Politics

By Joseph Ax and Jason Lange

(Reuters) – Moderate members of the U.S. House of Representatives are leaving office at twice the rate of their more partisan peers this year, a Reuters analysis found, likely deepening Washington gridlock during President Joe Biden’s next two years in office.

The number of incumbent House members retiring or who lost a party nomination contest is at a three-decade high after a once-a-decade redistricting process that eliminated more than a dozen of the country’s dwindling number of competitive districts.

    Now all 50 states have finished their nominating contests, 13 of Congress’s 50 most centrist members – about one in four – did not seek reelection or lost their primary, ensuring they will leave office at year’s end. By comparison, only one-eighth of other incumbents will not appear on the Nov. 8 ballot, with the majority running in politically safe districts.

The candidates who take their place won’t be known until after the midterm election, when Republicans are favored to win a majority in the House, but in many cases their potential successors show signs of being further from the middle.

One driving factor is gerrymandering, the practice by which lawmakers in states controlled by a single party manipulate redistricting to create politically safe House districts. Another is former President Donald Trump, who worked to push from office Republicans who voted to impeach him following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“The lack of competitive seats has helped accentuate that trend,” said Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump and lost his primary to a far-right challenger. “It’s really easy from the safety of a deep red or a deep blue seat to cast stones.”

‘MORE GRIDLOCKED’

The Reuters analysis employed a measure developed by political scientists known as DW-Nominate, which scores every representative’s voting record to determine the most moderate members.

The share of moderates heading for the door this year is unusually high. For elections held between 2012 and 2020, only about one in eight moderate incumbents opted not to seek reelection or lost their primaries.

The result could accelerate a decades-long trend that has seen the House grow increasingly polarized, lengthening the odds of bipartisan efforts to address thorny challenges such as shoring up Social Security and Medicare, the welfare programs for seniors that face severe fiscal challenges.

“Politics is going to be more gridlocked,” said Doug Spencer, an expert on elections and redistricting at the University of Colorado.

The narrowly Democratic-controlled Congress over the past two years passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and its first gun control bill in decades in bipartisan votes. But Democrats also passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill in March 2021 and $430 billion climate and drug pricing bill using a parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation that let them bypass Republican objections in the Senate.

Whichever party is in control, the Congress that convenes on Jan. 3 will need to make prompt decisions on fiscal matters, including raising the U.S. government’s borrowing authority beyond its current $31.4 trillion limit, which it is expected to reach early next year.

Without a debt limit increase, Washington would face a potential default that would shake the global economy.

GERRYMANDERING

In interviews, several moderates leaving office said their decisions were motivated by factors including gerrymandering, which has made it less politically valuable to appeal to voters from both major parties.

More than four-fifths of the House’s 435 districts as they now stand were won by Biden or Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2020, making it harder for a lawmaker from the other party to mount a viable campaign. That drove some members of Congress, such as Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, to choose not to seek reelection at all.

Tom Suozzi, a moderate Democrat from New York who opted to run for governor rather than seek re-election, said gerrymandering was producing more ideologically radical caucuses.

“The only way to lose the safe seat is to lose the primary,” he said. “Republicans pander to the far right, Democrats pander to the far left. And that’s why there’s very little moderation or compromise available.”

Suozzi has been a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of moderate lawmakers. The progressive Democrat running in the race to replace him, Robert Zimmerman, has criticized the group for being too close to Republicans.

Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat and a leading centrist, is retiring from the House at age 43, saying she wants to spend more time with her young children. She said she believes both parties have become less tolerant of dissent.

“The reason, I think, you see more attrition among moderate members is they take incoming from both sides,” she said, adding that she faced attacks from both liberal and conservative groups in previous campaigns.

Republican control of the House would create divided government, with Biden’s Democrats having a harder time advancing legislation.

The push by Trump-backed candidates echoes the 2010 midterms, when small-government Tea Party activists drove massive Republican gains in Congress while moving the party further to the right.

With Democrat Barack Obama in the White House, the two parties courted fiscal disaster when they nearly allowed the federal government to default on its debt payments, prompting the first-ever downgrade to U.S. sovereign debt and shaking financial markets.

Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat and a leading centrist who is retiring this year, said the Jan. 6 attack only deepened distrust between the parties, with many Democrats unwilling to work with Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s victory based on Trump’s false claims of fraud.

“We’ve got to get something done, and that requires us to work with people who you don’t always agree with their votes,” she said.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and by Jason Lange and Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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By Jason Lange and Tim Reid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The unexpected rise in inflation reported on Tuesday was an unwelcome blow for President Joe Biden’s Democrats, but a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Democratic voters just as enthusiastic as their Republican counterparts, pointing to a potentially close contest in November’s elections.

Republicans remain favored to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives – with the Senate on a knife-edge – amid widespread dissatisfaction with Biden’s presidency and months of sharp price increases that the poll showed remain the top concern for Republican and Democratic voters alike.

Labor Department data showed consumer prices rose a tenth of a point in August, confounding analysts’ expectations for a decrease. The rise was fueled by higher prices for food, rent and healthcare.

