Politics

By Nate Raymond and Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s legitimacy could be imperiled if Americans come to view its members as trying to impose personal preferences on society, liberal Justice Elena Kagan said on Wednesday in the wake of rulings powered by her conservative colleagues curtailing abortion access and widening gun rights.

At an event at Northwestern University in Chicago, Kagan differed from conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who during a public appearance on Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said the court’s legitimacy should not be questioned “simply because people disagree with an opinion.”

Kagan said that on the question of legitimacy, the popularity of the court’s rulings is not the issue. Instead, she added, a “court is legitimate when it’s acting like a court,” by respecting past precedents and not asserting authority to make political or policy decisions.

“When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, once people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society, irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem,” Kagan said.

Kagan did not mention any specific rulings in her comments about the court’s legitimacy.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority during its most recent term, which ended in June, illustrated how it was willing to assert its power with blockbuster rulings on abortion, guns and other matters.

Kagan, who has served on the court since 2010, dissented in its June decisions that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark that had legalized abortion nationwide and recognized for the first time that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

Kagan said it is important that courts respect precedents to provide stability over time and overturn past rulings only in “highly unusual cases.”

“If there’s new members of the court, and all of a sudden everything is up for grabs, all of a sudden very fundamental principles of law are being overthrown or are being, you know, replaced, then people have a right to say, ‘What’s going on there? That doesn’t seem very law-like,’” Kagan said.

The Supreme Court includes three conservative justices appointed by former President Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

Kagan also criticized a way of interpreting the Constitution favored by some conservatives known as originalism, which focuses upon how the text was understood when it was written. The Constitution was ratified in the 18th century, with amendments in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“I’m not sure what it means, given that it seems to be sort of fluctuating over time and over cases in ways that again makes you concerned that the rules change as the desired outcomes change,” Kagan said of originalism.

Kagan said that originalism “does not work so well” in part because it is difficult for judges to find definitive legal answers from historical evidence that may support either side. Kagan cited as examples the disputes that led to the court’s rulings in 2008 and last June expanding the right for people to possess handguns both at home and in public.

In addition, Kagan said originalism is “inconsistent” with the way the Constitution was written.

Its framers wrote broad, even vague, statements of protection such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws” in order to account for a changing world, Kagan said.

“They knew the country would change,” Kagan said. “They knew a Constitution was meant to survive for the ages.”

The court’s next term begins in October and includes more major cases including conservative challenges to affirmative action policies used by colleges and universities to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students on their campuses. President Joe Biden’s recent appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson has joined Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in the court’s liberal bloc.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

source

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas-based hotel magnate, has always had a cause.

For decades, he invested his hotel profits into UFO research, creating his own aerospace company while lobbying senators to fund additional research. More recently, he offered nearly $1 million in prizes for a contest to show consciousness after death, part of his newer interest in the afterlife.

Now Bigelow, 78, has become the largest donor this cycle in Nevada’s midterm gubernatorial race, donating $5.7 million through his companies to the campaign for Nevada GOP gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo and to political action committees supporting him. The race has implications for inflation policy, reproductive rights and the Democrats’ hold on the Legislature.

Bigelow’s donations give a lifeline to a Republican challenger who is spending more and fundraising less than the Democratic incumbent. As of the latest filings, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak leads Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff, in cash-on-hand $10.78 million to $1.2 million, which includes direct contributions to their campaigns but does not account for donations to political action committees, which make up the bulk of Bigelow’s donations in support of Lombardo.

PACs are required to operate independently from candidates, meaning they can raise money for candidates but aren’t allowed to coordinate with the their campaigns.

Bigelow has made his wealth through his extended-stay apartment chain Budget Suites of America, which he has used to fund his UFO research. He was also a vocal critic of the federal eviction moratorium, calling it “legalized theft” as some tenants didn’t pay rent, and he filed 46 eviction actions at the height of the pandemic. He lamented Sisolak’s statewide closure of nonessential businesses early in the pandemic, which he said sank his aerospace company.

Bigelow’s political and social influence in Nevada has long been pronounced, most notably in his UFO research that is now shifting toward afterlife research. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that UFOs are “under our noses” and wondered why news organizations have not extensively covered UFO sightings.

But Bigelow, a staunch Republican, said his interest in UFOs and the afterlife is not related to his current political donations.

“Number one, honesty in government. That’s the foundation,” Bigelow said of his priorities. “Liberalism, that’s a cancer. And we have U.S. senators and representatives that need to go. And the second would be a philosophy of freedom — a philosophy of free enterprise and freedom for everybody.”

