Politics

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for an overhaul of Democrats’ political strategy on Saturday, saying the party is “getting crushed” by Republicans in part because they are too timid, often forced to play defense while Republicans “dominate with illusion.”

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas — the territory of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, one of Newsom’s chief political foils — Newsom was careful to praise current party leaders like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But he said that mantras that may have worked for the party in the past — like Michele Obama’s famous quip “when they go low, we go high,” — simply don’t work today because “that’s not the moment we’re living in right now.”

“These guys are ruthless on the other side,” Newsom said. “Where are we? Where are we organizing, bottom up, a compelling alternative narrative? Where are we going on the offense every single day? They’re winning right now.”

Newsom said that’s why — even though he is running for reelection as governor of California — he has been spending some of the millions of dollars in his campaign account on TV ads in Florida urging people to move to California, newspaper ads in Texas decrying the state’s gun laws, and putting up billboards in seven states urging women to come to California if they need an abortion.

“There’s nothing worse than someone pointing fingers. What are you going to do about it?” Newsom said. “The reason we’re doing those ads is because … the Democratic Party needs to be doing more of it.”

Of course, the main reason Newsom can do those things is because he faces little pressure at home. Newsom is likely to cruise to a second term as governor of California in November, facing a little-known and underfunded Republican challenger one year after defeating a recall attempt.

Newsom’s actions have increased speculation he might be running for president, an idea he has repeatedly denied — doing so again on Saturday in Texas. Asked if he was considering running for president in 2024 or 2028, Newsom said: “No, not happening.”

“I cannot say it enough,” he said. “I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking.”

Newsom said that President Joe Biden’s first two years in office have been “a master class … on substance and policy.” But later, he said good governance, by itself, is not enough to win elections — adding that “otherwise Biden would be at 75% approval.” In reality, about 53% of U.S. adults disapprove of Biden, according to the most recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The problem for Democrats, Newsom said, is that they “fall in love so easily” with “the guy or gal on the white horse to come save the day.”

“We missed a more important paradigm that leadership is not defined by that person in formal authority, it’s defined by people with moral authority every single day,” he said.

Newsom’s aggressiveness could end up helping Abbott, who is locked in a more competitive race with former Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Kenneth Grasso, a political science professor at Texas State University, said there has been concern among some in the Republican Party that Abbott is “not conservative enough.” Newsom’s attacks against Abbott “only helps him with those people,” Grasso said.

“If you stress that they’re right-wingers, you call them extremists, using that kind of language, all you are going to do is enhance their popularity in their own base,” he said.

Despite that risk, Texas Democrats seem to be welcoming Newsom’s attention.

“I like this guy,” Texas Democratic Party chair Gilberto Hinojosa said of Newsom. “I like the way he’s showing the contrast between what y’all do in California and what the narrow-minded, extremist positions that occur here in the state of Texas.”

The Republican Party of Texas did not respond to an email seeking comment.

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An Arizona judge ruled on Friday that a 1901 ban on nearly all abortions in the state can be enforced after being blocked for about 50 years, a decision that drew immediate criticism from abortion-rights activists and Democrats and is likely to be appealed.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson granted a request by the state’s Republican attorney general to lift a court injunction that had barred enforcement of Arizona’s pre-statehood ban on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Johnson’s ruling bans all abortions in Arizona except when the procedure is necessary to save the mother’s life.

Abortion-rights advocacy group Planned Parenthood said the ruling “has the practical and deplorable result of sending Arizonans back nearly 150 years.” Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs said she was “outraged and devastated” by the decision.

“The court finds that because the legal basis for the judgment entered in 1973 has now been overruled, it must vacate the judgment in its entirety,” Johnson said in her ruling.

The Supreme Court in June overturned the right to abortion it had recognized in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

“We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a tweet after the ruling.

Democrats have been eager to cast Republicans as extreme on the abortion issue since the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade and many states began enforcing abortion bans.

Democrats are increasingly hopeful the Supreme Court decision will boost voter support in the midterm elections, with its control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate at stake.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe, about half of U.S. states are expected to seek to restrict abortions, or have already done so, sparking a wave of litigation around the country.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Joe Biden will for the first time as U.S. president hold a political rally in a state where he lost in 2020, when he treks to Florida on Tuesday to stage a showdown with potential 2024 rival, fierce critic and possible Trump successor Ron DeSantis.

Biden is expected to offer his most sharply targeted attack yet on DeSantis, a pugnacious governor who has used the power of his office to rise to national prominence by shunning COVID-19 lockdowns, mocking Biden’s age and abilities, penalizing Disney World for opposing a new state law limiting discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools, and recently flying Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.

Biden should treat DeSantis like a playground bully and strike hard, some Democrats say

“I think people are going to look for him to be aggressive. What DeSantis is doing is a horrible thing. And there is no greater juxtaposition than the kindness and humanity of Joe Biden than the, you know, awful, inhumane, bully that is Ron DeSantis,” said Jennifer Holdsworth, a Democratic political consultant.

