Politics

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will unveil plans this week to support the U.S. energy industry, fight crime and combat illegal immigration as they seek to gain the upper hand in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

The Republicans bill their “Commitment to America” agenda as a prescription for economic and social ills they say President Joe Biden’s Democrats have caused, with top House Republican Kevin McCarthy hoping it will also serve as a unifying message for his party in the closing weeks of the campaign

House Republican leadership also intends the platform to help the party’s candidates keep their focus on criticizing Democrats, rather than on former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020.

The plan will propose increasing U.S. energy production to address high gas prices, boosting funding to hire more police and reimposing Trump-era border restrictions to stem the flow of migrants coming from Mexico, lawmakers said. They will unveil it on Friday in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a small city in a deep red congressional district outside Pittsburgh.

“There’s a plan for a new direction for America, one that will curb inflation, give us lower gas prices, make your streets safer again, but also give parents a say on their kids’ education and bring accountability back to this government,” McCarthy told Reuters.

Republicans are favored by nonpartisan election analysts to erase Democrats’ 221-212 majority in the House, and doing so would give them the power to block Biden’s legislative agenda and to launch potentially politically damaging investigations into his administrations.

With Democrats still in control of the White House and control of the Senate up for grabs as well as Nov. 8, the parties would need to work together to pass meaningful legislation.

“If Republicans are fortunate enough to take the House of Representatives, we will have policies ready to go – day one,” said Representative Yvette Herrell of New Mexico, whose bid for reelection is a toss-up.

She pointed to her own bills to prevent the Biden administration from relenting on COVID-19 border restrictions and to require the administration to seek congressional approval for any curtailment of energy leases on federal lands.

Democrats dismissed the plan, saying it ignores serious voter concerns about abortion rights and the state of American democracy, issues that aided Democratic victories in recent special House elections in New York and Alaska and helped block abortion restrictions in Kansas..

“I don’t think they have an agenda that the American people will … want,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said in an interview.

“Kansas showed that to be the case. I think New York showed it to be the case – and Alaska, which hasn’t had a Democratic congressperson for a long time. We’re doing what the public thinks is for them, for the people,” Hoyer said.

FLASHBACK TO 1994

The “Commitment to America” is modeled on the 1994 “Contract with America,” which helped give Republicans control of the House and Senate. It identified specific policies that the party pledged to pursue if given the majority.

“We’re going to show the country how to do this,” Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters. “Then, if we get a majority, we will have a mandate to do those things.”

Biden’s anemic job approval rating, which has remained below 50% since August 2021 according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, has weighed on Democrats’ electoral hopes. A national Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Sept. 12 found that 37% of Americans would prefer to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate, with 34% preferring Republicans and 15% still undecided.

Concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court decision ending national abortion rights and the high-profile congressional and legal investigations into Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat have also boosted enthusiasm among Democratic and independent voters.

Republicans are hoping their agenda can now help them turn up the heat on Democrats.

Republican governors in Florida, Texas and Arizona have helped shift U.S. media attention from abortion to immigration by sending migrants to the Chicago, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and New York.

“Voters are paying attention now. So, it’s important to pound away at those themes,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

The agenda has also raised questions about a possible conflict between McCarthy and his Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell, who has opposed producing an agenda for party Senate candidates out of concern that it could distract from the campaign focus on Biden and the Democrats.

Nonpartisan forecasters say Democrats have a better chance of holding onto their Senate majority than they do in the House.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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LILBURN, Ga. (AP) — Like schools nationwide, those in Georgia face some big decisions in coming years.

But polls show K-12 education trailing among voter concerns this year, and candidates are spending more time talking about inflation, the economy, abortion and guns.

When it comes to education issues, Gwinnett County parent and former teacher Missy Purcell says, “I’m not hearing a lot.”

It’s not that Republican incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams don’t have education proposals.

Abrams proposes a big boost in teacher pay, more state-paid preschool slots for lower income families and an increase in college aid financed by legalizing casinos. She also pledges efforts to block conservative laws that limit what schools can teach about race and make it easier for parents to challenge books.

“We have to invest in our children from cradle to career and we have to pay our educators a professional wage,” she told Democrats at their state convention in Columbus on Aug. 27. “We’ve got to keep our teachers in the classroom and not the courtroom.”

Kemp rolled out a more modest agenda, including a grant program aimed at helping students learn what they missed during the pandemic, encouraging teacher aides to become full teachers and increasing funding for school counselors.

