Politics

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s highest court opened the door Friday to nullifying a voter ID mandate approved by citizens in 2018 because the lawmakers who put it on the ballot were elected from districts tainted by illegal racial bias.

However, the North Carolina Supreme Court stopped short of striking down the voter ID requirement and another constitutional amendment that limited income tax rates, ruling that a lower court must gather more evidence on the measures before tossing them out.

Voter identification is not currently required in North Carolina, because it’s held up in separate litigation regarding state voter laws. Friday’s ruling doesn’t alter that situation.

The long-awaited ruling, decided 4-3 by the court’s Democratic majority, is a victory for the state NAACP, which sued Republican legislative leaders. It undoes a state appeals court ruling that upheld the amendments, and it sends the case back to Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins, who previously struck down the amendments.

Friday’s ruling decried that the Republican-controlled legislature proceeded with putting the constitutional amendments on the ballot despite the fact that more than two dozen districts had been found to be tainted by illegal racial bias.

Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Anita Earls noted that “what makes this case so unique is that the General Assembly, acting with the knowledge that 28 of its districts were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered and that more than two-thirds of all legislative districts needed to be redrawn to achieve compliance with the Equal Protection Clause, chose to initiate the process of amending the state constitution.”

However, the opinion said that before taking a step as serious as undoing constitutional amendments approved by voters, the trial court must gather more evidence on whether leaving the amendments in place would allow improperly elected legislators to escape accountability, further exclude voters from the democratic process or amount to continued discrimination.

In a dissent, Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. wrote that the ruling by the court’s Democratic majority “unilaterally reassigns constitutional duties and declares that the will of the judges is superior to the will of the people of North Carolina.”

Federal courts had declared that nearly 30 districts used in 2016 elections were unlawful racial gerrymanders. Ultimately over 100 of the 170 General Assembly seats had to be redrawn. Judges had permitted lawmakers elected in 2016 to serve in the General Assembly for the next two-year session. Still, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said that this edition of the legislature was illegally constituted, so the amendment was unlawfully on the ballot and should be canceled.

In 2020, a split state Court of Appeals panel declared that such a threshold for blocking legislative action would cause chaos and confusion by allowing anyone to challenge any conventional legislation approved by a majority of lawmakers whose districts were struck down. The appeals court overturned Collins’ 2019 ruling that struck down the amendments and found the General Assembly had exceeded its authority to place the referenda.

The state NAACP hailed Friday’s ruling as limiting an improperly elected legislature’s ability to change the state constitution.

“Rigging elections by trampling on the rights of Black voters has consequences. No legislature has the right to use racially gerrymandered maps — infecting more than two-thirds of the districts of this state — to steal power from the people to change our state’s constitution,” said state NAACP President Deborah Maxwell in a statement.

The NAACP sought narrow relief — that a General Assembly elected from illegally distorted boundaries lose its ability to propose constitutional referenda. Unlike legislation, it argued, a referendum needs support from three-fifths of the members of each legislative chamber to go on the ballot and isn’t subject to gubernatorial veto.

Republican state House Speaker Tim Moore issued a statement arguing that Friday’s ruling was a political decision.

“This party-line ruling is in direct contradiction to the rule of law and the will of the voters. The people of North Carolina will not stand for the blatant judicial activism and misconduct that has seized our state’s highest court, and neither will I,” Moore said.

The divided decision further intensifies sharp differences on the court and should bring greater focus on two seats on the statewide ballot this fall. Both are currently held by Democrats, so Republicans need to win one of them to regain a majority.

Friday’s ruling didn’t block regular state laws that require simple majorities and are subject to a governor’s veto. GOP legislators have passed other regular laws lowering taxes and requiring photo identification to vote.

A rule-making law passed in 2018 after the voter ID amendment was approved sought to implement the mandate. Friday’s ruling doesn’t cancel that law. But it remains unenforceable pending two other lawsuits — one federal and one state — challenging current voter ID rules.

