Politics

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A judge in Georgia on Monday granted a Republican state lawmaker’s request to disqualify the district attorney from probing the lawmaker directly in an investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office were disqualified from investigating Georgia State Senator Burt Jones’ role as one of the “fake electors” who wrongly claimed Trump won the state of Georgia in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Jones had called on the court to disqualify Willis from her role as legal adviser in the case over Willis’ support for an opponent of Jones in a fundraiser.

Jones is running for lieutenant governor. Willis is a supporter of his Democratic opponent, Charlie Bailey, and was a guest speaker at a fundraising event for Bailey earlier this year.

“The court grants Senator Jones’s motion to disqualify the District Attorney and her office – as to Senator Jones only,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled on Monday.

The judge denied a request by the other electors to avoid their own subpoenaed testimony.

Trump has falsely claimed that rampant voter fraud caused his loss in Georgia, a battleground state where President Joe Biden’s victory helped propel him to the White House.

A special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, is undertaking a criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing. It is one of the most serious cases facing Trump, who was recorded in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call pressuring a top state official to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss to Biden in the state. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

On Thursday, the judge had refused to quash subpoenas for 11 “fake electors” identified as targets in the probe in Georgia. He said at the time that the fundraiser reflected poor judgment on the district attorney’s part, adding he would issue a ruling later.

“It’s a ‘What were you thinking?’ moment,” McBurney had said. “The optics are horrific.”

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans are warming up to Doug Mastriano.

When he crushed a nine-person field to win the GOP nomination for Pennsylvania governor in May, some in the party warned that Mastriano’s far-right views on everything from abortion to the 2020 presidential election would squander an otherwise attainable seat in a critical battleground state. But now, as the general election season intensifies, the GOP machinery is cranking up to back Mastriano’s campaign and attack his Democratic rival, Josh Shapiro.

Mastriano spoke in Aspen, Colorado, last week at an event with donors sponsored by the Republican Governors Association. At the GOP’s “Rally at the Rock” campaign event in northern Pennsylvania earlier this month, the independently elected state treasurer, Stacy Garrity, introduced Mastriano as “our next governor.” County offices and booths are festooned with his campaign signs and he spoke at this month’s closed-door state party meeting. And on Wednesday, a pair of top party officials are hosting a fundraiser for Mastriano.

In one of America’s most politically divided states, the GOP’s embrace of a candidate who opposes abortion rights with no exceptions, spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection risks alienating moderate party members. But some Republicans say they’re duty bound to get behind their party’s nominee.

“When you play team sports, you learn what being part of a team means,” said Andy Reilly, the state GOP’s national committeeman and co-host of Wednesday’s fundraiser. “Our team voted for him in the primary and, no matter how you slice it, his philosophies are much better to run the state than a career politician like Josh Shapiro.”

November’s election has major implications.

Working with a Republican-controlled Legislature, Mastriano could dramatically scale back access to abortion. And he would be able to appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, giving him tremendous power over elections in a state that is often decisive in presidential campaigns.

Perhaps with that in mind, some Republicans have been tentative about vocally supporting Mastriano.

The Republican Governors Association — typically a source of millions of dollars for GOP campaigns — has done next to nothing to publicly praise Mastriano, as it has other Republican nominees.

But that could change as the fall campaign nears. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, the RGA’s co-chairman, told CNN this month that he would not rule out helping Mastriano and suggested that the group would help if Shapiro appears beatable.

“The job of the RGA is to elect Republican governors, and that’s what we’re going to do in this cycle,” Ducey said.

Mastriano and Shapiro are vying for the right to succeed Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who is constitutionally term-limited after entering office in 2015.

Shapiro, the state’s two-time elected attorney general, unified the party behind his candidacy, running an uncontested primary campaign and rolling up strong fundraising numbers. He also has ties to some prominent Republicans in Philadelphia and its heavily populated suburbs.

His campaign recently rolled out a list of onetime Republican elected officials who are endorsing him, while another group of Republicans have started a group called Republicans for Shapiro to sway votes against Mastriano.

Mastriano dismissed them as “has-beens.”

Still, the party’s traditional donor community around the state is — by many accounts — sitting on their wallets at a time when Mastriano is badly lagging Shapiro in fundraising. That includes prominent Philadelphia-area donors and fundraisers who long have financed Republican campaigns but know Shapiro well and likely reject Mastriano’s socially conservative politics.

“That’s going to make it much tougher for Mastriano to break into that southeastern Pennsylvania kind of money, that group of big-time donors and fundraisers,” said David Urban, a Republican strategist who worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Beyond that, Mastriano as the party’s standard-bearer is causing heartburn, and some party officials declined to speak on the record about him.

