Politics

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – A week after Kansas voters firmly rejected an attempt to restrict abortion, the issue will play a key role in Wisconsin and Minnesota midterm primaries on Tuesday as Republican candidates for governor vow to ban the procedure if elected.

In Wisconsin, the two top contenders for the Republican nomination to run for governor on Nov. 8, construction magnate Tim Michels and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, say they will enforce a 19th-century abortion ban that has prompted providers to stop offering the procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the nationwide right in June.

With a Republican-majority legislature, either candidate could push through abortion restrictions as governor. Democratic incumbent Tony Evers and his administration have filed litigation challenging the 1849 law while promising not to prosecute doctors who violate it.

The contest between Kleefisch and Michels is the latest proxy battle between Donald Trump and more moderate Republicans. The former president has thrown his support behind Michels, who has poured millions of dollars of his own money into the race, while former Vice President Mike Pence and former Governor Scott Walker have endorsed Kleefisch.

A similar dynamic is at play in Minnesota, where Republicans on Tuesday will select a nominee to take on Democratic Governor Tim Walz in November.

The leading Republican is former state Senator Scott Jensen, a physician who has pledged to try to ban most abortions and has cast doubt on the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Abortion remains legal in Minnesota, where Democrats control one of the two legislative chambers.

Last week’s Kansas ballot, which saw about 60% of voters support abortion rights, has raised Democrats’ hopes that the issue will mobilize their base in November and attract votes from independents and moderate Republicans. This follows the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.

Unlike the Kansas initiative, which was open to voters of all parties, Tuesday’s Republican primaries will reflect the preference of just Republican voters.

2024 PREVIEW

November’s election could serve as a preview of 2024, when Wisconsin will likely again be a major swing state in the presidential election. Trump, the former president who still maintains falsely that Democratic President Joe Biden’s statewide win in 2020 was fraudulent, has strongly hinted that he intends to run for a third time.

Republicans on Friday named Milwaukee as the site of their 2024 national convention, underscoring the state’s strategic importance.

Kleefisch and Michels have both questioned the 2020 election results, following Trump’s lead. At a Friday night rally with Trump in Waukesha, Michels declared that “election integrity” would be his top priority if elected.

The winner should avoid focusing too much on 2020 in the fall, when the general electorate will include more Trump-skeptical voters, said Bill McCoshen, a veteran Republican strategist based in Madison.

“It’s manifestly in the winner of the primary’s interest to focus on the future, not the past,” he said.

Trump-backed candidates have recently prevailed in statewide races in Arizona and Michigan, though his overall endorsement record is somewhat mixed.

Also in Wisconsin, Democrats will choose a candidate to take on U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who is perhaps the most vulnerable Republican senator. Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, who would be the state’s first Black U.S. senator, is widely expected to win the nomination.

The battle for Johnson’s seat could determine which party controls the Senate. The chamber is currently split 50-50 with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes, as she did on Sunday to advance a sweeping domestic bill intended to fight climate change, lower healthcare costs and raise taxes on the biggest corporations.

While it is unclear if Democrats will be able to hold their razor-thin Senate majority, Republicans are favored to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, which would enable them to block much of Biden’s legislative agenda and initiate politically damaging investigations. Biden’s low approval ratings, coupled with persistent inflation and recession fears, have weighed on Democrats’ chances.

Tuesday also brings a special election in Minnesota for the U.S. House seat left vacant when Republican Jim Hagedorn died in February after a battle with cancer. Democrat Jeff Ettinger, the former CEO of Hormel Foods, is running against Republican Brad Finstad, a former agricultural official in the Trump administration.

Voters in Connecticut and Vermont will choose nominees for congressional and statewide races as well.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Voters in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota will pick candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices in primaries on Tuesday, in another test of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the Republican Party ahead of the Nov. 8 midterms.

Vermont and Connecticut also hold nomination contests, while Minnesota holds a special election for its currently vacant 1st Congressional District. Following are four key races:

WISCONSIN REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR’S PRIMARY

In its final stretch, the Republican nomination contest for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race has become a proxy battle in the rivalry between President Donald Trump and his former Vice President, Mike Pence.

Trump endorsed construction company owner Tim Michels in June, upending a race that until then was led by former state Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. By the end of June, Kleefisch and Michels were neck-and-neck in a poll by Marquette Law School.

