Politics

By Jonathan Allen and Rich McKay

MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. (Reuters) – Florida’s Republican governor on Friday defended his decision to fly dozens of migrants to the wealthy vacation island of Martha’s Vineyard from Texas, and said similar actions could follow as a political dispute over border security deepened in the run-up to U.S. elections in November.

DeSantis claimed credit for a pair of chartered flights on Wednesday that carried around 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of a broader Republican effort to shift responsibility for border crossers to Democratic leaders.

At a news conference in Daytona Beach, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blamed Democratic President Joe Biden for what he portrayed as a failure to stop migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, as a record 1.8 million have been arrested this fiscal year.

DeSantis said the Florida Legislature set aside $12 million to transport migrants out of the state and that his government would likely use the funds “to protect Florida.”

“There may be more flights, there may be buses,” he said to cheers and applause from backers in the crowd.

The state paid $615,000 to Vertol Systems Company Inc, an aviation business, on Sept. 8 as part of a “relocation program of unauthorized aliens,” Florida state data showed. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The flights to Martha’s Vineyard follow a busing effort by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, another Republican, that has sent more than 10,000 migrants to the Democrat-controlled cities of Washington, New York and Chicago since April. The Republican governor of Arizona also has sent more than 1,800 migrants to Washington.

Unlike those major cities, the island south of Boston is home to around 20,000 year-round residents and is known as a vacation spot for affluent liberals like former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

On Friday morning in Martha’s Vineyard, the migrants, a group of mostly Venezuelans including half a dozen children, boarded buses en route to a ferry to Cape Cod in transportation organized by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. He said they would be housed temporarily at a Cape Cod military base.

The scene left some of the island residents who volunteered to shelter them in a church for two nights in tears. Locals had come together to donate money, toiletries and toys for the migrants. A local thrift shop donated clean clothes, restaurants took turns organizing meals and pro-bono lawyers flew in to help the migrants with paperwork and immigration cases.

“I want them to have a good life,” said Lisa Belcastro, who helped organize cots and supplies at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, which sits among expensive white-clapboard homes in Edgartown. “I want them to come to America and be embraced. They all want to work.”

‘LIKE CHATTEL’

DeSantis, who is running for reelection in November and is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 2024, said his administration flew the migrants from Texas, and not his own state, to the island getaway because many of the migrants arriving in Florida come from Texas.

In addition to re-election bids by DeSantis and Abott, November’s midterm elections will determine whether the Democrats retain control of Congress.

Many migrants who cross into the United States via the Southwest border are immediately expelled to Mexico or other countries under a COVID-19 pandemic policy. But some nationalities, including Venezuelans, cannot be expelled because Mexico will not accept them and many seek to apply for U.S. asylum.

The White House has decried the Republican governors’ efforts, saying migrants were being used in a political stunt.

“These were children. They were moms. They were fleeing communism. And what did Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott do to them? They used them as political pawns, treated them like chattel,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing on Friday.

The legal basis for the Florida government to round up migrants in a different state remained unclear. U.S. government attorneys are exploring possible litigation around the governors’ efforts, a Biden administration official told Reuters.

The migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard said they had recently been admitted into the United States on humanitarian parole after fleeing Venezuela, and had been staying at a shelter in San Antonio, Texas, when they were approached by a woman who identified herself as “Perla.”

The woman persuaded them to board the flights by misleading them into thinking they were heading to Boston and would be provided shelter and assistance finding work for three months, they said.

Many said they told the people who organized the flights they had appointments with immigration authorities they needed to attend in other cities, said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a group in Boston assisting the migrants.

“The organizers of this scheme said ‘Don’t worry, that will be taken care of’” he said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Oatis)

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ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — A staffer for U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski was trying to pass a flat-bed truck on a northern Indiana highway last month when the SUV they were in crashed into an oncoming car, killing Walorski and three other people, police said Friday.

