Politics

By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Friday to strip hundreds of senior U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees of civil service job protections, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

HHS employees at several agencies received the email, which said members of their teams would have their jobs reclassified. The change means they can be fired at will. Previously, they could only be fired for cause and had appeal rights.

The move is in line with an overhaul announced by the administration in February of the government’s civil service system.

The overhaul gives the president more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees who are being reclassified from Schedule F to Schedule Policy/Career.

An HHS official confirmed the email’s authenticity but did not respond to questions about how many staff would be affected and their agencies and positions. The category of employees involved, GS-15, usually consists of senior technical experts, managers, high-level policy staff and supervisors.

The email said that initially “a relatively modest number…on the order of hundreds not thousands” of HHS personnel in that category would be affected by the reclassification.

The email said “additional tranches” of conversions would follow. The official said there would be no mass layoffs at the department beyond those previously announced.

Trump pledged in his campaign to strip job protections from federal workers deemed by his team to be “influencing” government policy. Governance experts say the change will make it easier to carry out more mass layoffs.

Unions representing federal workers have challenged the move in federal court.

The Trump administration has sought to shrink ​the federal workforce and make civil servants and historically independent boards and commissions more accountable to the White House.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

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By David Morgan

May 16 (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican moderate targeted for retribution by President Donald Trump, will find out whether he can survive a primary election in Louisiana on Saturday against two popular rivals, including a Trump-backed challenger, or become the first elected Senate incumbent to lose renomination in more than a decade. 

Cassidy, a physician who first earned the president’s ire by voting for his conviction in Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial in 2021, entered the Republican primary in third place behind Trump-backed U.S. Representative Julia Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, a former congressman who served in Trump’s first administration, according to polling data compiled by the website RealClearPolitics.com.

Trump, in a Truth Social post on Saturday, called Cassidy a “disloyal disaster.”

“Bill Cassidy is a sleazebag, a terrible guy, who is BAD FOR LOUISIANA,” Trump wrote. “Now he’s going to get CLOBBERED, hopefully, in today’s BIG election, by two great people!!!”

Cassidy’s chances of victory seem narrow in a state where Trump received more than 60% of the vote during the 2024 presidential election. But in a closely fought three-way battle that is likely to end in a June 27 runoff election, Trump could also risk embarrassment if Letlow, whom Cassidy has sought to brand as a “liberal,” is ultimately bested by Fleming, a former Navy physician who has strong backing within the state Republican Party.

“Dr John Fleming is the only conservative candidate in the race,” said Christy Haik, a member of the powerful Republican State Central Committee and president of the conservative group Louisiana State Republican Assembly.

TRUMP RETRIBUTION CAMPAIGN

The Louisiana primary is the latest venue for an ongoing Trump retribution campaign that delivered primary defeats this month against at least five of seven Republican state legislators in Indiana, who opposed the president’s push for a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan to protect the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Next week, Trump’s campaign moves to Kentucky, where the president hopes to see his hand-picked primary challenger Ed Gallrein defeat Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic and leading voice in the campaign to release government files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an erstwhile friend of the president. 

In Louisiana, Letlow, 45, won Trump’s Senate endorsement before she had even announced her candidacy. She entered Congress after her husband Luke died of a COVID infection after being elected to the House in 2020. She ran to replace him in a special election and succeeded with Trump’s endorsement. Cassidy has targeted her support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives when she worked for the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She has responded with ads calling Cassidy and Fleming “Never Trumpers” and emphasizing her presidential endorsement. 

Cassidy, a 68-year-old doctor who specialized in the treatment of liver disease and helped found a Baton Rouge clinic that serves low-income patients, served in the Louisiana Senate and the U.S. House before unseating former Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in 2014 to become the first Republican to capture the seat since 1883. He now chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He was reelected in 2020 with nearly 60% of the vote. 

With backing from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he entered the final phase of the primary campaign with $5.5 million in cash, compared with $1.6 million for Letlow, according to documents filed to the Federal Election Commission. Fleming, 74, had nearly $1.4 million in cash left from a campaign that he has largely self-financed.

