Politics

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Vice President JD Vance will visit Iowa on Tuesday, marking his first visit since taking office to the state where Republicans in less than two years will cast the first votes to pick their party’s next presidential nominee.

Vance, who is seen as one of the GOP’s strongest potential candidates for president in 2028, is making the trip to campaign on behalf of Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, who faces a competitive race to keep his Des Moines-area seat in the November midterms.

But the visit offers Vance an opportunity to test his reception before Iowa’s voters, whose leadoff caucuses give them an outsized role in determining the next presidential nominee. Campaigning for a local congressman in his role as the sitting vice president gives him an opening chance to make an impression on Iowa Republicans, seasoned evaluators of those who seek the nation’s highest office before the campaign begins in earnest.

Vance’s appearance comes days after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is also considered a possible 2028 candidate, spoke to a group of evangelical Christians who are influential in Iowa’s GOP contest.

Des Moines-based Jimmy Centers, a Republican political consultant, said the 2028 contest is “light-years away,” but said the Republicans who hear Vance speak on Tuesday will be evaluating how he might measure up in an election for the White House.

“I certainly think, as of right now, Vice President Vance would probably be a straw-poll winner of Iowa Republicans for 2028. But I don’t think anyone is saying, ‘We won’t consider anybody else,’” Centers said.

Vance, who has not said whether he will run for the presidency in 2028, is scheduled to appear with Nunn at a manufacturing facility in Des Moines. His office did not comment on the trip’s impact on Vance’s political future.

The vice president’s visit follows a trip President Donald Trump made in January to tout the administration’s tax cuts, part of a string of stops they’re making this year on economic issues ahead of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

But Vance’s visit comes at a time when his own political prospects — and the message he’s expected to deliver on the economy — have been complicated by the war in Iran.

The vice president, who has long been skeptical of foreign military interventions, has seemed a reluctant defender of the nine-week-old war for which Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp. Iowans, like much of the rest of the country, are grappling with higher gas prices because of the conflict. But the state’s farmers are also feeling the pinch of high fertilizer costs from the war and have been hurt by the tariffs Trump has imposed.

While Iowa’s farmers have steadfastly supported the president, they have been looking to the White House for assurances that the current troubles won’t last.

Vance’s visit to Iowa was originally scheduled for last week, but the timing shifted because the House moved to pass a sweeping farm bill that Nunn was due to vote on.

The vice president also had been slated to appear last week at an Iowa State University event with Turning Point USA, but the organization said it was not able to reschedule the event with the university until sometime in the fall.

Kim Schmett, a longtime Iowa GOP activist, said the presidential cycle starts “deceptively slow.”

Republican figures testing the waters often drop by the Westside Conservative Club, which Schmett hosts, but he said it’s still too far out from the caucuses, which are typically held in January of the presidential election year.

He said Trump’s Make America Great Again political movement “is very alive and going here” in Iowa, which would benefit Vance — as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also thought to be another potential candidate.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of MAGA support,” he said. “And Vice President Vance and Marco Rubio seem to be the recipients of where that is going at the moment.”

But Schmett cautioned, “it’s awfully, awfully early in the process.”

On the Democratic side, at least half a dozen presidential prospects have been making visits to the states with the earliest presidential primary contests, including recent visits to Iowa by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

Meanwhile, potential Republican presidential candidates “are treading very lightly,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant, who worked on Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“I think Republicans are going to be very reluctant to get in Trump’s way until Trump gives the green light for the campaign to start,” Conant said.

That means much of the groundwork to meet with donors or activists or recruit political staffers might happen slowly and subtly – for now.

After the midterms? Conant said: “It’ll be irresistible.”

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Price reported from Washington.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — As civil rights advocates protest, Republican lawmakers in several Southern states are seizing on the opportunity afforded by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to redraw congressional districts ahead of the November midterm elections.

The latest state to jump on the redistricting bandwagon is Tennessee, where a special legislative session is to begin Tuesday, a day after a similar session kicked off in Alabama. In Louisiana, lawmakers are making plans for new U.S. House districts after the Supreme Court last week struck down the state’s current map.

The high court’s ruling said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black-majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling significantly altered a decades-old understanding of the law and provided grounds for Republicans in various states to try to eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Democrats.

Its impact on congressional representation, specifically for Black Americans, is threatening to undo decades of progress to ensure minority voting rights.

President Donald Trump has been encouraging more states to join in redistricting as Republicans seek to hold on to their narrow House majority in this year’s elections.

Several hundred people protested on Monday shortly before Alabama’s special session began, including some carrying signs declaring “No new map” and “We fight back! Black Voters Matter.”

Opponents of the redistricting session gathered across the street from the historic Alabama Capitol, where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd of thousands after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.

