Politics

The Republican matchup in the Wisconsin governor’s race on Tuesday features competing candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump and his estranged vice president, Mike Pence. Democrats are picking a candidate to face two-term GOP Sen. Ron Johnson for control of the closely divided chamber.

Meanwhile, voters in Vermont are choosing a replacement for U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy as the chamber’s longest-serving member retires. In Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar faces a Democratic primary challenger who helped defeat a voter referendum to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety.

What to watch in Tuesday’s primary elections in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut:

WISCONSIN

Construction company co-owner Tim Michels has Trump’s endorsement in the governor’s race and has been spending millions of his own money, touting both the former president’s backing and his years working to build his family’s business into Wisconsin’s largest construction company. Michels casts himself as an outsider, although he previously lost a campaign to oust then-U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold in 2004 and has long been a prominent GOP donor.

Establishment Republicans including Pence and former Gov. Scott Walker have endorsed former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who along with Walker, survived a 2012 recall effort. She argues she has the experience and knowledge to pursue conservative priorities, including dismantling the bipartisan commission that runs elections.

With Senate control at stake, Democrats will also make their pick to take on Johnson. Democratic support coalesced around Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes late in the race, when his three top rivals dropped out and threw their support to him. He would become the state’s first Black senator if elected.

Several lesser-known candidates remain in the primary, but Johnson and Republicans have treated Barnes as the nominee, casting him as too liberal for Wisconsin, a state Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020.

Four Democrats are also running in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, a seat that opened up with the retirement of veteran Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind. The district has been trending Republican, and Derrick Van Orden — who narrowly lost to Kind in 2020 and has Trump’s endorsement — is running unopposed.

MINNESOTA

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz faces a little-known opponent as he seeks a second term. His likely challenger is Republican Scott Jensen, a physician and former state lawmaker who has made vaccine skepticism a centerpiece of his campaign and faces token opposition.

Both men have been waging a virtual campaign for months, with Jensen attacking Walz for his management of the pandemic and hammering the governor for rising crime around Minneapolis. Walz has highlighted his own support of abortion rights and suggested that Jensen would be a threat to chip away at the procedure’s legality in Minnesota.

Crime has emerged as the biggest issue in Rep. Omar’s Democratic primary. She faces a challenge from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, who opposes the movement to defund the police and last year helped defeat efforts to replace the city’s police department. Omar, who supported the referendum, has a substantial money advantage and is expected to benefit from a strong grassroots operation.

The most confusing part of Tuesday’s ballot was for the 1st Congressional District seat that was held by U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who died earlier this year from cancer. Republican former state Rep. Brad Finstad and Democrat Jeff Ettinger, a former Hormel CEO, are simultaneously competing in primaries to determine the November matchup for the next two-year term representing the southern Minnesota district, as well as a special election to finish the last few months of Hagedorn’s term.

CONNECTICUT

It’s been roughly three decades since Connecticut had a Republican in the U.S. Senate, but the party isn’t giving up.

In the GOP primary to take on Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the party has endorsed former state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides. She’s a social moderate who supports abortion rights and certain gun control measures and says she did not vote for Trump in 2020. Klarides contends her experience and positions can persuade voters to oppose Blumenthal, a two-term senator who in May registered a 45% job approval rating, his lowest in a Quinnipiac poll since taking office.

Klarides is being challenged by conservative attorney Peter Lumaj and Republican National Committee member Leora Levy, whom Trump endorsed last week. Both candidates oppose abortion rights and further gun restrictions, and they back Trump’s policies.

VERMONT

Leahy’s upcoming retirement has opened up two seats in Vermont’s tiny three-person congressional delegation — and the opportunity for the state to send a woman to represent it in Washington for the first time.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, the state’s at-large congressman, quickly launched his Senate bid after Leahy revealed he was stepping down. Leahy, who is president pro tempore of the Senate, has been hospitalized a couple of times over the last two years, including after breaking his hip this summer.

Welch has been endorsed by Sanders and is the odds-on favorite to win the seat in November. He faces two other Democrats in the primary: Isaac Evans-Frantz, an activist, and Dr. Niki Thran, an emergency physician.

On the Republican side, former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, retired U.S. Army officer Gerald Malloy and investment banker Myers Mermel are competing for the nomination.

The race to replace Welch has yielded Vermont’s first wide-open U.S. House campaign since 2006.

