Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department and former President Donald Trump’s attorneys are due on Friday to jointly file a list of possible candidates to serve as a special master to review records the FBI seized from the former president’s Florida estate.

The filing could come at any time on Friday. It was ordered by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee in Fort Pierce, Florida, after she granted Trump’s request on Monday for a special master over the Justice Department’s objections. The order temporarily bars prosecutors from reviewing the seized records as part of their ongoing criminal investigation.

The department in a Thursday court filing asked Cannon to suspend two main parts of her order, saying it wants to be able to continue reviewing the seized classified materials for its continuing investigation, and it wants to protect them from disclosure to a special master.

It also warned that some classified materials may still be missing, even after an Aug. 8 search of Trump’s home by the FBI.

The investigation turns on whether Trump, a Republican, improperly removed classified records from the White House and stored them at his home in Palm Beach, and whether he unlawfully tried to obstruct the probe by concealing or removing some of the records when the FBI tried to collect them in June with a grand jury subpoena.

Whoever is tapped as special master will need to weed out anything that should be kept from prosecutors, either due to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year side-stepped the question of how far a former president’s privilege claims can go in rejecting Trump’s bid to keep White House records from a congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot by his supporters.

However, the U.S. National Archives, after conferring with the Justice Department, told Trump’s lawyers earlier this year that he cannot assert privilege against the executive branch to shield the records from the FBI.

Cannon’s order, which said that U.S. intelligence officials can still continue using the seized records to conduct a national security damage assessment, has been criticized by both Democratic and Republican legal experts.

Attorneys have questioned the logic of her decision to include an executive privilege review because the records are not Trump’s personal property and he is no longer president.

The Justice Department’s “filter team,” a group of agents who are separate from the investigators, have already reviewed the more than 11,000 seized records.

It identified about 500 documents that could be subject to attorney-client privilege.

Meanwhile, there are more than 100 pages recovered by the FBI’s August search bearing classification markings, including some marked “top secret.”

Prosecutors on Thursday said they cannot easily separate the national security review from their criminal work because the two are connected.

Legal experts have said that finding a special master that both sides can agree on is no easy task.

The person would potentially need to have a top-level security clearance, be an expert on executive privilege and be willing to take on a very public role that would thrust him or her into the political spotlight.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter, Grant McCool)

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By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Steve Bannon, a onetime top strategist to former U.S. President Donald Trump and an architect of his successful 2016 White House run, is expected to surrender on Thursday to New York authorities to face state charges in a new indictment.

The charges come more than 1-1/2 years after Trump pardoned Bannon in the final hours of his presidency, excusing Bannon from a federal fraud case.

Bannon, 68, and three other men had been charged in August 2020 with defrauding donors in a private $25 million fundraising drive, known as “We Build the Wall,” to help build Trump’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bannon pleaded not guilty to the federal indictment, including to charges he diverted close to $1 million for personal expenses. But his indictment was dismissed after Trump pardoned him.

Bannon’s new indictment is being issued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The case may mirror parts of the federal case concerning the wall, though it is unclear because the indictment has not been unsealed yet, a person familiar with the matter said.

Presidential pardons cover federal charges and do not prohibit state prosecutions.

Bannon is expected to appear in a New York state court in Manhattan on Thursday.

He is being charged less than two months after being convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from a House of Representatives committee probing the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement on Tuesday night, Bannon called the New York case “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

The state probe of Bannon began under Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance.

Bragg also inherited Vance’s probe into Trump’s namesake company, the Trump Organization, which along with longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg was charged with tax violations in July 2021.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August to a variety of tax charges, and the Trump Organization faces a trial scheduled to start in October.

Bannon would not be the first former Trump ally charged in both federal and state court.

In March 2019, Vance brought fraud charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that were similar to charges on which Manafort had been convicted in federal court and sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.

But a New York judge dismissed the charges nine months later because they amounted to double jeopardy, or trying someone twice for the same conduct.

Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.

Double jeopardy may not apply to the Bannon case because he never went to trial on the federal charges.

The leader of the wall campaign, Brian Kolfage, pleaded guilty in April to wire fraud conspiracy and tax charges, and is awaiting sentencing.

