Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House will issue guidance Friday to federal agencies in a bid to ensure effective implementation and oversight of the $1 trillion infrastructure spending law, officials told Reuters.

President Joe Biden will meet Friday with about a dozen inspectors general (IGs) and other oversight officials, the White House said, along with other key administration officials overseeing infrastructure spending.

Biden wants to empower IGs – independent government watchdogs – to ensure appropriate oversight of the big government spending plan approved in November, the officials said.

The 14-page guidance memo, reviewed by Reuters and being issued on Friday by White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, says agencies must designate a senior official to be accountable for infrastructure spending implementation and to lead regular reviews.

Agencies should work with IGs as they design infrastructure programs and hold joint review meetings with IGs and OMB on significant programs, Young wrote.

The guidance says agencies should use “enterprise risk management practices … to identify and mitigate risks during program design.”

An administration official told Reuters the federal government was working to hire about 8,000 people to implement the infrastructure law, with the majority to be hired in 2022. The guidance says the jobs include “human resources, contracting officers, grants managers, and data scientists.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote this week on Twitter the department “is ready to bring on thousands of new employees.” Buttigieg’s department is overseeing about $200 billion in competitive and discretionary grant programs.

A fact sheet seen by Reuters says the administration wants agencies to “make evidence-based decisions, transparently describe the criteria for investment decisions, (and) set and track measurable goals, performance indicators, and milestones.”

The guidance also directs agencies to make it easier for smaller governments to apply for grants, including providing technical assistance to local and tribal communities, and says agencies must report monthly infrastructure spending to government website USAspending.gov for public disclosure.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bradley Perrett)

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan majority of U.S. voters oppose politicians punishing companies over their stances on social issues, a cold reception for campaigns like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ against Walt Disney Co, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The two-day poll completed on Thursday showed that 62% of Americans – including 68% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans – said they were less likely to back a candidate who supports going after companies for their views.

DeSantis signed a bill last week that strips Disney of self-governing authority at its Orlando-area parks in retaliation for its opposition to a new Florida law that limits the teaching of LGBTQ issues in schools.

For DeSantis, a rising star in the Republican Party, it was an attempt to bolster his conservative credentials as a culture warrior ahead of a possible run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But even when prompted along the lines of DeSantis’ own argument for his action – that laws should remove benefits of government tax breaks from corporations that push a “woke” agenda – 36% of Republicans nationally said they would be less likely to support a candidate with such a view.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll still showed that DeSantis, 43, is a potential force in national Republican politics.

Presented with a list of prominent politicians, a full 25% of Republican respondents said DeSantis best represents the values of their party, second only to former President Donald Trump who was favored by 40% of Republicans. Texas Governor Greg Abbott garnered 9%.

But the poll also showed a nation deeply divided on how schools teach about sexual orientation and gender identity — the subject of the controversial Florida law.

Half of U.S. voters support laws banning classroom discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity for children age 5-11, including 69% of Republicans and 36% of Democrats.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English and throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,003 adults and had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points.

(This story corrects name in first para)

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said American teachers are being unfairly targeted in “the culture wars,” and warned against book banning in an event at the White House Wednesday.

Biden, speaking at an annual 2022 National and State Teachers of the Year award ceremony, said politicians are trying to score points by banning books, in an apparent reference to conservatives and Republicans in states from Texas to Tennessee.

“American teachers have dedicated their lives to teaching our children and lifting them up,” Biden said to murmurs of agreement from the teachers. “We’ve got to stop making them the target of the culture wars. That’s where this is going.”

Across the United States, more than 1,000 titles, mostly addressing racism and LGBTQ issues, have been removed from school libraries in recent months, according to the writers’ organization PEN America.

He also defended U.S. teachers, who have been criticized by groups like “Moms for Liberty,” for they way they teach about race and slavery in the United States.

“Today, there are too many politicians trying to score political points, trying to ban books,” Biden said. “Did you ever think when you were teaching you’d be worrying about book burning and banning books all because it doesn’t fit someone’s political agenda?”

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress’s official probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters plans to hold public hearings in June before issuing a final report in early autumn, its chairman said on Tuesday.

The House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 is “still looking at probably early fall” for releasing the final report, Representative Bennie Thompson told reporters.

The committee’s leaders had previously said they were aiming for hearings in early spring.