A witness traveling behind the SUV told investigators it sped up, crossed the centerline of the two-lane highway as it neared the truck and pulled into the path of the other car when the crash happened about 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 3, according to the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office.

Airbag control module data from the SUV driven by Zachery Potts, 27, who was Walorski’s district director, showed it was going 77 mph at the time of the crash on a rural stretch of Indiana 19 near the town of Wakarusa, the office said.

“All of the evidence and information gathered is consistent with someone attempting to pass another vehicle on a two-lane roadway,” the office said in a statement.

Walorski, 58, was a Republican who had first been elected to represent northern Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in 2012 and was seeking reelection this year to a sixth term.

The sheriff’s office released statements from the county coroner ruling the deaths of Walorski and the others as accidental from injuries suffered in the crash. Investigators blamed the crash on Potts for “driving left of center with a contributing factor of excessive speed.”

Also killed in the crash were Emma Thomson, 28, who was Walorski’s communications director, and Edith Schmucker, 56, of Nappanee, Indiana, who was driving the other vehicle.

The sheriff’s office said investigators found no signs of mechanical failures with either vehicle or any evidence of cellphone use by anyone in the vehicles when crash happened.

Republican officials selected Rudy Yakym, an executive with Elkhart distribution company Kem Krest and a longtime political ally of Walorski, to replace her on the November election ballot in the heavily GOP district. The district’s congressional seat will remain vacant until a special election on the November ballot to complete Walorski’s term through rest of this year.

Yakym will face Democrat Paul Steury, a science teacher from Goshen, and Libertarian William Henry.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Sensitive voting system passwords posted online. Copies of confidential voting software available for download. Ballot-counting machines inspected by people not supposed to have access.

The list of suspected security breaches at local election offices since the 2020 election keeps growing, with investigations underway in at least three states — Colorado, Georgia and Michigan. The stakes appeared to rise this week when the existence of a federal probe came to light involving a prominent loyalist to former President Donald Trump who has been promoting voting machine conspiracy theories across the country.

While much remains unknown about the investigations, one of the most pressing questions is what it all could mean for security of voting machines with the midterm elections less than two months away.

Election security experts say the breaches by themselves have not necessarily increased threats to the November voting. Election officials already assume hostile foreign governments might have the sensitive data, and so they take precautions to protect their voting systems.

The more immediate concern is the possibility that rogue election workers, including those sympathetic to lies about the 2020 presidential election, might use their access to election equipment and the knowledge gained through the breaches to launch an attack from within. That could be intended to gain an advantage for their desired candidate or party, or to introduce system problems that would sow further distrust in the election results.

In some of the suspected security breaches, authorities are investigating whether local officials provided unauthorized access to people who copied software and hard drive data, and in several cases shared it publicly.

After the Georgia breach, a group of election security experts said the unauthorized copying and sharing of election data from rural Coffee County presented “serious threats” to the November election. They urged the state election board to replace the touchscreen devices used throughout the state and use only hand-marked paper ballots.

Harri Hursti, a leading expert in voting security, said he is concerned about another use of the breached data. Access to the voting equipment data or software can be used to develop a realistic looking video in which someone claims to have manipulated a voting system, he said.

Such a fake video posted online or to social media on or after Election Day could create chaos for an election office and cause voters to challenge the accuracy of the results.

“If you have those rogue images, now you can start manufacturing false, compelling evidence — false evidence of wrongdoing that never happened,” Hursti said. “You can start creating very compelling imaginary evidence.”

There has been no evidence that voting machines have been manipulated, either during the 2020 election or in this year’s primaries. But conspiracy theories widely promoted among some conservatives have led to calls for replacing the machines with hand-marked and hand-counted ballots and raised concerns that they could be targeted by people working inside election offices or at polling places.