He called Sisolak a “puppet” to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is a frequent target of Republican politicians. And he likened Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to a young Ronald Reagan, saying that he hopes the Republican runs for president in the future after he bucked other states’ approach of issuing COVID-19 emergency protective orders during the pandemic. Earlier this summer, Bigelow donated $10 million to DeSantis-backed political action committees, making him the largest individual donor to DeSantis’ reelection race as well.

For decades, Bigelow has invested millions in UFO research with money he has made from his hotel and real estate business. He has also pushed it in politics. He once convinced his friend and then-U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat, to allocate $22 million to a secretive program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program, which investigated reports of UFOs from 2007 through 2012. Much of the money went to Bigelow’s company to investigate and the allocation was not made public until a 2017 New York Times investigation. The Pentagon said the program shut down in 2012, though Reid later said he had no regrets about the funding.

Bigelow said he considered Reid a good friend, though toward the end of Reid’s tenure in the Senate, they maintained that friendship by not talking politics.

Since shifting his focus toward the afterlife, he has founded the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies and offered nearly $1 million in prizes last year for a contest that shows “the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.”

Bigelow donated $5.5 million to PACs supporting Lombardo this cycle — $3.5 million to Better Nevada PAC, which has financed pro-Lombardo ads, and $2 million to Stronger Nevada PAC, which transferred money to Better Nevada PAC. Through 39 donations of $5,000 each through his companies, he donated $195,000 directly to the Clark County sheriff.

The Nevada contributions have provided a talking point for Sisolak, who has tied Bigelow’s support for Lombardo to the housing crisis in Nevada, referencing Bigelow’s pandemic evictions.

“While the governor is fighting for housing affordability, creating good paying jobs and making historic investments to support hardworking families, Joe Lombardo is siding with the Ultra Wealthy, standing with his campaign’s single largest donor — a billionaire who got rich off of evicting families during the pandemic,” spokesperson Reeves Oyster said in a statement last month.

Lombardo’s campaign did not respond to email requests for comment.

Lombardo has been vastly outraised by Sisolak in direct contributions, which is common for a challenger facing an incumbent. Sisolak has raised the second-highest amount in direct contributions for a Nevada gubernatorial campaign since 2000 and he’s on pace to break his own 2018 record, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks political spending.

“Overall, challengers do need to spend in order to overcome the incumbency advantage,” said Christina Ladam, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Reno, in an email. “While Joe Lombardo was a familiar name in the Vegas area, he was less well known in northern Nevada. Sisolak does not need to spend as much in terms of getting name recognition.”

Still, Lombardo has outspent Sisolak this year — $3.1 million to about $727,000 as of the latest filing date — after facing a crowded primary field.

___

Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues. Follow Stern on Twitter https://twitter.com/gabestern326

source

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tom Barrack, the investor and onetime fundraiser for former U.S. President Donald Trump, will go on trial next week in a case that will provide a rare test of a century-old law requiring agents for other countries to notify the government.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say Barrack worked for the United Arab Emirates to influence Trump’s campaign and administration between 2016 and 2018 to advance the Middle Eastern country’s interests.

According to a July 2021 indictment, prosecutors have emails and text messages that show UAE officials gave Barrack input about what to say in television interviews, what then-candidate Trump should say in a 2016 energy policy speech, and who should be appointed ambassador to Abu Dhabi.

Prosecutors said neither Barrack, nor his former assistant Matthew Grimes, nor Rashid Al Malik – the person prosecutors identified as an intermediary with UAE officials – told the U.S. Attorney General they were acting as UAE agents as required under federal law.

Barrack, who chaired Trump’s inauguration committee when he took office in January 2017, and Grimes pleaded not guilty. Jury selection in their trial begins on Sept. 19. Al Malik is at large.

The federal law in question was passed as part of the 1917 Espionage Act to combat resistance to the World War I draft.

Known as the 951 law based on its section of the U.S. Code, it requires anyone who “agrees to operate within the United States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government” to notify the Attorney General.

The law was once mainly used against traditional espionage, but more 951 cases in recent years have – like Barrack’s – targeted lobbying and influence operations.

But the use of the law in those types of cases has rarely been tested at trial, because most have ended in guilty pleas or remain open because the defendants are overseas.