A majority on a three-judge panel of trial judges struck down those rules last September, saying the law was rushed through the General Assembly and still intentionally discriminates against Black voters. The state Supreme Court has since agreed to hear this case, too.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Sen. Joe Manchin said he pays no attention to criticism or campaign donations when making decisions about what’s best for West Virginia.

Sounding somewhat exasperated when asked whether the dramatic bump in campaign contributions he’s received from oil and gas interests in recent months influenced his voting, the conservative Democrat said no.

During a roundtable discussion in Charleston on Friday, he said his office’s outsized role in drafting the sprawling economic package signed this week by U.S. President Joe Biden made him the target of the “far left,” environmental activists and the fossil fuel industry all at once.

“Nobody in their right mind would go through what I have gone through with my staff for the last eight months, taking all the crap we’ve taken from everybody in the country” if they weren’t doing what they believe is right, he said.

“I can be the hero and the villain all within a 24-hour shift,” he said. “The bottom line is, I make no excuses for what I think is right. I’ve always said this — If I can explain that, I can vote. I can take the criticism I know that goes with those votes. That’s part of the game.”

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, offered a key vote needed to pass the Democrats’ flagship climate and health care bill in the 50-50 Senate. The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, which Biden signed Tuesday.

The law, which places caps on prescription drug prices for seniors and extends subsidies meant to help Americans pay for health insurance, contains billions in incentives for clean energy. Owing largely to Manchin’s influence, it also offers renewed support for traditional fuel sources such as coal and natural gas with steps such as subsidies for technology that reduces carbon emissions.

“I wasn’t sure that they would ever agree because of my friends on the far left, the environmental community, was totally committed to dispersing and basically eliminating fossil,” Manchin said of the law.

But Manchin said there is “no way you can get rid of fossil in any short period of time.”

“You can use it cleaner as you basically transition, but it’s going to be with us, and you got to do the best you can with it,” he said. “So, I wanted to make sure they understood that.”

On the other side, he said he’s “been criticized by all my friends in the coal industry” because they think the bill doesn’t go far enough to protect their interests.

“(They) for some reason think that this is going to be harmful,” said Manchin, whose family owns Enersystems, a coal brokerage company. “I think it basically is a pathway forward so we can continue to produce industry, provide energy that our country needs.”

Under an agreement with the Democratic leadership, Manchin proposed a separate list of legislation to speed up federal permitting and make energy projects harder to block under federal acts. He also specifically asked that federal agencies “take all necessary actions” to streamline completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project long opposed by environmental activists.

The 303-mile (487-kilometer) pipeline, now mostly finished, would transport natural gas drilled from the Appalachian Basin through West Virginia and Virginia. Legal battles have delayed completion by nearly four years and doubled the pipeline’s cost, now estimated at $6.6 billion.

This election cycle, Manchin has received more campaign contributions from natural gas pipeline companies than any other member of U.S. Congress — contributions that have increased from $20,000 in 2020 to $331,910 in 2022, according to campaign finance records compiled by Open Secrets.

On Friday, he said his agenda in advocating for the pipeline was to bring down the cost for consumers by increasing the size of the market and creating jobs. He insisted the campaign money had nothing to do with it.

“I understand the cynical part of that. People look at it and they go, ‘Well, they’re just taking care of themselves,’” he said. “I’m sorry people, I have no idea who contributes. I don’t look at that, I don’t go out and advocate that at all.”

He said lawmakers need to “rise above” corporate and party pressure to deliver for their constituents.

“Politics has become a very, very nasty, destructive type of process … both sides are guilty of weaponizing the good of America for the good of the party — both sides, and it’s just not right for our country,” he said.

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By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A Utah judge on Friday blocked a state law banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ school sports from being enforced while he considers a lawsuit by three transgender students challenging the law.

Utah’s state legislature passed the law earlier this year, arguing that it would help protect athletes and ensure women were not edged out of their sport.

