Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — With never-seen video, new audio and a “mountain of evidence,” the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will attempt to show not only the deadly violence that erupted that day but also the chilling backstory as the defeated president, Donald Trump, tried to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.

Thursday’s prime-time hearing will open with eyewitness testimony from the first police officer pummeled in the mob riot and from a documentary filmmaker who recorded the melee, and it will feature the committee’s accounts from Trump’s aides and family members of the deadly siege that put U.S. democracy at risk.

“When you hear and understand the wide-reaching conspiracy and the effort to try to corrupt every lever and agency of government involved in this, you know, the hair on the back of your neck should stand up,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a member of the 1/6 committee, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“Putting it all together in one place and one coherent narrative, I think, will help the American people understand better what happened on January 6th — and the threats that that could potentially pose in the future.”

The 1/6 panel’s yearlong investigation into the Capitol attack will begin to show how America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Biden’s victory.

The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee’s investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire to it in 1814 and to ensure such an attack never happens again.

Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security will be tight for the hearings. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.

Against this backdrop, the committee will try to speak to a divided America, ahead of the fall midterm elections, when voters decide which party controls Congress. Most TV networks will carry the hearings live, but Fox News Channel will not.

The committee chairman, civil rights leader Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will set the tone with opening remarks.

The two congressional leaders will outline what the committee has learned about the events leading up to that brisk January day in 2021 when Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency as lawmakers undertook the typically routine job of certifying the previous November’s results.

“People are going to have to follow two intersecting streams of events — one will be the attempt to overturn the presidential election, that’s a harrowing story in itself,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee, told the AP.

“The other will be the sequence of events leading up to a violent mob attack on the Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes and block the peaceful balance of power,” he said.

First up will be wrenching accounts from police who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the mob, with testimony from U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was seriously injured in the attack. Also appearing Thursday will be documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the extremist Proud Boys storming the Capitol. Some of that group’s members have since been indicted, as have some from the Oath Keepers, on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.

Along with the live eyewitness testimony, the panel will unveil multimedia presentations, including unreleased video and audio, and a “mountain of evidence,” said a committee aide who insisted on anonymity to preview the hearing. There will be recorded accounts from Trump’s senior aides at the White House, the administration and the campaign, as well as members of Trump’s family, the aide said.

In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases and his own attorney general attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.

The panel, made up of nine lawmakers, faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.

Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress over the objections of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. She rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted Jan. 6 against certifying the election results, choosing her own preferred members to serve.

Trump has dismissed the investigation as illegitimate, and many Republicans are poised to defend him.

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said at a GOP leadership news conference that the committee’s “shameless prime-time show” is nothing but a smear campaign against the former president, his party and his supporters.

But by many measures, the attack was set in motion shortly after Election Day, when Trump falsely claimed the voting was rigged and refused to concede once Biden was declared the winner.

The proceedings are expected to introduce Americans to a cast of characters, some well known, others elusive, and to what they said and did as Trump and his allies tried to reverse the election outcome.

The public will learn about the actions of Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, whose 2,000-plus text messages provided the committee with a snapshot of the real-time scramble to keep Trump in office. Of John Eastman, the conservative law professor who was the architect of the unsuccessful scheme to convince Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification on Jan. 6. Of the Justice Department officials who threatened to resign rather than go along with Trump’s startling proposals.

Lawmakers have also been caught up in the probe, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who defied the committee’s subpoena requests for testimony. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who urged her father to call off the rioters, appeared privately before the committee.

The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -An 11-year-old survivor of last month’s mass shooting at a Texas elementary school told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday how she desperately acted to save her own life after the gunman shot a friend next to her, saying, “I got the blood and put it all over me.”

Miah Cerrillo, 11, and the parents of multiple young Americans killed and wounded in a spate of recent mass shootings testified on Wednesday before a congressional panel as a bipartisan group of senators worked to see if there was any compromise on gun safety that Democrats and Republicans can agree to.

“He told my teacher ‘good night’ and shot her in the head,” Cerrillo said in a pre-taped interview played for the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee.

“And then he shot some of my classmates and the white board,” she said, adding: “He shot my friend that was next to me … and I thought he was going to come back to the room. I got the blood and put it all on me.”

The young girl said she fears such violence could happen again at school.

