Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, the leading Democratic candidate in the race to replace retiring Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, said on Sunday he had suffered a stroke but was on his “way to a full recovery.”

Fetterman, who will face U.S. Representative Conor Lamb and two other candidates in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat on Tuesday, said in a statement issued from Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital that he suffered the stroke on Friday.

Fetterman, 52, who eschews suits for hoodies, has surged in opinion polls ahead of the May 17 primary, shocking political observers who had predicted a close contest with Lamb.

The state party establishment views Lamb, a former federal prosecutor and former Marine, as a safer choice to take on whoever Republicans choose to run in November’s general election. Lamb received major endorsements from party stalwarts, while Fetterman received almost none.

Lamb said on Twitter that he found out about Fetterman’s stroke on live television. “Hayley and I are keeping John and his family in our prayers and wishing him a full and speedy recovery,” he tweeted.

The winner of the Democratic primary could face celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in the general election. If it is Fetterman, it would be a race of two anti-establishment candidates.

Polls show the Trump-endorsed Oz with a slight lead over his Republican rivals.

Fetterman said he had not been feeling well but ignored his symptoms until his wife insisted he go to a hospital.

“I had a stroke that was caused by a clot from my heart being in an A-fib rhythm for too long,” he said. “The amazing doctors here were able to quickly and completely remove the clot, reversing the stroke, they got my heart under control as well. It’s a good reminder to listen to your body and be aware of the signs.”

Fetterman said in his statement that he was “feeling much better” and suffered no cognitive damage. “I’m well on my way to a full recovery,” he said. “They’re keeping me here for now for observation, but I should be out of here sometime soon.”

(Reporting by Diane Bartz in WashingtonEditing by Tim Ahmann, Matthew Lewis and Jonathan Oatis)

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and a top Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, is recovering from a stroke he said was caused by a heart condition called atrial fibrillation.

Fetterman said in a statement Sunday that doctors believe he’s on his way to making “a full recovery.”

A look at what happened, the diagnosis, the future of Fetterman’s campaign and what can cause A-fib.

WHAT HAPPENED?

It was on Friday morning when Fetterman’s campaign first canceled an event. The campaign’s communications director, Joe Calvello, told scores of people waiting to see Fetterman at Millersville University that he hadn’t been feeling well that morning and had to cancel.

The campaign canceled more events Friday and through the weekend, saying nothing about his condition or whereabouts. They revealed Sunday afternoon that he had suffered a stroke and was hospitalized.

In a 16-second video released by the campaign with the statement, Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, appear together, with Fetterman seated and speaking clearly.

“As you can see, we hit a little bump on the campaign trail,” she begins.

WILL THIS AFFECT HIS CANDIDACY?

Fetterman, 52, maintains that his candidacy will continue, that he’s feeling much better and that he’s expected to make a full recovery.

However, it’s not clear when he will get out of the hospital in Lancaster or whether he will attend the primary night event that his campaign had scheduled in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

Fetterman suffered the stroke in the busy sprint in the last days of the primary campaign, when he had a full schedule of travel and public events around the state.

While campaigns can slow down a bit in the weeks after a primary, the campaign did not say whether this will affect Fetterman’s schedule or what sort of doctors’ visits or medication will be required in the future.

Fetterman said the campaign itself “isn’t slowing down one bit.”

Nothing else changes. Fetterman remains in the race and on the ballot along with the three other Democratic candidates.

WHAT’S THE DIAGNOSIS?

Fetterman said in the statement that he had a stroke that was caused by a clot from his heart being in “an A-fib rhythm for too long.” The doctors quickly and completely removed the clot, reversing the stroke, Fetterman said.

Blood can pool inside a pocket of the heart, allowing clots to form. Clots then can break off, get stuck and cut off blood, often in the brain, which receives substantial blood flow.

Fetterman did not say by what method the doctors removed the clot, or what sort of follow-up treatment will be required.

Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist and chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University, said clots can be removed with “clot-busting” drugs or, more commonly, by extracting the clot “mechanically” by inserting a catheter through a big artery in the groin.

The longer a clot blocks an artery, the more brain cells can die, so it is critically important to recognize the symptoms of a stroke, said Lloyd-Jones, who is president of the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association

People who develop A-fib are almost always put on a blood-thinning medication for the rest of their life to help prevent the stroke-causing blood clots that untreated A-fib can create, Dr. Lloyd-Jones said.

WHAT IS A-FIB?