But Judge Keith Kelly of the Third Judicial District Court in Salt Lake City ruled that transgender girls did not necessarily have an automatic advantage over other girls, since puberty-blocking treatments can prevent them from developing the physical advantages for sports that boys can have.

With the ban blocked for now, Utah law states that transgender girls’ eligibility to participate in girls’ sports will be decided by a state-created commission on a case-by-case basis.

“The negative impact of the ban on these girls has been profound, and they are all breathing much easier now that it has been blocked,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represents the plaintiffs. “We are very grateful for the court’s decision and looking forward to putting an end to this law once and for all.”

A spokesperson for Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes declined to comment on the ruling.

Following a series of sporting victories by trans women athletes, including a collegiate swimmer, some conservatives and women’s sports advocates have called for more restrictive legislation. Utah’s ban was passed over the veto of Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, in March, who argued that it applied to very few students.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2019 that just 1.8% of high school students in the country are transgender, and the Human Rights Campaign has said that, according to surveys, only about 12% play on girls’ sports teams.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson and Tyler Clifford in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rosalba O’Brien)

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ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said Sen. Lindsey Graham’s appearance before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia should not be delayed to allow him to continue to challenge it in court.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May ordered Graham to honor his subpoena for the special grand jury. Graham’s attorneys appealed that order to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and asked May to stay her ruling and prohibit the special grand jury from questioning him while that appeal plays out. May declined that request in her order on Friday.

“Under the circumstances, further delay of Senator Graham’s testimony would greatly compound the overall delay in carrying out the grand jury’s investigation,” May wrote. “Further delay thus poses a significant risk of overall hindrance to the grand jury’s investigation, and the Court therefore finds that granting a stay would almost certainly result in material injury to the grand jury and its investigation.”

Graham is currently scheduled to testify on Tuesday. But he still has another motion to stay May’s ruling pending before the 11th Circuit.

Representatives for Graham did not immediately respond to messages on Friday seeking comment.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation early last year and in July filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates, including Graham.

Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who’s been told he’s a target of the investigation, testified before the special grand jury for nearly six hours on Wednesday. Two other lawyers who advised Trump, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, were ordered this week to appear before the panel later this month. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp filed a motion Wednesday seeking to quash a subpoena for his testimony.

The investigation, originally prompted by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is one of several pending legal threats Trump faces. Willis has said she’s considering seeking to compel the former president himself to testify before the special grand jury.

Attorneys for Graham, a South Carolina Republican, have argued that a provision of the U.S. Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a U.S. senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.

Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis had shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.

Willis and her team have said they want to ask Graham about two phone calls they say he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff shortly after the 2020 general election. During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.

Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.

Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump’s attorney general found there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of the election.

In asking May to stay her decision, Graham’s lawyers argued that his rights to immunity would be violated the moment he was questioned.

Willis’ team responded that delaying Graham’s testimony would harms the investigation. In addition to facts he knows, he’s also expected to shed light on other sources of information that the special grand jury may want to pursue, they wrote. So waiting to talk to him “could ultimately delay” the entire investigation.

In the separate motion for a stay filed with the 11th Circuit, Graham’s attorneys argue that on Wednesday Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney Donald Wakeford agreed to postpone the scheduled testimony pending the outcome of the appeal. They included a voicemail Wakeford left for Graham attorney Brian Lea.

Lea says in a declaration filed with the motion that later that same afternoon Wakeford confirmed Graham’s grand jury appearance wouldn’t move forward until the appeal was resolved. But then Wakeford sent an email 20 minutes later “stating that he did not ‘want to characterize the contents of our response before it is written,’” Lea wrote.

Lea said he reached out to Wakeford several more times by phone and email but got no response until Wakeford sent an email at 4:40 a.m. Friday saying the district attorney’s office intended to oppose the stay and would argue that Graham should appear before the special grand jury as planned.