Biden has held political events in Democratic strongholds like Maryland and New York in recent weeks, but Tuesday’s grassroots rally in Orlando is in a state he lost in 2020 by roughly 3 points and expected to show how he may build the case for his reelection. While former president Donald Trump has long been considered the Republican frontrunner in 2024, recent polls show DeSantis higher in Florida.

Biden will use his rally to call so-called “extremist” Republicans such as DeSantis a threat to democracy while seeking to leverage anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe vs Wade decision that guaranteed woman access to abortions, according to Democratic officials.

“I expect the president to throw punches. There’s no way we are going to escape the elephant in the room,” a senior Democratic official said of DeSantis.

DeSantis, whose campaign did not respond to requests for comment, has spent the last two years trying to turn Biden into a liberal villain for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis and record inflation. He has also questioned Biden’s mental competence.

Biden’s poll numbers remain underwater in Florida, and Republicans say they welcome his trip.

“The more that Biden comes to Florida, the better it is for the state’s Republican Party,” said Evan Power, chair of the Leon County Republican Party.

AVOIDING BIDEN

Democrats in close contests in the November midterms are still outperforming Biden in polls, and some have expressed concern that appearing with the president will make their elections a referendum on his popularity.

Democratic Senate candidate Val Demings won’t be there on Tuesday to meet the president in her hometown, Orlando. Her campaign says this is due to commitments she has as a U.S. representative. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist will attend the event.

“I think he’s great. I think he’s doing a great job. He’s my friend. And I’m very proud of him. And he’s going to give our campaign a real shot in the arm,” Crist said in an interview on Thursday.

Crist trails DeSantis by a wider margin than Demings does in her race against incumbent U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, recent polls show. Demings is about tied with Rubio in the fundraising race, while Crist is going up against an incumbent with a whopping $120 million on hand, the reportedly highest in any state race in the country.

Democrats also say Biden’s visit will help them control a news cycle frequently dominated by DeSantis.

“I think it will shine a bright light on the state,” said Crist.

One message Biden and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison want to convey is that the party has not given up on a state that, in recent times, has felt like it has given up on them. The last time a Democrat won a presidential or Senate election in Florida was 2012.

In Florida, Republicans hold a voter registration advantage, 5.2 million versus 4.9 million. But the number of unaffiliated voters stands at 3.9 million, an increasingly important part of the electorate.

“He had no choice. If he comes to Florida, it’s a story. If he doesn’t come to Florida, it’s a story,” said one Democrat involved in a statewide race.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose; Editing by Heather Timmons, Alistair Bell and Mark Porter)

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The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight.

Convinced the White House had been stolen from Republican Donald Trump, Stewart Rhodes exhorted his followers to action, suggesting they emulate a popular uprising that brought down Yugoslavia’s president two decades earlier. He published a version of his appeal online, headlined, “What We The People Must Do.”

“We must now … refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol,” Rhodes declared to fellow Oath Keepers.

Authorities allege that Rhodes and his band of extremists would spend the next several weeks amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary training and readying armed teams outside Washington with a singular goal: stopping Joe Biden from becoming president.

Their plot would come to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors say, when Oath Keepers wearing helmets and other battle gear were captured on camera shouldering their way through the crowd of angry Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation.

Hundreds of pages of court documents in the case against Rhodes and four co-defendants — whose trial opens with jury selection Tuesday in Washington’s federal court — paint a picture of a group so determined to overturn Biden’s election that some members were prepared to lose their lives to do so.

The trial is the biggest test so far for the Justice Department’s efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack on the Capitol, a violent assault that challenged the foundations of American democracy. Rioters temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s victory by sheer force, pummeling police officers in hand-to-hand fighting as they rammed their way into the building, forcing Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from the mob.

Despite nearly 900 arrests and hundreds of convictions in the riot, Rhodes and four Oath Keeper associates — Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — are the first to stand trial on the rare and difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that the insurrection for the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but part of a serious, weekslong plot to stop the transfer of power.

The trial could shed new light on Trump’s attempts to cling to power. It comes amid growing legal peril for the former president, who faces multiple investigations, including one by the Justice Department into his handling of sensitive government documents.

Defense lawyers for the Oath Keepers will tell jurors the government case is all a lie.

The Oath Keepers accuse prosecutors of twisting their words and insist there was never any plan to attack the Capitol. They say they were in Washington to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before the president’s big outdoor rally behind the White House. Their preparations, training, gear and weapons were to protect themselves against potential violence from left-wing antifa activists or to be ready if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to call up a militia.

Rhodes’ lawyers have signaled that their defense will focus on his belief that Trump would take that action.

“When he believed that the President would issue an order invoking the Insurrection Act, he was prepared to follow it. When that invocation did not come, he did precisely nothing,” Rhodes lawyers wrote in court documents.

“The Government would like this Court to believe that is sedition, when in fact, it is the opposite. It is loyalty to an oath taken in defense of the Country.”

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Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 and it has grown into one of the largest anti-government groups in U.S. history. It recruits past and present members of the military, first responders and police officers, and promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties. It portrays its followers as defenders against tyranny.

