Politics

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Republican governors in Alabama and Tennessee have summoned lawmakers into special sessions this week seeking new congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has called legislators back to Montgomery starting Monday to approve contingency plans for special primary elections in hopes that the Supreme Court will allow the state to switch congressional maps ahead of the November midterms. It’s a move that Republicans legislative leaders said would “give our state a fighting chance to send seven Republican members to Congress.” The seven-member delegation currently has two Democrats.

In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee also announced a special session starting Tuesday for the GOP-controlled Legislature to break up the state’s one Democratic-held House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis.

The Supreme Court decision striking down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana said the drawing of the district map relied too much on race. The ruling began reverberating through statehouses across the South as Republicans eyed the possibility of getting new lines in place for the 2026 midterm elections, or at least 2028.

President Donald Trump encouraged the latest round of redistricting in a post on social media on Sunday, saying his party could gain 20 seats in the House.

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

Florida approved new districts the day of the Supreme Court ruling, and Louisiana moved quickly to postpone its May 16 congressional primary, drawing lawsuits from Democrats and civil rights groups. The state’s Republican leadership started planning for a redraw that could eliminate one or both of its congressional districts now represented by a Black lawmaker. South Carolina’s governor suggested his state might also reconsider its congressional map.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, described the court decision and the redistricting scramble as an attempt to roll back the Civil Rights Movement.

“They said we’re going to allow partisan politicians to gerrymander you, so that even when you show up, your voice won’t have as much impact because we’ll play with the lines,” he said Sunday from the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor. “That isn’t a new method. That’s an old method. That’s a Jim Crow method.”

The Supreme Court ruling boosted an already intense national redistricting battle by providing Republican officials in some states potential new grounds to redraw voting districts.

Federal judges previously ordered Alabama to use a court-selected map with a second district with a substantial number of Black voters. The judges also ordered Alabama to use the new map until after the 2030 Census. Alabama is appealing that decision and is hoping the court, in light of the Louisiana ruling, will let Alabama revert to a 2023 map drawn by state lawmakers.

“As I continue saying, Alabama knows our state, our people and our districts best,” Ivey said.

Tennessee’s move comes after a pressure campaign by Trump and other Republicans to reconfigure the state’s 9th Congressional District. Republicans have always been checkmated by the Voting Rights Act in their desire to spread the district’s Democratic voters around neighboring conservative districts and make it winnable, but the law may no longer be an impediment.

“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Lee said Friday. The move was encouraged by Trump, who wrote on social media Thursday that Lee had promised to work hard to give Republicans one extra seat.

The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6. Democrats noted that in 2022 the state Supreme Court checked additional redistricting because it was too close to an election. They argued that the court is their best hope this time around too.

“We cannot keep doing things like this and calling ourselves a democracy,” Democratic State Sen. Ramesh Akbari said at a news conference outside the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

Alabama Democrats also sharply criticized the decision to try to change the maps ahead of looming elections.

“This special session is a blatant power grab by Republican leadership in Montgomery to eliminate seats held by Black Democrats,” said former Sen. Doug Jones, a Democratic candidate for Alabama governor.

Louisiana has suspended its May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts, though that is being challenged in court.

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, then other states joined the battle. Lawmakers, commissions or courts have adopted new House districts in eight states.

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Associated Press writers Jeff Amy, Bill Barrow, Jack Brook, Nicholas Riccardi and David A. Lieb contributed to this report.

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May 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed unease on Sunday concerning the continuing leaks of internal deliberations at the nation’s highest judicial body, citing the need for the nine justices to be able to engage in “candid conversations.” 

Gorsuch, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, made his comments in the aftermath of publication by the New York Times last month of leaked memos related to a Supreme Court action in 2016 blocking Democratic President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. It was the latest in a number of leaks involving the court in recent years.

“We want some transparency, but we also have to leave room for candid conversations and deliberations with one another,” Gorsuch, appointed to the court in 2017 by Republican President Donald Trump, said on the “Fox News Sunday” program.

