Politics

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Thursday expressed support for New York City’s lawsuit seeking to halt the spread of “ghost guns,” as city and state officials try to hold sellers of the largely untraceable firearms accountable.

In a “statement of interest” filed in Manhattan federal court, the Department of Justice expressed “serious concerns” about the proliferation of ghost guns, and said kits containing the weapons’ components are classified as firearms under federal gun control law.

“Ghost guns are a major contributor to the ongoing plague of gun violence,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said in a statement accompanying the filing, which U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan also signed.

New York City and state Attorney General Letitia James on June 29 filed two lawsuits accusing 10 out-of-state distributors of creating a public nuisance by selling unfinished frames and receivers to buyers within the state.

Ghost guns lack serial numbers and can be acquired without background checks, potentially letting people otherwise ineligible to buy firearms to construct finished guns.

“We are not going to let gun companies turn New York into a city of mail-order murder,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said when announcing the city’s lawsuit.

Both lawsuits were filed six days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a century-old New York law that strictly limited the carrying of guns outside the home.

Federal law largely shields gun makers from lawsuits over shootings. There is an exception for when sellers knowingly violate statutes governing firearms sales and marketing.

Three of the five defendants in the city’s lawsuit have settled, and agreed to stop sales to city residents.

Christian Waugh, a lawyer for Indie Guns, one of the remaining defendants, in an email said “no one seriously believes that craft guns” contribute to rising crime rates.

“While I have hope that governments will ultimately pursue policies based on science and evidence, that hope got a little bit smaller with the DOJ’s statement of interest,” he said.

A lawyer for the fifth defendant, Arm or Ally, was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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A man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020 was granted a major break Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison.

Kaleb Franks was rewarded for testifying for prosecutors at two trials. His sentence was longer than the term given to another man who was the first to plead guilty but it still carried a significant benefit.

Franks “made the right decision and came clean. That’s encouraging,” U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said.

Franks was among six anti-government extremists who were charged in federal court with conspiracy and other crimes. Investigators said the group’s goal was to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and incite a U.S. civil war — the “boogaloo” — before the 2020 presidential election.

“I would like to start by saying I’m sorry to the governor and her family,” Franks said in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“I understand that this experience had to have been very traumatizing and difficult,” he said. “I’m ashamed and embarrassed of my actions, and I regret every decision that I made.”

The group considered Whitmer, a Democrat, and other elected officials to be tyrants who were infringing on constitutional rights, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses were shut down, people were told to stay home and schools were closed.

Franks, 28, participated in a key step in the conspiracy: a ride on a rainy night to scout Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. She was not there at the time.

He testified that he had hoped to be killed by police if a kidnapping could be pulled off at some point. The FBI, however, had undercover agents and informants inside the group.

“I was going to be an operator,” Franks said last spring. “I would be one of the people on the front line, so to speak, using my gun.”

Prosecutors said Franks’ cooperation was important because it backed up critical testimony from Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty a year earlier and was sentenced to just 2 1/2 years in prison.

“It really was invaluable to have the testimony of an insider,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told the judge, referring to Franks.

When the hearing began, his sentencing guidelines suggested a minimum prison term of 12 years. But Jonker reduced the range at the government’s request and settled on a much lower figure. Franks will get credit for two years in custody.

Two men described as leaders of the conspiracy, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted in August. Two other men, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, were acquitted in April.

“They didn’t just want to kidnap her,” Kessler said in court Thursday. “The plot that Mr. Fox and Mr. Croft really wanted to do was to put (Whitmer) on trial, kill her and begin a second civil war. What’s really frightening about that is just how prevalent those kind of views have become.”

Meanwhile, 120 miles (190 kilometers) away in Jackson, Michigan, a jury heard a second day of testimony in the trial of three members of a paramilitary group who were also arrested in 2020. Joe Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar are not charged with directly participating in the plot but are accused of assisting Fox and others.

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White reported from Detroit.

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Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez

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By Jeff Mason and Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Thursday took executive action to change U.S. policy on marijuana, pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession.

“There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result,” Biden said in a statement. “My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions.”

Biden’s actions fulfill a campaign promise and are likely to please members in his left-leaning political base ahead of the November midterm elections in which Biden’s fellow Democrats are defending their control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Biden said he had directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to develop an “administrative process” to issue certificates of pardon to those who are eligible.

The president also said he was urging state governors to follow suit.

“Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either,” he said.

Biden said he was asking federal officials to start a review process of how marijuana is “scheduled”, or classified, under federal law. Presently it falls under the same classification as heroin and LSD and in a higher classification than fentanyl and methamphetamine, he said.