Pence then endorsed Kleefisch in late July, setting up the third high-profile race this year in which Pence and Trump backed opposing candidates. In the previous contests, Pence-backed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp won the party nomination for his re-election bid, while Trump-backed Kari Lake, a former news anchor, won the Republican nomination for the Arizona governor’s race.

Pence, who like Trump is considering running for president in 2024, has recently distanced himself from Trump’s repeated falsehoods about a stolen 2020 election.

MINNESOTA SPECIAL CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION

Democrats on Tuesday face an uphill battle to gain the U.S. House of Representatives seat left vacant following the death in February of Republican U.S. Representative Jim Hagedorn.

Ahead of Tuesday’s special election, Republican Brad Finstad, a former agriculture official in the Trump administration, was ahead of Democrat Jeff Ettinger 46% to 38%, according to a public opinion poll conducted in the last week of July by Survey USA.

Political observers have said the race could be close after Ettinger, a former CEO at Hormel Foods, spent early on television ads making the case that his business experience set him up as a problem solver on run-away food prices.

WISCONSIN DEMOCRATIC U.S. SENATE PRIMARY

In the race to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, a progressive backed by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, is expected to win the Democratic nomination after a leading moderate opponent dropped out of the race in late July. The focus now shifts to Barnes’ ability to appeal to moderate voters in the race against Johnson, which could be one of November’s tightest and most consequential Senate races.

MINNESOTA REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR’S PRIMARY

Former Minnesota state senator Scott Jensen, the Republican frontrunner to win the party nomination for the governor’s race in November, vows he will try to ban most abortions in the state.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion remains legal under state law in Minnesota. Jensen recently said he supports abortion rights in cases of rape or incest.

Jensen, a physician who has cast doubt on the seriousness of COVID-19, would challenge Democratic Governor Tim Walz if he wins the nomination. Walz is seen as potentially vulnerable in November.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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By Nathan Layne

(Reuters) -The Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records.

The analysis shows that people working with Matthew DePerno – the Trump-endorsed nominee for the state’s top law-enforcement post – examined a vote tabulator from Richfield Township, a conservative stronghold of 3,600 people in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County.

The Richfield security breach is one of four similar incidents being investigated by Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel. Under state law, it is a felony to seek or provide unauthorized access to voting equipment.

DePerno did not respond to a request for comment.

The involvement of a Republican attorney general nominee in a voting-system breach comes amid a national effort by backers of Trump’s fraud falsehoods to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections.

In Arizona last week, three Trump-backed candidates who claim the 2020 election was stolen won Republican primary elections for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, the top official overseeing elections. In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano has vowed to decertify any election he considers fraudulent through his appointed secretary of state. Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania are all presidential election battlegrounds.

Trump lavished praise on DePerno before a large audience this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “He’s going to make sure that you are going to have law and order and fair elections,” Trump said, pumping his fist as DePerno stood up in the audience and waved. “That’s an important race.”

Reuters established the connection between Michigan’s DePerno and the Richfield voting-system breach by matching the serial number of the township’s tabulator to a photograph in a publicly released report written by a member of DePerno’s team. The photograph showed a printed record of a vote-tabulator’s activity, which also included a string of ten digits. Reuters confirmed that those numbers matched the serial number of a Richfield vote tabulator through public records obtained from the township. State officials had previously identified Richfield as the site of a voting-equipment security breach.

DePerno had submitted the report as evidence in a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in a different Michigan county, Antrim. The report claimed that Dominion and ES&S election equipment was vulnerable to hacking and vote-rigging.

Reuters asked an election-security expert to review the materials. Kevin Skoglund, president and chief technologist for the nonpartisan Citizens for Better Elections, an election-security advocacy organization, said the matching numbers indicate that DePerno’s team had access to the Richfield Township tabulator or its data drives.

DePerno led the “Michigan Antrim County Election Lawsuit & Investigation Team,” which included himself, Detroit attorney Stefanie Lambert, private investigator Michael Lynch, and James Penrose, a former analyst for the National Security Agency, according to promotional material for a July 2021 fundraising event in California sponsored by a conservative group that advertised appearances by DePerno’s team members. Penrose, who had assisted other prominent Trump allies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, authored the report that Reuters tied to a tabulator involved in the Richfield Township security breach.

Lambert, Lynch and Penrose did not respond to requests for comment.