Gorsuch pointed to the availability of live audio of the court’s oral arguments as an example of transparency.

“But do we need time to actually talk quietly with one another, to find those places where we can reach agreement? Yeah, we do,” Gorsuch said. 

The court has dramatically increased the use of its so-called emergency docket – also called the “shadow” docket – handing Trump repeated wins since he returned to office last year that allowed him to pursue aggressive and sometimes novel uses of executive authority while challenges played out in lower courts. This emergency docket power was the subject of the leaked memos published in the New York Times.

The most prominent leak occurred in 2022 when the news outlet Politico published a draft of the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark that had legalized abortion nationwide weeks before the decision was formally issued. 

Asked whether leaks impact the court’s role or the public’s confidence in it as an institution, Gorsuch said the public can listen to arguments and read the court’s opinions. 

“Everything that I think about a case is there, on the printed page for anybody to read if they so choose,” Gorsuch said. 

Though the court typically issues full opinions in its regular cases after hearing arguments and deliberating for months, its emergency decisions frequently are delivered quickly with little or no reasoning provided.

Gorsuch made his comments while promoting his new children’s book, “Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence,” which goes on sale on Tuesday. 

The book coincides with U.S. celebrations of the 250th anniversary of its independence from Britain in July. 

Gorsuch and the other conservative justices continue to move American law sharply to the right. Last week, Gorsuch joined the other conservative justices in gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act – making it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the pivotal civil rights law.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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By Michael S. Derby

May 3 (Reuters) – The prosecutor who dropped the criminal investigation launched by President Donald Trump’s administration into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Sunday if a Fed internal watchdog probe into cost overruns in the central bank’s headquarters renovations finds no wrongdoing that would end the matter.

Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Washington, launched the criminal investigation into Powell in January and dropped it last month after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the Justice Department’s subpoenas issued in the inquiry. 

Pirro, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday, said of the Fed Office of Inspector General’s examination of the renovations in Washington: “If there’s something there, great – and if there isn’t, I’ll go home.”

Powell, a frequent target of Trump’s ire, had denounced the criminal investigation as a threat to the Fed’s independence. Boasberg concluded that prosecutors had improperly issued the subpoenas, saying a “mountain of evidence” suggested that the investigation – as Powell has argued – was intended to pressure him to rapidly lower interest rates or resign as chair.

When she dropped the criminal probe, Pirro said she instead asked the Inspector General to examine the cost overruns. The Inspector General had already been examining the project after Powell requested a review last year.

“The only way to find out what happened is through the Inspector General,” Pirro said.

That said, Pirro also said that “we continue to litigate the issue, and we will litigate the issue” and “we’re going to make a motion to vacate the order” by Boasberg in order to defend what she sees as a precedent about investigations.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

Since his return to the presidency in January 2025, Trump has routinely pushed the central bank to lower interest rates more quickly and more deeply than it has done, despite persistent inflation.

The criminal investigation had put in jeopardy Senate confirmation of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to replace Powell when his leadership term ends on May 15. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a critic of the probe, had held up Warsh’s confirmation until the investigation was ended. 

Pirro’s termination of the probe and deferral to the Inspector General has now allowed Warsh’s nomination to move forward, with confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate appearing almost certain.

Also speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Tillis welcomed Pirro’s comments and said her decision to hold off on further action while the internal watchdog does its work is “the way this process is supposed to work.”

If the Inspector General finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Tillis said, “then we’ll talk about it. But I think this is a nice way of just ramping it down.” 

Tillis also said that “at the end of the day, there was no crime committed – and prosecutors that I’ve spoken with all agree.”

At last Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Powell said he would stay on as a Fed governor after the end of his chair term.

“I’m encouraged by recent developments, and I’m watching the remaining steps in ​this process carefully,” Powell said.