KNOWLEDGE AND INTENT

Barrack’s lawyers have said the U.S. State Department, and Trump himself, knew of his contacts with Middle East officials, showing Barrack did not have the intent to be a foreign agent.

The lawyers also said Barrack never agreed to represent UAE interests and that his interactions with UAE officials were part of his role running Colony Capital, a private equity firm now known as DigitalBridge Group Inc.

But prosecutors have said an agreement to act as an agent “need not be contractual or formalized” to violate section 951.

The results of recent 951 trials have been mixed. In August, a California jury convicted former Twitter Inc employee Ahmad Abouammo of spying for the Saudi government. In 2019, a Virginia jury convicted Bijan Rafiekian, a former director at the U.S. Export-Import Bank, of acting as a Turkish agent. A judge later overturned that verdict and granted Rafiekian a new trial, saying the evidence suggested he did not intend to be an agent. Prosecutors are appealing that ruling.

“What it comes down to is the person’s knowledge and intent,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor who handled foreign agent cases as Detroit’s top federal prosecutor from 2010 to 2017. “That’s the tricky part.”

Barrack resigned as DigitalBridge’s chief executive in 2020 and as its executive chairman in April 2021. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

If convicted of the charge in the 951 law, Barrack and Grimes could face up to 10 years in prison, though any sentence would be determined by a judge based on a range of factors. Convictions on a related conspiracy charge could add five years to their sentences.

Barrack potentially faces additional time if convicted on other charges against him.

‘SERIOUS SECURITY RISKS’

Barrack’s trial will focus on allegations that during Trump’s presidential transition and the early days of his administration, the UAE and its close ally Saudi Arabia tried to win U.S. support for their blockade of Gulf rival Qatar and to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors said Barrack also gave UAE officials nonpublic information about potential appointees to Trump administration posts, and made false statements to investigators.

Barrack’s conduct “presented serious security risks,” prosecutors said.

A UAE official said in a statement the country “respects the sovereignty of states and their laws” and has “enduring ties” with the United States.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Houston, said that while the UAE and Saudi Arabia are U.S. security partners, Trump’s perceived disregard for traditional government processes may have enticed them to establish back channels to advance their interests.

“It was in violation of the norms of international diplomacy,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “If it’s proven, it was also a case of actual foreign intervention in U.S. politics.”

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Ghaida Ghantous and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Amy Stevens and Grant McCool)

source

(Reuters) – California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday he had signed a bill into law requiring transparency of social media companies, a move that could draw criticism from tech firms and industry groups.

The law, AB-587, will require social media companies to publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies.

Last year, the governor of Texas signed a bill prohibiting social media firms from restricting users or their posts based on their viewpoint. The Supreme Court in May blocked the law, after technology industry groups sued.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” Newsom said in a statement.

The latest measure is expected to bring transparency and accountability to the policies that shape social media content, Newsom added.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely)

source

By Joseph Ax and Jason Lange

(Reuters) – Moderate members of the U.S. House of Representatives are leaving office at twice the rate of their more partisan peers this year, a Reuters analysis found, likely deepening Washington gridlock during President Joe Biden’s next two years in office.

The number of incumbent House members retiring or who lost a party nomination contest is at a three-decade high after a once-a-decade redistricting process that eliminated more than a dozen of the country’s dwindling number of competitive districts.

    Now all 50 states have finished their nominating contests, 13 of Congress’s 50 most centrist members – about one in four – did not seek reelection or lost their primary, ensuring they will leave office at year’s end. By comparison, only one-eighth of other incumbents will not appear on the Nov. 8 ballot, with the majority running in politically safe districts.

The candidates who take their place won’t be known until after the midterm election, when Republicans are favored to win a majority in the House, but in many cases their potential successors show signs of being further from the middle.

One driving factor is gerrymandering, the practice by which lawmakers in states controlled by a single party manipulate redistricting to create politically safe House districts. Another is former President Donald Trump, who worked to push from office Republicans who voted to impeach him following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“The lack of competitive seats has helped accentuate that trend,” said Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump and lost his primary to a far-right challenger. “It’s really easy from the safety of a deep red or a deep blue seat to cast stones.”

‘MORE GRIDLOCKED’

The Reuters analysis employed a measure developed by political scientists known as DW-Nominate, which scores every representative’s voting record to determine the most moderate members.

The share of moderates heading for the door this year is unusually high. For elections held between 2012 and 2020, only about one in eight moderate incumbents opted not to seek reelection or lost their primaries.