“Finally, even as federal and state regulation of marijuana changes, important limitations on trafficking, marketing, and under-age sales should stay in place,” Biden said.

“Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs.”

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Chris Gallagher

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -“Zombie Killer” tomahawk axes were among the weapons that Donald Trump supporters recommended bringing to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, an FBI agent testified on Thursday at the trial of five members of the far-right Oath Keepers.

FBI agent Michael Palian read from what he described as a planning document prepared by Thomas Caldwell, one of the five on trial for charges including seditious conspiracy for their alleged role in planning the attack, which was intended to overturn then-President Trump’s election defeat.

“Each team member shall be equipped with a striking weapon,” Caldwell wrote in the document sent on Dec. 2, 2020, Palian said in his third day of testimony. “When the battle is joined, apply the striking weapon wherever it will do the most good.”

Knives, multitools and “Zombie Killer” tomahawks were recommended as weapons.

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four associates – Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins – are accused of plotting to prevent Congress from certifying the election victory of Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to keep Trump, a Republican, in power.

Some of the defendants are 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, prosecutors say.

The five defendants are charged with several felonies, including seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era statute that is rarely prosecuted and carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Defense attorneys have said the evidence will show that the defendants did nothing illegal and that the Oath Keepers are simply a peacekeeping group that has done security work at events around the country in recent years.

Caldwell, in the operations plan, instructed Oath Keeper members not to use their actual names, how to create cover stories for their “mission” and to use “burner phones” because their personal cellphones were traceable, Thursday’s testimony showed.

“The OTC (Overall Tactical Commander) should consider having limited firearms available which can be rapidly introduced into the mission area,” Caldwell also wrote. He added that they should make weapons “non-attributable” by wearing gloves and wiping them down before use to remove any fingerprints.

QUICK REACTION FORCE

Prosecutors have said the defendants trained and planned for Jan. 6 by stockpiling weapons at a northern Virginia hotel outside the capital for a “quick reaction force,” or QRF, that would be ready if called upon to transport arms into Washington.

A second witness, John Zimmerman, a former Oath Keeper from North Carolina, testified on Thursday that he had been part of a QRF for a rally in support of Trump in Washington on Nov. 14, 2020. Zimmerman was not in Washington on Jan. 6.

Zimmerman said he had previously interacted with Rhodes at a pre-election rally for Trump in North Carolina, at which Rhodes spoke on the phone with someone he said was a Secret Service agent.

Zimmerman said Oath Keeper members discussed the need for weapons on Nov. 14 because they were concerned about potential violence by counterdemonstrators.

“The need for the weapons would be if President Trump enacted the Insurrection Act,” Zimmerman cited Rhodes as telling them. The Insurrection Act is a law that empowers the president to deploy the military to suppress civil disorder.

Zimmerman volunteered his van, in which members stored roughly six handguns and 12 to 15 rifles, he said. He and others in the van waited in Arlington National Cemetery, the nation’s largest military cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington during the rally but were never called upon.

Zimmerman also said he had joined the Oath Keepers believing it was an emergency response team, but he was unhappy with tactics Rhodes was suggesting, including acting like a parent pushing a baby stroller — but with weapons in the carriage.

“I told him that’s entrapment,” Zimmerman said. “If we’re going to trick people into attacking us so we can give them a beatdown? That’s not what we do.”

(Reporting by Chris Gallagher; editing by Scott Malone, Richard Pullin and Jonathan Oatis)

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By Jack Queen

(Reuters) – A lawyer for families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting on Thursday urged a Connecticut jury to hold conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accountable for building a “lie machine” that profited off of falsehoods about the tragedy.

The attorney, Chris Mattei, said during his closing arguments that Jones and his Infowars website encouraged legions of followers to harass and threaten Sandy Hook families with false claims that they were actors complicit in a government plot to seize guns.

“He built a lie machine that put this stuff out,” Mattei said. “You reap what you sow.”

Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, have already been found liable for defamation. The state court jury in Waterbury, Connecticut, is charged only with deciding how much they must pay for claiming the killing of 20 young children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged.

During his closing arguments Thursday, Jones’ lawyer urged jurors to ignore the polarizing political undercurrents of the case and focus narrowly on the plaintiffs’ actual losses.

“This is not an action to make a political statement, to silence Alex Jones — no matter how satisfying that might feel” defense attorney Norman Pattis said.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations Thursday afternoon.

Over the past several weeks, families of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting offered anguished testimony about their suffering at the hands of Jones’ followers.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys also presented evidence that Sandy Hook conspiracy theories helped grow Infowars’ audience to hundreds of millions and drove a surge in sales of the site’s products, including nutritional supplements and doomsday supplies.