The suspected breaches appear to be orchestrated or encouraged by people who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. In several of the cases, employees of local election offices or election boards gave access to voting systems to people who were not authorized to have it. The incidents emerged into public view after the voting system passwords for Mesa County, Colorado, were posted online, prompting a local investigation and a successful effort to replace the county clerk from overseeing elections.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has organized or attended forums around the U.S. peddling conspiracy theories about voting machines, said this week that he had received a subpoena from a federal grand jury investigating the breach in Colorado and was ordered to hand over his cellphone to FBI agents who approached him at a fast-food restaurant in Minnesota.

“And they told me not to tell anybody,” Lindell said in a video afterward. “OK, I won’t. But I am.”

Lindell and others have been traveling the country over the past year, holding events where attendees are told that voting machines have been corrupted, that officials are “selected” rather than elected and that widespread fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.

In an interview with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, Lindell said FBI agents questioned him about the Colorado breach and Dominion Voting Systems. The company provides voting equipment used in about 30 states and has had its machines targeted in the Colorado, Georgia and Michigan breaches.

When agents asked him why he flies between different states, Linden told them, “I’m going to attorney generals and politicians, and I’m trying to get them to get rid of these voting machines in our country.”

The Justice Department did not respond when asked for details about its investigation.

Dominion has sued Lindell and others, accusing them of defamation. In a statement this week, the company said it would not comment about ongoing investigations but said its systems are secure. It noted that no credible evidence has been provided to show that its machines “did anything other than count votes accurately and reliably in all states.”

The scope of the federal grand jury probe in Colorado isn’t known, but local authorities have charged Mesa County clerk Tina Peters in what they described as a “deceptive scheme which was designed to influence public servants, breach security protocols, exceed permissible access to voting equipment and set in motion the eventual distribution of confidential information to unauthorized people.”

Peters has pleaded not guilty and said she had the authority to investigate concerns that the voting equipment had been manipulated. She has appeared at numerous events with Lindell over the past year, including Lindell’s “cybersymposium” last August in which a digital copy of Mesa County’s election management system was distributed.

David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who now leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, notes the irony of those who raise alarms about voting equipment being involved in allegations of breaches of the same systems.

“The people who have been attacking the integrity of elections are destroying the actual integrity of elections,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s voting coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/voting

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden called on Americans to combat racism and extremism during a summit at the White House Thursday focused on combating hate-fueled violence.

“White supremacists will not have the last word,” Biden said.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Andrea Shalal)

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By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New Hampshire’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Don Bolduc, said on Thursday that he believed the 2020 presidential election was legitimate, a reversal of his previously false claims that Democrat Joe Biden had won unfairly.

Bolduc, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general, said during a hard-fought Republican primary that he believed Republican Donald Trump’s false claims that he had won the election, despite no credible evidence of widespread fraud.

But one day after narrowly winning the primary, Bolduc said he had revised his opinion.

“I have come to the conclusion, and I want to be definitive on this, the election was not stolen,” Bolduc said in an interview on Fox News.

“Elections have consequences. And unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he added.

Bolduc is vying to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan in the Nov. 8 midterm election, in which control of Congress is at stake.

Independent analysts say his hard-right views could make it difficult to win over independent-minded voters in the politically competitive state of New Hampshire.

Aside from his false claims about the 2020 election, Bolduc has questioned whether the FBI should be abolished following its August search of Trump’s Florida estate, where agents seized a cache of classified documents.

New Hampshire is one of seven key battlegrounds along with Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada that analysts believe will determine control of the 100-seat Senate. The Senate is currently divided 50-50, with Democrats holding a majority thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Senate votes on legislation protecting gay marriage on Thursday was put off until after the Nov. 8 congressional elections, as negotiators failed to win enough Republican support to ensure passage.

The delay dashed the hopes of advocates who had sought prompt action on a bill already passed by the House of Representatives that would ensure protection for same-sex and interracial marriages.

The move came after weeks of closed-door talks between a small group of Democratic and Republican senators who looked at ways to amend the House bill in order to attract at least 10 Republican supporters who would join 48 Democrats and two independents.