Another defendant, Andrew Badolato, also pleaded guilty over the scheme, while a judge in June declared a mistrial in the case of the final defendant, Timothy Shea.

Bannon championed “America First” right-wing populism, including fierce opposition to existing immigration practices, that became hallmarks of Trump’s presidency.

He now runs the popular podcast “War Room,” and often hosts guests who deny that Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Restaurant owners moved Wednesday to at least temporarily block a nation-leading new California law giving more power to fast food workers.

The owners want the state’s voters to ultimately decide the law’s fate.

A coalition calling itself Protect Neighborhood Restaurants filed a referendum request with the state attorney general, the first step before the law’s opponents can begin gathering signatures. If they get enough, the law that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Monday, Labor Day, wouldn’t take effect unless it’s supported by a majority of voters.

If it stands, the law will create a 10-member Fast Food Council with equal numbers of workers’ delegates and employers’ representatives, along with two state officials, who will be empowered to set minimum standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California.

The law will raise consumer costs, isn’t needed, and will create “a fractured economy” with different regulations for different types of restaurants, objected the coalition. The coalition is co-chaired by the International Franchise Association and the National Restaurant Association, but organizers said it includes small business owners, restaurateurs, franchisees, employees, consumers, and community-based organizations.

“As a result of backroom politicking, Governor Newsom has signed a lie into law and maligned all of California’s quick service small businesses and local franchisees as bad employers,” the group said.

It said Newsom, a Democrat, signed the bill against the advice of his own Department of Finance “to curry favor with special interest groups and organized labor.”

Newsom’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“It is saddening that the industry is looking for a way out of providing a seat at the table amongst all stakeholders,” said the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Chris Holden. He said the workers “make the multi-billion fast food industry possible” and that “giving equal representation of employees and employers is the recipe for sustainable, long-term growth in an inclusive manner.”

Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta said the restaurant chains “are attempting to overthrow cooks and cashiers’ historic victory.”

“Instead of pouring money to suppress the voices of Black and Latino cooks and cashiers, fast-food corporations should sit down and listen to them.” he said.

The opponents would not immediately say if they are shooting for this November’s ballot or for the 2024 election.

Rules are different for referenda, which seek to overturn laws, than for ballot initiatives that seek to enact them. They can go on the ballot with an expedited process, as little as a month before the election. That compares to initiatives, which must qualify 131 days before.

But to qualify for this November’s ballot the opponents would have to gather more than 600,000 signatures within a few weeks, or 5% of the votes cast for all candidates for governor in the 2018 election. That makes it far more likely the referendum would go before voters in November 2024 if opponents take the full 90 days they are allotted to gather signatures, with the law on hold until voters weigh in.

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By Matt McKnight

SEATTLE (Reuters) -Seattle teachers hit the picket lines on Wednesday on what would have been the first day of school this fall for tens of thousands of students after voting to strike over pay, staffing and mental health support.

The Seattle Teachers Association (SEA), a labor union representing more than 6,000 teachers, paraprofessionals and office workers in Washington state, on Tuesday said that 95% of its members who submitted a ballot voted to go on strike.

The work stoppage canceled the first day of school for 47,000 students in the district, the largest public school system in the state, as teachers formed picket lines at many of the system’s 110 schools on Wednesday morning.

Outside of Rainier Beach High School on the city’s South Side and down the street at South Shore K-8 elementary school, dozens of teachers wearing red T-shirts carried “Strike Now” signs while they chanted “Educators United Will Never Be Defeated” as motorists drove past honking their horns in support.

“Either we take action now to put solid programs in place that can serve students or we cave and then we are overwhelmed and can’t educate,” said Kathy Krikorian, a speech therapist at South Shore K-8.

The strike is the latest in a wave of work stoppages in school districts across the United States in recent years, with teachers demanding salary and benefit increases, beefed-up staffing and improved working conditions.

Seattle teachers are calling for an increase in pay, staffing ratios to be maintained or improved for special and multilingual education, and an increase in the number of counselors and social workers who work in the district.

