Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden said U.S forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, his most explicit statement so far on the issue, something sure to anger Beijing.

Asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday whether U.S. forces would defend the self-ruled island claimed by China, he replied: “Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.”

Asked to clarify if he meant that unlike in Ukraine, U.S. forces – American men and women – would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Biden replied: “Yes.”

The interview was just the latest time that Biden has appeared to go beyond long-standing stated U.S. policy on Taiwan, but his statement was clearer than previous ones about committing U.S. troops to the defend the island.

The United States has long stuck to a policy of “strategic ambiguity” and not making clear whether it would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan.

Asked to comment, a White House spokesperson said U.S. policy towards Taiwan had not changed.

“The President has said this before, including in Tokyo earlier this year. He also made clear then that our Taiwan policy hasn’t changed. That remains true,” the spokesperson said.

The CBS interview with Biden was conducted last week. The president is in Britain for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday.

In May, Biden was asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan and replied https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-meets-japanese-emperor-start-visit-launch-regional-economic-plan-2022-05-23: “Yes … That’s the commitment we made.”

In the 60 Minutes interview, Biden reiterated the United States did not support Taiwanese independence and remained committed to a “One-China” policy in which Washington officially recognizes Beijing not Taipei.

Biden’s remarks are sure to enrage Beijing, which was greatly angered by a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi in August.

That visit promoted China to conducted its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan and China has protested moves by U.S. lawmakers to advanced legislation that would enhance U.S. military support for Taiwan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to bring democratically-governed Taiwan under Beijing’s control and has not ruled out the use of force.

There was no immediate response to a request for comment from China’s embassy in Washington.

In a phone call with Biden in July, Xi warned against playing with fire over Taiwan, saying “those who play with fire will perish by it.”

Asked last October if the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan, which the United States is required by law to provide with the means to defend itself, Biden said: “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

At that time, a White House spokesperson said Biden was not announcing any change in U.S. policy and some experts referred to the comment as a “gaffe”.

Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said if Biden made such pledges he needed to ensure he could back them up.

“If President Biden plans to defend Taiwan, then he should make sure the U.S. military has the capability to do so,” she said. “Rhetorical support that isn’t backed up by real capabilities is unlikely to strengthen deterrence.”

Biden’s Asia policy czar, Kurt Campbell, has in the past rejected any move to “strategic clarity” over Taiwan, saying there were “significant downsides” https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/significant-downsides-strategic-clarity-over-taiwan-us-2021-05-04 to such an approach.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Costas Pitas, Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Lincoln Feast.)

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BOSTON (AP) — Just 20 years ago, Massachusetts voters had yet to elect a woman as governor, attorney general, U.S. senator or mayor of its largest city. This year, Democratic women won five of six statewide primary contests.

2022 is shaping up to be a watershed year for women seeking political power in Massachusetts, a state that despite its liberal reputation has lagged when it comes to electing women to top offices.

Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey is heavily favored to flip the Republican-held governor’s office in November, which would make her the state’s first woman and first openly gay candidate elected chief executive. Andrea Campbell, the former Boston city councilor hoping to succeed Healey as attorney general, would be the first Black woman to hold that post.

And since candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run together in the general election, Healey is poised to make history with her running mate, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, by becoming the first two-female governor/lieutenant governor ticket elected to lead any state.

Healey said she’s more focused on issues important to voters — like housing costs and transportation — than on the groundbreaking nature of her run.

“I know it’s historic. I also know this is about the resume, though. This is about picking the people that you want in government to best serve and deliver for you and your family,” Healey said a day after her Sept. 6 primary victory.

This year, both Democrats and Republicans nominated women for the lieutenant governor post. In addition, Democrats nominated women in the attorney general, treasurer and auditor races, while Republicans nominated a woman for secretary of the commonwealth.

The nominations continue a trend that saw Michelle Wu become the first woman and first Asian American elected mayor of Boston last year.

If Healey were to win in November, she wouldn’t be the state’s first female governor, but she would be the first woman to be elected to the post. Republican Jane Swift, then lieutenant governor, became the acting governor in 2001 when Paul Cellucci resigned to become ambassador to Canada.