The unifying theme is a distaste for Mastriano.

No GOP contender for governor in the U.S. did more to subvert the 2020 presidential election than Mastriano — and no one may be better positioned to subvert the next one if he’s elected governor.

He has rubbed elbows with QAnon conspiracy theorists, Trump’s most prominent election-denying allies and people arrested in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. His active account on Gab — a social media site popular with white supremacists and antisemites where he also spent $5,000 for advertising — prompted a condemnation by the national Republican Jewish Coalition.

He has been one of Pennsylvania’s leading spreaders of Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

His plan to overturn the election results — introduced as a resolution in the Legislature — drew a subpoena from the U.S. House committee investigating the insurrection.

Mastriano later organized bus trips to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and, afterward, can be seen in photos walking past breached police lines to where he watched pro-Trump demonstrators clash with police on the Capitol steps. That prompted an FBI interview, though he has not been charged with a crime.

Then there’s Mastriano’s embrace of Christian nationalism, which scholars generally define as championing a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity. Christian nationalism, they say, is often accompanied by a belief that God has destined America, like the biblical Israel, for a special role in history, and that it will receive divine blessing or judgment depending on its obedience.

Mastriano has also condemned the GOP establishment, refuses to speak with most mainstream media organizations and backed a ban on abortion, with no exceptions, that turns off some party officials in Pennsylvania.

That — plus Mastriano’s talk of decertifying voting machines, opposing gay marriage and ridiculing climate change as “fake science” — hasn’t escaped Shapiro, whose campaign is running a TV ad calling Mastriano “extreme, and way too risky for Pennsylvania.”

Once a Mastriano primary victory appeared inevitable, Trump endorsed him, despite party leaders fearing that he couldn’t win over enough moderate voters to beat Shapiro in November.

State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, who once warned that “Democrats will destroy him with swing voters,” had dinner with Mastriano following the primary.

Ward said she told Mastriano that “he has my full support because I want a governor who isn’t going to kowtow to the Biden administration and the Democrats’ anti-fossil fuel policy on energy.”

Mastriano is also getting help from an organization whose political action committees are a conduit for campaign cash from billionaire Jeffrey Yass and spent $13 million fruitlessly backing a primary rival to Mastriano while warning that Mastriano could not win swing voters in a general election.

The organization, the Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, has already commissioned anti-Shapiro billboards and plans to spend millions against Shapiro, its president, Matt Brouillette, said.

Its board has made no decision on whether to endorse Mastriano, he said.

For now, many Republicans are watching Mastriano’s efforts to mend fences with the party, raise money and broaden his appeal to swing voters. He has called up some party officials and donors. Some have given him advice, other say they have yet to.

“I will tell him that he’s got to his message out, and he’s got to raise money to get his message out to counter the false portrayal that Josh Shapiro is putting out,” Reilly said.

Some say they see him focusing more on standard GOP talking points, such as inflation, and moving away from talk of 2020’s election denial and banning abortion.

Charlie Gerow, a conservative activist who lost to Mastriano in the primary, said he will help Mastriano any way he can — and will tell Mastriano to expand his campaign efforts beyond the most conservative voters.

“A lot will depend on his ability to put together a campaign necessary to win in November,” Gerow said. “And I think he recognizes that he’s got to broaden his appeal in order to win in November.”

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

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A conservative-backed initiative to publish voter registration records from across the country online for public consumption can move forward over the objections of New Mexico election regulators, a federal judge has ordered in a preliminary opinion.

Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning issued an order last Friday preventing New Mexico state prosecutors from pursuing allegations of possible election code violations against the creators of VoteRef.com.

The VoteRef.com website provides searchable access to voter registration records by name and street addresses, often indicating when people voted in past elections.

The online records do not say for which candidates the people voted or how they voted on initatives. Party affiliation is listed for voters in some states but not all.

The Voter Reference Foundation that created the website advocates for voting accountability by making voter information more accessible to the public.

Following the ruling, the foundation said it would post New Mexico voter rolls online starting Tuesday.

The decision doesn’t apply to New Mexico voters enrolled in a confidential address program aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and stalking.

New Mexico election regulators contend that the effort violates state restrictions on the purchase and dissemination of voter registration records — and is likely to discourage voter participation because people may opt out if they know that some of their voting information is being made public.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, in March referred the matter the attorney general’s office for possible prosecution of the Voter Reference Foundation, which published New Mexico registration records online at the time after obtaining them through an out-of-state business. State law restricts the use of voter registration information to political campaigning and election- or government-related activities.

The foundation — backed by former GOP Senate candidate Doug Truax of Illinois — took its New Mexico records offline in response and sued the state in federal court, alleging violations of due process and free speech guarantees.