Two women, including Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and state Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, are the top Democratic candidates in the race. Gray, elected in 2020 in her first political bid, is a lawyer and a former assistant state attorney general.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be the heavy favorite to win the general election in the liberal state. In 2018, Vermont became the last state without female representation in Congress when Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate.

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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Doug Glass in Minneapolis; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; and Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed to this report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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By Laura Sanicola

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. fuel retailers are fighting the inclusion of a tax credit for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in Democrats’ $430 billion spending bill, arguing SAF is more carbon intense and less efficient than renewable diesel.

Lawmakers are offering a $1.25-$1.75 per gallon SAF credit depending on the feedstock used, as part of a tax and climate bill that aims to lower U.S. carbon emissions by about 40% by 2030 and cut the federal budget deficit by $300 billion.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate and move to the House with the SAF credit included next week. Democrats control the House and approval with the credit is expected.

Fuel retailers fear the credit would shift vegetable oil and other renewable feedstocks to aviation, leaving less of it for fuel producers that make renewable diesel.

The National Association of Truckstop Operators (NATSO) and SIGMA, a fuel marketers association, are urging lawmakers to oppose the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 unless it provides tax parity between the biodiesel tax credit (BTC) and proposed SAF tax credit.

A 2021 study from LMC International, an agricultural marketing consultancy, found that SAF production is less efficient at reducing carbon emissions than renewable diesel as more feedstock is required per gallon of output.

“SAF cannot compete with other renewable fuels on an environmental basis,” said David Fialkov, executive vice president of government affairs at NATSO.

Other environmental advocates have argued that all biofuels that divert lipid-based feedstocks such as animal fats and waste cooking oils from existing markets present significant sustainability concerns.

“Increasing the global supply of vegetable oils, directly or indirectly, necessarily comes at the cost of forests and other natural lands,” according to researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation in an August briefing.

Airlines have told investors they will increasingly use sustainable aviation fuel made from vegetable oil and other low-carbon feedstocks in an attempt to decarbonize air travel. Due to poor economics, the fuel only represents 0.5% of today’s jet fuel pool.

Aviation accounts for 3% of the world’s carbon emissions, and is considered one of the toughest areas to cut emissions due to a lack of alternative technologies.

But the White House has vowed to lower aviation emissions by 20% by 2030, with a goal of boosting SAF production to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030, and to meet 100% of aviation fuel demand of about 35 billion gallons a year by 2050.

(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; Editing by David Gregorio)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats started pushing their election-year tax and spend bill through the Senate on Saturday, starting the sprawling collection of President Joe Biden’s priorities on climate, energy, health and taxes on a pathway through Congress that the party hopes will end in victory by the end of this week.

In a preview of the sharply partisan votes that are expected on a mountain of amendments, the evenly divided Senate voted to begin debate on the legislation 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie and overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. The package, a dwindled version of earlier multitrillion-dollar measures that Democrats failed to advance, has become a partisan battleground over inflation, gasoline prices and other issues that polls show are driving voters.

The House, where Democrats have a slender majority, could give the legislation final approval next Friday when that chamber plans to briefly return to Washington from summer recess.

“The time is now to move forward with a big, bold package for the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “This historic bill will reduce inflation, lower costs, fight climate change. It’s time to move this nation forward.”

Republicans said the measure would damage the economy and make it harder for people to cope with sky-high inflation. They said the bill’s business taxes would hurt job creation and force prices upward and urged voters to remember that in November.

“The best way to stop this tax and spend inflationary madness is to fire some of the 50 so they can’t keep doing this to your family,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

Nonpartisan analysts have said the legislation, which Democrats have named the Inflation Reduction Act, would have a minor impact on the nation’s worst inflation bout in four decades. Even so, it would take aim at issues the party has longed to address for years including global warming, pharmaceutical costs and taxing immense corporations.

Earlier Saturday, the Senate parliamentarian gave a thumbs-up to most of Democrats’ revised 755-page bill. But Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said Democrats had to drop a significant part of their plan for curbing drug prices.

MacDonough said Democrats violated Senate budget rules with language imposing hefty penalties on pharmaceutical companies that boost prices beyond inflation for drugs sold in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief drug pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own.

Other pharmaceutical provisions were left intact, including giving Medicare the power to negotiate what it pays for drugs for its 64 million elderly recipients, a longtime Democratic aspiration. Penalties on manufacturers for exceeding inflation would apply to drugs sold to Medicare, and there is a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on drug costs and free vaccines for Medicare beneficiaries.

