Politics

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of failing to fulfill his constitutional obligation to call special elections for two seats in the state House and Senate.

The seats in question were vacated in November by state Rep. Joel Rudman and state Sen. Randy Fine, who resigned to run for two congressional seats that opened up when President-elect Donald Trump named U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz as Cabinet picks.

Shortly after Gaetz and Waltz resigned, DeSantis called for special congressional elections with a Jan. 28 primary and an April 1 general. He has yet to set elections for the state-level openings, however.

“I don’t understand why the governor resists calling special elections in a timely manner. From Jeb Bush to Rick Scott, past governors moved quickly to ensure the people retained their voice in government. DeSantis’s refusal to do so is both troubling and illegal,” said Nicholas Warren, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida.

Asked about the lawsuit, the governor’s office referred comment to the Florida Department of State, which did not immediately respond.

Florida law requires state lawmakers to resign if they want to run for open congressional seats, and their vacated positions must be filled through special election.

Rudman’s resignation was effective Jan. 1, and Fine’s takes effect March 31 after the state legislative session gets underway.

In 2021, DeSantis was sued over a delay in setting a special election for a heavily Democratic South Florida congressional district. Days later the governor set an election date for nine months after U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings died.

Similarly, in 2023 the ACLU filed a lawsuit against DeSantis over a special election in a state House district in Miami-Dade County. Days later he set a date for that vote.

Rudman, who is seeking to replace Gaetz, faces an uphill battle in a race that features numerous candidates including the apparent front-runner, Trump-endorsed state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis.

Fine, meanwhile, is vying for the Waltz seat and is backed by Trump.

Waltz is set to join the incoming Trump administration as national security adviser, while Gaetz withdrew as nominee for attorney general after both Democrats and Republicans voiced skepticism over the pick due to his personal controversies.

The House Ethics panel has since released a report accusing Gaetz of misconduct including paying a 17-year-old for sex and possessing illegal drugs.

Gaetz, now a host on the One America News Network, said Wednesday on his show that he was considering running for governor after DeSantis finishes his second and final term.

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Thursday he will resign from his U.S. Senate seat from Ohio at midnight ahead of his inauguration later this month.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Vance defeated the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

Vance’s Senate seat will now be filled by another person appointed by Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

Vance’s replacement will serve until a special election is held in November 2026. The winner of that election will finish the remainder of Vance’s Senate term, which had been set to end January 2029.

In his resignation letter to the Ohio governor, Vance wrote that “it has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve the people of Ohio in the Senate over the past two years.”

Republicans won a narrow majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the November elections.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday denied a bid to block the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a emergency challenge aimed at keeping under wraps the report expected to detail unflattering revelations about Trump’s failed effort to cling to power in the election he lost to President Joe Biden.

A separate volume of the same special counsel report — related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate — will not become public while the case against two co-defendants of the president-elect remains pending, the Justice Department has said.

Even with the appeals court ruling, though, the election interference report will not immediately be released, and there’s no guarantee it will be as more legal wrangling is expected. A lower court ruling from Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida temporarily blocking the Justice Department from releasing the report remains in place for three days.

The defendants may now ask Cannon to rule on the merits of their request to block the report, which she did not do earlier when she granted their emergency motion. They could also conceivably ask the conservative-dominated Supreme Court to intervene.

A Trump spokesperson called Smith’s report an “unconstitutional, one-sided, falsehood-ridden screed.”

“It is time for Joe Biden and Merrick Garland to do the right thing and put a final stop to the political weaponization of our Justice system,” spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement after the ruling.

The two-volume report is expected to detail findings and explain charging decisions in Smith’s two investigations, though the prospect for significant new information is unclear given the extensive details already disclosed in separate indictments against Trump.

Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s presidential election victory, citing Justice Department policy that prohibits the federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

The case accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate was dismissed in July by Cannon, who concluded that Smith’s appointment was illegal. Smith’s appeal of the dismissal of charges against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who were charged alongside Trump with obstructing the investigation, is still active, and their lawyers argued this week that the release of a report while proceedings were pending would be prejudicial and unfair.

The Justice Department’s decision to withhold the classified documents section of the report for now lessens the likelihood it will ever been seen by the public, given that the Trump Justice Department almost certainly will not release it even after the case against Nauta and De Oliveira is resolved.