Swift said having more women serving in office helps defuse the “gender question.”

“I would have loved to never answer another gender question, not because I wasn’t tremendously proud of my accomplishments, but I didn’t run for office because I was a woman,” she said. “I ran for office because I thought we needed lower taxes and a better small business climate and better education.”

“I can’t wait for the day when it’s not part of the conversation, when the women serving in office can talk about the issues that propelled them to win, not why they think differently because they have a uterus,” she added.

Massachusetts has fallen behind other states in electing women. In 2012, neighboring New Hampshire, considered far less liberal, became the first state to elect an all-female congressional delegation as well as electing a female governor.

One reason for the recent success of female candidates in Massachusetts may be the weakening of the Massachusetts Democratic Party apparatus, said Erin O’Brien, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

“In the past, single party control has made it harder for women to get elected because parties only expand their pool of candidates when they feel threatened — and Democrats have not been threatened in Massachusetts,” O’Brien said.

There are signs the party’s influence may be waning. In 2014, a relatively unknown Healey took on state Sen. Warren Tolman for attorney general. Tolman had the endorsement of the Democratic Party and a brother who was president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, but Healey easily beat him and won the general election.

Just this summer, Quentin Palfrey won the state party’s endorsement for attorney general but dropped out of the race a week before the primary and endorsed Campbell. In the race for state auditor, Chris Dempsey won the party’s endorsement but lost the primary to state Sen. Diana DiZoglio.

“Part of the reason that women are beginning to win in Massachusetts is because the Democratic Party is starting to look outside itself,” O’Brien said. “Women can run against the preferred male and win and not pay with their careers if they lose.”

US Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who defeated an incumbent to become the first Black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, said the rise of fellow Democratic women is a testament to the “courage, skill, and commitment” of each candidate.

“More women are seeing themselves in public office, recognizing the critical role their expertise and lived experience plays in policy-making, and choosing to build more inclusive, representative decision-making tables,” she said in a statement.

“When I won my first campaign for Congress, in 2018, many people referred to it as ‘Black Girl Magic,’ but I know it was ’Black Woman Work,’” she added.

The party’s bylaws prohibit it from getting involved in contested primaries other than endorsements at the state convention, according to Gus Bickford, chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

“Once a nominee is chosen by voters in the primary election we get to work to get them elected,” Bickford said in a statement. “As we prepare to elect the first female Governor and Lt. Governor team in Massachusetts history, along with other qualified women on the ballot, we are very proud of the role we play in supporting them.”

The shift began in part in 2006, when Martha Coakley became the first woman elected attorney general in Massachusetts. Another milestone came in 2012 when Elizabeth Warren defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Scott Brown to become the state’s first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Representation by women in Massachusetts state politics stretches back to 1922, when Democrat Susan Fitzgerald and Republican Sylvia Donaldson became the first women elected to the state House of Representatives.

In 1936 Republican Sybil Holmes became the first woman elected to the Massachusetts Senate, but it took another 70 years before Therese Murray became the first woman to serve as Senate president.

The number of women serving in the Legislature has increased in recent decades.

In 1992, there were just six women serving in the 40-member Massachusetts Senate and 31 in the 160-member Massachusetts House. Thirty years later, the number of women in the Senate has more than doubled to 13, while the number of women in the House stands at 46.

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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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AUBURN, Maine (AP) — Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District this year, but his brand of politics is.

In a race that will help decide control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic Rep. Jared Golden will defend his seat against Republican former Rep. Bruce Poliquin and independent candidate Tiffany Bond. The race is a rematch for Golden and Poliquin, who ran for the same seat in 2018, when Golden emerged victorious by a razor-thin margin.

The appeal of Trump-style politics has grown in the district since then despite the fact it is represented by Golden, a moderate Democrat. Poliquin, who represented the 2nd District as a moderate Republican from 2014 to 2018, has shifted his own messaging rightward to try to take advantage of those headwinds.

