Politics

PHOENIX (AP) — A spokesman for Kari Lake said Tuesday the Republican candidate for Arizona governor didn’t mean to suggest abortion should be legal, saying she’s not calling for changes to abortion laws weeks after a judge ruled that prosecutors can enforce a near-total ban on terminating pregnancies.

In her most expansive comments on abortion since the ruling last month, Lake told a Phoenix talk radio host that it should be “rare and legal” before saying twice that it should be “rare but safe.” Ross Trumble, a spokesman for Lake, said she meant to say only “rare but safe.”

“You know, it would be really wonderful if abortion was rare and legal — the way they said it before, remember? Rare but safe, rare but safe, I think is what they said,” Lake told conservative host Mike Broomhead on KTAR radio. “It’d be really wonderful if that’s how it turned out. But that’s not what they want, Mike. They don’t want rare but safe.”

Lake appeared to be referring to former President Bill Clinton’s famous line that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

Arizona doctors stopped performing abortions late last month after a judge in Tucson ruled that prosecutors can enforce a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion unless it’s necessary to save a woman’s life. Arizona also has a law passed this year that bans abortion after 15 weeks, creating speculation about what’s allowed.

Trumble said either the total ban or the 15-week law would fit Lake’s standard of abortion being “rare but safe.”

“’Rare but safe’ would apply to whatever the current law is interpreted to mean,” Trumble said.

He said Lake has no plans to ask the Legislature to change abortion laws and declined to say whether she would sign legislation expanding access, saying he wouldn’t address “hypotheticals.”

Asked in the radio interview whether she would support allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest — both are disallowed under the total abortion ban and the 15-week law — Lake demurred.

“That’s a very small percentage of abortions,” she said. She said her Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, has the more extreme position, accusing her of supporting abortion without restrictions. Hobbs says decisions about abortions should be made by women and their doctors without government interference.

Lake has spoken positively of Arizona’s total ban on abortion, which she called “a great law that’s already on the books.” She has called abortion “the ultimate sin,” said abortion pills should be illegal and that she would sign a bill banning abortion as soon as fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks gestational age and before many women know they’re pregnant.

Democrats have seized on the ruling, which revived the issue ahead of next month’s midterm elections. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter on Tuesday asking Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to call a special session of the Legislature to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The founder and CEO of a software company targeted by election deniers was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing data on hundreds of Los Angeles County poll workers.

Konnech Corporation’s Eugene Yu, 51, was arrested in Meridian Township in Michigan and held on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information, while computer hard drives and other “digital evidence” were seized by investigators from the county district attorney’s office, according to the office.

Local prosecutors will seek his extradition to California.

“We are continuing to ascertain the details of what we believe to be Mr. Yu’s wrongful detention by LA County authorities,” Konnech said in a statement that ended: “Any LA County poll worker data that Konnech may have possessed was provided to it by LA County, and therefore could not have been ‘stolen’ as suggested.”

Konnech is a small company based in East Lansing, Michigan. In 2020, it won a five-year, $2.9 million contract with LA County for software to track election worker schedules, training, payroll,and communications, according to the county registrar-recorder/county clerk, Dean C. Logan.

Konnech was required to keep the data in the United States and only provide access to citizens and permanent residents but instead stored it on servers in the People’s Republic of China, the DA’s office said.

The DA’s office didn’t specify what specific information allegedly was taken. But officials said it only involved poll workers, not voting machines or vote counts and didn’t alter election results.

“But security in all aspects of any election is essential so that we all have full faith in the integrity of the election process,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement.

“With the mid-term General Election 35 days away, our focus remains on ensuring the administration of this election is not disrupted,” said a statement from Dean C. Logan, the LA County registrar-recorder/county clerk.

There wasn’t any evidence that any election worker was bribed or extorted and an investigation was pending into whether any of the data went into inappropriate hands, the DA’s office said.

Konnech previously said that all the data for its American customers were stored on servers in the United States, the New York Times reported Monday.

The paper reported that Konnech and Yu, who was born in China, became the target of claims by election conspiracy theorists that the company had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had supplied information on 2 million poll workers.

There wasn’t any evidence to support those claims, but Yu received threats and went into hiding, the paper said.