The judge’s order blocks prosecution while the case advances toward trial and said that the Voter Reference Foundation is likely to prevail in its claim as the victim of viewpoint discrimination by election regulators. Browning said New Mexico state law “does not prohibit Voter Reference — or any organization — from posting voter data online.”

The creators of VoteRef.com are “substantially likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Secretary of State’s referral of Voter Reference to the Attorney General for criminal prosecution and her public statements about the referral are an unconstitutional prior restraint on protected speech,” Browning said.

Truax, founder of the Restoration of America organization that funds VoteRef.com, said his group “won’t be intimidated by politicians who, for some reason, don’t want to give the people of their state easy access to election records they pay for.” He is an advocate for limiting voting access largely to in-person voting on Election Day with photo ID requirements and no same-day registration.

VoteRef.com already publishes voter registration information online from at least 28 states and Washington D.C.

Toulouse Oliver spokesman Alex Curtas called the judge’s opinion a “blow to protecting the privacy rights of every New Mexican voter.”

“The fear now is that voters will be less likely to participate in our elections because their voting information — name, residential address, party affiliation, voting history, and year of birth -– will be made easily available online for anyone to obtain and potentially manipulate,” Curtas said.

Some New Mexico neighborhoods this year have been the focus of door-to-door canvassing by volunteers for a group called New Mexico Audit Force that promotes unproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The door knocking — ostensibly to verify individual voter registrations at peoples’ homes — has generated voter intimidation concerns and counterclaims of threats against canvassers.

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A group of Republicans in Congress on Monday proposed legislation to raise the mandatory commercial pilot retirement age to 67 from 65, in a bid to address an airline industry staff shortage.

The proposal, which would require pilots over age 65 to pass a rigorous medical screening every six months, follows complaints of pilot shortages by many regional airlines.

Senator Lindsey Graham said the proposal would help address travel snarls in the United States. Travelers have faced widespread flight delays and cancellations this summer as airlines struggle to cope with rising travel demand with workforces depleted by employee departures during the COVID pandemic.

The Regional Airline Association praised the legislation, saying a pilot shortage has resulted in 500 aircraft “parked and 315 communities losing air service. Raising the mandatory pilot retirement age is part of the solution to a critical issue with rippling effects.”

Airlines for America, an industry group representing major carriers including American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, declined to say if it supports raising the pilot retirement age

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), however, said Monday that it opposed any attempts to increase the retirement age for professional airline pilots.

“There is no reason to change the retirement age and doing so would only increase costs for airlines and introduce unnecessary risks to passengers and crew alike,” ALPA President Joe DePete said Monday.

Speaking in a news conference in South Carolina, Graham said 14,000 pilots would be forced to retire over the next four years. “It’s time for America to adjust its age when it comes to allowing qualified people to be in the cockpit,” he said.

Graham noted that in 2007 the United States raised the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65, and “the sky did not fall.”

Even if the proposal is approved, the union said pilots older than 65 would still not be able to fly in most countries outside the United States because of international rules.

Republican Senators John Thune, Deb Fischer, Chuck Grassley, Cynthia Lummis and Marsha Blackburn are co-sponsors of the proposal, while a group of House Republicans led by Representative Chip Roy proposed parallel legislation.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has not come out in favor of the hike in pilots’ retirement age, and he told Fox News earlier this month that the regulation is in place “for safety reasons. I haven’t seen any piece of information or data that would suggest that the reasoning has changed.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter, Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Marc Short, who was a top staffer to Republican former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ABC News reported on Monday.

Short, who served as Pence’s chief of staff, was captured on video leaving the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Friday afternoon, alongside his attorney, Emmet Flood. Both ABC’s cameras and Reuters cameras captured footage of Short’s exit.

Neither Flood nor Short could be immediately reached for comment.

Short is the most high-profile official known to have appeared before the grand jury, which is also probing the effort by former President Donald Trump’s allies to submit slates of fake electors to overturn the 2020 election. The grand jury convenes on Fridays, according to a copy of a subpoena seen by Reuters that was sent to an elector in Georgia in May of this year.

Short’s appearance is a sign the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation into the attack on the Capitol and the fake elector plot is heating up.

In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco confirmed the Justice Department had received referrals about slates of alternative fake electors that were sent to the National Archives, and said prosecutors were reviewing them.

Copies of the phony electoral slates submitted to the National Archives by pro-Trump Republicans in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were made public in March by the non-profit watchdog group American Oversight, which obtained them through a public records request.

The Office of the Federal Register, part of the National Archives, coordinates some functions of the Electoral College between the states and Congress, including receiving the certificates from the states that identify their electors and receiving the certificates of votes by the electors.