(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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By Ismail Shakil

May 2 (Reuters) – Pharmaceutical company Danco Laboratories filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday seeking a stay of an appeals court ruling that temporarily blocks the abortion drug mifepristone from being dispensed through the mail.

The appeals court ruling was issued unanimously by a conservative three-judge panel on Friday, significantly curtailing access to the drug nationwide and particularly in states that have banned abortion.

The temporary decision was made in a case brought by Republican-led state of Louisiana claiming the FDA in adopting a 2023 rule – which allows mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail – had ignored the risks of serious adverse events posed by the drug, including sepsis and hemorrhaging. The panel ruled that Louisiana was likely to prevail in its challenge.

Danco, in its Supreme Court application, said the ruling “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions—and it forces Danco, FDA, certified Mifeprex providers, patients, and pharmacies all to guess at what is allowed and what is not.”

While that ruling is temporary, it is the first to significantly curtail access to mifepristone in a series of lawsuits challenging the drug’s initial approval in 2000 and subsequent rules making it easier to obtain. The 2023 U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation removed a requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person.

In states where abortion is legal and doctors are permitted to prescribe drugs via telehealth, fewer than 2% of prescriptions for abortion drugs are filled in person, according to research from the University of Southern California.

Drug companies GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories have intervened in Louisiana’s lawsuit to defend the FDA regulation. The brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, is Danco’s only product.

The Supreme Court in 2024 took up a challenge to the mail-order rule by medical ​groups and doctors, but ruled that they lacked legal standing ​to sue. Missouri, Kansas and Idaho have taken over ⁠that case, which is pending.

U.S. District Judge David Joseph in an April 7 decision had paused Louisiana’s lawsuit pending a review by President Donald Trump’s administration of the safety of mifepristone, which, according to media reports, has been delayed until after the November midterm elections.

The judge denied Louisiana’s request to block the 2023 rule but agreed with ​the state that it was likely unlawful, indicating he would rule that way when the case resumes.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Tom Hals, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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May 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on Sunday that the government has evidence that a federal agent was shot by the suspect in custody during an alleged attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last weekend.

“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

“It is definitively his bullet,” Pirro said.

Cole Tomas Allen is accused of storming a security checkpoint and firing a shotgun in the foyer leading to the White ​House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25. Allen is charged with attempted ⁠assassination, ​discharging a firearm during a crime ​of violence and illegally transporting guns and ammunition across state lines. He has not yet entered a plea.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Sunday there could be more charges filed as the investigation continues.

“I expect in the next week or so, there will be more information coming out. Obviously, assuming the investigation moves forward, there will be an indictment forthcoming. And all that is typical of what happens,” Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

(Reporting by Michael S. Derby and Doina Chiacu; editing by Scott Malone and Nia Williams)

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By Jan Wolfe

May 3 (Reuters) – Clarence Thomas this week will reach a major milestone on the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the second-longest-serving justice in American history. Along the way, the stalwart conservative has played an important role in guiding the court on a rightward course, even if he has not gotten everything he has advocated.

Thomas, who is 77, has served since October 1991, having been appointed at age 43 by Republican President George H.W. Bush to replace liberal luminary and civil-rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall on the top U.S. judicial body. Marshall was the first Black member of the court. Thomas, after a contentious Senate confirmation battle, became the second.

Thomas on Monday will overtake Justice Stephen J. Field, who served from 1863 to 1897, for the court’s third-longest tenure, according to the Supreme Court Historical Society. Thomas on Thursday will leapfrog his late former colleague Justice John Paul Stevens, who served from 1975 to 2010, for the second-longest tenure, the society said.

If Thomas remains until May 20, 2028, he would set the court’s longevity record, passing Justice William O. Douglas, who served from 1939 to 1975, the society said.

PROFOUNDLY INFLUENTIAL

Thomas has left his mark on the Supreme Court, even as his role has evolved over the years.

“He began his time on the court often in dissent, and he stood his ground,” said Haley Proctor, a University of Notre Dame law professor who previously served as a clerk for Thomas.

