Politics

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican Herschel Walker’s bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia comes to a head on Friday when they meet for their sole televised debate in a contentious race that could help determine which party controls the Senate.

The battle between Walker, a one-time football star and political novice backed by former President Donald Trump, and Warnock, a pastor at a historic Atlanta church who has served less than two years in the Senate, is one of the most closely watched contests in the Nov. 8 congressional elections.

The race has been rocked by media reports that Walker, who has voiced opposition to abortion without exceptions, paid for an abortion in 2009 to terminate the pregnancy of a woman he was dating and who later gave birth to one of his children. Walker has called the allegation a “flat-out lie.” Reuters has not independently confirmed the claim.

The issue is expected to be among many discussed when Walker and Warnock hold their debate, scheduled to start at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT), in Savannah. Opinion polls show the race as a toss-up.

President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats hold slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Senate control could be decided by the outcome of races in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Georgia was a reliably Republican state, with two Republican senators, until Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff then claimed the state’s two Senate seats in January 2021 run-off elections.

Two prominent Senate Republicans – Rick Scott and Tom Cotton – campaigned with Walker this week, delivering a message that Republicans need to secure a majority in the chamber to stop Biden’s legislative agenda.

“We are solidly behind our candidates and striving to get out the vote and secure it,” Bibb County Republican Party Chairman David Sumrall said.

“There aren’t that many people who are undecided in the race,” Republican strategist Charlie Black added. “But those who are undecided are looking for something to reassure them that he’s capable. If Herschel does well, then that’s going to help him.”

Warnock is an eloquent speaker who is senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King once preached. Walker on the other hand has been known to make confusing statements on policy issues such as climate change.

Walker himself tried to lower expectations in an interview with the Savannah Morning News last month, saying: “I’m a country boy. I’m not that smart. He’s a preacher.”

“My opponent has talked the talk. Friday’s the time to walk the walk. See you on the debate stage, Herschel Walker,” Warnock wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

Warnock initially accepted invitations to three debates, but Walker agreed to only one.

If neither candidate gets more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 8, the race would be decided in a Dec. 6 run-off election.

Republicans have sought to steer voter attention away from questions about Walker’s character and toward the need to gain control of the Senate, focusing upon issues including inflation, crime and border security.

An opinion poll conducted by the University of Georgia showed Warnock leading Walker 46% to 43% among likely voters. That compares to Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp’s 51% to 41% lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams in his re-election race.

The difference in the two Georgia races may be driven by independent and Democratic voters who favor a split ticket between Kemp and Warnock, according to University of Georgia political science professor Trey Hood, who oversaw the survey.

Hood added that most of the polling in the survey was conducted before the first media reports on the abortion allegation surfaced.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol plans to vote at a meeting on Thursday on whether to subpoena former President Donald Trump.

A source familiar with the matter said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been alerted to the panel’s plan to hold the vote.

Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee, announced that Thursday’s gathering would be a business meeting, not a hearing, which would allow the panel to vote on whether to recommend further investigative action rather than just present evidence.

During the meeting, committee members argued that the Republican former President Trump planned to deny his election defeat in advance and followed through even as close advisers told him he had lost.

NBC News had initially reported that the committee planned to vote to subpoena Trump during the meeting. A committee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

“We now know more about President Trump’s intention for election night. The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance before any vote had been counted. It was a premeditated plan by the president to declare victory no matter what the actual result was,” Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren said.

The meeting followed eight hearings earlier this year and one in July 2021. There were no live witnesses, but the panel aired videotaped testimony from earlier interviews.

It could be the committee’s last public session before releasing its final report, expected before the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine whether President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats or Trump’s Republicans control Congress.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Moira Warburton; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone, Josie Kao and Aurora Ellis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The congressional panel investigating Donald Trump’s supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol plans to vote on Thursday on whether to subpoena the former president, NBC News reported, citing sources familiar with the committee’s plans.

The vote is planned for during the panel’s hearing, which began earlier on Thursday, NBC reporters said in a post on Twitter.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chris Reese)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s family company is trying to restructure itself to avoid potential consequences from a lawsuit accusing the Trump Organization, Trump and three of his adult children of fraud, New York state Attorney General Letitia James said on Thursday.

James urged a New York state court in Manhattan to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the company before the civil fraud case, which accuses the real estate firm and the other defendants of overvaluing its assets and Trump’s net worth through a decade of lies to banks and insurers, goes to trial.

James said the Trump Organization on the date of the lawsuit registered a new Delaware-incorporated company named “Trump Organization II” with New York authorities. She said the Trump Organization has not provided assurances it will not seek to move assets out of New York.

Former U.S. President Trump, a Republican, and his company have denied wrongdoing and call the case a politically motivated “witch hunt.” James is a Democrat and is running for re-election in November.