The fake elector plot has featured prominently in multiple hearings of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives committee probing the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Rusty Bowers, the Arizona state House Republican speaker, testified in June that Trump and his close aides, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and adviser John Eastman, urged Bowers to reject the election results.

In recent months, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., has started issuing grand jury subpoenas to electors, including some who signed the bogus certificates.

According to one subpoena seen by Reuters that is focused on the phony slate of electors in Georgia, investigators are seeking copies of documents from October 2020 related to “any effort, plan or attempt to serve as an elector in favor of Donald J. Trump and/or Mike R. Pence.”

They are also seeking copies of communications between would-be electors and any federal government employees, any employees or agents of Trump, as well as communications with a long list of people including Giuliani and Eastman.

Arizona’s Republican party chair, Kelli Ward, and her husband, Michael Ward, who both signed their names on one of the slates of alternate electors for Trump, have also received subpoenas.

    Alexander Kolodin, an attorney for the Wards, told Reuters earlier this month that the DOJ’s investigation is “based on allegations that our clients engaged in core First Amendment-protected activity, namely petitioning Congress for redress of grievances.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported plans to travel to Taiwan have upended Washington’s political divide, with a rift emerging with President Joe Biden over the visit to the self-governing island while prominent Republicans offer encouragement to a political opponent they normally scorn.

Pelosi’s supporters include a conservative Republican senator, at least two former Trump administration officials and the last speaker of the House to make the trip to Taiwan, also a Republican. They are urging Biden to back the trip even as China threatens a forceful response if she goes.

Pelosi, D-Calif., has not confirmed the trip publicly. The White House and the speaker’s office have yet to challenge each other directly, and Biden has not said publicly that Pelosi should not go.

Biden has made blunting China’s rising influence a core part of his foreign policy ethos, but the Biden-China relationship is complicated and he has sought to avoid unnecessarily aggravating tensions. China considers democratic, self-ruling Taiwan its own territory and has raised the prospect of annexing it by force.

The White House is preparing for another call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a conversation the U.S. president said he expects this week despite his COVID-19 diagnosis.

The growing chorus pushing Biden to support Pelosi publicly is also raising the risk that the president could be perceived as insufficiently tough on China.

“Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said Monday. “No more feebleness and self-deterrence. This is very simple: Taiwan is an ally and the speaker of the House of Representatives should meet with the Taiwanese men and women who stare down the threat of Communist China.”

The White House on Monday declined to weigh in directly on Pelosi’s trip — including whether the speaker has Biden’s blessing — considering she has not confirmed it.

“The administration routinely provides members of Congress with information and context for potential travel, including geopolitical and security considerations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, without responding directly to Pelosi’s possible plans. “Members of Congress will make their own decisions.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price also declined to discuss any concerns.

“I will just restate our policy, and that is that we remain committed to maintaining cross-strait peace and stability and our ‘One China’ policy,” said Price, referring to the U.S. position that recognizes Beijing as the government of China but allows for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.

In private, the administration is particularly concerned that a convergence of upcoming events could make a Chinese response to a Pelosi visit even stronger and more animated than it might otherwise be, according to officials. The Chinese Communist Party congress, expected in November, at which Xi intends to further cement his hold on power, is one of those events.

International events in the coming months also could prompt China to react more forcefully than it has in the past if it believes its concerns are being ignored or its president is being disrespected, the officials said. Those include the annual U.N. General Assembly in September and several summits in Asia — the G-20 in Indonesia, the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Thailand — set for October and November. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s perspective.

The U.S. officials said the administration doubts that China would take action against Pelosi herself or try to sabotage or otherwise interfere with a visit, but they said the administration does not rule out the possibility that China could escalate provocative overflights of military aircraft in or near Taiwanese airspace and naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait should the trip take place. The officials also said the administration does not preclude that China might also step up its actions outside the immediate area of Taiwan as a show of strength, thus possibly expanding military operations in contested areas of the South China Sea.

Earlier Monday, Taipei staged air raid drills and the island’s military performed routine defense exercises amid rising tensions over the potential visit, although there was no direct link between those exercises and threats posed by Beijing should Pelosi make the trip.

The Chinese in general don’t fully appreciate or understand the concept of the separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Those distinctions to them are muddied further because the last time a speaker of the House visited Taiwan, Newt Gingrich, he was the speaker of a Republican-controlled House under a Democratic president.

Pelosi would be visiting at a time when the Democrats control the House, Senate and the White House, so there are concerns that the Chinese may see this as an administration move.

Gingrich himself tweeted support for Pelosi on Monday: “What is the Pentagon thinking when it publicly warns against Speaker Pelosi going to Taiwan? If we are so intimidated by the Chinese Communists we can’t even protect an American Speaker of the House why should Beijing believe we can help Taiwan survive. Timidity is dangerous.”