Cerrillo spoke about two weeks after the shooting by an 18-year-old at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 of her classmates and two teachers.

A spate of mass shootings across the United States in recent weeks has killed dozens and sparked the latest round of bipartisan talks in the U.S. Senate.

Her testimony came as the United States has suffered more than 200 mass murders just this year.

While the House since last year has been passing a series of sweeping gun-related reforms that likely would be blocked by Senate Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Reuters she had “trust” in the Senate negotiators and noted the urgency for Congress to act.

With Democrats and Republicans deeply divided on guns, the Senate talks have focused on modest goals including encouraging states to pass “red flag” laws to deny firearms to people judged a risk to themselves or the public and federal funding to improve school security.

A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday were haggling over the likely costs of beefing up treatment of mental illnesses that could contribute to gun violence and for funding states’ red flag programs, according to senators.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said that while “we’re close on a number of these issues,” negotiators still have plenty of details to iron out.

During the House hearing, Republicans on the panel vowed to defend the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Many of them have objected to proposals such as limiting sales of the assault-style rifles used in the Uvalde massacre and another mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store that killed 10 Black victims.

‘DEFEND MYSELF FROM EVIL’

Another witness, Lucretia Hughes of the DC Project Women for Gun Rights, criticized the idea of more gun control laws.

“Y’all are delusional if you think it’s going to keep us safe,” she said. She added that her 19-year-old son was shot dead in April 2016 by a person with an illegally obtained gun.

“How about letting me defend myself from evil? You don’t think that I’m capable and trustworthy to handle a firearm?” Hughes added.

Public opinion polls show a majority of Americans favor steps to expand background checks of prospective gun buyers and other moves to rein in spiking gun violence.

But Wednesday’s hearings underscored the deep emotions of the debate.

The sobbing parents of one of the dead Uvalde students urged Congress to take tough steps to control gun sales.

“Somewhere out there, there’s a mom listening to our testimony … not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act now,” said Kimberly Rubio, mother of murdered daughter Lexi.

The mother of a victim of the Buffalo massacre, the alleged work of an avowed white supremacist, asked the committee: “What in the world is wrong with this country?”

Zeneta Everhart, mother of Zaire Goodman, who was injured in the shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, added, “Lawmakers who continuously allow these mass shootings to continue by not passing stricter gun laws should be voted out.”

Meanwhile, the full House was debating a bill to raise the minimum age to 21 from 18 on purchases of certain firearms and toughen prohibitions on untraceable guns.

Rather than pushing for a quick vote on the broader House bills, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has opted to give more time for bipartisan negotiations in his chamber.

Democrats have signaled to Republicans that they would be willing to accept a narrow first step with legislation, even as President Joe Biden calls for tougher action, such as banning assault weapons.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)

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ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) – The White House expects the next round of economic data to show elevated numbers on inflation, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters as President Joe Biden flew to Los Angeles, Jean-Pierre said inflation numbers to be released at the end of this week are likely to show more evidence of high inflation.

“We expect the headline inflation number to be elevated. And we expect the war in Ukraine to have some effects on core inflation, particularly when you look at things like airfares and the effect of higher jet fuel costs,” she said.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Democrats on Wednesday braced for renewed Republican attacks on their management of crime across the U.S. after residents in San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to recall the city’s progressive district attorney, suggesting that even the party’s most loyal supporters are frustrated with the way in which violence and social problems are being addressed.

Chesa Boudin was swept into the district attorney’s office pledging to seek alternatives to incarceration, end the racist war on drugs and hold police officers to account. But the city’s longstanding problems with vandalism, open drug use and robberies proved too much for voters, who blamed him for making the situation worse.

While a single city race is hardly a barometer of the national mood, the rejection of Boudin by residents in the nation’s progressive epicenter carried symbolic significance for members of both parties. Republicans were emboldened by the vote, planning to highlight crime in several critical Senate races. At the White House, meanwhile, President Joe Biden acknowledged that the vote sent a “clear message” about public safety.

“Both parties have to step up and do something about crime as well as gun violence,” Biden said ahead of a trip to California, noting he sent “billions of dollars and encouraged them to use it to hire police officers and reforming police departments.”

“It’s time to move,” Biden continued. “It’s time that states and the localities spend the money they have to deal with crime as well as retrain police officers.”