Konnech also has contracts with Allen County, Indiana, and DeKalb County in Georgia, the Times said.

On its website, Konnech said it currently has 32 clients in North America.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Leading Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign increasingly optimistic that a Senate majority is within reach even as a dramatic family fight in Georgia clouds one of the party’s biggest pickup opportunities.

And as some Democrats crow on social media about apparent Republican setbacks, party strategists privately concede that their own shortcomings may not be outweighed by the GOP’s mounting challenges.

The evolving outlook is tied to a blunt reality: Democrats have virtually no margin for error as they confront the weight of history, widespread economic concerns and President Joe Biden’s weak standing. There is broad agreement among both parties that the Democrats’ summertime momentum across states like Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has eroded just five weeks before Election Day.

“There’s reason to be apprehensive, not reason to be gloomy,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said. “It looked like at the end of August we had a little momentum. I don’t know if we’ve regressed any, but we’re not progressing in many places.”

That tepid outlook comes even as Republicans confront a series of self-imposed setbacks in the states that matter most in the 2022 midterms, which will decide the balance of power in Congress and statehouses across the nation.

None has been more glaring than Herschel Walker’s struggles in Georgia, where the Republican Senate candidate’s own son accused him of lying about his personal challenges — including a report from The Daily Beast alleging that the anti-abortion Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker called the accusation a “flat-out lie” and said he would sue, an action his campaign hadn’t taken as of late Tuesday.

“Everything has been a lie,” Christian Walker responded Tuesday.

The Republican establishment, including the Sen. Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, and former President Donald Trump himself remained staunchly behind Walker on Tuesday in his bid to oust first-term Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. The Walker campaign also reported a massive fundraising haul that coincided with the latest allegations.

“If you’re in a fight, people will come to your aid,” said Steven Law, head of the Senate Leadership Fund and a close ally of McConnell, R-Ky.

Law said the Georgia race had grown increasingly competitive despite the Democrats’ focus on Walker’s personal life. And looking beyond Georgia, Law said the political climate was predictably shifting against the party that controls the White House, as is typically the case in midterm elections.

“It certainly seems that voters are returning to a more traditional midterm frame of mind,” Law said.

Should Republicans gain even one Senate seat in November, they would take control of Congress’ upper chamber — and with it, the power to control judicial nominations and policy debates for the last two years of Biden’s term. Leaders in both parties believe Republicans are likely to take over the House.

Even facing such odds, it’s far too soon to predict a Republican-controlled Congress.

Democrats remain decidedly on offense and are spending heavily to try to flip Republican-held seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Voter opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision this summer to strip women of their constitutional right to an abortion has energized the Democratic base and led to a surge in female voter registrations.

Republicans are most focused on Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada, although Republican officials believe that underwhelming Trump-backed nominees in Arizona and New Hampshire have dampened the party’s pickup opportunities.

“The Republican candidates they’re running are too extreme,” said J.B. Poersch, who leads the pro-Democrat Senate Majority PAC. “I think this is still advantage Democrats.”

Meanwhile, conditions in the top battleground states are rapidly evolving.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz faced difficult new questions this week raised by a Washington Post article about the medical products he endorsed as a daytime television star. Another news report by the news site Jezebel detailing how his research caused hundreds of dogs to be killed rippled across social media.

Still, Democratic officials acknowledge the race tightened considerably as the calendar shifted to October. And White House officials are concerned about Democratic nominee John Fetterman’s stamina as he recovers from a May stroke.

“Senate Republicans had a very bad start to October, but we know each of our races will be tight and we’re going to keep taking nothing for granted,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who leads the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

The GOP Senate candidates’ latest challenges in Georgia and Pennsylvania dominated social media Monday and Tuesday, according to data compiled by GQR, a public opinion research firm that works with Democratic organizations.

News stories about Walker’s abortion accuser and Oz’s animal research had the first- and second-highest reach of any news stories on Facebook and Twitter since they surfaced Monday, topping content related to the television show “Sons of Anarchy,” another report about Planned Parenthood mobile abortion clinics and news about Kanye West. GQR used the social listening tool NewsWhip, which tracks over 500,000 websites in more than 100 languages roughly in real time.

In swing-state Nevada, the rhetoric from Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has become increasingly urgent in recent days as she fends off a fierce challenge from former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Within the White House, there is real fear that she could lose her reelection bid, giving Republicans the only seat they may need to claim the Senate majority.