The previously unreported link to GOP attorney general candidate DePerno and his associates comes as Democratic incumbent Nessel advances her probe, which she launched in February 2022. Nessel is seeking re-election, which would create a conflict of interest if her political opponent became a suspect in her office’s investigation.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the specifics of its investigation but said Nessel would “take appropriate steps to remove herself and her department should a conflict arise.”

Those steps include requesting a special prosecutor to look into the election breaches, according to a letter from the attorney general advising the secretary of state of the request. The request was sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, an autonomous entity within the attorney general’s office that would decide whether a special prosecutor is warranted.

Nessel’s office started investigating the voting-system security breaches after a request from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. In a February statement, Benson said that “at least one unnamed third party” had gained access to tabulation machines and data drives from Richfield Township and Roscommon County.

Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said the office does not believe DePerno’s team had legal approval to access ES&S voting equipment. Rollow declined to comment further on the attorney general’s investigation but emphasized its importance. “To ensure Michigan’s elections are secure in the future, there must be consequences now for the people who illegally accessed the state’s voting machines,” he said.

ES&S did not respond to requests for comment.

SEIZING ON A GLITCH

Voting and vote-counting equipment is subject to strict chain-of-custody requirements to ensure accuracy and guard against fraud. Access to tabulators is tightly restricted, and any machine compromised by an unauthorized person is typically taken out of commission.

The four cases being investigated by Nessel are among at least 17 incidents identified by Reuters nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment. Michigan accounts for 11 of them, reflecting how conspiracy theorists sought to capitalize on an error in the initial reporting of 2020 results in Antrim County to allege widespread fraud in the state, without evidence.

A state review of the Antrim County incident found that a failure to properly update software caused a computer glitch that resulted in county officials initially reporting Joe Biden as the winner of the reliably Republican county. The officials quickly acknowledged and corrected the mistake, and Trump’s victory was affirmed by a hand tally of every vote cast.

DePerno seized on the confusion, filing a lawsuit making the unfounded claim that tabulators made by Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems had been rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden in Antrim County.

“No evidence of machine fraud or manipulation in the 2020 election has ever been presented in Michigan or any other state, and courts in Michigan and elsewhere have dismissed such claims as baseless,” Dominion spokesman Tony Fratto said.

In early December 2020, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer granted DePerno’s legal team permission to take forensic images of Antrim County voting equipment to search for evidence of election fraud. The court order was limited to Antrim, where only Dominion equipment was used. The order did not extend to other jurisdictions or machines made by other voting-system providers.

Yet DePerno’s team submitted two reports in April 2021 to the court that revealed they had also examined equipment made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).

The report written by Penrose, dated April 9, contained a photograph of a “summary tape” with information about a tabulator’s activity on election night, such as when results were submitted to the county. Among other things, the tape showed a sequence of figures: 0317350497.

That is the serial number for one of two ES&S DS200 tabulators Richfield Township used during the 2020 vote, according to copies of documents obtained by Reuters through a public-records request.

Skoglund, the election-security specialist consulted by Reuters, said the matching numbers indicate that the report’s author had access to either Richfield’s tabulator or a data drive containing the results and other information on the machine.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Penrose photograph is output from that same DS200 — that he had physical hands-on access,” Skoglund told Reuters.

A second person familiar with the workings of ES&S voting equipment examined the records obtained by Reuters and concurred that the tabulator tape shown in the Penrose report matches the machine with the same serial number.

MORE MACHINES

The Penrose report was part of a series of submissions from DePerno’s team that failed to convince Judge Elsenheimer. At an April 12, 2021 hearing, the judge shut down DePerno’s attempt to subpoena several Michigan counties for access to election data and equipment.

DePerno gave an interview later the same day to two right-wing websites, Gateway Pundit and 100 Percent Fed Up. DePerno said that Penrose had examined an ES&S machine. He added that the team had also looked at Dominion equipment “outside of Antrim County.” The attorney said he didn’t consider Elsenheimer’s ruling a dead-end.

“Maybe there will be some county somewhere that decides to come forward and cooperate. That would be nice,” DePerno told the websites.

In reality, DePerno’s associates had already taken possession of voting machines from local officials in Richfield Township in Roscommon County and Lake Township in Missaukee County, according to police records and text messages acquired through public records requests.