The Democratic president’s tough-on-crime comments come as his party continues to face pointed attacks from Republicans about its commitment to public safety two years after progressive activists responded to the police murder of George Floyd by championing calls to “defund the police.” Biden has rejected such calls, as have the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress, yet polling suggests that voters have become increasingly likely to trust Republicans more than Democrats on public safety.

Republicans, pointing to the San Francisco election, signaled that they would continue to hammer vulnerable Democratic candidates in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin for their record on crime or associations with the Black Lives Matter movement. While the economy is widely considered the central issue of this midterm season, Republicans believe a focus on crime will help them this fall, especially among suburban voters.

“The very first thing that I talk about everywhere we go is ending the war on our police, ending the war on cops,” said Andrew Giuliani, a Republican candidate for New York governor.

Public safety remains a potent political issue, even as the numbers suggest a more complicated reality.

Crime statistics for the first quarter of 2022, released by the FBI on Monday, suggest that a rise in violent crime is not the fault of either party’s criminal justice policies. Democratic-led cities such as Detroit, Fort Wayne and South Bend, Indiana, as well as Wichita, Kansas and Portland, Ore., listed fewer murders for the first quarter of 2022 than 2021. The same could be said for several cities with Republican mayors at the helm. The reverse also was true in a number of Democratic and Republican-led cities with several showing rises in violent crime rates and murders.

Still, Republicans have effectively convinced voters, in some cases, that Democrats are more to blame.

In June 2021, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that roughly the same number of U.S. adults trusted Democrats and Republicans to handle crime. But in April 2022, the same poll found that 47% trusted the Republican Party to do a better job handling crime, compared with 35% preferring the Democratic Party.

Republican pollster Gene Ulm said the perception that Democrats are weak on crime is pushing swing suburban voters toward the GOP in midterm elections across the country, even if crime is not a defining issue in the campaign.

“The Democrats have basically tattooed themselves with defund the police,” Ulm said. “It’s too late to change it.”

Republicans point to key Senate races in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where they have already begun to attack Democrats on crime, sometimes relying on false charges.

In North Carolina, the Senate Republican campaign arm already launched two ads against Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court justice, for failing to protect victims of violent crime. The ads were removed by some local television stations for being inaccurate.

“Sheriffs from across North Carolina condemned these dishonest and despicable attacks because they know Cheri’s record: as a judge and chief justice, she partnered with law enforcement to keep North Carolina communities safe and hold violent offenders accountable,” campaign spokesperson Dory MacMillan said. “Washington Republicans are lying.”

Still, the GOP rhetoric is likely to persist. Republicans are also telegraphing weak-on-crime attacks against Wisconsin Democrat Mandela Barnes, a Senate candidate photographed holding a shirt critical of immigration officers; and Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman, who used his powers as lieutenant governor to help increase the number of pardons.

Campaign spokesman Joe Calvello noted that Fetterman has a history of confronting crime as the chief law enforcement officer of Braddock, Pa., where he served as mayor.

“Under John’s leadership, Braddock went five and a half years without a gun death,” Calvello said. “John not only has worked hand-in-hand with the police, but he knows what challenges our police force face and how to support them.”

Back in San Francisco, Boudin blamed his loss on “right-wing billionaires” who exploited understandable frustration over a pandemic and city government that has failed to deliver on basics.

Former Mayor Willie Brown also warned against reading too much into the recall, given that Boudin won election in 2019 with 36% of first-place votes in San Francisco’s ranked-choice system.

No candidate – Republican or Democrat — can ignore the public’s need to feel safe, Brown said.

“There is an absolute need for people to feel safer, and if they, the public, voter interprets your advocacy as not being sensitive to that component … they will probably not vote for you,” Brown said. “They will vote for somebody that does give them some level of comfort, that safety is as important as all the other factors.”

Beyond San Francisco on Tuesday night, a reform-minded progressive in Contra Costa County was keeping her seat while in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, the progressive favorite heads to a runoff against a long-time prosecutor in November for an open seat being vacated by a more traditional law-and-order district attorney.

Ludovic Blain, executive director of the California Donor Table, which seeks to elect progressive candidates, pointed out that the population of Contra Costa and Alameda counties dwarfs the size of San Francisco, which is under 900,000.