Before approving the legislation, Democrats will have to fight off a “vote-a-rama” of nonstop amendments. Most will be designed by Republicans to upend the bill or at least force vulnerable Democrats facing reelection and party moderates into tough votes on issues like inflation, taxes and immigration.

Saturday’s vote capped a startling 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of Biden’s agenda that had seemed dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators — first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginia, then Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a package that would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.

The measure is a shadow of Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal, which funded a rainbow of progressive dreams including paid family leave, universal preschool, child care and bigger tax breaks for families with children. The current bill, barely over one-tenth that size, became much narrower as Democratic leaders sought to win the votes of the centrists Manchin and Sinema, yet it has unified a party eager to declare victory and show voters they are addressing their problems.

The bill offers spending and tax incentives favored by progressives for buying electric vehicles and making buildings more energy efficient. But in a bow to Manchin, whose state is a leading fossil fuel producer, there is also money to reduce coal plant carbon emissions and language requiring the government to open more federal land and waters to oil drilling.

Expiring subsidies that help millions of people afford private insurance premiums would be extended for three years, and there is $4 billion to help Western states combat drought. A new provision would create a $35 monthly cap for insulin, the expensive diabetes medication, for Medicare and private insurance patients starting next year. It seemed possible that language could be weakened or removed during debate.

Reflecting Democrats’ calls for tax equity, there would be a new 15% minimum tax on some corporations with annual profits exceeding $1 billion but that pay well below the 21% corporate tax. Companies buying back their own stock would be taxed 1% for those transactions, swapped in after Sinema refused to support higher taxes on hedge fund managers. The IRS budget would be pumped up to strengthen its tax collections.

While the bill’s final costs were still being determined, it would spend close to $400 billion over 10 years to slow climate change, which analysts say would be the country’s largest investment in that effort, and billions more on health care. It would raise more than $700 billion in taxes and from government drug cost savings, leaving about $300 billion for deficit reduction over the coming decade — a blip compared to that period’s projected $16 trillion in budget shortfalls.

Democrats are using special procedures that would let them pass the measure without having to reach the 60-vote majority that legislation often needs in the Senate.

The parliamentarian decides whether parts of legislation must be dropped for violating those rules, which include a requirement that provisions be chiefly aimed at affecting the federal budget, not imposing new policy.

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(SRN NEWS) Former President Donald Trump remains extremely popular with conservatives.

The 45th President won- by a wide margin – an unofficial straw poll of attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference Texas who were asked who they preferred as the Republican nominee for president in 2024.

Of the attendees who voted, just over 69% said they preferred Mr. Trump, with nearly 24% saying they would prefer Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

When asked about who they would prefer if Mr. Trump did not run for president, 65% of respondents said they preferred Governor DeSantis, while 8% said they would support Donald Trump Jr.

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By Richard Cowan and Makini Brice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Saturday began debating a Democratic bill to address key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda – tackling climate change, lowering the costs of medication for the elderly and energy, while forcing corporations and the wealthy to pay more taxes.

The debate began after the Senate voted 51-50 to move ahead with the legislation. Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tie vote, with all 50 Republicans in opposition.

The Senate was set to debate the bill for up to 20 hours before diving into an arduous, time-consuming amendment process called a “vote-a-rama.”

Democrats and Republicans were poised to reject each other’s amendments, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer maneuvered to keep a his 50-member caucus united behind a bill that was negotiated over several months. If even one Democrat were to peel off, the entire effort would be doomed in the evenly split 50-50 Senate.

Earlier in the day, the Senate parliamentarian determined that the lion’s share of the healthcare provisions in the $430 billion bill could be passed with only a simple majority, bypassing a filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to advance most legislation and enabling Democrats to pass it over Republican objections.

Democrats hope that the legislation will give a boost to their candidates in the Nov. 8 midterm elections in which Biden’s party is in an uphill battle to retain its narrow control of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Democrats cast the legislation as a vehicle to combat inflation, a prime concern of U.S. voters this year.

“The bill, when passed, will meet all of our goals: fighting climate change, lowering healthcare costs, closing tax loopholes abused by the wealthy and reducing the deficit,” Schumer said in a Senate speech.