Jones, who has since acknowledged the shooting occurred, briefly threw the trial into chaos during his testimony last month, railing against his “liberal” critics and refusing to apologize to the families.

In August, Jones was hit with a $49.3 million jury verdict in a similar case in Texas, where Free Speech Systems is based.

Jones’ lawyers hope to void most of that verdict before a judge approves it, calling it excessive under Texas law.

(Reporting by Jack Queen; editing by David Bario and Jonathan Oatis)

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By Steve Holland

FORT MYERS, Fla. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday to assess the devastation from Hurricane Ian, and stressed the need for a united federal and state effort for the lengthy recovery ahead.

Biden, a Democrat, and DeSantis, his potential Republican presidential rival, have clashed over multiple issues including COVID-19 vaccines, abortion and LGBT rights.

They largely set those differences aside during the visit to hard-hit Fort Myers as Biden pledged federal support for a cleanup and rebuilding effort that could cost taxpayers billions of dollars and take years to complete.

Biden and DeSantis greeted each other warmly and stood shoulder to shoulder as they met with victims of the hurricane.

“Mr. President, welcome to Florida. We appreciate working together across various levels of government,” DeSantis, often a blistering critic of the president, told Biden during remarks after the tour.

“We’re in this together,” said Biden, who referred to DeSantis as ‘Guv,’ and complimented the “good job” the governor had done. “We’ve worked hand-in-glove. We have very different political philosophies.”

More than 100 people died and nearly 400,000 homes and businesses remained without power in Florida on Tuesday, five days after Hurricane Ian crashed across the state.

Biden opened his remarks by saying the storm showed climate change was real and needed to be addressed, something some in DeSantis’s Republican party have denied. “I think the one thing this has finally ended is a discussion about whether or not there’s climate change and we should do something about it,” he said.

Climate change is making hurricanes wetter, windier and altogether more intense, experts say.

The president also stressed the amount of federal help Florida receive for storm aid and as part of Democrat-backed spending, including $13 billion over the next five years for highways and bridges.

“The key here is building back better and stronger to withstand the next storm. We can’t build back to what it was before. You got to build back better, because we know more is coming,” he said.

Biden and his wife, Jill, arrived in Fort Meyers early Wednesday afternoon, two days after visiting Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory battered by Hurricane Fiona last month.

Biden got an aerial view of the destruction during a helicopter flight and called the destruction “horrific.”

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, INSURANCE QUESTIONS

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said it would cost the federal government billions of dollars to repair the damage from the storm.

“We are still very much in the lifesaving and stabilization mode. They are just beginning the assessments of what the actual extent of damages to the infrastructure. It’s going to be in the billions,” Criswell told reporters on Air Force One.

Biden and Criswell also suggested Wednesday that Florida’s insurance industry, which faces tens of billions of dollars in losses for the storm, could come under increasing scrutiny.

“The fact of the matter is, states like Florida, where they’ve had a lot of natural disasters because of flooding and hurricanes and the like – the insurance industry is being very stretched,” Biden said. “We’re going to have to have a hard look at whether or not the insurance industry can be sustained.”

Biden visited Florida in July after a condominium complex collapsed and killed nearly 100 people, and stressed cooperation with DeSantis at the time.

But before Hurricane Ian hit, Biden had planned a rally in the political battleground state where Democratic officials expected the president to attack the governor.

On climate change, Biden has made reducing carbon emissions a focus of his presidency, while DeSantis backed funding to harden Florida’s defenses against flooding but also opposed some previous disaster-relief aid and pushed pension funds not to consider environmental impact when they invest.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Writing by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons, Aurora Ellis and Lincoln Feast)

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By Andrew Chung and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday signaled sympathy toward Alabama in the state’s defense of a Republican-drawn electoral map in a case that could further erode a landmark voting rights law, drawing a skeptical response from its newest member, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The court on the second day of its new nine-month term heard about two hours of arguments in Alabama’s appeal of a ruling by a panel of three federal judges that the map setting the boundaries of the state’s seven U.S. House of Representatives districts unlawfully diluted the clout of Black voters.

The case illustrated the ideological divide on a court with a 6-3 conservative majority.

Jackson, the first Black woman on the court, and the two other liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, vigorously questioned Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour as he defended the map drawn by his fellow Republicans who control the state legislature. The conservative justices appeared sympathetic to some of LaCour’s arguments.

Black voters challenged the legality of the Republican-drawn map. The lower court found that the map concentrated Black voters into a single House district even though Alabama’s population is 27% Black, while spreading the rest of the Black population in other districts at levels too small to form a majority in violation of a 1965 law called the Voting Rights Act that bars racial discrimination in voting.