“The justice’s influence on the law has been profound,” Proctor said. “And that is a consequence, not only of his many years on the court, but also of his persistence.”

Thomas has helped the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, in place since 2020, to act assertively. On back-to-back days in June 2022, he was the author of a landmark ruling expanding gun rights protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment and joined other conservative justices in overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide.

Thomas also has championed an expansive view of religious liberty, opposed gay marriage, fought affirmative action preferences for minorities in university admissions and hiring, supported the death penalty and broad presidential powers, and curbed campaign-finance restrictions.

“Justice Thomas is the most radically conservative justice to serve on the Supreme Court in modern times,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I say this because in addition to being conservative he has taken positions that would dramatically change the law that the court never has accepted.” 

Chemerinsky noted, among other things, that Thomas favors overturning Supreme Court precedents that have blocked laws against contraceptives and gay sex. Chemerinsky also pointed to the justice’s desire to end key protections for freedom of the press and his criticism of the court’s precedent that required states to provide defense lawyers to criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire one. 

“In some areas, he succeeded in changing the law, such as the Second Amendment, overruling Roe v. Wade and ending affirmative action,” Chemerinsky said. “But in most places his calls for a radical change in a conservative direction have not gained support from a majority of the court.”

Thomas and the other conservative justices have let Republican President Donald Trump implement a series of policies impeded by lower courts that faulted their legality. When the court handed Trump a rare setback in February by rejecting his sweeping global tariffs, Thomas was one of three conservative justices who dissented, and the president lavished praise on him.

A SENSE OF LOYALTY

Ken Masugi, a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute think tank, said Thomas engenders a sense of loyalty in those who work with him, especially his former law clerks, several of whom have since become federal judges. Before his Supreme Court tenure, Thomas hired Masugi as an advisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC.

“One notices that his clerks are incredibly loyal to him, even the ones who disagree with him,” Masugi said. “That’s proof of the influence he has on the people within the court.”

Thomas was serving as a federal appellate judge when Bush nominated him to a lifetime job on the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed Thomas on a 52-48 vote after a confirmation battle during which he was accused of sexual harassment by a law professor named Anita Hill, a former subordinate of his at the EEOC. Thomas denied the allegation.

Future President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings that Thomas denounced as “a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks.” Thomas told the senators: “It is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order … you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

Thomas continues to be blunt in public remarks. On April 15 at the University of Texas, Thomas called progressivism a political philosophy that poses an existential threat to the United States and its 18th-century founding principles.

Thomas said progressivism “seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”

American University law professor Stephen Wermiel said, “I understand that he’s a very gregarious guy and that people at the court like him, but he does often come across as sort of an angry, bitter justice. There are times when you feel like he’s still not over the Anita Hill episode, and still has a kind of simmering anger about that.”

‘BAD PRECEDENTS’

Bush’s other Supreme Court appointee, Justice David Souter, surprised conservatives by evolving into a reliable member of its liberal wing. Thomas, on the other hand, became a darling of conservatives, even if his contributions sometimes were overshadowed by his contemporary conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.

In 1992, his first full year on the court, Thomas joined a dissent arguing that abortion access should be decided on the state level, and that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. It was the first of many times Thomas showed no reservations about overturning major precedents.

In 1995, Thomas wrote a concurring opinion denouncing affirmative action programs, saying they foster a belief that racial minorities cannot compete without help.

Now, decades later, these positions have been enshrined in Supreme Court precedent. 

“If Thomas believes there were bad precedents set in the past, he doesn’t feel any fidelity to them,” said Ralph Rossum, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who wrote a book on Thomas.

And Thomas has abandoned one of his idiosyncrasies. For his first nearly three decades on the court, he rarely posed questions during oral arguments in cases. That changed when the court began hearing arguments by teleconference in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, and he has been a regular questioner since. 

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR THOMAS?