“Much blood, sweat and tears was shed in an effort for us to gain the right to vote,” said Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who as a child participated in the 1965 Bloody Sunday voting rights march in Selma. “In 2026, there are still people who are still not exercising that right to vote, and we are still fighting today, even in an effort to keep our right to vote.”

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey called legislators into a special session to consider contingency plans for special primary elections in hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will let Alabama switch congressional maps ahead of the November midterms.

A three-judge federal panel previously ordered Alabama to use a court-selected map — with a second district that has a substantial number of Black voters — until a new map is drafted after the 2030 Census. Alabama appealed that decision and has asked the court, in light of the Louisiana ruling, to let it revert to a 2023 map drawn by Republican state lawmakers. That map could give Republicans a better chance of winning at least one of the two seats currently held by Black Democratic lawmakers.

“This is the voice of the people,” Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said while promoting the Republican plan. “We had three judges determine how five million people were supposed to vote, and I don’t think that’s the way.”

At a town hall held by a pro-Democratic group, Doug Jones, a former U.S. senator who is running for governor as a Democrat, said Alabama was “ground zero for voting rights, and we are going to be ground zero to make sure we retain those voting rights.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee called Tennessee lawmakers into a special session to consider a plan that could break up the state’s lone Democratic-held U.S. House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis. The move comes after pressure from Trump.

The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6. Lee had said.

Clergy members concerned about plans to split Memphis’ congressional district came together Monday to denounce the move.

“This latest attempt at redistricting is not just about lines on a map. It is about misrepresentation,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, a pastor at the Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church and the founder of Up the Vote 901, referring to the Memphis area code. “It’s about whether the voices of Black people in this state will be heard or hidden.”

After last week’s Supreme Court decision, Louisiana moved quickly to delay its May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts.

Louisiana state Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, a Republican who chairs a Senate committee tasked with redistricting, told The Associated Press that his committee plans to hold a public hearing Friday on congressional redistricting. Kleinpeter said lawmakers are still weighing their options, including bills that would eliminate one or both of the state’s two majority-Black Congressional districts

Democrats and civil rights groups have filed several lawsuits challenging the suspension of the state’s congressional primary, including another filed Monday in federal court. They are encouraging people in Louisiana — where early voting already is underway — to go ahead and cast votes in the congressional primaries in case courts later allow them to be counted.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn only once a decade, after a census, to account for population changes. But Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw U.S. House districts to give the party an advantage. Democrats in California responded by doing the same, and then other states joined in.

Florida became the eighth state to enact new House districts ahead of the midterm elections when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Monday he had signed a redrawn map passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature. It could help Republicans win as many as four additional House seats. The new map was immediately challenged in court as a partisan gerrymander that violates a Florida constitutional provision against drawing districts that favor one political party over another.

All told, Republicans think they could gain as many as 13 seats from new congressional districts in five states, while Democrats think they could pick up as many as 10 seats from new districts adopted in three states. The newly proposed redistricting in Southern states could add to the Republicans’ tally.

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Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama, and Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers Jack Brook in New Orleans and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has spent his campaign for Ohio governor focused on November’s general election and finally gets the chance Tuesday to put the long primary season behind him, as the Trump-endorsed biotech entrepreneur positions for an expensive run against Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director.

Contests on the ballots also will set the stage for Ohio’s third competitive U.S. Senate race in the last four years, as well as a handful of U.S. House races that are expected to be closely fought in the fall.

Every statewide executive office is open this year due to term limits, but the governor’s race has captured the bulk of the attention so far.

Ramaswamy, a 2024 GOP primary presidential candidate, swept onto the state’s political scene early last year as a mad shuffle was taking place. Then-Sen. JD Vance was ascending to the vice presidency and front-running gubernatorial candidate Jon Husted was being appointed to replace him in Washington.

That opened a window of opportunity at the top of Republicans’ statewide ticket.

Though he is a newcomer in state politics, Ramaswamy’s national profile, tech industry connections and proximity to Trump landed him the Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement. With it, he cleared a prospective field that included the sitting state attorney general, state treasurer and lieutenant governor.

But Democrats also saw opportunity with the open governors seat, even as the state, a former bellwether, has tipped convincingly toward Republicans during the Trump era. The president’s lagging approval ratings on the economy and dissatisfaction over the war in Iran are contributing to a competitive contest.

Acton, a physician and public health expert, emerged as their choice. She became a household name across Ohio in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as she stood alongside Republican Gov. Mike DeWine during daily coronavirus broadcasts. Her comforting presence during the crisis made her a beloved figure with many Ohioans.

But the administration’s aggressive actions — including shuttering businesses, closing schools and canceling an election — also earned Acton plenty of enemies and made her the occasional target of people upset about pandemic policies, with some armed protesters showing up outside her home. Ramaswamy’s campaign has sought to capitalize on the lingering anger over pandemic restrictions with attacks on Acton’s role early in the crisis.

