Politics

HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston conservative activist charged with unlawful restraint and aggravated assault had asked a U.S. attorney in Texas to provide federal marshals to help his private investigator seize what were believed to be fraudulent voter ballots from an air conditioner repairman’s vehicle.

A transcript of a phone call from Dr. Steven Hotze to then U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick filed in district court in Houston says Hotze told Patrick of plans by private investigator Mark Aguirre to cause the repairman’s vehicle to crash and for Aguirre to make a citizen’s arrest.

Aguirre has also been charged with the same offenses and both men have said through their attorneys that they did nothing wrong. Patrick, now in private practice, declined comment. Both men are out on bail.

Aguirre had hoped to seize what was believed were thousands of fraudulent voter ballots, but the vehicle carried only tools, prosecutors have said.

Then-President Donald Trump and others falsely claimed there was massive voter fraud in the November 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

“He (Aguirre) needs to have a federal marshal with him,” Hotze said, according to the transcript of the Oct. 17, 2020 phone call. “He doesn’t want to get (the) Houston Police Department, he said all the evidence would disappear.”

The Texas Attorney General’s office was not helping, the transcript said and the county sheriff’s office could not be trusted “obviously because they’re Democrats.”

Ryan replied that no federal agents worked for his office.

“I can’t just send marshals … the marshals don’t work for me,” Ryan said, according to the document.

Hotze’s attorney, Jared Woodfill, said in a statement to KTRK-TV that Hotze is innocent.

“The Ryan Patrick tape further demonstrates that the indictment of Dr. Hotze was politically motivated and that Dr. Hotze is innocent of any criminal or civil wrongdoing. We look forward to proving Dr. Hotze’s innocence,” according to the statement.

Aguirre’s attorney, Terry Yates, also denied wrongdoing by Aguirre. “This is a political prosecution that is utterly baseless in fact or law,” Yates said.

Aguirre allegedly slammed his vehicle into the back of the repairman’s vehicle two days after the phone call, drew a weapon and ordered the man to the ground and put a knee on his back, according to prosecutors.

Aguirre was paid $266,400 to conduct the investigation by the Houston-based nonprofit Liberty Center for God and Country, whose CEO is Hotze, police have said. The group says on its website that it protects and promote citizens’ “God-given, unalienable Constitutional rights and liberties.”

Hotze, a conservative power broker, unsuccessfully sued to stop the extension of early voting in Texas for this year’s election. He also sued officials in Harris County to limit in-person and absentee voting, making allegations without evidence that Democrats were engaged in “ballot harvesting” by gathering votes from individuals who are homeless or elderly.

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By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON Reuters) -U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be allowed to run for reelection, Georgia’s secretary of state ruled on Friday, rejecting arguments by a group of voters that her comments about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol made her unfit for federal office.

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger issued a final decision upholding the findings of Charles Beaudrot Jr., an administrative law judge in Atlanta. Free Speech for People, the group spearheading the legal challenge, vowed to appeal the decision to the Georgia Superior Court.

“In this case, Challengers assert that Representative Greene’s political statements and actions disqualify her from office,” Raffensperger said in his decision. “That is rightfully a question for the voters of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District.”

Greene, a prominent supporter of Republican former President Donald Trump, is seeking reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives from a Georgia district. The Republican primary is scheduled on May 24 and the general election on Nov. 8.

In comments to the media, she has played down and justified the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol assault by Trump supporters in their failed bid to block congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“Democrats know they can’t beat me at the ballot box, so left-wing Communist activists tried to RIP my name off the ballot. And they failed,” Greene said in a statement. “This assault on our Constitution confirmed what we already knew: Democrats hate our system of free and fair elections.”

“Marjorie Taylor Greene helped facilitate the January 6 insurrection, and under the Constitution, she is disqualified from future office,” Free Speech for People said.

In a novel legal challenge, the Georgia group accused Greene of violating a U.S. Constitution provision called the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause by supporting an incendiary rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.

The constitutional clause, added after the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, prohibits politicians from running for Congress if they have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort” to the nation’s enemies.

Trump at the preceding rally told his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” repeating his false claims that the election was stolen through widespread voter fraud. The Trump supporters attacked police, ransacked parts of the Capitol and sent lawmakers into hiding for their own safety.