“We have repeatedly provided assurance, in writing, that the Trump Organization has no intention of doing anything improper,” Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said in a statement, calling James’ request a “stunt” to help her campaign and an attempt to influence which judge gets assigned the case.

Lawyers for Trump’s children and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Thursday, James asked the court to bar the Trump Organization from offloading its assets while the case plays out, to prevent it from issuing financial statements that do not explain their methodology, and to appoint a monitor to ensure compliance with those conditions, court papers showed.

She also asked to speed up the case and sought a trial date for October 2023.

“Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility,” James said in a statement. “Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions.”

The Trump Organization manages hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, and had been under investigation by James for more than three years.

Through the lawsuit, James is seeking to remove the Trumps from power at their company, prohibit Trump and the three adult children named in the case from serving as corporate officers or directors in New York, and to recoup at least $250 million of alleged improper gains.

The lawsuit said Trump’s scheme was designed to fraudulently induce banks to lend money more cheaply, coax insurers into providing coverage for higher limits at lower premiums, and obtain tax benefits.

James said Trump pretended his Trump Tower apartment was 30,000 square feet, when it was actually 10,996 square feet, and that its $327 million valuation in 2015 was “absurd” because no New York City apartment had sold for $100 million at the time.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has separately charged the Trump Organization with criminal tax fraud, and is preparing for an Oct. 24 trial. The company has pleaded not guilty.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; additional reporting by Karen Freifeld in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Will Dunham and Chris Reese)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is issuing a stark warning in its final public hearing before the midterm election: The future of the nation’s democracy is at stake.

The panel returned Thursday for an October hearing, weeks ahead of the election, with new details about President Donald Trump’s state of mind on Jan. 6, 2021 as he egged on his supporters with false claims of election fraud, pushed to accompany them to the Capitol while lawmakers were counting the votes and then did nothing for hours as they violently broke into the building.

Similar to its eight hearings over the summer, lawmakers on the panel focused on Trump and his efforts to disrupt the country’s long tradition of peaceful transfers of power. The panel was expected to subpoena the former president at the end of the hearing, according to two people familiar with the investigation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

The committee is set to shut down at the beginning of next year, and is making its final public arguments ahead of a report expected in December.

The former president “continued to pull out all the stops” even after losing in court and the Electoral College, said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the panel’s chairman.

‘CONSIDER WHETHER WE CAN SURVIVE’

The lesson of the committee’s investigation is that institutions only hold when people of good faith protect them without regard to political cost, said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairwoman.

“Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions in our Republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time?” Cheney asked.

The warnings come as Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he lost his reelection to Joe Biden and is considering another run in 2024 – and as many Republicans who deny Biden’s win are running in the midterm elections at all levels of government. Many states have replaced election officials who resisted Trump’s pressure campaign.

“Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” said Cheney, who lost her own Republican primary this August. “Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years.”

SECRET SERVICE REVELATIONS

The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents from the Secret Service in recent weeks. Lawmakers are revealing some of that information in the hearing, including an email from within the agency on Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of his attempts to undermine the vote.

“Just fyi. POTUS is p—-d — breaking news —- Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now,” one anonymous Secret Service email said.

Other emails showed that the agency had ample warnings of violence in the weeks and days ahead of the insurrection.

An alert received by the agency on Dec. 24 said that multiple online users were targeting members of Congress and “instructing others to march into the chambers,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the panel.

CABINET OFFICIALS

The committee showed prerecorded interviews with Cabinet members including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia who said that they believed that once the legal avenues had been exhausted, then that should have been the end of Trump’s to remain in power.

Pompeo, who was interviewed by the panel since its last hearing in July, said in his videotaped testimony that he believed that once the Electoral College certified the vote, that was the end of the process for contesting the election. “We should all comply with the law at all times, to the best of our ability — every one of us,” Pompeo said.

At the same time, Trump continued to push the false claims of fraud to his millions of supporters.

“President Trump knew the truth. He heard what all his experts and senior staff was telling him,” said Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the committee’s other Republican. “His intent was plain: ignore the rule of law and stay in power.”

CRIMINAL REFERRALS

Cheney addressed one of the committee’s remaining questions at the beginning of the meeting, saying that the panel “may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.”

Members of the panel have long suggested they may suggest charges for Trump or others based on their own evidence. While such a referral would not force any action, it would place political pressure on Garland as the department has pursued its own investigations surrounding Jan. 6. And the committee has yet to share any transcripts from its more than 1,000 interviews.

Still, “we recognize that our role is not to make decisions regarding prosecution,” Cheney said.

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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

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(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to let an independent arbiter vet more than 100 classified documents that were seized from his Florida home as he confronts a criminal investigation into his handling of sensitive government records.