The result is a race that could be an indicator of Trump’s continued influence on swing districts and rural politics.

Voters in the district are taking notice. Mary Hunter, a Democrat and retired academic who lives in the city of Lewiston, thinks Golden is still the right candidate for the district. She said she’s voting for him in part because she’s concerned about Democrats losing control of Congress. And she’s aware Trump is still a big influence on a lot of voters in her district.

“Most people are kind of red team or blue team. I think Jared is doing his best to move to the middle. He’s very centrist,” Hunter said. “Whether that will serve him, I don’t know.”

But in Auburn, a nearby city of about 23,000 in the 2nd District, Coastal Defense Firearms owner Rick LaChapelle said he’s planning to vote for Poliquin. LaChapelle, a Republican city councilor in Lewiston, said he respects Golden but feels the Democratic Party has become too extreme.

“His party is too radical. He cannot overcome the strength of his party, so you have to change the party,” LaChapelle said.

The district, one of two in Maine, includes the state’s second- and third-largest cities — Lewiston and Bangor — but is mostly made up of vast rural areas in northern and western Maine. It also includes the state’s Down East coastline and is home to Maine’s traditional industries such as lobster fishing, logging and potato and blueberry farming.

The district is also geographically the largest in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River, and it is far more politically mixed than the heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District in southern Maine. Trump won the 2nd District in 2016 and performed even better in the district in 2020, though he lost the statewide vote both times because of overwhelming margins in the 1st District, centered in liberal Portland.

Poliquin has focused his campaign on issues such as curtailing immigration and protecting gun rights. It’s a shift from his earlier campaigns, which focused more closely on controlling taxes and protecting rural jobs, though he continues to tout those issues. His website has warned of liberals who want to defund law enforcement and push critical race theory in schools, and boasted of his work with Trump when he served in Congress.

“I came out again from semi-retirement because our country and our state are in deep trouble,” said Poliquin, who was once an investment manager and served two years as Maine’s state treasurer.

Golden, a Marine Corps veteran, has long positioned himself as a moderate who supports the 2nd Amendment and works to safeguard industries such as commercial fishing and papermaking. He’s continuing that approach this time around.

Golden has shown a willingness to buck his own party over the years, including coming out against President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan in August. His positions have sometimes won him crossover endorsements from groups that often back Republicans, such as when he received the backing of the state’s largest police union in July.

The union also endorsed Republican former Gov. Paul LePage, who is running for his old job. Golden said he expects voters to reward him for standing up to the Democratic Party leadership on issues such as the nearly $2 trillion climate and health care bill the House passed in 2021. He voted against the bill. He subsequently voted for the slimmed-down $740 billion measure that passed Congress last month.

“In the last two years, I don’t know of anyone who has been more independent, and more willing to stand up to their own party, than I have been,” Golden said. “I’m not trying to strategize ‘How do I hold on to the Democratic voters or to the Trump voters?’”

The race will include the use of ranked-choice voting, which Golden needed to win the seat in 2018. Bond, who came in third in 2018, said independent voters in the race will be the ones who decide it. She said she’s focusing her campaign on issues such as improving health care access and addressing climate change.

Bond said she expects ranked voting will play a role again this time around.

“I was the candidate who got all the votes that neither party could,” she said.

The race is likely to be much closer than Golden’s 2020 reelection victory, said Mark Brewer, a political scientist at University of Maine. Golden won that election handily over Republican Dale Crafts.

It’ll be closer this time in part because of national backlash against Democrats over issues such as inflation, Brewer said. But it’ll also be closer simply because the 2nd District is unpredictable, he said.

“It’s the kind of district that has a lot of the people Trump made his appeal to in 2016. Relatively rural, largely white working class voters who have a sense of grievance, economic grievance,” Brewer said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that this race is going to be closer than Golden’s last race.”

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The story has been corrected to show that Golden voted for the $740 billion climate and health care bill passed last month. He voted against a previous, more expansive bill in 2021 labeled the Build Back Better Act.