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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed reporting.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the Trump investigations at: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A former deputy Virginia attorney general who says she was fired over social media posts in which she praised the Capitol rioters as “patriots” and falsely claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election is suing the attorney general’s office for defamation.

Monique Miles alleges in her lawsuit that Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares and members of his staff damaged her professional reputation and credibility when a spokesperson told the media she had resigned from her job and that she was not transparent during her initial interviews for the job.

Miles said she was forced out of her job as The Washington Post was getting ready to publish a story with screenshots of Facebook posts she wrote as a private citizen, more than a year before she began working as the deputy attorney general of the Government Operations and Transactions division, which oversaw work on issues related to election integrity.

“News Flash: Patriots have stormed the Capitol,” Miles wrote. “No surprise. The deep state has awoken the sleeping giant. Patriots are not taking this lying down. We are awake, ready and will fight for our rights by any means necessary.”

The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages.

In her complaint, Miles said she was aggressively recruited to apply for a job as a deputy attorney general shortly after Miyares won the 2021 election. She said she had known Darrell Jordan, Miyares’ chief of staff, for about four years and believed the office was aware of her views about the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 riots because she and Jordan were Facebook “friends” and he was “privy” to her posts.

Miles said no one in the attorney general’s office — including Miyares — asked her about her political views during interviews for the job.

About a week after Miles began her job in January, a friend told her the Post had asked her for comment on a story about Miles. She said she immediately told Jordan and other officials in Miyares’ offiice.

On Feb. 10, she said she had a series of meetings, phone calls and text messages with the officials in which she presented them with screenshots of her Facebook posts and explained that she had later edited some of them as she gained “more information from the news, post-election lawsuits, legislative hearings, and election audits as information was unfolding.”

In a text exchange with Jordan, she wrote, “I don’t condone the Jan. 6 riot or any of the lawlessness,” according to the lawsuit.

Miles said she was told the attorney general’s office would give her “an opportunity to resign,” but she did not do so.

Miles said she sent a message to several officials — including Miyares — and told them, “I have done nothing wrong.”

The lawsuit says that Miyares’ director of communications, Victoria LaCivita, issued a statement saying Miles had resigned. Miles said she was inundated by news outlets seeking comment, but she did not respond at first, believing that Miyares’ office would correct their statement. But when no correction was issued, Miles said she reached out to the media to say she had been asked to resign because of statements she made about the election and the events of Jan. 6.

LaCivita, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said in a statement Friday that the attorney general’s office “commits to vigorously defend against Ms. Miles’ claim for $1 million of taxpayer money and is confident that our legal position is strong.”

According to the lawsuit, a statement issued by LaCivita said the attorney general’s office and Miles had “parted ways” because she showed a “lack of transparency during her initial interviews for the position.”

Miles said the statement impugned her reputation for truthfulness and integrity, qualities that are especially important as an attorney in a profession in which character and fitness are required to maintain a license to practice law.

“This is all about clearing my name,” Miles said in a telephone interview Friday.

Miles said in the lawsuit that she has lost clients because of the suggestion that she was not transparent and has been questioned by at least two judges in open court about the matter.

Courthouse News first published a story about the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Richmond Circuit Court..

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ATLANTA (AP) — Two Georgia Public Service Commission elections will not occur this November, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday, reversing an earlier appeals court ruling that allowed them to proceed.

Instead, the high court reverted to the original decision by a federal judge in Atlanta that postponed the elections after finding that electing the five commissioners statewide illegally diluted Black votes.

District 2 Commissioner Tim Echols and District 3 Commissioner Fitz Johnson, both Republicans, are seeking reelection to six-year terms. Echols is being challenged by Democrat Patty Durand and Libertarian Colin McKinney, while Johnson faces Democrat Shelia Edwards.

The Supreme Court decision came hours after a state court judge in a separate case overturned a residency challenge to Durand and allowed her to stay on the ballot, ruling that new districts drawn earlier this year violated Durand’s rights. Edwards also earlier won a residency challenge.