Thomas, who turns 78 on June 23, has given no indication of planning to retire. Trump, who would get to make a fourth appointment to the court if any vacancy arises, has said he hopes Thomas and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito, 76, stay on the bench.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that becoming the longest-serving justice is not of some importance to him,” Wermiel said.

Thomas in the past has hinted at a lengthy tenure. During a 2019 talk at Pepperdine University in California, Thomas was asked what he might say at his retirement party in 20 years’ time.

“But I’m not retiring,” Thomas told the interviewer, who queried: “Not in 20 years?”

“No,” replied Thomas.

“Not in 30 years?” the interviewer persisted.

“No,” Thomas replied.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Dr. Amy Acton, a Democrat running unopposed in her party’s primary for Ohio governor, faces some steep challenges in the coming general election.

She is trying to be the first Democrat in 20 years to win the office in a state that has become dominated by Republicans. Her presumed opponent, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, has national name recognition and a personal fortune that he is plowing into his campaign.

But Acton’s most formidable obstacle may be a ghost from her recent past: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acton, a physician, was Ohio’s public health director when the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020, causing a wave of deaths, anxiety and social disruption. As the government took aggressive action to combat it, Acton became a household name throughout Ohio.

Six years later, the orders Acton signed at the urging of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to battle the virus — closing schools, shuttering businesses, restricting sporting events and suspending voting in the 2020 primary — are drawing fresh attention as she runs for the state’s top office and have become a central line of criticism from Republicans.

During campaign rallies, Ramaswamy has accused Acton of spreading dangerous “COVID ideology.” Her campaign said it does not think voters will buy it.

“Dr. Acton is proud of the work she did alongside Governor DeWine to put public health over politics, save lives and keep Ohioans safe,” her campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that Vivek Ramaswamy wants to play politics on this issue.”

Wearing a white medical coat, Acton was a fixture at daily COVID-19 briefings with DeWine that were highly anticipated events watched in households across the state. Day after day, she calmly explained the virus’ trajectory, the grim march of hospitalizations and deaths, and reassuringly provided tips on how Ohioans should handle themselves.

“Ohio, don the mask, don your cape,” Acton said at the time, asking ordinary people to act like superheroes.

In Ohio and elsewhere, the social trauma from the pandemic has yet to fully heal. It has changed how millions of people in the United States view vaccines, how deeply government should interfere in daily life and even whether people can trust government health officers.

The below-the-surface skepticism, which continues even as concerns over contracting the virus have faded, has emerged as an unusual storyline in the race for governor.

Ramaswamy, the front-running Republican, is airing ads capitalizing on lingering anger over the election order that Acton issued for DeWine. At Republican events around the state, mention of Acton’s name elicits loud boos.

“Are we choosing freedom or are we choosing Fauci?” asked Zac Haines, a Republican campaigning for the state Senate, in a reference to former national infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as the candidate warmed up a recent Ramaswamy fundraising crowd. “Are we choosing liberty or are we choosing lockdowns?”

At Democratic events, Acton carries the air of the cult hero who, back in 2020, inspired a Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club with its own yard signs, a bobblehead doll and a proposal to honor her with a state holiday.

Campaigning this year, she seems to tread cautiously when discussing her time as Ohio’s health chief, sometimes avoiding use of the words COVID-19 or coronavirus.

“I had the honor and the privilege, the privilege, of serving in a very tough moment,” she told a Democratic crowd in southwest Ohio in March. “I’m proud of Ohioans, because together we flattened that curve, we saved a lot of lives.”

Ohio ranked 22nd among the states in its per capita death rate from the virus during the pandemic’s first year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acton, who left the job halfway through 2020, does not dwell on what happened after the government imposed restrictions: the mutiny against DeWine over business closures and health mandates, the legislation by Republicans to limit the governor’s powers and the protesters, some of them armed, outside her house.

At a recent States Forum symposium in Columbus, where people from across the political spectrum were brought together to try to find common ground within the “ Make America Healthy Again” movement, Acton said she had worked for or advised five different governors.