Lynch, the private investigator who worked with DePerno on his Antrim county case, exchanged texts with Lake Township clerk Korinda Winkelmann on March 20, 2021. Lynch asked for help accessing a Dominion device she had provided to him, according to the messages, obtained by Reuters through a public-records requests. Winkelman shared with Lynch an operational manual and a password for the device, while also speculating on how election systems might be rigged.

Lynch had no authorization to examine the machine, and the incident remains under state investigation. Winkelmann did not respond to requests for comment.

Elsenheimer dismissed the Antrim suit in May 2021, a decision that was affirmed this year by the Michigan Court of Appeals. DePerno’s fraud claims have been widely debunked. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee issued a scathing report in June 2021 that called DePerno’s various allegations “demonstrably false.”

In September 2021, Trump endorsed DePerno as the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, praising his pursuit of “fair and accurate elections” and his ongoing effort to “reveal the truth about the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; additional reporting by Peter Eisler; editing by Brian Thevenot)

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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Matthew DePerno made his political reputation on loudly and repeatedly questioning the 2020 presidential election results. It gained him the fervor of Republican delegates and the endorsement of Donald Trump in his bid for attorney general.

But now the political novice is accused of helping obtain improper access to voting machines and intending to use them to further the false claims, just three months before voters head to the polls in this and other key statewide races in battleground Michigan.

The reliability of election systems and equipment was already at stake in the race, given DePerno’s history, but Michigan political experts said the new accusations ensure the issue will play a critical role as voters decide whether to reelect Democratic incumbents or replace them with three Republicans who wooed primary voters by pledging their belief in Trump’s false assertion that he won the election.

The accusations against DePerno became public this week as Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel acknowledged a clear personal conflict and asked that a special prosecutor be appointed to oversee the accusations against her opponent and others.

The Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, a state agency, said in a statement that it can take 60 to 90 days for its staff to review a request and select a prosecutor. That could mean the issue isn’t resolved before the Nov. 8 election.

DePerno released a statement Sunday night denying the allegations and saying that the claims were “purely based on political prosecution.”

During a radio interview Monday morning, Deperno said that “90% of the facts that (Nessel) lays out, that she calls facts in her petition, are either false or I have no knowledge of what she’s talking about.”

The Kalamazoo attorney is a political novice whose embrace of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election won him the former president’s endorsement and later the state party members’ nomination for attorney general over a former Michigan House speaker who narrowly lost to Nessel in 2018.

DePerno’s legal career typically focused on tax cases, with rare public scrutiny. As his profile rose following Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, a March report by Bridge Michigan found a series of disagreements with his former law partners over billing, clients and other court officials that caused some Republicans to question his readiness to serve as the state’s top law enforcement official.

DePerno made a name for himself among Michigan activists on the right by suing Antrim County, claiming voting machines there recorded votes for Trump as being for Biden in the 2020 election. He also clashed with GOP leaders of the state Senate and raised money for attempts to challenge election results in other states.

Trump, though, gave DePerno his endorsement in September 2021 and DePerno relied on it to defeat two other candidates for the party’s endorsement in April, despite public acknowledgement that he could be among those investigated by the state for profiting from allegations of election fraud in Antrim County.

The Antrim County suit was dismissed and a Republican-led state legislative panel found no evidence of fraud in Michigan’s 2020 elections, calling DePerno’s claims “demonstrably false.”

The allegations made public this week went even further — naming DePerno as one of the “prime instigators” of a plan to get improper access to voting machines and use them to dispute the 2020 presidential outcome.

According to documents released by Nessel’s office, five vote tabulators were taken from Roscommon and Missaukee counties in northern Michigan, and Barry County in western Michigan. Investigators found others in the group broke into the tabulators and performed “tests” on the equipment.

“It was determined during the investigation that DePerno was present at a hotel room during such ‘testing,’” the petition to the prosecutors’ council said.

Obtaining undue possession of a voting machine used in an election is a felony punishable by five years in prison.

DePerno and the others named in the Michigan documents join others facing legal jeopardy for embracing Trump’s election lies, including a Colorado county clerk indicted for planning to breach election equipment.

Bernie Porn, a nonpartisan pollster who’s worked in the state for more than 30 years, said public opinion is against Republican candidates in several key areas, including abortion and the veracity of the 2020 presidential race. In a May poll conducted by his Lansing firm EPIC-MRA, Porn said 61% of Michigan general election voters said Biden won “fair and square.”

