnett in Chicago, Gabe Stern in Reno, Nevada, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Senator Ben Sasse, who voted in 2021 to impeach Donald Trump, suggested on Thursday that he was likely to leave the U.S. Senate, the latest Republican critic of the former president set to leave or lose political office.

Sasse, 50, represents Nebraska and was one of seven Republican senators who voted to hold Trump accountable on charges related to inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His expected resignation will not alter the balance of power in the Senate, which Democrats control by a razor-thin margin, as Nebraska’s Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, would appoint a successor.

Sasse, whose term does not expire until January 2027, said on Twitter that he was in talks with the University of Florida. The university, on its website, said its presidential search committee “unanimously recommends” Sasse as its next president.

Trump, who has hinted that he will run for president in 2024 and maintains sway over the Republican Party, has used the November mid-terms to target those who backed his impeachment, achieving high-profile success with the ouster of congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Of the 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who supported impeachment, it is possible that only one will be in Congress after November’s election. Only one of seven Republican senators who supported impeachment is up for re-election this year.

In his Twitter post, Sasse said he was talking with the University of Florida, a public school, about building “a vision” for the institution, which he called the “most interesting university in America.”

Sasse, a former president of Nebraska’s Midland University, first took office in early 2015 and handily won re-election in 2020.

Sasse publicly denounced Trump’s false claims of widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 elections and said there was no basis to object to Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

The University of Florida “is the most important institution in the nation’s most economically dynamic state,” Sasse said on Twitter. “Washington partisanship isn’t going to solve these workforce challenges – new institutions and entrepreneurial communities are going to have to spearhead this work.”

The university’s board of trustees and board of governors must vote to formalize the appointment of a new president, which is expected to happen over the next few weeks into November.

According to the university’s website, it had a student body of roughly 53,000 students as of fall 2020

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; additional reporting by Costas Pitas in Los Angeles; editing by Richard Pullin and Leslie Adler)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska suggested in a statement and social media post on Thursday that he was likely to leave the U.S. Senate in the near future and join the University of Florida as its president.

Sasse, 50, a former president of Midland University, was one of seven Republican Senators who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump on charges related to inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His expected resignation will not alter the balance of power in the Senate, which Democrats control by a razor-thin margin, as fellow Republican, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, would appoint a successor.

In a statement on Twitter, Sasse said he was in talks with the University of Florida about building “a vision” for the institution, while the university’s presidential search committee said it had unanimously recommended Sasse for the role.

The Nebraska senator took office in early 2015 and handily won re-election in 2020. His current term was scheduled to end in Jan. 2027.

Sasse publicly denounced Trump’s false claims of widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 elections and said there was no basis to object to Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

“(University of Florida) is the most important institution in the nation’s most economically dynamic state,” Sasse said on Twitter. “Washington partisanship isn’t going to solve these workforce challenges – new institutions and entrepreneurial communities are going to have to spearhead this work.”

The university’s board of trustees and board of governors must vote to formalize the appointment of a new president, which is expected to happen over the next few weeks into November.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Richard Pullin)

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The two major-party candidates seeking to succeed retiring North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr are meeting for what is likely their only televised debate.

Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Ted Budd agreed to a one-hour debate being held Friday night at a cable television studio in Raleigh.

Budd is a three-term congressman from Davie County who received the endorsement of former President Donald Trump over a year ago. Trump again campaigned on his behalf two weeks ago in Wilmington.

Beasley is a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and would be the first Black senator for North Carolina if elected. The election outcome could decide which party takes a majority in the current 50-50 Senate.

Budd has said Beasley would push President Joe Biden’s agenda that’s led to inflation and unchecked immigration. Beasley says Budd would seek extreme abortion restrictions and has voted against efforts to rein in health care costs.

While Beasley’s campaign has outraised Budd’s, national Republicans have already spent over $20 million on advertising opposing Beasley. Democrats in Washington haven’t been as generous in fighting Budd.

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By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Top U.S. senators from both parties on Thursday gave momentum to a bill pressuring OPEC+ after the group this week announced a deep cut in oil production despite lobbying by President Joe Biden’s administration to keep the taps open.

The so-called No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill gained interest after OPEC+, a group led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, decided on Wednesday to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day. OPEC+ made the move despite tight oil global supplies worsened by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“What Saudi Arabia did to help (Russian President Vladimir) Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat. “We are looking at all the legislative tools to best deal with this appalling and deeply cynical action, including the NOPEC bill,” Schumer said in a statement.

Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican who sponsored NOPEC, said he intends to attach the measure as an amendment to the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act.

NOPEC easily passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in May,

with support from Democrats including Senator Amy Klobuchar, a former 2020 presidential candidate. It passed a House committee last year.

If passed by both chambers of Congress and signed by President Joe Biden, NOPEC would change U.S. antitrust law to revoke the sovereign immunity that has protected OPEC+ members and their national oil companies from lawsuits.

It would give the U.S. attorney general the option to sue the oil cartel or its members, such as Saudi Arabia or Russia, in federal court.

“OPEC and its partners have ignored President Biden’s pleas for increased output, and now they are colluding to reduce production and further raise global oil prices,” Grassley said in a statement. “We should at least be able to hold them accountable for their unfair price fixing,” he said.

It was uncertain whether an amendment would gain enough support to pass. Congress is unlikely to tackle major legislation until after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

If Washington were to sue other countries for collusion, the United States could face criticism for its attempts to manipulate markets by, for example, its release of record amounts of oil from emergency reserves between May and November.

Klobuchar’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The White House said on Wednesday it would consult with Congress on “additional tools and authorities” to reduce OPEC+’s control over energy prices, an apparent reference to possible support for NOPEC. The White House had previously raised concerns about the bill.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; additional reporting by Kanishka Singh, and Patricia Zengerle, Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Thursday to plotting with other members of the far-right Proud Boys to violently stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election, making him the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge.

Jeremy Joseph Bertino, 43, has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a federal prosecutor said. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to release Bertino pending a sentencing hearing that wasn’t immediately scheduled.

Bertino also pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully possessing firearms in March 2022 in Belmont, North Carolina. Kelly accepted his guilty plea to both charges during a brief hearing after the case against Bertino was filed Thursday.

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