Mark Esper, a defense secretary during the Trump administration, said Monday that he had recently returned from Taipei and that more high-ranking U.S. officials should visit to help shape U.S. policy in the region. He also stressed that China should not have veto power over where U.S. officials travel.

“I think if the speaker wants to go, she should go,” Esper said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Republican who served in the Trump administration, tweeted on Sunday: “Nancy, I’ll go with you. I’m banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan. See you there!”

Biden last week raised the U.S. government concerns about Pelosi’s possible visit, telling reporters after returning from Massachusetts that the military thinks her trip is “not a good idea right now.”

A spokesman for Pelosi again declined to comment on Monday, citing security protocol. Last week Pelosi said it was “important for us to show support for Taiwan” and that she believed Biden meant “maybe the military was afraid our plane would get shot down or something like that by the Chinese.”

Pelosi has positioned herself as a lawmaker unafraid to confront Beijing almost since the moment she was sworn into Congress in 1987. When she visited Tiananmen Square two years after the 1989 massacre, she defiantly unfurled a banner that read “To those who died for democracy in China.” Three years ago, Pelosi voiced support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, again triggering the ire of the Chinese government.

She had planned to visit Taiwan in April, but postponed the trip after testing positive for COVID-19.

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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

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When heads of state visit the U.S., the top item on their itinerary is usually a White House visit. For Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban next month, it will be addressing a conference of conservative activists in Dallas.

Orban’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he’ll be joined by former President Donald Trump and right-wing icons such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is the most dramatic indication yet of how a leader criticized for pushing anti-democratic principles has become a hero to segments of the Republican Party.

Orban has curbed immigration and stymied those who envision a more middle-of-the-road European democracy for their country. He’s done so by seizing control of Hungary’s judiciary and media, leading many international analysts to label him as the face of a new wave of authoritarianism. He also is accused of enabling widespread corruption and nepotism, using state resources to enrich a tight circle of political allies.

The U.S. conservative movement’s embrace of Orban comes as it echoes Trump’s lies that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election, punishes Republicans who tried to hold him accountable for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and embrace new voting restrictions. Many experts on Hungarian politics fear the GOP might aspire to Orban’s tactics.

“The Trumpist side of the Republican Party is coming for the rhetoric, but staying for the autocracy,” said Kim L. Schepple, a sociologist at Princeton University who has studied Orban. “I’m worried the attraction to Orban is only superficially the culture war stuff and more deeply about how to prevent power from ever rotating out of their hands.”

Conservatives dismiss that notion — or even the charge that Orban is an authoritarian.

“What we like about him is that he’s actually standing up for the freedom of his people against the tyranny of the EU,” said Matt Schlapp, head of CPAC, which meets in Dallas starting Aug. 4. “He’s captured the attention of a lot of people, including a lot of people in America who are worried about the decline of the family.”

CPAC’s gatherings are something of a cross between Davos and Woodstock for the conservative movement, a meeting place for activists and luminaries to strategize, inspire and network. Earlier this year, CPAC held its first meeting in Europe, choosing Hungary. While there, Schlapp invited Orban to speak at the Texas gathering. Last year, Fox News star Tucker Carlson broadcast his show from Budapest.

Orban served as prime minister of Hungary between 1998 and 2002, but it’s his record since taking office again in 2010 that has drawn controversy. A self-styled champion of what he describes as “illiberal democracy,” Orban has depicted himself as a defender of European Christendom against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby.”

While Orban’s party has backed technocratic initiatives that have captured the imagination of the U.S. right — Schlapp specifically cited a tax cut Hungarian women receive for every child as a way to counter a declining population — he’s best known for his aggressive stance on hot-button cultural issues.

Orban’s government erected a razor-wire fence along Hungary’s southern border in 2015 in response to an influx of refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Carlson visited the border barrier, praising it as a model for the U.S.

Last year, Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party banned the depiction of homosexuality or sex reassignment in media targeting people under 18, a move critics said was an attack on LGBTQ people. Information on homosexuality also was forbidden in school sex education programs, or in films and advertisements accessible to minors.

Those policies have put him on a collision course with the European Union, which has sought to reign in some of his more antidemocratic tendencies. The bloc has launched numerous legal proceedings against Hungary for breaking EU rules, and is now withholding billions in recovery funds and credit over violations of rule-of-law standards and insufficient anti-corruption safeguards.

Those conflicts started early in Orban’s tenure. In 2011, the Fidesz party used the two-thirds constitutional majority it gained after a landslide election the previous year to unilaterally rewrite Hungary’s constitution. Soon after, it began undermining the country’s institutions and took steps to consolidate power.