The results of a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, however, show Democrats appear just as eager to vote as Republicans, running counter to expectations that a weak economy would depress enthusiasm in the president’s party, said Daron Shaw, an expert on polling and elections at the University of Texas at Austin.

Some 63% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans say they are completely certain they will vote in November, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 7-12. In a Jan 31-Feb 7 poll, 55% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans said they were certain. The similar levels of certainty in the latest poll suggest neither side may have an edge in voter turnout.

“Basically this points to a really close race,” Shaw said.

The poll, which gathered responses from 4,411 U.S. adults, had a credibility interval of between 2 and 5 percentage points, meaning that the enthusiasm gap between the two parties is too small to tell who has the edge.

Democrats will be defending an 11-seat advantage in the House, while the 100-member Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties.

Of respondents in the new poll, 37% said they planned to vote for a Democrat in their congressional district, compared to 34% for Republicans. Fifteen percent were undecided.

Political experts still see Republicans as having the better odds of controlling the House next year, in part because decades of elections have shown that the party in the White House typically loses seats during midterm elections.

`A DRAMATIC CONTRAST`

Democrats are struggling against major headwinds this year – Biden’s poor popularity and the Ukraine war, which has helped to push inflation to 40-year highs. Republicans have seized on inflation to hammer Democrats on the campaign trail and in television ads, blaming it on higher federal spending by Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“No issue defines the terms of this election as clearly as high prices for energy, groceries and other staple goods,” said Republican strategist John Ashbrook.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said inflation was America’s biggest problem, with 20% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans selecting it from a list of issues in the poll. Respondents picked Republicans over Democrats – 37% to 26% – as the party with a better plan to fight inflation.

Most respondents said the root cause of inflation was related to economic disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic or Ukraine war, a view shared by many economists, while only a third said federal government spending was the driver.

One factor behind Democratic enthusiasm appears to be outrage over a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that ended the right to an abortion. Another is angst over Donald Trump’s influence over U.S. politics, including his endorsement of Republican candidates who deny that Biden won the 2020 election.

One in five Democrats in the poll said America’s biggest problem was political extremism or changes to abortion laws.

Democrats believe the advantage Republicans enjoyed for most of the year because of inflation has been blunted by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting abortion rights, Trump’s continued false claims about the 2020 election and his deepening legal problems, and recent legislative wins for Biden on drug costs and climate change.

Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist, also pointed to Biden’s recent speech slamming Trump and his followers as extremists.

“It’s such a dramatic contrast,” Finney said. “That is mobilizing voters.”

(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington and Tim Reid in Los Angeles, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

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By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) -West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday passed a sweeping abortion ban that prohibits the procedure even in the earliest days of pregnancy with limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the health of the mother is at risk.

The bill, which now goes to Governor Jim Justice for his signature, is the second abortion ban passed by a state after the deeply conservative U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old Roe v Wade decision that established a constitutional right to the procedure.

The measure, which Justice is expected to sign, comes as differences are beginning to emerge among Republicans over how strict to make abortion bans ahead of November elections that will decide control of Congress.

The largely conservative party has campaigned for years to limit abortion access. A resounding defeat of a ballot initiative that would have opened the door to a ban in deeply conservative Kansas has led some Republicans to back away from the issue to avoid alienating women voters.

At the national level, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday proposed restricting abortions throughout the country after 15 weeks gestation. Graham, a Republican, said such a move would help define his party on the issue in advance of November’s congressional elections.

In West Virginia, Republican lawmakers who dominate the legislature wrangled for weeks over how rigid to make the bill, ultimately shrinking the length of time adult rape victims would have to seek care but removing criminal penalties for doctors.

The measure passed on Tuesday outlaws abortion after an embryo has been implanted in a woman’s uterus, usually within a few days of conception. Minors who are rape or incest victims would have up to 14 weeks to terminate pregnancies, while adults who are raped will have only eight weeks to obtain an abortion.

Abortions that are allowed must be performed by physicians or osteopaths with hospital-admitting privileges. Providers could lose their licenses if procedures they offer are deemed to be illegal.

Anyone who performs an abortion who is not a doctor or osteopath with hospital-admitting privileges would be subject to prison time.

“This bill insults West Virginia doctors, questioning their expertise and putting their patients’ lives at risk while subjecting them to appalling government surveillance,” said Alisa Clements, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.

“No matter how many narrow exceptions are written into this dangerous bill, it will cause chaos in the healthcare system and result in people being denied life-saving care, including survivors of sexual assault,” she said.

State Senator Eric Tarr, a Republican, said he thought the bill should have outlawed abortion at conception and not made exceptions for victims of rape or incest, which he views as punishing a baby for the sins of its father.

Still, he said the bill would help the legislature achieve the goal of shutting down the state’s only abortion clinic.

(Reporting by Sharon BernsteinEditing by Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Sitting on top of more than $115 million across several political committees, Donald Trump has positioned himself as a uniquely indomitable force in the GOP who would almost certainly have the resources to swamp his rivals if he launched another presidential campaign.