“I was asking people to come for a peaceful march, which everyone is entitled to do,” Greene told the judge at an April hearing on the effort to block her from the ballot. “I was not asking them to actively engage in violence.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone, Leslie Adler, Chizu Nomiyama Cynthia Osterman and David Gregorio)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will set a mininum annual pay for its staff at $45,000, months after a non-profit report found that over 12% of congressional staffers did not have a living wage.

“I am pleased to announce that ….. the House will for the first time ever set the minimum annual pay for staff at $45,000,” Pelosi said in a letter to lawmakers dated Friday.

The step would go into effect from September, she added.

A report from a non-profit earlier this year found that one in eight congressional staffers in Washington, DC, are not paid a living wage.

The report had compared staff salaries in Congress to the living wage in Washington, D.C., which is $42,610 for an adult without children, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In her letter on Friday, Pelosi also acknowledged that young staffers “often earn the lowest salaries.” The letter was first reported by Punchbowl News.

“This is also an issue of fairness, as many of the youngest staffers working the longest hours often earn the lowest salaries”, Pelosi said.

Last year, over 100 U.S. lawmakers, led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had called for higher wages for congressional staffers in order to better retain employees working for members of Congress.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Louise Heavens)

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By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers attempting to cut the cost of insulin for more than a million Americans to $35 per month are unlikely to succeed as November elections draw near and complicate bipartisan support, health policy and political experts say.

The U.S. House of Representatives in March passed a bill capping monthly out-of-pocket insulin costs for those with health insurance at $35. Senators are drafting a wider bill that also provides incentive for drugmakers to lower list prices.

Both houses must pass the same legislation for it to move forward.

The Democratic-backed legislation was once seen as likely to garner the support it needed because it sidestepped requiring drug companies to cut prices, which the pharmaceutical industry would have fought. Some Republicans have said they support drug pricing reform.

Health policy experts, pharmaceutical industry sources, patient advocates and Congressional staffers told Reuters that insulin legislation faces significant obstacles. Some said Democrats were still hoping to get support from 10 Republicans needed in the Senate to pass the bill.

“As we inch closer and closer to the summer and to the election, it seems like there may not be a lot of appetite to potentially give Democrats a win going into the elections,” said Ipsita Smolinski, managing director at research firm Capitol Street.

Around 8.4 million of the 37 million people in the United States with diabetes use insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association.

About one-in-five insured Americans pay more than $35 per month for the treatment, while the rest pay about $23 dollars per month, according to a 2021 report on drug prices by health information company IQVIA. Monthly out-of-pocket costs for insulin are already capped by 20 states and the District of Columbia. In nine of those states and D.C., the cap is $35 or lower, the ADA said.

The bill would help the estimated 1.7 million people who have private insurance or Medicare coverage and pay more than $35 a month for insulin because of their location, the design of their insurance plan, or the specific insulin they need.

Laura Marston, co-founder of advocacy group The Insulin Initiative, said the bill would only have lowered the co-pays for about 20% of diabetes patients, and that her organization will continue to battle for lower list prices.

“From my perspective, it’s not a setback in our fight to cap the price, not just the co-pay, of insulin for all,” she said.

About 17% of insulin users ages 18 to 64, or some 5 million to 6 million people, were uninsured or had a gap in coverage, according to a 2020 Commonwealth Fund study. Two thirds of that group paid the full price – an average of $900 a month – for the life-sustaining medicine.

That has left many people rationing or skipping insulin doses, endangering their health.

PHRMA VS AHIP

The legislation has the support of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, and insulin makers. Three companies, Sanofi SA, Eli Lilly and Co, and Novo Nordisk make up 90% of the market for insulin, which was invented in the 1920s.

“A $35 co-pay cap is an elegant policy solution to help people afford their insulin,” said Eli Lilly executive Shawn O’Neail.

Insurers would have to pass the after-market discounts they receive from drugmakers to patients rather than integrating them in the monthly premium price for everyone, O’Neail and other industry sources said.

AHIP, the health insurance industry’s largest trade group, said capping the co-pays would result in a cost shift that would result in higher insurance premiums.

CVS Health Corp, Cigna Corp, and UnitedHealth Group Inc are among the largest managers of pharmacy and health insurance benefits.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that setting that $35 co-pay would cost the U.S. government $20 billion over 10 years as premiums in government-sponsored Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid plans rise.

Higher private insurance premiums also would lead to lower wages and therefore lower tax revenue, the CBO said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — One contender thinks West Virginia voters will see the value of federal spending on badly needed infrastructure in one of the nation’s poorest regions. The other is betting that loyalty to former President Donald Trump will matter more.