“If we were to look at one election to decide whether Democrats are vulnerable or not, it wouldn’t be the San Francisco one,” he said.

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Peoples reported from New York. AP writers Hannah Fingerhut and Gary Fields in Washington contributed.

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By James Oliphant

(Reuters) -Voters in San Francisco recalled the city’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, a Democrat, in a nationally watched test of frustrations over rising crime that also split Democrats in one of America’s most liberal cities.

With 75% of the estimated votes counted, 60.5% of ballots were to remove Boudin from office, while 39.5% voted no, according to Edison Research, which projected the recall.

Boudin had been the target of a multi-million-dollar recall campaign by residents who say the liberal California enclave has become an increasingly unsafe place to live.

Many of its backers were Democrats in a city where Republicans are a distinct minority. But the election has ramifications beyond San Francisco, with national polls showing Americans increasingly worried about violent crime.

Republicans hope to seize upon that anxiety in their bid to assume control of the U.S. Congress in the November midterm elections. Republican-backed ads are already running in states such as North Carolina and Wisconsin addressing fears of rising crime.

The concerns in San Francisco resemble those in other large cities in the United States, where gun violence spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boudin was elected in 2019 promising to institute criminal justice reforms designed to keep low-level offenders from jail and spare juveniles from facing long prison terms. His critics blame those policies for an uptick in murders, shootings and property crimes, as well as an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

His defenders say the spike was a function of the pandemic and note that crime is reverting to norms that existed beforehand. They contend the city’s swelling homeless population has distorted some residents’ perceptions of security.

The recall effort is San Francisco’s second this year. In February, voters ousted three members of the city’s school board.

Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, will choose Boudin’s replacement.

Downstate in Los Angeles, public safety and homelessness are also top issues in the city’s mayoral contest on Tuesday.

Rick Caruso, a billionaire Republican-turned-Democrat, was leading Democrat Karen Bass, a top progressive in Congress, with 41% of the vote to 38% with some 40 percent of votes counted. If neither receives a majority of the vote, they would face off in a run-off election in November.

In the primary for California governor, Democratic incumbent Gavin Newsom was easily leading the field with 60 percent of the vote, while Republican challenger Brian Dahle trailed far behind at 15 percent with around half of the estimated votes counted.

(Reporting by James Oliphant and Mary MillikenEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Republicans picked a seasoned TV broadcaster to take on New Mexico’s incumbent Democratic governor, nominating former network meteorologist Mark Ronchetti on his pledges to rein in state spending, shore up policing and unleash already record-setting oil production.

Ronchetti won by a wide margin in a field of five candidates that included state Rep. Rebecca Dow, a prominent voice among Republicans in the Legislature.

The GOP nominee, a family man joined on the victory stage by his wife and school-aged daughters, pledged to back police officers by restoring immunity from prosecution and blasted Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for a lengthy suspension of in-person teaching and student proficiency testing during the pandemic.

“Now our children are even further behind, and she has no plan to catch them up,” Ronchetti said. “Every at-risk child deserves to know that they have a chance with a great education.”

He added a jab at new social studies standards that increase instruction related to racial and social identity in a heavily Latino and Native American state.

“We’ll focus on teaching them reading, writing, history, science and math. One thing we won’t teach them is how to hate each other,” Ronchetti said.

New Mexico is home to 23 federally recognized Native American tribes and nations, while nearly half the population claims Hispanic ethnicity.

Separately, the Democratic nomination for attorney general went to Raúl Torrez, a second-term district attorney for Albuquerque and its outskirts.

He defeated State Auditor Brian Colón to vie in an open race against Republican attorney and U.S. Marine veteran Jeremy Michael Gay of Gallup.

New Mexico has alternated between Democratic and Republican governors since the early 1980s. An incumbent governor last lost reelection in 1994.

The November election for New Mexico governor will be a test of Democratic resolve in an oil-producing region with enduring currents of Catholicism and a strong culture of gun ownership.

The GOP in 2020 flipped a congressional district along the U.S. border with Mexico with the election of Republican U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell, a firm defender of former President Donald Trump.

Ronchetti has pledged to deploy 150 state law enforcement personnel to the remote international border with Mexico to combat illegal migration and drug and human trafficking. The proposal echoes National Guard deployments by Republican governors in Arizona and Texas.