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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LONDON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden paid emotional tribute to Queen Elizabeth on the eve of her state funeral on Sunday, saying Britain and the world had been lucky to have such a dignified and dedicated servant on the throne for 70 years.

Biden, among scores of dignitaries and royals from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas who have arrived in London for Monday’s funeral, said the queen’s death at 96 years of age had left a giant hole on the global stage.

“To all the people of England, all the people in United Kingdom, our hearts go out to you,” Biden said after he signed a book of condolence and visited her lying-in-state in Westminster. “You were fortunate to have had her for 70 years, we all were. The world’s better for her.”

He said he had consoled the queen’s heir, King Charles, that the queen would be “with him every step of the way, every minute, every moment and that’s a reassuring notion”.

Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on London to bid farewell to Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, with people from all walks of life from around the country and overseas queuing for hours to file past her coffin in a solemn stream.

Biden followed other world leaders in appearing on a balcony overlooking the coffin in the vast historic Westminster Hall, making a sign of the cross and briefly placing his hand on his heart in reverence.

The U.S. president later joined Charles and other leaders for an evening reception ahead of the state funeral https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/plans-queen-elizabeths-state-funeral-2022-09-15.

Biden was one of 14 U.S. presidents https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/queen-elizabeths-reign-featured-enchiladas-with-reagan-dancing-with-ford-2022-09-12 in office during the queen’s reign, of which Elizabeth met all except Lyndon Johnson, starting with Harry Truman in 1951 when still a princess.

He will join presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens and sultans representing nearly 200 countries and territories at the funeral.

French President Emmanuel Macron was seen walking near the River Thames earlier on Sunday, mingling with those gathered in the streets around parliament.

Liz Truss, who the queen appointed as Britain’s prime minister two days before her death, took the opportunity to meet with leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and Poland over the weekend.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, however, is no longer expected, according to a British government source. Inviting the man Western leaders believe ordered the murder in 2018 of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been controversial. He has denied any role in the killing.

Britain has invited https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/world-leaders-come-london-queen-elizabeths-funeral-2022-09-12 heads of state or ambassadors from any country with which it has full diplomatic relations, but it is up to those nations who they send. The change was made by Saudi Arabia, the source added.

‘LOVE FOR A SON’

For all the high ceremony and careful diplomacy of the funeral, for the queen’s family, it is also when they will bid farewell to a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

Prince Andrew https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/disgraced-prince-andrew-back-spotlight-still-out-cold-2022-09-15, the queen’s second son, paid tribute to “Mummy, Mother, Your Majesty” on Sunday, reflecting the roles he said Elizabeth fulfilled during her reign.

“Mummy, your love for a son, your compassion, your care, your confidence I will treasure forever,” he said.

Andrew has fallen from grace, stripped of the “His Royal Highness” title and removed from royal duties after a scandal over his friendship with late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, and a related sex assault allegation.

Andrew, Duke of York, has not been charged with any criminal offence and has denied wrongdoing. He paid to settle a U.S. civil court case.

On Saturday, his two daughters joined the queen’s other six grandchildren, including Charles’ sons Princes William and Harry, at a vigil around her coffin.

Camilla https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/rottweiler-queen-consort-camillas-rise-shadow-diana-2022-09-08, wife of the new king and now Queen Consort, said the smile of the late queen was “unforgettable”, in her own tribute https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/i-will-always-remember-queen-elizabeths-smile-camilla-pays-tribute-2022-09-18 on Sunday.

CLAMOURING CROWDS

Monday’s funeral and the period of mourning has already drawn hundreds of thousands of people to central London, many clamouring to view floral tributes and feel the atmosphere.

The government advised against travelling to join the queue to see the coffin before it closes later on Sunday.

Such has been the desire to pay tribute to the popular monarch, the only one most Britons have known since her accession in 1952, that tens of thousands have waited patiently for hours alongside the Thames to spend a few brief seconds at the side of her coffin.

Many have wept, said a prayer, bowed their head or dropped to their knees.

Dignitaries have also taken their place on a balcony to view her lying-in-state, with leaders from Canada, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere having already paid their respects.

