Politics

OBERHOFEN, Switzerland (AP) — The billionaire British-Swedish president of skiing’s governing body is standing for re-election as a candidate from the country of Georgia.

The International Ski and Snowboard Federation on Wednesday published the list of five candidates for the June 11 election, which ended speculation about which member federation had nominated its incumbent leader Johan Eliasch.

The British snowsport federation nominated its chief executive Victoria Gosling for the FIS presidency and Swedish media reported this week its national federation would not back Eliasch, who has often been unpopular with European ski officials.

Sweden-born Eliasch, the owner of the Head sportswear brand that provides skis to many top racers including Lindsey Vonn, also is a citizen of his adopted home Britain.

He was nominated by the British federation before winning the FIS presidency in 2021, and was classed as a British candidate when he ran in the International Olympic Committee presidential election last year won by Kirsty Coventry. Eliasch has been an IOC member for two years.

FIS legal statutes require election candidates to “hold a valid passport with the nationality of their nominating member association”.

It was unclear until Wednesday where Eliasch would find his nomination and similarly unclear why he is now a candidate for Georgia.

The other candidates are Dexter Paine of the United States, Anna Harboe Falkenberg of Denmark and Alexander Ospelt of Liechtenstein.

FIS has said it will send a list of eligible candidates on May 20 to member federations, after a review by an international panel.

The election meeting in June is in Belgrade, Serbia.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – A number of U.S. lawmakers expressed concerns about a potential federal government rescue of bankrupt Spirit Airlines, with the Republican chair of the Senate Commerce Committee calling it a “terrible idea.”

“This is an absolutely terrible idea,” Senator Ted Cruz said on social media. He added that “the government doesn’t know a damn thing about running a failed budget airline.”

Reuters reported that President Donald Trump’s administration was nearing a deal to rescue low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines that could include up to $500 million in government-backed financing to help it exit bankruptcy, its second restructuring since 2025.

The package would likely be a loan to keep Spirit running during bankruptcy, which would later become a longer-term loan when the airline exits bankruptcy, with warrants giving the U.S. government a potential stake of up to 90%, the sources said.

The White House and Spirit did not immediately comment.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton said: “If Spirit’s creditors or other potential investors don’t think they can run it profitably coming out of its second bankruptcy in under two years, I doubt the U.S. Government can either. Not the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “Donald Trump’s war with Iran caused the sky-high fuel prices that finally did Spirit Airlines in.” She added: “What do the American people get out of this taxpayer bailout? Will the failed airline executives be held accountable?”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in an interview Tuesday with Reuters, expressed serious concerns about a potential bailout. “What we don’t want to do is ‌put good money after bad, and there’s been a lot of money thrown at Spirit, ‌and they haven’t found their way into profitability. And so would we just forestall the inevitable and then own that?” Duffy said. “We can’t make dumb investments.”

Duffy said it appears ⁠no one wants to buy Spirit. “What would someone buy?” Duffy asked. “If no one else wants ⁠to buy them, why would we buy them?”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Diana Novak Jones

April 22 (Reuters) – A Virginia court on Wednesday halted a new Democratic-drawn congressional map approved by voters that could flip four Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in November’s ‌midterm elections.

The court in Tazewell County said Tuesday’s referendum was invalid, blocking the state from taking any action to enact the new districts. The Republican National Committee sued to block the referendum.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said his office would appeal the ruling.

“As I said last night, Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People’s vote. We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court,” Jones said in a post on X.

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, editing by Ross Colvin)

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Three congressional candidates wagered on the outcome of their own elections on Kalshi, according to the prediction market, which said Wednesday that it fined and suspended the men from their platform for five years.

It is the latest high-profile case of alleged insider trading on prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket, which have brought bipartisan scrutiny from Congress and calls for stricter regulations of the websites where people can put money on just about anything.

Kalshi’s disciplinary documents named Mark Moran, who is running as an independent in Virginia’s U.S. Senate race; Ezekiel Enriquez, who ran in a Texas Republican primary for a U.S. House seat; and Matt Klein, a Democratic state senator running for a U.S. House seat in Minnesota.

Klein and Enriquez both placed bets less than $100 related to their “own candidacy,” Kalshi said. Moran said on social media that he “traded $100 on myself.”