“We have a big problem, friend,” Cortez Masto wrote in a fundraising appeal Tuesday. “Experts say that our race in Nevada could decide Senate control — and right now, polling shows me 1 point behind my Trump-endorsed opponent.”

Democrats and their allies continue to hope that backlash against the Supreme Court’s abortion decision will help them overcome historical trends in which the party controlling the White House almost always loses seats in Congress. Democrats, who control Washington, are also facing deep voter pessimism about the direction of the country and Biden’s relatively weak approval ratings.

The traditional rules of politics have often been broken in the Trump era. In past years, Republicans may have abandoned Walker. But on Tuesday, they linked arms behind him.

Law, of the Senate Leadership Fund, said he takes Walker at his word that he did not pay for a former girlfriend’s abortion, despite apparent evidence of a “Get Well” card with Walker’s signature and a check receipt.

He said voters believe that “Walker may have made mistakes in his personal life that affected him and his family, but Warnock has made mistakes in public life in Washington that affected them and their families.”

There were some signs of Republican concern on the ground in Georgia, however.

Martha Zoller, a popular Republican radio host in north Georgia and one-time congressional candidate, told her audience Tuesday that the latest allegations require Walker to reset his campaign with a straightforward admission about his “personal demons” and what he’s done to overcome them.

“He needs to fall on the sword. ‘I was a dog. … And I have asked forgiveness for it,’” she said, detailing the kind of message she believes Walker must give voters. “It would be so refreshing to have somebody just tell the truth.”

Veteran Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin warned his party against writing off the Georgia Republican.

“I wouldn’t say Walker is done. Over the last couple of cycles we’ve certainly seen Republican candidates survive things that are not supposed to be survivable,” Schwerin said. “There are a lot of close races, and the dynamics of this election are difficult to predict. Everybody is expecting multiple shifts in momentum between now and Election Day.”

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden intends to nominate Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to be the U.S. representative on the World Health Organization’s executive board, administration officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Murthy has served as the top U.S. doctor under Biden and under former President Barack Obama. He will continue in that role while taking on the WHO position, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

“With his experience and expertise, the president is confident that Dr. Murthy will build on his commitment to an era of relentless diplomacy by representing our nation on the world stage,” one official said.

“Rejoining the WHO requires an experienced and seasoned physician and public health expert,” who can expand on the U.S. commitment to global health, the official said. “Dr. Murthy is the perfect person for that.”

Upon taking office in January 2021, Biden declared that the United States would reengage with the WHO after his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, said in 2020 that the country would withdraw from the organization because of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“If confirmed, I will continue to elevate U.S leadership on the global stage and ensure public health is at the forefront of our planning and preparation for global challenges,” Murthy said in a statement provided to Reuters.

A second administration official said Murthy would remain in Washington, where he lives with his wife and two children, but travel to Geneva “whenever necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of this role.”

The WHO’s executive board has 34 members who serve 3-year terms. Its purpose, according to the organization’s website, is to prepare an agenda for and implement policies by the World Health Assembly, which is made up of the WHO member states. The U.S. has not had a Senate-confirmed representative on the board since 2020.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who has said he opposes abortion with no exceptions, has denied a media report that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.

Walker, who aims to unseat Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia, was responding to a Monday report by The Daily Beast that said the candidate’s then-girlfriend provided a receipt, a copy of the check and a get well card given to her by on the former football star endorsed by ex-President Donald Trump.

“This is a flat-out lie – and I deny this in the strongest possible terms,” Walker, 60, said in a statement late Monday.

Matt Fuller, an editor at the publication, said it stood by its report, which Reuters could not independently confirm.

The report comes two weeks before early voting begins in Georgia, one of several critical races that will determine whether Democrats hold onto their narrow majority in the chamber.

It is the latest scandal for Walker, a first-time candidate for office who has also faced allegations of domestic violence.

One of his sons, conservative social media influencer Christian Walker, blasted his father following Monday’s report.

“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you,” he wrote on Twitter.