The result could accelerate a decades-long trend that has seen the House grow increasingly polarized, lengthening the odds of bipartisan efforts to address thorny challenges such as shoring up Social Security and Medicare, the welfare programs for seniors that face severe fiscal challenges.

“Politics is going to be more gridlocked,” said Doug Spencer, an expert on elections and redistricting at the University of Colorado.

The narrowly Democratic-controlled Congress over the past two years passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and its first gun control bill in decades in bipartisan votes. But Democrats also passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill in March 2021 and $430 billion climate and drug pricing bill using a parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation that let them bypass Republican objections in the Senate.

Whichever party is in control, the Congress that convenes on Jan. 3 will need to make prompt decisions on fiscal matters, including raising the U.S. government’s borrowing authority beyond its current $31.4 trillion limit, which it is expected to reach early next year.

Without a debt limit increase, Washington would face a potential default that would shake the global economy.

GERRYMANDERING

In interviews, several moderates leaving office said their decisions were motivated by factors including gerrymandering, which has made it less politically valuable to appeal to voters from both major parties.

More than four-fifths of the House’s 435 districts as they now stand were won by Biden or Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2020, making it harder for a lawmaker from the other party to mount a viable campaign. That drove some members of Congress, such as Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, to choose not to seek reelection at all.

Tom Suozzi, a moderate Democrat from New York who opted to run for governor rather than seek re-election, said gerrymandering was producing more ideologically radical caucuses.

“The only way to lose the safe seat is to lose the primary,” he said. “Republicans pander to the far right, Democrats pander to the far left. And that’s why there’s very little moderation or compromise available.”

Suozzi has been a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of moderate lawmakers. The progressive Democrat running in the race to replace him, Robert Zimmerman, has criticized the group for being too close to Republicans.

Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat and a leading centrist, is retiring from the House at age 43, saying she wants to spend more time with her young children. She said she believes both parties have become less tolerant of dissent.

“The reason, I think, you see more attrition among moderate members is they take incoming from both sides,” she said, adding that she faced attacks from both liberal and conservative groups in previous campaigns.

Republican control of the House would create divided government, with Biden’s Democrats having a harder time advancing legislation.

The push by Trump-backed candidates echoes the 2010 midterms, when small-government Tea Party activists drove massive Republican gains in Congress while moving the party further to the right.

With Democrat Barack Obama in the White House, the two parties courted fiscal disaster when they nearly allowed the federal government to default on its debt payments, prompting the first-ever downgrade to U.S. sovereign debt and shaking financial markets.

Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat and a leading centrist who is retiring this year, said the Jan. 6 attack only deepened distrust between the parties, with many Democrats unwilling to work with Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s victory based on Trump’s false claims of fraud.

“We’ve got to get something done, and that requires us to work with people who you don’t always agree with their votes,” she said.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and by Jason Lange and Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

source

By Jason Lange and Tim Reid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The unexpected rise in inflation reported on Tuesday was an unwelcome blow for President Joe Biden’s Democrats, but a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Democratic voters just as enthusiastic as their Republican counterparts, pointing to a potentially close contest in November’s elections.

Republicans remain favored to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives – with the Senate on a knife-edge – amid widespread dissatisfaction with Biden’s presidency and months of sharp price increases that the poll showed remain the top concern for Republican and Democratic voters alike.

Labor Department data showed consumer prices rose a tenth of a point in August, confounding analysts’ expectations for a decrease. The rise was fueled by higher prices for food, rent and healthcare.

The results of a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, however, show Democrats appear just as eager to vote as Republicans, running counter to expectations that a weak economy would depress enthusiasm in the president’s party, said Daron Shaw, an expert on polling and elections at the University of Texas at Austin.

Some 63% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans say they are completely certain they will vote in November, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 7-12. In a Jan 31-Feb 7 poll, 55% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans said they were certain. The similar levels of certainty in the latest poll suggest neither side may have an edge in voter turnout.

“Basically this points to a really close race,” Shaw said.

The poll, which gathered responses from 4,411 U.S. adults, had a credibility interval of between 2 and 5 percentage points, meaning that the enthusiasm gap between the two parties is too small to tell who has the edge.

Democrats will be defending an 11-seat advantage in the House, while the 100-member Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties.

Of respondents in the new poll, 37% said they planned to vote for a Democrat in their congressional district, compared to 34% for Republicans. Fifteen percent were undecided.