“I’m actually blown away by the amount of people that are here,” Gary Thompson, 54, and from London told Reuters. “When you’re here, it’s overwhelming. It really is incredible.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the “sheer silence” was one of the things that made the lying in state so moving, adding that she had shared her moment beside the coffin on Friday with people who had queued for 20 hours or longer.

“The queen was here for her people and now her people are there for her,” she told the BBC on Sunday.

Prince William joined his father Charles to speak to mourners waiting in line on Saturday. “She wouldn’t believe all this, she really wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

MOMENT OF REFLECTION

Britain has hosted a series of carefully choreographed ceremonies in the 10 days that have followed Elizabeth’s death, reflecting the traditions and pageantry of a royal family whose lineage stretches back almost 1,000 years.

A minute of national silence will be held at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Sunday, marked by the striking of Big Ben, which towers over Westminster Hall.

London’s police force has described the funeral ceremony as the biggest security operation it has ever undertaken.

Members of the public were camping out to secure positions on the procession route and near Westminster Abbey, the site of coronations, weddings and burials of English and then British kings and queens since William I in 1066.

Britain has not held a state funeral on the scale planned for the queen since that for World War Two leader Winston Churchill in 1965.

(Additional reporting by William James, Kate Holton and Paul SandleEditing by Alison Williams and Frances Kerry)

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By Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Friday asked a federal appeals court to let it resume reviewing classified materials seized in an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.

In the filing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the Justice Department said the circuit court should halt part of the lower court decision that prevents prosecutors from relying on the classified documents in their criminal investigation into the retention of government records at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach after his presidency ended.

The department also asked that a third party appointed to examine all the records taken in the federal raid at Trump’s part, Senior U.S. Judge Raymond Dearie, not be permitted to review the classified materials.

The government asked the appeals court to rule on the request “as soon as practicable.”

Trump’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the unprecedented search of the former president’s property, the Justice Department has said it is investigating the retention of government records – some marked as highly classified, including “top secret” – as well as obstruction of a federal probe.

The Justice Department must now convince the Atlanta-based appeals court, with a conservative majority, to take its side in litigation over the records probe. Trump appointees make up six of the 11 active judges on the 11th Circuit.

The government’s motion comes after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected the same requests from the Justice Department.

Cannon, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, had said she would tell Dearie, who is filling the role of a “special master” in the case, to prioritize the classified records in his review, which she set a Nov. 30 deadline to complete.

There were roughly 100 classified documents among the 11,000 records gathered in the FBI’s court-approved Aug. 8 search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

If Cannon’s ruling stands, experts said, it would likely stall the Justice Department investigation involving the government records.

The government’s Friday filing at times directly took issue with Cannon’s prior decisions in the case. Prosecutors said the judge cited court papers from Trump’s lawyers that suggested the former president could have declassified the documents marked as classified, but those legal briefs stopped short of claiming Trump did so.

“The court erred in granting extraordinary relief based on unsubstantiated possibilities,” the government lawyers wrote.

The Justice Department also criticized Cannon’s direction that classified records be disclosed to Dearie and Trump’s lawyers as part of an outside review of all records taken in the search, and described the former president’s attorneys as potentially being witnesses to “relevant events” in the criminal probe.

The department is also looking into possible obstruction of the probe after it found evidence that records may have been removed or concealed from the FBI when it sent agents to Mar-a-Lago in June to try to recover all classified documents through a grand jury subpoena.

Trump’s lawyers had opposed the government’s latest requests to Cannon, telling the judge in a Monday filing they dispute the government’s claim that all the records are classified, and that a special master is needed to help keep prosecutors in check.

Trump’s attorneys instigated the litigation over the records investigation last month, seeking a third party to go over the materials taken by federal agents and determine if any should be shielded from investigators. The former president’s legal team argued that some materials could be covered by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that can shield some presidential records from disclosure.

Cannon granted that request in a Sept. 5 ruling, rejecting Justice Department arguments that the records belong to the government and that because Trump is no longer president he cannot claim executive privilege.