The U.S. Census Bureau in 2019 estimated that there were 543,000 same-sex married couple households and 469,000 households with same-sex unmarried partners living together.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is “extremely disappointed” that there were not at least 10 out of 50 Republicans willing to come forward to support the gay rights legislation, spokesman Justin Goodman said in a statement.

Goodman added that Schumer nonetheless is “100% committed” to holding a vote this year. Schumer had hoped to set up a first procedural vote on the legislation on Monday.

Senators leading the negotiations issued a statement saying that they needed additional time to work on the bill. “We are confident that when our legislation comes to the Senate floor for a vote, we will have the bipartisan support to pass the bill,” said Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin and Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans Susan Collins, Rob Portman and Thom Tillis.

Earlier, Baldwin told reporters that a bill will be put to a vote following the elections.

Joni Madison, the interim president of LGBT civil rights organization Human Rights Council, called for the bill to be brought to the floor for a vote “at the earliest possible moment,” calling the delay disappointing.

“Marriage equality – for both LGBTQ+ and interracial couples – is not and should not be a partisan issue, and to treat it as such is an insult to the millions of families who are impacted,” Madison said in a statement.

The thinking behind the delay is that following the midterm elections Republican senators will feel freer to back the legislation at a time when any voter backlash would be two years away with the next elections.

“If they think that improves their chances of passage, that’s their prerogative,” Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters, adding that he would vote against a bill codifying same-sex marriage into law.

The Senate’s failure to win sufficient Republican support for a bill came after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in mid-July passed such a measure with the backing of 47 Republicans.

Schumer has been careful to give negotiators — and wavering Republicans — the space they needed to put together a bill that would succeed, rather than just force senators to go on record for or against but result in a failed vote.

Over the past several days, the small group of senators and their staffs worked on an amendment designed to protect the “religious liberty” concerns of some Republicans.

But some supporters of the bill said the real snag was that there just were not enough Republicans willing to back any such bill, especially six weeks before the elections.

“The Republicans need to stand up and explain why they don’t want to vote for equality among all human beings and the right to marry the person you love,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters upon hearing about the delay.

Republican Senator Rob Portman told reporters, “We were very, very close” to moving toward passage of a bill.

The push to enact a federal law recognizing gay marriage arose after conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in June wrote that the same logic that led the court to overturn the national right to abortion could also lead it to reconsider its earlier decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Early on, Senator Mitt Romney was one of several Republicans saying there was no need to tackle such legislation after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples.

The court in 2015, however, was markedly less conservative than the current high court.

Supporters of the legislation fear that the delay – the second in two months – could see support further erode, especially if Republicans win in November elections.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Makini Brice and Moira Warburton; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Jacqueline Thomsen

(Reuters) – Former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Bossert Clark’s lawyers are pushing the District of Columbia Bar Association to make public filings in his ethics case that referenced a federal raid of his home.

Clark is under scrutiny for attempts to be appointed attorney general under then-President Donald Trump to help promote false election fraud claims, and his electronic devices were seized in the June raid.

A report from a D.C. Bar committee posted Wednesday stated that Clark disclosed in earlier filings that a June raid of his home was tied to a Justice Department investigation on potential violations of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of justice statutes.

Clark’s lawyers, according to a filing they sent to Reuters on Thursday, asked a D.C. Bar board on Wednesday to make the documents quoted in the report public.

“The incomplete public record is creating a misleading impression in the reporters who are following this case, and likely in any reporting they may publish, and in turn in the public as to the arguments of the parties and proceedings in this case,” Clark’s attorneys wrote.

A representative for the D.C. Bar board did not immediately return a request for comment.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by David Gregorio)

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(Reuters) – Major U.S. railroads and unions secured a tentative deal after 20 hours of intense talks brokered by the Biden administration to avert a rail shutdown that could have hit food and fuel supplies nationwide.