These relatively small bets follow mammoth wagers on prediction markets earlier this year that raised eyebrows. In one case, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit in January on a wager that former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would soon be out of office.

In March, after two U.S. senators announced legislation that threatened prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket highlighted new rules, including against political candidates trading on their own campaigns.

Moran refused to reach an agreement with Kalshi and was fined the most at more than $6,200, while Klein and Enriquez did reach agreements and face penalties of over $530 and $780, respectively, the company said. All were suspended from Kalshi for five years.

Some politicians have said the punishments didn’t go far enough. U.S. Rep. Mike Levin slammed the repercussions as a “timeout.”

“That’s not a punishment. That’s a parking ticket,” Levin wrote.

The agreements are with the company, and not with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates predication markets. The agency is chaired by Michael Selig, who is considered friendly to the burgeoning industry.

Far from denying the allegations, Moran told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he placed the bets intending to draw attention to what he said was unjust sway that platforms like Kalshi have on elections. Moran added that he’d met with the company and had asked for his name to appear on its website.

Moran said he was fined more than the other candidates because he refused to sign a settlement that would’ve required him to post a statement on X. He said he felt that the stunt was successful.

“When I piss people off, when I upset people, and when I captivate their attention, that’s when they have to start listening,” he said.

Klein also confirmed Kalshi’s findings in a post on social media on Wednesday. The $50 wager he placed in October was the first time he had used a predictions market, he said in a statement on X, and he was “curious about how it worked.”

“This was a mistake and I apologize,” he wrote, saying that the experience made it clear that the markets need more regulation.

Klein is a cosponsor of a bill working its way through the Minnesota Legislature to ban most wagering on predictive markets, including the outcome of elections. In an interview, he said he didn’t think there was an inconsistency between his betting $50 on himself to win his primary and his sponsorship of legislation.

Klein said he spent the winter learning about predictive markets and signed onto the bill well before he learned that his bet violated Kalshi’s rules.

Enriquez, known as Zeke, lost his House race in the beginning of March with less than two percent of the vote. Contact information for Enriquez was not immediately found to request comment. ___

Associated Press reporter Steve Karnowski contributed from St. Paul, Minnesota.

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By Nathan Layne

BRIGHTON, Michigan, April 22 (Reuters) – Tom Barrett tapped into voter frustration over high gas prices as part of his successful 2024 run for Congress in Michigan. Now the Republican is on the defensive on that same issue as Democrats see an opportunity to flip his seat.

“Gas in Michigan is four bucks a gallon,” Barrett said as he filmed himself filling up his tank at a gas station in August 2023. “When I’m elected to Congress, we’ll produce our own energy. We’ll get gas under control so that this will be a lot more affordable for families like yours and families like mine.”

Nearly three years after he posted that video to social media, average gas prices in Michigan are back near the same level, briefly topping $4 in early April before settling around $3.80 this week, up 27% since the Iran war began on February 28.

The surge has put Republicans who campaigned against high fuel costs under Democratic President Joe Biden on the defensive heading into November’s midterm elections, with control of the House at stake and the Senate potentially in play.

The vulnerability is especially acute for Barrett, who represents one of the country’s most competitive districts as a U.S. congressman and is already facing Democratic attacks on the issue.

In an interview with Reuters, Barrett acknowledged that gasoline prices were squeezing his constituents’ finances but said the war was justified on national security grounds and expressed hope that prices would fall.

“Gas is an issue that affects people’s livelihoods, the affordability of things … I’m not dismissing any of that,” he said after the opening of a new campaign office in Brighton, a small city 45 miles west of Detroit. “But that doesn’t mean gas is going to be the same price on Election Day as it is today.”

That optimism has been undercut by both President Donald Trump and his energy secretary, Chris Wright, who have acknowledged that gasoline prices could remain high through Election Day. 

FEW GOOD OPTIONS

Republicans across the country are grappling with how to campaign amid high gas prices after weaponizing the issue during the Biden years, when prices peaked above $5 a gallon in June 2022 as Russia’s war on Ukraine provoked a sharp rise in global energy prices.  The recent rise in gas prices has exacerbated Republicans’ woes heading into the election, with Americans already disgruntled by high food and property prices as well as healthcare costs.