Among Democrats the total was 97% and among independents 66%

Based on those numbers, Michigan Democrats “would be insane” not to highlight DePerno’s legal woes this fall, along with the Republican slate’s unanimous primary statements backing Trump’s lie about the 2020 outcome, Porn said.

“If I were running a campaign for any candidate running against the Republican candidates for governor, attorney general or secretary of state, I’d advise them to constantly remind voters that these on the Republican side believe the election was stolen and they have yet to prove it,” he said.

Even before the allegations became public, DePerno told Michigan reporters that the attorney general race shouldn’t focus on “the election issue.”

“Let’s start talking about the real issues that are facing people every day in their budget and how they’re managing their families,” he said following a June 30 gubernatorial debate.

Republican leaders in the state stood by DePerno following news of the investigation, with Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan GOP party, tweeting that Nessel is “hell bent on going after her political opponents.”

Party Chairman Ron Weiser said he expects the party’s formal nominating convention on Aug. 27 will back all of the candidates previously endorsed by party delegates, including DePerno. He said Republicans “have a great opportunity” this fall in Michigan and questioned the timing of Nessel’s request, accusing her using her office to target a political opponent.

“The public is sick and tired of what happened during the pandemic, as well as what’s happening now between Gretchen Whitmer and her allies,” he said.

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Foody reported from Chicago. 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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By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts will not convene the state legislature for a special session to consider stricter abortion laws because Republican lawmakers did not have the votes to pass a ban on abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, he said on Monday.

The statement by Ricketts, a Republican, comes as several other Republican-led states have grappled in recent weeks with how far to go in restricting abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Indiana on Friday became the first state to pass a new abortion ban since Roe’s overturn, but Republican lawmakers there were divided over which exceptions to allow.

Nebraska currently allows abortions up to 20 weeks post-fertilization. Ricketts had expressed interest in calling a special session to further restrict abortion access, saying he would support a near-total ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

But in his statement on Monday, the governor said only 30 state senators would support a ban on abortions past 12 weeks. The legislation requires 33 votes to pass.

Nebraska’s state legislature is unicameral, meaning it only has one chamber, and is comprised of 32 Republicans and 17 Democrats.

“It is deeply saddening that only 30 Nebraska state senators are willing to come back to Lincoln this fall in order to protect innocent life,” Ricketts said. “As Governor, I will continue doing whatever I can in my power to affirm the rights of preborn babies and to support pregnant women, children, and families in need.”

Nebraska state Senator Megan Hunt, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter last week that the 12-week ban proposal was part of an effort by the state’s Republican leadership to seem “moderate” in comparison to the total bans that have taken effect in some 10 other states.

“Abortion is a right. Abortion is health care. And the decision about whether and when to become a parent does not belong to the government,” Hunt tweeted on Monday.

The near-total ban signed by Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb on Friday prohibits all abortions except when the life of the mother is endangered, the fetus develops a fatal abnormality or the pregnancy results from rape or incest but has not advanced beyond 10 weeks of gestation.

West Virginia’s legislature, also led by Republicans, is on the verge of passing a near-total abortion ban during a special session this summer. But lawmakers disagree over whether doctors who perform abortions outside narrow exceptions should face prison time.

The defeat last week of a Republican-backed Kansas constitutional amendment to restrict abortion has boosted Democrats’ hopes that they can harness voter anger to prevail in competitive November midterm elections.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Josie Kao)

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By Gabriella Borter and Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate gave final legislative approval on Friday to a bill that would ban most abortions, six weeks after a U.S. Supreme Court decision erased a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy.

The bill, adopted on a 28-19 vote hours after clearing the state’s House of Representatives, would make Indiana the first U.S. state to impose such a ban since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion nationwide was overturned on June 24.

A decision on whether to sign the measure into law is now up to Republican Governor Eric Holcomb.

Indiana’s legislature adopted the measure during a special session its Republican leaders called after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, in a Mississippi case titled Dobbs v. Jackson, immediately cleared the way for all states to regulate abortion as they see fit.

West Virginia is likely days away from passing a near-total abortion ban, and some 10 other Republican-led states have already implemented similarly strict prohibitions that were on the books before Dobbs replaced Roe as the law of the land.

The so-called Hoosier state became a flashpoint for the renewed national abortion debate in late June when a 10-year-old rape victim from neighboring Ohio traveled to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy because her home state banned abortions after six weeks of gestation, with no exceptions for sexual assault or incest.