CASSIDY VOTED TO IMPEACH TRUMP

But that financial firepower has not propelled his campaign after a series of conflicts with Trump beginning with his role in 2021 as one of seven Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He is now one of only three still in office. 

Cassidy later called on Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after his indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents and declined to endorse Trump after he won the Republican nomination.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, Cassidy has tried to work his way back into the president’s good graces by supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for U.S. health secretary. 

But Cassidy’s support for Trump health policy has been short-lived, with him expressing open skepticism for Kennedy’s bid to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy and joining fellow Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to slow the health secretary’s agenda in Congress. 

 The most recent break came last month when Trump accused Cassidy of blocking the nomination of Casey Means as U.S. surgeon general, forcing the president to name radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier as his third pick for the job.

Independent political analysts say Cassidy could still emerge from Saturday’s primary to face either Letlow or Fleming in a run-off. Whoever ultimately emerges as the victor, the seat is expected to remain in Republican hands.

Former Republican Senator Richard Lugar was the last elected incumbent to lose his bid for renomination in 2012.  

(Reporting by David Morgan. Additional reporting by David Hood-Nuño and Blake Brittain. Editing by Michael Learmonth, Alistair Bell and Mark Potter)

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s midterm elections.

The justices declined to halt a ruling by Virginia’s top court that blocked a voter-approved pro-Democratic map for the midterms, denying a request by Democrats in the state. The court’s action came in a brief and unsigned order that provided no rationale. No justice publicly dissented.

Democrats pursued the revised electoral map – crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Democrats – as part of a nationwide political battle initiated last year by Trump to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court acted in the Virginia case after clearing the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of the midterms.

Control of Congress is at stake in the midterms, with Republicans holding slim majorities in the House and Senate. Virginia has 11 seats in the 435-member House.

The Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision on May 8 threw out the state’s voter-approved map, ruling in favor of Republicans who challenged it. The court found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedures last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in the state legislature in time to put the ballot initiative before voters ahead of the midterms.

Don Scott, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and other Democratic legislators asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to halt the ruling by the state’s top court, saying it had “deprived voters, candidates and the Commonwealth (Virginia) of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”

They cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

The Virginia referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a state constitutional amendment that was passed by voters in 2020 to put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

Virginia Senate Republican Leader Ryan McDougle, one of the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the court’s ruling on Friday.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed what we always knew: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle said.

Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed electoral map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, with about 3.1 million votes cast. 

In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national U.S. census every 10 years. Redistricting traditionally has been carried out by state legislatures at the start of each new decade. 

In the unusual mid-decade redistricting fight now unfolding, Republicans hold a clear advantage. 

At Trump’s urging, Republican-governed Texas redrew its electoral map last year in a bid to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats, prompting Democratic-led California to reconfigure its congressional map to target five Republican-held seats. Multiple other states have joined the fray.

Democrats suffered a blow when the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the November elections. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting effort, Democratic- and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.

The ​referendum has faced multiple legal challenges. In addition to the dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court, a judge in a separate case on April 22 also blocked the pro-Democratic map, acting in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) – Democrats hoping to win control of Congress in November’s elections are seizing on Republicans’ support of President Donald Trump’s proposed $400 million White House ballroom to portray his party as out of touch with voters’ cost-of-living concerns.

As Republicans move toward a vote that might include hundreds of millions of dollars for the ballroom, Democrats are pointing to a more than 50% jump in gasoline prices since Trump launched a war with Iran, as well as rising healthcare, fertilizer and electricity costs they say his policies have worsened. 

“It’s a perfect storm of ugly,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told reporters, quoting a farmer in her state.

Outside of Washington, Democratic candidates are portraying the project as a frivolous diversion from working Americans’ concerns.

The ballroom “is a vanity project that we don’t need,” Brian Poindexter, a Democrat running for a House of Representatives seat in northeastern Ohio, said in an interview. “Most of the people I hope to serve … worry about food, utilities, paying the rent.”

His rival, incumbent Republican Representative Max Miller, did not respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans say the ballroom is a needed improvement for an outdated White House and has nothing to do with the broader economy.