Abortion looms large ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

Warnock, who serves as pastor at the Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King Jr., backs access to abortion and other reproductive health care, saying on his campaign website that the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade “cannot stand.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

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The Biden administration unveiled a set of far-reaching goals Tuesday to align artificial intelligence-powered tools with what it called the values of Democracy and equity, including guidelines for how to protect people’s personal data and limit surveillance.

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights notably does not set out specific enforcement actions, but instead is intended as a White House call to action for the U.S. government to safeguard digital and civil rights in an AI-fueled world, officials said.

“This is the Biden-Harris administration really saying that we need to work together, not only just across government, but across all sectors, to really put equity at the center and civil rights at the center of the ways that we make and use and govern technologies,” said Alondra Nelson, deputy director for science and society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “We can and should expect better and demand better from our technologies.”

The office said the white paper represents a major advance in the administration’s agenda to hold technology companies accountable, and highlighted various federal agencies’ commitments to weighing new rules and studying the specific impacts of AI technologies. The document emerged after a year-long consultation with more than two dozen different departments, and also incorporates feedback from technologists, civil society groups, businesses and industry researchers.

The resulting non-binding principles cite academic research, agency studies and news reports that have documented real-world harms from AI-powered tools, including facial recognition tools that contributed to wrongful arrests and an automated system that discriminated against loan seekers who attended a Historically Black College or University.

The white paper also said parents and social workers alike could benefit from knowing if child welfare agencies were using algorithms to help decide when families should be investigated for maltreatment.

Earlier this year after the publication of an AP review of an algorithmic tool used in a Pennsylvania child welfare system, OSTP staffers reached out to sources quoted in the article to learn more, according to multiple people who participated in the call. AP’s investigation found that the Allegheny County tool in its first years of operation showed a pattern of flagging a disproportionate number of Black children for a “mandatory” neglect investigation, when compared with white children.

In May, sources said Carnegie Mellon University researchers and staffers from the American Civil Liberties Union spoke with OSTP officials about child welfare agencies’ use of algorithms. Nelson said protecting children from technology harms remains an area of concern.

“If a tool or an automated system is disproportionately harming a vulnerable community, there should be, one would hope, that there would be levers and opportunities to address that through some of the specific applications and prescriptive suggestions,” said Nelson, who also serves as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden.

OSTP did not provide additional comment about the May meeting.

Still, because many AI-powered tools are developed, adopted or funded at the state and local level, the federal government has limited oversight regarding their use. The white paper makes no specific mention of how the Biden administration could influence specific policies at state or local levels, but a senior administration official said the administration was exploring how to align federal grants with AI guidance.

The white paper also did not specifically address AI-powered technologies funded through the Department of Justice, whose civil rights division separately has been examining algorithmic harms, bias and discrimination, Nelson said.

Tucked between the calls for greater oversight, the white paper also said when appropriately implemented, AI systems have the power to bring about lasting benefits to society, such as helping farmers grow food more efficiently or identifying diseases.

“Fueled by the power of American innovation, these tools hold the potential to redefine every part of our society and make life better for everyone. This important progress must not come at the price of civil rights or democratic values,” the document said.

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans in the tightest U.S. Senate races are getting help from deep-pocketed allies who are unleashing a late advertising blitz, potentially neutralizing their Democratic rivals’ fundraising advantage heading into the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

Led by a fundraising group tied to Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, dozens of conservative organizations reported spending more than $104 million in September to help Republican candidates in seven Senate races widely seen as competitive, a Reuters analysis of federal disclosures found.

Democrats’ allies in the same races – spread across Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have reported spending about $23 million last month, less than a quarter of the sum reported by Republican allies.

Democratic campaigns have reported having bigger bank accounts in six of the seven states, ranging from New Hampshire where U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan had about $7 million more on hand than Republican challenger Don Bolduc in late August, to Arizona where U.S. Senator Mark Kelly had a $23 million advantage over Republican Blake Masters in mid-July. In Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson had a $1 million advantage over Democrat Mandela Barnes in mid-July.

The outside spending – which has overwhelmingly funded ads – could make a difference in the final five weeks before the elections, when Republicans are favored to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives but the Senate is up for grabs.

Any of the seven races could tip the balance of power in the Senate, currently split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote.

In Pennsylvania, more than $20 million in recent spending by Republican allies has fueled a barrage of attack ads against Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, accusing him of being “dangerously liberal on crime.”