A-fib — or atrial fibrillation — occurs when the heart’s top chambers, called the atria, get out of sync with the bottom chambers’ pumping action. It’s a type of irregular heartbeat that’s potentially serious but treatable.

In that abnormal rhythm, the upper chambers beat so fast that they can’t contract like they normally do. As a result, they don’t move blood effectively, so the blood can stagnate in the upper chambers and form a clot, Lloyd-Jones said.

Sometimes patients feel a flutter or a racing heart but many times they’re not aware of an episode. Sometimes the heart gets back into rhythm on its own. Other patients get an electric shock to get back into rhythm.

A-fib causes 130,000 deaths and 750,000 hospitalizations a year in the U.S. Between 2% and 3% of adults in the U.S. in Fetterman’s age range have had a stroke, and a substantial number of those are caused by atrial fibrillation, Lloyd-Jones said.

HOW DO DOCTORS CHECK FOR IT?

A-fib is most common in older adults, and other risks include high blood pressure, sleep apnea or a family history of arrhythmias. Obesity is also a significant risk factor, as is being taller, Lloyd-Jones said.

Fetterman is 6-foot-8, has been open about his push to lose weight in the past. He weighed in at over 400 pounds before losing nearly 150 pounds in 2018.

Routine screening isn’t recommended for people without symptoms. Studies haven’t yet proved that early detection from screening would prevent enough strokes to outweigh risks from unnecessary testing or overtreatment.

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter

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NEW YORK (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence will campaign with Georgia’s incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp the day before this month’s GOP primary in his most significant political break with former President Donald Trump to date.

Kemp’s campaign announced Friday morning that Pence will headline a get-out-the-vote rally for Kemp on Monday, May 23rd, the day before the vote. That puts Pence in direct conflict with Trump-endorsed candidate David Perdue, who has been trailing in the polls. Kemp is one of Trump’s top targets this election cycle because of his refusal to cooperate with Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Brian Kemp is my friend, a man dedicated to faith, family and the people of Georgia,” Pence said in a statement. “I am proud to offer my full support for four more years of Brian Kemp as governor of the great state of Georgia!”

The news comes as Pence has taken steps to distance himself from Trump as the former congressman and Indiana governor considers a 2024 presidential run that could put him into direct competition with his former boss.

That has included calling out Trump by name. In February, Pence said Trump was “wrong” to insist that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn the results of the 2020 election — a power vice presidents do not possess. In a separate speech before top Republican donors, Pence urged the GOP to move on from Trump’s 2020 election grievances and said there was “no room in this party for apologists” for Vladimir Putin after Trump praised the Russian leader’s maneuvering as “genius” before his brutal invasion of Ukraine.

“Elections are about the future,” Pence said in March. “My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values. We cannot win by fighting yesterday’s battles, or by relitigating the past.”

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pence’s plans. But Trump this week panned a trio of current and former Republican governors, including New Jersey’s Chris Christie, as “RINOs” — or “Republicans in Name Only” — for supporting Kemp. “That tells you all you need to know about what you are getting in Georgia—just a continuation of bad elections and a real RINO if you vote for Brian Kemp,” Trump said.

“Maybe the “R” in RINO really stands for re-elected,” Christie quipped back.

The Georgia race is a gamble for Trump, who notched a major victory in Ohio earlier this month when JD Vance, the candidate he endorsed, came from behind to win a competitive GOP Senate primary. But last week, his pick for governor in Nebraska, Charles Herbster, lost his primary amid groping allegations. And Trump faces further challenges ahead, including in Pennsylvania next week, where his pick for Senate, celebrity heart surgeon Mehmet Oz, is locked in a tight, three-way race.

Kemp had been substantially ahead of Perdue in polls in March and April, and many expect Kemp will be able to prevail without a June runoff, which would be triggered if no candidate won a majority of the vote.

Perdue, a former senator, has also been lagging in fundraising and had about $900,000 cash on hand on April 30, less than a month before the May 24 primary, while Kemp had $10.7 million.

The winner will face Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has raised more than $20 million so far and had $8 million in cash on April 30.

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A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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New Tennessee abortion pill law doesn’t ban Plan B

CLAIM: Newly signed legislation in Tennessee “banned Plan B and made it a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine to order it.”