Dearie said earlier on Friday he will hold his first hearing on the privilege review for the seized documents on Tuesday, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Tim Ahmann and William Mallard)

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MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. (Reuters) – Florida’s Republican governor on Friday defended his decision to fly dozens of migrants to the wealthy vacation island of Martha’s Vineyard from Texas, and said similar actions could follow as a political dispute over border security deepened in the run-up to U.S. elections in November.

DeSantis claimed credit for a pair of chartered flights on Wednesday that carried around 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of a broader Republican effort to shift responsibility for border crossers to Democratic leaders.

At a news conference in Daytona Beach, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blamed Democratic President Joe Biden for what he portrayed as a failure to stop migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, as a record 1.8 million have been arrested this fiscal year.

DeSantis said the Florida Legislature set aside $12 million to transport migrants out of the state and that his government would likely use the funds “to protect Florida.”

“There may be more flights, there may be buses,” he said to cheers and applause from backers in the crowd.

The state paid $615,000 to Vertol Systems Company Inc, an aviation business, on Sept. 8 as part of a “relocation program of unauthorized aliens,” Florida state data showed. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The flights to Martha’s Vineyard follow a busing effort by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, another Republican, that has sent more than 10,000 migrants to the Democrat-controlled cities of Washington, New York and Chicago since April. The Republican governor of Arizona also has sent more than 1,800 migrants to Washington.

Unlike those major cities, the island south of Boston is home to around 20,000 year-round residents and is known as a vacation spot for affluent liberals like former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

On Friday morning in Martha’s Vineyard, the migrants, a group of mostly Venezuelans including half a dozen children, boarded buses en route to a ferry to Cape Cod in transportation organized by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. He said they would be housed temporarily at a Cape Cod military base.

The scene left some of the island residents who volunteered to shelter them in a church for two nights in tears. Locals had come together to donate money, toiletries and toys for the migrants. A local thrift shop donated clean clothes, restaurants took turns organizing meals and pro-bono lawyers flew in to help the migrants with paperwork and immigration cases.

“I want them to have a good life,” said Lisa Belcastro, who helped organize cots and supplies at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, which sits among expensive white-clapboard homes in Edgartown. “I want them to come to America and be embraced. They all want to work.”

‘LIKE CHATTEL’

DeSantis, who is running for reelection in November and is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 2024, said his administration flew the migrants from Texas, and not his own state, to the island getaway because many of the migrants arriving in Florida come from Texas.

In addition to re-election bids by DeSantis and Abott, November’s midterm elections will determine whether the Democrats retain control of Congress.

Many migrants who cross into the United States via the Southwest border are immediately expelled to Mexico or other countries under a COVID-19 pandemic policy. But some nationalities, including Venezuelans, cannot be expelled because Mexico will not accept them and many seek to apply for U.S. asylum.

The White House has decried the Republican governors’ efforts, saying migrants were being used in a political stunt.

“These were children. They were moms. They were fleeing communism. And what did Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott do to them? They used them as political pawns, treated them like chattel,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing on Friday.

The legal basis for the Florida government to round up migrants in a different state remained unclear. U.S. government attorneys are exploring possible litigation around the governors’ efforts, a Biden administration official told Reuters.

The migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard said they had recently been admitted into the United States on humanitarian parole after fleeing Venezuela, and had been staying at a shelter in San Antonio, Texas, when they were approached by a woman who identified herself as “Perla.”

The woman persuaded them to board the flights by misleading them into thinking they were heading to Boston and would be provided shelter and assistance finding work for three months, they said.

Many said they told the people who organized the flights they had appointments with immigration authorities they needed to attend in other cities, said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a group in Boston assisting the migrants.

“The organizers of this scheme said ‘Don’t worry, that will be taken care of’” he said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Oatis)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Henry Silva, a prolific character actor best known for playing villains and tough guys in “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and other films, has died at age 95.

