Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to grant former President Donald Trump’s request to appoint a special master to oversee a review of materials seized Aug. 8 from his Florida home during an FBI raid.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who was nominated by Trump in 2020, on Saturday also directed the Justice Department to submit under seal more details “specifying all property seized pursuant to the search warrant.”

Trump in a Aug. 22 had also demanded the Justice Department provide him a more detailed property receipt outlining items the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago home during its Aug. 8 search, and asked investigators to return any items outside the scope of the search warrant.

Cannon gave the government until Tuesday to file a response to Trump’s request for a special master and set a hearing for Thursday. Her order said she had not made a final determination on Trump’s request.

A special master can sometimes be appointed in highly sensitive cases to go through seized materials and ensure that investigators do not review privileged information.

The Justice Department on Friday disclosed it was investigating Trump for removing White House records because it believed he illegally held documents including some involving intelligence-gathering and clandestine human sources – among America’s most closely held secrets.

In the affidavit, an unidentified FBI agent said the agency reviewed and identified 184 documents “bearing classification markings” containing “national defense information” after Trump in January returned 15 boxes of government records sought by the U.S. National Archives.

The search was part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed and kept documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe.

Trump, a Republican who is considering another presidential run in 2024, has described the court-approved search at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach as politically motivated, and on Friday again described it as a “break-in.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

source

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — As a former ski resort executive, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu knows something about navigating slippery slopes. But recent controversy at a county-owned ski area has raised questions about his grip on the Republican Party heading into the November elections.

Sununu, who is seeking his fourth term, recently inserted himself into a power struggle over Gunstock Mountain Resort, siding with staff who quit en masse and forced a two-week shutdown last month. Pushing back against anti-government activists who want to privatize the ski area, Sununu also called for the ouster this fall of three Republican legislators with an oversight role of the resort.

“These individuals have made bad decisions, and until they are removed from their positions and replaced with good people who recognize the wonderful asset that Gunstock is, the county will continue to suffer,” he wrote in an open letter to area residents.

Sununu’s intervention was seen by many as a rebuke of the Free State Project, a 20-year-old political experiment that promotes a mass migration of 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire. Fewer than 6,500 have arrived so far, but they have made inroads everywhere from school boards to the legislature. What that means for Sununu, the Republican Party and the state overall is uncertain. But so-called Free Staters are clearly shaking things up.

“In my view the governor is barely holding on to his party in the lower chamber, and some of the crazy things they have tried to pull have damaged his reputation in the state,” said Linda Fowler, professor emirata of government at Dartmouth College.

In 2003, Fowler dismissed the project as a gimmick, saying it was unlikely that even 20,000 people could have a significant impact. But she also did not foresee Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 or the coronavirus pandemic.

“Both, I think, have contributed to the fact that the Free Staters are now a negative influence on the state’s politics and that their behavior has become an election issue,” she said.

Conceived by a Yale graduate student in 2001, the Free State Project picked New Hampshire — with its low taxes, easy entry into politics and “Live Free or Die” motto — as its destination two years later. By 2016, 20,000 people had promised to pack their bags within five years. That hasn’t happened, and the group’s past president now says the pledge model has fallen by the wayside.

But it hasn’t taken huge numbers to get results.

About 45 Free Staters have been elected to the legislature since 2008; more than 20 serve now. While that is a small fraction of the 424-member legislature, it’s enough to influence policy given the GOP’s slim majority in the House.

The group counts the House majority leader as one of its own, and members often team up with dozens of other lawmakers who make up the wider “freedom caucus,” securing victories on legislation related to school choice, vaccines and limiting the governor’s power during emergencies.

One Free State stronghold is Belknap County, which owns the Gunstock ski area. After months of tension, top managers abruptly resigned last month, then returned after two commissioners were ousted. Sununu’s letter targeted both the commission members and three of the Republican lawmakers who appointed them, saying they had lost the public’s trust.

The governor later described their handling of the ski area as “just the latest episode of their craziness,” noting that one of the three — Rep. Michael Sylvia — supports having New Hampshire secede from the United States. But Sununu said he doesn’t consider them representatives of either the Free State movement or the Republican Party.

“I don’t have any problem with Free Staters,” he said. “These are not Free Staters.”

Sununu also rejected the notion that the rise of the Free State movement poses a long-term problem for his political career or his party, saying voters will reject the most extreme candidates.