The revised timetable would still allow the panel to release its findings before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress for the next two years of President Joe Biden’s term.

Republicans, who are currently favored to reclaim control of the House in that election, are expected to shut the committee down if they do so.

The committee had previously planned to issue an interim report followed by a final report, but Thompson said the interim document is no longer in the works.

“The progress is coming at a better pace than we anticipated, so in all probability the goal is to produce one report,” Thompson, a Democrat, told reporters.

The committee is trying to establish then-President Trump’s actions while thousands of his supporters attacked police, vandalized the Capitol and sent members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for their lives.

Congress had been meeting to count the electoral votes that gave Democrat Joe Biden victory in the November 2020 presidential election.

Some 800 people, including many Trump White House aides, have been interviewed in the committee’s investigation.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Lincoln Feast.)

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Republicans hoping to emerge from crowded primaries this year stacked up on operatives with ties to former President Donald Trump, betting those connections would give them a leg up on landing critical endorsements that would help them win.

But as Trump wades into some of the most competitive primaries, the strategy is proving a bust.

In Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states that will kick off a more frenzied phase of the midterm campaign next month, the former president passed over candidates who hired some of his most prominent aides and allies. He instead endorsed contenders including Mehmet Oz and JD Vance, who were relatively new to politics but boasted high-wattage profiles tied to television and books.

As Trump seeks to assert himself this election year as the GOP’s undisputed kingmaker, the endorsements are a reminder of the traits that are often most important to him. While he demands loyalty of those around him, he rarely returns it in equal measure. And the former reality television star-turned-president remains dazzled by the power of celebrity in politics.

“Obviously Donald Trump is very mercurial about how he does things, right? So we might know now, with 20/20 hindsight, that that was not the best bet to make,” said longtime GOP strategist Doug Heye of the campaigns’ Trump hires. “But at the time,” he said, the hiring “made the most sense.”

The dynamic is especially clear in Pennsylvania, where Trump endorsed Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon best known as the host of daytime TV’s “The Dr. Oz Show,” over former hedge fund manager David McCormick.

McCormick hired two of Trump’s most trusted aides: domestic policy adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller and longtime communications aide and counselor Hope Hicks. (Miller dropped McCormick as soon as Trump announced his support for Oz.) McCormick is also married to Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, Dina Powell, and had the backing of other allies, including former Trump campaign adviser David Urban and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is running for governor in Arkansas.

Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as White House counselor, also works for McCormick’s super PAC, Honor Pennsylvania, which paid her firm $15,000 last month.

Trump’s alliance with Oz sparked deep frustration among some on his team who signed on with McCormick and believed the former president would, at worst, stay neutral in the primary. But Oz shared a longstanding relationship with Trump, having known him for years and having similarly risen to fame with a television show. In announcing his endorsement, Trump noted Oz “has lived with us through the screen.”

“He’s somebody that had great success on television, which is like the ultimate poll,” Trump told supporters at a teletownhall last week. He noted Oz had the support of Fox News host Sean Hannity, and made the case that Oz, who also had the backing of former first lady Melania Trump, was simply best positioned to win the general election this fall.

Trump gave a similar rationale in Ohio, where he ultimately chose to back Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and venture capitalist who became a fixture on Fox News and conservative podcasts. He impressed Trump with his performance in a recent GOP debate.

At a rally Saturday night, Trump said he studied the race “very closely” and ”liked a lot of other candidates.” But, he said, “we have to pick the one that’s going to win.”

For now, the power of Trump’s endorsement is unclear. His backing opens his chosen candidates to a flood of money, attention and, sometimes, an appearance with the former president at one of his signature rallies. In Ohio, it might have helped lift Vance ahead of the May 3 primary. A Fox News poll released Tuesday found Vance slightly ahead of rivals Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons after trailing them in March.

Polls in Pennsylvania conducted in late March and early April suggested Oz was locked in a tight race, though there’s been little recent polling to detect if Trump’s endorsement has made a difference.

But in Georgia, another state where Trump has invested heavily, his chosen candidate for governor, David Perdue, is lagging in polls and fundraising. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released Tuesday found incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp leading Perdue 53% to 27% among likely voters. That just barely puts Kemp above the 50% threshold he would need to avoid a runoff.