“They have been ubiquitous,” Chris Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said of the anti-Fetterman ads.

MONEY MATTERS

The advertising push could be hurting Fetterman’s standing among elderly voters, a demographic with a high turnout rate in midterms that also watches a lot of television, said Borick, who runs the college’s polling institute.

“Could the money matter in this and the other races? I think the belief is increasingly that it can,” Borick said.

A Muhlenberg College poll conducted Sept. 13-16 showed Fetterman up 49%-44% over Republican celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. The gap was within the poll’s margin of error. But among voters age 65 and older, Oz had a commanding 54% to 40% lead.

Fetterman’s campaign reported having $5.5 million in the bank at the end of June, compared to Oz’s $1.1 million.

The Democrat’s big campaign account helped him respond with his own television ads defending his votes on Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons to give some people in prison a “second chance” by commuting their sentence.

Across the seven races, the Republican advantage in recent spending by allies reflects in part wealthy donors seeking to even out the financial stakes.

In Arizona, Masters’s allies – including a group funded by his old boss and Thiel Capital founder, billionaire Peter Thiel – reported directly spending more than $12 million to support his campaign or to oppose Kelly. Kelly’s allies reported spending about $6 million to help his cause.

“Outside groups are making up the difference,” said Aaron Scherb, a lobbyist on campaign finance and election issues for Common Cause, a watchdog group that advocates for increasing transparency in campaign finance.

Under U.S. campaign finance rules, outside groups can spend unlimited amounts supporting candidates as long as the outlays are not coordinated with campaigns.

Much of outside spending comes from Super PACs, funding groups that include the McConnell-tied Senate Leadership Fund and the Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, which advocates for tighter gun laws and has taken big checks from wealthy Democratic donors.

Super PACs face no limits on the size of contributions they can take from individuals or from other groups.

The Senate Leadership Fund, which has reported spending more than $60 million in September helping Republicans in the seven competitive Senate races, has received contributions of at least $10 million since December from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, according to the Super PAC’s financial disclosures.

The groups behind the recent outside spending have yet to file comprehensive financial reports for September but are required by the Federal Election Commission to disclose large independent outlays soon after making them.

A notable absence in the Republican-aligned spending blitz is former President Donald Trump.

Trump’s Save America fundraising group has amassed more than $90 million after taking in close to one-fifth of online fundraising reported in the current election cycle by Republican online donation portal WinRed.

While Trump has held rallies supporting Oz and other Republicans, he has yet to report spending any money on ads supporting congressional candidates.

(Editing by Deepa Babington)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up an Alabama redistricting case that could have far-reaching effects on minority voting power across the United States.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the latest high-court showdown over the federal Voting Rights Act, lawsuits seeking to force Alabama to create a second Black majority congressional district. About 27% of Alabamians are Black, but they form a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts.

The court’s conservatives, in a 5-4 vote in February, blocked a lower court ruling that would have required a second Black majority district in time for the 2022 midterm elections.

A similar ruling to create an additional Black majority district in Louisiana also was put on hold.

Conservative high-court majorities have made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021. A ruling for the state in the new case could weaken another powerful way civil rights groups and minority voters have used to challenge what they claim is racial discrimination in redistricting.

The case also has an overlay of partisan politics. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress.

A three-judge panel found that Alabama has concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice.

Alabama’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found.

The state argues that the lower court ruling would force it to sort voters by race, insisting that it is taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting.

That argument could resonate with conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. He has opposed most consideration of race in voting both as a justice and in his time as a lawyer in Republican presidential administrations.

Tuesday’s arguments are the first Supreme Court case involving race for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice.

A challenge to affirmative action in college admissions is set for arguments on Oct. 31.

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By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will announce new guidelines and grants to protect reproductive rights on Tuesday, and describe how abortion rights have been curtailed since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to terminating pregnancies.

He will be speaking at a meeting of the reproductive rights task force, also to be attended by Vice President Kamala Harris, that is being held 100 days after the landmark Roe v. Wade judgment.

The meeting will focus on how millions of women cannot access abortion services and doctors and nurses are facing criminal penalties for providing such services, according to a White House official and a letter shared by the White House.

The letter to the president was from Jen Klein, the head of the inter-agency task force on abortion access.