There are three main parts to the bill’s tax provisions: a 15% minimum tax on corporations and the closing of loopholes that the wealthy can use to avoid paying taxes; tougher IRS enforcement; and a new excise tax on stock buybacks.

The legislation has $430 billion in new spending along with raising more than $740 billion in new revenues.

Democrats have said the legislation by 2030 would result in a 40% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions, blamed for climate change.

‘PRICE-FIXING’

The measure also would allow the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly to begin negotiating in 2026 with the pharmaceutical industry over prices on a limited number of prescription drug prices as a way of reducing costs. It also would place a $2,000-per-year cap on out-of-pocket medication costs under a Medicare drug program.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell attacked the provision involving negotiating drug prices, comparing it to past “price-fixing” attempts by countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and the former Soviet Union.

“Their policy would bring about a world where many fewer new drugs and treatments get invented in the first place as companies cut back on R&D,” McConnell said in a floor speech, referring to research and development.

While senators debated the policies embedded in the bill, its political ramifications also were on display.

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, former President Donald Trump predicted fallout for Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two key Democratic senators: “If this deal passes, they are both going to lose their next elections.”

But Manchin and Sinema are not up for re-election until 2024 and many of the provisions of the bill are popular with voters.

The legislation is a scaled-down version of a far broader, more expensive measure that many Democrats on the party’s left had hoped to approve last year. That measure stalled when Manchin, a centrist, balked, complaining that it would exacerbate inflationary pressures.

The bill calls for billions of dollars to encourage the production of more electric vehicles and foster clean energy, though automakers say sourcing rules will sharply limit how many electric vehicles qualify for tax credits.

It also would set $4 billion in new federal drought relief funds, a provision that could help the re-election campaigns of Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Mark Kelly in Arizona.

One provision cut from the bill would have forced drug companies to refund money to both government and private health plans if drug prices rise more quickly than inflation.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading progressive, has criticized the bill for failing to go far enough and said he planned to offer amendments that would revive a series of social programs he pushed last year, including broadening the number of prescription drugs Medicare could negotiate prices on and providing government-subsidized dental, vision and hearing aid.

His amendments were expected to fail.

Republicans have signaled that they will offer amendments touching on other issues, including controlling immigrants coming across the U.S. border with Mexico and enhancing policing to curtail rising crime rates in American cities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Makini Brice; additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici, David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A Democratic lawyer who pledged to make abortion prosecutions under Tennessee’s “trigger law” an extremely low priority in the county that includes Memphis has defeated the incumbent Republican district attorney who refused to say whether she would go after doctors who perform the procedure.

Steve Mulroy scored a decisive win over Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich in Thursday’s election after a contentious race that featured clashes over abortion prosecutions as well as a new state law requiring strict sentencing for violent crimes and other issues.

Mulroy takes office Sept. 1. He said his top priority is consulting with staff to develop strategies to combat violent crime, which is a persistent problem in Memphis.

“I’m looking forward to getting to know the people in the DA’s office, both the leadership and the line attorneys,” he said Friday.

A longtime prosecutor, Weirich has been the district attorney in Shelby County since 2011. She oversaw successful prosecutions in high-profile cases such as the murder of NBA player Lorenzen Wright and developed a program that uses a panel of community members to hold low-level offenders accountable without sending them to jail.

Weirich also has been the center of criticism. She came under fire for the prosecution of Black Lives Matter activist Pamela Moses, who was charged with trying to register to vote illegally. Moses, who had prior felonies, was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. At the time, legal experts said the sentence was excessive.

In February, a judge threw out the sentence and ordered a new trial after it was found that the Tennessee Department of Correction failed to turn over a necessary document in the case. Weirich decided not to pursue a second trial “in the interest of judicial economy,” she said at the time.

Weirich also accepted a private reprimand for her actions as lead prosecutor in the 2009 trial of Noura Jackson, who was convicted of fatally stabbing her mother more than 50 times.

Weirich had faced a recommendation of public censure on charges that she did not turn over a key witness statement to the defense until after the trial and that she improperly commented on Jackson’s right to remain silent.

Jackson was eventually released from prison after entering an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to avoid admitting guilt but acknowledges there is enough evidence to convict.

Mulroy, a law professor, civil rights lawyer and former federal prosecutor, and Weirich argued over Tennessee’s new “truth in sentencing” law, which requires serving entire sentences for various felonies, including attempted first-degree murder, vehicular homicide resulting from the driver’s intoxication and carjacking.