THE FACTS: The law does not ban Plan B or emergency contraceptives used to reduce the risk of pregnancy after sex. It imposes strict penalties for distributing abortion pills — which are different from Plan B — via mail or delivery services and also bars pharmacists from dispensing the drugs. A tweet spreading the erroneous information about the new law spread widely in recent days, gaining tens of thousands of shares and likes before it was deleted. “Tennessee just banned Plan B and made it a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine to order it,” read the tweet from Pam Keith, an attorney and Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Florida in 2020. But that’s not what the legislation does. Keith did not respond to a request for comment, but suggested in a later tweet that she misunderstood the law. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed HB 2416 into law last week. As The Associated Press reported, the legislation further regulates how abortion pills can be distributed. The law requires that a medical clinician be physically present when such pills are distributed — and bars them from being delivered by mail or dispensed by a pharmacist. It adds harsh penalties for providers who violate the provisions, including potential felony charges or a fine of up to $50,000. The bill specifically refers to “abortion-inducing drugs” that are provided with the aim of “terminating the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a patient.” That’s not the same as Plan B. Dr. John Schorge, professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, noted in an email that Plan B medications are “basically oral contraceptives which in normal circumstances are given to regulate periods, prevent pregnancy and can have other health benefits.” They’re available as an emergency contraceptive to prevent pregnancy — sometimes referred to as a “morning after” option. The office of state Rep. Debra Moody, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said in an emailed statement that the “Tennessee General Assembly did not ban Plan B. We passed a law banning mail-order abortions.” “The new law simply says that a patient must meet in-person with a qualified physician in order to get a prescription for an abortion-inducing drug,” the statement said. The legislation will go into effect Jan. 1, 2023. Use of abortion pills has been rising in the U.S. since 2000 when the FDA approved mifepristone — the main drug used in medication abortions. More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills, rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

— Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report with additional reporting from Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Posts misattribute CDC quote in Supreme Court draft on abortion

CLAIM: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett cited a need for a “domestic supply of infants” in a leaked draft opinion for a decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

THE FACTS: The draft opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, and the term appears in a footnote quoting a 2008 document about adoption data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following the leak in early May of Alito’s draft opinion — signaling that the court may be about to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling on abortion — social media users and bloggers seized on its inclusion of the term “domestic supply of infants.” Many correctly attributed the phrase to a footnote quoting the CDC on the document’s 33rd page, and have noted that it appears in a section that echoes remarks made by Barrett during December arguments in the case, which is challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks. But others are falsely conflating the two. “BREAKING: In a brief re abortion, Supreme court Justices Amy Coney Barrett/Alito’s Draft, said US needs a ‘domestic supply of infants’ to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt — that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term — giving children up for adoption,” reads one post with more than 35,000 retweets on Twitter and also spread widely as a screenshot on Facebook. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett Wants To Overturn Roe To Create A ‘Domestic Supply Of Infants’ For Adoption,” said a headline on a widely-shared blog post, although the post itself never actually mentions Barrett. The opinion, which was published by Politico on May 2 and later confirmed as authentic by the court, states that it is a first draft penned by Alito and circulated to other justices in February. In one portion of the draft, Alito outlines “arguments about modern developments” he says are used by Americans who believe abortion should be restricted. Among others, he lists “that States have increasingly adopted safe haven laws, which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously; and that a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.” The last sentence cites a footnote, which quotes a 2008 CDC report about the demand for adoption in the U.S., reading: “(N)early 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent.” This is the only use of the term “domestic supply of infants” in the opinion. Alito does not mention Barrett, but several articles about the draft opinion have noted that his mention of safe-haven laws is similar to a comment she made during the case in December, when she suggested such laws mean pregnant people can’t be forced into parenthood. “Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?” asked Barrett, who has long expressed personal opposition to abortion. She noted the pregnancy would still be “an infringement on bodily autonomy,” but added, “it seems to me that the choice more focused would be between, say, the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion,” according to a transcript. It remains unclear if the draft will reflect the court’s final decision and opinion. The Supreme Court’s public information office did not return a request for comment on the false claims.