Acton is unopposed in the Democratic primary, while Ramaswamy faces a long-shot challenge from Casey Putsch. The engineer and car designer is a YouTube provocateur who has trolled Ramaswamy incessantly over his Indian heritage and Hindu faith and painted him as an out-of-touch billionaire “tech bro.”

Husted is unopposed in the GOP primary for Senate, a special election to fill the remainder of the six-year Senate term Vance won in 2022. Husted’s likely opponent will be Democrat Sherrod Brown, a former three-term senator who lost a reelection bid against Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024, a contest where spending hit $500 million. Brown faces a minor primary challenge from first-time candidate Ron Kincaid.

Early voting began April 7 under some new election laws, including citizenship checks and elimination of the four-day grace period for receiving mailed ballots. There have been no reports so far of any widespread problems for voters related to the changes.

In the wake of a new round of redistricting that slightly favored Republicans, the state also has numerous partisan congressional primaries.

The most heated GOP primary is in the Toledo area’s 9th District for the chance to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in Congress.

The five-way contest includes former state Rep. Derek Merrin, whom Kaptur defeated by less than a percentage point in 2024, as well as an Air National Guard veteran, a healthcare industry worker, a sitting state representative and the former deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Madison Sheahan.

In Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman’s Cincinnati-area district, which his party considers a “must-hold,” the three-way Republican primary includes Eric Conroy, a CIA and Air Force veteran who has been endorsed by Trump, Vance and Moreno.

Landsman also faces a primary challenge from Damon Lynch IV, the grandson of a prominent civil rights leader. Lynch has criticized Landsman for his initial vote against a war powers resolution on the war in Iran, which Landsman later followed up with a favorable vote.

In the Akron area’s 13th District, five Republicans including business owner Neil Patel, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate, are vying for the opportunity to face Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes.

As a Trump-backed national effort to remake congressional maps in Republicans’ favor was underway, Ohio Democrats took a could-have-been-worse approach and passed the map they were given unanimously.

Now party candidates are crowding congressional primaries across the state for the chance to take on sitting Republican representatives, who hold 10 of Ohio’s 15 seats.

The newly redrawn 7th District in the Cleveland area has attracted eight Democrats hoping to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller, a former senior Trump adviser, in November. Among them is former Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014.

In northeast Ohio’s 14th District, former state Supreme Court Justice William O’Neill is among three Democrats seeking to take on Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce. Joyce also has two primary challengers.

Meanwhile six Democrats are on the ballot in the Dayton-area 10th District of Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Turner. There are seven in GOP U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli’s 6th District along the Ohio River and five in the 5th District of Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Latta.

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A partisan redistricting battle among states has accelerated ahead of the November midterm elections following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the federal Voting Rights Act and opened the way for states to try to eliminate voting districts drawn for racial minorities.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn based on census data after the start of each decade. But an unusual spate of mid-decade redistricting broke out after President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to reshape U.S. House districts to give the party an edge in the midterm elections. Democrats in California countered with their own political gerrymandering. More states followed.

Eight states have already adopted new House maps, and several more are considering it. So far, Republicans believe they could win up to 13 additional seats from new districts in Texas, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain up to 10 seats from new districts in California, Utah and Virginia.

But those tallies presume past voting patterns hold in November. Historically, the president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms. Democrats need to gain just a few seats in November to wrest control of the House from Republicans, which would give them greater power to oppose Trump.

Lawmakers in at least three states are meeting to consider plans for new U.S. House maps.

Current map: two Democrats, four Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has postponed the May 16 congressional primary to allow lawmakers to revise U.S. House districts in response to an April 29 Supreme Court ruling striking down a majority Black congressional district.

Challenges: Several lawsuits have been filed in federal and state court asserting that Landry lacked authority to suspend the primary elections.

Current map: two Democrats, five Republicans

New map: Republican state officials hope to revert to a U.S. House map passed in 2023 — but not previously used — that could help Republicans win an additional seat.

Challenges: The current map was imposed under a court order and is supposed to be used until after the 2030 census. State officials have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside that order in light of its ruling in the Louisiana redistricting case.

Current map: one Democrat, eight Republicans

New Map: Republican Gov. Bill Lee has called lawmakers into special session to consider a new U.S. House map that could carve up a Black-majority district in Memphis and improve Republican chances of winning an additional seat.

Challenges: The candidate qualifying period already has ended for the primaries, which are scheduled for Aug. 6.

New U.S. House districts have passed in eight states since last summer. Six took up redistricting voluntarily, one was required to by its state constitution and another did so under court order.

Current map: 13 Democrats, 25 Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a revised House map into law last August that could help Republicans win five additional seats.

Challenges: The U.S. Supreme Court in December cleared the way for the new districts to be used in this year’s elections. It has since overturned a lower-court ruling that blocked the new map because it was “racially gerrymandered.”

Current map: 43 Democrats, nine Republicans

New map: Voters in November approved revised House districts drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature that could help Democrats win five additional seats.