In a nod to his days as a TV personality, Ronchetti cracked some jokes on the victory stage. He ridiculed the governor for lavish public spending at the governor’s mansion on premium beef and liquor, contrasting that with his own offer of chips, salsa and a cash bar for supporters on election night.

Lujan Grisham spent much of Election Day surveying recent destruction from the largest wildfire in recorded New Mexico history. President Joe Biden is scheduled to discuss relief efforts during a planned visit Saturday to Santa Fe.

An incumbent governor hasn’t lost election since 1994. And Republicans have faltered in a string of statewide elections, ceding control of every statewide elected office to Democrats, including the five-seat state Supreme Court.

Since taking office in 2019, Lujan Grisham and the Democratic-led Legislature have enacted reforms to ensure access to abortion, expand government oversight of guns and expand police accountability by lifting immunity from prosecution for misconduct.

The incumbent governor has walked a fine line on the environment with climate change initiatives that rein in methane pollution from oilfield infrastructure, phase out coal-fired power plants and mandate new renewable energy investments without restricting oil production. New Mexico last year surpassed North Dakota in 2021 to become the nation’s No. 2 oil producer behind Texas.

Lujan Grisham has harnessed a surge in state government income to underwrite teacher raises, offer free college education to in-state students, expand preschool and bolster Medicaid coverage across a state with high rates of poverty.

In response to inflation, the state is sending out staggered payments of up to $1,500 per household between June and August.

New Mexico’s most recent Republican governor was Susana Martinez, an El Paso native with family ties in Mexico who served as a district attorney before winning an open race to succeed termed-out Gov. Bill Richardson.

First-term congresswomen were seeking reelection to New Mexico’s three congressional districts, without primary challengers.

In the 2nd District of southern New Mexico, Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez won the Democratic nomination to challenge Herrell. He defeated rural physician Darshan Patel.

In the 1st District that includes most of Albuquerque and rural communities to the south, the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury was won by former police Detective Michelle Garcia Holmes.

Holmes ran for the same congressional seat in 2020 and was defeated by Democrat Deb Haaland, now serving as U.S. Interior secretary.

In other statewide races, former Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya won the Democratic nomination for state treasurer, defeating former Magistrate Judge and Treasury official Heather Benavidez. Montoya will compete against former Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya in an open race to replace termed out State Treasurer Tim Eichenberg.

The Democratic nomination for state auditor went to utilities regulator Joseph Maestas, an elected member of the Public Regulation Commission. He’ll confront Libertarian write-in candidate Robert Vaillancourt in a general election without a Republican contender.

In state legislative races, state Rep. Roger Montoya of Velarde was ousted in the Democratic primary by Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde, who gave up the seat in 2020 to run unsuccessfully for Congress.

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AP writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque.

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By Jason Lange and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, easily won the Republican nomination to seek reelection in November, while a former member of Trump’s cabinet was locked in a tight race in his Montana primary for the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Noem, known for her opposition to COVID-19 restrictions, won her primary with 77% of the vote, while former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of Montana was locked in a tight race as he seeks the party’s nomination to return to Congress.

At the other end of the political spectrum, San Francisco’s progressive Democratic district attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled from office by Democratic voters frustrated with spikes in homicides and gun violence, according to Edison Research. With 80% of the expected vote in, 60% of voters opted for Boudin’s ouster.

His fate could ring alarm bells for Democrats, who have been painted by Republicans as being lenient on crime ahead of November’s midterm elections.

With President Joe Biden slumping in the polls and soaring inflation souring voters’ moods, Republicans are expected to win control of the House and possibly the Senate, which would bring Biden’s legislative agenda to a halt and give Republicans the power to launch distracting and possibly politically damaging investigations.

Just 41% of Americans approve of Biden’s performance as president, near the lowest level of his presidency, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll completed on Tuesday.

The poll also showed the Democratic Party and the Republican Party were neck-and-neck in voter preferences ahead of the November congressional elections. Thirty-nine percent said they would vote for a Democrat compared to 37% picking a Republican. The difference was well within the poll’s 4 percentage point credibility interval.

Voters in New Jersey, Iowa, Mississippi and New Mexico also cast ballots on Tuesday in nominating contests that will set the competitive field for Nov. 8’s elections.