Political experts still see Republicans as having the better odds of controlling the House next year, in part because decades of elections have shown that the party in the White House typically loses seats during midterm elections.

`A DRAMATIC CONTRAST`

Democrats are struggling against major headwinds this year – Biden’s poor popularity and the Ukraine war, which has helped to push inflation to 40-year highs. Republicans have seized on inflation to hammer Democrats on the campaign trail and in television ads, blaming it on higher federal spending by Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“No issue defines the terms of this election as clearly as high prices for energy, groceries and other staple goods,” said Republican strategist John Ashbrook.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said inflation was America’s biggest problem, with 20% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans selecting it from a list of issues in the poll. Respondents picked Republicans over Democrats – 37% to 26% – as the party with a better plan to fight inflation.

Most respondents said the root cause of inflation was related to economic disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic or Ukraine war, a view shared by many economists, while only a third said federal government spending was the driver.

One factor behind Democratic enthusiasm appears to be outrage over a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that ended the right to an abortion. Another is angst over Donald Trump’s influence over U.S. politics, including his endorsement of Republican candidates who deny that Biden won the 2020 election.

One in five Democrats in the poll said America’s biggest problem was political extremism or changes to abortion laws.

Democrats believe the advantage Republicans enjoyed for most of the year because of inflation has been blunted by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting abortion rights, Trump’s continued false claims about the 2020 election and his deepening legal problems, and recent legislative wins for Biden on drug costs and climate change.

Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist, also pointed to Biden’s recent speech slamming Trump and his followers as extremists.

“It’s such a dramatic contrast,” Finney said. “That is mobilizing voters.”

(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington and Tim Reid in Los Angeles, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

source

By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) -West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday passed a sweeping abortion ban that prohibits the procedure even in the earliest days of pregnancy with limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the health of the mother is at risk.

The bill, which now goes to Governor Jim Justice for his signature, is the second abortion ban passed by a state after the deeply conservative U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old Roe v Wade decision that established a constitutional right to the procedure.

The measure, which Justice is expected to sign, comes as differences are beginning to emerge among Republicans over how strict to make abortion bans ahead of November elections that will decide control of Congress.

The largely conservative party has campaigned for years to limit abortion access. A resounding defeat of a ballot initiative that would have opened the door to a ban in deeply conservative Kansas has led some Republicans to back away from the issue to avoid alienating women voters.

At the national level, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday proposed restricting abortions throughout the country after 15 weeks gestation. Graham, a Republican, said such a move would help define his party on the issue in advance of November’s congressional elections.

In West Virginia, Republican lawmakers who dominate the legislature wrangled for weeks over how rigid to make the bill, ultimately shrinking the length of time adult rape victims would have to seek care but removing criminal penalties for doctors.

The measure passed on Tuesday outlaws abortion after an embryo has been implanted in a woman’s uterus, usually within a few days of conception. Minors who are rape or incest victims would have up to 14 weeks to terminate pregnancies, while adults who are raped will have only eight weeks to obtain an abortion.

Abortions that are allowed must be performed by physicians or osteopaths with hospital-admitting privileges. Providers could lose their licenses if procedures they offer are deemed to be illegal.

Anyone who performs an abortion who is not a doctor or osteopath with hospital-admitting privileges would be subject to prison time.

“This bill insults West Virginia doctors, questioning their expertise and putting their patients’ lives at risk while subjecting them to appalling government surveillance,” said Alisa Clements, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.

“No matter how many narrow exceptions are written into this dangerous bill, it will cause chaos in the healthcare system and result in people being denied life-saving care, including survivors of sexual assault,” she said.

State Senator Eric Tarr, a Republican, said he thought the bill should have outlawed abortion at conception and not made exceptions for victims of rape or incest, which he views as punishing a baby for the sins of its father.

Still, he said the bill would help the legislature achieve the goal of shutting down the state’s only abortion clinic.

(Reporting by Sharon BernsteinEditing by Bill Berkrot)

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sitting on top of more than $115 million across several political committees, Donald Trump has positioned himself as a uniquely indomitable force in the GOP who would almost certainly have the resources to swamp his rivals if he launched another presidential campaign.

But that massive pile of money is also emerging as a potential vulnerability. His chief fundraising vehicle, Save America PAC, is under new legal scrutiny after the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas that sought information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.

The scope of the probe is unclear. Grand jury subpoenas and search warrants issued by the Justice Department in recent days were related to numerous topics, including Trump’s PAC, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The subpoenas seek records as well as testimony and ask at least some of the recipients about their knowledge of efforts to engage in election fraud, according to one of the people.