“We have to do more work addressing the pandemic learning loss, bringing more educators and counselors into into our schools and keeping our students and staff safe,” Kemp said Monday at a school in Statham.

But other concerns appear to be crowding out education, especially among Democrats.

Walking her two children home from Camp Creek Elementary in the Gwinnett County suburb of Lilburn, Katherine Camp said her family moved to the area so her children could attend the highly rated school.

“This is better than private school in some ways,” Camp said, noting both her children get special education services.

Gwinnett is Georgia’s largest school district, with 180,000 students, more than 10% of statewide enrollment. It has been a magnet for families but has seen fighting over the district’s direction in recent years as newly ascendant Democrats took over the school board and other county offices.

But Camp said her top issues are health care and ensuring state laws don’t hamper people from voting. Even her top education issue, preventing school shootings, is mostly about controlling guns across society.

That’s a decline for what’s traditionally a centerpiece issue, especially in Southern states where educational attainment has lagged.

“Not just in Georgia, but across the South, individuals have been proud to be labeled the education governor,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

In September 2018, 16% of Georgians in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll said “public schools” were the most important election issue that year, which tied with health care for second place overall behind the economy. A Fox News poll conducted this August showed 3% of registered voters in Georgia naming “education” as their top issue in the Senate race.

“Republicans, what they want to talk about is inflation and the economy,” Bullock said. “Democrats want to talk about failure to expand Medicaid, the abortion decision.”

But Georgia’s next governor and lawmakers will face crucial decisions, including whether the state should push districts harder to help students recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, whether the state should rewrite its K-12 funding formula, what Georgia can do to recruit and retain more teachers, and how to shield students from shootings.

Georgia is spending more than $25 billion on public schools this year, out of a $58 billion budget, one indication of how education dominates state government. Georgia’s 120,000 public school teachers have historically been a key voting bloc. For example, a 2002 revolt by teachers helped deny Democrat Roy Barnes a second term after the governor tied teacher evaluations and bonuses to student performance and eliminated tenure.

Kemp courted teachers in 2018, promising a $5,000 pay raise that Abrams derided as a “gimmick.” Kemp delivered on that pledge and also sought their favor by backing moves to reduce standardized testing.

But the tone toward education shifted in Georgia after Republican Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in Virginia showcased conservative complaints about schooling. This spring, as Kemp faced a Republican primary challenge, he signed a raft of culturally conservative school bills, regulating how race could be taught in schools, making it easier for parents to challenge books they viewed as inappropriate and nudging the state athletic association to ban transgender girls from high school girls sports. Youngkin is coming to campaign with Kemp on Tuesday.

Those moves have some teachers steaming. Anthony Downer, a former high school social studies teacher, is a diversity coordinator for the Decatur school district. He’s also vice president of Georgia Educators for Equity and Justice, which opposes Georgia’s law banning teaching “divisive concepts” on race.

“Teachers are being targeted,” Downer said. “There are situations in which parents are already complaining, community members are already complaining about certain texts that deal with race or sexuality, certain lessons or activities.”

Abrams has proposed boosting average teacher pay to $75,000 and guaranteeing a starting salary of $50,000. The plan would cost a projected $1.65 billion in new spending.

That sounds attractive to Amber Karasik, a special education teacher at Gwinnett County’s Jenkins Elementary School and board member of the Gwinnett County Association of Educators. Karasik echoes Abrams’ arguments that Georgia shouldn’t be content to rank 21st in average pay among states at $60,553 annually, although that’s substantially higher than neighbors.

“We want to keep our best teachers, our best talent, in the state, and for somebody that may be considering getting a teaching degree, it probably would behoove them to move elsewhere,” Karasik said.

Kemp isn’t offering a new pay raise plan. He said in Statham that he “would love to continue to pay state employees more” and argued teachers should trust him because he delivered on his $5,000 promise.

Georgia has largely let its 181 school districts decide how to aid students’ academic and social recovery from pandemic-related disruptions. But others want Georgia to better guide districts on effective teaching, pointing to states such as Mississippi that saw test scores rise after implementing changes.

Purcell said that when she briefly returned to teaching after having children, she felt Gwinnett County did little to educate her on what had changed while she was gone. Her youngest son, Matthew, was struggling to read until Gwinnett County paid for him to attend a special school.

“I would rather have a lot more direction from the state level for districts to use evidence-based programs, especially in our foundational subjects like reading and writing and math,” Purcell said. “If we don’t set kids up for success early on, we’re basically giving them a life sentence of failure.”