The May 10 primary in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District between Republican Reps. Alex Mooney and David McKinley will be a barometer of Trump’s clout in a state that wholeheartedly embraced him in two presidential elections.

The two incumbents were pitted against each other after population losses cost West Virginia a U.S. House seat. The divergent paths they’ve chosen as congressmen could give Republican candidates nationally an early sense of what resonates with hardcore conservative voters in 2022.

The contest comes during an intensifying stretch of the midterm election season as Trump aims to solidify his influence over the GOP. His preferred candidate in this week’s Ohio Republican primary, JD Vance, easily dispatched other rivals, but potentially tougher tests for the former president lie ahead this month in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

Enthusiasm for Trump remains high in West Virginia, where he prevailed in every county in 2016 and 2020, winning more than two-thirds of the state’s voters. But West Virginians are also desperate to see upgrades in a state that consistently ranks among the worst in the nation for infrastructure. The state’s rugged landscape is rife with failing bridges and crumbling roads, and thousands of its citizens live without access to safe drinking water or internet.

Trump has made his position clear, endorsing Mooney on the day President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law. He’s repeatedly condemned McKinley and 12 other House Republicans for voting with the Democrats for Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, saying, “Republicans who voted for Democrat longevity should be ashamed of themselves.”

Mooney, a 50-year-old former Maryland state senator who moved to West Virginia to run for Congress in 2014 and is West Virginia’s first Hispanic congressman, has doubled down on Trump’s attacks. He called McKinley a RINO, or “Republican in Name Only,” and a sellout who betrayed his constituents. But the 75-year-old McKinley, a seventh-generation West Virginian and a civil engineer by trade, says the state’s infrastructure problems are too severe for anyone to be “playing party politics.”

“There’s no question that was the right vote,” he said, noting the state’s “D” infrastructure grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers. “West Virginia was rated last. Any commonsense, reasonable person would say, ‘You got a problem, fix it.’ I think it would have been a betrayal to do otherwise.”

The infrastructure vote earned McKinley the endorsement of Republican Gov. Jim Justice, a fervent Trump supporter who said his infrastructure vote took “courage,” as well as other government officials vying for infrastructure improvements, some of which are starting to take shape on the ground in West Virginia.

Paul Howe, president of the Clarksburg Water Board in Harrison County in northern West Virginia, called McKinley’s infrastructure bill vote “tremendous” and said his community desperately needs to replace lead service lines.

In July, the municipal water system was placed under an administrative order by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after three children were diagnosed with high lead blood levels. A subsequent study found that 4,000 customers have lead service lines. Replacing them would cost an estimated $52 million or more — a large burden on any small city.

Howe said McKinley worked with city officials to provide residents with bottled water and filters and complete an engineering study on replacing the lines. The congressman has traveled to Clarksburg repeatedly to tour the water plant and strategize about how to apply for infrastructure money.

Howe said he likes both congressmen, but given the circumstances, Mooney’s attacks on McKinley for his infrastructure vote helped make the choice clear.

“It’s hard to defend that,” he said. “If the government can do one thing right, it’s reinvest in infrastructure.”

Still, many of the infrastructure improvements that are expected to take place over the next few years won’t be visible to West Virginians right away. Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity in the state remains palpable.

“If you drive through West Virginia today, you’d think the (2020) election is still going on,” Mooney said in an interview. “There’s Trump flags everywhere. Trump signs — anti-Biden signs. It means a lot to voters.”

Voter Ron Howell, a manager for a lumber company from Buckhannon, said his decision to support Mooney is “50% Trump” and 50% McKinley’s decision to vote with Democrats.

“He supported President Donald Trump, whom I voted for and would again in a heartbeat,” he said. “I feel like McKinley is a RINO and supports much of the left’s agenda, and I don’t want that for my state.”

During their time representing West Virginia in Congress during Trump’s last two years of presidency, Mooney and McKinley voted together 87% of the time. But Mooney says there’s a consistent pattern of McKinley voting with Democrats on big votes, including his support for the creation of a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

In Harrison County, where Clarksburg is, 20-year-old Drew Harbert said he thinks that will lose McKinley more voters than supporting infrastructure.

“I don’t think people take it very kindly that he voted for that,” said Harbert, a Fairmont State University student and president of the Harrison County Young Republicans. “I think that will definitely hurt McKinley probably more than anything else that he’s done.”

Harbert said he knows infrastructure repairs are needed in the state, but said he has serious concerns about the rising national debt and believes it was irresponsible for McKinley to vote for a bill with such a big price tag.