On Nov. 9, 2020, less than a week after Election Day, Rhodes held a conference call and rallied the Oath Keepers to go to Washington and fight. He expressed hope that antifa (anti-fascist) activists would start clashes because that would give Trump the “reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.”

”You’ve got to go there and you’ve got to make sure that he knows that you are willing to die to fight for this country,” Rhodes told his people, according to a transcript filed in court. He urged those on their way to Washington to stop at Arlington National Cemetery to see the graves of thousands of people who died fighting for the United States.

“They were willing to give up their entire life,” Rhodes told them. “Most of us are in our 50s or 60s or older. You’ve lived a good life. You’ve lived way past the age of these young men. … And if you don’t stand up now, everything they fought for and died for will be fought for nothing.“

Some Oath Keepers would stay outside Washington but be “prepared to go in armed if they have to,” Rhodes said on the call. If they failed to “save” the country, Rhodes predicted there would be “a bloody, bloody civil war.”

After the call, another Oath Keeper, Watkins, told people who expressed interest in joining her Ohio militia group about “military-style basic” training planned for early January, prosecutors say. The Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers held training in “unconventional warfare.”

Watkins told one recruit, “I need you fighting fit” by the inauguration, which was Jan. 20, 2021. Watkins later predicted their “way of life” would be over if Biden became president.

“Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as Americans to fight, kill and die for our rights,” she wrote in another message.

By December, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers had set their sights on Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, prosecutors say.

Trump’s Dec. 19 tweet about a “big protest in D.C. on January 6th” that he predicted would “be wild” seemed to energize the Oath Keepers.

Days later, Meggs — the leader of the Florida chapter— wrote in a Facebook message: “Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!”

During an interview Dec. 22 with a regional Oath Keepers leader, Rhodes described Jan. 6 as “hard constitutional deadline” for stopping Biden from becoming president.

On Dec. 23, Rhodes published an open letter on the Oath Keepers website declaring that “tens of thousands of patriot Americans, both veterans and nonveterans” would be in Washington. Many would have their “mission-critical gear stowed nearby just outside D.C,” he wrote, warning that they might have to “take to arms in defense of our God given liberty.”

In late December, the Oath Keepers were making plans for “quick reaction force” teams to be stationed at a Virginia hotel in order to shepherd weapons into the city quickly if needed, prosecutors say. In one message days before the Capitol attack, Caldwell suggested getting a boat to ferry “heavy weapons” across the Potomac River into the Oath Keepers’ “waiting arms.”

As 2021 approached, Rhodes spent $7,000 on two night-vision devices and a weapon sight and sent them to someone outside Washington, authorities say. Over several days in early January, he would spend an additional $15,500 on guns, including an AR-platform rifle, magazines, mounts, sights and other equipment, according to court documents.

“There is no standard political or legal way out of this,” Rhodes wrote in a message on New Year’s Eve.

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Oath Keepers from across the country began traveling to the Washington area.

Rhodes had instructed them to be ready, if asked, to secure the White House perimeter and “use lethal force if necessary” against anyone, including the National Guard, who might try to remove Trump from the White House, according to court documents in the case of one member who has pleaded guilty.

On Jan. 5, Meggs and the Florida Oath Keepers brought gun boxes, rifle cases and suitcases filled with ammunition to the Virginia hotel where the “quick reaction force” teams would be on standby, according to prosecutors. A team from Arizona brought weapons, ammunition, and supplies to last 30 days, according to court papers. A team from North Carolina had rifles in a vehicle parked in the hotel lot, prosecutors have said. Surveillance footage shows Oath Keepers rolling bags, large bins and what appears to be at least one rifle case into the hotel.

On the morning of the riot, one of the quick reaction force team members warned on a podcast about the prospect of violence: “We are applying as much pressure as we can. The only and obvious next step is to go into armed conflict but hoping very much that that doesn’t happen.”

Trump delivered his speech at the Ellipse behind the White House, repeating his false claims about a rigged election and urging his supporters to “fight like hell.” The crowd started marching to the Capitol, eventually fighting past police barricades.

As word began spreading that people were storming the Capitol, Rhodes wrote: “All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no attempt by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it in their own hands. They’ve had enough.”

At the Capitol, the Oath Keepers formed two teams, military “stacks,” prosecutors say.

The first stack, with members wearing protective vests, helmets and communication devices, pushed through the crowd and up the Capitol steps. Over a channel called “Stop the Steal J6” on the walkie-talkie app Zello, Watkins said they were inside.

“Get it, Jess. … Everything we (expletive) trained for,” someone responded.

Some members of the first stack headed toward the House of Representatives searching for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but couldn’t find her, according to court documents. Members of the second stack confronted officers inside the Capitol Rotunda, prosecutors allege.

Rhodes isn’t accused of going inside the Capitol but was seen huddled with members outside after the riot. Rhodes and others then walked to the nearby Phoenix Park Hotel, prosecutors say.

Inside a private suite there, Rhodes called someone on the phone with an urgent message for Trump, according to an Oath Keeper who says he was there. Rhodes repeatedly urged the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power, court papers say. The person denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly to Trump.