“It’s hard to make that connection there. It doesn’t fit,” said Republican Representative Daniel Webster of Florida.

Others say it’s a bad look ahead of the November elections, when control of the House of Representatives and the Senate is at stake. 

“We’re talking about building a ballroom, and we’re trying to get the economy squared away. Timing is bad,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told CNN.

Republicans are highlighting tax cuts they passed last year as they make the case they have tackled affordability concerns. But Trump himself has not always stuck to that message. 

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about ​anybody,” he told reporters on Tuesday when asked about rising costs spurred by the Iran war. He said his main concern was preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the administration was working to make healthcare and other costs more affordable.

The funding in question is part of a package that would enable the Secret Service “to properly address the ever growing threats of political violence in this historically heightened threat environment,” Ingle said.   

WASHINGTON MAKEOVER

Trump, a former real estate developer, has already demolished the East Wing of the White House as he forges ahead with the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. It would be capable of hosting large state events that are now held in tents on the South Lawn. It would sit atop a fortified underground military complex.

The scale of the project and the administration’s handling of fundraising ⁠have drawn criticism from watchdog groups who say it raises questions about transparency, donor influence and adherence to longstanding ​ethics norms.

Trump has said roughly $300 million has been raised for the project, though he has not provided details on the source of that money.

The ballroom is one of several efforts Trump has undertaken to overhaul Washington landmarks, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and a proposed triumphal arch near Arlington Cemetery.

Trump has insisted the ballroom would not cost taxpayers one cent because of private donations and money out of his own pocket.

But after a gunman tried to storm a black-tie gala featuring Trump in April at a Washington hotel, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called for Congress to approve $323 million in taxpayer money for the ballroom, citing security concerns.

Republicans are now advancing legislation that would include $1 billion for presidential security, including roughly $400 million for the White House complex. A vote in the Senate is possible next week.

“We want to protect our presidents no matter who they are, what party they’re in,” said Republican Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania. “I think that this construction project does that.”

Details of the legislation have not yet been publicly released, and it is not clear whether it would fund ballroom construction directly. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the $1 billion is needed to bolster the Secret Service and harden the White House complex. “The ballroom is being financed privately,” he said.

Democrats say the legislation contains no such guardrails. “If it’s not for the ballroom, they should write that right into the bill,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon told Reuters.

While there is no presidential election until 2028, Trump looms large over November’s midterm elections. Polling shows voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, his immigration crackdown, the Iran war — and the ballroom.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this month found Americans opposed the ballroom project by 56% to 28%. 

In such an environment, it may be difficult for the security funding to pass the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, and the House, where their 217-212 majority gives them few votes to spare. 

“I have heard from residents all over the district, they don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars going to Donald Trump’s ballroom,” said Bob Harvie, a Democratic candidate running for a Pennsylvania House seat, noting incumbent Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick had cast votes supporting the Iran war and Trump’s tariffs. 

Fitzpatrick spokesperson Casey-Lee Waldron said: “Congressman Fitzpatrick is opposed to taxpayer money being used to pay for the ballroom, and he will be voting accordingly.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Andy Sullivan and Cynthia Osterman)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.

It’s possible Democrats could use the high court’s rejection of their bid, while also blessing Republican efforts in Alabama and Louisiana, in election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court.

The state’s top Democrats disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

The leader of the state’s Republican party said the justices made the right call. “Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced Friday that he is ending his bid for reelection, his career upended by the redistricting battles that are sweeping the country after last month’s Supreme Court decision.

Republicans in Tennessee this month enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen’s majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C., office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

He lamented that Tennessee would likely shift to an entirely Republican congressional delegation after the next election, warning that it could also leave the state out of the loop once Democrats are able to regain the White House.

Tennessee was the first state to pass new congressional districts after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. But more Southern states could follow. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina also have taken steps toward redistricting.

Cohen has represented his Memphis-based district for about two decades, among the last of the white Democrats representing the South. He has been a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee and has focused on strengthening voting access and civil rights.