But that massive pile of money is also emerging as a potential vulnerability. His chief fundraising vehicle, Save America PAC, is under new legal scrutiny after the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas that sought information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.

The scope of the probe is unclear. Grand jury subpoenas and search warrants issued by the Justice Department in recent days were related to numerous topics, including Trump’s PAC, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The subpoenas seek records as well as testimony and ask at least some of the recipients about their knowledge of efforts to engage in election fraud, according to one of the people.

The subpoenas also ask for records of communication with Trump-allied lawyers who supported efforts to overturn the election results and plotted to line up fake electors in battleground states. A particular area of focus appears to be on the “Save America Rally” that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the person said.

The investigation is one of several criminal probes Trump currently faces, including scrutiny of how documents with classified markings wound up at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Regardless of Save America’s ultimate role in the investigations, the flurry of developments has drawn attention to the PAC’s management, how it has raised money and where those funds have been directed.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the subpoenas, saying a “weaponized and politicized Justice Department” was “casting a blind net to intimidate and silence Republicans who are fighting for his America First agenda.” Representatives for the Justice Department have declined to comment.

While Trump has more than $115 million held across various committees, the vast majority of it is stored at Save America. The PAC ended July with more than $99 million cash-on-hand, according to fundraising records — more than the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees combined.

Trump has continued to shovel up small-dollar donations in the months since, frustrating other Republicans who have been struggling to raise money ahead of the November midterm elections.

Save America is set up as a “leadership PAC” designed to allow political figures to fundraise for other campaigns. But the groups are often used by would-be candidates to fund political travel, polling and staff as they “test the waters” ahead of potential presidential runs. The accounts can also be used to contribute money to other candidates and party organizations, helping would-be candidates build political capital.

Much of the money Trump has amassed was raised in the days and weeks after the 2020 election. That’s when Trump supporters were bombarded with a nonstop stream of emails and texts, many containing all-caps lettering and blatant lies about a stolen 2020 election, soliciting cash for an “election defense fund.”

But no such fund ever existed. Instead, Trump has dedicated the money to other uses. He’s financed dozens of rallies, paid staff and used the money to travel as he’s teased an expected 2024 presidential run.

Other expenses have been more unusual. There was the $1 million donated last year to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit that employs Cleta Mitchell and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, both of whom encouraged Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

There was the $650,000 “charitable contribution” in July to the Smithsonian Institution to help fund portraits of Trump and the former first lady that will one day hang in the National Portrait Gallery, according to the Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas.

Much of the money has also funded a different sort of defense fund — one that has paid the legal expenses of Trump confidants and aides who have been called to testify before the Jan. 6 committee.

Overall, Trump’s sprawling political operation has spent at least $8 million on “legal consulting” and “legal expenses” to at least 40 law firms since the insurrection, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

It’s unclear how much of that money went to legal fees for staffers after a congressional committee started investigating the origins of the attack. But at least $1.1 million has been paid to Elections LLC, a firm started by former Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino, according to campaign finance and business records. An additional $1 million was paid to a legal trust housed at the same address as Passantino’s firm. Passantino did not respond to a request for comment Monday night. Payments have also been made to firms that specialize in environmental regulation and real estate matters.

As of July, only about $750,000 had been doled out to candidates for Congress, with an additional $150,000 given to candidates for state office, records show. Trump is expected to ramp up his political spending now that general-election season has entered full swing, though it remains unclear exactly how much the notoriously thrifty former president will ultimately agree to spend.

Trump has long played coy about his 2024 plans, saying a formal announcement would trigger campaign finance rules that would, in part, force him to create a new campaign committee that would be bound by strict fundraising limits.

In the meantime, Trump aides have been discussing the prospect of creating a new super PAC or repurposing one that already exists as gets he closer to an expected announcement. While Trump could not use Save America to fund campaign activity after launching a run, aides have discussed the possibility of moving at least some of that money into a super PAC, according to people familiar with the talks.

Campaign finance experts are mixed on the legality of such a move. Some, like Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in campaign finance, said he didn’t see a problem.

“There may be some hoops he has to jump through,” he said. But “I don’t see a problem with it going from one PAC to another … I don’t see what would block it.”

Others disagree.

“It is illegal for a candidate to transfer a significant amount of money from a leadership PAC to a super PAC. You certainly can’t do $100 million,” said Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based good governance group focused on money and politics.

And whether or not Trump would face any consequences is a different matter.

For years, the FEC, which polices campaign finance laws, has been gridlocked. The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and a majority vote is needed to take any enforcement action against a candidate.

Indeed, legal experts say Trump has repeatedly flouted campaign finance law since launching his 2016 White House run, with no consequence.

More than 50 separate complaints alleging Trump broke campaign finance laws have been filed against him since his 2016 campaign. In roughly half of those instances, FEC lawyers have concluded that there was reason to believe that he may have broken the law. But the commission, which now includes three Trump-appointed Republicans, has repeatedly deadlocked.