Orban’s party implemented judicial reforms through constitutional amendment, enabling it to change the composition of the judiciary. It also passed a new law that created a nine-member council to oversee the media and appointed members to all those slots.

Reporters Without Borders declared Orban a “press freedom predator” last year. It said his Fidesz party had “seized de facto control of 80% of the country’s media through political-economic maneuvers and the purchase of news organizations by friendly oligarchs.”

The Associated Press and other international news organizations were barred from covering the CPAC conference in May, during which Orban called Hungary “the bastion of conservative Christian values in Europe.” He also urged conservatives in the U.S. to defeat “the dominance of progressive liberals in public life.”

The AP requested an interview with Orban when he visits Dallas next month, but was rebuffed. His communications office cited what it said was the prime minister’s “extremely busy” schedule.

Analysts note that Hungary lacks the traditional trappings of autocracies. There are no tanks in the streets and no political dissidents locked up in prisons. Fidesz has continued to win elections — albeit in seats that have been redrawn to make it extremely difficult for their legislators to be defeated. That’s similar to the political gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts in the U.S., a process that currently favors Republicans because they control more of the state legislatures that create those boundaries.

Still, experts say Orban’s near-total control of his country makes him a pioneer of a new approach to anti-democratic rule.

“I’ve never seen an autocrat consolidate authoritarian rule without spilling a drop of blood or locking someone up,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” He and other scholars said Orban qualifies as an authoritarian because of his use of government to control societal institutions.

Peter Kreko, a Budapest-based analyst for the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Orban’s anti-democratic tendencies won’t be a big issue in his quest to forge an alliance with U.S. conservatives. His closeness to Russia and China will be much thornier, Kreko argued.

Kreko said Orban’s government is increasingly isolated diplomatically but has not even bothered to try to build ties to the Biden administration — instead hoping Trump or his allies will shortly return to power.

“This is his big hope for coming back to the international scene, since there are not so many allies that remain for him,” Kreko said of Orban. “It’s a remarkable success of Hungarian soft power that Orban has become so popular among American conservatives when his image has declined so much in Europe.”

Schlapp scoffed at the notion that Hungary was undemocratic, noting that Orban’s party continues to win elections and reminiscing fondly about his trip to Budapest. He recounted how his group got lost in some alleys in the ancient Hungarian capital.

“If we were in Chicago or Los Angeles, I’d have been scared to death,” he said.

But not in Hungary: “It’s orderly, it works, it’s practical, it’s clean.”

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Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary, and Riccardi from Denver.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor supported by Donald Trump, a former two-term lieutenant governor endorsed by dozens of lawmakers and a state representative pushing for decertification of the state’s 2020 presidential election results largely agreed on most issues in their first debate Sunday,

The debate between Trump-backed Tim Michels, Rebecca Kleefisch and state Rep. Tim Ramthun came just over two weeks before the Aug. 9 primary. A Marquette University Law School poll last month showed Michels and Kleefish in a tight race, with the winner advancing to take on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Takeaways from Sunday’s debate:

DECERTIFICATION OF 2020 ELECTION

Even though Michels is supported by Trump, who continues to push for decertification of his loss in Wisconsin, Michels said he would not pursue that as governor. Kleefisch also said she would not try to decertify President Joe Biden’s win, a move that attorneys and Republican legislative leaders have repeatedly said is unconstitutional and can’t be done.

“It’s not a priority,” Michels said of decertification. “My priorities are election integrity, crime reduction and education reform. … I have to focus on beating Tony Evers this fall and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Kleefisch said she thought the 2020 election was “rigged,” but would not try to decertify the results.

Ramthun, who has based his candidacy around decertification, was the only one who said he would try to do it.

“I’m surprised I’m the only one,” he said.

Biden’s win in the state has withstood by two partial recounts, numerous lawsuits, a nonpartisan audit, a review by a conservative law form and an investigation by a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice hired by Republicans. None of the candidates offered any new evidence Sunday of widespread fraud.

ABORTION

All of the candidates support an 1849 Wisconsin law banning abortion that went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That law only provides an exception to protect the life of the mother.

Kleefisch, noting that she is the only woman in the race, said she did not support other exemptions, but also that “Miscarriage care and ectopic pregnancy treatment are not abortion.”

Ramthun said he would emphasize adoption as an option for women with unplanned pregnancies, while Michels said he would bolster counseling and other services to help those women.

INSIDER vs. OUTSIDER

Kleefisch, who served eight years as lieutenant governor under Scott Walker, touted her experience in his administration, mentioning the passage of the Act 10 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers.

She called herself an “effective and conservative reformer,” noting that she won statewide four times. That includes a 2011 recall election.