In Montana, with about two-thirds of the expected vote counted, Zinke held 41.5 percent of the vote and Al Olszewski, a former Montana state senator, had 39.3%, according to Edison Research. The race was too close to call.

Zinke’s primary came months after an inspector general report accused him of using his position as head of the Interior Department to advance a development project in his hometown and lying to an ethics investigator. He has denied wrongdoing.

South Dakota’s Noem beat former state House speaker Steven Haugaard 77% to 23%.

Noem has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential running-mate if Trump seeks election again in 2024 or as a White House candidate in her own right if he does not.

Republicans are favored to easily win the South Dakota governor and Montana House races in November.

HOUSE CHALLENGERS PICKED

Republicans also nominated candidates to take on embattled House Democrats, setting the stage for contests that will help determine control of that chamber.

New Jersey Republican Tom Kean Jr. won his party’s nomination to challenge embattled Democratic Representative Tom Malinowski in November, as voters cast ballots in primary elections across seven U.S. states, according to Edison Research.

Kean, the son of popular two-time Governor Thomas Kean, had more than 45% of the vote, far ahead any of his field of rivals. Malinowski, who is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country, also secured his renomination.

“I am both humbled and fully committed to flipping this seat in November,” Kean said in a tweet after winning his primary.

In Iowa, former state Senator Zach Nunn outpaced two other Republicans to seize the party nomination to challenge embattled Democratic Representative Cindy Axne.

Nunn, the only Republican contender who has held elective office, boasts a string of endorsements from high-profile party luminaries including Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and several sitting House Republicans.

CALIFORNIA SHAKEOUT

While Boudin lost his fight against a recall in San Francisco, Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer and former Republican, battled U.S. Representative Karen Bass and a host of other liberal candidates in the Los Angeles mayoral election.

Caruso was leading Bass with 41% of the vote to 38% with some 40% of votes counted, signaling they were headed to a run-off election in November.

Caruso, who has spent more than $30 million of his own money in the campaign, made crime the centerpiece of his candidacy in a city where homicides reached a 15-year high in 2021. That forced Bass, a longtime progressive champion in Congress, to move to the center and pledge to put more police on the streets.

A replacement for Boudin will be chosen by San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, a Democrat who has criticized the prosecutor but did not take a stance on the recall.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reorting by Jason Lange, Eric Beech, Kanishka Singh and Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone, Mary Milliken and Alistair Bell)

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana’s top election official asked a federal judge on Tuesday to delay her order that the state come up with a new congressional district map.

Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin filed a motion in Baton Rouge saying the Legislature won’t be able to convene in special session and complete a new map by the June 20 deadline set by U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick in Monday’s order. The filing asks Dick to delay her order while Ardoin’s office appeals to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans

Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday he will soon call a special legislative session to draw new congressional boundaries. Edwards says the current maps crafted by the Republican-led Legislature should have included a second majority-Black district, noting the state’s population is almost one-third Black. He had vetoed the congressional map but lawmakers were able to muster the two-thirds Senate and House majorities needed to override the veto.

Edwards told reporters at a news conference Monday after the judge’s decision that redrawing the district lines is required by the court order, the Voting Rights Act and by “basic fairness and basic math.”

Ardoin’s lawyers said advance notice required for a special session, the number of days required for a bill to go through the legislative process and the likelihood of long debates and numerous amendments all mean the June 20 deadline cannot be met. In addition, they said they would likely win an appeal.

“The Court — after waiting more than three weeks from the preliminary injunction hearing before issuing its ruling — gave the Legislature only 14 days to enact a remedial plan,” Ardoin’s filing says. But he wrote it wouldn’t be possibel to comply by the deadline “even without the complexities inherent in redistricting.”

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By Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democrats in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday they were encouraged by talks with Republicans on gun-violence legislation, but warned that any compromise would fall short of the steps they say are needed to tackle the problem.

“Every day we get closer to an agreement, not farther away,” said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who working with Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas on a possible deal.

The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, said he hoped the two sides would find common ground after a wave of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and elsewhere.

“We’re hoping to actually get an outcome that will make a difference,” he said at a news conference.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he would give negotiators until the end of the week to reach a deal.

The talks have raised hopes of a rare bipartisan agreement on gun-related issues in Congress, which has failed to act after similar mass shootings over the past decade. Most Americans support stronger gun laws, opinion polls show.