Challenges: The U.S. Supreme Court in February allowed the new districts to be used in this year’s elections. It denied an appeal from Republicans and the Department of Justice, which claimed the districts impermissibly favor Hispanic voters.

Current map: two Democrats, six Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a revised House map into law last September that could help Republicans win an additional seat.

Challenges: A Cole County judge ruled the new map is in effect as election officials work to determine whether a referendum petition seeking a statewide vote complies with constitutional criteria and contains enough valid petition signatures. The Missouri Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming mid-decade redistricting is illegal. It’s scheduled to hear arguments in May on claims the new districts violate compactness requirements and should be placed on hold pending the potential referendum.

Current map: four Democrats, 10 Republicans

New map: The Republican-led General Assembly gave final approval in October to revised districts that could help Republicans win an additional seat.

Challenges: A federal court panel in November denied a request to block the revised districts from being used in the midterm elections.

Current map: five Democrats, 10 Republicans

New map: A bipartisan panel composed primarily of Republicans voted in October to approve revised House districts that improve Republicans’ chances of winning two additional seats.

Challenges: None. The state constitution required new districts before the 2026 election, because Republicans had approved the prior map without sufficient Democratic support after the last census.

Current map: no Democrats, four Republicans

New map: A judge in November imposed revised House districts that could help Democrats win a seat. The court ruled that lawmakers had circumvented anti-gerrymandering standards passed by voters when adopting the prior map.

Challenges: A federal court panel and the state Supreme Court, in February, each rejected Republican challenges to the judicial map selection.

Current map: six Democrats, five Republicans

New map: Voters approved a constitutional amendment on April 21 authorizing new U.S. House districts backed by Democrats that could help the party win up to four additional seats.

Challenges: The state Supreme Court allowed the referendum to proceed, but it has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a Tazewell County judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.

Current map: eight Democrats, 20 Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on May 4 that he had signed revised U.S. House districts that improve the GOP’s chances of winning four additional seats.

Challenges: A court challenge contends the new map violates a state constitution provision prohibiting districts from being drawn with intent to favor or disfavor a political party.

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By Michael S. Derby

NEW YORK, May 4 (Reuters) – New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said on Monday the U.S. central bank’s monetary policy is “well positioned” to deal with the high level of economic uncertainty facing the economy as a result of the war in the Middle East.

“The future is difficult to see, and the risks to both sides of our mandate have increased,” Williams said in the text of remarks to be delivered before a gathering held by the Cynosure Group in New York City.

“The extent and duration of the effects of supply disruptions and higher energy prices that are emanating from the Middle East conflict are key factors that will shape the global economic outlook,” he said. 

Williams noted that high inflation, mixed job market signals and uncertainty about the war present “an unusual set of circumstances” for Fed policymakers, while refraining from providing guidance on the outlook for the central bank’s policy rate, which is currently in the 3.50%-3.75% range.

He said he expected resilient economic growth of between 2% and 2.25% this year amid mostly stable job market conditions, with unemployment holding at a level between 4.25% and 4.50%.

But inflation, challenged by tariffs and energy costs, will likely stay at around 3% this year before moving back to the Fed’s 2% target, Williams said. He added that inflation expectations are also mostly steady while warning that energy price rises could be worse than expected.

“Market expectations of the future path of oil prices are fairly benign, but several plausible scenarios entail more severe dislocations in both prices and quantities,” Williams said. He added that the Iran war “could result in a larger and broader-based supply shock that has more severe adverse consequences for inflation and economic activity.”

Williams’ remarks were his first public comments since the U.S. central bank last week decided to leave interest rates unchanged. Fed policymakers continue to be in a wait-and-see mode with monetary policy as they face considerable uncertainty about the economic outlook due to the war.

That conflict, particularly the closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, has driven up energy prices sharply. Fed officials are facing an outlook of rising inflation pressures coupled with the prospect that the energy price surge will also depress demand and create risks for the job market.

Three regional Fed bank presidents supported the central bank’s rate decision last week while objecting to the continued inclusion of language in the monetary policy statement that suggests the next move will be a cut in borrowing costs.

Those three officials – the presidents of the Cleveland, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks – argued in the wake of the Fed meeting that both monetary easing and tightening were possible.

(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Paul Simao)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is waging a retribution campaign against some fellow Republicans in Tuesday’s primary in Indiana. Seven GOP state senators who blocked his push to redraw the state’s congressional districts now face primary challengers endorsed by him.

In a series of social media posts, Trump has lobbed various insults at the incumbents, calling them incompetent, RINOs — Republicans in name only — or losers.

In 2025, Trump urged Republicans in several states to redraw their congressional maps to help the party maintain control of the narrowly divided U.S. House. Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio answered the call, but the effort to create new GOP seats in Indiana failed when more than half the state’s Republican senators sided with Democrats to defeat the plan backed by Trump. Eight of those state senators are up for reelection in 2026, and Trump has targeted all but one for defeat.