“Voters are very smart,” he said. “When they see that kind of extremism, they tend to move it along on both the Republican side and the Democrat side.”

Sununu’s involvement in the Gunstock dispute could signal a turning point, said political consultant Scott Spradling.

“There was, I think, a fine line between Republicans and Free Staters. Now there’s a battle line,” he said. “Gunstock could very well be a high watermark, putting warning lights around the Free State movement for New Hampshire voters who are now going to associate their identity with this controversy.”

Either side could make the other’s lives politically miserable, Spradling said. But Sununu has credibility and popularity on his side.

“Long term, I would put my money on the establishment right, on the Sununu side of the aisle, because his politics appeals to a far broader audience,” Spradling said.

Sununu, who surprised political watchers by seeking reelection instead of running for U.S. Senate, faces five largely unknown opponents in the Sept. 13 primary, and polls show him with a wide lead over the Democratic candidate, state Sen. Tom Sherman. Even Rep. Norm Silber, one of the lawmakers Sununu wants ousted, expects Sununu to be reelected and will vote for him again if he is the nominee. But he contends that it’s Sununu who has strayed from the GOP.

“Running as a Republican with a long family history of supporting the Republican Party, I thought for sure that he would be a real Republican,” Silber said. “And he has, in my view, pandered to non-Republicans in an effort to build a base of support.”

Silber said he is not a Free Stater, but he’s being called one by Democrats hoping to flip seats in November by painting all Republicans with a Free State brush. The ski area controversy has spurred the creation of a political action committee to back candidates from both parties to defeat the “extremist Free State agenda” in Belknap County.

“People on the left, or people who don’t like fiscally conservative Republicans, have a tendency to refer to people they don’t like as Free Staters,” he said.

Carla Gericke, past president of the Free State Project, agreed.

“When there’s something positive, people laud that, but on the flip side, we’ve also become the boogeyman whenever it’s convenient,” she said. “We’re at the stage where we are successful enough that we’re just being used as a pawn between the two parties. And we just do our own thing.”

___

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

source

By Katanga Johnson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said it will hold a summit aimed to address issues around U.S. hunger, nutrition and health on Sept. 28 in Washington, D.C.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in May that the event will help realize his administration’s goal to end U.S. hunger and reduce diet-related diseases in a majority of Americans by 2030.

The previous U.S. event of this kind was held in 1969, the White House said.

“Lack of access to healthy and affordable foods is one of many factors impacting hunger and diet-related diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these challenges further,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement.

The summit – which is expected to bring together government leaders, academics and activists – will yield a national strategy that identifies actions the government will take to “catalyze the public and private sectors to drive transformative change and address the intersections between food, hunger, nutrition and health,” Jean-Pierre added.

The White House added that the summit would aim to address ways the United States can reduce disparities among the communities who are impacted the most by these issues.

A venue for the event and a specific list of attendees has yet to be announced.

(Reporting by Katanga Johnson in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)

source

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke said Sunday that he had cleared his campaign schedule after receiving treatment at a San Antonio hospital for an unspecified bacterial infection.

In a statement tweeted Sunday by his campaign, O’Rourke said he sought treatment at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio after feeling ill Friday.

Intravenous antibiotic infusions improved his symptoms, O’Rourke said.

“While my symptoms have improved, I will be resting at home in El Paso in accordance with the doctors’ recommendations,” he said. “I am sorry to have had to postpone events because of this, but (I) promise to be back on the road as soon as I am able.”

O’Rourke continues to trail Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in opinion polls before the Nov. 8 general elections.

source

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — As the sun set in Wyoming, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney described her blowout loss as the beginning of a more consequential step in her political career. She summoned Abraham Lincoln, who lost elections for the House and Senate and still went on to become one of the nation’s most accomplished presidents.

But in the days since, would-be supporters in key states have openly expressed skepticism about a Cheney presidential run, even one solely designed to block Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

In fact, Republican voters and local officials in three of the states that matter most in presidential politics — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — believe the soon-to-be-unemployed congresswoman has little path to relevancy in a 2024 presidential primary, never mind a path to victory. Some sympathizers fear she would actually help Trump if she runs.