Harbert said Trump’s endorsement bolstered his decision to back Mooney, but it was far from the only reason. He wanted a candidate who will defend gun owners’ rights. McKinley has supported red-flag laws, which permit law enforcement or family members to petition a court to remove firearms from someone who presents a possible danger to themselves or others.

McKinley, who says he voted with Trump over 90% of the time when he was in office, said he believes Mooney has misled voters about his vote on the infrastructure bill. He cited a Mooney campaign ad that attacks him for “backing Biden for a trillion-dollar spending spree,” but mentions infrastructure only in printed text.

Howell, the lumber company manager, said he thought McKinley voted for Biden’s Build Back Better plan — a proposal McKinley vehemently opposed — and initially cited that vote as a reason for supporting Mooney. After doing more research on McKinley’s voting record, he said the congressman voted the way he would have most of the time. But he said he couldn’t forgive McKinley for his Jan. 6 and infrastructure votes.

“I wish we were in different times and I could be nonpartisan, but the Democrats have made that impossible,” he said.

Nate Orders, a bridge-building contractor who is president of the Contractors Association of West Virginia, said there’s a lot of hypocrisy in criticisms of the infrastructure bill and the Republicans who voted for it. Trump supporters were on board with infrastructure spending when the former president introduced his $2 trillion proposal, which Democrats blocked.

“If Alex Mooney wins, it’s another sign that our democracy continues down the road to dysfunction, where all that matters is party politics,” he said. “If David McKinley wins, it shows me a little bit of hope that even though we can agree or disagree on some big issues, we can also agree on the things that really make a difference to Americans.”

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

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This story has been corrected to show the name of the organization is the Contractors Association of West Virginia, not the West Virginia Contractors Association.

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By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion that would end the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion could imperil other freedoms related to marriage, sexuality and family life including birth control and same-sex nuptials, according to legal experts.

The draft ruling, disclosed in a leak that prompted Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday to launch an investigation, would uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The draft’s legal reasoning, if adopted by the court when it issues its eventual ruling by the end of June, could threaten other rights that Americans take for granted in their personal lives, according to University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper, an expert in healthcare law and religion.

“The low-hanging fruit is contraception, probably starting with emergency contraception, and same-sex marriage is also low-hanging fruit in that it was very recently recognized by the Supreme Court,” Sepper said.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority, including Alito, has become increasingly assertive on a range of issues. The court confirmed the authenticity of the leaked draft but called it preliminary.

The Roe decision, one of the court’s most important and contentious rulings of the 20th century, recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” Alito wrote in the draft, adding that Roe and a 1992 decision that reaffirmed it have only “deepened division” in society.

According to Alito, the right to abortion recognized in Roe must be overturned because it is not valid under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment right to due process.

Abortion is among a number of fundamental rights that the court over many decades recognized at least in part as what are called “substantive” due process liberties, including contraception in 1965, interracial marriage in 1967 and same-sex marriage in 2015.

Though these rights are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, they are linked to personal privacy, autonomy, dignity and equality. Conservative critics of the substantive due process principle have said it improperly lets unelected justices make policy choices better left to legislators.

Alito reasoned in the draft that substantive due process rights must be “deeply rooted” in U.S. history and tradition and essential to the nation’s “scheme of ordered liberty.” Abortion, he said, is not, and rejected arguments that it is essential for privacy and bodily autonomy reasons.

‘SOCIAL PROGRESS’

Like abortion, other personal rights including contraception and same-sex marriage may be found by conservative justices to fall outside this framework involving rights “deeply rooted” in American history, scholars noted.

“This was considered social progress – we were changing as a society and different things became important and became part of what one cherished,” said Carol Sanger, an expert in reproductive rights at Columbia Law School.

In the draft, Alito sought to distinguish abortion from other rights because it, unlike the others, destroys what the Roe ruling called “potential life.”

“Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” Alito wrote.

Sepper said that Alito is “not particularly convincing because he doesn’t do the work to distinguish those cases in a meaningful way.” She added: “It’s a really sweeping opinion. It doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the abortion right.”

Alito’s opinion resembles his dissent in the court’s same-sex marriage ruling in which he said the 14th Amendment’s due process promise protects only rights deeply rooted in America’s history and tradition.

“And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights,” Alito wrote in his 2015 dissent.

Some conservative commentators have suggested that Alito has provided a road map for future attempts to eliminate other guaranteed liberties. Other legal scholars doubt that there is either a willingness on the court or in legislatures to eliminate other rights.