“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up, according to court papers. Authorities have not disclosed the name of the person they believe Rhodes was speaking to on the call. Rhodes’ lawyer has said the call never happened.

That night, Rhodes and other Oath Keepers went to dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant in Virginia. In messages over the course of the evening, they indicated their fight was far from over.

“We aren’t quitting!! We are reloading!!” Meggs wrote in one message.

“Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming,” Rhodes wrote in another.

In the days between the riot and Biden’s inauguration, Rhodes spent more than $17,000 on firearm parts, magazines, ammunition and other items, prosecutors say.

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Rhodes returned to his home state of Texas after the Jan. 6 attack and remained free for a year before his arrest in January 2022.

In interviews before he was jailed, he sought to distance himself from those Oath Keepers who went inside the Capitol, saying it was a mistake to do so. But he also continued to push the lie that the election was stolen from Trump and painted the investigation of the Jan. 6 events as politically motivated.

The Oath Keepers’ “team leader on the ground that day was an experienced combat vet. … If he had actually intended for anyone to go into the Capitol and commit an insurrection, it would have looked very, very different from what we saw,” Rhodes said in a March 2021 interview with the website Gateway Pundit.

“The idea that that was somehow an insurrection, with no guns no actual, obvious intent to do anything is just ridiculous, a complete joke,” he said.

A lawyer for Caldwell wrote in a recent filing: “Defense counsel have reviewed thousands of text messages, Signal messages, emails, Facebook Messenger messages, social media posts, etc. and have found no evidence that the Rhodes defendants planned any specific acts of civil disobedience or violence on J6.”

The lawyer added: “If Caldwell or the Oath Keepers or both had a plan to forcibly, corruptly, illegally, or violently stop the Electoral College certification on J6, it was the best kept secret in the annals of American history.”

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

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CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is perhaps best known as an election denier who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. John Fetterman, the Democrat hoping to flip the state’s Senate seat, has revolutionized how campaigns use social media. And Dr. Mehmet Oz was a TV celebrity long before he launched a GOP Senate campaign.

And then there’s Josh Shapiro.

In one of the most politically competitive states in the U.S., the Democratic contender for governor is waging a notably drama-free campaign, betting that a relatively under the radar approach will resonate with voters exhausted by a deeply charged political environment. But Shapiro faces a test of whether his comparatively low-key style will energize Democrats to rally against Mastriano, who many in the party view as an existential threat.

The GOP candidate, who worked to keep Donald Trump in power and overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, supports ending abortion rights and would be in position to appoint the secretary of state, who oversees elections in this state that is often decisive in choosing presidents.

The tension of Shapiro’s strategy was on display during a recent swing through this small city, a dot in deeply Republican south central Pennsylvania. He spent 10 minutes ticking through his record as a two-term attorney general and his policy goals if he becomes governor, such as expanding high-speed internet and boosting school funding. But he also acknowledged that he knew what was on the minds of audience members, noting how his wife gives him a simple reminder every morning: “You better win.”

The 49-year-old Shapiro then became more explicit about the implications of a Mastriano win.

“This guy is the most dangerous, extreme person to ever run for governor in Pennsylvania and by far the most dangerous, extreme candidate running for office in the United States of America,” Shapiro told the crowd in Chambersburg, Mastriano’s home base in his conservative state Senate district.

Shapiro is managing something of a two-pronged campaign, one built for a conventional election year and another aimed at the tense political environment in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights.

Last month, Shapiro released a TV ad statewide that discussed a case he brought as attorney general against a contractor who agreed to repay wages after Shapiro’s office accused it of stealing from workers. Then, he’s also aired TV ads describing Mastriano as a threat to democracy, pointing out that Mastriano watched at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as pro-Trump demonstrators attacked police.

“It was there that day that my opponent sided with the angry mob, marched to the Capitol, breached the police lines, and he did so with one purpose, all of them: they didn’t want your votes to count,” Shapiro told an audience in Gettysburg, prompting one woman to call out, “He’s a traitor.”

That message isn’t lost on the Democrats who go see Shapiro.

“I think this is just a critical election,” said Marissa Sandoe, 29. “I think this election will determine whether we still have a democracy in this nation.”

Shapiro later shrugs off suggestions that, for his supporters, the grist of normal-year gubernatorial politics is being drowned out by existential issues, like saving democracy.

“I’m focused like a laser beam on making Pennsylvanians’ lives better,” Shapiro said.

The first midterm of a new administration is often challenging for the president’s party. But for now, polls suggest Shaprio is leading Mastriano and he also has a significant fundraising advantage. Shapiro has run more than $20 million worth of TV ads, while Mastriano has run hardly anything, and nothing since the primary.

Campaigning in the state where Biden was born, Shaprio may benefit from a recovery in Biden’s approval.

The president’s popularity nationally has improved to 45% from 36% in July, although concerns about his handling of the economy persist, according to a September poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Republican Party leaders who initially criticized Mastriano as being too extreme to win the fall general election say he could still win, despite his flaws, if the electorate is angry enough over inflation to check every box against Democrats as a vote against Biden.