The Supreme Court ruled that U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg’s decision did not come too close to the election. The justices ruled that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to block Grimberg’s order by citing an earlier Supreme Court decision saying judges shouldn’t order changes close to elections.

Grimberg broke new ground in finding that statewide elections violate the Voting Rights Act, although his decision hinged on Georgia’s decision of having candidates live in particular districts but run statewide. He found that illegally handicapped Black-favored candidates, and that such candidates would have a better chance of winning if only voters in a district voted on each candidate, making it possible to draw at least one Black-majority district.

Justices, in an unsigned one-paragraph order, wrote that the 11th Circuit was wrong to rely on that decision because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger earlier told Grimberg that officials would have enough time to alter ballots if Grimberg ruled by Aug. 12. Justices found that because of that statement, Raffensperger had forfeited that argument.

The high court left open the possibility that the 11th Circuit could block Grimberg’s ruling and let the election go forward on other grounds. The 11th Circuit is also expected to consider a full appeal of the ruling later.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr argues that Grimberg fundamentally erred in his decision by concluding that race and not Democratic partisanship drove defeats of candidates preferred by Black voters. He also says the judge overstepped in concluding that only state law and not the state constitution requires statewide elections. Grimberg earlier rejected both arguments.

Plaintiffs have said district elections would spotlight concerns of Black voters, including people with lower incomes who pay high utility bills. The lawsuit was brought by leaders of the NAACP, Georgia Conservation Voters and Black Voters Matter.

The commission regulates Georgia Power Co. and other utilities, determining how much companies are allowed to bill millions of ratepayers.

If Grimberg’s ruling stands, state lawmakers would have to draw single-member districts for the commission.

Another federal judge earlier this year a llowed Georgia’s congressional elections to proceed even though he preliminarily found redistricting was likely to have illegally harmed Black voters. Voting rights advocates have decried decisions that prioritize allowing elections to go forward, saying they allow states to proceed with illegal elections. It also sparks fears that the Supreme Court will gut the Voting Rights Act section allowing people to sue over district lines and other voting provisions.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission elections have been intensely litigated this year. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melynee Leftridge ruled Thursday that Durand should stay on the ballot despite Raffensperger trying to kick her off for not meeting her district’s one-year residency requirement.

Leftridge ruled that the requirement was not constitutional in Durand’s case because she was targeted for exclusion during redistricting based on her residency.

The judge cited text messages between Echols and Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore, who drew the districts that lawmakers adopted in March. Leftridge said evidence shows Pridemore had drawn a map that left Gwinnett County, where Durand previously lived, in District 2. But after Echols texted Durand’s previous address to Pridemore, she drew a new map that excluded Gwinnett County from the district.

Durand moved to Conyers, part of the new District 2, but Raffensperger challenged her qualifications in April for not meeting the one-year residency requirement.

Leftridge ruled that the residency law, as applied, violated Durand’s First Amendment right to free association and her 14th Amendment right to equal protection.

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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When JD Vance founded “Our Ohio Renewal” a day after the 2016 presidential election, he promoted the charity as a vehicle for helping solve the scourge of opioid addiction that he had lamented in “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir.

But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May, shortly after clinching the state’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.

The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision to bring on Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny. She’s an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the residency in the fall of 2018.

Documents and emails obtained by ProPublica for a 2019 investigation found that Satel, a senior fellow at AEI, sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors in her articles on addiction for major news outlets and occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance, including on occasions in 2004 and 2016. Over the years, according to the report, AEI received regular $50,000 donations and other financial support from Purdue totaling $800,000.

Longtime Ohio political observer Herb Asher cast the charity’s shortcomings, including Satel’s links to Big Pharma, as a “betrayal.”

“A person forms a charity presumably to do good things, so when it doesn’t, for whatever reason, that really is a betrayal,” said Asher, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State University. “That’s something voters can get their arms around.”