Such is the colossal political challenge ahead for Cheney, a Republican seeking to transform a 37-percentage-point home-state loss into a national campaign to destroy Trump’s White House ambitions. There is no precedent for what she hopes to accomplish.

“The Republican Party is a lot more diverse than it’s given credit for, and there will be some number of people who find her, and her message, appealing, but that is far from saying that there would be a warm reception, or a large reception,” said Micah Caskey, a Republican state representative in South Carolina. “I don’t see a Liz Cheney candidacy as being viable.”

In the hours after she conceded her Wyoming congressional primary to a little-known Trump acolyte, Cheney’s team transferred leftover campaign funds into a new entity she named “The Great Task,” borrowing a phrase from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. She vowed to devote the weeks before the November midterms to defeating Trump loyalists who continue to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

“I will be doing whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office,” Cheney told NBC’s “Today” show. She acknowledged she is thinking about a 2024 presidential run. “I’ll make a decision in the coming months.”

Cheney, the 56-year-old daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has not ruled out running in 2024 as a Republican or an independent. But those close to her now believe an independent run would likely attract more support from Democrats than Republicans, which would undermine her goals. Therefore, if she runs, it would almost certainly be as a Republican.

Her team believes that Cheney would enter the 2024 Republican contest as the undisputed leader of the anti-Trump lane, which could include the likes of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The Cheney name is universally known, they note, and she enjoys a national fundraising base that brought in more than $15 million for her failed reelection bid. She would also have the support of her father and maintains close ties to former President George W. Bush, who hosted a fundraiser for Cheney last fall.

She will continue to play a leading role in the House investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, which is set to host another round of hearings in September.

Despite those factors, there has been little sign of enthusiasm for Cheney in the states most likely to decide the next GOP presidential nomination.

Voters were openly celebrating her loss at the Iowa State Fair, a must-stop for presidents and presidential contenders ever since the state began hosting the nation’s opening presidential primary contest a half-century ago.

“It’s celebration day at the Iowa Republican Party. Liz Cheney is outta here!” crowed Debra Wyna, a Des Moines-area GOP volunteer and 57-year-old retired salon owner. “Liz Cheney is a swamp monster.”

Other voters who stopped by the GOP booth were less pointed than Wyna but no less dismissive of Cheney’s political ambitions.

“I’m never going to vote for her because I believe she betrayed the Republican Party by voting to impeach President Trump,” said Janet Diers, a 67-year-old retired special education teacher from rural western Iowa.

Gentry Collins, a veteran Iowa and national Republican operative who opposes Trump, said he has “great respect” for Cheney, but he doesn’t see how she wages a viable campaign for president.

“Where do the votes come from? Maybe she aggregates the anti-Trump vote, but that’s not enough,” said Collins, a former political director for the Republican National Committee. “She’s my kind of Republican, but I don’t see an opening.”

It was much the same across New Hampshire, which traditionally hosts the nation’s second Republican primary contest.

While the state prides itself on ushering in presidential candidates every four years, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has mocked Trump, declined an opportunity to welcome a prospective Cheney campaign when given the opportunity.

“The governor has given no thought or consideration as to who may or may not run for president in 2024,” Sununu spokesperson Ben Vihstadt said. “He is solely focused on the midterms in less than 100 days, and firmly believes every second spent speculating about 2024 is a waste of time.”

Early presidential primary jockeying has been underway for several months. And the first Republican presidential announcement could come any time. Trump is weighing whether to declare his presidential intentions before or after the midterms.

Republican presidential prospects have been flocking to Iowa and New Hampshire for months already. The visitors include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sen. Tom Cotton and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is another frequent name discussed by local Republican primary voters, though he has yet to make an appearance.

Cheney herself delivered a speech in New Hampshire late last year, declaring that Trump was at war with the rule of law.

Caskey, the South Carolina state representative, believes Trump may be vulnerable in a small Republican field, but a large Republican field would divide the anti-Trump vote and help Trump claim his party’s nomination again.

“I think Donald Trump is the odds-on favorite to win if he runs, but I don’t think he has an assured path to victory,” Caskey said. “I think the more candidates that get involved, the more likely it is that he succeeds.”

Matthew Bartlett, a veteran New Hampshire Republican operative who worked in Trump’s State Department but quit after the Jan. 6 insurrection, said there’s plenty of buzz across the state about presidential candidates — save one.