The subpoenas also ask for records of communication with Trump-allied lawyers who supported efforts to overturn the election results and plotted to line up fake electors in battleground states. A particular area of focus appears to be on the “Save America Rally” that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the person said.

The investigation is one of several criminal probes Trump currently faces, including scrutiny of how documents with classified markings wound up at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Regardless of Save America’s ultimate role in the investigations, the flurry of developments has drawn attention to the PAC’s management, how it has raised money and where those funds have been directed.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the subpoenas, saying a “weaponized and politicized Justice Department” was “casting a blind net to intimidate and silence Republicans who are fighting for his America First agenda.” Representatives for the Justice Department have declined to comment.

While Trump has more than $115 million held across various committees, the vast majority of it is stored at Save America. The PAC ended July with more than $99 million cash-on-hand, according to fundraising records — more than the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees combined.

Trump has continued to shovel up small-dollar donations in the months since, frustrating other Republicans who have been struggling to raise money ahead of the November midterm elections.

Save America is set up as a “leadership PAC” designed to allow political figures to fundraise for other campaigns. But the groups are often used by would-be candidates to fund political travel, polling and staff as they “test the waters” ahead of potential presidential runs. The accounts can also be used to contribute money to other candidates and party organizations, helping would-be candidates build political capital.

Much of the money Trump has amassed was raised in the days and weeks after the 2020 election. That’s when Trump supporters were bombarded with a nonstop stream of emails and texts, many containing all-caps lettering and blatant lies about a stolen 2020 election, soliciting cash for an “election defense fund.”

But no such fund ever existed. Instead, Trump has dedicated the money to other uses. He’s financed dozens of rallies, paid staff and used the money to travel as he’s teased an expected 2024 presidential run.

Other expenses have been more unusual. There was the $1 million donated last year to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit that employs Cleta Mitchell and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, both of whom encouraged Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

There was the $650,000 “charitable contribution” in July to the Smithsonian Institution to help fund portraits of Trump and the former first lady that will one day hang in the National Portrait Gallery, according to the Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas.

Much of the money has also funded a different sort of defense fund — one that has paid the legal expenses of Trump confidants and aides who have been called to testify before the Jan. 6 committee.

Overall, Trump’s sprawling political operation has spent at least $8 million on “legal consulting” and “legal expenses” to at least 40 law firms since the insurrection, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

It’s unclear how much of that money went to legal fees for staffers after a congressional committee started investigating the origins of the attack. But at least $1.1 million has been paid to Elections LLC, a firm started by former Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino, according to campaign finance and business records. An additional $1 million was paid to a legal trust housed at the same address as Passantino’s firm. Passantino did not respond to a request for comment Monday night. Payments have also been made to firms that specialize in environmental regulation and real estate matters.

As of July, only about $750,000 had been doled out to candidates for Congress, with an additional $150,000 given to candidates for state office, records show. Trump is expected to ramp up his political spending now that general-election season has entered full swing, though it remains unclear exactly how much the notoriously thrifty former president will ultimately agree to spend.

Trump has long played coy about his 2024 plans, saying a formal announcement would trigger campaign finance rules that would, in part, force him to create a new campaign committee that would be bound by strict fundraising limits.

In the meantime, Trump aides have been discussing the prospect of creating a new super PAC or repurposing one that already exists as gets he closer to an expected announcement. While Trump could not use Save America to fund campaign activity after launching a run, aides have discussed the possibility of moving at least some of that money into a super PAC, according to people familiar with the talks.

Campaign finance experts are mixed on the legality of such a move. Some, like Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in campaign finance, said he didn’t see a problem.

“There may be some hoops he has to jump through,” he said. But “I don’t see a problem with it going from one PAC to another … I don’t see what would block it.”

Others disagree.

“It is illegal for a candidate to transfer a significant amount of money from a leadership PAC to a super PAC. You certainly can’t do $100 million,” said Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based good governance group focused on money and politics.

And whether or not Trump would face any consequences is a different matter.

For years, the FEC, which polices campaign finance laws, has been gridlocked. The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and a majority vote is needed to take any enforcement action against a candidate.

Indeed, legal experts say Trump has repeatedly flouted campaign finance law since launching his 2016 White House run, with no consequence.