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No ruling yet in Dominion lawsuits against Powell and Giuliani

CLAIM: Election technology firm Dominion Voting Systems lost its lawsuits against attorney Sidney Powell and former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

THE FACTS: Legal records show that Dominion’s defamation lawsuits against Powell and Giuliani are ongoing in May 2022. Still, social media users are reviving a year-old false claim that Dominion Voting Systems lost the lawsuits. “ABSENT from the News,” read a tweet shared more than 18,000 times. “Dominion LOST their law suits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.” In January 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed the lawsuits against Giuliani and Powell, claiming the lawyers falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. The suits sought more than $1.3 billion in damages from Giuliani and the same sum from Powell. Lawyers for Giuliani and Powell have both requested through attorneys that the suits be dismissed. A judge denied those motions. Neither case had a verdict as of May 11, 2022. There is no evidence of the widespread fraud that Trump and his allies claimed occurred in the 2020 election. An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states found far too few cases to make a difference in the election. Republican and Democratic election officials certified the election as valid, and a clear majority of Congress confirmed that President Joe Biden won.

— Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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Video spreads false claims about immigrants

CLAIM: Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who come from Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador are “twice as likely” to commit crime than U.S.-born citizens.

THE FACTS: Research shows that immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission actually commit crimes at lower rates in comparison to citizens born in the country. A video from 2018 featuring two prominent conservative activists making claims about immigrants coming into the U.S., including the claim about crime, has resurfaced and is circulating widely on social media. In the clip, Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, and Candace Owens, a conservative commentator, are speaking to a live audience about immigration and calling for a border wall. But experts say many of the claims they make to support their argument are false or misleading. The video, shared on Facebook on Sunday, has since been viewed over 2 million times. It was originally recorded at an event at Stanford University in 2018 where both Kirk and Owens spoke. Among the claims was the assertion that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally from specific countries are more likely to commit crime than citizens born in the U.S. But experts say no evidence supports the notion. “It is false. Very false and troubling,” said Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. “There is a lot of empirical evidence that goes in the other direction.” “Almost every reputable report that I have seen has found that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native born U.S. citizens,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell University who teaches immigration law. Yale-Loehr cited a 2020 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. The study used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety and found that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally have “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.” When asked to provide evidence for Kirk’s claim, Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, pointed to a 2018 news story about a report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, a conservative nonprofit, which found that immigrants between the ages of 15 and 35 who were living in the U.S. illegally accounted for almost 8% of Arizona’s prison population, despite being around 2% of the state’s population. The report also concluded that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally are significantly more likely to be convicted of crime than “other Arizonans.” But the paper has “significant problems,” Gilman wrote in an email to the AP. She noted that the paper was not peer-reviewed and that the author failed to account for prosecutors’ potential bias against immigrants. “It may well be that migrants do not commit more crimes but are instead prosecuted at higher rates,” Gilman wrote. “The whole methodology is very questionable and the basic explanation of the method is not sound,” Ingrid Eagly, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email to the AP. Ernesto Castañeda, director of the Immigration Lab at American University, wrote in an email that the finding that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally are overrepresented in Arizona’s prisons “does not mean they were committing more or worse crime.”

— Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Growing discontent over homelessness and crime in Portland is driving interest in a pair of Oregon congressional primaries, one featuring a vulnerable incumbent endorsed by President Joe Biden and the other involving a candidate bankrolled by cryptocurrency.

Tuesday’s primaries for the 5th and 6th U.S. House districts are playing out in a state that’s become a right-wing target after sometimes-violent protests in Portland following George Floyd’s murder, surging gun crime and an ongoing homelessness crisis in the city.

The problems have given Republicans a megaphone and raised the stakes for Democrats as a crowded field of candidates vies to advance to November in a historically blue state, said John Horvick, political director at the nonpartisan public opinion firm DHM Research.

“Two of the districts touch on Portland, and Portland’s just become a rallying cry. It’s the biggest city, and it matters to the state’s economy, but it’s also a symbol for what is going wrong in the state right now,” Horvick said.

Another key race, for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District, is wide open for the first time in decades as Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio retires after 35 years. Changes to that district’s boundaries, however, are expected to favor Democrats even more strongly.

In Oregon voting is done entirely by mail, and nonaffiliated and third-party voters together make up the largest group of voters. So far, turnout has been anemic, but that could change because voters have until election day to postmark their ballots.

Amid that backdrop, a newly created 6th Congressional District that includes some Portland suburbs is creating national buzz for the amount of money in play and has attracted 16 candidates, including a Democratic newcomer backed by a cryptocurrency kingpin. The state gained a district in a once-in-a-decade reapportionment after the 2020 U.S. Census.

The nine Democrats competing in the primary have spent more than $18 million combined and drawn more than $13 million in outside money to date, making the race one of the most costly among Democratic primaries nationwide, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research group that tracks money in politics.