“Not one person is talking about Liz Cheney,” Bartlett said. “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Nationally, around 7 in 10 Republicans continue to support Trump. That number may have jumped in the days after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Florida estate, though critics note that Trump’s multiple legal entanglements could ultimately damage his standing. Cheney, meanwhile, is lumped near the bottom with Pompeo and Haley, among others, in early public polling.

Voters tend to agree with the political professionals.

Claire Potter wore a Cheney T-shirt on a recent trip to Conway, New Hampshire, to “express my admiration as a Democrat” for the position she has taken against Trump. Potter, a history professor at The New School in New York, also donated $25 to the Cheney campaign.

Just don’t expect her to vote for Cheney in 2024.

“I don’t hope that she runs for president,” Potter said. “I think that could be really dicey in terms of keeping Trump out of the White House. But I trust her political instincts around what she does next.”

___

Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

___

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

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative attorney L. Lin Wood said he had been subpoenaed to appear before a special grand jury in Georgia investigating former U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“The devil is after me today!!!” Wood said in a statement shared on Telegram late on Friday. “…the Fulton County DA attacks me as you can see from the email below to my attorney, Ibrahim Reyes, by demanding that I testify before the ‘Trump Witch Hunt’ grand jury!!!”

Wood, who gained notoriety after the 2020 election by promoting conspiracy theories of fraud in the race, joins a growing number of Republicans who have been asked to appear before the special grand jury to answer questions about Trump’s attempts to reverse his loss in Georgia, a battleground state that helped propel Democrat Joe Biden to the presidency.

The investigation has ensnared Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as several of the former president’s allies.

“I have NO relevant knowledge to offer to the grand jury,” Wood said. “It is just harassment.”

Wood shared a letter on Telegram sent to his lawyer Reyes by Trina Lucas, a deputy chief investigator with the Fulton County District Attorney’s office. Lucas informed Reyes that the “grand jurors have requested that we subpoena your client, L Lin Wood to provide testimony before them.”

The letter adds that if Reyes could not or would not accept the subpoena on Wood’s behalf, “we will begin the material witness subpoena process.”

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

source

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Democrat Charlie Crist on Saturday tapped Miami-Dade County teachers union president Karla Hernandez-Mats as his running mate as he challenges Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida.

Crist, a congressman who served as the state’s Republican governor a decade ago, announced United Teachers of Dade President Hernandez-Mats as his lieutenant governor pick at a brief rally in South Florida, describing her as a compassionate former teacher of special needs children with the “heart” necessary to govern.

“Caring, loving, empathic, compassionate — that’s what we don’t have in the governor’s office right now and that’s what you deserve to have in the governor’s office,” Crist said before introducing Hernandez-Mats to the crowd.

The selection of Hernandez-Mats ensures a campaign focus on education, an arena where DeSantis has had success in animating his conservative base through his hands-off approach to the coronavirus pandemic and policies limiting classroom discussions of race and LGBTQ issues.

Crist secured the Democratic nomination this week after a campaign that focused heavily on criticizing DeSantis as a “bully” who gained political prominence through his willingness to exploit cultural divides on gender, sexuality and race.

On Saturday, Hernandez-Mats framed the Democratic ticket as a way to “bring decency and respect back to the state of Florida” and preserve abortion access and voting rights.

“It has been dark in here but we’re going to bring the sunshine back,” she said.

Hernandez-Mats advocated delaying students’ return to school in the fall of 2020 and continuing mask mandates in 2021, in defiance of DeSantis’ administration. She has also previously been critical of a new law critics have dubbed “ Don’t Say Gay, ” which bars classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade as well as material that is not deemed age-appropriate.

The daughter of two Honduran immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 1970s, Hernandez-Mats was the first Hispanic elected to lead the United Teachers of Dade in 2016. She was born in Miami and her father picked tomatoes in the Everglades before becoming a carpenter and labor leader, according to a statement from Crist’s campaign.

Crist defeated state agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried in the Democratic primary in a race that increasingly centered on abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a new Florida law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. Fried often questioned Crist’s Democratic bonafides, highlighting his appointment of conservative state Supreme Court justices while he was a GOP governor. The state’s high court is soon expected to decide the constitutionality of the GOP-backed 15-week ban.

Crist on Saturday reiterated a pledge to sign an executive order protecting a woman’s right to choose, upon the first day of his new administration.