Vance’s campaign said the nonprofit is simply on temporary hold during Vance’s Senate run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan. It also said Vance was unfamiliar with Satel’s connection to Purdue when she was selected for the residency.

“JD didn’t know at the time, but remains proud of her work to treat patients, especially those in an area of Ohio who needed it most,” the campaign said in a statement.

In an email to the AP this week, Satel said that she “never consulted with” or ever “took a cent from Purdue” and that she didn’t know that Purdue had donated money to AEI because the institute maintains a firewall between its scholars and donors. She said she relies “completely on my own experience as a psychiatrist and/or data to form my opinions.”

Phoebe Keller, spokesperson for AEI, said the institute’s scholars “have academic freedom to follow their own research to conclusions without interference from management.”

Purdue Pharma did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Vance has described Our Ohio Renewal’s mission variously over the years as “to bring interesting new businesses to the so-called Rust Belt,” “to fill some of the (area’s) treatment gaps in mental health” and “to combat Ohio’s opioid epidemic.”

He has acknowledged at points that the charity fell short of his vision, though he has more recently suggested it remains active — including listing himself on a financial disclosure filed this week as “honorary chairman” of the canceled organization.

In his book, Vance recounts the hardship and heartbreak he and his family experienced as a result of his mother’s battle with drug addiction, which ravaged Appalachian areas of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when the 38-year-old was growing up. She used both OxyContin and heroin.

Ohio remains one of the hardest-hit states for deadly drug overdoses, with about 14 people dying each day, according to the most recent statistics.

Vance expressed hopes in media interviews about the time Satel arrived in struggling Ironton, Ohio, in September 2018, that she would use her experience to develop better treatment methods for addiction that could be “scaled nationally” or perhaps to produce “a paper or book-length publication” detailing her findings. She has yet to do either.

“I am working on a book,” Satel told the AP in an email exchange this week, nearly three years after she wrapped up her residency.

D.R. Gossett, CEO of the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization, who helped oversee Satel’s roughly $70,000 residency, said she “helped people who were struggling in southern Ohio” and “to this day, people are thankful for her presence.” That included treating an unspecified number of patients in a region long designated a health care shortage area and what Gossett described as “community planning efforts.”

After the residency ended, Satel’s public remarks suggested she remained as convinced as ever that addiction stems from combined behavioral and environmental forces — not the documented overprescribing and aggressive marketing of OxyContin and other opioids that helped families and state, local and tribal governments ultimately secure a $6 billion national settlement against Purdue in March.

“The data are completely clear that the decline in opioid prescribing had no effect on the overall opioid overdose rate,” she said in the email to the AP, blaming the number of growing overdoses on heroin and fentanyl.

It’s a familiar position for Satel, whose opinion columns in national publications included an October 2004 Times article, “Doctors Behind Bars: Treating Pain is Now Risky Business,” a February 2018 Politico article, “The Myth of What’s Driving the Opioid Crisis – Doctor-prescribed painkillers are not the biggest threat” and the March 2018 Slate article, “Pill Limits Are Not a Smart Way to Fight the Opioid Crisis.”

Jack Frech, a senior executive in residence at Ohio University who headed an Appalachian Ohio welfare agency for more than 30 years, said there is no doubt that the region was targeted with prescription opioids in the early days of the epidemic. He said the path to addiction to heroin and fentanyl for many residents “started with the overabundance of easily accessible pain pills.”

Ryan and his allies are already targeting Our Ohio Renewal in television ads, citing recent Business Insider reporting that called into question the charity’s payments to a Vance political adviser and on public opinion polling.

A year after Satel finished up her residency, a friend emailed Vance in October 2020 to express concern that Satel was headlining an AEI event on the origins of the U.S. opioid crisis “without a splash banner saying how much money AEI takes from Purdue Pharma.”