Voter-approved maps favoring Democrats in California and Virginia have offset some expected Republican gains in other states, but a new plan in Florida, as well as last week’s Supreme Court decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, have given Republicans a boost in their effort to reshape the electoral landscape heading into November.

The Trump-targeted Indiana state senators all represent districts he carried in 2024, mostly by 20 percentage points or more. The most competitive was District 1, near Lake Michigan and just southeast of Chicago. Trump won with about 53% of the vote and a margin of about 7 percentage points over Democratic then-Vice President Kamala Harris. His best performance of the seven targeted districts was in District 19, on the Ohio border, where he received about 68% of the vote and a margin of about 39 percentage points.

Only one of the incumbents, state Sen. Spencer Deery of District 23, faced a contested primary in 2022. He won with about 31% of the vote against a four-candidate field that included Paula Copenhaver, Trump’s pick to oust him this year. Another Trump-targeted incumbent, state Sen. Greg Goode of District 38, filled a vacant seat in 2023 and has not previously faced a full districtwide election.

Half of Indiana’s 50 state Senate seats and all 100 state House seats are up for election in 2026. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers.

Indiana voters will also choose nominees for the U.S. House under the existing boundaries, although none of the state’s nine seats is expected to play a key role in the effort to win control of the chamber in November.

Among the notable contests is the Democratic primary in the 7th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Andre Carson faces three challengers in his bid for renomination to a 10th full term. George Hornedo is an attorney and political consultant. Destiny Wells is an attorney, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and the 2024 nominee for state attorney general. Denise Paul Hatch, a former Center Township constable, is appealing her 2024 felony conviction for official misconduct.

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

There are no automatic recounts in Indiana, but the losing candidate may request and pay for a recount regardless of the vote margin. The costs may be partly or fully refunded depending on the results of the recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

All polls in Indiana close at 6 p.m. local time. Polls in most of the state are in the Eastern time zone and close at 6 p.m. ET, but some polls are in Central time and close at 7 p.m. ET. State Senate District 1 is the only Trump-targeted seat where polls close at 7 p.m. ET. The last polls in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 8th Congressional Districts also close at 7 p.m. ET.

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for the U.S. House, the state Senate and the state House. Republican incumbents face Trump-backed challengers in state Senate Districts 1, 11, 19, 21, 23, 38 and 41.

Indiana does not register voters by party, so registered voters are asked to select the primary ballot for the party of their choice. Voter ID is required. An unusual provision in state law requires voters in a party’s primary to have voted for a majority of that party’s candidates in the last general election or plan to do so in the next general election if they didn’t vote in the last election. This is essentially unenforceable, but voters whose party affiliations are challenged at the polls must vote by provisional ballot unless they sign an affidavit aligning themselves with the party.

There were about 4.8 million registered voters in Indiana as of the November 2024 general election. Registration totals in the state’s nine congressional districts ranged from about 442,000 in District 7 to about 505,000 in District 5.

Most of the targeted state Senate races did not have a contested primary in 2022, but those that had a contested general election ranged from about 32,000 to 45,000 total votes.

About 34,000 votes were cast in the 7th Congressional District Democratic primary in 2024, the most of any district. That was about 8% of registered voters. About 25,000 votes were cast in the Republican primary.

About 29% of the 2024 primary vote was cast before Election Day.

As of Friday, more than 175,000 ballots had already been cast in the Democratic and Republican primaries combined.

Absentee ballots in Indiana may be processed once they are received, and counting may begin before the polls close on Election Day. This leads to relatively quick counting of absentee ballots. Elections officials from more than three-quarters of Indiana’s 92 counties have indicated they tend to include all or nearly all the results of absentee and early voting in their first vote update of the night.

In 2024, the AP first reported results in the Republican presidential primary at 6:06 p.m. ET, or six minutes after polls closed in most of the state. The last vote update of the night was at 11:34 p.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

The last election night vote update for each congressional district with a contested primary was much earlier. The earliest was 9:10 p.m. ET in the 5th Congressional District, and the latest was 11:34 p.m. ET in the 1st District. The last vote update of the night in the 7th District Democratic primary was at 10:04 p.m. ET.

The first vote result in the state Senate District 23 primary was at 6:59 p.m. ET, almost an hour after polls closed in the district. The last update was at 11:11 p.m. ET, with more than 99% of the total votes counted.

As of Tuesday, there will be 182 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

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WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint on Monday against Minnesota over its regulation of global greenhouse gas emissions, the latest in a series of federal actions in the state that have included a fraud probe and immigration raids.

The department alleges in its complaint that Minnesota is trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by suing energy companies in state court.

“President Trump promised to unleash American energy dominance, and Minnesota officials cannot undermine his directive by mandating that their woke climate preferences become the uniform policy of our nation,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement announcing the filing.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Trump declared a national energy emergency on the first day of his second term as president, issuing an executive order to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.”