The election interference case was significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The court ruled then for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, all but ending prospects Trump could be tried before the November election.

Justice Department regulations call for special counsels appointed by the attorney general to submit a confidential report at the conclusion of their investigations. It’s then up to the attorney general to decide what to make public.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has made public in their entirety the reports produced by special counsels who operated under his watch, including Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference.

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NEW YORK (AP) — In a singular moment in U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.

Like so much else in the criminal case and the current American political landscape, the scenario set to unfold in an austere Manhattan courtroom was unimaginable only a few years ago. A state judge is to say what consequences, if any, the country’s former and soon-to-be leader will face for felonies that a jury found he committed.

With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge and prosecutors aren’t opposing it. That would mean no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed, but nothing is final until Friday’s proceeding is done.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

Trump, who is expected to appear by video from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, will have the opportunity to speak. He has pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.

The judge has indicated that he plans the unconditional discharge — a rarity in felony convictions — partly to avoid complicated constitutional issues that would arise if he imposed a penalty that overlapped with Trump’s presidency.

The hush money case accused him of fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.

Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”

While the specific charges were about checks and ledgers, the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.

Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.

“There was nothing else it could have been called,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I was hiding nothing.”

Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have pulled virtually every legal lever within reach to try to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.

They have made various arguments to Merchan, New York appeals judges, and federal courts including the Supreme Court. The Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.

Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.

On one hand, Trump’s defense argued that immunity should have kept jurors from hearing some evidence, such as testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.

And after Trump won this past November’s election, his lawyers argued that the case had to be scrapped to avoid impinging on his upcoming presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.

Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.” He wrote that he strove to balance Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the respect due a jury verdict and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”

Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.

Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.

After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman will become the chamber’s first Democrat to meet with President-elect Donald Trump since the election and plans to travel to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The trip marks Fetterman’s continuing evolution from a leading surrogate for President Joe Biden into a Trump-friendly lawmaker since Trump won the premier battleground state of Pennsylvania in November.

Fetterman since has shown surprising warmth to Trump, complimenting his political appeal, agreeing with him on some policies and embracing some of Trump’s would-be Cabinet nominees.

Fetterman said in a statement Thursday that Trump invited him to meet and that he accepted.

“I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said. “I’ve been clear that no one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with and have a conversation with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation.”

Fetterman was first elected in 2022 as an irreverent and unconventional progressive hero who had criticized then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for not voting with Democrats or supporting Biden’s agenda.

Fetterman has been unafraid to be an outsider to his party in the past. He endorsed insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary over Hillary Clinton and ran from the left against the party-backed candidate in 2016’s Senate primary. When the state Democratic Party looked to endorse a candidate in 2022’s three-way Democratic primary, Fetterman dismissed it as an “inside game.”

Last month, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that he’s not leaving the Democratic Party, but that meeting Trump nominees and agreeing with GOP policy views is “part of politics” and “representing the kind of state that we have in Pennsylvania.”

He said the constant “freak-out” by Democrats over Trump isn’t helpful, he called Trump a “singular political talent” and he disavowed the label “fascist” that Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris had given Trump during the campaign.

“It’s not a word that I would use,” Fetterman said, adding, “I happen to love people that are going to vote for Trump, and they are not fascists.”

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a case that for a time overshadowed his bid to retake the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court paved the way on Thursday for the 9:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT) sentencing in New York state court in Manhattan, rejecting a last-minute request by Trump to halt it 10 days before his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the six-week trial last year, has signaled he does not plan to send Trump to jail or to fine him. But by granting an unconditional discharge, he would place a judgment of guilt on Trump’s permanent record. 

Trump, 78, who pleaded not guilty, was expected to appear virtually at the hearing.

He fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being compelled to appear before a state-level judge days before returning to the public office he lost four years ago.

“He doesn’t want to be sentenced because that is the official judgment of him being a convicted felon,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University in New York. 

The trial played out against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House. The sentencing marks the culmination of the first-ever criminal case brought against a U.S. president, past or present.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it. 

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election. 

The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts on May 30. Prosecutors argued that despite the tawdry nature of the allegations, the case was an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election. 

Critics of the businessman-turned politician cited the charges and other legal entanglements he faced to bolster their contention that he was unfit for public office.