“On interracial marriage, contraception and same-sex marriage, for one reason or another there is no likelihood the court is going to revisit those decisions,” Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis said.

The fact that Americans have relied on the same-sex marriage decision to plan and invest in their lives and relationships makes it unlikely that the justices will overturn it, McGinnis said.

McGinnis added, “No state legislature is going to get rid of contraception. That’s fanciful. And no state legislature is going to get rid of interracial marriage.”

George Mason University constitutional law professor Ilya Somin said Alito’s ruling could make it unlikely the court would recognize due process protections in new areas such as transgender rights.

“But on the whole its effect on due process rights is likely to be minor,” Somin said.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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The primary elections in Ohio and Indiana on Tuesday stood as the first real test of former President Donald Trump’s status as the Republican Party kingmaker — and he passed.

Takeaways from the races:

TRUMP’S CLOUT

Trump’s chosen candidate, “Hillbilly Elegy” author and one-time investment banker JD Vance, won the crowded Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Ohio, giving Trump a strong beginning to primary season.

Vance, former State Treasurer Josh Mandel, businessman Mike Gibbons and former state GOP chair Jane Timken all vied for Trump’s endorsement, increasingly adopting language that mirrored the former president’s bombastic, populist style. In the end, Trump went with Vance, who in 2016 said the celebrity businessman could become “America’s Hitler” but has since become an avid supporter.

Vance wooed the former president by echoing his bashing of immigrants, skepticism about U.S. military involvement overseas — even in support of Ukraine — and lies about Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. Lagging in the polls when he received Trump’s endorsement three weeks ago, Vance made it a centerpiece of his closing pitch and vaulted ahead of his rivals.

Vance will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan in November’s general election as they compete for the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman. Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points in 2020, and the state has swung to the right under his influence. Replacing Portman, a traditional Republican and no fan of Trump’s, with Vance would move the Senate further in the former president’s direction.

POWER OF ELECTION DENIAL

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, easily survived a primary challenge from John Adams, who denies that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and ran as a full-throated skeptic of modern voting systems.

But Ohio’s Republican primary still shows the power that Trump’s election lies have on his party’s base. An AP-NORC poll last year found two-thirds of Republicans believe Biden was not legitimately elected, even though the contest was free of any significant voter fraud and repeated investigations, audits and court cases have disproved Trump’s claims.

LaRose initially said the 2020 election was secure and accurate, but as the primary neared, he began to echo some of Trump’s talking points. He claimed there were problems in other states and touted his office’s work to combat voter fraud.

Trump endorsed LaRose, a longtime supporter. Since Ohio wasn’t a battleground and Trump won the state easily, the incumbent secretary of state never got on his bad side in the days after he 2020 loss.

In contrast, in swing state Michigan — one of the states Trump claimed to win in 2020, even though he actually lost it — Trump endorsed an election conspiracy theorist, Kristina Karamo. She won the GOP nomination for secretary of state last month. Plenty of other Trump-backed election deniers are competing in upcoming Republican primaries.

RESILIENT GOVERNORS

Trump and his populist supporters have shaken up their party and pushed its incumbents in Trump’s direction in many places, but one weak point so far are governor’s mansions.

Ohio was the clearest example of that. Trump castigated Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for his strict coronavirus policies in 2020, but DeWine cruised to victory in the primary. He will face Democrat Nan Whaley in the general election. Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton, is the first woman nominated by a major party for Ohio governor.

Ohio is not the only place where a GOP governor is well positioned against a primary challenger. Idaho’s Brad Little has a strong fundraising advantage against his conservative opponent, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp is a strong favorite against former Sen. David Perdue, whom Trump recruited to punish Kemp for not supporting his election lies and for certifying Biden’s victory in the state.

Governors are helped by their incumbency, the wide range of popular conservative policies they can announce and federal coronavirus relief that has taken the pressure off state budgets. DeWine, for example, outraised his foes by millions of dollars and was able to benefit from, for example, the chip firm Intel’s announcement it will invest $20 million in the state.

DeWine got another boost because his opposition was split between former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci and farmer Joe Blystone. Trump didn’t make an endorsement in the race.

DEMOCRATS SPURN THE LEFT, AGAIN

In the Cleveland area, Democratic Rep. Shontel Brown trounced former state Sen. Nina Turner in yet another battle between the party’s establishment and progressive wings.