LaCour argued that the map was “race neutral,” that using a key Voting Rights Act provision to boost the power of minority voters may violate the guarantee of equal protection under the law enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and that states should ignore the question of race when devising electoral maps.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito expressed support for raising the burden on plaintiffs to show that an electoral map is unlawfully biased.

In “every place in the South … will not the plaintiffs always run the table?” Alito asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing President Joe Biden’s administration in backing the plaintiffs.

The Voting Rights Act was enacted at a time when Southern states including Alabama enforced policies blocking Black people from casting ballots. The case centers on a provision aimed at countering voting laws resulting in racial bias even absent racist intent.

A ruling is due by the end of June. A decision siding with Alabama could make it harder to prove state voting laws harm minorities.

Jackson, a Biden appointee, emphasized the historical intent of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the U.S. Civil War to help protect the rights of newly freed Black enslaved people. It was to ensure equality of all citizens and was not a “race-neutral or race-blind idea,” Jackson said on her second day of arguments as a justice.

The Voting Rights Act, Jackson added, “is saying you need to identify people in this community who have less opportunity and less ability to participate and ensure that that’s remedied, right? It’s a race-conscious effort.”

‘GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS’

LaCour said drawing Alabama’s map of House districts “in favor of one racial group” would itself be racially discriminatory, violating the 14th Amendment, because it would be “harming some other group on account of race.”

Kagan said endorsing Alabama’s arguments could lead states to draw maps in which minorities “could essentially be foreclosed from electing a candidate of their choice anywhere.” Kagan noted that Supreme Court rulings in 2013 and 2021 already undermined other Voting Rights Act protections.

“It’s one of the great achievements of American democracy to achieve equal political opportunities regardless of race, to ensure that African Americans could have as much political power as white Americans could,” Kagan said of the landmark law.

Sotomayor questioned LaCour about why the Republican-drawn map split up certain Black communities among House districts but not certain white communities.

The lower court ordered Alabama to configure a second House district where Black voters could hold a majority or close to it. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in February powered by its conservatives, let Alabama use the map for the Nov. 8 elections in which Republicans are trying to regain control of Congress.

Electoral districts are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain.

Alito said racially polarized voting patterns in Alabama and some other states “may be due to ideology and not have anything to do with race.”

“It may be that Black voters and white voters prefer different candidates now because they have different ideas about what the government should do,” Alito said.

Other conservative justices seemed skeptical about a second Black-majority district, but signaled there might not be appetite for a sweeping ruling upending the court’s Voting Rights Act precedents.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh focused on whether the proposed districts complied with traditional redistricting principles including that they are geographically compact.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who’s seeking his old job back, said he’d veto a bill banning abortions at 15 weeks, delivering disappointing news to abortion opponents.

LePage provided the answer in a labored exchange Tuesday evening during the first debate of the governor’s race with current Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and independent Sam Hunkler.

Mills is an unequivocal supporter of the right to an abortion, and Democrats have hammered LePage on the issue, seeking to energize voters after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

LePage, who has generally avoided the issue, said during the debate that he supports current state law that bans abortions after a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks.

But when pressed by Mills and moderators, he answered “yes” and nodded when asked if he would veto a bill banning abortions before 15 weeks.

Karen Vachon, executive director of Maine Right to Life, said Wednesday she was disappointed by LePage’s answer. “It is very disturbing that he wouldn’t support a ban after 15 weeks,” she said.

Democrats have been attacking LePage after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to an abortion, allowing states to decide the issue themselves. Maine’s abortion law went into place in 1993.

As governor, LePage, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, participated in the “Hands Around The Capitol” event protesting the Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion.

But abortion never arose as a political issue during LePage’s two terms in office. He’s now seeking to unseat Mills in one of a dozen or so competitive governor’s races across the country.

It’s a thorny topic.

In Arizona, a spokesperson had to clarify remarks made by the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, after she said abortions should be “rare and legal” before saying they should be “rare and safe.” The spokesperson said Lake is not calling for changes to abortion laws after a judge ruled that prosecutors can enforce a near-total ban on abortions.

During the debate exchange in Maine, LePage insisted he wasn’t interested in pressing for a bill to restrict or ban abortions, but lawmakers could act on their own. Democrats currently control both chambers.

Mills has stated repeatedly that she supports keeping abortions legal in Maine. “My veto pen will stand in the way of any restrictions on the right to abortion,” Mills said Tuesday evening.