The list of dismissed complaints against Trump is extensive. In 2021, Republicans on the commission rejected the claim, supported by the FEC’s staff attorneys, that a Trump orchestrated hush-money payment by his former lawyer to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels amounted to an unreported in-kind contribution. In May, the commission similarly deadlocked over whether his campaign broke the law by hiding how it was spending cash during the 2020 campaign.

And over the summer, the commission rejected complaints stemming from Trump’s threat to withhold $391 million in aid for the Ukraine unless the Ukrainian officials opened an investigation into the relationship President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had with a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma, which the FEC’s attorney’s determined was a potential violation of campaign finance law.

“There is no legal basis whatsoever for believing that Congress intended the FEC to police official acts of the government that may be intended to assist an officeholder’s reelection,” the commission’s three Republicans said in a written statement late last month.

That means any enforcement action would likely have to come from the Justice Department.

“He has nothing to fear from the Federal Election Commission until either its structure is changed or there is turnover among the FEC Commissioners,” said Brett G. Kappel, a longtime campaign finance attorney who works at the Washington-based firm Harmon Curran and has represented both Republicans and Democrats. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to fear from the Justice Department, which is already apparently investigating Save America. From what I can see, there are multiple wire fraud allegations that could be the subject of a Justice Department investigation.”

In the meantime, Trump and Save America continue to rake in contributions from grassroots supporters, blasting out fundraising solicitations with aggressive demands like “this needs to be taken care of NOW” and threatening donors that their “Voter Verification” canvass surveys are “OUT OF DATE,” even as some of the Republican Senate contenders Trump endorsed and helped drag across the finish line in primaries are struggling to raise cash.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has urged those candidates to ask Trump for money, which the former president has so far proven reluctant to provide. That has left the candidates, some of whom presented themselves as McConnell antagonists during their primaries, to grovel to McConnell and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC he controls and has $100 million in reserve.

It also strengthens McConnell’s hand in his long-simmering feud with Trump, who has urged GOP senators to oust the Kentucky Republican. Some close to Trump acknowledge the candidates could use the money, but said he doesn’t see it as his responsibility to fill the void.

___

Colvin reported from New York.

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OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — The crowd hung on his every word, cheering him on and booing his opponents. At one point, emotions ran high enough that someone in the crowd bellowed “Lock him up!”

This was no Donald Trump rally featuring the former president vowing to use prison to settle political scores. This cry came as President Joe Biden addressed top Democratic leaders at a riverside resort outside Washington, warning about “Trumpers” attempting to destroy U.S. democracy.

And, rather than urge bipartisan civility, Biden didn’t miss a beat.

“We have to win this off-year election,” the president said, “for more reasons than just being able to move our agenda forward.”

The boisterous mood of the Democratic National Committee’s recent summer gathering at National Harbor, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, follows a new, sharper tone from Biden as he warns that the GOP’s Trump wing is a threat to core American values. The atmosphere signaled an emboldened party less than two months from Election Day, sensing that a year of political liabilities ranging from the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to rising inflation is finally easing.

The Supreme Court’s decision invalidating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade may prove to be a turning point that energizes Democratic voters in November, the party argues. Since then, Republican Kansas rejected a statewide abortion ban, and Democrats notched notable victories in special House elections in New York and Alaska.

“There’s a real sense that Republicans kicked the bee hive,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which wants to flip a Senate seat held by Republican Ron Johnson while retaining the governorship.

But as the party navigates an unexpected sense of momentum, it risks tapping into the same divisiveness Trump and his supporters relish — and that Democrats have said is undermining democratic norms. Democrats, however, insist that they must be clear about the stakes of the campaign.

“Republicans use fear as a tactic,” said Democratic Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly. “It seems like, a lot of times, that we might have to do a little bit of that, too.”

Biden, who rarely referred to his predecessor during the opening phase of his presidency, is increasingly vocal about the need to confront Trump. “This guy never stops and we’ll never stop, either,” he told the DNC.

Vice President Kamala Harris told the conference, “We refuse to let extremist so-called leaders dismantle our democracy.”

“Democrats, we, here, rise to meet this moment,” Harris said.

Making his own rounds at the DNC, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, used sarcasm to slam even more moderate Republicans who have dared break with Trump on key issues like denouncing year’s deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“We’ve got some Republicans who are saying the right things on say, I don’t know, treason? Like, as if pushing back on treason is somehow, you should be honored,” Emhoff told the DNC’s Midwestern conference to hoots of laughter and cheers. “That was in the oath of office that we all took. That’s the job.”

Trump rose to power with a divisive approach to politics. He encouraged violence against protestors at his rallies during the 2016 campaign and branded the media the “enemy of the people.” As president, he said several liberal congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. The final days of his administration were consumed by efforts to remain in office, including Trump’s personal role in sparking the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Republicans who were largely silent then are now blasting Biden and Democrats for picking political fights.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has called the president “the divider-in-chief” and dismissed “the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”

While Democrats are increasingly optimistic about their prospects, there’s still plenty of reason for caution. The party’s grip on Congress is already tenuous and many of the races that could determine control on Capitol Hill may be decided by narrow margins. Democrats have also missed signs of strong GOP turnout in the past several elections — leading to surprise setbacks in places like South Florida.