In an Associated Press interview, Weirich said the law helps ensure justice for victims of violent crimes and makes those who break the law more accountable.

In a separate AP interview, Mulroy said the law does not reduce crime or provide incentives for incarcerated people to rehabilitate and earn credit for work done in prison. The law drives up Tennessee’s prison populations and budgets, using funds that could be better spent on youth intervention and community reentry programs, he said.

The candidates also battled over Tennessee’s pending abortion trigger law, which could take effect later this month.

The Tennessee trigger law would essentially ban all abortions statewide, except in cases when the procedure is necessary to prevent the pregnant person’s death or serious impairment “of a major bodily function.”

The law would make performing an abortion a felony and subject doctors to up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

In the AP interview, Mulroy said the criminal justice system is not the appropriate forum to “handle reproductive choice matters” and abortion prosecutions would be an “extremely low priority” for him.

Weirich never said outright whether she would or wouldn’t prosecute doctors who perform abortions. She said it would be a violation of Tennessee code for her office “to issue a broad and hypothetical statement without an actual charge or case.”

The DA contest is an example of abortion becoming an issue in underticket races, including battles for state attorney general. Democrats in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio and elsewhere are portraying themselves as backstops against potentially more restrictions on abortion rights, while many Republicans seeking to win or retain seats as their states’ top lawyers are vowing to support tougher laws.

Weirich told supporters Thursday night that she would continue to fight for crime victims and “it’s been a great honor to serve.”

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Associated Press reporter Julie Smyth contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio.

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By Sofia Ahmed and Ted Hesson

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said on Friday he has started to send buses carrying migrants to New York City in an effort to push responsibility for border crossers to Democratic mayors and U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

The first bus arrived early on Friday at the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan carrying around 50 migrants from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Venezuela. Volunteers were helping to steer people who had no relatives in town to city resources.

“Most of them don’t have anybody to help. They don’t know where to go, so we’re taking them to shelters,” said one volunteer at the bus station, Evelin Zapata, from a group called Grannies Respond.

One family of four from Colombia, who ended up at a homeless intake center in the Bronx, were unsure of where they would spend the night. Byron and Leidy, both 28, said they left the country’s capital Bogota because they were having trouble finding work. They did not provide their last name.

“It’s a little easier to enter the country now, before it was very hard to come here with children,” said Leidy, who traveled with her kids Mariana, 7, and Nicolas, 13. She said the family had hoped someone they knew in New York would take them in, but that plan did not work out. “We came here because they said they would help us find a place to sleep to not have to stay in the street,” Leidy said.

Abbott, who is running for a third term as governor in November elections, has already sent more than 6,000 migrants to Washington since April in a broader effort to combat illegal immigration and call out Biden for his more welcoming policies.

Biden came into office in January 2021 pledging to reverse many of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, but some efforts have been blocked in court.

Abbott said New York City Mayor Eric Adams could provide services and housing for the new arrivals.

“I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief,” Abbott said in a statement.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, another Republican, has followed Abbott’s lead and bused another 1,000 to Washington.

U.S. border authorities have made record numbers of arrests under Biden although many are repeat crossers. Some migrants who are not able to be expelled quickly to Mexico or their home countries under a COVID-era policy are allowed into the United States, often to pursue asylum claims in U.S. immigration court.

‘POLITICAL PAWNS’

Adams’ office has in recent weeks criticized the busing efforts to Washington, saying some migrants were making their way to New York City and overwhelming its homeless shelter system.

On Friday the mayor’s press secretary Fabien Levy said Abbott was using “human beings as political pawns,” calling it “a disgusting, and an embarrassing stain on the state of Texas.”

Levy said New York would continue to “welcome asylum seekers with open arms, as we always have, but we are asking for resources to help do so,” calling for support from federal officials.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday called the Texas initiative “shameful” and an unnecessary burden on taxpayers in that state.

Costs for the effort amounted to $1.6 million in April and May, a local NBC News affiliate reported in June, more than $1,400 per rider.

Texas officials declined to provide the cost when asked by Reuters.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has also said her city’s shelter system has been strained by migrant arrivals and last month called on the Biden administration to deploy military troops to assist with receiving the migrants, a request that has frustrated White House officials.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had declined a request for D.C. National Guard to help with the transportation and reception of migrants in the city because it would hurt the troops’ readiness.