Silva’s son Scott Silva told Variety that his father died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Silva was a New York City native who dropped out of school as a teenager, in the 1940s. He was accepted the following decade into the Actors Studio, where fellow students included Shelley Winters and Ben Gazzara. He went on to have a long and busy career in film and television, with hundreds of credits before retiring from acting in 2001.

He had a breakthrough role on stage and screen in the 1950s as a drug dealer in “A Hatful of Rain” and supporting parts in two of Frank Sinatra’s best known movies, both from the early 1960s: “Ocean’s Eleven,” the Las Vegas heist film that was a showcase for Sinatra, Dean Martin and other “Rat Pack” members; and “The Manchurian Candidate,” the Cold War thriller about brainwashing and the attempted assassination of a presidential nominee that starred Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh. (In his last film appearance, Silva was cast in the “Ocean’s Eleven” remake from 2000 that starred George Clooney and Brad Pitt).

“Our hearts are broken at the loss of our dear friend Henry Silva, one of the nicest, kindest and most talented men I’ve had the pleasure of calling my friend,” Dean Martin’s daughter, Deana Martin, tweeted. “He was the last surviving star of the original Oceans 11 Movie.”

Silva was also seen on such television series as “Wagon Train” and “The F.B.I.,” and in such films as Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy,” Jerry Lewis’ “Cinderfella” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” in which he played a mobster in the 1999 release directed by one of his admirers, Jim Jarmusch.

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The story has been corrected to show the plot of “The Manchurican candidate” involved the attempted assassination of a presidential nominee, not the assassination of a president.

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By Jonathan Allen and Ted Hesson

MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. (Reuters) -Some migrants who were flown to the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, said on Thursday they were duped about their destination, and Democratic leaders called for a probe of the move by Florida’s Republican governor to send them there from Texas.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is up for re-election in November and seen as a possible presidential contender in 2024, took credit for the two flights, which originated in San Antonio, Texas, and stopped in Florida on the way to Martha’s Vineyard.

The White House and residents of the vacation enclave called it a “political stunt,” as DeSantis joins Republican governors from Texas and Arizona in sending migrants north. The governors have sought to highlight the two parties’ differences on immigration policy and shift the burden of caring for immigrants to Democratic areas.

For months Texas and Arizona have sent busloads of migrants to the Democratic-run cities of New York, Chicago and Washington.

Florida now joins the campaign. Details of how the flights were arranged and paid for remain unclear, as well as an explanation as to why Florida was moving migrants in Texas. The Florida legislature has appropriated $12 million to transport migrants from the state to other locations.

The two flights on Wednesday carried about 50 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, a Martha’s Vineyard Airport official said.

Hours after the planes landed, two buses sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, another Republican facing re-election, dropped off migrants in a Washington neighborhood not far from Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence on Thursday.

One Venezuelan migrant who arrived at Martha’s Vineyard identified himself as Luis, 27, and said he and nine relatives were promised a flight to Massachusetts, along with shelter, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons. He said they were surprised when their flight landed on an island.

He said the promises came from a woman who gave her name as “Perla” who approached his family on the street outside a San Antonio shelter after they crossed from Mexico and U.S. border authorities released them with an immigration court date.

He said the woman, who also put them up in a hotel, did not provide a last name or any affiliation, but asked them to sign a liability waiver.

“We are scared,” he said, adding he and others felt they were lied to. “I hope they give us help.”

Residents of Martha’s Vineyard rallied to aid the confused migrants and offered housing at St. Andrews Episcopal Church.

Martha’s Vineyard is best known as a summer retreat populated mostly by affluent liberal Americans, including former President Barack Obama, a Democrat who owns a multimillion-dollar vacation home there.

Locals stopped by to donate money and children’s toys, while attorneys mobilized to offer free legal help.

“It’s a stunt to make political points and not caring about who gets hurt,” said Mike Savoy, 58, a nurse at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

DeSantis defended the flights, telling a news conference that Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden “has refused to lift a finger” to secure the border.

“We’ve worked on innovative ways to be able to protect the state of Florida from the impact of Biden’s border policies,” DeSantis said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Republican governors were using migrants as “political pawns.”