But Republicans acknowledge Mastriano is running a race focused largely on his right-wing base, instead of reaching out to the moderates who often put winners over the top in one of America’s most politically divided states.

Mastriano has gotten institutional fundraising help, including events headlined by state party leaders, Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but Republican strategists have whispered that the fundraisers aren’t well-attended and Mastriano went on Facebook this week to complain about a lack of support from “national-level Republican organizations.”

“We haven’t seen much assistance coming from them and we’re 49 days out,” Mastriano said.

At campaign events, Mastriano promises to be a pro-energy governor and bus migrants to Biden’s home in Delaware, and he warns that Shapiro is pursuing an extreme agenda.

“If we’re extreme about anything, it’s about loving our constitution,” Mastriano told a rally crowd in nearby Chambersburg earlier this month.

For his part, Shapiro is gamely going about the campaign, taking advantage of Mastriano’s weaknesses. The Democrat will be a guest in early October at the annual dinner of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, a group accustomed to endorsing Republicans for governor. Mastriano hasn’t accepted even its invitation to speak to its board, something Shapiro already did.

Building-trades unions that work on power plants, pipelines and refineries in a coal and natural gas powerhouse haven’t heeded Mastriano’s promises that “we’re going to drill and dig like there’s no tomorrow.”

Instead, they have accepted Shapiro’s middle-of-the-road stance on energy and attacked Mastriano’s support for right-to-work policies as anathema even to rank-and-file members who vote Republican.

“Here’s one thing my members get: They’ll never, ever be with someone who is for right-to-work, ever,” said James Snell, the business manager of Steamfitters Local 420 in Philadelphia.

Shapiro is also taking centrist positions that might help inoculate himself against Mastriano’s attacks.

The race got personal, with Mastriano repeatedly criticizing Shapiro’s choice of a private school for his children — a Jewish day school — as “one of the most privileged, entitled schools in the nation.”

Shapiro, a devout conservative Jew, responded that Mastriano — who espouses what scholars call Christian nationalist ideology — wants to impose his religion on others and “dictate to folks where and how they should worship and on what terms.”

Shapiro dug deeper on Mastriano, saying he speaks in “anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic tropes every day.” Mastriano calls those distractions from Shapiro’s record as attorney general and failure to stem rising homicides in Philadelphia.

Still, Shapiro is drawing crowds on Mastriano’s turf, far from his power base in Philadelphia’s upscale suburbs.

It is fertile ground, said Marty Qually, a Democratic county commissioner in Adams County, which includes Gettysburg, because Democrats are riled up like he’s never seen before and even Republicans there tell him they cannot accept Mastriano’s Christian nationalism or hard-line abortion stance.

It speaks volumes that Shapiro is campaigning in small towns, and not in Democratic strongholds: It means that he’s comfortable with where the race is, Qually said.

“Some folks here said: ‘Why do you want to go to Franklin County? That’s where the other guy’s from,’” Shapiro told the crowd in Chambersburg. “Let me tell you something. I’m glad I came. Ya’ll are making me feel at home.”

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: twitter.com/timelywriter.

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

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ATLANTA (AP) — The tale of breached voting equipment in one of the country’s most important political battleground states involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a cast of characters from a rural county that rarely draws notice from outsiders.

How they all came together and what it could mean for the security of voting in the upcoming midterm elections are questions tangled up in a lawsuit and state investigations that have prompted calls to ditch the machines altogether.

Details of the unauthorized access of sensitive voting equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became public last month when documents and emails revealed the involvement of high-profile Trump supporters. That’s also when it caught the attention of an Atlanta-based prosecutor who is leading a separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the state.

Since then, revelations about what happened in the county of 43,000 people have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia have been compromised.

The public disclosure of the breach began with a rambling phone call from an Atlanta-area bail bondsman to the head of an election security advocacy group involved in a long-running lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines.

According to a recording filed in court earlier this year, the bail bondsman said he’d chartered a jet and was with a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office when they “imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment.”

That happened on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and two days after a runoff election in which Democrats swept both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.

The trip to Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment was directed by attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies, according to deposition testimony and documents produced in response to subpoenas.

Later that month, security camera footage shows, two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states spent days going in and out of the Coffee County elections office.

The footage also shows local election and Republican Party officials welcoming the visitors and allowing them access to the election equipment. The video seems to contradict statements some of the officials made about their apparent involvement.

The new information has made Coffee County, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote two years ago, a focal point of concerns over the security of voting machines. While there is no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment in 2020, some Trump supporters have spread false information about machines and the election outcome.

Election security experts and activists fear state election officials haven’t acted fast enough in the face of what they see as a real threat.

The copying of the software and its availability for download means potential bad actors could build exact copies of the Dominion system to test different types of attacks, said University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Philip Stark, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the voting machines lawsuit.

“This is like bank robbers having an exact replica of the vault that they’re trying to break into,” he said.

Stark said the risks could be minimized by using hand-marked paper ballots and rigorous audits. Dominion says its equipment remains secure.

Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group that sued over the state’s voting machines, said the state has been slow to investigate. She was on the receiving end of the phone call from the bail bondsman.