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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

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By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to approve a bill aimed at allowing news organizations to band together to negotiate with Alphabet Inc’s Google and Meta’s Facebook and win more revenue.

The bill passed the committee by a vote of 15 to 7, according to a congressional aide. It must now go to the Senate for their approval. A similar bill is before the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill is aimed at giving news and broadcast organizations more clout after years of criticism that big tech companies use their content to attract traffic and ad revenue without fairly compensating the publishers, many of which struggle financially.

The bill, led by Democrat Amy Klobuchar, attracted some Republican support, with Senators John Kennedy and Lindsey Graham sponsoring it. Other Democrats, like Senator Alex Padilla, expressed reservations about it.

The bill hit a speed bump earlier this month when Senator Ted Cruz won backing for a plan to include provisions to address what he considers the platforms stifling conservative voices.

On Thursday Klobuchar won support for an amendment that specified that prices for use of content was the issue.

“The goal of the bill is to allow local news organizations to get compensation when major titans, monopolies like Facebook and Google, access their content,” she said at a committee session to vote on the bill.

Unlike other bills aimed at reining in big tech, some progressive groups oppose this measure, including Public Knowledge, on the grounds that it favors big broadcasters like News Corp, Sinclair and Comcast/NBCU.

Also opposing the bill are two technology industry trade groups that Facebook and Google belong to: the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Lananh Nguyen, Saeed Azhar and Scott Murdoch

WASHINGTON/HONG KONG (Reuters) -Top U.S. bankers came under pressure from lawmakers on Wednesday to take a tougher stance on doing business with China amid growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan’s sovereignty and China’s human rights record.

During a hearing before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, Republican congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer pressed bank chief executives on how they would respond in the hypothetical event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Lawmakers also asked the CEOs to condemn China’s “human rights abuses,” in a departure from previous hearings that tended to focus on domestic issues like housing and consumer protection.

“We will follow the government’s guidance, which has been for decades to work with China,” said Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan. “If they change that position, we will immediately change it, as we did in Russia.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser both concurred, saying their banks would follow government guidance if China were to invade Taiwan.

The increased scrutiny underscores the challenges the country’s largest lenders increasingly face as they try to balance commercial interests with pressure from policymakers, activists and investors to take stances on environmental, social and governance issues.

Wall Street giants including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have sought in recent years to expand their businesses in China, the world’s second-largest economy.

Authorities there have granted U.S. banks more ownership of their securities businesses despite rising geopolitical tension. Despite a bigger footprint, China is not yet a big profit centre for those banks.

“There would be few significant gains to the U.S. or losses to China if banks pared back operations there,” said Hong Kong-based Global Source Partners analyst Andrew Collier.

“The symbolism, however, is more important, because China is very concerned about decoupling in trade and imports of key products like semiconductors, so any pressure on the financial sector would send worrisome signals to Beijing.”

Responding to a question about the remarks by U.S. bank CEOs and lawmakers, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday that “the Taiwan question has always been the most important and sensitive issue” for U.S.-China relations.

“The U.S. side should strictly adhere to the One-China principle and the provisions in the three U.S.-China joint communiqués, earnestly and effectively implement the U.S. leaders’ stance of not supporting Taiwan independence, stop manipulating issues pertaining to Taiwan.”

‘HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION’

JPMorgan, which has been in China since 1921, serves Chinese and international corporations, financial institutions and government agencies. Last year it became the first foreign firm to fully own a securities venture in China.

Citigroup, which was the first U.S. bank to set up shop in China in 1902, last year applied for a mainland Chinese securities licence as part of its push to ramp up business in the market.

China has been carrying out military drills near Taiwan in recent weeks. After U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, China fired missiles into waters near the island, though its activities have since scaled back.

China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claims.

Congressman Luetkemeyer asked Fraser what Citigroup would do if a war over Taiwan broke out.

“It’s a hypothetical question,” Fraser said. “It’s highly likely that we will have a reduced presence.” Citigroup has a global reach that spans more than 160 countries.

When asked later by Republican Lance Gooden if she would condemn “ongoing human rights abuses in China,” Fraser hesitated. “Condemn is a strong word,” she said. “We certainly are very distressed to see it.”

JPMorgan’s Dimon also warned the U.S. had to compete with Chinese banks, which have grown in size over the last few years to become the biggest in the world.