Any major loss could deflate Trump’s image as the most powerful force in the party as he weighs a 2024 presidential run.

But such concerns do little to temper efforts among Republicans to win over Trump. Vance and his Ohio rivals, for instance, spent months traveling to Mar-a-Lago, mimicking his style, and running ads that painted each other as insufficiently loyal. They also brought on a coterie of Trump aides to help with their efforts.

Former Ohio Republican Chair Jane Timken, in particular, invested big, hiring Conway as well as two longtime Trump allies, Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie. Lewandowski was hired even though he was accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a GOP donor, leading to his brief excommunication from Trump’s circle.

Records show Timken paid Lewandowski $20,000 in March and also paid thousands to another Trump ally, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik. When Trump was president he pardoned Kerik, who had pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud and other charges that put him behind bars for three years.

Hiring Lewandowski and Kerik briefly became a campaign issue when Timken was pressed on the decision during a debate.

Meanwhile, investment banker Mike Gibbons, who fashioned himself as a Trump-style businessman, also tapped into Trump’s network, hiring the firm run by Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, which was paid $20,000 earlier this month.

Mandel, the former Ohio state treasurer who most aggressively adopted Trump’s shock jock tactics, has been campaigning with Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. He was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.

While Vance brought on some in Trump’s orbit and had the backing of Trump-allied megadonor Peter Thiel, he also had the support of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, along with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

At an event last week in Ohio, Trump Jr. noted those working for rival candidates.

“Trump person, speaks really favorably about someone that JD is opposing. Yeah, because they’re being paid $20,000 a month to do that. That’s their job. Doesn’t mean they actually believe it,” he quipped.

Trump has endorsed more than 100 candidates for offices up and down the ballot. Allies say he’s driven by a long list of factors — sometimes spite, sometimes personal rapport or even an appealing television appearance. After leaving the White House, he was eager to back those who offered to challenge GOP incumbents who voted for his impeachment, and also backed those who have parroted his election lies.

Trump has, at times, expressed frustration with former aides profiting from perceptions that they can sell his endorsement, and has made clear that those lobbying him needed to disclose their clients, according to a person familiar with his recent comments who requested anonymity to discuss them.

But allies say that anyone who believed they could buy a Trump endorsement was fundamentally mistaken.

“You hire consultants to coach you, to guide you on how to get the Trump endorsement,” said Bryan Lanza, a former Trump adviser who helped launch a pro-Vance super PAC but is no longer involved in any of the contests. “They help explain Trump, how he processes information, what he looks for, what he’s looking for in candidates.”

Still, Lanza said, those hires don’t guarantee Trump’s favor.

While there are advantages to hiring Trump whisperers, Lanza said, “I wouldn’t hire two. I’d certainly hire one.”

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AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

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By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will issue the first pardons of his term on Tuesday, part of a series of steps aimed at shoring up his record on crime and racial justice in an election year.

Biden will pardon three people and commute, or reduce, the sentences of 75 more, most of them convicted of non-violent drug crimes, the White House said.

White House officials are also introducing policies on Tuesday to assist people who have served time to integrate back into society and reduce the chance of repeat offenses, including a $145 million job training program at federal prisons.

The steps fall short of the criminal justice reforms activists want from the administration, including broadly reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses and freeing more of those previously convicted.

The United States has less than 5% of the world’s people but a fifth of its prisoners. Prison populations were reduced in recent years to lower risks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The issue carries special weight ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November, where Democrats’ control of the House of Representatives and Senate are on the line.

Democrats need support from people of color, who are disproportionately imprisoned. Rising urban crime is expected to be a key issue in the election, as are labor shortages in a time of high inflation.

“America is a nation of laws and second chances, redemption, and rehabilitation,” Biden said in a statement released on Tuesday. “Helping those who served their time return to their families and become contributing members of their communities is one of the most effective ways to reduce recidivism and decrease crime.”

He said the administration would continue to review clemency petitions and other efforts to reform the law enforcement system.

Betty Jo Bogans, 51, is being pardoned after serving a seven-year sentence stemming from a 1998 conviction for possessing crack cocaine for her boyfriend, the White House said. Dexter Jackson, 52, will be pardoned after a 2002 conviction for letting marijuana distributors use his pool hall.