Seattle Public Schools in a statement said it was optimistic that the bargaining teams will “come to a positive solution” for students and staff.

“The weight and responsibility of starting this year without delay is felt by both bargaining teams,” Superintendent Brett Jones said in a video statement.

The district said it would serve meals for students at several schools and after-school activities will continue during the work stoppage.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Mark Porter)

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By Sarah N. Lynch, Jacqueline Thomsen and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge has given the U.S. Justice Department and Donald Trump’s lawyers until Friday to come up with a list of potential candidates to serve as a special master to review records the FBI seized from the former president’s Florida estate.

But finding people who have the necessary experience and security clearances to handle the highly classified documents — and the willingness to enter the political brushfire surrounding the probe — will be no small task, legal experts said.

“If we’re talking about highly classified material, there’s only a relatively small number of individuals who would satisfy the requirements of the job,” said attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who served as a special master for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.

“It would have to be somebody willing to take on the hurricane. It’s not purely a security issue. It’s become a political issue,” he said.

One illustration of the challenge: the nonprofit law firm National Security Counselors last week provided the court with a list of four potential candidates with expertise on executive privilege. All four have since made public comments that either suggest they don’t want the job or that could be used to argue against them by lawyers for the Justice Department or Trump.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday ruled that a special master should review the records seized from Trump’s Palm Beach home to weed out anything that should be kept from prosecutors, either due to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year side-stepped the question of how far a former president’s privilege claims can go in rejecting Trump’s bid to keep White House records from the Jan. 6 select committee.

However, the U.S. National Archives, after conferring with the Justice Department, told Trump’s lawyers earlier this year that he cannot assert privilege against the executive branch to shield the records from the FBI.

SPECIAL MASTER

A special master is an independent outside expert who is sometimes tapped to review records seized by the government in sensitive cases where some of the material might be privileged.

Whoever is picked will likely need to have a top-level security clearance because more than 100 of the 11,000-plus documents are marked as top secret, secret or confidential.

A special master has never before been called on to determine whether records are covered by executive privilege, particularly in the unique circumstance of a former president asserting the right over the prerogative of the current president, Joe Biden.

“Appointing a special master I think may be harder than people think,” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who previously also served at the Justice Department. “How many people with TS/SCI clearance are out there? And how many of them are experts on executive privilege?”

SOME OPT OUT

None of the four potential candidates identified by National Security Counselors in a court filing last week have openly embraced the idea.

One of them, Mark Rozell, the dean of the public policy school at George Mason University, has asked for his name to be removed from the list, telling Reuters: “Flattered that someone thinks I’m qualified, but I prefer analyzing from the outside of events.”

A second, former Justice Department attorney Jonathan Shaub, has not said whether he would take the job, but criticized Cannon’s order in an interview with Reuters on Monday, saying it was “filled with inaccuracies about the law” and that the judge seemed to be “bending over backwards to help Trump.”

Northwestern University law professor Heidi Kitrosser, the third, told Reuters that she believes she is unlikely to be selected, after some conservative media outlets and Trump supporters on social media pointed to her prior political comments.

The fourth person, Mitchel Sollenberger of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said he does not have a security clearance.

A Justice Department spokesman on Monday said the government is reviewing Cannon’s order without commenting on next steps. Attorneys for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Most prior cases involving special masters related to practicing attorneys who had a duty to keep their clients’ records confidential.

A special master was appointed, for instance, after the FBI searched the homes and offices of former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.

Some legal experts said the best bet is to look for recently retired judges from Washington, D.C., or Florida who have handled national security cases and could easily get their clearance restored.

Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, said that after the FBI seized items from his client’s home and office, the government and the defense team were able to quickly agree on a special master candidate: retired judge Barbara Jones.

“They will try to whittle it down to one,” he said, noting that they will look for someone who can be “neutral and fair.”

If they can’t agree, he said, the judge can pick someone herself.

“The judge would be wise to make sure that it’s a consensus candidate,” said Feinberg. “She may end up appointing somebody over the objection of one side or the other, but at least she’s made an effort to determine and calibrate the degree of opposition.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Days after Democratic President Joe Biden gave a fiery speech attacking former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies as an extremist threat, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday found a majority of Americans believe Trump’s movement is undermining democracy.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents in the two-day poll – including one in four Republicans – said Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is threatening America’s democratic foundations.