For many Republican candidates, the rise in gasoline prices has upended a central campaign strategy. They still plan to focus November’s elections on Trump’s sweeping 2025 tax bill, but the higher fuel costs have made it harder for them to sell the promised relief to Americans squeezed by everyday expenses.

One strategist working for a Republican in a competitive House race said that candidates must back Trump and the war during party primaries that attract more conservative supporters but may have to break with him in the November general election.

“When the campaign focus becomes independent voters, soft Republicans, folks like that, then Republican candidates may be forced to be critical of the president,” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

DEMOCRATS TURN TABLES ON REPUBLICANS 

Gas was not the sole focus of Barrett’s 2024 campaign, but he repeatedly returned to the issue as part of a pledge to fight inflation under Biden. A 22-year U.S. Army veteran, Barrett won the district by nearly four percentage points, outperforming Trump’s one-point win in the presidential election the same year.

In late July 2024, for example, Barrett posted photos on X of gas price signs from four different stations, all hovering around $4 a gallon. 

Now, Democrats see gas prices as a potent weapon in their effort to flip Barrett’s predominantly white district, which is centered on Lansing and stretches across farmland and small towns, and east toward the outer edge of the Detroit metro area.

On April 13, local Democrats, farmers and activists gathered at a gas station outside Lansing to protest high fuel and fertilizer prices and call for an end to the war. “Tom Barrett + Iran War and We Pay,” read the sign carried by one protester. “Got Gas Pains? Vote Democrat for Relief,” read another.

Bridget Brink, the Democrat who has raised the most money so far ahead of her party’s August primary, said if she won the Democratic nomination she would hammer Barrett on his support for the war and the resulting spike in gas prices.

Brink, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under Biden, said any relief from new tax breaks on tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime pay in Trump’s 2025 tax bill was being outweighed by rising gas prices.

“When Republicans say they’re cutting your taxes, all of that gets lost in bigger prices on gas, healthcare, groceries, and housing,” she said. “We’ll be talking about gas prices every week, because we all see it and feel it.”

BARRETT CREATES SOME DISTANCE FROM TRUMP 

Earlier this month, Barrett criticized Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” as an affront to human dignity.

Yet Barrett voted against a congressional resolution to limit Trump’s war powers and says he supports efforts to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, arguing that current high gas prices stem from a justified foreign-policy choice, unlike a Biden-era spike he blames on limits on domestic oil production.

After a Reuters reporter mentioned interviewing a constituent who could afford to put only $14 of gas into her car, Barrett redirected the conversation to national security, repeatedly asking whether she had been questioned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Did you ask her if she thought Iran should develop a nuclear weapon?” Barrett asked.

Reuters did not ask the constituent, Danielle Lewis, about Iran’s nuclear capabilities but discussed the war’s impact on gas prices. Lewis, 39, said she liked Barrett and would likely vote for him in November.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that only 36% of Americans support the war in Iran.

Beyond the war, Barrett’s campaign office opening offered a glimpse of Republicans’ midterm pitch. The congressman promoted the 2025 tax bill, stressing the benefits of an expanded child tax credit, while another House member, Lisa McLain, previewed attack lines for the crowd. 

“I think we make this election a contrast election between normal and crazy, because they are crazy,” said McLain, casting Democrats’ positions on transgender rights and other cultural issues as liabilities.

Neither Barrett nor McLain mentioned gas prices in their remarks.

Democrat Christine Waugh‑Fleischmann, who spends up to $200 a week on gas for drives to see her grandchildren, said after discussions with Republican friends about inflation she believes the district can be flipped.

“I do see a lot of people in my conservative neighborhood here who are very upset,” said the 70-year-old art teacher, as she filled her SUV at the same Quality Dairy gasoline station in Charlotte, Michigan where Barrett made his 2023 social media post.

“It’s gas. It’s grocery prices, it’s healthcare costs.”

Alexander Melton, 38, an HVAC technician, said he still planned to vote for Barrett despite higher gas prices that have raised his costs, saying the Republican better aligned with his conservative values.

However, he does see a cautionary lesson from the 2024 election for all politicians campaigning on high gas prices.

“We don’t dictate the price of gas. We’re getting it from overseas, and at this point now we’re at the mercy of everybody else,” Melton said. 