“It’s unique in America that an African-American majority district has elected a white guy, and that we’ve got a great relationship, great amount of support,” said Cohen, who is also the first Jewish person to represent Tennessee in Congress.

He was facing a primary challenge from state lawmaker Justin Pearson, a Black progressive who represents much of Memphis in the state’s General Assembly.

“The status quo is failing us,” Pearson told The Associated Press Friday. “It’s time for new energy, new voices, and new ideas to meet this present moment, and that’s why I started to run in the first place.”

Pearson said he still intends to run in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, which now includes multiple rural counties that backed Trump by double-digit margins.

“We’re going to win. It’s going to be harder, but as an ancestor once said, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it,” said Pearson. He said his message would not change, but argued his agenda had some appeal to rural, working-class, white conservatives.

But Cohen predicted it would be nearly impossible for Tennessee Democrats to win a seat in Congress with the new districts. He added there was a chance the redistricting effort could “backfire on the Republicans” but that would require an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and a massive vote turnout.

Sitting in his congressional office with staff looking on, Cohen pointed to photos of Memphis and local projects that he had championed during his career and expressed worry that Memphis voters would no longer have a voice in Washington. He also recounted how he had worked with the state’s Republican leaders to win funding during the Biden administration for a larger bridge to cross the Mississippi River into Memphis.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that Cohen was “a powerful champion for civil rights” and that “the City of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference.”

Cohen said the Republican’s redistricting effort was being done “for Donald Trump to get one more vote, he thinks, to stop him from being impeached.”

Still, he vowed to use his remaining time in Congress to try to mount opposition to Trump, calling the president “the greatest threat to democracy and to decorum and grace that we’ve ever seen.”

Like many lawmakers, Cohen has often attracted attention with colorful outbursts during congressional debates and hearings. During Trump’s first term, in 2019, Cohen brought a bucket of fried chicken to a House Judiciary Committee hearing at which then-Attorney General William P. Barr was a no-show.

“The message is Attorney General Bill Barr is not brave enough to answer questions from a staff attorney and members of the Judiciary Committee,” he said in a statement at the time.

While Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress tried to certify the results of the presidential election, Cohen screamed angrily at his Republican colleagues to “Call Trump. Call your friend. Tell him to do something.”

Cohen was among the first Democrats to join impeachment efforts for Trump in his first term, and he has signed on to articles of impeachment against Trump this year as well.

Meanwhile, Memphis activists grappled with the new political realities after the Republican-led legislature’s decision to divide the city’s longtime congressional district into three neighboring districts.

Advocates said they believed they could work with — and pressure — any lawmaker who will represent the city.

“Things are going to change. We’re aware of that,” said Tierney Macon, an activist with The Equity Alliance, a local civil rights group.

Macon, who protested at the Tennessee statehouse for days following the unveiling of the redrawn maps, said activists aimed to hold the city’s new representatives in Congress accountable no matter their party.

“We just have to be engaged,” Macon said.

Demonstrations in the statehouse included chants accusing lawmakers of resurrecting Jim Crow, a system of state and local laws that for decades enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement across the South.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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ATLANTA (AP) — The specter of the 2020 election — when President Donald Trump refused to accept his loss to Democrat Joe Biden — continues to haunt Georgia and casts a long shadow over the Republican primary for candidates vying to be the state’s top election official.

Georgia’s current secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, became a household name when he defended the state’s election results against Trump’s false claims about widespread voter fraud and resisted the president’s urging to help “find” enough ballots to win the race.

Now that Raffensperger is stepping down to run for governor, election oversight is a key issue in the race to replace him. Some Republican candidates are endorsing the same distortions that Trump did six years ago. The president has stocked the federal government with people who echo his conspiracy theories, and election denial has spread through state offices as well.

The race comes at a time when lawmakers have made a contradictory mess of state law governing how votes are counted. Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday called lawmakers into special session on June 17 for redistricting but also to address a looming deadline on voting.

Georgia’s touch-screen voting machines print a paper ballot that includes a human-readable list of voters’ selections and a QR code that a scanner reads to count votes. Lawmakers two years ago passed a law saying QR codes could not be used for the official vote count after July 1 of this year.