Top among those is Carrick Flynn, whose ads have inundated local TV but who remains unfamiliar to many voters. Cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s political action committee has poured millions into Flynn’s campaign, and the powerful House Majority PAC, which focuses on electing Democrats to the U.S. House, has spent $1 million in ads on his behalf.

Flynn appears to be in a close race with state Rep. Andrea Salinas, a three-term state lawmaker who would become Oregon’s first Hispanic woman in Congress if elected. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts endorsed Salinas this week, saying she would be a “progressive champion” for working families in the district, which is 20% Hispanic.

Seven Republicans are running for the 6th district seat, including Ron Noble, a moderate who currently serves in the Oregon House.

Meanwhile, the D5th district has been significantly redrawn, leaving centrist incumbent Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader to defend himself from progressive candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who has the backing of the local Democratic parties in all four counties covered by the seat.

The district, which once stretched to the Pacific Coast, now reaches east across the state’s political fault lines to include Bend — an area where Schrader has less name recognition. Biden recently endorsed the seven-term congressman for reelection in the district, which now leans a little less blue.

Schrader, a veterinarian and former state lawmaker, has alienated progressive members of his party over the course of his last term.

He was one of two House Democrats to vote against a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, in part because he didn’t want the bill to include an increase in the minimum wage. He also voted in committee against a Biden-supported plan that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate outpatient medication prices with pharmaceutical companies and has apologized for likening the pending impeachment of then-President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to a “lynching.”

“There’s been a lot of discontent with a lot of the votes the Congressman has made and there’s a perception that he’s not really true to the standards of the party,” said Judy Stiegler, a part-time instructor at Oregon State University-Cascades and a former state lawmaker.

But some primary voters who pay attention may be concerned that McLeod-Skinner, an attorney and former city planner, wouldn’t be as competitive in November, particularly given that issues like Portland’s crime and homelessness are on the minds of even more moderate Democrats. The nature of primary voters — older and more politically moderate — may also play in Schrader’s favor, she added.

Meanwhile, five Republicans are vying to advance to November’s general election in the 5th district.

Jimmy Crumpacker, a seventh-generation Oregonian who worked on Wall Street and now owns his own energy firm, and former Happy Valley Mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer have emerged in the crowded field in the increasingly bitter campaign.

Crumpacker, who said in a tweet that he was running to “stop the dumpster fire that is ruining this state,” has tried to pin Chavez-DeRemer as pro-abortion rights and too liberal.

Chavez-DeRemer, meanwhile, has gotten a nod from the third-ranking Republican in the House, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who called her a “proven conservative results-getter” in a recent endorsement.

The race for Oregon’s only House district held by the GOP, in rural eastern Oregon, has gotten little attention and changes to the district’s boundaries are widely expected to make it even more safely Republican.

Likewise, two Democratic incumbents — Rep. Suzanne Bonamici in the 1st district and Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the 3rd district — are not expected to face serious primary challenges.

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The top Democrat and Republican in the U.S. Senate joined forces in a rare moment of unity on Thursday in an attempt to pass $40 billion in aid for Ukraine, only to be stymied by a single Republican lawmaker: Senator Rand Paul.

Faced with the prospect of an extended delay for the package that passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, sought to move forward on the aid package only to be blocked by Paul, a longtime fiscal hawk who objects to the amount of spending proposed.

The stalemate delayed passage of the measure into next week.

The Senate has scheduled an initial procedural vote on the bill for late Monday afternoon. It was unclear whether that vote would then speed passage of the Ukraine aid. Alternatively, passage could come around the middle of next week if any senator wants to force a series of legislative steps before a final vote.

As the Ukraine aid bill became caught in the Senate’s procedural gears, Schumer pleaded for fast action: “The package is ready to go, the vast majority of senators on both sides of the aisle want it.”

“If Senator Paul persists in his reckless demands … all he will accomplish is to single-handedly delay desperately-needed Ukraine aid.”

But Paul was not moved.

The delay into next week could cause problems for Western nations trying to bolster Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The Biden administration has said that by May 19 it expects to run out available funds to draw on under an authority that allows the president to authorize the transfer of weapons without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

Paul is demanding that the legislation be altered to require an inspector general to oversee spending on Ukraine. Without his agreement, the Senate must follow a lengthy process stipulated by the chamber’s arcane rules.

In an usual display of legislative theater, Schumer was joined by his political rival, McConnell, who also addressed the urgency of the situation.