Turner co-chaired Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential primary campaign and lost to Brown in last year’s special election for the seat after its previous occupant, Marcia Fudge, became Biden’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Turner ran again, hoping that the district might be more amenable to her approach after it was redrawn to include more Democratic areas.

No such luck. Brown’s easy victory is a reminder that the left has a very uneven track record in Democratic primaries, notching a few high-profile wins like that of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City, but mostly a long string of losses. Trump may have changed Republican primaries, but Democratic ones still tilt toward the same establishment that has run the party for decades.

IN INDIANA, INCUMBENCY BEATS ‘LIBERTY’

Legislative races in Indiana showed the power of incumbency, even amid rising conservative anger.

Activists infuriated by the state’s coronavirus restrictions organized roughly two dozen so-called liberty candidates to take on lawmakers in the GOP primary whom they saw as too supportive of Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s public health measures. The picture was mixed on Tuesday night, with several of those races uncalled.

But the challengers were repeatedly coming up short taking on incumbent legislators. One incumbent targeted as too close to the party establishment lost his primary, but so did an incumbent who encouraged the liberty candidates. And in at least 10 other races, the liberty candidates fell short.

It’s a reminder that, even in Trump’s GOP, conservative insurgents don’t always have an easy path against incumbents.

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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 Eric Cox and Nathan Layne

CINCINNATI, Ohio (Reuters) -J.D. Vance, a candidate for the U.S. Senate who is backed by Donald Trump, won the Republican primary vote in Ohio on Tuesday, in an early test of the former president’s sway over his party as he eyes a possible White House run in 2024.

Trump upended the Ohio race last month by endorsing author and venture capitalist Vance ahead of the Nov. 8 congressional elections, catapulting him ahead of former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, also a staunch Trump supporter.

With almost all ballots counted, Vance led the Republican field with 32% of the vote, followed by Mandel with 24% and state lawmaker Matt Dolan with 23%, according to Edison Research.

While Vance’s victory is a sign of Trump’s endorsement power, every other major candidate besides Dolan had lobbied for Trump’s support while advocating for his policies and parroting his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

“It was a big night for Trumpism in the Ohio Republican Party. Not just in Vance’s win but in a field that was dominated by candidates trying to out-Trump each other,” said University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven.

“It was still a close race. He wasn’t able to shut this race down with a simple wave of his magic wand.”

Vance, author of the “Hillbilly Elegy” book and a former Trump critic, will face Democratic U.S. Representative Tim Ryan, who won his Senate primary as had been expected.

“I have absolutely gotta thank the 45th, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” Vance told the crowd at his election party in Cincinnati, before criticizing unnamed media outlets which he said had sought his and Trump’s defeat. “Ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t the death of the America First agenda.”

Trump has not announced his plans for 2024, but he regularly hints that he intends to mount another presidential campaign.

Ryan, who briefly ran for president in 2020, has focused his campaign on working-class voters and the rejuvenation of manufacturing while taking a hardline on China and courting Trump supporters. After winning Tuesday’s primary, he sent out a fundraising ad calling Vance an “out-of-touch millionaire.”

“I want us to be the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. I want us to help this country leapfrog China,” Ryan told a gathering of supporters. “We can do it by coming together.”

Vance led the field in almost all the counties where most ballots had been counted, from deeply conservative rural counties to suburban areas that could be crucial to his hopes of beating Ryan. Vance’s lead was especially wide in places like Clermont County, a suburb of Cincinnati, where he led Mandel 35% to 22%, with almost all ballots counted. Vance also had a large lead in rural Athens County in southern Ohio, one of the state’s few counties won by U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020.

Nonpartisan election analysts favor Republicans’ chances of winning in November to keep retiring Senator Rob Portman’s seat.

Tuesday’s contests, which included a Democratic rematch for a U.S. House seat in Ohio and primaries in Indiana, kicked off a series of critical nominating contests in the coming weeks, including primaries in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The influence of Trump, who has endorsed more than 150 candidates this year, will help determine whether Republicans, as expected, reverse their slim deficit in the House and also take control of the Senate, which is split 50-50 with Democrats owning the tie-breaking vote.

A loss of control of either chamber would allow Republicans to block Biden’s legislative agenda and also to pepper his administration with politically damaging investigations.

REPUBLICAN PUSHBACK

Not all Republicans are blindly following Trump’s lead. As in Ohio, where Senate candidates spent an unprecedented $66 million on advertising, Trump-backed candidates in Pennsylvania and North Carolina face well-funded Republican challengers.