The people seeing their sentences reduced have already served almost 10 years in prison, on average, for nonviolent drug offenses and have shown a commitment to rehabilitation, the White House said.

Abraham Bolden, 86, who served as the first Black member of a president’s Secret Service detail under President John F. Kennedy, is also among those being pardoned.

The Chicago man raised concerns about the readiness of the security force before facing charges in the 1960s of trying to sell government information to a counterfeiter. Bolden maintained his innocence and key witnesses in his trial admitted to lying at the prosecutor’s request, the White House said.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

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By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A slow-rolling staff shakeup is under way at the White House as President Joe Biden girds for battle in the November midterm elections, where he hopes to help his Democrats hang on to control of the U.S. Congress.

Cedric Richmond, a former Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana who as the director of the White House office of Public Engagement has been a top adviser to Biden since the president’s campaign for office, will depart to the private sector, a person briefed on the move said.

Richmond will also become a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, helping fundraise for the party and broadcasting its message, the person said.

Meanwhile, long-time Biden political and public relations adviser Anita Dunn is returning to the White House after departing last July to return to her communications firm, a second source briefed on the situation said.

At the same time, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy plans to step down, as Reuters reported last week. And press secretary Jen Psaki is expected to depart in the weeks ahead, a move that may include several members of the White House press team as well, multiple administration sources say.

It is fairly standard for top White House officials to warn staff long before midterm and presidential elections that they should depart with plenty of lead time, or stay until the election is over. But it is unclear whether Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain has issued such a memo.

Many political analysts believe Republicans are poised to take control of the House and possibly the Senate as well this November, as voters weigh in on inflation that has soared to a 40-year high on Biden’s watch, and progressive groups disappointed in Biden’s progress on climate and social issues stay home from the polls.

Richmond will leave for a “new important role” at some point in the future, Psaki told reporters Monday, adding it was “something the president is excited about and has asked him to do.” His departure was first reported by The New York Times.

Psaki’s primary deputy press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is considered a top contender to take over when Psaki leaves, multiple sources within the White House said.

On a West Coast swing last week, Biden predicted Democrats could win two more U.S. Senate seats in November’s midterms, strengthening the party’s majority to pass his agenda despite sagging approval ratings. [L2N2WJ2SQ]

(Reporting by Steve Holland; additional reporting by Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)

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(Reuters) – A New York judge on Monday held former President Donald Trump in contempt of court for not producing documents subpoenaed in the state attorney general’s civil probe of his business practices, and ordered Trump to be fined $10,000 per day until he complies.

Trump lost a bid to quash a subpoena from state Attorney General Letitia James, and then failed to produce all the documents by a court-ordered March 3 deadline, later extended to March 31 at his lawyers’ request.

Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that a contempt finding was appropriate because of what the judge called “repeated failures” to hand over materials and because it was not clear Trump had conducted a complete search for responsive documents.

“Mr. Trump … I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously. I hereby hold you in civil contempt,” the judge said, although Trump himself was not in the courtroom.

Trump intends to appeal the contempt ruling, said his attorney Alina Habba. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” Habba said in a statement.

Should Trump fail to pay the fine, he could be jailed, according to Sarah Krissoff, a New York lawyer not involved in the case, though she said such a scenario was unlikely and the judge could opt for other remedies such as increasing the amount of the fine.

James is investigating whether the Trump Organization, the former president’s New York City-based family company, misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax deductions.

She has said the more than three-year-old probe found “significant evidence” that the company included misleading asset valuations in its financial statements for more than a decade.

“Today’s ruling makes clear: No one is above the law,” James said in a statement on Monday.

Trump, a Republican, denies wrongdoing and has called the investigation politically motivated. James is a Democrat.

The attorney general has questioned how the Trump Organization valued the Trump brand, as well as properties including golf clubs in New York and Scotland and Trump’s own penthouse apartment in Midtown Manhattan’s Trump Tower.

Also on Monday, Engoron granted a motion by James’ office to compel real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to comply with certain subpoenas. Cushman conducted appraisals for several Trump Organization properties.

Trump and two of his adult children, Ivanka and Donald Jr., also were subpoenaed and ordered to provide testimony to the attorney general. An appeal is pending for the testimony.

COERCION, NOT PUNISHMENT

Andrew Amer, special litigation counsel with the attorney general’s office, said during the hearing that the $10,000-a-day fine was meant to coerce Trump into complying with the subpoena, not punish him.