While LePage said he supports the current law, he said he opposes taxpayer-funded abortions, meaning he opposes abortions provided through the state’s MaineCare program.

On a different topic, LePage was asked if he considered the election of President Joe Biden to be legitimate. LePage, who previously expressed concerns about voter fraud, answered yes. All three candidates also said they’d accept the outcome in November.

The debate was sponsored by the Portland Press Herald, Sun Journal and Maine Public. The candidates tackled issues including inflation and the economy, the state’s opioid crisis, and education.

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Follow David Sharp on Twitter @David_Sharp_AP

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By Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden is calling on his administration and Congress to explore ways to boost U.S. energy production and reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices after the cartel’s “shortsighted” production cut, the White House said on Wednesday.

Biden will also continue to direct releases from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve “as necessary,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a statement.

Previously, the White House had committed to ending releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in the coming weeks, but said on Wednesday it will continue to release them “as appropriate.” Earlier this year, Biden ordered up to 180 million barrels released from the reserve.

OPEC+ at a Vienna meeting on Wednesday ignored pleas from the White House to keep oil flowing and agreed to cut output by 2 million barrels per day, its deepest cuts in production since the 2020 COVID pandemic.

“The President is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” the statement said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Tim Ahmann and David Gregorio)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican Tim Michels was talking to a roomful of party activists in early September when he fielded a question about his position on abortion. Michels vowed he would never change, and said he was “winning” his race against Democratic Gov. Tim Evers precisely because people saw him as “a man of conviction, a man who doesn’t waffle.”

Two weeks later, Michels retreated from his unqualified support for Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion except to save the life of the mother, saying if elected he would sign legislation to grant exceptions for rape and incest.

It wasn’t the first time Michels changed course on a significant issue. Since getting into the race in April, Michels endorsed Donald Trump for a 2024 run, after first declining to support anyone; said the state’s bipartisan election commission should be eliminated, after first saying he wanted to keep it; and began welcoming big-dollar donations after earlier saying he wouldn’t take any larger than $500.

Michels and Evers are in a close race with broad implications for national politics in 2024 and beyond. Evers has highlighted his status as the only barrier to total GOP control, including his vetoes this year of Republican legislation that would have made it more difficult for some voters to cast ballots in the key battleground state. A Michels victory would give the GOP free rein to pass those changes and more.

It’s the most expensive governor’s race in the nation in terms of ad spending, with both sides spending about $55 million on TV so far, according to AdImpact Politics, which tracks spending by major campaigns.

Michels declined an interview request. But when asked about his change in position at a campaign stop Tuesday, Michels said, “I’ve been very clear and consistent throughout that I am pro-life, and I make no apologies for that.”

Michels said he would sign a bill creating abortion exceptions in cases of rape and incest because if the Legislature passes it, that means “the people have spoken.”

It’s not clear whether Michels will pay any price with voters for his evolving position on abortion or other issues. Brandon Scholz, a Republican strategist, said he doubted it. Most voters have already decided whom they support, he said.

“The independents that started in this race after the primary have picked their sides,” Scholz said. “Republicans have made up their minds on Michels. I don’t see anything out there that would move Republicans to vote for Tony Evers.”

That hasn’t stopped Evers from seeking to batter Michels on the abortion issue.

“It’s not surprising he would make a last-minute, dishonest attempt to hide his radical record on abortion, education, and more,” Evers said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Michels is in his first campaign since an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate 18 years ago. Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, said such candidates “make mistakes sometimes.”

“They say things that commit then to a position or a path that they eventually don’t want to be on so that creates inconsistencies with their positions as they try to walk back earlier views,” he said.

Michels’ abortion shift came after a primary fight where his chief rival, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, also opposed the rape and incest exceptions. After winning, Michels clearly came under pressure to soften his position, Burden said.

A Marquette University Law School poll taken shortly before Michels’ reversal found 83% of respondents — including 70% of Republicans — supported exceptions for rape and incest.

“Abortion is a little bit of a worrying sign for Republicans as an issue and it might be the only thing that ends up saving some Democrats who are having a tough go of it,” Burden said.

To push back, Michels accuses Evers of breaking promises with voters on a variety of issues, including changes in approach to fighting COVID-19 in 2020. He also points out that Evers proposed tax increases, after saying he didn’t intend to raise taxes, and then later took credit for tax cuts passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature that he signed into law.

As part of his strategy to make the race about crime and safety, Michels has also attacked Evers over his administration paroling people convicted of murder and rape and said that Evers has broken his promise made in 2018 not to release violent offenders.

Evers does not determine who is granted parole, something that has occurred routinely under both Republican and Democratic governors for decades.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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