Democratic President Joe Biden last week called for banning assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, or at least raising the minimum age to buy those weapons from 18 to 21.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve some of those proposals on Wednesday, but they are unlikely to clear the evenly divided Senate as many Republicans are opposed to tighter gun controls.

“Obviously, an agreement that we reach with the Republicans won’t come close to the full list of things that I think are necessary to curb this epidemic. But the Americans people are looking for progress,” Murphy said.

Instead, Murphy and Cornyn are considering more modest proposals: encouraging states to adopt “red flag” laws to deny firearms to people deemed a risk to public safety or themselves; upgrades to school security; strengthening mental health services; and doing more to keep guns out of the hands of people who are legally barred from owning them, such as felons.

Murphy met with Biden earlier in the day, the White House said.

The U.S. Supreme Court this month is expected to rule on a New York state case that could bring a sweeping expansion of gun rights.

Firearms ownership has been one of the most hotly contested issues in the United States. Gun rights advocates, including most elected Republicans, staunchly maintain that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. Gun control supporters say permissive U.S. gun laws lead to needless deaths. More than 45,000 people were killed by firearms last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Andy Sullivan, Rami Ayyub and Steve Holland; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States faces “unacceptable levels of inflation” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told senators on Tuesday, adding that it was likely to remain high but that she hoped price increases would soon moderate.

At a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Yellen rejected Republican assertions that the highest inflation in 40 years was caused by Democratic President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) COVID-19 spending legislation last year.

“We’re seeing high inflation in almost all of the developed countries around the world. And they have very different fiscal policies,” Yellen said. “So it can’t be the case that the bulk of the inflation that we’re experiencing reflects the impact of the ARP.”

Yellen repeated her views that inflation was being fueled by supply-demand mismatches, including excessive demand for goods over services during the pandemic and severe supply chain disruptions. High energy and food prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also have pushed inflation higher, she said.

“I do expect inflation to remain high although I very much hope that it will be coming down,” she said.

She insisted that addressing inflation was Biden’s top priority and said that elements of the president’s proposed social and climate legislation could help lower costs for Americans, including for prescription drugs and clean energy technologies.

‘TRANSITORY’ WRONG WORD

Yellen has come under fire from Republicans after admitting she was “wrong” last year in forecasting that inflation would be transitory and quickly subside. She will face more tough questions on the issue in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Yellen added that both she and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell both “probably could have used a better term than transitory” in describing inflation that they thought would fade quickly.

“When I said that inflation would be transitory, what I was not anticipating was a scenario in which we would end up contending with multiple variants of COVID that would be scrambling our economy and global supply chains, and I was not envisioning impacts on food and energy prices we’ve seen from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Yellen said.

U.S. Consumer Price Index inflation has been tracking above 8%. Another metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which the Fed monitors for its 2% target, measured inflation at 6.3% in April. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the PCE fell to 4.9% that month.

“To dampen inflationary pressures without undermining the strength of the labor market, an appropriate budgetary stance is needed to complement monetary policy actions by the Federal Reserve,” Yellen said in prepared remarks.

Her testimony came as the World Bank on Tuesday warned of a heightened risk of “stagflation” – the 1970s mix of feeble growth and high inflation – returning as it slashed its global growth forecast by nearly a third to 2.9% for 2022.

World Bank President David Malpass said the “huge expansion” of government spending by advanced economies during the pandemic had fueled demand and played a role in stoking inflation.

The Biden administration is still pushing for a scaled-back version of its stalled climate and social spending agenda, which would offer tax credits for clean energy technologies and reform prescription drug pricing.

OIL PRICE PRESSURES

Yellen said that even though the United States is a major energy producer and exporter it was “virtually impossible” for the United States to insulate itself from oil market price shocks and needed to press ahead with a transition to renewable energy sources.

Regarding efforts to increase economic pressure on Russia, she said the United States was “extremely active” in discussing with European countries ways to limit Moscow’s oil revenues.

Yellen also said she was “keenly focused” on proceeding with a global tax reform deal among 137 countries, including a 15% global minimum tax.

“I am hopeful that Congress will also implement this global minimum tax as part of its legislative agenda.”

(Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal;Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Andrea Ricci)

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