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Michigan; Additional reporting by Jason Lange in Washington, Editing by Ross Colvin and Andrea Ricci )

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April 21 (Reuters) – In testimony Tuesday at the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chair nominee Kevin Warsh never said if he agrees with President Donald Trump’s view that the Fed’s policy rate is too high and should be cut. No lawmaker asked him that directly.

But Warsh’s two and a half hours of often combative exchanges with Democratic senators and friendly ones with Republicans yielded plenty of other insights about both his approach to the job and the heated politics of the moment.

Here are five: 

POLITICS AND THE PRESIDENT

Elizabeth Warren, the panel’s top Democrat, asked Warsh if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, a question that she has asked other Trump nominees to showcase what she feels is excessive deference to a president who asserts he won it. To be clear: he did not. 

Warsh, though, sidestepped. “Umm, we try to keep politics, if I’m confirmed, out of the Fed … I believe this body certified that election many years ago.” As Warren repeated her question, Warsh spoke over her, saying it was critical to “keep the politics out of monetary policy, keep monetary policy out of politics.”

He was repeatedly pressed on whether Trump had tried to get him to promise to cut rates as Fed chair. “The president never asked me to predetermine, commit, fix, decide on any interest rate decision, in any of our discussions, nor would I ever agree,” Warsh told Republican Senator John Kennedy, thanking him for the question.

ON COOK AND POWELL

Asked about Fed Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump has tried to fire for alleged misstatements on her mortgage application, Warsh said he could not comment.

“If I stand for anything, it’s the Fed should stay in its lane … it’s inappropriate for me to weigh in on that.” Cook has sued to keep her job. Fed Chair Jerome Powell called it “the most important legal case” in Fed history and attended the oral arguments at the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Warsh said he expects a ruling soon. “If confirmed by this body, I will follow the Constitution, the Supreme Court law, and the best of the Fed’s traditions,” he said. 

Warsh also sidestepped a question about whether Powell can stay on as temporary Fed chair after May 15 – as he says the law requires – if Warsh is not yet confirmed by then.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis on Tuesday repeated that he would block his confirmation as long as the Department of Justice keeps open its investigation of Powell for cost overruns on building renovations.

“I’m certainly not capable of defining whether the Vacancy Act applies to the Federal Reserve or not,” Warsh said, referring to the law that allows the president to appoint temporary agency heads in some cases. 

FEWER FED MEETINGS, FED CHAIR PRESS CONFERENCES?

Warsh promised broad reform at the Fed so as to trim its balance sheet, measure inflation better, and cooperate more with the Treasury and other parts of the administration on issues not directly related to monetary policy. He also wants to make changes to how the Fed communicates to the public, and with each other. 

Warsh appeared to open the door to a change in the number of Fed policy-setting meetings, which currently take place eight times a year. Warsh noted that the law requires only four, adding, “four is not enough, so having more meetings than that is appropriate. But I’ve not even begun to look at the meeting schedules for 2027.”

Asked to commit to doing press conferences after each Fed meeting, as Powell has done since 2018, Warsh notably did not.

“Right now, Fed chairs and other central bankers around the FOMC, they speak quite frequently. There was no lack of transparency. But I would say this, I think truth seeking is more important than repetition,” Warsh said. Would he take reporters questions, he was then asked. “If a press conference were held, I think it would be incumbent to hear what the reporters of the day had in mind.”

NEW APPROACH TO INFLATION? 

Warsh said he wants a better way to measure the “underlying” inflation trend, and said one of his first projects at the Fed would be a “data project” with public and private sector actors to identify such a gauge.

“The measures I prefer are looking at things that are called trimmed averages where we take out all of the tail risks,” he said, an apparent reference to measures like the Dallas Fed trimmed mean that lop off data at the extremes to give policymakers a better picture of inflation’s center of gravity. Many current Fed policymakers say they consult such measures regularly.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, INFLATION AND THE LABOR MARKET

Trump administration officials say that the productivity gains brought by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence will push down on inflation quickly, allowing the Fed to cut interest rates.

Warsh agreed that is possible, but stopped short of signing on to the notion completely.