The justices in a brief order denied Trump’s emergency request that he made on Oct. 4 asking them to lift a federal appeals court’s decision that prevented the arbiter from reviewing more than 100 documents marked as classified that were among the roughly 11,000 records seized by FBI agents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Aug. 8.

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

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The candidates for governor of Michigan are having their first debate on Thursday, as Republican challenger Tudor Dixon looks to use the primetime appearance to narrow her gap with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Dixon is a former commentator for a conservative online program who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. She has never held public office and is still working to introduce herself and her ideas to voters — some of whom may be seeing her in action for the first time at Thursday’s debate.

For months, Whitmer and fellow Democrats have been airing attack ads portraying the Republican as too extreme on issues such as abortion, noting Dixon’s opposition to the procedure even in cases of rape or incest. Those ads have largely gone unanswered as Dixon has struggled to raise money to compete with Whitmer’s multimillion-dollar campaign fund.

But with just weeks to go before the Nov. 8 election, Dixon is expected to fire back at Whitmer during the debate in Grand Rapids. She has described the governor’s views as “radical” on issues such as education, abortion and criminal justice. Dixon also has criticized Whitmer on the campaign trail for her approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying lockdowns she imposed hurt the state’s economy.

Whitmer is seeking her second term as governor after serving in leadership in the Michigan Legislature, where in 2013 during a debate over insurance coverage of abortion she publicly shared her story of being raped. She has since said she will “fight like hell” to protect abortion rights, including filing a lawsuit earlier this year to block a 1931 ban from taking effect in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Abortion has been a particularly prominent issue in Michigan this year because voters in November also will decide whether to enshrine the right to the procedure in the state constitution.

Dixon has said she supports abortion only to save the life of the mother, and she has been endorsed by anti-abortion groups, including Right to Life of Michigan.

She has had support from the family of Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary under Trump, and a well-known member of the state’s GOP establishment. Her campaign said she was getting help preparing for the debate from another endorsee, former Gov. John Engler.

Dixon emerged from a five-candidate Republican primary after receiving Trump’s endorsement. She said during the primary that she believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, whose loss to Joe Biden in Michigan by some 154,000 votes was confirmed through multiple investigations and lawsuits.

The mother of four has criticized Whitmer over education in the state, saying parents should have more rights in regard to what is taught to children.

The two candidates are scheduled to debate again on Oct. 25 at Oakland University in Rochester.

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Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Burnett reported from Chicago.

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — As they have been for most elections the past decade, two of Nevada’s four U.S. House races are in the swing-seat spotlight as Democratic incumbents Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford seek reelection in the western battleground state.

But for the first time in more than 20 years, Republicans also think they have a chance to turn a traditional blue seat red in a Las Vegas district as Nevadans struggle with some of the highest gas prices and unemployment rates in the nation.

Both national parties are watching Nevada, one of the few swing states Donald Trump failed to carry in 2016 and which President Joe Biden won by only 2.4 percentage points in 2020.

Six-term Democratic Rep. Dina Titus anticipates her stiffest challenge in Las Vegas yet against Republican Mark Robertson after Democrats sacrificed parts of their traditional stronghold during redistricting in exchange for some gains in the neighboring swing districts.

Horsford is slightly favored to fend off GOP challenger Samuel Peters in one of those: the 4th Congressional District stretching from the northern outskirts of Vegas into rural communities to the northeast.

In the 3rd district that runs through the Vegas suburb of Henderson all the way to the Arizona border, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report is among those that consider Lee’s race against Republican April Becker a toss-up.

Both are near the top of the list of races nationally that could help determine whether the GOP takes control of the House.

In northern Nevada, Republican Rep. Mark Amodei is all but certain to win reelection to a seventh term in the rural 2nd District, where no Democrat has ever won and this year’s challenger, Elizabeth Mercedes Krause, is largely unknown and woefully underfunded.

Amodei and Peters were among the Republicans who joined Trump earlier this month at a contentious rally in rural Minden south of Carson City.

Trump hasn’t formally endorsed any Nevada House candidates, as he has Adam Laxalt’s bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Joe Lombardo’s challenge to Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

But among the GOP challengers, Peters has aligned himself most closely with Trump in his race against Horsford, who won by 4.9 percentage points in 2020. Cook characterizes the race as “leans Democrat.”

A war veteran who lost in the 2020 GOP primary, Peters urged congressional Republicans to contest Biden’s election. He said he wouldn’t have certified it without obtaining more information and has advocated for eliminating electronic voting machines.

In addition to “election integrity” and “fiscal responsibility,” Peters has campaigned most on border security. His 11-point immigration plan begins with completing the wall the Trump administration began on the Mexican border.

Lee, now seeking a third term, won by 3 percentage points in 2020 in the district that has bounced between parties the past decade.