“I am going to do everything in my power to make sure we compete with the best Chinese banks in the world. It is very important for the future of America that America maintains its financial supremacy just like anything else.”

(Reporting by Lananh Nguyen and Pete Schroeder; additional reporting by Saeed Azhar, Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong and Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Richard Pullin and Toby Chopra)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department can resume reviewing classified records seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home pending appeal, a federal appellate court ruled on Wednesday, giving a boost to the criminal investigation into whether the records were mishandled or compromised.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by federal prosecutors to block U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s stay barring them from using the classified documents in their probe until an independent arbiter, called a special master, vets the materials to weed out any that could be deemed privileged and withheld from investigators.

The appeals court also said it would agree to reverse a portion of the lower court’s order that required the government to hand over records with classification markings for the special master’s review.

“We conclude that the United States would suffer irreparable harm from the district court’s restrictions on its access to this narrow—and potentially critical—set of materials, as well as the court’s requirement that the United States submit the classified records to the special master for review,” the three-judge panel wrote.

The decision is “limited in nature,” the panel wrote, as the Justice Department had asked only for a partial stay pending appeal, and that the panel was not able to decide on the merits of the case itself.

The three judges who made the decision were Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, and Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, both of whom were appointed by Trump.

Trump’s lawyers could potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by him, to intervene in the matter.

In filings on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers urged the court to keep the stay in place and to allow them under the supervision of the special master, U.S Judge Raymond Dearie, to review all of the seized materials, including those marked classified.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not have an immediate comment. Attorneys for Trump could not be immediately reached for comment.

In an interview on Fox News Wednesday night, Trump repeated his claim without evidence that he declassified the documents and said he had the power to do it “even by thinking about it.”

The FBI conducted a court-approved search on Aug. 8 at Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, seizing more than 11,000 documents including about 100 marked as classified.

The search was part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents from the White House when he left office in January 2021 after his failed 2020 re-election bid and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe.

Cannon, a Trump appointee herself, appointed Dearie to serve as special master in the case at Trump’s request, despite the Justice Department’s objections about a special master.

Cannon tasked Dearie with reviewing all of the materials, including classified ones, so that he can separate anything that could be subject to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure.

However, Trump’s lawyers have not made such claims in any of their legal filings, and during a hearing before Dearie on Tuesday, they resisted his request to provide proof that Trump had declassified any records.

Although the appeals court stressed its ruling was narrow in scope, it nevertheless appeared to sharply rebuke Cannon’s ruling from top to bottom and many of Trump’s legal arguments.

“[Trump]has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the judges wrote. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”

The Justice Department previously also raised strong objections to Cannon’s demand that Dearie review the seized records for documents possibly covered by executive privilege, noting that Trump is a former president and the records do not belong to him.

While it voiced disagreement, however, the Justice Department did not appeal that portion of Cannon’s order. It is not clear if prosecutors may separately seek to appeal other parts of Cannon’s ruling on the special master appointment.

“We decide only the traditional equitable considerations, including whether the United States has shown a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits, the harm each party might suffer from a stay, and where the public interest lies,” the appeals court said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Eric Beech, Mike Scarcella and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam)

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By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A Georgia county has validated 15,000 to 20,000 registered voters whose status was challenged ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm election, officials said on Wednesday, leaving another 16,000 pending cases to resolve, according to the group leading the challenge.

The voter challenge campaign in Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, is led by VoterGA, which backs Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election. Supported by prominent allies of the former president, VoterGA has contested 37,000 voter registrations in the county of about 562,000 active voters.

Similar challenges are taking place in counties across Georgia, which has tight races for governor and U.S. senator on the ballot, and the queries have overwhelmed Gwinnett’s elections board.

Voting rights advocates contend the campaign disproportionately targets areas with a higher African-American population. VoterGA disputes that, calling it a lie.

Gwinnett County Elections Supervisor Zach Manifold told the county’s election board on Wednesday that a review of the challenges found 15,000 to 20,000 were eliminated from further scrutiny because the process by which those voters had their ballots delivered to them was legitimate.

Manifold said he had been informed just before the meeting that a further 6,275 challenges had been withdrawn by VoterGA.

VoterGA co-founder Garland Favorito told Reuters those challenges were withdrawn after a previous review by Gwinnett County determined they were legitimate, leaving a total of around 16,000 pending cases.

“I would be surprised if any more entries were removed (from the voter rolls) prior to the election,” Favorito said.