More fundamentally, the party that wins the presidency almost always loses congressional seats the next cycle, and inflation remains at near-record highs despite some recent indications it might be cooling. Biden’s approval ratings, while improving, remain low.

Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and DNC vice chair, suggested that the key to midterm gains doesn’t have to be confrontational and can just mean trumpeting the accomplishments of Washington under Democratic control.

“Everywhere I go, I see Democrats hanging their head, wringing their hands, wondering, ‘Well, What are we going to do to win?’ You know what you need to do to make sure we win? Tell the story,” Martin said of promoting the party’s achievements. “President Joe Biden has led the way, delivered on almost every single promise.”

But Martin also suggested that simply staying positive may not be enough, adding that Democrats must “be willing to fight for our president” and “fight for our party.”

Wikler, the Wisconsin state Democratic chairman, said his party turned the GOP playbook back on Republicans to boost turnout in local elections throughout the state.

Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin’s harnessing parental frustration over schools that were closed during the pandemic helped key his upset win of the state’s governorship last year. Wikler said Democrats successfully argued in the latest round of local elections that so-called parental activism was actually built on conservative attacks on teacher authority, transgender students and how history is taught — with the ultimate goal of shifting taxpayer funding away from public schools.

“Explaining why the other side is doing what they’re doing can take the sting out of it,” Wikler said.

DNC Chair Jamie Harrison suggested his party has regained some of its political swagger nationally, calling the coming election “Roe-vember” as a way of predicting that support for abortion rights will lift Democrats.

But, as he traveled around the conference meeting with smaller caucus groups, Harrison also reminded them that Democratic leaders in critical swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan helped safeguard the electoral system from Trump’s lies about widespread fraud that did not occur in 2020. He said winning key races in such states this year is the best way to ensure the system holds after 2024’s presidential race results are in.

“If we are not successful in those elections,” Harrison said, “God help us all.”

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the panel’s top Republican on Monday asked Twitter Inc Chief Executive Parag Agrawal to answer questions about a former company executive turned whistleblower who is set to testify.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a famed hacker who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired last year, will appear Tuesday before the committee.

Senate Judiciary chair Dick Durbin and Republican Chuck Grassley on Tuesday asked Agrawal to answer questions by Sept. 26 including on Zatko’s allegations Twitter “turned a blind eye to foreign intelligence infiltration, does not adequately protect user data and has provided misleading or inaccurate information about its security practices to government agencies.”

The senators said they had invited Agrawal to testify on Tuesday, but he had declined.

Twitter declined comment.

Durbin and Grassley outlined some concerns raised by Zatko, including potentially more than half of Twitter full-time employees having privileged access to company production systems. With that capability, several thousand employees can access sensitive user data, according to Zatko.

“… at the same time, Twitter reportedly lacks sufficient capacity to reliably know who has accessed specific systems and data and what they did with it,” the senators wrote in a letter to Agrawal.

“With tens of millions of users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of users worldwide, your company collects and is responsible for vast troves of sensitive data,” they wrote. “If accurate, Mr. Zatko’s allegations demonstrate an unacceptable disregard for data security that threatens national security and the privacy of Twitter’s users.”

Zatko has claimed Twitter had misled regulators about its compliance with a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over improper handling of user data.

Durbin, while speaking to reporters on Monday, said Zatko’s claims were “a matter of grave personal and privacy concern.”

Twitter has said the former executive was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance,” and that his allegations appeared designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Bradley Perrett)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With only three months left in the year, the House Jan. 6 committee is eyeing a close to its work and a final report laying out its findings about the U.S. Capitol insurrection. But the investigation is not over.

The committee has already revealed much of its work at eight hearings over the summer, showing in detail how former President Donald Trump ignored many of his closest advisers and amplified his false claims of election fraud after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Witnesses interviewed by the panel — some of them Trump’s closest allies — recounted in videotaped testimony how the former president declined to act when hundreds of his supporters violently attacked the Capitol as Congress certified Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Lawmakers say there is more to come. The nine-member panel — seven Democrats and two Republicans — interviewed witnesses through all of August, and they are planning at least one hearing this month. Members are expected to meet and discuss some of their next steps on Tuesday.

Because the Jan. 6 panel is a temporary, or “select,” committee, it expires at the end of the current Congress. If Republicans take the majority in November’s elections, as they are favored to do, they are expected to dissolve the committee in January. So the panel is planning to issue a final report by the end of December.

What’s left for the committee in 2022:

HEARINGS

The committee is expected to hold at least one hearing, maybe more, before the end of the month. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman, said the committee “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”

“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said at a July 21 hearing that was held in prime time and watched by 17.7 million people. “We have considerably more to do.”