The state, she said, has been “repeatedly looking the other way when faced with flashing red lights of serious voting system security problems.”

State officials say they’re confident the election system is safe. All Coffee County election equipment that wasn’t already replaced will be swapped out before early voting begins next month, the secretary of state’s office said Friday.

State officials also noted they were deluged by false claims after the 2020 election.

“In retrospect, you can say, well what about this, this and this,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “In real time, no, there was no reason to think that.”

In late January 2021, a few weeks after the computer forensics team visited, security video shows a secretary of state’s office investigator arriving at the Coffee County elections office. He and the elections supervisor walk into the room that houses the election management system server. Seconds later, Jeff Lenberg, who has been identified by Michigan authorities as being part of an effort to gain access to voting machines there, is seen walking out of that room.

Asked whether Lenberg’s presence in the room with sensitive election equipment raised concerns for the investigator, secretary of state’s office spokesperson Mike Hassinger said the investigator was looking into an unrelated matter and didn’t know who Lenberg was.

Security video also showed another man, Doug Logan, at the office in mid-January. Logan founded a company called Cyber Ninjas, which led a discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. In May 2021, Coffee County’s new elections supervisor raised concerns with the secretary of state’s office after finding Logan’s business card by a computer. The election supervisor’s concerns were referred to an investigator, but he testified that no one ever contacted him.

Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office responds to allegations when they are raised but that “information about unauthorized access to Coffee County’s election equipment has been kept hidden” by local officials and others.

Much of what is known was uncovered through documents, security camera video and depositions produced in response to subpoenas in the lawsuit filed by individual voters and the election security advocacy group. The suit alleges Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are not secure and seeks to force the state to use hand-marked paper ballots instead.

The recently produced evidence of a breach wasn’t the first sign of problems in Coffee County, which caused headaches for state election officials in the hectic weeks following the 2020 election. It’s likely that turmoil helped open the door for Trump’s allies.

In early December 2020, the county elections board declined to certify the results of a machine recount requested by Trump, saying the election system had produced inaccurate results. A video posted online days later showed the former county elections supervisor saying the elections software could be manipulated; as she spoke, the password to the county election management system server was visible on a note stuck to her computer.

At the end of December, Cathy Latham, the Coffee County Republican Party chair who also was a fake elector for Trump, appeared at a state legislative committee hearing and made further claims that the voting machines were unreliable.

Within days of that hearing, Latham said, she was contacted by Scott Hall, the bail bondsman, who had been a Republican observer during an election recount. Latham testified in a deposition that Hall asked her to connect him with the Coffee County elections supervisor (who later was accused of falsifying timesheets and forced to resign).

A few days later, on Jan. 7, Hall met with a computer forensics team from data solutions firm SullivanStrickler at the Coffee County elections office. The team copied the data and software on the election management system server and other voting system components, a company executive said in a deposition. The company said it believed its clients had the necessary permission.

Invoices show the data firm billed Powell $26,000 for the day’s work.

“Everything went smoothly yesterday with the Coffee County collection,” the firm’s chief operating officer wrote to Powell in an email. “Everyone involved was extremely helpful.”

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Today in History

Today is Saturday, Sept. 24, the 267th day of 2022. There are 98 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Sept. 24, 1960, the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Virginia.

On this date:

In 1789, President George Washington signed a Judiciary Act establishing America’s federal court system and creating the post of attorney general.

In 1869, thousands of businessmen were ruined in a Wall Street panic known as “Black Friday” after financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market.

In 1957, the Los Angeles-bound Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0.

In 1963, the U.S. Senate ratified a treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union limiting nuclear testing.

In 1968, the TV news magazine “60 Minutes” premiered on CBS; the undercover police drama “The Mod Squad” premiered on ABC.

In 1969, the trial of the Chicago Eight (later seven) began. (Five were later convicted of crossing state lines to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic convention, but the convictions were ultimately overturned.)

In 1976, former hostage Patricia Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery in San Francisco carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army. (Hearst was released after 22 months after receiving clemency from President Jimmy Carter.)

In 1996, the United States and 70 other countries became the first to sign a treaty at the United Nations to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons. (The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has yet to enter into force because of the refusal so far of eight nations — including the United States — to ratify it.)

In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered a freeze on the assets of 27 people and organizations with suspected links to terrorism, including Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, and urged other nations to do likewise.

In 2015, a stampede and crush of Muslim pilgrims occurred at an intersection near a holy site in Saudi Arabia; The Associated Press estimated that more than 2,400 people were killed, while the official Saudi toll stood at 769.

In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump; the probe focused partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from the government of Ukraine to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden. (Trump would be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on two impeachment charges.)

In 2020, President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he were to lose the November election drew swift blowback from both parties in Congress, with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell saying that the winner “will be inaugurated on January 20th.”

Ten years ago: President Barack Obama told the ABC talk show “The View” there was “no doubt” that the assault of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, “wasn’t just a mob action” but a sign of extremism in nations lacking stability. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused Obama of minimizing the Benghazi attack as a mere “bump in the road.”