Biden’s Sept. 1 speech marked a sharp turn for his efforts to boost Democrats in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when Republicans aim to win control of the U.S. Congress.

Speaking in Pennsylvania, a key electoral battleground, Biden urged voters to reject Trump and extremism. Republican leaders, including House of Representatives minority leader Kevin McCarthy, responded by calling Biden divisive.

The poll highlights the sharply polarized state of U.S. politics.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents said Biden’s speech will further divide the country, though just about half of respondents said they didn’t watch or follow the speech at all.

While Trump remains popular among Republicans, his standing within the party has suffered since a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to stop lawmakers from certifying Biden’s election victory.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 60% of Republicans don’t think Trump’s MAGA movement represents the majority of the party.

Biden’s own approval ratings remain low, despite a string of recent legislative achievements. Just 39% percent of respondents said they approve of Biden’s job performance as president, a level not far above the lowest levels Trump had during his presidency.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online in English throughout the United States, gathered responses from 1,003 adults, including 411 Democrats and 397 Republicans. It has a credibility interval – a measure of precision – of four percentage points.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In recent days, President Joe Biden has sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump and the so-called MAGA Republicans for posing a threat to democracy. He’s likened the philosophy undergirding the dominant strain of the modern-day GOP to “semi-fascism.”

And Democrats are taking notice.

The gloves-off, no-holds-barred approach from Biden as of late has emboldened Democrats across the country, rallying the party faithful ahead of the November elections even as his harshest rhetoric makes some vulnerable incumbents visibly uncomfortable.

Biden’s increasingly stark warnings about Trump-fueled elements of the Republican Party are making up the core part of his midterm message, combined with repeated reminders to voters about recent Democratic accomplishments and a promise that democracy can still produce results for the American people. But it’s the blistering statements from Biden about his predecessor and adherents of the “Make America Great Again” philosophy that have given many Democrats a bolt of fresh energy as they campaign to keep control of Congress.

“It’s a particularly strong issue for our base,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of Senate Democrats. “Folks want us, want people to show that there is a clear contrast in the election between where Democrats are and Republicans have been.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., noted that “politics is somewhat like a team sport, and the president is the quarterback.”

“The team is not going to fight hard if they don’t see the team leader fighting hard,” said Khanna, who backed Bernie Sanders during the 2020 presidential primaries but has since been a vocal liberal defender of Biden.

Biden’s forceful campaign-year posture comes as Democrats are feeling more optimistic about the midterms, when the party controlling the White House has historically faced losses in Congress. A combination of legislative accomplishments, polarizing Republican candidates and voter fury stoked by the overturning of Roe vs. Wade have Democrats feeling they could see smaller losses in the House than initially anticipated, while retaining their barebones majority in the Senate.

The president began road-testing his midterm message at a rally in the Washington suburbs late last month, as he railed against a Republican ideology that he said largely resembled “semi-fascism.” The White House chose Philadelphia’s Independence Hall as the backdrop for last week’s address that outlined the danger that Trump’s “extreme ideology” posed to the functioning of U.S. democracy.

And in a pair of Labor Day events in critical midterm battlegrounds, Biden continued to hammer the contrast while becoming even more comfortable in invoking his predecessor, whom he had avoided referring to by name for much of his presidency.

“You can’t call yourself a democracy when you don’t, in fact, count the votes that people legitimately cast and count that as what you are,” Biden said Monday in front of a union crowd in Pittsburgh. “Trump and the MAGA Republicans made their choice. We can choose to build a better America or we can continue down this sliding path of oblivion to where we don’t want to go.”

Biden will headline another political event Thursday, hosted by the Democratic National Committee in suburban Maryland. There, the president will speak about “the choice before Americans” on issues of abortion, Social Security and Medicare, democracy, school safety and climate, and how “extreme MAGA Republicans are working to take away our rights,” according to a Biden adviser who requested anonymity to preview his remarks. That will be followed by a trip to Ohio on Friday, a state where the Senate contest between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance is becoming increasingly competitive.