DeSantis as governor has become one of the most popular Republicans in America, with his frequent and vocal opposition to Democratic President Joe Biden and liberal policies on abortion and gender issues winning him large sums from wealthy GOP donors and fueling speculation of a 2024 presidential bid.

In Florida, with the help of the GOP-controlled Legislature, DeSantis has carried out a brash approach to policymaking, exerting unusual control over the state’s congressional redistricting process, suspending an elected prosecutor who pledged not to enforce the 15-week abortion ban and punishing Disney for opposing the law that bars lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3.

The governor this week, in a speech after Crist’s primary win, did not mention Crist by name, instead casting the general election as a battle against Biden and “woke” ideology.

source

By Phil Stewart and Jarrett Renshaw

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) -Three years before retiring from the U.S. Army in 2017, Donald Trump-backed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano posed in Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College, according to a copy of the photo obtained by Reuters.

The previously unreported photo, released by the War College to Reuters after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, showed Mastriano in a 2013-14 portrait for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, where he worked.

Faculty at the time had been given the option of dressing as a historical figure, people familiar with the photo said. At least 15 of the 21 faculty in the photo opted to appear in regular attire. Although one man wears a trench coat and sunglasses and another carries an aviator’s helmet, Mastriano is the only one wearing a Confederate uniform.

Mastriano did not immediately respond to requests for comment made by email and phone. A Reuters reporter attended a Mastriano event on Wednesday to seek comment, but the candidate did not make himself available for questions.

Displays of Confederate symbols can be seen as insensitive to those who view them as painful reminders of racial oppression and the Civil War that saw 11 rebelling Confederate states fight to keep Black people enslaved.

    The U.S. military issued a de facto ban on displaying the Confederate flag and has sought to remove segregationist symbols from bases and academic institutions following the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd, a Black man whose killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis triggered protests worldwide.

After Reuters made its formal request for the photo, it was removed from the War College wall where it had hung alongside other annual portraits of faculty groups.

The Army War College (AWC), a premier military higher education institution in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, told Reuters a team had reviewed all art, text, and other images displayed at Carlisle Barracks in 2020, but missed the faculty photo.

“The faculty photo did not get the team’s attention; the photo has since been removed because it does not meet AWC values,” the college said in a statement.

Asked about the War College photo, a spokesperson at U.S. Army headquarters said: “The Army supports commanders who remove symbols or images that do not comport with Army values.”

Confederate symbols and dress have been embraced by white supremacists in the United States, and monuments and flags honoring the Confederacy have been removed from many public areas in recent years.

Pennsylvania plays an outsized role in U.S. politics as a so-called swing state in presidential elections, and Republican Mastriano, who has embraced Trump’s stolen election lies, is trailing his Democratic opponent in the governor’s race ahead of the November ballot.

It is unclear how the photo might be viewed in Pennsylvania, which played a critical role in the Civil War. More than 33,000 soldiers from Pennsylvania died fighting for the Union, and the state was the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the conflict’s bloodiest battle, which ended with a Union victory and inspired President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Mastriano’s district, Pennsylvania’s 33rd, includes Gettysburg.

Many Americans continue to participate in Civil War battle re-enactments, wearing uniforms from both sides in an effort to preserve U.S. history.

Jenna Ellis, a senior adviser to Mastriano’s campaign and former Trump lawyer, said the media was having a “melt down” because Mastriano once posed as a civil war historical figure for a photo.

“And? He has a Ph.D in HISTORY,” Ellis wrote on Twitter. “The left wants to erase history. @dougmastriano wants us to learn from it. I invite @Reuters to go on a Gettysburg tour with Doug. You’ll learn a lot!”

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Heather Timmons and Daniel Wallis)

source

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, three years before retiring from the U.S. Army, posed in a Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College.

The photo, which Reuters said Friday it obtained after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, shows Mastriano in the uniform in a 2013-14 portrait for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans and Operations, where he worked until he retired in 2017. Reuters said it was told that faculty at the time were given the option of dressing as a historical figure, and while a few did so, only Mastriano is shown wearing a Confederate uniform.

The Army War College said in a statement that a team in 2020 had reviewed all art, text and images displayed at the Carlisle barracks for alignment with Army values and the college’s educational philosophies, but it missed the faculty photo, which “has since been removed because it does not meet AWC values.”

Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator, has spread Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and was a leading proponent in Pennsylvania of Trump’s drive to overturn the result. He was also in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters after attending the “Stop the Steal” rally nearby.

Mastriano did not immediately respond to requests for comment but retweeted a comment by Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to his campaign, who said “Media MELT DOWN that Mastriano apparently once posed as a civil war historical figure for a photo. And? He has a Ph.D in HISTORY.

“The left wants to erase history. Doug Mastriano wants us to learn from it,” Ellis tweeted.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro accused Mastriano of wearing “the uniform of traitors who fought to defend slavery,” calling it “deeply offensive” and saying his opponent was “unfit to be governor.”

Mastriano served for three decades in the Army, retiring as a colonel after serving in Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Confederate flags, symbols and statues have increasingly divided the country in recent years, with critics calling them symbols representing the struggle to retain slavery and supporters calling them displays of Southern pride and heritage.

source

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul vowed to aggressively prosecute anyone who attacks or harasses election workers in the key swing state this fall and proclaimed his faith in the state’s election system as clerks report rising concerns about potential threats due to misinformation about elections.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press this week, Kaul also touted his work defending the results of the 2020 election against a host of legal challenges that accompanied President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud.

Kaul, a Democrat seeking reelection in November against Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, said public trust in “the reality of our elections” is important.

“We have the world’s greatest democracy in the U.S. and it’s something we should be proud of,” Kaul told the AP on Wednesday. “We have had that system tested over and over in Wisconsin through audits and recounts and reviews and consistently they show that our system works and the results reflect the will of the voters.”

Some of Trump’s followers have lashed out as they refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and and public policy institute, found in a March poll that one in six election officials have been threatened because of their job, with more than three-quarters saying they feel threats have increased in recent years.

In Wisconsin, multiple clerks have cited distrust and hostility toward election workers as concerns going into the November election. At a gathering of the National Association of State Elections Directors in July, election officials and bureaucrats meeting in Madison raised concerns that federal law might not be up to date with the threats they’ve faced since 2020.

Kaul said he is planning a public relations campaign informing people that intimidating, threatening or assaulting election workers is illegal and telling them how they can quickly report incidents. He said the Justice Department is working with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to stay abreast of any potential cases.

“What people should know is intimidating election officials is a crime and something we take very seriously,” Kaul said. “Continuing to get that message out is a proactive way to deter people from engaging in that activity. And if they do we will hold them accountable.”

Kaul also questioned whether Toney would defend the 2024 election results in court if Trump runs again and loses Wisconsin. He noted that Toney has drawn support from former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who called for Biden’s win to be decertified as part of an investigation into Wisconsin’s 2020 results. The probe found found no evidence of election fraud.

“If he were to take that kind of approach it would create chaos,” Kaul said. “I’m proud to have defended the will of the voters and our system of government. Based on what we’ve seen from (Toney), he hasn’t shown that type of commitment.”

Toney rejected Kaul’s attack.

He told AP that he believes Biden won the presidency, but said state laws were broken during the election. He brought charges in February against five voters who allegedly used improper addresses and has called for removing five state election commissioners who voted to keep special voting assistants out of nursing homes early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Toney promised to review any allegation of election fraud and prosecute “because it’s the job of district attorneys and the attorney general to enforce the rule of law.”

Other key issues Kaul discussed in his AP interview:

— Abortion. Kaul filed a lawsuit this summer seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on abortion, arguing in part that it’s so old it’s no longer valid. Kaul said if that lawsuit is unsuccessful, he may file more lawsuits based on other legal theories such as equal protection and the fundamental right to liberty. He also maintained his pledge not to use state Justice Department resources to enforce the ban and promised to lobby legislators to repeal the prohibition.

— Pollution. Kaul sued 18 companies in July looking to hold them liable for polluting state waters with a group of chemicals known as PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. He promised to see that case through to its conclusion.

—Gun control. Kaul, like Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, has advocated for universal background checks and a red-flag law that would allow family members and police to ask judges to seize guns from people who might pose a threat. Republican leaders have refused to even debate those proposals. Kaul said he plans to keep pushing.

___

Associated Press writer Harm Venhuizen contributed to this report. Venhuizen 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 undercovered issues. Follow Venhuizen on Twitter.

source