Five years ago: More than 200 NFL players kneeled or sat during the national anthem after President Donald Trump criticized the players’ protests in a speech and a series of tweets. Trump signed a proclamation to replace his expiring travel ban on visitors from six Muslim-majority countries; citizens from eight countries would now face new restrictions on entry to the country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office, but voters weakened her conservatives and a nationalist, anti-migrant party surged into Germany’s parliament.

One year ago: A Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county ended without providing proof to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election; the vote tally from a firm hired by Republican lawmakers found that President Joe Biden won in the county by 360 more votes than in the official results that were certified. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law removing the word “alien” from various sections of the state code; the word, which was criticized as being dehumanizing and offensive, would be replaced with terms like “noncitizen” or “immigrant.”

Today’s Birthdays: Singer Phyllis “Jiggs” Allbut Sirico (The Angels) is 80. Political commentator Lou Dobbs is 77. Pro and College Football Hall of Famer Joe Greene is 76. Actor Gordon Clapp is 74. Actor Harriet Walter is 72. Songwriter Holly Knight is 66. Actor Kevin Sorbo is 64. Actor-writer Nia Vardalos is 60. Rock musician Shawn Crahan (AKA Clown) (Slipknot) is 53. Country musician Marty Mitchell is 53. Actor Megan Ward is 53. Singer-musician Marty Cintron (No Mercy) is 51. Contemporary Christian musician Juan DeVevo (Casting Crowns) is 47. Actor Ian Bohen is 46. Actor Justin Bruening is 43. Olympic gold medal gymnast Paul Hamm (hahm) is 40. Actor Erik Stocklin is 40. Actor Spencer Treat Clark is 35. Actor Grey Damon is 35. Actor Kyle Sullivan is 34. Actor Ben Platt is 29.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iowa man was “weaponizing” rioters who joined him in chasing a police officer up a staircase during one of the most harrowing scenes from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, a prosecutor told jurors on Friday at the close of the man’s trial.

Douglas Jensen had a folding knife in his pocket and was wearing a T-shirt expressing his adherence to the QAnon conspiracy theory when he joined the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. One of the videos that went viral after the siege captured Jensen at the front of the crowd that followed Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the stairs.

“The defendant wasn’t just leading the mob. He was weaponizing it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell said during closing arguments for Jensen’s trial. “He knew he had the numbers, and he was willing to use them.”

Jurors began deliberating in the case against Jensen, a construction worker who is among hundreds of people charged with federal crimes for their conduct at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Jensen’s shirt — which depicted a large “Q” and a bald eagle along with two QAnon slogans — made him stand out from the crowd of rioters.

Defense attorney Christopher Davis said the shirt was a symbol of Jensen’s adherence to QAnon, which centered on the baseless belief that former President Donald Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping cabal of “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. During Trump’s time in the White House, QAnon spread beyond the internet’s fringes to influence mainstream Republican circles.

“The (COVID-19) pandemic did weird things to us. It did weird things to everyone,” Davis said. “Apparently, Mr. Jensen was one of them.”

Jensen believed the conspiracy theory’s apocalyptic prophesy that “The Storm” was coming and would usher in mass arrests and executions of Trump’s foes, including Vice President Mike Pence. Before the riot, Trump and his allies spread the false narrative that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election.

After scaling the outer walls of the Capitol, Jensen climbed through a broken window to enter the building. Prosecutors said Jensen learned from a friend’s text message that Pence was about to certify the election results.

“That’s all about to change,” Jensen replied.

Pence was presiding over the Senate on Jan. 6 as a joint session of Congress was convened to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Photographs showed Jensen with his arms extended as he confronted a line of police officers near the Senate chambers.

“Go arrest the vice president,” Jensen told one of the officers, according to prosecutors.

“This was a terribly confused man on Jan. 6,” Davis said of his client.

The defense lawyer urged jurors to judge Jensen by his own actions and not by what others did at the Capitol.

“Jan. 6 is not sitting at that table. Douglas Jensen is,” Davis said, pointing to his client.

Jensen didn’t testify at his trial, which started Tuesday. Goodman was a key witness for prosecutors.

Before running upstairs, Goodman approached Jensen and other rioters with his hand on his gun. Fearing for his life, Goodman retreated upstairs and found backup from other officers guarding an entrance to the Senate, where senators were being evacuated, according to prosecutors.

“That was not a game of follow the leader. That was Officer Goodman in survival mode,” Mirell said.

Jensen is charged with seven counts, including charges that he obstructed Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, that he assaulted or interfered with police officers and that he engaged in disorderly conduct inside the Capitol while carrying his knife. He isn’t accused of brandishing the knife.

“Doug Jensen would not be stopped on Jan. 6 until he got what he came for, and that was to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Mirell said.

Davis said Jensen didn’t forcibly assault Goodman or anybody else.

“It’s all on video,” he said. “He never did it.”

Mirell argued that Jensen didn’t have to physically touch Goodman to be found guilty of an assault charge.

“Just a threat to use force,” she said.