More than 50 separate complaints alleging Trump broke campaign finance laws have been filed against him since his 2016 campaign. In roughly half of those instances, FEC lawyers have concluded that there was reason to believe that he may have broken the law. But the commission, which now includes three Trump-appointed Republicans, has repeatedly deadlocked.

The list of dismissed complaints against Trump is extensive. In 2021, Republicans on the commission rejected the claim, supported by the FEC’s staff attorneys, that a Trump orchestrated hush-money payment by his former lawyer to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels amounted to an unreported in-kind contribution. In May, the commission similarly deadlocked over whether his campaign broke the law by hiding how it was spending cash during the 2020 campaign.

And over the summer, the commission rejected complaints stemming from Trump’s threat to withhold $391 million in aid for the Ukraine unless the Ukrainian officials opened an investigation into the relationship President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had with a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma, which the FEC’s attorney’s determined was a potential violation of campaign finance law.

“There is no legal basis whatsoever for believing that Congress intended the FEC to police official acts of the government that may be intended to assist an officeholder’s reelection,” the commission’s three Republicans said in a written statement late last month.

That means any enforcement action would likely have to come from the Justice Department.

“He has nothing to fear from the Federal Election Commission until either its structure is changed or there is turnover among the FEC Commissioners,” said Brett G. Kappel, a longtime campaign finance attorney who works at the Washington-based firm Harmon Curran and has represented both Republicans and Democrats. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to fear from the Justice Department, which is already apparently investigating Save America. From what I can see, there are multiple wire fraud allegations that could be the subject of a Justice Department investigation.”

In the meantime, Trump and Save America continue to rake in contributions from grassroots supporters, blasting out fundraising solicitations with aggressive demands like “this needs to be taken care of NOW” and threatening donors that their “Voter Verification” canvass surveys are “OUT OF DATE,” even as some of the Republican Senate contenders Trump endorsed and helped drag across the finish line in primaries are struggling to raise cash.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has urged those candidates to ask Trump for money, which the former president has so far proven reluctant to provide. That has left the candidates, some of whom presented themselves as McConnell antagonists during their primaries, to grovel to McConnell and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC he controls and has $100 million in reserve.

It also strengthens McConnell’s hand in his long-simmering feud with Trump, who has urged GOP senators to oust the Kentucky Republican. Some close to Trump acknowledge the candidates could use the money, but said he doesn’t see it as his responsibility to fill the void.

___

Colvin reported from New York.

source

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — The crowd hung on his every word, cheering him on and booing his opponents. At one point, emotions ran high enough that someone in the crowd bellowed “Lock him up!”

This was no Donald Trump rally featuring the former president vowing to use prison to settle political scores. This cry came as President Joe Biden addressed top Democratic leaders at a riverside resort outside Washington, warning about “Trumpers” attempting to destroy U.S. democracy.

And, rather than urge bipartisan civility, Biden didn’t miss a beat.

“We have to win this off-year election,” the president said, “for more reasons than just being able to move our agenda forward.”

The boisterous mood of the Democratic National Committee’s recent summer gathering at National Harbor, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, follows a new, sharper tone from Biden as he warns that the GOP’s Trump wing is a threat to core American values. The atmosphere signaled an emboldened party less than two months from Election Day, sensing that a year of political liabilities ranging from the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to rising inflation is finally easing.

The Supreme Court’s decision invalidating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade may prove to be a turning point that energizes Democratic voters in November, the party argues. Since then, Republican Kansas rejected a statewide abortion ban, and Democrats notched notable victories in special House elections in New York and Alaska.

“There’s a real sense that Republicans kicked the bee hive,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which wants to flip a Senate seat held by Republican Ron Johnson while retaining the governorship.

But as the party navigates an unexpected sense of momentum, it risks tapping into the same divisiveness Trump and his supporters relish — and that Democrats have said is undermining democratic norms. Democrats, however, insist that they must be clear about the stakes of the campaign.

“Republicans use fear as a tactic,” said Democratic Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly. “It seems like, a lot of times, that we might have to do a little bit of that, too.”

Biden, who rarely referred to his predecessor during the opening phase of his presidency, is increasingly vocal about the need to confront Trump. “This guy never stops and we’ll never stop, either,” he told the DNC.

Vice President Kamala Harris told the conference, “We refuse to let extremist so-called leaders dismantle our democracy.”

“Democrats, we, here, rise to meet this moment,” Harris said.