It’s unclear if the next hearings will provide a general overview of what the panel has learned or if they will be focused on new information and evidence. The committee conducted several interviews at the end of July and into August with Trump’s Cabinet secretaries, some of whom had discussed invoking the constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the insurrection.

WITNESSES

The panel has already interviewed more than 1,000 people, but lawmakers and staff are still pursuing new threads. The committee just recently spoke to several of the Cabinet secretaries, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in July and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in August.

The committee also wants to get to the bottom of missing Secret Service texts from Jan. 5-6, 2021, which could shed further light on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after earlier testimony about his confrontation with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol.

“We anticipate talking to additional members of the president’s Cabinet,” Cheney said at the beginning of August. “We anticipate talking to additional members of his campaign. Certainly, we’re very focused as well on the Secret Service.”

The committee has also pursued an interview with conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who’s married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Lawmakers want to know more about her role in trying to help Trump overturn the election. She contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin as part of that effort.

FINAL REPORT

The committee must shut down within a month after issuing a final report, per its rules. But lawmakers could issue some smaller reports before then, perhaps even before the November elections. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel’s chairman, has said there may be an interim report in the fall.

The release of the final report will likely come close to the end of the year so the panel can maximize its time. While much of the findings will already be known, the report is expected to thread the story together in a definitive way that lays out the committee’s conclusions for history.

TRUMP AND PENCE

Members of the committee are still debating how aggressively to pursue testimony from Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Some have have questioned whether calling Pence — he resisted Trump’s pressure to try and block Biden’s certification on Jan. 6 — is needed since many of his closest aides have already testified. His top lawyer at the White House, Greg Jacob, testified at one of the committee’s hearings in June and characterized much of Pence’s thought process during the time when Trump was pressuring him.

The panel has been in discussions with Pence’s lawyers for months, without any discernible progress. Still, the committee could invite Pence for closed-door testimony or ask him to answer written questions.

The calculation is different for the former president. Members have debated whether they need to call Trump, who is the focus of their probe but also a witness who has railed against the investigation, denied much of the evidence and who has floated the idea of presidential pardons for Jan. 6 rioters. He is also facing scrutiny in several other investigations, including at the Justice Department and over the classified documents he took to his private club.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS

Another bit of unfinished business is the committee’s subpoenas to five House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

In May the panel subpoenaed McCarthy, R-Calif., and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama. The panel has investigated McCarthy’s conversations with Trump the day of the attack and meetings the four other lawmakers had with the White House beforehand as Trump and his aides worked to overturn his election defeat.

The five Republicans, all of whom have repeatedly downplayed the investigation’s legitimacy, have simply ignored the request to testify. But the Jan. 6 committee seems unlikely to meet their defiance with contempt charges, as they have with other witnesses, in the weeks before the November elections. Not only would it be a politically risky move, but it is unclear what eventual recourse the panel would have against its own colleagues.

LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

The committee is expected to weigh in on possible legislative changes to the Electoral Count Act, which governs how a presidential election is certified by Congress.

A bipartisan group of senators released proposed changes over the summer that would clarify the way states submit electors and the vice president tallies the votes. Trump and his allies tried to find loopholes in that law ahead of Jan. 6 as the former president worked to overturn his defeat to Biden and unsuccessfully pressured Pence to go along.

The Jan. 6 panel’s final report is expected to include a larger swath of legislative recommendations.

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A staunchly conservative retired Army general is vying for the chance to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire in a contest many Republicans hoped would be among their best chances to flip a Senate seat this year.

But the prospect of Don Bolduc winning Tuesday’s GOP Senate primary has dampened those ambitions. In a state that President Joe Biden carried by more than 7 percentage points, Bolduc has campaigned on a platform that includes lies that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and conspiracy theories about vaccines.

That underscores the sense of disappointment among some national Republicans that Gov. Chris Sununu, a relatively popular moderate who likely could have posed more of a threat to Hassan, chose instead to run for reelection. The GOP is grappling with the possibility of again nominating a candidate who is popular with the party’s base but struggles to broaden support ahead of the November general election.

Republican primary voters have similarly chosen conservative candidates this year in moderate or Democratic-leaning states including Massachusetts and Maryland, potentially putting competitive races out of the party’s reach.

Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said Bolduc is a type of candidate who would have struggled to succeed in GOP politics before Trump’s rise. He’s never held elected office and had just $75,000 in cash on hand last week. Still, Bolduc has been able to make inroads by positioning himself as an ally of Trump and his election falsehoods.

“That is because the theme of his campaign and messaging is very similar to former President Trump,” Levesque said. “If it mirrors the former president, it’s been effective.”

Federal and state officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

Known for kicking off the primary season during presidential campaigns, New Hampshire is instead marking the conclusion of the nominating process for this year’s midterms. There are also contests on Tuesday in Delaware and Rhode Island.

But the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire is perhaps most revealing about the direction of the GOP. Bolduc is competing in a crowded field that includes Chuck Morse, the more moderate president of the New Hampshire state Senate, who has been endorsed by Sununu. The governor called Morse “the candidate to beat Sen. Hassan this November and the candidate Sen. Hassan is most afraid to face.”