Bowser suggested on Friday that she would submit a more targeted troop request, reiterating her stance that the federal government should handle what she called a “growing humanitarian crisis.”

“If the federal government’s not going to do it, they need to at least get out of our way and give us the resources that we need,” she told reporters.

Many migrants are arriving after long and difficult journeys through South America.

Venezuelan migrant Jose Gregorio Forero said before traveling more than a day by bus from Texas he had crossed through eight countries. “It’s taken 31 days to get here, on foot and asking for rides,” he said, saying he was glad to be in New York where he thought there would be more job opportunities.

New York City, he said, “is very beautiful. I love it.”

(Reporting by Sofia Ahmed in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Jeff Mason in Washington, Roselle Chen and Dan Fastenberg in New York; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Daniel Wallis)

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As election workers spend long hours tallying ballots in Arizona and elsewhere in the days after Tuesday’s primary elections, some critics are arguing they should be finished counting by now.

Widely shared Twitter posts this week called the delayed results “corrupt” and “unacceptable,” while Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in a press conference on Wednesday said Arizona voters should know the winner “when they go to bed on election night.”

She repeated that gripe during a radio interview Friday, the day after the AP declared her victory in the primary, saying “we had days of waiting to get the ballots counted. It’s a mess.”

These complaints ignore the realities of modern-day ballot processing, which requires extensive time and labor, according to election officials and experts. In fact, states have never reported official election results on election night, experts say.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: In the past, election results have been released on election night.

THE FACTS: That’s misleading. While media outlets routinely project winners and The Associated Press calls races when it determines a clear victor, no state releases complete and final results on election night, nor have they ever done so in modern history, according to experts.

“In the entirety of American history, there were never official results on election night. That is not possible, it’s never happened,” said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney and current executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “There is not a state in the union that doesn’t wait days, if not weeks, until after Election Day to officially certify the final results.”

He added that when margins are large enough in certain races, media outlets feel confident enough to call races for one candidate or another. For example, Katie Hobbs was the clear winner in Arizona’s Democratic primary for governor by Tuesday night, while the state’s GOP primary for governor was still too close to call until Thursday night.

But those projections aren’t official election results, and counting is still taking place after those calls are issued.

There’s a reasonable argument to be made that states could strive to release unofficial election results by election night, according to Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT. Some states, like Florida, have passed laws that make that easier, he said.

However, even states that do manage to report unofficial counts on election night spend the following days processing provisional ballots, reconciling unmatched signatures and correcting any tabulation errors, which leads to a delay in final results, Stewart said.

Those unofficial counts also aren’t sufficient for the closest races, where candidates must wait for final results to identify the winner anyway, Stewart said.

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CLAIM: If election officials take days to release a complete ballot count, that means they cheated or are incompetent.

THE FACTS: That’s false. Time and labor is necessary to process and correctly tabulate ballots, experts and election officials say. Certain local laws also require procedures that extend the process.

For instance, election workers in Arizona are legally barred from picking up ballots from polling places before the sites close at 7 p.m. on Election Day, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Elections Department. And as the AP has previously reported, many voters who receive mail-in ballots opt to return them on Election Day.

In this year’s primary election in Maricopa County, which is Arizona’s largest county by far, more than 120,000 voters dropped off their ballots on Election Day, creating a backlog of votes that needed to be processed after the polls closed, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer explained on Twitter.

Those ballots accounted for most of the votes still being counted in the days after the primary election, Richer said.

The law also requires that mail-in ballots undergo signature verification, a time-intensive process in which the signatures on ballot envelopes are compared to voters’ on-file signatures to verify authenticity, according to Gilbertson. After the signature is verified, bipartisan two-person teams then have to physically separate the ballots from their envelopes and prepare them for tabulation.

“We’ve had two-member teams that take your ballot out of your envelope, flatten it, they have to count every single ballot and every single envelope,” Gilbertson said. “It is a very, very manual process, but that is required by statute to have those bipartisan boards do that separation.”

“They are making sure that eligible voters are the only ones who vote and they only vote once. And that takes time,” Becker said. “We should be thrilled that election officials all across the country take that seriously. It is much more important to get it accurate than to get it fast.”

Arizona state law gives counties 10 days to tabulate and certify the primary election results, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State.

“We don’t anticipate any delays as we expect everyone will meet their statutory deadlines,” she wrote in an email to the AP.

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CLAIM: Maricopa County election results are particularly slow this year.