Some Republicans worry that Trump’s picks, like former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia, could prove too controversial to prevail against Democrats in November, imperiling the party’s bid for Senate control.

Vance was not the choice of many party leaders in Ohio, and some have grumbled publicly about Trump’s decision. The Club for Growth, a powerful conservative advocacy group, broadcast ads bashing Vance and stuck by their pick in the race, Mandel.

In the Republican primary for governor, incumbent Mike DeWine held off three far-right Republican challengers to win the nomination, despite criticism from many conservatives for his business shutdowns and other policies during the pandemic.

DeWine will face former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, who won the Democratic primary, becoming the first woman in Ohio history to secure a major party’s backing for the governorship.

In a closely watched Democratic race, incumbent Shontel Brown handily defeated progressive candidate Nina Turner in the congressional district which includes Cleveland. The contest was seen as a measure of the power balance between the establishment — represented by Brown — and more liberal wings of the party.

In Indiana, Air Force veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green beat six Republican challengers to win the nomination for a congressional district in a historically Democratic stronghold outside Chicago increasingly seen as having the potential to be competitive. She will attempt to oust freshman Democratic Representative Frank Mrvan, who easily won his primary on Tuesday night.

(Reporting by Eric Cox in Cincinnati, Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Jason Lange, Rami Ayyub, and Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Anti-abortion activists and pro-abortion rights supporters took to the streets of Washington on Tuesday after news that the U.S. Supreme Court may overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

A leaked initial draft majority opinion suggests the court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, Politico reported on Monday.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the draft opinion. The Supreme Court and the White House declined to comment.

Within hours of the news, anti-abortion activists chanting “hey, hey, ho, ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go” and abortion rights supporters shouting “abortion is healthcare” were facing off outside the court.

Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics and has been for nearly a half century.

A 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 59% of U.S. adults believed it should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% thought it should be illegal in most or all cases.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the draft opinion, which is dated Feb. 10, according to Politico, which posted a copy online.

Based on Alito’s opinion, the court would find that the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb – between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy – was wrongly decided because the U.S. Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.

“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” Alito said, according to the leaked document.

Protester Annie McDonnell, 19, a student at George Washington University, said: “The first line in the draft is that this is a moral issue. If it’s a moral issue, you shouldn’t be depriving us of our choice.”

“Justices get out of my vagina,” said one protest sign.

The unprecedented leak sent shock waves through the United States.

“This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, & lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law. It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace,” said former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The ruling would be the court’s most sweeping since former President Donald Trump succeeded in naming three justices to the court, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority.

“The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history,” said U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats.

The news broke a little more than six months before midterm elections that will determine if Democrats hold their razor-thin majorities in the U.S. Congress for the next two years of President Joe Biden’s term.

“Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW,” said Independent Senator Bernie Sanders.

California governor Gavin Newsom said the state will propose an amendment to “enshrine the right to choose” in the state’s constitution.

“We can’t trust SCOTUS to protect the right to abortion, so we’ll do it ourselves,” Newsom said on Twitter, referring to the Supreme Court.

ABORTION PROVIDERS STUNNED

The decision appeared based on an oral argument in December on Mississippi’s bid to revive its ban on abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy, a law blocked by lower courts.

The Politico report said a court majority was inclined to uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban and that there could be five votes to overturn Roe. An official ruling is expected before the end of June.

Four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices, it added.

After an initial vote among the justices following an oral argument, one is assigned the majority opinion and writes a draft. It is then circulated among the justices.

At times, in between the initial vote and the ruling being released, the vote alignment can change. A ruling is only final when it is published by the court.

The news of the draft opinion stunned abortion providers.

Andrea Gallegos, executive administrator at Tulsa Women’s Clinic in Oklahoma, had just finished calling some 25 patients to tell them their Tuesday abortion appointments would need to be canceled because of a soon to be enacted Oklahoma law modeled on a highly restrictive Texas abortion ban.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she said.

“Now all these other conservative states like Oklahoma are passing the exact same legislation that Texas did, I have to say I became less optimistic and way more scared for what the future of Roe looks like.”

The Roe v. Wade decision recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy.

Christian conservatives and many Republican officeholders have long sought to overturn it.

If Roe is overturned, abortion is likely to remain legal in liberal states. More than a dozen states have laws protecting abortion rights. Numerous Republican-led states have passed various abortion restrictions in defiance of the Roe precedent in recent years.

Democrats said the draft opinion underscores the importance of this year’s elections, in which they are seeking to maintain control of the House and Senate. Republican lawmakers criticized the leak, suggesting it was an attempt to inappropriately pressure the court into changing course.

The anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List welcomed the news.

“If Roe is indeed overturned, our job will be to build consensus for the strongest protections possible for unborn children and women in every legislature,” its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Gabriella Borter and Moira Warburton; Editing by Scott Malone and Michael Perry)

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — When New York Gov. Kathy Hochul took office last year after her predecessor resigned in a sexual harassment scandal, one of her first big decisions was appointing a lieutenant governor who could help restore trust in government.

Her choice — and attempt at a reset — imploded last month when her pick, Brian Benjamin, resigned after his arrest on corruption charges.

Now the Democrat is hoping to try again, vetting candidates for a new partner as legislative allies move to change state law in a way that would get Benjamin off the ballot in the primary election and allow Hochul to campaign with a new, yet-to-be named running mate.

Hochul’s choice for a job that normally fades into the background is now a high-stakes decision that could make it tougher to shake off two primary challengers and weigh her down in the general election in November.

“If she gets the wrong person, it gives the Republicans an issue,” Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said. “The question of this choice is being used against her to question her capacity to govern and to make decisions.”

Hochul has said Benjamin’s April 12 arrest surprised her. She dismissed questions Monday about how carefully she vetted Benjamin, a former state senator, pointing to the tight timeframe she had to find a second-in-command after then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in August and she took his place.

“We had to get someone. It was not a situation that was desirable. Can we do it all over again differently? Yes, and we will do it very differently,” she said.

Her decision of a new partner is expected in the coming days. But in order to take her new pick on the campaign trail, she first needs lawmakers to allow her to remove Benjamin from the June primary ticket.

Existing elections law says a candidate can only get off the ballot in case of death, moving out of state or running for another office.

The state Senate and Assembly started considering a bill Monday that would allow candidates to decline their spot on the ballot if they’ve since been charged with or convicted of crimes.

Hochul told reporters Monday that the bill is about ending dysfunction in Albany. She denied that it’s solely focused on her gubernatorial bid.

“When you think about it, every time I talk to a voter, they can’t believe that that was even the law,” she said. “So why not fix it now since this came to light? They know that a governor deserves to have a running mate of her choosing.”

Mike Murphy, a state Senate Democrats spokesperson, said lawmakers expected to start voting on the bill Monday afternoon.

Once that bill passes, Benjamin can decline his party’s nomination and remove himself from the June primary ballot, something he said Monday he intends to do.

“I am innocent of these unsubstantiated charges. However, I would be unable to serve under these circumstances,” Benjamin said in a statement posted to Twitter.

The Democratic Party and its committee on vacancies would be able to fill Benjamin’s spot with a candidate of party leaders’ choosing, according to a summary of the bill that outlines existing state election law.

“The expectation is that this will be accomplished today and that’ll create the necessary vacancy for there to be someone that goes before the committee on vacancies, they can start doing their work then,” Hochul said.

Republicans, as well as some Democrats, blasted the bill as an unfair changing of election rules at the last minute.

“Instead of working to lower crime and taxes, Kathy Hochul is more focused on salvaging her political future by desperately working to change state law to cover up that she put a known-corrupt LG on her ticket,” Suozzi said.

Hochul’s office didn’t immediately provide answers to questions Monday about when she will announce her new running mate.

Veteran campaign lawyer Jerry Goldfeder said the Democratic party has ample discretion when it comes to picking a new nominee.

“If this passes, they’ll be able to do it, as long as the person fulfills the qualifications for lieutenant governor,” he said.

Hochul, who is white and from Buffalo in western New York, has been pressured to select a person of color who has ties to New York City.

That was a consideration she made when choosing Benjamin, a former state lawmaker who hails from Harlem and was the second Black man to hold the job.

Hochul could also potentially tap one of two lieutenant governor candidates already on the ballot: immigration advocate Ana Maria Archila, and former New York City council member Diana Reyna. Both are running in hopes of serving alongside progressive Jumaane Williams and centrist Tom Suozzi, respectively.

Luis Miranda, a New York political consultant and board chair of the progressive political group Latino Victory, is among those who’ve publicly called on Hochul to appoint New York’s first Hispanic lieutenant governor, a symbolic choice in a state that prizes diversity.

Latinos make up roughly one-fifth of the population but have not yet been elected to statewide office in New York or citywide office in New York City.

“It will make a difference and it will be noticeable and great for the Latino community, and quite frankly, good politics,” Miranda said.

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