Sununu feels differently about Bolduc, whom he’s called a conspiracy theorist while warning that Bolduc could have a harder time winning the general election.

Bolduc doesn’t seem bothered by Sununu’s criticism. He’s called the governor “a Chinese communist sympathizer.” Bolduc hasn’t been formally endorsed by Trump, who propelled many primary candidates to victory in key races throughout the summer. But the former president has called Bolduc a “strong guy.”

The final primary contests are unfolding at a dramatic moment in the midterm campaign. Republicans have spent much of the year building their election-year message around Biden and his management of the economy, particularly soaring prices. But Democrats are now entering the final stretch with a sense of cautious optimism as approval of Biden steadies and inflation shows signs of easing.

The Supreme Court’s decision overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion may provide Democrats with the energy they need to turn back the defeats that historically accompany a new president’s first midterms.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged the challenge last month, saying his party may be more likely to end Democrats’ narrow control of the House than the Senate. He bemoaned “candidate quality” as a factor that could sway some outcomes in his chamber.

Some Democratic groups, meanwhile, have sponsored primary ads promoting Bolduc, predicting he’ll make an easier November opponent for Hassan. That’s consistent with Democratic-aligned organizations backing pro-Trump candidates in key races around the country — a strategy some have criticized, arguing that it could backfire if those candidates go on to win their general elections.

Republicans in New Hampshire and around the country scoff at the notion that being a Trump loyalist — or not — could be a deciding general election factor, noting that the still unpopular Biden will be a drag on his party regardless.

The New Hampshire Republican Party has tweeted that Hassan “votes with Joe Biden 96.4% of the time.”

Many of the same dynamics swirling around the former president are at work in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District, where pro-Trump candidate Bob Burns is among several Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to face five-term incumbent Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster.

In New Hampshire’s other congressional district, which encompasses Manchester and the southeastern part of the state, several Republicans are vying to challenge Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who could also face a potentially close general election reelection contest — once he learns who his opponent will be.

The GOP field includes former TV broadcaster Gail Huff Brown, wife of Scott Brown, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts and ambassador to New Zealand during the Trump administration. Also running is Matt Mowers, who won the district’s congressional 2020 Republican nomination and was a Trump administration State Department adviser.

But the candidate closest to Trump may be Karoline Leavitt, who worked in his White House’s press office and has also campaigned with Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Her compass always points to Trump,” said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor. He added, in reference to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan, “She, in a very kind of crisp, sharp, confident way, will say the most MAGA thing that can be said in any situation.”

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Weissert reported from Washington.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee is facing a tough challenge from the secretary of state in Tuesday’s Democratic primary as he seeks his first full term in office after taking over when two-term Gov. Gina Raimondo was tapped as U.S. commerce secretary.

McKee is trying to avoid becoming the first sitting governor to lose a primary since 2018, when Gov. Jeff Colyer in Kansas narrowly lost the Republican nomination to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who went on to lose the general election to Democrat Laura Kelly, the state’s current governor. Like McKee, Colyer took over when the sitting governor resigned for another job.

McKee is touting his leadership in navigating the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic after he was sworn in as governor in March 2021. His leading Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, who would be the first Latina governor in New England if elected, says the state needs better leadership on issues like housing, education and climate change.

In the last primaries before the November general election, voters in Rhode Island are choosing nominees for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, U.S. House, the state Legislature and local offices. New Hampshire and Delaware are also holding primaries on Tuesday.

With the retirement of longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin, the state’s 2nd Congressional District is open for the first time in 30 years. Six Democrats are vying for the party’s nomination, while Republicans are eyeing the seat as a possible pickup opportunity in November.

But the top race in Rhode Island on Tuesday is the Democratic gubernatorial primary, whose winner will be favored to win in November in the liberal state.

Besides McKee and Gorbea, three other Democrats are also seeking the nomination: former CVS Health executive Helena Foulkes, who wants to use her business background to lead the state as it recovers from the pandemic; former Rhode Island Secretary of State and progressive candidate Matt Brown; and community activist Dr. Luis Daniel Muñoz.

On the Republican side, businessperson Ashley Kalus is competing against Jonathan Riccitelli, who made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2018 as an independent. Kalus, a political newcomer who moved to Rhode Island last year from Illinois, said she’s ready to “take on whichever insider or career politician emerges from the Democratic primary.”

The Boston Globe reported Friday that Riccitelli had been arrested dozens of times since 2000 under a different name. The Globe said the criminal charges ranged from obstructing police officers to assault and were lodged against someone named Jonathan Tefft, according to court records.

Riccitelli told the newspaper he couldn’t remember how many times he had been arrested and denied that all of the charges were his, but acknowledged his mother was married to someone whose last name was Tefft and people may have called him Jonathan Tefft at some point. The Department of Corrections confirmed Monday that a person named Jonathan Tefft, who goes by Jonathan J. Tefft-Riccitelli, had been in and out of state prison from 2000 to 2011.