THE FACTS: No, they aren’t. County data shows that ballot counts for primary elections took between seven and 10 days in each midterm year from 2006 to 2020. In 2020, Maricopa County took seven days to finish counting, the data shows.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrats are poised to strip Iowa from leading off their presidential nominating process starting in 2024, part of a broader effort allowing less overwhelmingly white states to go early and better reflect the party’s deeply diverse electorate.

The Democratic National Committee’s rule-making arm had planned to recommend on Friday which states should be the first four to vote, while considering adding a fifth prior to Super Tuesday, when a large number of states hold primary elections. But it delayed the decision until after November’s election, lest it become a distraction affecting Democrats in key congressional races.

Still, the position of Iowa’s caucus remains precarious after technical glitches sparked a 2020 meltdown. More than a decade of complaints that caucus rules requiring in-person attendance serve to limit participation are reaching crescendo. That’s ignited a furious push for the No. 1 position between New Hampshire, which now goes second but traditionally kicks off primary voting, and Nevada, a heavily Hispanic state looking to jump from third to first.

“I fully expect that Iowa will be replaced,” said Julián Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and federal housing chief. “And that the primary calendar will be reordered to better reflect the diversity of the Democratic Party and of the country.”

Castro isn’t on the rules committee but has criticized Iowa being first since his 2019 presidential run. A Democratic National Committee spokesperson said the rules committee “is conducting a thorough process” and will continue to “let it play out.”

Iowa has survived previous challenges and may do so again, especially given that the final decision won’t come for months. It argues that, aside from 2020, voters here have a strong track record launching the nomination process — and that its caucuses keep Democrats relevant amid the state’s recent shift to the right.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Ross Wilburn said he’d fight to ensure that nearly 50 years of tradition hold.

“When I became chair and we started this process, the word was ‘Iowa’s done,’” Wilburn told reporters Thursday. “But no decision has been made. No calendar has been presented to the committee. We are still in this fight.”

But many rules committee members privately said that the party is leaning toward either New Hampshire or Nevada going first, or perhaps on the same day. They all requested anonymity to more freely detail discussions that remain ongoing.

South Carolina, with its large bloc of Black Democrats, may move from fourth to third, freeing up a large Midwestern state to go next. Michigan and Minnesota are making strong cases, but both can’t move their primary dates without legislative approval, requiring support from Republicans.

If the committee adds a fifth early slot, that could go to Iowa to soften the blow.

Iowa has kicked off voting since 1976, when Jimmy Carter scored a caucus upset and grabbed enough momentum to eventually win the presidency. Since then, it’s been followed by New Hampshire, which has held the nation’s first primary since 1920. Nevada and South Carolina have gone next since the 2008 presidential election, when Democrats last did a major primary calendar overhaul.

Nevada has now scrapped its caucus in favor of a primary. During a recent presentation before rules committee members, its delegation showed a video arguing that “tradition is not a good enough reason to preserve the status quo.”

“If a diverse and inclusive state isn’t at the front of the primary calendar, I’m really concerned that what we’re gonna keep seeing is the same criticisms that we’ve been seeing about the Democratic Party primary process,” said Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.

Representatives from Iowa and New Hampshire argue that small states let all candidates — not just well-funded ones — connect personally with voters, and that losing their slots could advantage Republicans in congressional races. The GOP has already decided to keep Iowa starting its 2024 presidential nominating cycle.

“Just like when two more states were added to the early window, Nevada and South Carolina,” there is a sense that, just like America isn’t stagnant, “that the Democratic Party changes and grows with the times as well,” said rules committee member Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

New Hampshire Democratic National Committeeman Bill Shaheen said he didn’t know what would’ve happened if the rules committee vote wasn’t postponed, but cheered it as “one more chance to show what kind of state we are.”

When the DNC approved shaking up the primary calendar ahead of 2008, it called for Nevada’s caucus after Iowa and before New Hampshire, only to see New Hampshire move up its primary. Shaheen said his state might do similar this time, regardless of the party’s decision.

“We’re going to do the first primary whether the DNC recognizes it or not,” said Shaheen whose wife, Jeanne, is a senator. “There’s a great likelihood of that.”

Those pushing for more diverse states to leadoff say Democrats can impose sanctions to prevent such jockeying this time.

Non-white voters made up 26% of all voters and supported Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a nearly 3-to-1 margin in the 2020 presidential election, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the electorate. Nonwhite voters accounted for 38% of Democratic voters then.