Both national parties are targeting the contest.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, has helped raise money for Lee, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee who enjoyed a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage through June 30 against Becker, a Republican attorney who narrowly lost her bid to unseat the state Senate leader in 2020.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has campaigned with Becker and Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel appeared with her at an Oct. 7 rally in Las Vegas.

Like other Democrats, Lee has emphasized abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade.

Becker opposes abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and harm to the mother and has the support of groups that oppose abortion. But she notes that abortion is legal in Nevada through 24 weeks under a voter-approved measure, so any federal limits on abortion would be unconstitutional.

Titus, the dean of Nevada’s delegation, is still favored to win a seventh term. But she’s complained that the shift of her newly drawn district into GOP-leaning suburbs makes her more vulnerable as she tries to fend off Robertson.

Robertson, a retired Army colonel and business owner, has focused most on reigning in federal spending, including by eliminating some child care subsidies and paid family leave, which he says should be addressed by state governments.

The last Republican to win there was John Ensign, who served two terms from 1995-99 and later was elected to the Senate, where he was serving a second term when he resigned in 2011 amid an ethics investigation into an extramarital affair.

Ensign’s resignation started a domino effect that led to Amodei winning a special congressional election in Nevada’s rural district in September 2011.

Amodei, now a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, has captured at least 58% of the vote since he won his first full term.

Krause is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, chairwoman of the Nevada Native Caucus, and co-founder of the Indigenous Educators Empowerment nonprofit. She had only raised about $10,000 through June compared to Amodei’s nearly $800,000 and has been largely invisible throughout the campaign.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of Social Security recipients will get an 8.7% boost in their benefits in 2023.

That’s a historic increase and welcome news for American retirees and others — but it’s tempered by the fact that it’s fueled by record high inflation that’s raised the cost of everyday living.

The cost–of living adjustment means the average recipient will receive more than $140 extra a month beginning in January, according to estimates released Thursday by the Social Security Administration.

The boost in benefits will be coupled with a 3% drop in Medicare Part B premiums, meaning retirees will get the full impact of the jump in Social Security benefits.

The Social Security Administration’s Acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi said combined with Medicare premiums going down in 2023, the Social Security benefit increase, “will give seniors more peace of mind and breathing room.”

“This year’s substantial Social Security cost–of–living adjustment is the first time in over a decade that Medicare premiums are not rising and shows that we can provide more support to older Americans who count on the benefits they have earned,” she said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House hosted a summit Thursday to help speed up construction projects tied to the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law — an effort to improve coordination with the mayors and governors who directly account for 90% of the spending.

“This is the first time we’ve tried this in 50 years on this level,” said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator and the former mayor of New Orleans. “We’re going to really push hard to make it go faster and try to do it better, and try to get at least all the federal agencies focused on accelerating the pace of design, construction, permitting.”

The summit began Thursday morning and comes at a critical moment for the nearly year-old law as high inflation and worker and material shortages are threatening to delay many projects.

At stake is a legacy-making investment championed by President Joe Biden, who has said that it’s the largest set of public works projects since the Interstate Highway System began in the 1950s during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Going into midterm elections this year, Biden has repeatedly told voters that the government can deliver results with Democrats and Republicans working together.

Administration officials plan to use the summit to smooth the way for accelerating the pace of construction, which in turn can help to control costs and maximize the value of dollars spent.

The Transportation Department will launch an internal center to provide best practices on project design, planning and construction for state and local leaders. The Commerce Department will have a “Dig Once” effort so that construction workers are not repeatedly punching holes into roads to lay water pipes, broadband connections and electricity and natural gas lines, in addition to other efforts by government agencies and industry groups.

“I just fully expect that the more we work on this, and the better we get, the more money we’re going to save and the more time we’re going to save,” said Landrieu, who will be speaking at the event along with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, among others.

Roughly 3,000 people were expected to gather in-person and online for the summit. It overlapped with Biden’s being away from the White House as he travels to Western states.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock will speak on a panel about getting projects done on time. He said that inflation, worker shortages and supply chain issues have each been barriers and cause an increase as high as 30% in forecasted costs.

“All of those issues are the most critical threat to what we’re trying to do,” Hancock said.

Denver is using federal funds to ensure that neighborhoods remain connected as express lanes are added to a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 70 that bisects the city. Hancock wanted to ensure that the neighborhoods on either side of the highway were not cut off from each other, which could make it more difficult for children to attend school. Funding from the infrastructure law provided an additional $14 million to keep neighborhoods intact, with the project scheduled for completion in 2026.

Hancock said that the infrastructure law also created an “unprecedented” opportunity to partner with female and minority-owned contractors.

“We should not let this moment pass by,” he said.

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