2026

By Leila Miller and Maximilian Heath

BUENOS AIRES, May 21 (Reuters) – U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Brian Mast has warned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio of “Chinese malign influence” in a bid for a major contract in Argentina, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

The April 23 letter concerns an auction for a 25-year contract to dredge and operate Argentina’s Parana River, a vital waterway for most of the country’s agricultural exports, that Argentina estimates will reach $10 billion in investment.

The terms of the tender, which is in its final phase with a decision expected in the coming days, explicitly barred state-owned companies, preventing bids from Chinese firms.

But Mast alleged that China was attempting “to circumvent that choice through a private sector proxy.” There is “serious concern” that Jan De Nul, a Belgian dredging company vying for the contract, “maintains deep and ongoing links to PRC state-owned entities” through Servimagnus, an Argentine firm that’s part of Jan De Nul’s consortium, the letter claimed.    

Jan De Nul has managed the Parana waterway for decades and is competing for the contract against the Deme Group, whose consortium includes investment firm KKR & Co and U.S.-based Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corp. In the bid’s point-score system, Jan De Nul has been ahead.

The Trump administration, a close ally of Argentina’s President Javier Milei, has expressed concern about Chinese influence in Latin America, including Argentina, where Beijing in March was its second-largest trading partner.

Awarding the contract to Jan De Nul “would be unacceptable and damaging to Argentina’s national security, America’s national security and our bilateral relationship,” the letter said.

Jan De Nul, Servimagnus and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement last month, the companies said that they don’t maintain a commercial or contractual relationship with state-run companies and that allegations that the bid hides the participation of Chinese capital are “a malicious fallacy that seeks to hinder the normal development of the process.”

Last Tuesday, Argentina’s National Ports and Navigation Agency celebrated the culmination of the bid, calling it a process that had seen “strong multisectorial support.” The agency did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. LOBBYING

About 80% of Argentina’s agricultural and agro-industrial exports leave the country via the Parana River, flowing from the Rosario agro-industrial hub and surrounding areas to the South Atlantic Ocean. 

Deme’s consortium was approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Advocacy Center, which helps companies pursuing foreign contracts, according to a person in contact with the consortium who requested anonymity.

The lobbying effort resulted in Milei adviser Santiago Caputo flying last week to D.C. to meet with officials, including Mast, Michael Jensen, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs on the National Security Council, and Alec Oxenford, Argentina’s ambassador to the U.S.

Caputo was told that the U.S. had “grave concerns” about Chinese involvement in the bid, according to a person familiar with the visit. The person said the concerns stemmed partly from allegations of frequent contact between the Chinese embassy and Servimagnus’ office in Argentina.

The consortium, in a May 11 letter addressed to Jensen seen by Reuters, has also alleged “clear bias” against U.S.-backed investment, saying that the timeline for companies to present a technical offer was rushed and had benefited Jan De Nul.

Argentina’s anti-corruption prosecutors’ office has also signaled concern about “serious and obvious” procedural irregularities in the bidding process.

(Reporting by Leila Miller and Maximilian Heath; Editing by Christian Plumb and Nick Zieminski)

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ATLANTA (AP) — For Donald Trump, it seems the 2020 presidential election is never over. That’s especially true in Georgia.

The Republican president’s years of false claims that his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden was due to widespread fraud have shadowed many elections since in the presidential battleground. The issue is almost certain to play a role in a four-week runoff campaign as GOP voters choose nominees for governor, secretary of state and the U.S. Senate.

Among the contenders: one of Trump’s alternate electors in his attempt to overturn Biden’s win in the state, a Trump acolyte who won his first congressional race while saying Trump won in 2020 and a secretary of state hopeful who echoes Trump’s conspiracy theories as he vies to become Georgia’s top elections official.

To be clear, Georgia’s presidential votes were counted three times, including once by hand, and each one affirmed Biden’s victory.

The primary came amid continued legal and political wrangling over how elections are managed in Fulton County — home to heavily Democratic Atlanta. Trump’s questioning of the Georgia results and longtime criticism of Fulton County elections were supercharged earlier this year when the FBI searched the county’s election office, seizing ballots and records from 2020.