Michels, who along with his brothers co-owns the state’s largest construction company Michels Corp., touted his outsider experience and said he would “turn Madison upside down.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot of fraud and abuse and inefficiencies in government,” he said. “I’m going to find it, I know how to do it.”

He also took a subtle jab at Kleefisch, without mentioning her by name, in his closing statement.

“If you want to keep politics as usual, vote for the usual politicians,” he said.

AWKWARD MOMENTS

Michels was asked repeatedly if he supports giving incentives to an Obama-era program that prevents the deportation of thousands of people brought into the U.S., but did not give an answer. People in the program are often referred to as “dreamers.” The program is called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the moderators referred to it by its acronym DACA.

“Yes or no for DACA students as well, the incentives?” moderator Charles Benson asked Michels.

“What kind of students?” he replied.

“DACA,” moderator Shannon Sims said.

“DACA? DACA students?” Michels responded. “I want to look at the details on everything before I agree to anything.”

Ramthun was asked about his comment in March indicating that he wanted to punch Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in the nose after Vos kicked Ramthun out of a meeting related to the 2020 election results. The question drew loud applause from the audience and Ramthun said his comments were misinterpreted.

Ramthun said Vos had acted like a bully and he said bullies should be punched in the nose.

“I didn’t say I wanted to punch him in the nose,” Ramthun said. “I said you have to push back and say no.”

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — When former President Donald Trump took the stage before a crowd of more than 5,000 young conservative activists in Tampa this weekend, he received the rock star’s welcome he’s grown accustomed to over the seven years in which he’s reshaped the Republican Party.

One night earlier, it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who had the crowd on its feet as he headlined the day’s program at Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit.

“To be honest, it’s like choosing between your favorite child,” said Leo Milik, 19, who lives in Barrington, Illinois, when asked whom he’d like to see as the party’s next nominee.

Milik, wearing a “Trump was Right” baseball cap, said both Republicans “have their pros, they have their cons.” For now, he said, he’s leaning toward Trump.

That sentiment reflects the soul searching underway inside the GOP as an invisible primary for the 2024 presidential nomination begins to take shape, dominated at least for the moment by Trump and DeSantis.

There’s little doubt that Trump is moving closer to announcing a third presidential campaign. But there’s genuine debate over whether he’s the party’s best candidate to take on President Joe Biden, who is otherwise seen as a vulnerable incumbent heading into the next campaign, weighed down by soaring inflation, sinking popularity and questions about his capacity to manage the U.S. into his 80s.

This summer’s hearings by the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection have only amplified the GOP’s anxiety about Trump. A pair of weekend editorials in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal — publications owned by the often Trump-friendly Rupert Murdoch — underscored the impact, castigating the former president for refusing to call off the mob of his supporters as they stormed the U.S. Capitol to halt the peaceful transfer of power.

“As a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again,” wrote the New York Post.

But inside the Tampa Convention Center, mentions of Jan. 6 elicited cheers as a who’s who of Trump’s “MAGA movement” took the stage in a room that had the feel of a Las Vegas nightclub.

Young attendees dressed in sparkly heels and candy-colored cowboy boots danced under laser lights to a DJ before the program began. Speakers were introduced with WWE-style videos, elaborate pyrotechnics and smoke displays. Throughout the venue, ring lights were placed strategically in front of logoed backdrops for flattering photo ops. Outside, a small group of neo-Nazis briefly waved swastika flags.

The top draw was Trump, who again teased his future plans.

“I ran twice. I won twice and did much better the second time … and now we may just have to do it again,” he said to thundering cheers and chants of “Take it back!”

During his speech, Trump appeared intent to address criticism from some corners of the party that he is too focused on relitigating the 2020 election, telling the crowd he wanted to talk about “some of the really big issues.” But he quickly returned to familiar grievances, labeling himself the most persecuted politician in the nation’s history as he inched ever closer to announcing a run.

“If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed home, if I announced that I was not going to run for office, the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop,” he said. “But that’s what they want me to do. And you know what? There’s no chance I do that.”

DeSantis, who often insists he is focused solely on reelection as governor, headlined Friday night’s program in an appearance that strongly suggested his ambitions extend beyond the state.

He welcomed the crowd to the “free state of Florida” and highlighted the anti-COVID mitigation policies that made him a conservative hero during the height of the pandemic. And he bragged about his efforts to bar discussions of race and sexual orientation in Florida classrooms, as well as his battles with Disney.

“We’ve accomplished an awful lot in the state of Florida. But we have only begun to fight,” he said. “Because we are on a mission to keep the state of Florida free and to save our great country.”

An unscientific straw poll of attendees at the event found that 78.7% would vote for Trump in a GOP primary, with DeSantis coming in second with 19%. No other potential candidate came in above 1 percent.