“Yeah. It’s not good,” Vance replied, according to a copy of the email obtained by the AP. “I have a minor affiliation with AEI. Thinking about dropping it because of this and other things.” He did. Keller, the AEI spokesperson, said Vance ended his nonresident fellowship at the institute that year and did not renew the affiliation.

Medical professionals and others on the front lines of the drug crisis say the scourge of addiction in Appalachia still needs advocates.

“There’s definitely still a major problem,” said Trisha Ferrar, who directs The Recovery Center in Lancaster, at the edge of Appalachian Ohio. “Things are very tough and people who are sick are having a lot of challenges. There’s just a lot of uncertainty in the world right now that kind of adds to that.”

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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 David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hires over the next decade will mainly replace retiring Baby Boomers, answer taxpayer questions and program new computers, U.S. Treasury officials and tax experts said, responding to Republican claims that the IRS will recruit 87,000 new agents to harass Americans on their taxes.

The Republican attack ads and social media messages follow a decade of Republican-passed budget cuts https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce in Congress for the IRS, leaving it with 16,000 fewer employees in 2021 than it had in 2010. The agency is responsible for collecting the bulk of nearly $5 trillion in annual U.S. revenues.

Days after President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act that includes $80 billion in new IRS funding over 10 years, Republicans including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have continued criticizing that funding https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1559917181873405955 on social media.

“I think it was basically a middle finger to the American public that this is what they think of you,” DeSantis told a news conference on Wednesday. “All the problems we have to deal with and they think the way is to do 87,000 IRS agents.”

Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, has said Democrats plan to hire an “army of 87,000 IRS agents https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1557716607144706049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw,” more than the population of Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Others, including Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, have repeatedly said that 87,000 new agents would be armed.

A Reuters Fact Check https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-irs-armed-idUSL1N2ZT296 found that only 2,100 special agents in the IRS Criminal Investigation branch are authorized to carry firearms.

The 87,000 figure does exist, buried within a May 2021 Treasury Department report https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf when the Biden administration was pushing a bigger spending bill with the same $80 billion IRS funding. The report estimated the money could fund 86,852 full-time hires through 2031.

But the actual net staff increase would be far lower, as the IRS expects over 50,000 employees to retire over the next five years alone, said Natasha Sarin, Treasury counselor for tax policy and administration.

Claims that all 87,000 would be auditors, criminal enforcement agents or armed are “deeply dangerous nonsense – and false,” Sarin told Reuters.

“The speed and voracity with which (Republicans) are coming at this is really a testament to how important these resources are going to be – because there are many wealthy tax evaders that stand to lose a lot,” Sarin said.

The new resources are aimed at closing an estimated $600 billion annual “tax gap” – taxes owed but unpaid – by cracking down on evasion by the wealthy, especially those with opaque income sources.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the funding would increase federal revenues by $204 billion over 10 years – key to climate and healthcare spending.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directed IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig this week to produce a $80 billion spending and hiring plan within six months, but not to boost scrutiny on people earning under $400,000.

Sarin declined to say how many revenue agents the IRS wants to hire – a job category that stood at 8,321 in fiscal 2021.

MAKING THE IRS MORE LIKE ONLINE BANKING

After making up for attrition, the IRS hiring plan includes tens of thousands of new customer service personnel and information technology specialists.

These hires will develop technology tools to identify more high-end audit targets and provide a customer experience on par with online banking, she said.

“We’ll have an IRS that is able to serve Americans the way that they deserve. That means an IRS, for example, that is able to answer the phones,” Sarin added.

Representative Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, disputed Treasury’s assertion that many of the new hires would replace retirees, his office saying on Twitter https://twitter.com/WaysandMeansGOP/status/1560360530996613122, “the existing budget can replace them. These are all new.”

To target wealthy taxpayers and handle sophisticated audits, Sarin said the IRS needs mid-career individuals with accounting and often tax law experience.

Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow with the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, said it will be difficult for the IRS to compete with the private sector for experienced employees in a tight labor market as the IRS has salary limitations based on federal pay scales.

“From the IRS’ perspective, one area where they might be able to compete on is offering a better quality of life,” Holtzblatt said. This includes more job security, government health care, pension benefits and regular working hours.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Heather Timmons and Josie Kao)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden has appointed Dave Noble, currently chief of staff for the Peace Corps, to oversee management and administration of the White House, a White House official said on Friday.

Noble, who will hold the title of director of White House Management and Administration and Office of Administration and assistant to the president, replaces Anne Filipic.

During the Obama administration, Noble served as deputy director of the White House personnel office.

Filipic joined the White House in January 2021 after a job with the Obama Foundation.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Sam Holmes)

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – A court considered on Thursday whether to unseal records containing evidence presented by the U.S. Justice Department to justify its search of Donald Trump’s Florida home last week, in a case pitting news organizations against judicial officials.

News outlets are trying to persuade a federal judge that the public deserves to see the evidence it used to secure court approval for the search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

But the Justice Department has opposed the release of the affidavit containing the evidence, which gave investigators probable cause to believe crimes were committed at Trump’s Palm Beach home.

Jay Bratt, the head of the department’s counterintelligence and export control section, told the judge on Thursday that releasing the affidavit is not in the public interest because it could harm the ongoing probe.

“There is another public interest at stake and that is the public interest that criminal investigations are able to go forward unimpeded,” he said.

The search was part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

The Justice Department is investigating violations of three laws, including a provision in the Espionage Act that prohibits the possession of national defense information and another statute that makes it a crime to knowingly destroy, conceal or falsify records with the intent to obstruct an investigation.

Attorneys for several media outlets including The New York Times, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NBC News are asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday to unseal the affidavit and other related materials filed with the court, saying the public’s right to know and the historic significance of the search outweigh any arguments to keep the records sealed.

“The public could not have a more compelling interest in ensuring maximum transparency over this event,” said Charles Tobin, one of the attorneys arguing for the media companies.

Trump in statements on social media has called on the court to unseal the unredacted version of the affidavit “in the interest of transparency.”

But none of his attorneys have filed any motions asking the West Palm Beach federal court to do so. His attorney Christina Bobb, however, was present in the courtroom on Thursday to observe the proceedings.

Trump says the search was politically motivated. He has also said, without providing evidence, that he had a standing order to declassify the documents in question.

However, none of the three laws cited by the Justice Department in the search warrant require a showing that the documents were in fact classified.

Threats directed at FBI agents have increased since the raid.

In Ohio last week, police shot an armed man dead after he tried to breach an FBI building. A second man in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has since been charged with making threats against FBI agents.

Bratt said on Thursday that the two agents whose names appeared on a leaked copy of the unredacted warrant have also since received threats.

In addition, he said, the department “is very concerned about the safety of the witnesses in the case.”

Trump’s rhetoric against the FBI have caught on with Republican voters, 54% of whom say federal law enforcement officials behaved irresponsibly in the case, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found this week.

The Mar-a-Lago search marked a significant escalation in one of the many federal and state investigations Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business. The Republican former president has suggested he might run for the White House again in 2024, but has not made any commitment.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland took the highly unusual step of publicly moving to unseal the search warrant, two attachments and a redacted version of the receipt showing the items the FBI seized during its search on Aug. 8.

The records showed that the FBI seized boxes containing 11 sets of classified materials, some of which were labeled “top secret” – the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held U.S. national security information.

Such documents usually are typically kept in special government facilities because disclosure could cause grave damage to national security.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department said it is open to releasing some additional redacted materials from the warrant, such as cover sheets, the government’s motion to seal and the court’s sealing order.

The media outlets in the case have also asked for those records to be unsealed as well.

At the start of Thursday’s proceedings, Reinhart said he would unseal those other portions of the documents with some redactions.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; additional reporting by Christopher Gallagher; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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