The girl was just three days past Ohio’s six-week abortion limit, which had been blocked from enforcement before Roe was struck down but then took effect hours after the Dobbs ruling.

Current Indiana law, in effect pending the governor’s signature on the newly passed abortion bill, SB-1, permits abortions up to 22 weeks after a patient’s last menstrual period, with several additional restrictions.

SB-1 would ban abortions altogether, with exceptions allowed in cases of fetal abnormalities considered lethal, or to prevent serious physical health risks to the mother. Exceptions also are permitted for underage victims of rape or incest, but only up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Physicians found to have violated the measure could be charged with a felony and face the revocation of their medical license.

Final passage by lawmakers in Indianapolis came three days after abortion foes suffered a major blow in the first statewide electoral test on the issue since Roe fell. Voters in Kansas, another predominantly conservative Midwestern state, rejected a ballot measure on Tuesday seeking to remove abortion-rights protections from their state’s constitution.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates-East organized a protest at the Indiana statehouse on Friday evening to oppose an abortion ban.

Earlier in the day, dozens of abortion rights advocates rallied at the Capitol, chanting “Shame on you!” as members of the House passed the bill, according to video posted to Twitter.

“SB-1 is a cruel and dangerous attack on liberty and freedom. We won’t stop fighting until everyone can access the abortion care they need without politicians interfering,” the ACLU of Indiana wrote on Twitter.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles;Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Robert Birsel)

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The Republican matchup in the Wisconsin governor’s race on Tuesday features competing candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump and his estranged vice president, Mike Pence. Democrats are picking a candidate to face two-term GOP Sen. Ron Johnson for control of the closely divided chamber.

Meanwhile, voters in Vermont are choosing a replacement for U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy as the chamber’s longest-serving member retires. In Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar faces a Democratic primary challenger who helped defeat a voter referendum to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety.

What to watch in Tuesday’s primary elections in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut:

WISCONSIN

Construction company co-owner Tim Michels has Trump’s endorsement in the governor’s race and has been spending millions of his own money, touting both the former president’s backing and his years working to build his family’s business into Wisconsin’s largest construction company. Michels casts himself as an outsider, although he previously lost a campaign to oust then-U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold in 2004 and has long been a prominent GOP donor.

Establishment Republicans including Pence and former Gov. Scott Walker have endorsed former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who along with Walker, survived a 2012 recall effort. She argues she has the experience and knowledge to pursue conservative priorities, including dismantling the bipartisan commission that runs elections.

With Senate control at stake, Democrats will also make their pick to take on Johnson. Democratic support coalesced around Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes late in the race, when his three top rivals dropped out and threw their support to him. He would become the state’s first Black senator if elected.

Several lesser-known candidates remain in the primary, but Johnson and Republicans have treated Barnes as the nominee, casting him as too liberal for Wisconsin, a state Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020.

Four Democrats are also running in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, a seat that opened up with the retirement of veteran Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind. The district has been trending Republican, and Derrick Van Orden — who narrowly lost to Kind in 2020 and has Trump’s endorsement — is running unopposed.

MINNESOTA

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz faces a little-known opponent as he seeks a second term. His likely challenger is Republican Scott Jensen, a physician and former state lawmaker who has made vaccine skepticism a centerpiece of his campaign and faces token opposition.

Both men have been waging a virtual campaign for months, with Jensen attacking Walz for his management of the pandemic and hammering the governor for rising crime around Minneapolis. Walz has highlighted his own support of abortion rights and suggested that Jensen would be a threat to chip away at the procedure’s legality in Minnesota.

Crime has emerged as the biggest issue in Rep. Omar’s Democratic primary. She faces a challenge from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, who opposes the movement to defund the police and last year helped defeat efforts to replace the city’s police department. Omar, who supported the referendum, has a substantial money advantage and is expected to benefit from a strong grassroots operation.

The most confusing part of Tuesday’s ballot was for the 1st Congressional District seat that was held by U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who died earlier this year from cancer. Republican former state Rep. Brad Finstad and Democrat Jeff Ettinger, a former Hormel CEO, are simultaneously competing in primaries to determine the November matchup for the next two-year term representing the southern Minnesota district, as well as a special election to finish the last few months of Hagedorn’s term.

CONNECTICUT

It’s been roughly three decades since Connecticut had a Republican in the U.S. Senate, but the party isn’t giving up.