Minnesota has been a target of the Trump administration. Last week, U.S. agents searched more than 20 locations in Minnesota as investigations into fraud in social-welfare programs continued.

The Trump administration also sent thousands of federal agents into the state earlier this year in an immigration crackdown and has sought records from Minnesota’s governor and attorney general as part of an investigation into interference with immigration enforcement.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Katharine Jackson)

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By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is aiming for quick wins on new health initiatives to help Republicans in November’s midterm elections, after the White House asked him to pivot from a widely criticized campaign to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy, senior administration officials told Reuters.

New efforts announced in the past few weeks were designed to appeal to Trump’s voter base, from an executive order bolstering research into psychedelics to approving a new gene therapy for children with a rare type of hearing loss, and the administration is looking for more.

Trump is keen to stress prescription drug price cuts negotiated by his appointees, while the health secretary and his team plan a slate of food policy initiatives and are exploring whether they can quickly approve other treatments for childhood disease, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. It is not yet clear which of the possible moves under discussion will be chosen by the administration, they said.

Many of the details about efforts to align Kennedy’s strategy with the White House’s priorities for the midterms are reported here for the first time, based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior administration officials and outside advisers. The changes follow months of friction between the two camps over personnel and policies. 

The stakes are high for Trump’s Republican party, which risks losing control of both chambers of Congress, polls show. Kennedy’s past moves, such as removing vaccines from the recommended U.S. childhood immunization schedule, are among the policies that could hurt the party’s candidates.  As a result, the White House has insisted that he take no more steps against vaccines this year, ahead of the vote, four senior administration officials said. 

At the same time, the White House views Kennedy’s celebrity status and appeal to Americans who may not otherwise vote for Republicans as an asset, according to three of the senior officials. The health secretary will join the campaign in competitive congressional districts over the next few months, they said.

Kennedy has “a good grasp” on the politics ahead of the elections, one senior administration official said. The health secretary can see a long list of policy options “that don’t cause consternation” between the health department and the White House.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, warned that it remained to be seen if voters would put aside their views of Kennedy after he spent years sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, contrary to scientific evidence.

“The vast majority of Americans view effective vaccines as one of the great miracles of modern medicine. An anti-vaccine message is political poison,” Ayres said. 

Kennedy “is trying to be a team player, but he is so widely associated with an anti-vaccine message that I don’t know that he can effectively pivot away from that,” he said.

In response to Reuters questions, Health and Human Services Department spokesman Andrew Nixon said that Kennedy “remains focused on the priorities Americans consistently say matter most to them, including chronic disease prevention, food quality, and affordable health care.” 

White House spokesman Kush Desai described Kennedy as “an invaluable asset for President Trump since Day One.” Neither official commented on vaccine policies or the strategy ahead of the midterms. 

RED HAT, GREEN HAT

Kennedy plays a unique role in Trump’s orbit. He is the only cabinet secretary with an agenda distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the president’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, according to Republican strategists and administration officials.

Several administration officials described that tension as a “red hat-green hat” divide. A so-called “red hat” staffer — referencing Trump’s cherry red Make America Great Again hats — signals loyalty to the president’s political agenda. A “green hat” staffer connotes allegiance and often fandom of Kennedy, whose “Make America Healthy Again” presidential campaign slogan was emblazoned on spruce green hats.

When Kennedy dropped out of the 2024 race to support Trump, his political base — a coalition of vaccine skeptics and opponents of pesticides and processed foods — was viewed by some Trump allies as a boost to the president’s re-election prospects. The health secretary received wide latitude to carry out his policies in the first year of the new administration. 

The MAHA “green hats” cheered when Kennedy replaced a federal advisory board on immunization with new members who shared his views on vaccines. His appointees limited eligibility for COVID vaccines, dropped a universal recommendation for hepatitis B shots and promoted the view, not backed by science, that Tylenol taken by pregnant women may contribute to autism in their children.

But the White House eventually grew concerned about the potential political consequences, the current and former officials said.

In December, new survey results published by Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who works with Trump, showed strong bipartisan support for routine childhood vaccines, even among some of the MAHA voters who view Kennedy as their standard-bearer. 

A Republican or Democratic candidate who opposed existing childhood vaccine recommendations would “pay a price in the election,” Fabrizio wrote in a published memo, concluding that “vaccine skepticism is bad politics.”

At the time, Kennedy and his top deputies were preparing to remove more vaccines from the recommended U.S. schedule, according to three people familiar with the discussions. Kennedy made the case to the White House to move forward, arguing that he needed to keep MAHA supporters on board, according to four senior administration officials.