The effort follows Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud allowed now-President Joe Biden to win the state and the country as a whole in 2020. Trump’s claims have been rejected by multiple courts, state reviews and members of his former administration.

This year’s voter role challenges are being filed under Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021, or SB 202, which made it easier for citizens to question the eligibility of registered voters.

VoterGA volunteers scoured public records to compile their claims, seeking to verify whether voters had improperly registered, moved away, had invalid addresses, or otherwise could not be accounted for.

The group is backed by the American Project, which was founded by former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com Inc Chief Executive Patrick Byrne. The American Project announced in August it would sponsor lawsuits related to claims about the 2020 election in Georgia, including several involving VoterGA and Favorito.

Favorito said he did not vote for Trump and has never met Flynn or Byrne but welcomes their help.

Voting rights advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union and All Voting is Local say that VoterGA is abusing the law, which they say was intended to enable citizens with personal knowledge of an irregularity to report it, such as when a neighbor moves away and is still registered to vote locally.

The group is bringing “tens of thousands of what we would call baseless challenges that take up the resources of offices that really have better things to be doing at this time,” said Vasu Abhiraman, senior policy counsel for the ACLU of Georgia.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Heather Timmons and Edmund Klamann)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department can resume reviewing classified records seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home pending appeal, a federal appellate court ruled on Wednesday, giving a boost to the criminal investigation into whether the records were mishandled or compromised.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by federal prosecutors to block U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s stay barring them from using the classified documents in their probe until an independent arbiter, called a special master, vets the materials to weed out any that could be deemed privileged and withheld from investigators.

The appeals court also said it would agree to reverse a portion of the lower court’s order that required the government to hand over records with classification markings for the special master’s review.

“We conclude that the United States would suffer irreparable harm from the district court’s restrictions on its access to this narrow—and potentially critical—set of materials, as well as the court’s requirement that the United States submit the classified records to the special master for review,” the three-judge panel wrote.

The panel added that the decision is “limited in nature,” as the Justice Department had asked only for a partial stay pending appeal, and that the panel was not able to decide on the merits of the case itself.

The department’s request to the court had not asked for a reversal of Cannon’s order itself, and it is not clear if prosecutors may separately seek to appeal other parts of Cannon’s ruling on the special master appointment.

“We decide only the traditional equitable considerations, including whether the United States has shown a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits, the harm each party might suffer from a stay, and where the public interest lies,” the appeals court said.

The three judges who made the decision were Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, and Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, both of whom were appointed by Trump.

Trump’s lawyers could potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by him, to intervene in the matter.

In their filings on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers urged the court to keep the stay in place and to allow them under the supervision of the special master, U.S Judge Raymond Dearie, to review all of the seized materials, including those marked classified.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not have an immediate comment. Attorneys for Trump could not be immediately reached for comment.

The FBI conducted a court-approved search on Aug. 8 at Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, seizing more than 11,000 documents including about 100 marked as classified.

The search was part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents from the White House when he left office in January 2021 after his failed 2020 re-election bid and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe.

Cannon, a Trump appointee herself, appointed Dearie to serve as special master in the case at Trump’s request. The Justice Department had objected to the appointment of a special master.

Cannon tasked Dearie with reviewing all of the materials, including classified ones, so that he can separate anything that could be subject to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure.

As one of his defenses, Trump has claimed on social media posts without evidence that he declassified the records.

However, his lawyers have not made such claims in any of their legal filings, and during a hearing before Dearie on Tuesday, they resisted his request to provide proof that Trump had declassified any records.

Although the appeals court stressed its ruling was narrow in scope, it nevertheless appeared to sharply rebuke Cannon’s ruling from top to bottom and many of Trump’s legal arguments.

“[Trump]has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the judges wrote. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”

The Justice Department previously also raised strong objections to Cannon’s demand that Dearie review the seized records for documents possibly covered by executive privilege, noting that Trump is a former president and the records do not belong to him.

While it voiced disagreement, however, the Justice Department did not appeal that portion of Cannon’s order.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Eric Beech, Mike Scarcella and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Election Commission on Wednesday started the process of reviewing the rules for election observers, an issue that’s drawn attention and concern as Democrats and Republicans alike aggressively recruit partisan watchers to ensure election workers adhere to the law this November.

The unprecedented recruitment efforts are the result of heightened election skepticism and have some local clerks worried about safety at the polls, especially as reports of intimidating behavior from partisan observers have popped up across the country since 2020.