The primary election’s first-round results showed that siding with Trump, even on his election lies, is good politics within the GOP. Georgia candidates who opposed Trump’s efforts in 2020 got trounced. But some conservatives worry that misplaying the issue — or emphasizing it at all — could backfire with the general electorate in November.

“We’re going to look stupid,” warned Debbie Dooley, an early tea party organizer who supported Trump from the outset of his first presidential campaign. “What are you going to say — Trump won, and he was always the president? It serves no purpose.”

She said Republicans should instead focus on the economy, and that any mention of election procedures should look to “securing future elections, looking forward.”

Whether Trump sees it that way is another question. The president already has endorsed Burt Jones, one of his 2020 alternate electors, in the governor’s race. Dooley, who is backing Jones, said she wouldn’t be surprised if Trump comes to Georgia to campaign — and air his 2020 grievances again.

“I don’t know if the president gets it or not,” she said.

Jones was a state lawmaker in 2020 when he joined Trump’s cause to overturn Biden’s 11,779-vote margin in Georgia. He parlayed that loyalty into winning the lieutenant governor’s office in 2022 and getting Trump’s early endorsement in his bid for a promotion. On Tuesday, he won about four out of 10 Republican votes.

Trump and Jones don’t revisit the details, but Trump has praised Jones multiple times on his Truth Social platform for his loyalty while Jones has promoted “election integrity.”

Jones’ runoff rival, billionaire and political newcomer Rick Jackson, is among the Republicans who does not talk much about the 2020 election. But he spent a slice of the $83 million he invested in his own campaign on an ad attacking outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, another GOP candidate for governor who resisted Trump’s urging to help find “find 11,800 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in 2020.

In the ad, a child is shown asking his mother why she chose the name Brad. The mother replies that her second choice was “Judas” – in the New Testament account, the name of the disciple who betrays Jesus to Roman authorities. The full name “Brad ‘Judas’ Raffensperger” appeared on the screen at the end of the spot.

Raffensperger finished a distant third in this week’s primary, with just 15% of the vote.

Rep. Mike Collins, who led the Senate GOP primary with about 40% of the vote, has never backed off his false claims that Biden’s win was rigged, an argument he featured when he first ran for Congress in 2022.

“You count the legal votes that were cast in the state of Georgia, Donald Trump won this state. Period,” he said in one ad, in which he held a long gun and bemoaned the “federal hijacking” of the 2020 election. He concluded with shooting a mock voting machine.

Collins’ runoff rival, former college football coach and political newcomer Derek Dooley, has been more circumspect. But both men are pledging fealty to Trump, with the president thus far not endorsing in the race to determine who will challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

It’s notable that Dooley’s main political benefactor is outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp, who like Raffensperger drew Trump’s ire in 2020 for certifying Biden’s slate of electors.

Kemp ran for and won reelection in 2022, saying Republicans should look forward instead of relitigating the 2020 election. Trump eventually made up with Kemp during the 2024 presidential campaign, and advisers to both men say Kemp has discussed the Senate contest with the president.

State Rep. Tim Fleming, a former deputy secretary of state, and former state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Trump loyalist and perennial candidate, were the top vote-getters in the contest for secretary of state and will face off next month.

Jones, a former Democrat, embraced Trump’s “stop the steal” movement and said during an Atlanta Press Club debate last month, “I stand with those who believe there was election fraud.”

Fleming, who worked under Kemp when the governor was secretary of state, has said there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election — a buzz word among Republicans who stop short of echoing Trump without refuting him. But Fleming said he believes the state has made great strides since then in improving elections and said he wants to focus on future elections.

Fleming and Jones far outpaced one of Raffensperger’s top aides, Gabriel Sterling, who gained attention in December 2020 for urging Trump to help discourage threats of violence against election workers. Sterling got 12% of the primary vote, finishing fourth.

Trump has long fixated on Fulton County, alleging it was the center of Georgia fraud in 2020. The FBI seized 2020 ballots and documents from the county elections offices in January, and the county remained a punching bag for Republicans through vote tabulations on Tuesday.

During voting hours, two voting precincts were closed for four hours in an Atlanta suburb after police received a call about possible gunfire and a suspicious person wearing military-style clothing. While the incident was unrelated to the primary, a judge ordered the precincts to stay open until 11 p.m. to make up for the lost time, and Fulton officials said the law prevented them from releasing any results until those precincts were closed.

State Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican runoff candidate for lieutenant governor, tried to capitalize on the delay, despite the fact that he’s seeking an office with no role over tabulating ballots or certifying elections.

“Here we are on Election Night, Georgians are anxiously awaiting the results, and which county hasn’t even started reporting? It’s always Fulton County,” Dolezal posted on social media. “It’s time for Georgia to takeover the process. We will not have another 2020 this November!”

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DETROIT (AP) — Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said Thursday that he is suspending his campaign for Michigan governor citing an increasingly “toxic” political climate due to President Donald Trump’s war with Iran and skyrocketing gas prices.

Duggan, a longtime Democrat, was running as an independent to replace Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who can’t run again due to term limits. He told The Associated Press that it was going to be “very hard to win” as the Democrats who would have supported him are galvanizing against what’s going on in Washington.

“Democrat anger against Trump and Republicans is extremely high,” Duggan said. “In 60 days there’s been a huge change in the attitudes of this country. People are feeling the pain at the pump and are angry about it.”

An independent has never served as Michigan governor and third-party candidates typically don’t fare well in elections for the state’s top seat. To Duggan, who shunned partisan fighting while choosing to run as an independent, it was clear the odds were stacking against his campaign.

“As long as I knew there was a path for victory, I was going to fight,” he said. “I don’t see a likely path to win.”

Since the beginning of the war with Iran in late February, oil prices have spiked more than 50%. As of Thursday, the price of regular unleaded gas in Michigan averaged $4.74 per gallon, according to AAA Michigan. That’s above the $4.56 national average. A year ago, the average in Michigan was $3.13. Nationally, it was $3.18.

Trump repeatedly has said gas prices will go down once the war ends without acknowledging when that might happen.

Nationally, Trump’s approval rating on the economy has dropped slightly since the start of the Iran war, according to AP-NORC polling. A recent AP-NORC poll conducted in May found that even Republicans are unhappier with Trump’s handling of the economy than they were a few months ago, even as they’re largely continuing to stand behind him. About 6 in 10 Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the economy, down from about 8 in 10 before the war began.

Duggan believed he was trailing Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Republican U.S. Rep. John James in the governor’s race. Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson also is running as a Democrat, while millionaire businessman Perry Johnson is running as a Republican.

Michigan’s primary election will be held Aug. 4, while the general election is Nov. 3.

In December 2024, Duggan announced his pursuit of the state’s top office surprising many when he also said he’d choose the independent route instead of sticking with the Democratic Party.

Duggan told The AP at that time that he wanted to offer Michigan voters “a choice.”

“It’s clear to me that there are a lot of people in this country who are tired of both parties and tired of the system,” Duggan said then. “You have a (state) legislature that’s almost evenly divided that makes the stakes of each issue become magnified. It has gotten harder and harder to address things as the partisan climate has gotten more toxic.”

His decision to run as an independent came as Michigan was one of a handful of swing states that helped Trump in November 2024 win a second term in the White House.

“I’ve done everything I know how to do for almost a year and a half,” Duggan said Thursday. “You could feel the mood of this state wanting the toxic partisanship to end. They wanted the parties to work together.”

Duggan spent a dozen years as Detroit mayor. He first was elected in November 2013 as the city was going through its painful and historic bankruptcy while being run by a state-appointed emergency manager. The former county prosecutor and medical center executive became Detroit’s first white mayor since Coleman A. Young was elected in the early 1970s as its first Black mayor.

Duggan is credited by many for leading Detroit after it emerged in December 2014 from bankruptcy to become a thriving, more vibrant city.

The city with a Black population hovering around 80% reelected Duggan twice. He announced in November 2024 that he would not seek a fourth term. He left the mayor’s office in January.

Duggan, who had been a Democrat for close to 40 years in a largely Democrat voting city, was targeted throughout the campaign by his former party, with many worried he would pull votes away from the Democratic Party’s nominee.

“I was running to change politics, not to be a spoiler,” he said Thursday.

Following Duggan’s announcement that he would run for governor, Republican and former Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley said on X that Duggan checked the boxes of being a “credible, independent candidate with the ability to raise money.”

“But there are huge advantages of having a political party behind you,” Calley wrote. “And being a target of the left and the right will be intense.”

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