Trump flipped the script. He argued the case – along with three other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse – was an effort by opponents to weaponize the justice system against him and harm his reelection campaign.

He frequently lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ultimately fined Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order. 

As recently as Jan. 3, Trump called the judge a “radical partisan” in a post on his Truth Social platform. 

In a decision that day, Merchan said that setting aside the verdict would “undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways” and wrote that Trump’s behavior during the trial showed disrespect for the judiciary. 

“Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole,” Merchan said.

Late on Thursday, hours before sentence was to be imposed, Trump wrote on his social media platform that he would be appealing the case and was confident that he would prevail.

A POLITICAL MIXED BAG

The hush money case was widely viewed as less serious than the three other criminal cases Trump faced, in which he was accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty in all the cases. 

But Bragg’s case was the only criminal case to reach trial in the face of an onslaught of challenges from Trump’s lawyers. After Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, federal prosecutors backed off their two cases due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The remaining state case, brought in Georgia over efforts to reverse the 2020 election results in that state, is in limbo after a court in December disqualified the lead prosecutor on the case. 

The hush money case was a mixed bag politically. Contributions to Trump’s campaign surged after he was indicted in March 2023, likely helping him vanquish his rivals for the Republican nomination. During the trial, polling showed a majority of voters took the charges seriously, and his standing among Republicans slipped after the guilty verdict.

But the case quickly faded from the headlines, especially after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance led him to drop out with Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him on the Democratic ticket, and after a gunman’s bullet came inches from killing Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

Merchan initially scheduled the sentencing for July 11, but pushed it back multiple times at Trump’s request. In agreeing in September to defer the sentencing until after the election, the judge wrote that he was wary of being perceived as placing his thumb on the scales. 

Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. While Trump would have been unlikely to get jail time due to his advanced age and lack of a criminal history, legal experts said it was not impossible, especially given his gag order violations.

Trump’s victory and looming inauguration made a sentence of jail or probation even less practical. 

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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By Stephanie Kelly

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greeted and shook hands on Thursday with his estranged former vice president Mike Pence, as current and former administrations gathered at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter in Washington.

Republicans Trump and Pence have had a strained relationship since the end of Trump’s first term, which ran from 2017 through 2021. During that time, Pence served Trump loyally but refused Trump’s demand that he overturn his 2020 election defeat on Jan. 6, 2021 before Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

On Thursday at Carter’s funeral, Pence sat behind Trump, who was in the second row with other former presidents and first ladies, including former President George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Biden and Harris were in the first row.

Former Vice President Al Gore was seated next to Pence. As Trump entered his row ahead of the funeral service, Gore stood and shook Trump’s hand and then Pence stood. Trump extended his hand to Pence.

Trump and Pence shook hands with little expression on their faces, and Pence nodded. Pence then shook the hand of Trump’s wife Melania before they all sat

Trump and Obama spoke continuously ahead of the funeral service, with Obama nodding seriously in response to Trump before breaking into a grin.

Pence did not endorse his former boss during last year’s presidential election, which Trump won over current Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence refused Trump’s instructions to delay or halt the certification of current President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win over Trump, drawing an angry rebuke from Trump during the riot. Some rioters shouted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Pence has said that his life was put in danger that day, and he urged Republican primary voters not to choose Trump as their White House candidate last year.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman said on Thursday he had accepted an invitation to meet with Donald Trump, and CBS News reported that the meeting would take place at the Republican president-elect’s Florida residence.

“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians— not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in a statement.

CBS first reported the planned meeting. The network said it would be the first known meeting between a sitting Democratic senator and Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate since his Nov. 5 election win.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; editing by Rami Ayyub)

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By Richard Cowan and Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Thursday was expected to advance a bill to require the federal government to detain migrants living in the U.S. illegally who are suspected of criminal activity, even if they are not charged with crimes, as a growing number of Democrats voiced support for the Republican-backed measure.

The legislation, named the “Laken Riley Act” after a Georgia college student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan man previously arrested for shoplifting, passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday by a vote of 264-159, with 48 Democrats supporting the measure.

The Senate vote comes just 11 days before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration and “migrant crime.”

A range of studies by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.