“It’s important to revisit the Fed’s models and see whether this innovation cycle – while it could have over time improvements in the price level and make the Fed’s job on inflation easier – there’s a question about what that means for employment, which is another part of the Fed’s mandate,” he said. “I am more confident that there will be improved output than I am certain about when the effects of that would be on the labor market … the lag between the improvement on output and the effect on the labor markets, that’s got to be central to the Fed’s thinking.”

(Reporting by Ann Saphir, Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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By Jason Lange, Ted Hesson and M.B. Pell

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign to deport immigrants could weigh on his Republican Party in November’s midterm congressional elections, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Some 52% of Americans in the six-day poll completed on Monday said they were less likely to support a candidate who backs Trump’s approach to deportations, significantly more than the 42% who said they were more likely to support such a candidate. 

The disadvantage for Trump allies was more stark among people who don’t identify with either major political party, with 57% of independents saying they prefer a candidate who opposes Trump’s deportations and 32% preferring candidates who support Trump on the issue.

Republicans could face an uphill battle to defend their majorities in both chambers of Congress in November’s midterm elections, with the party already under pressure over a surge in gasoline prices as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Republican lawmakers have almost universally backed Trump’s hardline approach on immigration, reflecting the president’s growing dominance over the party since winning the 2024 election on a promise to crack down on unauthorized immigrants.

Trump’s immigration policy was initially supported by a fairly broad slice of America, with 50% of the country approving of his performance on the issue in Reuters/Ipsos polls from the weeks after his January 2025 inauguration. But after more than a year of aggressive enforcement measures – including the deployment of masked federal agents nationwide and the deaths of two U.S. citizens caught up in the crackdown – only 40% of respondents in the latest poll approved of Trump’s performance on the issue.

The poll, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 4,557 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

ARRESTS DECLINE FROM DECEMBER HIGHS

Trump’s deportation drive may have made a lasting impression on Americans, said Sarah Pierce, director of social policy for the center-left organization Third Way.

“People were being pulled out of cars, a priest shot with pepper balls, and Americans killed before our eyes,” said Pierce, citing scenes from city streets in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis during Trump’s first year in office. “I don’t think those images are going to go away anytime soon.”

The Trump administration in recent weeks has appeared to dial back its detentions of immigrants within the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested just over 1,000 people a day in early March, down from close to 1,300 per day in December but still more than double the daily arrests reported in January 2025, according to ICE figures obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Reuters.

Only one in four respondents in the poll said they would describe current efforts to detain immigrants as less aggressive than a month ago, but 70% said a less aggressive approach would be a positive change.

Americans generally support policies that stop people from entering the country illegally, with 84% saying it’s at least somewhat important to have secure borders and 87% saying it’s important to enforce immigration laws.

But Americans also support giving many migrants living in the U.S. illegally a way to stay in the country. Some 76% of respondents in the poll said unauthorized migrants who have jobs and no criminal record should have a way to gain legal status.

Some Republicans in Congress have urged a less aggressive stance on deportations.

Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican representing a South Florida district that has many Hispanic voters with relatives who are recent immigrants, has been promoting legislation in recent weeks that would give legal status to certain immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Republican hardliners have criticized the bill but Salazar has argued that it “respects Trump’s agenda” by securing the border.

“I’m very concerned about what’s happening within the party with immigration,” Salazar said earlier this month on Fox News’ “Brian Kilmeade Show” regarding hardliners within her party.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Ted Hesson in Washington and M.B. Pell; Editing by Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)

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Virginia voters approved a mid-decade redistricting plan Tuesday that could boost Democrats’ chances of winning four additional U.S. House seats in November’s midterm elections that will decide control of the closely divided Congress.

The constitutional amendment narrowly backed by voters bypasses a bipartisan redistricting commission to allow the use of new districts drawn by Virginia’s Democratic-led General Assembly. But the public vote may not be the final word. The state Supreme Court is considering whether the plan is illegal in a case that could make the referendum results meaningless.

The Virginia redistricting referendum marked a setback for President Donald Trump, who kicked off a national redistricting battle last year by urging Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts. The goal was to help Republicans win more seats in the November elections and hold on to a narrow House majority in the face of political headwinds that typically favor the party out of power during midterm elections.

But the Virginia redistricting referendum could help nullify Republican gains elsewhere.

“Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms,” Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said in a celebratory statement. “At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country.”

Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who campaigned for the new map, quickly shifted her attention to the November election.