“So I’ll work with anyone who wants to solve a problem rather than make one,” she said, “which is what Ohioans are longing for.”

While he has endorsed Ramaswamy, DeWine denounced the campaign’s ad against Acton for suspending the 2020 primary.

“I told her to issue the health order,” the governor said. “The decision was mine.”

Ramaswamy and another prominent Republican running in this year’s midterm elections have their own ties to Ohio’s pandemic response.

As CEO of Roivant Sciences, the biotechnology research company he founded in 2014, Ramaswamy “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19” during 2020, he wrote in a 2021 op-ed. The lieutenant governor at the time, Republican Jon Husted, is now a U.S. senator running for reelection. He was a regular participant alongside Acton and DeWine at Ohio’s daily virus briefings.

A Roivant subsidiary, Genevant Sciences, also played a “fundamental role” in the global pandemic response, according to a March news release. The statement announced a $2.2 billion settlement with Moderna over its unauthorized use of Genevant’s and Arbutus Biopharma’s patents in its COVID vaccines.

During the pandemic, Ramaswamy, whose wife is a physician, supported vaccines. He received one himself and advocated mask-wearing, although he said he never supported governments mandating either.

One of Ramaswamy’s companies, Datavant, even pushed for a national COVID registry that would be used to allow the small segment of the population that was gradually gaining natural COVID-19 immunity to “get back to normal life” while facilitating the rest continuing to be “segregated.”

Yet since he entered politics for the 2024 presidential race, Ramaswamy has taken steps to distance himself from those days. In early 2023, he stepped down from the Roivant board and paid an editor to scrub a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team” from his Wikipedia page. He called it a simple correction, saying the panel never met.

His campaign referred questions about his time at Roivant to the company, which did not respond to an email seeking comment.

In an interview, Ramaswamy said both his support for a COVID registry and his talks with Husted involved “getting the economy going again.” While calling his position on the virus “nuanced,” he said he intends to hold Acton accountable for the decisions to shutter Ohio businesses and schools and to suspend voting in the 2020 primary, which eventually was conducted by mail balloting.

“As a decision maker, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of your actions,” he said. “You can’t be unmoored from the data.”

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BOSTON, May 2 (Reuters) – Attorneys for the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at a black-tie press gala last weekend asked a judge on Saturday to remove him from suicide precautions while in jail in Washington.

Cole Tomas Allen allegedly stormed a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25.

When he was initially booked into the jail facility on April 27, Allen was assigned a “safe cell,” described as a padded room with 24-hour lockdown procedures and a requirement to wear “a vest akin to a strait jacket,” according to a filing by his lawyers in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.    

He was then downgraded to “suicide precautions,” which means Allen could still not make phone calls, receive visits from anyone aside from his legal team, or spend time outside his cell except for legal visits or showers, with an escort, the filing states. A nurse on Friday recommended those precautions be ended, but they remained in place as of a visit by one of his public defense lawyers that day, the filing states.

Allen’s status “amounts to punishment” and denies him resources such as the use of a jail tablet, “which would permit him to communicate with loved ones outside of the jail,” the filing states.

Allen is charged with attempted assassination, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence and illegally transporting guns and ammunition across state lines. He has not yet entered a plea.

(Reporting by Ross KerberEditing by Rod Nickel)

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Republicans have eliminated an elected position days before an exoneree who overwhelmingly won the New Orleans-based clerk seat was set to take office.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry quietly signed legislation abolishing the longstanding Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court position into law Thursday, according to Louisiana Secretary of State spokesperson Trey Williams.

Republicans say wiping away the office is a consolidation effort meant to make the local judicial system more efficient and cut costs. But Democrats describe the change as government overreach — arguing that it infringes on a predominately Black parish’s decision at the polls.