The elections commission voted 5-1 Wednesday to send a scope statement to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers outlining their intent, the first step in a lengthy process that could change how election observers monitor polls. If approved by the governor, the statement would be opened up for public comment.

Any new rules will not be in effect ahead of the November election, and the entire process will likely take one to two years, according to Brandon Hunzicker, an attorney for the commission.

The statement approved on a bipartisan vote Wednesday gives broad outlines for what the commission will consider if it receives the governor’s approval, including reviews of how observers should interact with voters and poll workers, how election workers may restrict observers’ access and what qualifies as disruptive behavior from an observer.

The only person to vote against the proposal, Republican Commissioner Robert Spindell, said he was concerned that the scope statement lacked specifics. “I see no reason to rush,” he said, citing concerns he’s heard from observers who don’t want rule revisions to restrict their access.

Meanwhile, commission Chairperson Don Millis said he expects to see record numbers of election observers this year.

The election commission also voted Wednesday to again send postcards to voters who request absentee ballots to addresses other than those listed on their records. In August, after a Racine man admitted to fraudulently requesting absentee ballots to his home by using the personal information of elected officials and other voters, the commission sent out postcards to verify that such fraud hadn’t occurred more broadly. None of the nearly 4,000 voters who received the notifications responded to say that they hadn’t requested an absentee ballot.

Commissioner Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, called repeating that process “theatre” designed to reassure voters that the state’s voter system works.

“We’re doing this to make people feel better while knowing that our system is in a really good place,” she said.

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Harm Venhuizen 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. Follow Venhuizen on Twitter.

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By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and his family company were sued on Wednesday for what New York state’s attorney general called a decade of fraudulent misstatements of the values of real estate properties to secure favorable loans and tax benefits.

Here is a look at some of the numerous investigations and lawsuits that Trump faces as he considers another run for the presidency in 2024.

NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL SUIT

New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office uncovered more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and the Trump Organization between 2011 and 2021. James accused Trump of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to satisfy loan terms and get better insurance coverage.

James is seeking to permanently bar Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump from running companies in New York state, and to prevent them and his company from buying new properties and taking out new loans in the state for five years. James is also seeking to have the defendants disgorge around $250 million that she described as obtained through fraud.

After James announced the lawsuit, Trump in a social media post called the action “Another Witch Hunt.” A lawyer for Trump called the lawsuit’s claims “meritless.”

James said her probe also uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing, which she referred to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service for investigation.

NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBE

The Trump Organization is set to go on trial on Oct. 24 on New York state criminal tax fraud charges. Its former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, also named as a defendant in the James lawsuit, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the company.

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has also been investigating whether Trump misled lenders and others about asset valuations. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the probe politically motivated. Bragg, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that the investigation concerning Trump and his company was ongoing.

MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDS

The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Trump for retaining government records, including some marked as classified, after leaving office in January 2021. The FBI seized 11,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in a court-approved Aug. 8 search, including about 100 marked as classified including top secret.

The department opened its investigation after the National Archives, the U.S. agency responsible for preserving government records, tried to get missing government property returned by Trump and received 15 boxes with classified documents mixed in.

Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.

DEFAMATION CASE

E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied her allegation that he raped her in the 1990s in a New York City department store. Trump accused her of lying to drum up sales for a book.

In a letter made public on Tuesday, a lawyer for Carroll said she also plans to sue Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress under a new state law in New York giving adult accusers a one-year window to bring civil claims over alleged civil misconduct regardless of when it occurred.

The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to rule on Trump’s bid to get Carroll’s lawsuit dismissed.

A lawyer for Trump has argued that he is protected by a federal law that makes government employees immune from defamation claims. Trump was president at the time the lawsuit was filed.

U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK

A House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol is investigating whether he broke the law in actions taken to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat. The rioters sought to block Congress from certifying the election results.

Committee Vice chair Liz Cheney has said the committee could make multiple referrals to the Justice Department seeking criminal charges against Trump, who has accused the panel of conducting a politically motivated sham investigation.

The committee cannot charge Trump with federal crimes. That decision must be made by the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBE

A special grand jury was selected in May to consider evidence in a Georgia prosecutor’s inquiry into Trump’s alleged efforts to influence that state’s 2020 election results.

The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss.

Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.

Trump could argue he was engaging in constitutionally protected free speech.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two-thirds of the U.S. Senate voted on Wednesday to recommend ratification of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, a global environmental treaty.

The amendment would phase out use of key greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change. Voting continues on the measure.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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