“I understand the urgency of winning congressional seats as a check on this President, and I look forward to campaigning with candidates across the Commonwealth working to earn Virginians’ trust,” she said in a statement.

The redistricting in Texas led to a burst of redistricting nationwide. So far, Republicans believe they can win up to nine more House seats in newly redrawn districts in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats think they can win up to five more seats in California, where voters approved a similar mid-decade redistricting effort last November, and one more seat under new court-imposed districts in Utah.

Democrats hope to offset the rest of that gap in Virginia, where they decisively flipped 13 seats in the state House and won back the governor’s office last year.

Tuesday’s narrow victory for Democrats contrasted with last fall’s vote in California, where a Democratic redistricting plan passed by a nearly 29-point margin.

“As we saw in California, when voters have a say, they are rejecting Republicans’ attempt to rig the system,” said U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, of Washington state, who is chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Republicans pledged to continue the battle over Virginia’s new map in court.

“Serious legal questions remain about both the wording of this referendum and the process used to put it before voters,” Virginia House Republican Minority Leader Terry Kilgore said. “Those questions have not been resolved, and they now move where they belong: to the courts.”

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, of North Carolina, who is chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the “close margin reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn’t be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander.”

The back-and-forth redistricting battle also could continue in Florida, where the Republican-led Legislature is to convene April 28 for a special session that could result in more favorable congressional districts for Republicans.

The campaign over Virginia’s redistricting referendum focused heavily on fairness.

Republicans argued that it was unfair to gerrymander Virginia’s districts to Democrats’ advantage. But Democrats argued that they were creating a fairer election landscape nationally by counteracting Republican gerrymandering elsewhere.

Matt Wallace, of Alexandria, said he voted for the Democratic redistricting amendment “to help balance the scales a bit until things get back to normal.”

But Ruth Ann McCartney, who voted in the town of South Hill just a few miles north of the North Carolina border, said she cast her ballot against the amendment.

“I look at it more as we don’t have the population as northern Virginia,” she said. “And as a rural area, we just need to be heard.”

In Virginia, Democrats currently hold six of the 11 U.S. House seats under districts that were imposed by the state Supreme Court in 2021 after a bipartisan commission failed to agree on a map based on the latest census data.

The new plan could help Democrats win as many as 10 seats. Five seats are anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads dilute the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia lumps together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

Democrats portrayed the Virginia redistricting as a response to Trump. Ads for the “yes to redistricting” campaign featuring former President Barack Obama flooded the airwaves.

But opponents of the redistricting also distributed campaign materials citing statements from Obama and Spanberger, who had both criticized gerrymandering in the past.

Congressional redistricting typically is done once a decade after each census.

In 2020, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment meant to diminish political gamesmanship by shifting redistricting responsibilities away from the legislature.

But lawmakers endorsed a new constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting last fall, then passed it again in January as part of a two-step process that requires an intervening election in order for an amendment to be placed on the ballot. The measure allows lawmakers to redistrict until returning the task to a bipartisan commission after the 2030 census.

In February, they passed a new U.S. House map to take effect pending the outcome of the redistricting referendum.

Republicans have filed multiple legal challenges against the redistricting effort.

A Tazewell County judge ruled that the redistricting push was illegal for several reasons. Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. said lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session. He ruled that their initial vote failed to occur before the public began casting ballots in last year’s general election and thus didn’t count toward the two-step process. And he ruled that the state failed to publish the amendment three months before that election, as required by law.

If the state Supreme Court agrees with the lower court, the referendum results could be rendered moot.

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Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed in South Hill, Virginia, Gary Fields in Alexandria, Virginia, and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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By Karen Freifeld

April 22(Reuters) – Micron Technology, the largest U.S. memory chipmaker, is a driving force pushing the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter.  

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday is set to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on U.S. companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials.

The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, as well as critical technology countrywide.

Micron has told lawmakers that Washington needs to do more to inhibit Chinese development in the memory market, according to people familiar with the matter. They said increased U.S. action is necessary to prevent China from dominating memory chip manufacturing the way it has the solar energy industry and other sectors, and is a national security issue.

Micron did not respond to requests for comment. CXMT, YMTC and SMIC did not respond to requests for comment.