“Ukraine is not asking us to fight this war. They’re only asking for the resources they need to defend themselves against this deranged invasion. And they need this help right now,” said McConnell, who is Paul’s fellow senator from Kentucky.

The House passed the Ukraine spending bill by 368 to 57, with only Republicans voting against it.

President Joe Biden had asked Congress to approve an additional $33 billion in aid for Ukraine. But lawmakers decided to increase the military and humanitarian funding.

On Thursday, Schumer and McConnell offered Paul an amendment vote on his proposal that would have required support from 60 of the 100 senators to pass.

But Paul refused the offer and demanded the Senate adopt his amendment before voting on the aid package.

“This is the second spending bill for Ukraine in two months. And this bill is three times larger than the first,” Paul said before formally blocking the aid package. “Congress just wants to keep on spending, and spending.”

(Reporting by David Morgan, additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Moira Warburton and Eric Beech; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Thursday commemorated the COVID-19 deaths of 1 million people in the United States, marking what he called “a tragic milestone” and urging Americans to “remain vigilant” during the ongoing pandemic.

In a statement, Biden acknowledged the impact of the deaths on families left behind and urged the country not to “grow numb to such sorrow.”

The United States on Wednesday reached more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths, according to a Reuters tally, crossing a once-unthinkable milestone about two years after the first cases upended everyday life. The loss represents about one death for every 327 Americans, or more than the entire population of San Francisco or Seattle.

Most of those deaths, some 600,000, happened after Biden took office in January 2021 at the peak of a major wave of the disease.

Biden marked the sad occasion by ordering flags to be flown at half-staff. The administration on Thursday also hosted a global COVID Summit with other countries to spur international efforts to fight the pandemic.

Biden’s more muted response to the 1 million deaths contrasts with his commemoration of 500,000 deaths last year, roughly a month after he took over from former President Donald Trump, who many voters criticized for downplaying COVID’s impacts and bungling the government response.

In February 2021, 500 lit candles lined steps at the White House and a military band played “Amazing Grace” as Biden, his wife Jill, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, bowed their heads in respect for the dead.

Politically, Biden now owns the pandemic. He ran against Trump on a promise to take it more seriously, and he came into office with a plan to get Americans vaccinated and an attempt to show leadership on mask-wearing and mitigation efforts.

But he faced an unexpectedly strong opposition to vaccine and mask mandates, led by Republicans, that turned public safety measures endorsed by disease experts into a political and legal battle in the United States.

A conservative-dominated Supreme Court struck down his federal vaccine-or-test mandate for companies, and a Trump-appointed judge struck down his public transportation mask mandate.

READY TO MOVE ON

The administration’s focus on vaccines as the way out of the pandemic also left it scrambling when new virus variants emerged that were resistant to them, health experts said, while some critics also faulted Biden’s team for not doing enough early on to increase coronavirus testing nationwide.

Just 67% of Americans are fully vaccinated – one of the lowest rates among wealthy countries – and hundreds are still dying from the disease every day.

Now, even with cases once again rising, mask-wearing is less common, mandates are increasingly taboo, and some Democrats, including in the administration, seem ready simply to move on.

Polls seen by the White House have shown that some key voters view the party’s response to COVID, which Biden aides have long viewed as one of the president’s strengths, as too heavy-handed.

While many Americans are eager to maintain the use of masks and other safety measures, many are also fatigued by the two-year-old pandemic and more focused on fears about the direction of the economy, one White House official said, citing public and Democratic polls.

That has been reflected in Biden’s response.

In his recent public remarks, the president mentions COVID-19 more often as a cause of inflation than as a sickness that Americans should work to avoid. The administration has emphasized the fact that COVID deaths are relatively low compared with earlier in the health crisis.

Biden has urged Congress to fund billions more in COVID aid to continue fighting the virus as new variants of concern emerge.

“We must remain vigilant against this pandemic and do everything we can to save as many lives as possible, as we have with more testing, vaccines, and treatments than ever before,” Biden said on Thursday. “It’s critical that Congress sustain these resources in the coming months.”

U.S. lawmakers had reached a $10 billion deal but the additional tranche of funding has been delayed over various concerns.

Researchers are working on yet another booster shot as the virus continues to mutate, and health experts have said greater pandemic investment is needed now to thwart future outbreaks that could cause further havoc.