And many were indeed all in on a Trump 2024 run.

“I love the idea, I absolutely do,” said Ryan Malone, 33, who recently moved from New York to Florida. While he is a big fan of DeSantis, he argued that Trump is best positioned to turn the country around from what he sees as Biden’s litany of failures.

“I think that he would get more done,” he said. “Again, I love DeSantis, he’s my 1A, right? But I do think that if we’re going to get out of this miserable period that we’re in, Trump is the guy to get us out of this hole.”

Still, he worried about what might happen if the two were to run against each other in a GOP primary.

“I wouldn’t want to see there be bad blood between the person who’s, like, the true leader of our party and then the person who’s, you know, the second coming,” he said.

But his wife, Dr. Mariuxi Viteri Malone, 33, is eager for DeSantis to run. As an immigrant from Ecuador, she said she was offended by Trump’s rhetoric toward Hispanics.

“Be nice!” he said. “That’s all you need to do.”

Others were more strategic in their thinking.

Cameron Lilly, 29, said that he personally likes DeSantis better than Trump, but nonetheless thinks another Trump run makes sense for the party.

“I think Ron DeSantis right now is wasting the one more chance that Trump has,” said Lilly, who works for a defense contractor in Annapolis, Maryland. “I like DeSantis even a little bit more. But I think if we want to have consistent conservatives in the White House, one more Trump term, DeSantis as vice president, and then potentially one or two more terms. That’s the way to keep conservatives in the White House for more years.”

Steven Dykstra, 22, had another reason.

“As much as I want DeSantis to be the president — he would make a great president — I want him to stay in Florida,” said Dykstra, who attends Pasco-Hernando State College. “If he were to run in 2024, he wouldn’t be our governor. He’s been a great governor. I think he should stay.”

Orlando sisters Sydney and Janae Kinne, who go by “The Patriot Sisters” online, said they were fans of both Trump and DeSantis, but don’t expect either to run in 2024.

“I would still vote for him. We’re still there. But I would like to see him in a different seat this year,” said Janae, 23, of Trump. “If he runs, I mean, we’re going to be on the street rooting for him anyways. But we’d like to see him start to raise up other people who have the same mentality.”

Sydney, 21, said she was looking for an alternative, but wasn’t sure who.

“That’s the question of the hour,” she said. “Right now what we need is someone that, yes, is strong, they’re strong-willed, but someone that’s a little more kind of rallying everyone together.”

But Zachary Roberson, 22, said that, if he ever had to choose between Trump and DeSantis, he’d pick the Florida governor.

“He seems like a more refined version of Trump. So I’m hoping he runs for president,” said Roberson, a student at Florida Gulf Coast University.

As for Trump, Roberson suggested: “You can run for governor here in Florida.”

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A man accused of attacking New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin during a recent campaign rally told investigators he’d been drinking that day and didn’t know who the congressman was, authorities said as the man was arrested on a federal assault charge Saturday.

David Jakubonis, 43, made an initial court appearance Saturday before a federal magistrate judge in Rochester, New York, on a single count of assaulting a member of Congress with a dangerous weapon. The charge carries a potential maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

He was ordered held until a bail hearing in federal court Wednesday. Prosecutors said he should remain detained as a flight risk and is dangerous, according to a court filing. Assistant federal public defender Steven Slawinski, representing Jakubonis, said in an email to The Associated Press that he planned to ask the judge to release Jakubonis from custody.

Jakubonis was arraigned Friday on a separate state charge of attempted assault in the second degree and was released by a local judge. That prompted criticism from Zeldin and other Republicans who held it up as an example of the need to reform New York’s bail laws, something Zeldin has called on Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to toughen.

A 2019 bail reform law in New York eliminated pretrial incarceration for people accused of most nonviolent offenses. The law gives judges the option to set bail in nearly all cases involving violent felonies, but it has exceptions for certain attempted felonies like attempted assault.

The federal criminal complaint filed Saturday alleged Jakubonis, an Iraq War veteran, told investigators he was drinking whiskey on Thursday before he went onstage as Zeldin addressed a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in the town of Perinton to ask the speaker if he was disrespecting veterans.

Jakubonis “did not know who the speaker was or that the speaker was a political person,” according to the complaint. The complaint added that when Jakubonis watched video of Thursday evening’s incident he told investigators he “must have checked out” and that what was depicted in the video was disgusting.

According to video of the attack, Jakubonis raised his arm toward Zeldin as he held a keychain with two sharp points. The congressman from Long Island then grabbed Jakubonis’ wrist and the two tussled to the ground as others jumped in to help. Zeldin, who also served in the military, suffered a minor scrape.

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