Those close to Biden say the president has never shied away from a political fight.

“He’s always made the case very aggressively when he thinks the other side is wrong,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who has known Biden since the 1980s. “I think he’s always tried to lift up the country and tried to appeal to our better angels while at the same time, making the case for when he thinks the other side is on the wrong track.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said issues of democracy, as well as Trump himself, are increasingly becoming topics of concern for voters.

“More and more people are feeling that, you know, this former president broke the law over and over and over again, and people around him are still doing his bidding to undermine our democracy,” she said. Stabenow commended Biden’s recent approach, noting that “threats are only going up, not down.”

Still, the sharper-edged posture from Biden has been more complicated for Democrats competing in some of the most contested Senate races this cycle, as they seek to attract support from voters who may have backed Trump in 2020.

While she stressed that she has “concerns about attacks on our democracy,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said in an interview with WMUR News 9 in New Hampshire that “I think President Biden’s comments just painted with way too broad a brush.” Hassan is considered one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, although she won’t know her Republican challenger until the state’s Sept. 13 primaries.

Asked about those same Biden remarks, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told The Associated Press that he hadn’t seen them.

“I think a president has a right to give his opinion,” added Kelly, who is facing Republican Blake Masters in one of the most closely watched Senate contests this fall. “You know, I don’t share all of his opinions. But he has a right to give his opinion.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he didn’t like the phrase “semi-fascism,” calling it “awkward.”

“But are they leaning toward fascism? Certainly,” Durbin said. “When you deny the results of an election, when you’re talking about mobs in the street taking over, I mean, that to me is not consistent with democratic values.”

Republicans have accused Biden of divisive rhetoric in his string of speeches, particularly with his Philadelphia address. They say the president has tagged tens of millions of Americans who supported Trump as threats to democracy, although both the president and his aides have been careful to distinguish elected officials from voters themselves.

GOP officials still believe Biden remains a liability in competitive districts and states, although his approval ratings have brightened somewhat in recent weeks as the White House notched a series of achievements and as Trump’s legal troubles — starting with the FBI search of his southern Florida estate — have dominated headlines.

“I hope Biden keeps going around the country,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a Fox News interview Tuesday night. “I hope he goes to every swing state and gives his raving lunatic speech everywhere around the country.”

Yet in those swing states, more Democrats who had initially shied away from joining Biden are increasingly comfortable in doing so. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is in one of the most closely contested gubernatorial races nationwide, joined Biden in Milwaukee on Monday, although Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes stayed away.

After avoiding other presidential visits to the state, Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, a Democrat, appeared with Biden in Pittsburgh.

Peters, the DSCC chairman, said it was up to each Democratic candidate to decide whether to appear alongside Biden, but said he believed the president was an asset. Peters noted that he was the sole Democratic candidate in 2014 to actively campaign with President Barack Obama during a midterm year heavily favorable to Republicans.

“Everyone ran away. I had him come in, and I won,” Peters said. “So that’s my data point.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In Orange County, California, where the typical house sells for $1 million, Rep. Katie Porter’s four-bedroom, three-bath residence in a leafy subdivision on the University of California Irvine campus is a bargain.

The progressive Democrat and law professor, who has lamented the cost of housing in her district, purchased it in 2011 for $523,000, a below-market price secured through a program the university uses to lure academics who couldn’t otherwise afford to live in the affluent area. The only eligibility requirement was that she continue working for the school.

For Porter, this version of subsidized housing has outlasted her time in the classroom, extending nearly four years after she took unpaid leave from her $258,000-a-year teaching job to serve in the U.S. House.

But the ties go deeper, with at least one law school administrator, who was also a donor to her campaign, helping secure extensions of her tenure while she remained in Congress, according to university emails obtained by The Associated Press.

That has allowed Porter, a rising Democratic star and fundraising powerhouse whose own net worth is valued at as much as $2 million, to retain her home even as her return to the school remains in doubt.

Porter’s housing situation does not violate U.S. House ethics rules. But it cuts against the profile she has sought to cultivate in Washington as an ardent critic of a political system that allows “the wealthy and well-connected” to “live in one reality while the rest of us live in another,” as she wrote in an online fundraising solicitation in 2020.