Shares of Union Pacific Corp and CSX Corp were up about 3% before the bell.

Following are some reactions to the tentative deal:

U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI

“The report of a tentative agreement between railroads represented by labor unions and the National Carriers’ Conference Committee is good news for our nation’s economy, our security and the well-being of the American people. I commend President Biden for his personal involvement and insistence on resolution and especially Labor Secretary Marty Walsh for leading the negotiations.”

NATIONAL RETAIL FEDERATION

“We are relieved and cautiously optimistic that this devastating nationwide rail strike has been averted. We appreciate the Biden administration’s intervention on behalf of the businesses and consumers who would have been impacted at a time when high inflation and economic uncertainty are challenging consumer budgets and putting business resiliency at risk.”

“We hope railway workers will accept the new terms of the proposed contract and the railway system can continue to operate on behalf of the millions of hardworking Americans who rely on it for their jobs and the economic security of our country.”

MIKE STEENHOEK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOY TRANSPORTATION COALITION

“We are extremely pleased both sides were able to arrive at an agreement. Our nation’s railroads are integral to the success of the American farmer. Without cost-effective, reliable rail service, so much of what farmers produce will never connect with our domestic and international customers.”

“American farmers are responding to the challenges of global food insecurity. We need our nation’s railroads to be a reliable partner in this effort. A strike, lockout, or significant slowdown would have imposed significant harm on agriculture – particularly on the eve of harvest.”

IPEK OZKARDESKAYA, SENIOR ANALYST AT SWISSQUOTE BANK

“Avoiding a strike is good news for equities, there won’t be additional pressure on supply chains, and inflation expectations.”

“It’s great news, it’s one less issue to worry about for investors. Obviously there is no good time for a strike. But this week is really a particularly bad week!”

(Compiled by Kannaki Deka, Priyamvada C and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta)

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By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Major U.S. railroads and unions secured a tentative deal after 20 hours of intense talks brokered by the Biden administration to avert a rail shutdown that could have hit food and fuel supplies across the country and beyond.

If they accept the deal, workers whose pay had been frozen will win double-digit increases and exceptions to employer attendance polices that will allow them to seek certain types of medical care without fear of being punished, union leaders said. The agreement includes an immediate 14.1% wage rise, the railroads said.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the deal early on Thursday morning, calling it “a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America’s families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.”

Unions will now vote on the agreement. Even if those votes fail, a rail shutdown that could have happened as soon as midnight Friday has been averted for several weeks due to the standard language included in such a deal, a person familiar with the negotiations said.

A rail shutdown could have frozen almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoked inflation, cost the U.S. economy as much as $2 billion per day and unleashed a cascade of transport woes affecting the U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and retail sectors.

The impact would have stretched beyond U.S. borders because trains link the United States to Canada and Mexico and provide vital connections to massive ships that ferry goods from around the globe.

Biden administration officials hosted labor contract talks into the night on Wednesday aiming to secure an agreement between unions which represent 115,000 workers and railroads including Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern.

Shares of Union Pacific and CSX were up between 1.8% and 3% in pre-market trading. U.S. natural gas futures dropped about 6% after soaring 10% in the prior session. Investors expect a rail strike would threaten coal supplies to power plants and boost demand for gas.

Negotiations between the companies and a dozen unions had stretched for more than two years, leading Biden to appoint an emergency board to help break the impasse.

Biden himself called Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and negotiators around 9 p.m. on Wednesday and told them “once again to recognize the harm” that the failure to reach a deal would have on families, farmers and businesses, according to a person aware of the negotiations.

Talks at the Washington, D.C., Labor Department headquarters went on for 20 hours straight until early Thursday morning. Officials are expected to host a news briefing later Thursday.

Failing to reach a deal before the deadline of one minute after midnight on Friday would have cleared the way for workers to legally strike.

Amtrak, which runs passenger rail, said it was working to restore services after cancelling long-distance trains on Thursday in anticipation of a strike.