However, they’ve failed to agree on an alternative method since then, causing uncertainty and the potential for lawsuits over Georgia elections until that’s sorted out.

While the special session may resolve the question temporarily, the next secretary of state will likely be involved in implementing a new voting system by 2028.

Gabriel Sterling, who was one of Raffensperger’s top aides, is the only Republican secretary of state candidate actively defending the state’s 2020 election results.

He rose to prominence by imploring Trump to help discourage threats of violence against election workers, and he said in a recent Atlanta Press Club debate that the state has “the best and safest elections in America.”

But others continue to echo Trump’s claims.

Vernon Jones, who was elected as a state representative and DeKalb County CEO as a Democrat and then switched parties to become a Republican and fervent Trump supporter, is maybe the harshest critic.

“I believe there were many irregularities. I believe violations have taken place,” Jones said, adding, “I stand with those who believe there was election fraud.”

Kelvin King, a general contractor who previously ran for U.S. Senate and is married to State Election Board member and conservative commentator Janelle King, is only a little more reserved.

“I think 2020 is still in question to be frank with you,” King said.

State Rep. Tim Fleming said he believes there were some “irregularities” in 2020 and that “great strides” have been made to address the issues. He said he’s “not running on conspiracy theories” and is focused on the future.

Fleming said he believes he and his fellow lawmakers need to find a “temporary fix” during the special session to remove the QR code from the ballot in a way that is “least disruptive for the county elections officials.” But ultimately, he said, he also wants to see the state move to hand-marked paper ballots, a position supported by many other Republicans.

Fleming previously worked for the secretary of state’s office while Brian Kemp, now the outgoing Republican governor, held the position. He led a study committee on Georgia’s election system last summer, but the committee produced only the briefest of reports.

Jones and King and Ted Metz, who has previously run for governor and secretary of state as a Libertarian, have criticized Raffensperger’s record as secretary of state. They have decried what they say is incompetence, which he denies, and a lack of transparency and are calling for a switch from touch-screen voting machines to hand-marked paper ballots. They have extended that criticism to Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s current voting system and continues to defend it.

Sterling, for his part, has insisted he is best positioned to beat a Democrat in the fall. He endlessly repeats the refrain that he has defended Georgia’s election laws and policies against attacks from “Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden’s Justice Department and the woke world.”

Cole Muzio, president of Frontline Policy, a Christian conservative group, said he believes Jones has “traction” in the closing days of the race, but said he believes that in any runoff, rank-and-file Republicans are likely to rally behind anyone who is opposing Jones. Muzio said despite Jones’ outspoken pro-MAGA position, questions about his party switch could intensify in a runoff, particularly over Jones’ switch from vociferously defending legal abortion to opposing it.

On the Democratic side, the candidates have stressed protecting the right to vote and fighting attacks on the state’s elections.

The Democrats running for secretary of state include certified financial planner and political organizer Cam Ashling; Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett; nonprofit founder Adrian Consonery Jr; and former Fulton County State Court Judge Penny Brown Reynolds.

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BEIJING (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’s not yet made a determination on whether a major U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan can move forward, following his three-day visit to China.

Speaking to reporters as he flew back on Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Trump said he’d not decided on the sale, but added he “will make a determination.”

The Trump administration has authorized the sale but it has yet to move forward.

China opposes the deal and has suggested that Washington’s relationship with the self-governing island is the key factor in China-U.S. relations.

Mr. Trump also says he raised a potential three-way nuclear deal among the U.S., Russia and China.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Democratic leaders, desperate to compete in red states where their party brand is toxic, are embracing something new this midterm season: not backing Democrats.

In states like Nebraska and Alaska, Democratic officials are, in some cases, looking past their own party’s candidates while subtly encouraging — or even openly promoting — independent candidates they hope can outperform the Democratic label. The Democratic National Committee and some of its allies in Washington are quietly supporting the new strategy.

Meanwhile, some of the independent candidates are chatting in a group text about their approach as they plot a path that could shake up Congress, which is consumed by partisan gridlock.