In the state’s 2nd Congressional District, the state’s treasurer, Seth Magaziner, is considered the front-runner and has been endorsed by Langevin, who was the first quadriplegic to serve in Congress. Magaziner had been running for governor but switched races after Langevin’s announcement to try to keep the seat in Democratic control.

National Republican leaders aim to flip the seat into their control for the first time since 1991, and they’re hoping a former Cranston mayor, Allan Fung, can do it. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy visited Rhode Island in August to raise money for Fung.

Two Republican rivals dropped out of the primary contest to clear the path for Fung. His campaign spokesperson Steven Paiva said Fung is ready to lead “Rhode Island’s rejection of the wealthy elites’ out-of-touch ideology,” and that Tuesday’s Democratic winner will prove to be a “rubber stamp” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s agenda.

Magaziner faces a crowded Democratic field with Joy Fox, a former top aide to Langevin; former Biden administration official Sarah Morgenthau; Omar Bah, executive director of The Refugee Dream Center in Providence; and former state lawmakers David Segal and Spencer Dickinson.

Magaziner said his campaign is about delivering results on the issues that matter most, such as protecting Social Security and Medicare, defending abortion rights, lowering the cost of health care, and “turning the page on Trumpism.” He said he’s asking residents to get out to vote Tuesday and in November because the stakes are high.

Morgenthau is calling for change since Rhode Island has never elected a Democratic woman to Congress, though voters did elect a Republican woman in 1980. Morgenthau said now more than ever, voters need to elect women who will protect abortion rights.

In the 1st Congressional District, Democratic U.S. Rep. David Cicilline will face Republican Allen Waters in November. Both are unopposed Tuesday. Cicilline is seeking his seventh term.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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STATHAM, Ga. (AP) — Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday that he wants Georgia to provide grants to school districts to help students catch up on what they might have missed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, expand the number of school counselors, encourage teacher aides to become full-fledged teachers and pass a law requiring school lockdown drills.

Kemp unveiled a relatively modest set of K-12 education proposals as part of his second-term reelection effort at an elementary school in Oconee County, the same school where one of his daughters was a teacher last year.

“We have more work to do to address pandemic learning loss, bring more educators and counselors into our schools, and keep our students and staff safe,” Kemp said at Dove Creek Elementary School in Statham, just outside Athens.

Kemp made a $5,000 pay raise for teachers a centerpiece of his agenda when he was running in 2018 and delivered the final chunk of the money this year, but he didn’t propose a pay raise for his second term on Monday.

Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is running against Kemp again after losing narrowly to him in 2018, has proposed boosting average teacher pay over four years to $75,000, and guaranteeing a starting salary of $50,000. The plan would cost $1.65 billion in new spending over four years, Abrams has said.

Kemp has made few promises thus far for what he would do in a second term. His biggest proposal has been a pledge to use $2 billion in surplus state money to provide $1 billion in state income tax rebates and $1 billion in property tax relief. Abrams has proposed a much more ambitious plan, including expanding Medicaid, promoting affordable housing, expanding college financial aid, tightening gun laws and blocking further restrictions on abortion.

Kemp said he would propose to lawmakers that the state should offer $25 million in grants to school districts using state money to provide additional tutoring, non-traditional staff, or boost existing services.

During the 2021-2022 school year, 64% of third graders read at grade level or above, according to results from Georgia’s Milestones standardized tests, while 73% of third graders read at or above grade level during the 2018-2019 school year. Officials attribute the drop to pandemic-related disruptions.

“By working with our local school systems and providing targeted funding to bring these kids back up to grade level, I am confident we can lend a helping hand to the students who need it most,” Kemp said.

However, the $25 million pales in comparison to the $6 billion in federal aid that Georgia’s 181 public school districts have gotten during the pandemic. School districts must spend more than $750 million of that money improving academic performance.

Kemp also said he would recommend giving districts another $25 million to recruit more counselors statewide. Right now, the state funding formula mandates funding for one counselor for every 450 students, but it has never been fully funded. The governor also proposed spending $15 million to give $3,000 to paraprofessionals who already have four-year degrees to become certified as teachers.

“These funds will help get more teachers in the classroom and assist Georgians already passionate about our students achieve career success,” Kemp said.

Kemp said he would seek to enhance school safety by passing a law requiring schools to offer “intruder alert drills” once each August and September, with a requirement to report drills to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. Some fear such drills traumatize students, but Kemp said his proposal would allow parents to opt students out of the drills.

Kemp said he would also propose letting teachers take school safety and anti-gang training, require that school security plans, already legally mandated, be submitted to GEMA, and recommend continuing education for school resource officers.

Georgia provided $69 million in school safety grants in 2019, Kemp’s first year in office, guaranteeing every school $30,000.

Kemp in 2020 backed a reduction in state-required standardized tests. This spring, he signed a package of conservative education bills that regulate the teaching of race and let the state athletic association ban transgender girls from playing high school sports, and that eased parental challenges to books they view as inappropriate.

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

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