Habba told the judge that Trump did indeed comply with the subpoena, but that he did not have any documents responsive to James’ request. Engoron said she would have to submit a detailed affidavit about her search of Trump’s records in order to be in compliance with the subpoena.

Such an affidavit would need to show that Trump’s team had conducted a diligent search for documents, said Halim Dhanidina, a former California judge now practicing as a lawyer.

“The court’s not going to just take someone’s word for it,” Dhanidina said.

The Trump Organization’s property valuations are also the subject of a criminal probe in Manhattan, which last year led to the indictment of the company’s chief financial officer.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said this month that probe is ongoing despite the departure of its two top lawyers.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Karen Freifeld; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., the key player in a North Carolina absentee ballot fraud probe that led to a do-over congressional election, has died.

His daughter, Andrea Dowless Heverly, wrote that her father “passed away peacefully” Sunday morning, according to a social media post. He had been diagnosed with an advanced form of lung cancer and died at his daughter’s home in Bladen County, his friend Jay DeLancy told The Associated Press in a brief interview. Dowless was in his mid-60s.

The political operative was set to go on trial this summer on more than a dozen state criminal counts related to absentee ballot activities for the 2016 general election and the 2018 primary and general elections. A half-dozen others were also charged.

Witnesses told state officials that Dowless, with help of his assistants, gathered hundreds of absentee ballots from Bladen County in 2018. Those workers testified they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates.

The 2018 general election results for the 9th Congressional District were ultimately thrown out and a new vote for the seat was ordered by the State Board of Elections, following an inquiry.

Dowless was working in the 2018 congressional race for then-Republican candidate Mark Harris. No charges were filed against Harris, who didn’t run in the subsequent election.

Dowless was later accused of charges related to the 2016 elections and the 2018 primary.

Dowless’ health had become an issue while receiving a six-month prison sentence for federal crimes involving benefits fraud that was tangentially related to the broader state probe.

A federal judge delayed Dowless’ reporting date from last December to April 1 after his defense attorney said Dowless had a stroke in August and learned in the fall about a potential cancer diagnosis.

Dowless’ federal attorney filed another motion in March that she requested be sealed “due to the inclusion of sensitive health information.” The Federal Bureau of Prisons never reported Dowless as being in custody.

Dowless’ state and federal attorneys didn’t immediately respond to emails on Sunday seeking comment. But with Dowless’ death, the absentee ballot case against him is now moot.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said legal delays caused by COVID-19 contributed to the inability to bring Dowless to trial sooner.

While expressing condolences to Dowless’ family, Freeman said Sunday her office would move forward with the prosecution of other defendants, even though Dowless had been seen as the principal in the probe.

“All of the other cases to some degree were derived from what the state thought was his master plan and coordination,” Freeman told the AP. She said each individual case would be evaluated before deciding how to proceed.

Dowless declined to accept a plea agreement on the state charges in November. The charges against him included obstruction of justice, possessing absentee ballots and perjury.

DeLancy, who saw Dowless last week, said Dowless “wanted the chance to defend himself against the state’s indictments” and rejected the plea deal “in hopes of being given his day in court.”

Dowless was “a man who was quick to trust and even love others by his acts of service,” DeLancy said in a text message.

Dowless had pleaded guilty last June in federal court to obtaining illegal Social Security benefits while concealing payments for political work he performed.

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This story has been corrected to show that Dowless declined a plea agreement in November, 2021, not that summer.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — With violent crime increasing in many parts of the U.S., Republicans see a winning strategy in portraying Democrats as soft on crime ahead of this year’s elections. In ads, campaign appearances and interviews, the GOP has ripped liberal policies and blamed Democratic lawmakers from the White House to city councils for the violence.

But in Oklahoma, where Gov. Kevin Stitt is being targeted for mass commutations and a crime that involved cannibalism, the attacks are different: Stitt is a Republican.

In one ad, a woman’s voice says Stitt commuted the prison sentence of a man who later “brutally murdered his neighbor, then tried to feed her organs to his family.” The ad, paid for by a group called Conservative Voice of America, concludes, “Oklahomans deserve a governor who cracks down on violent criminals, not one who lets them go.”