Nebraska Democrats this week chose a nominee for U.S. Senate, Cindy Burbank, who said a major campaign priority was to ensure a Democrat wouldn’t be on the fall ballot to pull support from independent Dan Osborn. Shortly after polls closed, Burbank reiterated her plan to drop out in the coming weeks during a private conversation with a party official, according to state Democratic chair Jane Kleeb.

Democratic leaders believe Osborn, who came within 7 percentage points of winning a Senate seat in 2024, has the best chance to defeat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Democrats’ pivot toward independents is part of an intentional strategy in some places — and something closer to a wink and a nod in others — that covers a handful of high-profile Senate and House and even statehouse contests. Independent Senate candidates are also running in states like Idaho, South Dakota and Montana, where Democratic leadership has so far been unwilling to fully embrace the independents, although many view them as the Democrats’ best chance to stop Republicans this fall.

“For some states, and Nebraska is one of them, where Democrats are 32% of the electorate, this is a long-term strategy for us,” said Kleeb, who also serves as a vice chair to the Democratic National Committee.

Kleeb said her state party is backing independents in at least four state legislative seats in addition to the U.S. Senate: “We have to build a coalition with independents in order to win elections so we can do good work for the people. Period.”

Some of the Democratic Party’s national political machine appears to be on board.

The Democrats’ fundraising site, ActBlue, serves some of the independent candidates, as do popular Democratic-allied website builders. At the same time, some of the party’s campaign committees in Washington quietly provide logistical support in some cases, while avoiding public criticism of the independent candidates even in some races where there is a Democratic nominee.

“The Democratic Party’s brand is awful right now,” said Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin. “The combination of the brand problem and the existential nature of the threat that our country is facing requires us to have a big tent and look for candidates who can win.”

Some Democratic donors, strategists and party leaders from other states have privately pushed back, insisting Democrats should not look past their own nominees for short-term political gain. They want Democratic officials, in Washington and on the ground in red states, to work harder to make the Democratic brand more attractive — even if it takes several more years to be competitive.

“What’s the independent going to do for the Democratic Party if they win?” asked Democratic strategist Mike Ceraso, who sees the shift toward independents as an attempt to disguise Democrats in some cases. “We’re the party of truth and honesty and integrity, but we’re playing these stupid political games?”

And there is no guarantee that the independent candidates, if elected, would support all of the Democrats’ policy priorities or even Democratic leadership in Congress.

In Idaho, independent Senate candidate Todd Achilles, an Army veteran and former Democratic state legislator, said he won’t be caucusing with either party if elected. He explained his politics as “straight down the middle,” and said he believes in individual liberties.

“Idahoans should be able to live how they want,” he said. But the Democratic Party was a bad fit because it “has given up on little red states like Idaho.”

On his list of problems with Democrats is that the party made a big mistake by initially running Joe Biden again for president in 2024. But he also said “the shine is coming off” Trump, whom Idaho voters backed by 36 points in 2024.

Achilles said he and other military veterans running for Senate as independents chat in the text chain and are “very much on the same page.” He says the group wants to see “guardrails,” including term and age limits and campaign finance reform.

“The priority is to get Congress functioning again,” he said. “We gotta break the grip of the two-party system.”

In South Dakota, Navy and Air Force veteran Brian Bengs has launched an independent bid to defeat Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Rounds, who’s seeking a third term this fall.

Bengs ran as a Democrat against Senate Majority Leader John Thune four years ago and lost by 43 points.

A lifelong independent, he said he got turned down by the party in 2022 when he sought to run with its organizational support but without the label. Still, he insists he can win without the party’s formal backing.

One key lesson from his 2022 campaign, he says, was how hard it was to break through with the Democratic Party label.

Voters would immediately ask, “What are you?” he recalled.

“When you say, ‘I’m a lifelong independent running as a Democrat,’” Bengs said, the response was quick. “‘I’ll never vote for a Democrat.’ And that was it,” he said.

“So that takeaway soured me on running again in any party system, because it was just a soul-sucking experience.”

In Alaska, some Democrats believe that commercial fisherman Bill Hill, a retired school superintendent, may represent their best hope in defeating first-term Republican Rep. Nick Begich for the state’s only House seat.