It also coincides with a growth in interest in the school’s housing program, which has resulted in a yearslong waitlist of more than 250 school academics and administrators, as a nationwide housing shortage sends prices for homes outside the on-campus development skyrocketing, university figures from 2021 show.

Whether voters care will be tested in November when Porter, who has amassed a $19.8 million campaign fund, seeks a third term to the once reliably Republican district that has become more competitive in recent years.

“It sounds like the sort of insider deal that really makes people mad at Congress,” said Bradley A. Smith, a professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, and a Republican former member of the Federal Election Commission was appointed by Bill Clinton.

In an interview, Porter declined to say whether her housing arrangement was appropriate. But she said she “followed the applicable (University of California) policies, as well as all applicable state and federal law.”

“I am always happy to be transparent with voters,” Porter said. “I take a lot of pride in my record on transparency and good governance and have been asked about this before by voters and have always been happy to give them full and complete information.”

Smith said the arrangement could run afoul of an FEC prohibition on third parties paying the living expenses of federal candidates. He cautioned, however, that the situation was nuanced and unique.

“Let’s suppose they were paying her mortgage? I think that would pretty clearly be a problem,” Smith said. “Here, it is a little different than that. They are just letting her keep a deal that she had previously. But it does seem to subsidize her income. If I were still serving on the commission and that complaint came in, I’d be very interested in seeing her response.”

Porter said Smith’s analysis “is interesting to think about” and his question about whether the prohibition could apply to her situation “is exactly right.” But she added,“ I don’t think he necessarily has all of the facts about how the housing is structured to be able to definitively answer that question,” citing her payment of property taxes, as well as homeownership fees and other expenses.

Smith responded that he is “not sure how the fact that she paid those fees changes anything.”

For decades, the cost of housing in Orange County has soared above the national average. The University of California Irvine’s solution was to build University Hills, their own exclusive academic community, where home values are capped to make them more affordable and favorable mortgage rates are offered to those approved to live there.

The pent-up demand to live in University Hills is understandable in light of Irvine’s $1.3 million median home price. Houses in the school’s subdivision have sold in recent years for about half of their regular market value, according to University of California figures from 2021. The community is a short drive from the Pacific Ocean and Laguna Beach. And the list of amenities includes a network of parks, walking paths, scenic vistas and community pools. It also feeds into some of the most sought-after schools in the area.

But for academics and administrators, the trade-off is that they are required to work full-time for the university, with an exception built in for retirees. For those no longer employed by the school, however, an enforcement provision kicks in, which in Porter’s case would require her to pay off her mortgage within months.

When Porter was recruited, school officials outlined their expectations in a letter informing her that they would sponsor her application to the housing program.

“Your primary duties, of course, will be to serve as a professor of law,” school officials wrote in the letter, which Porter signed in December 2010. “It is expected that you will teach two classes … you will be expected to hold office hours and be available to mentor students.”

Eight years later, after her 2018 election, Porter ceased to fulfill those obligations.

Initially, administrators signed off on two separate one-year periods of leave that enabled her to keep her house, documents show. But school officials voiced more concern about the arrangement in the run-up to Porter’s 2020 reelection, emails show.

“Is there any fixed limit on the number of years of leave without pay … One of our administrators mentioned that they seemed to recall a two-year limit,” law school Vice Dean Chris Whytock wrote in a April 2020 email. He added: “Some government service may, of course, last for a number of years.”

Whytock, who donated $500 to Porter’s campaign in 2018, wrote a memo outlining the case for extending Porter’s leave, while suggesting that there are no limits on how long such an arrangement could continue. The plan required the approval of the school’s vice provost, which was granted in 2020, according the the emails.

Whytock did not respond to an email seeking comment.

In a statement, UC Irvine spokesperson Tom Vasich said faculty “on approved leaves without pay remain UCI employees, and they can maintain their home in University Hills.”

Porter said she intends to win her election, but would resume teaching if she lost. She declined to say whether she would look for housing elsewhere if she won.