By contrast, 91% of 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus goers were white and 94% of New Hampshire primary voters were, according to VoteCast surveys.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who is helping lead her state’s push to go early, said Michigan reflects diversity “and that’s what we are missing in these early primaries.”

“We are not testing candidates in what their general election’s gonna look like,” said Dingell, who added that Michigan’s “got more county fairs than anyone could want.” That recalls Iowa’s state fair, where generations of presidential candidates have worked the porkchop grill and wolfed down deep-fried versions of all imaginable foodstuffs.

“We’re very good at junk food,” Dingell said, laughing.

If the rules committee approves a reshuffled framework, it would still have to be sanctioned by the full Democratic National Committee, though it usually endorses such decisions.

This may be moot if Biden opts to seek a second term. In that case, the party likely will have little appetite to build out a robust primary schedule potentially allowing another Democrat to challenge him for the nomination.

Some rules committee members suggested that the White House has taken a keener interest in the primary calendar process recently, but others expressed frustration that the Biden administration hasn’t given them clearer guidance on where its preferences lie.

In addition to diversity, Democrats are considering electoral competitiveness and states’ efforts to relax voting restrictions. They’re scrutinizing states’ racial makeup, union membership and size in terms of population and geography — which can affect possibilities for direct voter engagement and travel and advertising costs.

After results malfunctions that kept The Associated Press from declaring a winner, Iowa Democrats have proposed changing the caucus’ presidential preference portion to require that all participants mail in their selections. But there also had been calls for a decade-plus from top Democrats to move the starting line elsewhere, thus highlighting the party’s growth and potential among younger voters and those of color.

Advocacy groups have cheered Nevada’s bid for first, with Latino Victory, the board of the Asian American Action Fund, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ Bold PAC, Somos Votantes and ASPIRE PAC, which represents Asian American and Pacific Islander members of Congress, endorsing it.

Castro said that his position was once an outlier that irked party bosses but increasingly become accepted among top Democrats.

“This time feels different,” he said. “After the experience of Iowa in 2020 — and after the push for equity and racial justice the last two years, the recognition that the Democratic Party is the only big tent party, the only inclusive party — it’s fitting that our primary calendar would reflect that.”

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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed.

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BUDAPEST (Reuters) – U.S. and Hungarian conservatives must join forces in 2024 elections to “take back” institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals who threaten western civilization, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday.

Orban, a Hungarian nationalist who was addressing a conservative gathering in Dallas, also said the United States needs a strong leader to negotiate a peace deal for Russia to end the war in Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbor.

“Only a strong leader can negotiate peace,” Orban said, speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a prominent U.S. political organization. “We need a strong America with a strong leader.”

Orban didn’t specifically refer to former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has hinted publicly that he will seek the presidency again in 2024. Trump has endorsed over 100 conservative candidates ahead of this year’s mid-term U.S. elections.

But Orban and Trump had warm relations and the Hungarian leader endorsed Trump ahead of the 2020 U.S. vote. Before the CPAC conference, he wished Trump success in a video message.

As with Trump in the United States, Orban has been widely criticized in Europe. Leaders of the European Union, of which Hungary is a member, have said he has undermined democracy with measures that restrict immigration and give his government control over the media and non-governmental organizations.

Orban, who was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term in April, said the stakes are high for 2024. In addition to the U.S. election, Europeans will vote on European Parliament seats that year.

“These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle for western civilization,” Orban said.

Calling himself “an old fashioned freedom fighter,” Orban said Hungary and his government were “under the siege of progressive liberals.”

He said progressives seek to separate western civilization from its Christian roots. His government’s fierce anti-immigration stance, pro-family policies and rejection of gender ideology resist those efforts, he added.

“This war is a culture war,” Orban said. “We have to revitalize our churches, our families, our universities and our community institutions.”

In a speech last month, Orban said that in contrast to Western Europe, where locals mixed with non-European immigrants, Hungary was not a “mixed-race” country. His words drew condemnation from the United States, the European Union, Jewish groups and academics.

A few days later Orban backtracked, saying sometimes he said things in a way “that can be misunderstood.”

He told CPAC that those who accused him or his government of racism were “idiots.” He said his government had adopted a “zero tolerance” policy on racism and antisemitism.

“Accusing us is fake news,” he added.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than. Edited by Paulo Prada)

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