In the GOP primary to take on Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the party has endorsed former state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides. She’s a social moderate who supports abortion rights and certain gun control measures and says she did not vote for Trump in 2020. Klarides contends her experience and positions can persuade voters to oppose Blumenthal, a two-term senator who in May registered a 45% job approval rating, his lowest in a Quinnipiac poll since taking office.

Klarides is being challenged by conservative attorney Peter Lumaj and Republican National Committee member Leora Levy, whom Trump endorsed last week. Both candidates oppose abortion rights and further gun restrictions, and they back Trump’s policies.

VERMONT

Leahy’s upcoming retirement has opened up two seats in Vermont’s tiny three-person congressional delegation — and the opportunity for the state to send a woman to represent it in Washington for the first time.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, the state’s at-large congressman, quickly launched his Senate bid after Leahy revealed he was stepping down. Leahy, who is president pro tempore of the Senate, has been hospitalized a couple of times over the last two years, including after breaking his hip this summer.

Welch has been endorsed by Sanders and is the odds-on favorite to win the seat in November. He faces two other Democrats in the primary: Isaac Evans-Frantz, an activist, and Dr. Niki Thran, an emergency physician.

On the Republican side, former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, retired U.S. Army officer Gerald Malloy and investment banker Myers Mermel are competing for the nomination.

The race to replace Welch has yielded Vermont’s first wide-open U.S. House campaign since 2006.

Two women, including Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and state Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, are the top Democratic candidates in the race. Gray, elected in 2020 in her first political bid, is a lawyer and a former assistant state attorney general.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be the heavy favorite to win the general election in the liberal state. In 2018, Vermont became the last state without female representation in Congress when Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate.

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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Doug Glass in Minneapolis; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; and Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed to this report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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By Laura Sanicola

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. fuel retailers are fighting the inclusion of a tax credit for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in Democrats’ $430 billion spending bill, arguing SAF is more carbon intense and less efficient than renewable diesel.

Lawmakers are offering a $1.25-$1.75 per gallon SAF credit depending on the feedstock used, as part of a tax and climate bill that aims to lower U.S. carbon emissions by about 40% by 2030 and cut the federal budget deficit by $300 billion.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate and move to the House with the SAF credit included next week. Democrats control the House and approval with the credit is expected.

Fuel retailers fear the credit would shift vegetable oil and other renewable feedstocks to aviation, leaving less of it for fuel producers that make renewable diesel.

The National Association of Truckstop Operators (NATSO) and SIGMA, a fuel marketers association, are urging lawmakers to oppose the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 unless it provides tax parity between the biodiesel tax credit (BTC) and proposed SAF tax credit.

A 2021 study from LMC International, an agricultural marketing consultancy, found that SAF production is less efficient at reducing carbon emissions than renewable diesel as more feedstock is required per gallon of output.

“SAF cannot compete with other renewable fuels on an environmental basis,” said David Fialkov, executive vice president of government affairs at NATSO.

Other environmental advocates have argued that all biofuels that divert lipid-based feedstocks such as animal fats and waste cooking oils from existing markets present significant sustainability concerns.

“Increasing the global supply of vegetable oils, directly or indirectly, necessarily comes at the cost of forests and other natural lands,” according to researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation in an August briefing.

Airlines have told investors they will increasingly use sustainable aviation fuel made from vegetable oil and other low-carbon feedstocks in an attempt to decarbonize air travel. Due to poor economics, the fuel only represents 0.5% of today’s jet fuel pool.

Aviation accounts for 3% of the world’s carbon emissions, and is considered one of the toughest areas to cut emissions due to a lack of alternative technologies.

But the White House has vowed to lower aviation emissions by 20% by 2030, with a goal of boosting SAF production to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030, and to meet 100% of aviation fuel demand of about 35 billion gallons a year by 2050.

(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; Editing by David Gregorio)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats started pushing their election-year tax and spend bill through the Senate on Saturday, starting the sprawling collection of President Joe Biden’s priorities on climate, energy, health and taxes on a pathway through Congress that the party hopes will end in victory by the end of this week.

In a preview of the sharply partisan votes that are expected on a mountain of amendments, the evenly divided Senate voted to begin debate on the legislation 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie and overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. The package, a dwindled version of earlier multitrillion-dollar measures that Democrats failed to advance, has become a partisan battleground over inflation, gasoline prices and other issues that polls show are driving voters.