Trump advisers, worried about Fabrizio’s findings, told Kennedy that would be his last big effort on vaccines ahead of the November midterms, the four officials said. On January 5, the federal government scrapped recommendations for childhood immunizations against flu, rotavirus, meningococcal disease and hepatitis A, saying families should decide on their use with their doctors.

Public backlash was swift, including from major medical organizations that had already sued to stop Kennedy. The White House contrasted that criticism to a broadly positive response to Kennedy’s moves on nutrition, such as new dietary guidelines that recommend whole foods and protein over sugar and highly processed items, a senior administration official said.

The reaction in both the White House and health secretary’s office to the new food guidelines was “‘You know what? this is pretty cool,” the official said. “They thought, ‘Enough already with the negativity, let’s move forward with (food policy). This is where the year begins.’” 

A TURNING POINT?

Since January, the White House has taken a bigger role in staffing key positions at the health department to ensure Trump’s priorities are carried out and to avoid negative news coverage of controversial appointees and policies. Last week, Trump nominated a new surgeon general who has supported vaccines after it became clear that Kennedy ally Casey Means, a wellness influencer and non-practicing doctor, would not be confirmed by the Senate. 

It has not all been smooth sailing. Top White House advisers sought to remove Kennedy’s chief of staff and longtime adviser, Stefanie Spear, and place her elsewhere in the administration, leading to a fight between the teams. In a White House confrontation — in which Trump was not present — Kennedy refused, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Spear remains a top adviser to the secretary, but her standing has been diminished, two senior administration officials said. Trump officials elevated Chris Klomp, former head of the U.S. Medicare program, in February to help enforce the president’s priorities at the agency as Kennedy’s No. 2. The change, at the behest of Trump officials to help bring order to the health department, has improved the working relationship with the White House, four officials said. Spear and Klomp did not respond to requests for comment.

Klomp has played a key role advancing more conventional health appointees, such as Erica Schwartz, the former deputy surgeon general tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three officials said.

A handful of close advisers to Kennedy helped convince him that Schwartz would not undermine his earlier work on vaccines, and White House advisers made clear they supported her nomination, one of the officials said.

Kennedy and his team have also aimed for greater cohesion with the White House in recent weeks as they put the finishing touches on new announcements unrelated to vaccines, four senior officials said, while warning it was too early to say whether core differences between MAHA and MAGA will create new tensions in the future.

(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Bo Erickson; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Frank Jack Daniel)

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Trump gave few details about what could be a sweeping attempt to help hundreds of vessels and some 20,000 seafarers. Iran quickly denounced the move as a ceasefire violation.

“Project Freedom” would begin on Monday morning in the Middle East, Trump said, adding that his representatives are having discussions with Iran that could lead to something “very positive for all.”

U.S. Central Command said the initiative would involve guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft and 15,000 service members. The Pentagon did not immediately answer questions about how they would be deployed.

Iran’s effective closure of the strait, imposed after the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, has shaken global markets.

“They are victims of circumstance,” Trump wrote, and described the effort as a humanitarian gesture “on behalf of the United States, Middle Eastern Countries but, in particular, the Country of Iran.” But he sounded a warning: “If, in any way, this Humanitarian process is interfered with, that interference will, unfortunately, have to be dealt with forcefully.”

Earlier Sunday, a cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz said it was attacked by multiple small craft, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported, while another ship was hit by “unknown projectiles.” They were the latest in at least two dozen attacks in and around the strait since the Iran war began, and a reminder of the risks if the new U.S. effort goes forward.

No injuries were reported.

They were the first reported attacks in the area since April 22. Tehran has effectively closed the strait by attacking and threatening ships, and the threat level in the area remains critical.

Iran denied an attack, the semiofficial Iranian outlets Fars and Tabnak reported, and said a passing ship had been stopped for a documents check as part of monitoring.

The second ship was a tanker that reported being struck around 11:40 p.m. Sunday while off Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

The British military monitor also said Sunday that ships near Ras al-Khaimah, the northernmost emirate in the United Arab Emirates and close to the strait, reported receiving radio warnings to move from anchorages. It was not clear who sent the VHF messages.

Tehran is reviewing the U.S. response to its latest proposal to end the war, Iran’s judiciary Mizan news agency cited Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei as saying.

Iran’s proposal wants other issues resolved within 30 days and aims to end the war rather than extend the ceasefire, according to Iran’s state-linked media. Trump on Saturday said he was reviewing the proposal but expressed doubt it would lead to a deal.

Iran’s 14-point proposal calls for the U.S. lifting sanctions on Iran, ending the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, withdrawing forces from the region and ceasing all hostilities, including Israel’s operations in Lebanon, according to the semiofficial Nour News and Tasnim agencies, which have close ties to Iran’s security organizations.

Pakistan’s prime minister, foreign minister and army chief continue to encourage the U.S. and Iran to speak directly, according to two officials in Pakistan who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Pakistan hosted face-to-face talks last month and has passed messages between the two sides.