With a majority that currently stands at 52-47, Senate Republicans need eight Democrats to support the measure to meet the chamber’s threshold of 60 of 100 senators agreeing on most legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday said he expects the bill will “have enough votes from both parties to proceed” — including his own — and several Democrats have also voiced support, including Senators John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego, who have both signed on as cosponsors, and Senator Mark Kelly.

“If we get on the bill, Democrats want to have a robust debate where we can offer amendments and approve the bill,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

“It’s about border security and keeping Americans safe,” Democratic Senator Gary Peters told reporters on Tuesday shortly after the House vote, when asked if he would vote for the bill.

Peters is among the one-third of senators up for election in 2026. He hails from Michigan, a state that Trump narrowly won over Vice President Kamala Harris. His newly elected Michigan colleague, Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, announced on social media that she also would vote for the bill.

Georgia Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who faces a tough reelection bid in 2026, both voiced support for the measure.

The House passed a similar bill last year, which the then-Democratic-majority Senate ignored. Another 11 House Democrats supported the bill on its second go-round.

“It’s a common-sense piece of legislation. This was the most litigated issue of the last four years and the American people spoke,” Republican Senator Katie Britt, a sponsor of the bill, told reporters.

Many Democrats see it as a back-door way for racial profiling by law enforcement and trampling on constitutional protections.

“This bill ends due process for immigrants, including DACA recipients,” said Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar, referring to Washington’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shields young undocumented immigrants brought across U.S. borders by parents or other adults.

Trump has used harsh terms when describing immigrants in the United States illegally or awaiting asylum hearings, calling them “animals” when talking about alleged criminal acts.

Thursday’s likely vote to move toward debating this controversial bill does not necessarily mean it will have enough votes for passage. Leading Democrats are expected to insist on amendments to achieve broader immigration reforms.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Bo Erickson; Additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone, Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte was sworn as the 83rd governor of New Hampshire on Thursday, promising to bring people together and prodding young people to “step up and contribute.”

“I am going to be a governor for you, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent, you name it. Our state is so much bigger than a party or an ideology,” she said in remarks prepared for delivery. “Good government knows no party, so let’s show folks that even when partisanship is at a fever pitch, we can set a different example.”

Ayotte succeeds fellow Republican Chris Sununu, whose decision against seeking a fifth two-year term set up on one of the most competitive gubernatorial races in the country. Promising to continue Sununu’s anti-tax, pro-business economic policies, Ayotte defeated five opponents in September’s GOP primary and Democratic former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig in the November election.

In her inaugural speech, Ayotte said she would keep the state on a prosperous path but warned that belt-tightening would be necessary as lawmakers write the next two-year budget.

“We are going to have to look to find better ways to do things with fewer dollars,” she said. “Just like that family making hard decisions, there’s things we can’t skimp on — protecting our most vulnerable and serving those most in need.”

Ayotte is the third woman to be elected governor of New Hampshire, following Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, both of whom are now U.S. senators. They were the first and second women in the nation to serve in the Senate after being governor. Ayotte is the first woman to do so in reverse, according to Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota and author of the Smart Politics news site.

While more than 150 sitting or former governors have become senators, Ayotte is among just 23 sitting or former senators elected governor since 1900, Ostermeier said. In an interview in October, Ayotte said that experience will serve her well.

“Not only do I understand how Washington works, but also how to fight for New Hampshire. I still have relationships there, across the aisle, with important people making decisions in Washington,” she said. “So I do feel like it does broaden my skill set as governor doing this in reverse.”

A narrow loss to Hassan in 2016 ended Ayotte’s tenure in Washington after one term. Before that, Ayotte spent five years as the state’s attorney general, and she often highlighted her past as a prosecutor during her campaign.

She repeated that Thursday, saying her top priority remains keeping the state safe. She also cited the state’s housing crisis as a top issue she plans to tackle, and she praised Republicans for expanding the state’s school voucher program. Without offering details, she also announced plans to ban cellphones in schools.

“Screens are negatively impacting our learning environments, drawing students’ attention away from their classes, and becoming a barrier for teachers to do their jobs,” she said. “No more.”

Ayotte said she looks forward to talking to students visiting the Statehouse and urging them to embrace public service.

“If we don’t teach our kids about it, they aren’t going to learn it,” she said. “It is so important to root our lives in something bigger than ourselves, and it is critical to the health of our state and our communities that our next generation step up and contribute.”

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