The House, where Democrats have a slender majority, could give the legislation final approval next Friday when that chamber plans to briefly return to Washington from summer recess.

“The time is now to move forward with a big, bold package for the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “This historic bill will reduce inflation, lower costs, fight climate change. It’s time to move this nation forward.”

Republicans said the measure would damage the economy and make it harder for people to cope with sky-high inflation. They said the bill’s business taxes would hurt job creation and force prices upward and urged voters to remember that in November.

“The best way to stop this tax and spend inflationary madness is to fire some of the 50 so they can’t keep doing this to your family,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

Nonpartisan analysts have said the legislation, which Democrats have named the Inflation Reduction Act, would have a minor impact on the nation’s worst inflation bout in four decades. Even so, it would take aim at issues the party has longed to address for years including global warming, pharmaceutical costs and taxing immense corporations.

Earlier Saturday, the Senate parliamentarian gave a thumbs-up to most of Democrats’ revised 755-page bill. But Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said Democrats had to drop a significant part of their plan for curbing drug prices.

MacDonough said Democrats violated Senate budget rules with language imposing hefty penalties on pharmaceutical companies that boost prices beyond inflation for drugs sold in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief drug pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own.

Other pharmaceutical provisions were left intact, including giving Medicare the power to negotiate what it pays for drugs for its 64 million elderly recipients, a longtime Democratic aspiration. Penalties on manufacturers for exceeding inflation would apply to drugs sold to Medicare, and there is a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on drug costs and free vaccines for Medicare beneficiaries.

Before approving the legislation, Democrats will have to fight off a “vote-a-rama” of nonstop amendments. Most will be designed by Republicans to upend the bill or at least force vulnerable Democrats facing reelection and party moderates into tough votes on issues like inflation, taxes and immigration.

Saturday’s vote capped a startling 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of Biden’s agenda that had seemed dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators — first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginia, then Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a package that would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.

The measure is a shadow of Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal, which funded a rainbow of progressive dreams including paid family leave, universal preschool, child care and bigger tax breaks for families with children. The current bill, barely over one-tenth that size, became much narrower as Democratic leaders sought to win the votes of the centrists Manchin and Sinema, yet it has unified a party eager to declare victory and show voters they are addressing their problems.

The bill offers spending and tax incentives favored by progressives for buying electric vehicles and making buildings more energy efficient. But in a bow to Manchin, whose state is a leading fossil fuel producer, there is also money to reduce coal plant carbon emissions and language requiring the government to open more federal land and waters to oil drilling.

Expiring subsidies that help millions of people afford private insurance premiums would be extended for three years, and there is $4 billion to help Western states combat drought. A new provision would create a $35 monthly cap for insulin, the expensive diabetes medication, for Medicare and private insurance patients starting next year. It seemed possible that language could be weakened or removed during debate.

Reflecting Democrats’ calls for tax equity, there would be a new 15% minimum tax on some corporations with annual profits exceeding $1 billion but that pay well below the 21% corporate tax. Companies buying back their own stock would be taxed 1% for those transactions, swapped in after Sinema refused to support higher taxes on hedge fund managers. The IRS budget would be pumped up to strengthen its tax collections.

While the bill’s final costs were still being determined, it would spend close to $400 billion over 10 years to slow climate change, which analysts say would be the country’s largest investment in that effort, and billions more on health care. It would raise more than $700 billion in taxes and from government drug cost savings, leaving about $300 billion for deficit reduction over the coming decade — a blip compared to that period’s projected $16 trillion in budget shortfalls.

Democrats are using special procedures that would let them pass the measure without having to reach the 60-vote majority that legislation often needs in the Senate.

The parliamentarian decides whether parts of legislation must be dropped for violating those rules, which include a requirement that provisions be chiefly aimed at affecting the federal budget, not imposing new policy.

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(SRN NEWS) Former President Donald Trump remains extremely popular with conservatives.

The 45th President won- by a wide margin – an unofficial straw poll of attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference Texas who were asked who they preferred as the Republican nominee for president in 2024.

Of the attendees who voted, just over 69% said they preferred Mr. Trump, with nearly 24% saying they would prefer Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

When asked about who they would prefer if Mr. Trump did not run for president, 65% of respondents said they preferred Governor DeSantis, while 8% said they would support Donald Trump Jr.

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