Calvin Duncan, who spent nearly 30 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, easily won election to the criminal court clerk position in November, beating the incumbent and earning more than two-thirds of the vote. He had been set to take office next Monday and has asked a federal judge to allow him to take office as scheduled.

“It’s a sad thing to see the state government repeating what happened to Black public officials during Reconstruction,” Duncan said. “They will do what they do, and I will do whatever I have to do to vindicate the voters of New Orleans and make sure that what happened to me never happens to anybody else.”

Landry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Duncan, a Democrat whose murder conviction was vacated in 2021 after evidence emerged that police officers had lied in court, has vowed to help fix the system that once failed him.

Duncan, 63, and his supporters say he is being targeted by the most powerful Republicans in the state, including those who have denied his innocence, even though Duncan’s name is listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

“We’re doing something because powerful people don’t like him,” Rep. Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat told lawmakers during a legislative committee hearing in April. Landry, who is not related to the governor, described the Republican efforts as “atrocious” and worries what it could mean for other elected positions in the state.

Republicans say the legislation consolidates the civil and criminal court clerks’ offices in Orleans Parish, putting it in line with all other parishes in the state, which have single clerk’s office. The civil clerk position would remain and absorb the criminal clerk’s role.

Eliminating the clerk position saves the state about $27,000 and the city $233,000 according to the office of the legislative auditor, which added that the long-term costs of consolidation are “unknown.” The legislation also shifts about $1.17 million in state expenditures to the parish. The civil and criminal court of clerk have separate physical offices and different case management systems.

The governor told The Associated Press that eliminating Duncan’s elected office was about improving government efficiency and “cleaning up a system in Orleans Parish that has been plagued by dysfunction and corruption for years.”

The consolidation is part of a broader GOP effort during the ongoing legislative session to overhaul the judiciary in New Orleans — including bills that propose abolishing several other elected judicial positions in the parish. However, those jobs would be eliminated further down the line, allowing officials to serve out their terms.

The bill’s Republican author, Sen. Jay Morris, who represents a district several hours from New Orleans, said the goal was to implement the clerk consolidation before Duncan takes office, preventing him from starting a four-year term. Morris has acknowledged that he expects lawsuits to be filed because of this law but believes the change to be constitutional.

“It’s unfortunate for Mr. Duncan, I concede that,” Morris told lawmakers in April. “He seems very nice, but we don’t make policy around here for just one person.”

Although conversations have revolved around Duncan, many also raise concerns about how the change could potentially disenfranchise voters — a heightened worry in a deeply red state that has been leading efforts to gut the Voting Rights Act. Orleans Parish is a Democratic hub with a predominantly Black electorate.

“Mr. Duncan was elected by 68% of the vote in a city that’s majority African American. This is the will of the people, and what your bill attempts to do is usurp the will of the people,” Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Democrat, told Morris.

Well before the legislation ever reached the governor’s desk, Duncan said he could see the writing on the wall. Ahead of the outcome, Duncan’s advocates held a ceremonial swearing in for him. Hundreds of people gathered on the steps of the Orleans Parish criminal courthouse to support the exoneree.

Duncan told lawmakers that, along the campaign trail last year, he spoke with many people who told him they typically abstain from voting in elections: “Now, this bill tells people exactly what they had believed — that their vote doesn’t count.”

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Brook reported from New Orleans.

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By Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he had spoken with Iraqi prime minister-designate Ali al-Zaidi on Thursday, and voiced strong support for him.

“With our help, he won, and we want him to do very well. And I told him that the United States is with him all the way. It was a great victory, the new head of Iraq is somebody that we support, very strongly,” Trump told reporters before he departed the White House for a trip to Florida.

Iraq’s alliance of Shi’ite political blocs, the Coordination Framework, ​on Monday named Zaidi as ‌its nominee for the post of prime minister, a coalition statement said.

Washington is seeking to maintain close ties with Baghdad amid ongoing regional tensions and security concerns.

(Reporting By Gram Slattery and Jarrett Renshaw;By David Ljunggren)

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