Making his own rounds at the DNC, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, used sarcasm to slam even more moderate Republicans who have dared break with Trump on key issues like denouncing year’s deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“We’ve got some Republicans who are saying the right things on say, I don’t know, treason? Like, as if pushing back on treason is somehow, you should be honored,” Emhoff told the DNC’s Midwestern conference to hoots of laughter and cheers. “That was in the oath of office that we all took. That’s the job.”

Trump rose to power with a divisive approach to politics. He encouraged violence against protestors at his rallies during the 2016 campaign and branded the media the “enemy of the people.” As president, he said several liberal congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. The final days of his administration were consumed by efforts to remain in office, including Trump’s personal role in sparking the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Republicans who were largely silent then are now blasting Biden and Democrats for picking political fights.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has called the president “the divider-in-chief” and dismissed “the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”

While Democrats are increasingly optimistic about their prospects, there’s still plenty of reason for caution. The party’s grip on Congress is already tenuous and many of the races that could determine control on Capitol Hill may be decided by narrow margins. Democrats have also missed signs of strong GOP turnout in the past several elections — leading to surprise setbacks in places like South Florida.

More fundamentally, the party that wins the presidency almost always loses congressional seats the next cycle, and inflation remains at near-record highs despite some recent indications it might be cooling. Biden’s approval ratings, while improving, remain low.

Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and DNC vice chair, suggested that the key to midterm gains doesn’t have to be confrontational and can just mean trumpeting the accomplishments of Washington under Democratic control.

“Everywhere I go, I see Democrats hanging their head, wringing their hands, wondering, ‘Well, What are we going to do to win?’ You know what you need to do to make sure we win? Tell the story,” Martin said of promoting the party’s achievements. “President Joe Biden has led the way, delivered on almost every single promise.”

But Martin also suggested that simply staying positive may not be enough, adding that Democrats must “be willing to fight for our president” and “fight for our party.”

Wikler, the Wisconsin state Democratic chairman, said his party turned the GOP playbook back on Republicans to boost turnout in local elections throughout the state.

Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin’s harnessing parental frustration over schools that were closed during the pandemic helped key his upset win of the state’s governorship last year. Wikler said Democrats successfully argued in the latest round of local elections that so-called parental activism was actually built on conservative attacks on teacher authority, transgender students and how history is taught — with the ultimate goal of shifting taxpayer funding away from public schools.

“Explaining why the other side is doing what they’re doing can take the sting out of it,” Wikler said.

DNC Chair Jamie Harrison suggested his party has regained some of its political swagger nationally, calling the coming election “Roe-vember” as a way of predicting that support for abortion rights will lift Democrats.

But, as he traveled around the conference meeting with smaller caucus groups, Harrison also reminded them that Democratic leaders in critical swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan helped safeguard the electoral system from Trump’s lies about widespread fraud that did not occur in 2020. He said winning key races in such states this year is the best way to ensure the system holds after 2024’s presidential race results are in.

“If we are not successful in those elections,” Harrison said, “God help us all.”

source

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the panel’s top Republican on Monday asked Twitter Inc Chief Executive Parag Agrawal to answer questions about a former company executive turned whistleblower who is set to testify.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a famed hacker who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired last year, will appear Tuesday before the committee.

Senate Judiciary chair Dick Durbin and Republican Chuck Grassley on Tuesday asked Agrawal to answer questions by Sept. 26 including on Zatko’s allegations Twitter “turned a blind eye to foreign intelligence infiltration, does not adequately protect user data and has provided misleading or inaccurate information about its security practices to government agencies.”

The senators said they had invited Agrawal to testify on Tuesday, but he had declined.

Twitter declined comment.

Durbin and Grassley outlined some concerns raised by Zatko, including potentially more than half of Twitter full-time employees having privileged access to company production systems. With that capability, several thousand employees can access sensitive user data, according to Zatko.

“… at the same time, Twitter reportedly lacks sufficient capacity to reliably know who has accessed specific systems and data and what they did with it,” the senators wrote in a letter to Agrawal.

“With tens of millions of users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of users worldwide, your company collects and is responsible for vast troves of sensitive data,” they wrote. “If accurate, Mr. Zatko’s allegations demonstrate an unacceptable disregard for data security that threatens national security and the privacy of Twitter’s users.”

Zatko has claimed Twitter had misled regulators about its compliance with a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over improper handling of user data.

Durbin, while speaking to reporters on Monday, said Zatko’s claims were “a matter of grave personal and privacy concern.”

Twitter has said the former executive was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance,” and that his allegations appeared designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Bradley Perrett)

source