Korean chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix now dominate the memory market, with Micron the No. 3 maker and sole major U.S. supplier. 

But YMTC and CXMT are growing fast, despite curbs on exports to them imposed by the U.S. Commerce Department.   

YMTC has been on a restricted trade list since 2022. CXMT’s advanced facilities have been subject to U.S. export curbs.

The bill as now drafted would restrict more equipment from going to China — including DUV immersion machines countrywide, a market dominated by Netherlands’ ASML — and legislate how to impose restrictions if diplomacy fails. 

It also would require a license for ASML and other foreign companies to service equipment at covered facilities.

Micron representatives have engaged with lawmakers throughout the drafting process, sources said. They added that about a month ago, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra held a closed-door roundtable with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

He held a similar roundtable last month with Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, is building a megafacility in New York. Other companies in the industry are also lobbying on the bill, said one source, citing Tokyo Electron and U.S. toolmakers Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA, who lose sales from export controls. 

This month, the Commerce Department also posted photos of ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The MATCH Act is only one of many bills tied to export controls to be voted on Wednesday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Others target the Commerce Department’s licensing, interagency process, Entity List, enforcement, and penalties.

A House foreign affairs panel staffer touted the slate as the biggest legislative push in the sphere since the Export Control Reform Act of 2018.

Kate Koren, who this year left the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls, said the bureau’s leadership has not been doing its job.  

“It seems there’s a pretty strong bipartisan consensus that BIS has not really been functioning as it should be over the past year,” said Koren, now at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

As Reuters has reported, the bureau has been in turmoil and held off new restrictions during a detente with China tied to trade talks.

A BIS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

If the MATCH Act and other bills advance on Wednesday, it is only one step toward their potentially becoming law. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate and may eventually be included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; editing by Chris Sanders and David Gregorio)

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By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told lawmakers on Tuesday that he was not under instructions from the White House to stop publicly bringing up vaccines or other controversial positions ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Kennedy, appearing in his fourth Congressional hearing this week, again highlighted nutrition and food safety in his opening statement but omitted mention of his efforts to overhaul nationwide vaccination ‌policy or his work to identify the causes of autism.

“Yes or no. Did Susie Wiles, or anyone in the White House instruct you or suggest that you stop talking about your controversial vaccine skepticism,” asked Representative Marc Veasey, referring to President Donald Trump’s chief of staff. Kennedy’s response was a curt “no.”

Veasey, a Democrat from Texas, asked if Kennedy had seen a Trump administration internal memo referencing polling showing his anti-vaccine rhetoric was unpopular with voters. Kennedy said he had not.

Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month that the White House recently urged health officials to redirect policy discussions toward more popular topics, as Trump and his Republican Party seek to shore up support for their slim majorities in ​Congress.

Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, faced a setback last month, when a court ruling derailed key elements of his efforts to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy and revamp a CDC advisory ​panel on immunizations.

Separately, close Kennedy ally and White House food policy adviser Calley Means also denied on Tuesday that the secretary and his allies have been instructed to stop bringing up vaccines.

“I think that these are just ongoing conversations about where to prioritize on what’s leading to a problem in American healthcare,” Means said during an appearance at the Politico Health Care Summit in Washington. “We’re not apologizing for what’s happened on vaccines.”

Kennedy also said on Tuesday that he had vetted Erica Schwartz’s position on vaccines before she was nominated to run the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy, testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee, said he had not spoken to Trump directly before the president nominated Schwartz.

Trump said on Thursday he would nominate Schwartz to be the next CDC director following multiple leadership shakeups at the health agency. She had served as deputy surgeon general during the ‌COVID-19 pandemic in Trump’s first administration. 

Her nomination represents a far more traditional pick, as the White House seeks to focus on more popular issues such as lowering drug prices and ​food safety, rather than Kennedy’s controversial vaccine policies, with control of Congress up for grabs in November.

Kennedy said on Tuesday that his agency had sent Schwartz’s name up to the White House.

He also said he is reforming the U.S. Preventive ‌Services Task Force, the advisory panel that decides access to ​free preventive healthcare that last met over a year ago. His Department of Health and Human Services will be putting a notification in the Federal Register this week soliciting new members of the task force, Kennedy said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Michael Erman and Chris Prentice in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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