National Retail Federation CEO Matthew Shay thanked the Biden administration for intervening, adding in a statement that his group is “relieved and cautiously optimistic.”

Freight railroads had halted transportation of hazardous goods, including chlorine for water purification and ammonia for fertilizer, as well as shipments of refrigerated food and other goods that use rail and at least one other mode of transport. Their goal was to prevent cargo from being stranded in unsafe locations.

JOB CUTS

The railroad industry slashed almost 30% of its workforce over the last six years, cutting pay and other costs as they increased profits, stock buybacks and dividends for investors. Profits at billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF, rose 9.2% in the most recent quarter to $1.7 billion.

The number of U.S. railway workers has dropped from over 600,000 in 1970 to about 150,000 in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, due technology and cost-cutting. The result is that many industry workers are on call at all hours, waiting to respond at short notice to work for days at a time.

Biden, who has called himself the most union-friendly president in history and attacked companies for raking in “excessive” profits, praised a deal he said would give workers “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs.”

The president is not yet out of the woods when it comes to supply-chain labor issues. Some 22,000 union workers at 29 West Coast ports that handle almost 40% of U.S. imports are also in high-stakes labor contract negotiations.

Administration officials want the disputes resolved ahead of November’s midterm elections for control of Congress.

Senior congressional leaders had threatened to pass legislation imposing a resolution on the railroads and unions if the negotiations were not successful.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the tentative agreement and said that Congress was “ready to act” but that “thankfully this action may not be necessary.”

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, David Shepardson and Susan Heavey in Washington, Jahnavi Nidumolu, Aishwarya Nair, Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Editing by Heather Timmons and Catherine Evans)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Major U.S. railroads and unions secured a tentative deal after 20 hours of intense talks brokered by the Biden administration to avert a rail shutdown that could have hit food and fuel supplies nationwide.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the deal in a statement early Thursday morning, calling it “a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America’s families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.”

The tentative deal now goes to the unions to be voted on, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Even if those votes fail, a rail shutdown that could have happened as soon as midnight Friday has been averted for several weeks due to the standard language included in such a deal, this person said.

A rail shutdown could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke inflation, cost the U.S. economy as much as $2 billion per day and unleash a cascade of transport woes affecting the U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and retail sectors.

Biden administration officials hosted labor contract talks into the night on Wednesday aiming to secure an agreement between unions which represent 115,000 workers and railroads including Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern.

Shares of U.S. railroad operators rose between 2.4% and 2.9% in pre-market trade.

Negotiations between the companies and a dozen unions had stretched for more than two years, leading Biden to appoint an emergency board to help break the impasse.

Biden himself called U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and negotiators around 9 p.m. on Wednesday to advance talks, according to a person aware of the negotiations, which lasted 20 hours.

Failing to reach a deal before the deadline of one minute after midnight on Friday would have cleared the way for workers to legally strike.

The railroad companies involved have cut jobs and trimmed pay and other costs in recent years as they increased profits, stock buybacks and dividends for investors. Profits at billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF, rose 9.2% in the most recent quarter to $1.7 billion.

The number of U.S. railway workers has dropped from over 600,000 in 1970 to about 150,000 in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, due both to technology and cost-cutting.

Biden, who has called himself the most union-friendly president in history and pilloried companies for raking in “excessive” profits, praised a deal that he said would give workers “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs.”

Administration officials have been eager to resolve the dispute that threatened fresh goods shortages and added consumer price inflation ahead of November’s midterm elections for control of Congress.

Senior congressional leaders had threatened to pass legislation imposing a resolution on the railroads and unions if the negotiations were not successful.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the tentative agreement and said that Congress was “ready to act” but that “thankfully this action may not be necessary.”

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Jahnavi Nidumolu, Aishwarya Nair and Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Editing by Jason Neely, Devika Syamnath, Shounak Dasgupta, Heather Timmons and Catherine Evans)

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