LEGAL QUESTIONS

Several Democrats, including Charlie Crist, DeSantis’ opponent in Florida, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, called on federal authorities to investigate.

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said at a news conference her office would be “looking into that case” and speaking with the Justice Department.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed a plan last year to fly migrants to interior cities in coordination with aid groups to ease pressure on border regions, a Biden administration official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss internal planning.

The White House never adopted the idea, according to a second U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The use of resources from Florida to move migrants from Texas to Massachusetts raises legal concerns, including about what information was relayed to the migrants before they boarded and whether they were coerced, said immigration law expert Pratheepan Gulasekaram of Santa Clara University School of Law.

U.S. border agents have made 1.8 million migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border since last October. Many are quickly expelled to Mexico or other countries under a public health rule implemented in 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19.

But hundreds of thousands Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others cannot be expelled because Mexico refuses to accept them, or because they can pursue asylum claims.

Many migrants who are released from U.S. custody in border states seek to move elsewhere to join relatives or find jobs. They often must check in with U.S. immigration authorities or attend court hearings to obtain legal status.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Martha’s Vineyard, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago, Andrea Shalal and Mike Scarcella in Washington, Nate Raymond in Boston and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mica Rosenberg, Aurora Ellis, David Gregorio and Gerry Doyle)

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, a Republican who is running for governor in Arkansas, was released from a hospital Saturday after undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer.

“Following successful surgery on Friday to remove her thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes and in consultation with her physician, Sarah was discharged from an Arkansas hospital—cancer free,” said Sanders spokesperson Judd Deere. “She will spend the remaining portion of her recovery at home.”

Deere told The Associated Press that Sanders, 40, plans to resume campaigning “soon,” but it was not known precisely when she would return.

Sanders said Friday when announcing the surgery that a biopsy earlier this month revealed she had thyroid cancer.

Dr. John R. Sims, a surgeon at CARTI Cancer Center in Little Rock who is one of Sanders’ doctors, said Sanders’ cancer was a stage 1 papillary thyroid carcinoma, the most common type of thyroid cancer and said she has an “excellent” prognosis.

Sims said Sanders will need adjuvant treatment with radioactive iodine and long-term continuing care.

Sanders, who served as former President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman until 2019, is running against Democratic nominee Chris Jones. She is the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Jones and his wife, Jerrilyn, on Friday issued a statement saying their family was thinking of Sanders and praying for her.

Sanders is heavily favored in the predominantly Republican state of Arkansas to win the office currently held by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is leaving office in January due to term limits.

She’s run primarily on national issues in the Arkansas race, promising to use the governor’s office to fight President Joe Biden and the “radical left.”

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By Tyler Clifford

(Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday reduced the sentence of a man who pleaded guilty to participating in a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor after his testimony helped convict the ringleaders last month.

Ty Garbin, 26, was resentenced to 30 months in prison, less than half of the 75 months he was given in August 2021. Garbin’s testimony helped the U.S. government win convictions last month of two men for leading the plan to abduct Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home in northern Michigan in 2020.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in Grand Rapids cut the sentence in light of the “substantial assistance” that Garbin gave federal attorneys, according to the judge’s written order.

Garbin’s attorney, Mark Satawa, petitioned for the resentencing and prosecutors agreed.

Garbin testified against Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., who were found guilty of kidnapping conspiracy and other charges in an August retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict in April. Two others were acquitted of federal charges in the first trial.

Prosecutors said Fox and Croft were members of a right-wing militia. They face sentencing later this year and could get life in prison.

Kaleb Franks, who also pleaded guilty to kidnapping conspiracy and testified at the trial, is scheduled to be sentenced for the first time on Oct. 6.

Garbin, who has been in jail for almost two years, was resentenced to a shorter term than the 36 months requested by prosecutors. He has six months remaining before his release, Satawa said.

Garbin, who was arrested in October 2020, was among 13 men charged with state or federal crimes. Seven defendants are facing charges in state court.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in western Michigan could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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