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Willie Simon stood outside the Memphis motel where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, now a museum dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement.

Days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Simon feared what the decision would mean not just for Black Americans like himself but an entire country where the political guardrails seem to be coming apart.

Simon, who leads the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, said the court’s conservative majority set a precedent that if you’re “not in the in-crowd group, they can just erase us.”

By weakening a requirement that states draw congressional districts in a way that gives minorities an opportunity to control their own fate, the court escalated the nationwide redistricting war that has seen Democrats and Republicans casting aside decades of tradition in hopes of gaining an edge over the competition. New sessions are scheduled to begin this week in two Republican-controlled states to eliminate U.S. House districts represented by Democrats, and there’s more on the horizon.

It’s the latest example of how the American democratic experiment has been pushed to the breaking point in the decade since Donald Trump rose to power. Extreme rhetoric has become commonplace. There’s been a spike in political violence and a rash of assassinations. Five years after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump’s allies are trying to harness the same falsehoods about voter fraud to reshape elections.

The rules and norms that once helped smooth over an unruly country’s vast differences have given way to a race for power at all costs.

“I’ve never subscribed to the idea we’re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “It speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.”

Trump ignited the conflict over redistricting last year by urging Republicans to redraw congressional maps to reduce the likelihood that his party loses the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.

It was an unusual step, since redistricting normally only takes place after the once-a-decade census to accommodate population shifts. But in 2019 the Supreme Court ruled federal courts cannot prevent partisan gerrymandering, and Trump saw a chance to push the limits.

Once Republican-led states like Texas started shifting district lines, Democratic-led states like California countered. The fight was heading for a draw until the Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued its long-awaited decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

The court weakened the last remaining national impediment to gerrymandering — the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that, in places where white people and outnumbered racial minorities vote differently, districts be drawn to give those minorities a chance to elect representatives they prefer.

The ruling opened a new set of political floodgates.

Republicans in Tennessee plan to erase the only Democratic congressional district, which is majority Black and centered in Memphis, by splitting it up among more conservative suburban and rural white communities. More than a dozen other majority-minority districts, mainly in the South, could face the same fate.

Louisiana moved to postpone its congressional primaries, set for May 16, to have a chance to redraw two majority-Black Democratic seats it was required to maintain before the recent ruling. Alabama is trying to get the Supreme Court to let it redraw its two majority-Black seats.

“We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. “That is more important than administrative convenience.”

He said Republicans could gain 20 seats through redistricting.

Democrats have threatened to retaliate by splitting up conservative bastions in states like New York and Illinois, which would reallocate Republican voters to more liberal, urban districts.

With fewer limits — either legal or self-imposed — people expect the issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage out of legislative maps.

“It’s hard to know where it ends,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA.

Partisans gleefully shared color-coded maps of California with all 54 House seats drawn for Democrats, or southern states with only a couple of blue districts. Most agreed that eventually it will be very hard for Democrats to get elected to the House in any Republican-run state, even if there are large swaths of blue-leaning terrain, and vice versa for Republicans in Democratic-run states.

That seems un-American, said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon who’s redrawn maps on behalf of judges reviewing redistricting litigation. The country’s system, he said, “was founded on this idea that it’s majority rule with minority rights.”

“There is no more rule of law in redistricting,” Cervas said. “There have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don’t really have elections.”

The arcane art of drawing legislative lines is the most powerful tool that politicians have for gaming elections. They can make districts an almost guaranteed win for their side by drawing lines that scoop up a majority of their voters and just enough of the opposition’s supporters to ensure the other party cannot win that seat or the one next door, either.

Lawmakers have used the trick since the country’s founding. Democratic gerrymanders helped the party hold onto the House through the Reagan revolution. After the 2010 midterms, Republican majorities in state legislatures allowed the GOP to draw districts to lock up control of the House even during President Barack Obama’s reelection two years later.

However, that didn’t prevent the “blue wave” in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when Democrats retook the House. It was a reminder that even the most partisan gerrymanders may stifle shifts in public opinion but eventually crack as political tides turn.

“When you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you can end up shooting yourself in the foot,” said Michael Li of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

Political coalitions also change, and voters that a party thinks will be reliable can switch sides. That’s what’s happened in the Trump era, as Democrats have expanded their support among wealthier and suburban voters and Republicans among Blacks and Latinos.

Although Republicans won’t be able to exploit the full force of the Supreme Court ruling until after the November midterms, it will be challenging for Democrats to find enough seats to counter those gains.

Sean Trende, a political analyst who has drawn maps for Republicans, agreed that the court decision is likely to lead to partisan gerrymandering run amok. He said it’s been hard to find neutral arbiters to rein in politicians who draw lines to benefit themselves.

The coming storm, Trende said, will be more of a symptom of polarization than its root cause.

“All our institutions are broken. We don’t speak a common political language,” Trende said. “This is what you get.”

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