Democrats have borne the brunt of the political blame for the increase in homicides and other violent crime in recent years. In some cases that’s meant backpedaling on major criminal justice overhauls or insisting they don’t want to defund police departments, as some activists have advocated.

But now the attacks on some fellow Republicans are intensifying a split within the GOP between hard-liners and those conservatives who have shifted to support alternatives to prisons, largely as a way to save money. Groups that advocate various types of criminal justice reform worry the attacks could jeopardize meaningful changes that have occurred, many in heavily Republican states, such as Oklahoma, which has one of the highest incarceration rates, and Texas.

“We had been seeing sort of growing bipartisan consensus on reforms,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. But that’s gotten tougher because of rising crime and politics.

“There’s still some of those old holdouts who just are ‘lock them up, throw away the key’ types,” Ring said. “They’ve always been there, and I think that they have used the increase in crime to argue for a return to that posture by the party.”

Brett Tolman, executive director of the conservative criminal justice advocacy group Right on Crime, said “the accusation of being weak on crime gets thrown around very quickly,” causing “a lot of hesitation” in Congress. The former U.S. attorney said he now has to work with people mostly behind the scenes.

Republicans who support the changes say they can reduce crime as well as costs to taxpayers. When Stitt approved the 2019 mass commutation of more than 450 inmates in a single day, he said the release would save Oklahoma an estimated $11.9 million over the cost of keeping them behind bars. The commutations primarily benefited those convicted of drug possession or low-level property crimes.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, says his state saved billions of dollars by investing in alternative sentencing and closing prisons. He’s now defending Stitt, who’s facing an avalanche of attack ads as he seeks a second term as Oklahoma governor.

“I see the Texas reforms have proven tough on crime but soft on the taxpayer, as any conservative policy should be,” Perry wrote in a newspaper column defending Stitt.

The attack ads targeting Stitt were paid for by dark money groups, which don’t have to make their donors public. They criticize Stitt for signing off on the parole of a man now accused of three killings, including those of a 4-year-old girl and a neighbor whose heart he cut out and tried to feed to relatives, according to authorities.

Donelle Harder, a spokesperson for Stitt’s reelection campaign, said it’s not clear who is funding the groups.

“The undisclosed, special interest groups are not conservatives, and they are not being honest about their intentions,” Harder said. “Gov. Stitt’s commitment to lead as a conservative political outsider is clearly upsetting a small few.”

Trebor Worthen, a GOP political consultant who is running one of the dark money groups, Sooner State Leadership PAC, said it is dedicated to public safety and has raised $10 million. Worthen declined to identify specific donors.

“We are funded by business and community leaders who care deeply about our future and wish to exercise their First Amendment rights to advocate for policy changes that Oklahoma needs and deserves,” Worthen said.

The issue also has surfaced in the GOP primary for governor in Nevada. Former Sen. Dean Heller has criticized Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, saying he wants to defund the police. Lombardo told The Associated Press and other media outlets that he has no problem with his department losing funding if the money is used in another area that would benefit law enforcement.

“Who goes on NPR and says they want to defund the police?” Heller told a Nevada TV station during an interview, comparing Lombardo with progressive Democrats who often draw conservative ire, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “AOC, the Squad, and Sheriff Lombardo. They’re the ones that say that.”

In Illinois, Democrats who control state government hurriedly worked this spring to provide more funding to law enforcement after passing a major criminal justice overhaul last year that set strict standards for police behavior and eliminated cash bail beginning next year. Republicans have blasted the criminal justice legislation.

Among the most vocal critics is GOP candidate for governor Richard Irvin, a former prosecutor and defense attorney who is now mayor of Aurora, a Chicago suburb. Irvin, who faces several Republicans in the GOP primary, often touts his prosecutorial background as he blasts Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The Democratic Governors Association and Irvin’s GOP rivals have questioned his tough-on-crime credentials, however. In an ad, the DGA criticized Irvin’s work as a defense attorney, and fellow Republicans have attacked Irvin, who is Black, for expressing support for Black Lives Matter.

A spokesperson for Irvin dismissed the attacks. Eleni Desmertzis said Pritzker is “running scared” and facing “a former criminal prosecutor, tough-on-crime-mayor and strong supporter of law enforcement who has proven he’s not afraid to stand up for all lives in Illinois.”

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Burnett reported from Chicago.

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