The precise toll of the pandemic may never be truly known. Some people who died while infected were never tested and are not represented in the data. Others, while having COVID-19, may have died for another reason such as a cancer, but were still counted.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason, additional reporting by by Alexandra Alper and Susan Heavey; Editing by Heather Timmons, Bernadette Baum and Bill Berkrot)

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ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by former U.S. Sen. David Perdue that alleged fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted in the state’s most populous county during the 2020 general election.

Perdue filed the lawsuit, along with an individual voter, in December a few days after he announced that he would be challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary. Among other things, the suit sought access to examine absentee ballots, saying that would allow the petitioners to prove that there had been fraud in Fulton County.

Investigators with the secretary of state’s office found no evidence to support the fraud claims, but that hasn’t stopped former President Donald Trump, Perdue and others from continuing to spread them.

The suit was similar to another filed by a group of voters that was dismissed in October because a judge found the group hadn’t alleged a “particularized injury” and therefore didn’t have standing to sue. That ruling has been appealed.

Perdue and voter Elizabeth Grace Lennon argued that their state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process have been violated. Perdue claims his particularized injury was that he was a candidate for reelection in November but failed to achieve a majority, forcing him into a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff that Perdue lost. Lennon says she sought to cast an in-person early vote in October 2020 but was told someone had already submitted a mail ballot in her name.

In an order dated Wednesday dismissing the lawsuit, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that it “is not really about Perdue’s loss or Lennon’s personal voting experience.” Its core claims, he notes, are that several batches of absentee ballots were scanned multiple times and thousands of unlawful counterfeit absentee ballots were counted and certified in Fulton County.

Those are claims that were repeatedly pushed in the aftermath of the 2020 election by people who allege that widespread fraud caused the presidential election to be stolen from Trump. Perdue, who is trailing Kemp in polls as the May 24 Republican primary grows near, has made claims of a “stolen and rigged” election a central pillar of his campaign and frequently talks about the lawsuit while campaigning.

The lawsuit asks the judge to declare that county officials violated the petitioners’ equal protection and due process rights, but such a declaration requires that they demonstrate that if the court doesn’t act, their interests will be harmed in the future, McBurney wrote. Instead, they asked him to make a declaration about something that had already happened in the past, and the court can’t do that, he wrote.

The lawsuit also asks the judge to issue a series of orders that would empower the petitioners’ experts to “intrude upon the sealed ballot materials of tens of thousands of Fulton County voters, hunt for speculative voter fraud or error, and then determine for themselves what the ‘actual’ vote count should have been in the Election,” McBurney wrote.

“This quixotic journey will not take place,” he added.

Perdue harshly criticized the ruling saying it was “another example of how the establishment continues to cover up what happened in 2020, and we will vigorously appeal the decision.”

The lawsuit “excoriates” county officials for “having ‘negligently, willfully, wantonly, outwardly, maliciously or corruptly and unapologetically acted with malfeasance’ thereby causing electors in Fulton County to experience ‘disenfranchisement, dilution, debasement, and corruption of their vote in the General Election,’” but it doesn’t seek a remedy for the alleged violations of the petitioners’ rights, McBurney wrote.

The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the court is unable to provide and without such a declaration, the petitioners’ requests “are left supported only by sour grapes which make a wine this Court will not serve,” McBurney wrote.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Amy contributed to this report.

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(Reuters) – The Trump Organization said on Wednesday that it completed the $375 million sale of the lease on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to an investment firm that plans to rebrand the property as the Waldorf Astoria.

The business owned by the family of former President Donald Trump bought the rights in 2013 to the hotel, housed inside in the historic Old Post Office Building blocks away from the White House, and renovated it. The building itself is still owned by the federal government.

In March, the U.S. General Services Administration, which acts as the federal government’s landlord, approved the sale of the rights by the Trump Organization to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group.

Trump is projected to gain $100 million from the transaction.

The Trump International Hotel served as a gathering point for Trump’s supporters and some foreign government officials during his time in the White House.

During his presidency, the hotel became the focus of conflict of interest allegations against Trump and his family. Critics were concerned that outside entities tried to curry favor with Trump by booking stays and spending money at the hotel.

In 2016 he was elected president and later handed over day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization to two of his sons, though he did not formally divest himself from the business during his term, which ended in early 2021.

The Trump Organization and Trump’s 2017 U.S. presidential inaugural committee recently agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the District of Columbia’s attorney general claiming the family-owned hotel received excessive payments from the committee.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The insurgent candidate backed by former President Donald Trump appears to be stalling in a crowded field of Republicans challenging the GOP incumbent for a U.S. House seat in conservative central Washington state.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a four-term congressman, has drawn primary challengers thanks in part to being among the few in his party who voted to impeach President Donald Trump. Perhaps the best known outside candidate in Washington’s 4th Congressional District’s intraparty feud is Loren Culp, who’s running against his own Republican Party as much as he is against Newhouse.