At the meeting, the president will also speak about new guidelines for universities from the Department of Education to protect students from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and $6 million in new grants to protect access to reproductive healthcare services from the Department of Health & Human Services.

The letter from Klein said abortion bans have gone into effect in more than one dozen states since the court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling on June 24. Nearly 30 million women of reproductive age now live in a state with a ban, including nearly 22 million women who cannot access abortion care after six weeks, it said.

The letter also notes efforts by Republican lawmakers such as Senator Lindsay Graham to issue a nationwide abortion ban.

Democrats are increasingly hopeful that the Supreme Court decision will boost voter support in November’s midterm elections.

A Pew Research Center poll in August showed abortion rocketing up as a priority for Democratic voters — from 46 percent in March to 71 percent.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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By Andrew Chung and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court opened what promises to be an eventful new term on Monday, hearing arguments in an environmental dispute, welcoming a history-making justice to the bench and taking up some new cases to be decided in the next nine months.

President Joe Biden’s appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman justice, took part in oral arguments for the first time since being confirmed by the Senate in April to replace now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson was not shy, posing questions to lawyers appearing in the first of two cases argued on Monday – a closely watched fight from Idaho over environmental regulation.

Members of the public were allowed into the ornate courtroom to watch the arguments for the first time since early in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority has become increasingly assertive, as evidenced by its rulings last term overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide and expanding gun rights. Jackson becomes a member of the court’s liberal bloc. She is the sixth woman ever to serve on the court. And for the first time, four women serve together – Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

It is on the first Monday in October annually that the court gets back to work hearing cases. Before hearing its first arguments, it announced a series of new cases to hear during the term and turned away other appeals.

The court agreed to hear a challenge to federal protections for internet and social media companies freeing them of responsibility for content posted by users in a case involving an American student fatally shot in a 2015 rampage by Islamist militants in Paris.

It also agreed to hear Turkish state-owned lender Halkbank’s bid to avoid criminal charges of money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy for allegedly helping Iran evade economic sanctions in a case that has strained American relations with NATO ally Turkey.

IDAHO WETLANDS CASE

The court heard arguments in a case that could limit the scope of a landmark federal environmental law – the Clean Water Act of 1972 – as they consider for a second time a married Idaho couple’s bid to build on property that the U.S. government has deemed a protected wetland.

Chantell and Mike Sackett, who planned to build a home on their property in Priest Lake, Idaho, are appealing a lower court’s ruling favoring the government. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 determined that the property was part of a wetland and that the Sacketts were required to obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act before beginning construction, which they had failed to do.

At issue in the case is the test courts should use to determine when property is subject to regulation, requiring owners to obtain permits in order to carry out construction.

Several justices sparred with an attorney for the Sacketts, Damien Schiff, over his assertion that a wetland must be physically touching an adjacent navigable water, such as a creek or river, in order to require such a permit.

“I’m not sure that’s right,” conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said. “You would readily say that a train station is adjacent to the tracks even though it’s not touching the tracks.”

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan offered another example.

“I grew up in an apartment building in New York City. If I say there are two adjacent apartment buildings, do they have to be touching each other?” Kagan asked.

Jackson asked questions emphasizing what the U.S. Congress intended in writing the statute.

The new case gives the conservative majority an opportunity to embrace an approach favored by business groups, with a ruling due by the end of June.

On the term’s second day on Tuesday, the justices are set to hear arguments in an Alabama case that threatens to cripple the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

The justices on Monday turned away a number of appeals. They declined to hear a challenge to a federal ban on devices called “bump stocks” that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire like a machine gun. They turned away a Ukrainian government bid to avoid paying a $173 million judgment to Russian oil and gas company Tatneft as ordered by a Paris-based arbitration panel.

The court also rebuffed a Republican former congressman’s challenge to a map charting Pennsylvania’s U.S. House of Representatives districts that the state’s highest court adopted in place of one drawn up by Republican lawmakers. They justices declined to hear a challenge by Missouri and nine other states – mostly Republican-led – to Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers in healthcare facilities that receive federal funds.

Mike Lindell, a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump, must face a $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems Inc accusing him of defamation, with the justices turning away his appeal.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Nate Raymond; Editing by Will Dunham)

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