Jenson drove back home to Des Moines, Iowa, a day after the riot. The following day, he walked six miles to a police station and showed up unannounced, saying he was probably a wanted man. But there weren’t any warrants for his arrest when two FBI agents questioned him at the station.

Jensen told the agents he considered himself a “digital soldier” who was “religiously” following QAnon. He said he worked his way to the front of the crowd because he “wanted Q to get the attention.”

“I basically intended on being the poster boy, and it really worked out,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview on Jan. 8, 2021.

At least 880 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 400 of them have pleaded guilty. Juries have convicted eight Capitol riot defendants after trials. None of the defendants who had jury trials was acquitted of any charges.

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A leading U.S. conservative group is pressuring Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to shun “left-leaning” corporations that take stances on social issues such as abortion, election reform and LGBTQ rights, in exchange for its endorsement for party leadership positions.

As House Republicans began rolling out their campaign agenda for the Nov. 8 midterm elections, the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, called on the lawmakers to pledge not to meet with executives and lobbyists from companies that “have been hostile to policies that help all Americans.”

“This is the Republican Party’s moment to declare independence from corporate special interest money that flows from left-leaning large publicly traded companies,” CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp said in a Sept. 22 letter sent to more than 200 House Republican lawmakers.

The letter, based on the expectation that Republicans would regain control of the House in November, represents the latest push by the political right to reset the Republican Party’s once close relationship with corporate America since Donald Trump’s presidency.

Recent months have seen politicians, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 White House candidate, strip Walt Disney Co of its self-governing status, after it opposed a new state law limiting discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools.

Republicans also expressed anger after companies, including Citigroup, Levi Strauss & Co and Amazon.com Inc, said they would pay for employees who lived in states where abortion has been banned to travel out of state to obtain the procedure.

The CEOs of banks, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo took a grilling in Congress on Thursday over their companies’ having taken stances on social issues.

“I can’t help but observe that when banks do weigh-in on highly charged social and political issues, they seem to always come down on the liberal side,” said Republican Senator Pat Toomey during Thursday’s hearing.

CPAC represents a movement of Trump-led conservatives that has steadily gained influence within the Republican Party in recent years. But it was unclear how much sway CPAC might wield in internal House Republican politics.

GROWING CAMPAIGN

Republicans in Congress and across conservative-led states have railed against companies for taking what they see as “liberal” stances on environmental, social and governance issues.

Schlapp said companies have “colluded” with Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to “silence” conservatives, promoted “lies” about voter ID laws, withheld support from conservatives who back “fair elections,” paid travel costs for employee abortions and promoted “radical gender theory.”

That came as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and members of his caucus sought to unify their party’s focus on their “Commitment to America” agenda, which is intended to offer voters solutions to social and economic ills ranging from inflation and high energy prices to crime rates and border security, which Republicans blame on Democrats.

The agenda, formally unveiled on Friday at an event in Pennsylvania, makes no mention of “left-leaning” companies but puts a priority on abortion restrictions, voter ID laws, reining in Big Tech and keeping transgender women out of women’s sports.

Control of the Senate is up for grabs in November. Nonpartisan election analysts see Republicans as set to erase Democrats’ 221-212 House majority. Doing so would give them the power to block Biden’s legislative agenda and to launch potentially politically damaging investigations into his administration.

Democrats’ fortunes have improved in recent weeks. A national Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Sept. 12 found that 37% of Americans would prefer to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate, with 34% preferring Republicans and 15% still undecided.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chamber’s top Democrat, denounced the Republican agenda on Friday as an “alarming new extreme MAGA platform threatens to criminalize women’s health care, slash seniors’ Medicare and raise prescription drug prices, and attack our free and fair elections.” MAGA is an acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michael Avenatti, the brash celebrity lawyer who rose to fame taking on Donald Trump before a slew of criminal charges destroyed his legal career, was ordered on Friday to pay $148,750 in restitution to his best-known client, porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Avenatti, 51, was convicted by a Manhattan federal jury in February of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for embezzling $297,500 in book proceeds from Daniels, who testified that Avenatti “stole from me and lied to me.”

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in June sentenced Avenatti to four years in prison, calling his conduct “brazen and egregious.”

The sentence also required Avenatti to forfeit the $297,500, but the restitution is lower because he repaid some of the money to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Avenatti is appealing the conviction and sentence.

Daniels is known for receiving $130,000 from Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for keeping quiet about an affair she claimed to have had with the future U.S. president, which he denied.

Avenatti successfully freed Daniels from a non-disclosure agreement with Trump, paving the way for her 2018 memoir “Full Disclosure,” where she described the alleged liaison.

Lawyers for Avenatti and Daniels did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Before the trial, Avenatti had already been serving a 2-1/2 year sentence after being convicted in 2020 of trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike Inc.

Avenatti was also ordered to pay $259,800.50 in restitution to Nike, but the athletic wear company agreed that his individual victims could get paid first.

Parts of the prison sentences run concurrently, and Avenatti is expected to serve a total of five years behind bars.

He also faces a scheduled Nov. 7 sentencing in California after pleading guilty in June to five federal charges there, including four counts of wire fraud for defrauding clients.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)

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