Culp, a former small town police chief who lost the 2020 governor’s race to Democrat Jay Inslee but refused to concede, won Trump’s endorsement in February, but has lagged other candidates in reported fundraising figures.

Trump’s influence among GOP voters is being tested in midterm elections across the country this year as he looks to flex his power and punish his enemies ahead of a possible 2024 presidential campaign. Trump has vowed to take down the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, and four have already announced they won’t be seeking re-election. So far, Trump has found mixed success in his endorsement record, but it’s still early in the primary season.

In addition to Culp, four other GOP candidates are running against Newhouse in the Aug. 2 primary. Because of Washington’s top-two system, two Republicans could end up on the fall ballot. The top two primary vote-getters advance, regardless of party.

Todd Schaefer, a political scientist at Central Washington University, said he has been surprised by how little money Culp has raised, given his high-profile run for governor two years ago.

“On paper he should have good name recognition,” Schaefer said. “You would think he’d get a lot of grassroots support.”

Culp was invited to visit with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late February. Trump’s endorsement of Culp read in part: “Loren Culp is running against RINO Congressman Dan Newhouse … Loren will always defend your personal liberty, our under-siege Second Amendment, election integrity and law enforcement.”

The other GOP challengers in the race are Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR driver who has raised the most money; Corey Gibson; state Rep. Bradley Klippert, R-Kennewick; and Benanacio Garcia III.

As of the March 31 filing deadline, Culp had raised just $191,000 and had just $23,000 in cash on hand. Sessler had raised $444,000 and had $146,000 in the bank. Democrat Doug White had raised $230,000 and also had $146,000 in the bank. Gibson, Klippert and Garcia had raised little money.

Culp’s campaign has declined to return telephone calls from reporters but has made statements on Facebook. He lashed out recently at Republican Party officials who do not share his conservative views.

“The party can come and go … the Constitution is first and foremost,” Culp said. “God, family, country. That’s what’s important.”

Culp served as a police officer and then police chief of the small town of Republic for a decade. His job was eliminated because of budget cuts shortly after the 2020 election. He has since moved to Moses Lake.

Schaefer isn’t surprised so many Republicans decided to challenge Newhouse.

“The vote to impeach Trump put a target on him,” Schaefer said, noting that Newhouse otherwise seems a good fit for the district. The 4th runs from the Canadian border to the Columbia River through the agricultural heartland of the state east of the Cascade Range. The district is home to apple and cherry orchards, vineyards and wineries and a bounty of other farm crops and its biggest population centers are the Tri-Cities and Yakima.

Newhouse, who won 66% of the vote in 2020, so far has run a low-key campaign campaign, although he has veered to the right in an effort to fend off the challengers.

Newhouse, first elected in 2014, has raised $1.2 million and had $928,000 in the bank as of March 31.

“Dan is going to win because voters see that he’s a real conservative who works hard and gets results for the people he serves,” Newhouse campaign manager Derek Flint wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The Washington State Republican Party will not endorse a candidate prior to the primary, chair Caleb Heimlich said.

The party last year decided it was “disappointed” with Newhouse and U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington’s 3rd District for voting to impeach Trump. The party said it would treat the incumbents and any GOP challengers as equals this year.

“We want to make sure we hold the seat,” Heimlich said. “It’s up to the voters of the 4th Congressional District who they want to represent them.”

Heimlich predicted that two Republicans will likely emerge from the primary to the general election in what is considered the state’s most conservative district.

But Schaefer said with so many Republicans in the primary, it is possible that White, the lone Democrat in the race, could finish in the top two and advance to the November general election.

“But whoever gets the Republican nomination will have the advantage,” in the general election, Schaefer said.

The endorsement of Culp continued Trump’s pattern of seeking to oust politicians who have refused to echo his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump has also endorsed Joe Kent, a challenger to Herrera Beutler.

Like Trump, Culp has lobbed false claims of widespread voter fraud.

He refused to concede the 2020 gubernatorial race after losing to Inslee by 545,000 votes. Culp also filed a lawsuit over the results but quickly withdrew it after his attorney was threatened with sanctions for making meritless claims in a court of law.

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