Hill, a lifelong independent, raised more than $780,000 in the first three months of the year, besting Democrat Matt Schultz, a pastor, who raised $578,000 from last October through March.

The state Democratic Party declined to endorse Schultz at its recent convention, which Hill also attended. The House Democrats’ campaign committee in Washington has also declined so far to promote Schultz’s candidacy. Hill, meanwhile, is racking up local union endorsements.

Hill’s message to voters, he said, is the same for Republicans, Democrats and independents: “You need to be pragmatic about who you choose to support in this election cycle, because at the end of the day, we need a change in the House seat in Alaska.”

A spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee criticized independents like Osborn, Bengs, Achilles and Seth Bodnar, who is running in Montana, as “fake Independents who would push liberal Democratic policies in the Senate.”

Currently, there are two independents in the Senate: Maine Sen. Angus King and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both caucus with Democrats.

In an interview, Hill said he’s unlikely to caucus with Republicans in Washington if elected, but he’s not committing to joining Democrats either. He was reluctant to criticize the Democratic Party or Trump.

Hill acknowledged the challenge of running for Congress as an independent, but said there are benefits, too.

“There’s freedom,” he said. “I can truly represent the working people of Alaska.”

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This story has been updated to correct the date when Brian Bengs said he was turned down by Democrats for seeking to run with the party’s support. It was 2022, not this year.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he issued an executive order to restrict voters’ ability to cast ballots by mail, attorneys for Democrats and civil rights groups told a federal judge on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols didn’t rule from the bench on the plaintiffs’ request for an order blocking officials from implementing Trump’s March 31 order, his second related to elections since winning his second term in the White House. The case is one of multiple lawsuits filed to block the order on the grounds that only states and Congress, and not the president, are given power under the Constitution to decide how elections are run.

Trump’s initial executive order to revamp elections by requiring documentary proof of citizenship, issued last year, was largely halted by multiplefederal judges on similar grounds. He issued his latest order only after the voting bill he backed stalled in Congress. The current legal fight comes as the country is in the midst of primary elections and election officials are preparing for the intricacies of holding the fall’s midterm elections.

“I understand the time pressure here,” said Nichols, who questioned both sides but gave no clear indication of which way he’s leaning.

The president can’t rewrite election rules to give himself and the Republican Party a partisan advantage, the plaintiffs’ attorneys said. They argued that the executive order’s requirements are illegal and designed to coerce states into limiting voter registration and ballot access.

“It is harming our clients every day in the middle of an election season,” said Orion Nevers, an attorney representing the NAACP.

Democrats are more likely to vote by mail. Since even before his 2020 loss, Trump has falsely implied there is mass fraud involved in the practice and fought to curtail it, even after his baseless claims led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and were repeatedly debunked by audits and reviews, including some run by Republicans.

Since returning to office, Trump has said he wants Republicans to “take over” elections in Democratic areas and launched investigations of the 2020 vote.

His latest executive order calls on the Department of Homeland Security to make a list of eligible voters in each state and seeks to prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list.

The administration is asking the judge to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims. Justice Department attorney Stephen Pezzi on Thursday suggested that the litigation is premature, calling it “shadowboxing” for the plaintiffs to challenge a list that hasn’t yet been created.

“It’s a little hard to address these questions in the abstract,” Pezzi said.

Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, asked Pezzi why it would be lawful to disseminate the list to states.

“I think it would be the plaintiffs’ burden to explain why it’s unlawful,” Pezzi replied. “I don’t mean to be cute with that answer.”

Trump’s executive order requires federal agencies to compile a list of adults the U.S. government has purportedly “confirmed” to be U.S. citizens and to share it with each state at least 60 days before each federal election.

“There isn’t a way to lawfully compile it,” said Lalitha Madduri, an attorney for Democratic Party plaintiffs.

Danielle Lang, who represents the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the executive order is aimed at creating “the maximum amount of chaos and confusion” for local election officials.

“They need clear direction,” Lang said.

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Riccardi reported from Denver.

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