After the AP interviewed Porter, spokesperson Jordan Wong provided an additional comment, stating the congresswoman “had no knowledge of Vice Dean Chris Whytock’s role in researching her request for leave” and “at no point” was in contact with him about it.

Still, longtime government ethics watchdogs in Washington, including those with favorable opinions of the congresswoman, say it’s difficult squaring Porter’s housing situation with her crusading rhetoric.

“She has a reputation for being highly ethical and requiring others to live up to that standard,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the Washington-based government watchdog group Public Citizen. “Let’s hope she is not running short of her own ethics with the university.”

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Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman of Pennsylvania will participate in just one debate, his campaign said Wednesday, after weeks of his Republican rival, Dr. Mehmet Oz, pressuring Fetterman and aggressively questioning the severity of his lingering health problems from a stroke.

Fetterman’s campaign said he will participate in a televised debate in mid- to late October. The campaign gave no other details, including why he would agree to just one debate. Oz’s campaign immediately dubbed it a “secret debate,” with no details on when or where.

Politico was first to report that Fetterman had agreed to one debate.

As the general election grows closer, Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon and political novice, has begun stepping up his questioning of Fetterman’s fitness for office after he suffered the stroke in May. Fetterman’s campaign has said Oz was operating in bad faith by insisting on debates and said his motivations were really “about mocking John for having a stroke.”

Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, and Oz are vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a race Democrats see as one of their best chances nationally to flip a Republican-held seat. The winner in the battleground state could help decide the chamber’s partisan control next year.

Oz, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has accused Fetterman of lying about the seriousness of his stroke. Fetterman has said that he almost died after suffering the stroke just days before the Democratic primary.

Fetterman’s campaign had previously said he was willing to debate but wants a debate that can accommodate the lingering effects of his stroke, in particular his diminished auditory processing speed — he cannot always respond quickly to what he’s hearing. In brief public speaking events, Fetterman also has struggled to speak fluidly.

It was not immediately clear what accommodations Fetterman would be looking for in his debate appearance, but has used closed-captioning in video interviews with reporters.

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

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

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday denied Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes’ request to postpone his upcoming Jan. 6 Capitol riot trial, and ruled he cannot fire his lawyers and replace them just three weeks before the case is set to begin.

Rhodes and eight other co-defendants are accused of plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Rhodes is due to go to trial in Washington, D.C. with four other defendants on Sept. 27 for seditious conspiracy, a rarely prosecuted criminal charge. A second set of four defendants head to trial on Nov. 29.

“The idea that at the 11th hour, Mr. Rhodes wants to bring in new counsel three weeks before this trial is set to begin, months and months after trial preparation,” said U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, at times sounding exasperated. “Here’s the thing: I’m not going to do it.”

Rhodes, one of the most high-profile defendants of the more than 860 people charged over the Capitol riot, informed the court in a Tuesday filing that he had “a complete, or near-complete breakdown” in communication with his two original attorneys, James Bright and Phillip Linder.

His new lawyer, Edward Tarpley, told Mehta he needs at least 90 additional days to get up to speed on the case, address motions Rhodes wanted filed and collect additional potentially exculpatory evidence.

The list of to-do items Tarpley cited should be done included deposing witnesses whose names have not been mentioned in any pre-trial motions or hearings, such as Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to former President Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Tarpley also said the government dealt a blow to Rhodes’ defense plans when it charged Oath Keeper attorney and Rhodes’ former girlfriend Kellye SoRelle earlier this month in connection with the Capitol attack.

During a sometimes contentious virtual hearing on Wednesday, Rhodes’ original attorneys expressed exasperation with their client, saying some of his claims about their performance were untrue.

“I’ve given 7 months of my life to Mr. Rhodes…I’ve missed sporting events for my children. I’ve missed time with my family for a man I don’t know,” Bright told the court.

Mehta ruled the trial will continue as scheduled.

“If Mr. Rhodes wants you in this case? That’s fine,” Mehta told Tarpley. “Mr. Linder and Mr. Bright are going to be at that table, representing Mr. Rhodes in this trial starting September 27. Period. Full stop. End of story.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Josie Kao)

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