Politics

By Isla Binnie

NEW YORK (Reuters) – California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Sunday he would sign legislation that would require large companies to disclose their carbon footprints, potentially putting the state ahead of federal regulators on managing corporate climate risks.

The State senate approved the bill mandating greenhouse gas emissions disclosure last week, leaving Newsom with the final say.

Asked at the start of “Climate Week” in New York, a week of events coinciding with the U.N. General Assembly, whether he would sign the bill, Newsom replied: “Of course I will sign that bill.”

“We have some cleanup on some little language,” he added, without giving details.

Newsom acknowledged there had been “a lot of opposition” to the bill which would require companies earning more than $1 billion a year and operating in the state to measure categories of emissions including a complex category linked to supply chains and end-users, known as Scope 3.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is yet to issue its own guidance.

Multinational companies including Apple and Microsoft have voiced support for the bill, but the California Chamber of Commerce said it would increase costs and paperwork for firms.

Measures aimed at managing environmental, social and governance (ESG)factors have created controversy among U.S. politicians in recent years. Lawyers have said the new California legislation could still be challenged in court.

Last week, California sued major oil companies, alleging they had played down the risks posed by fossil fuels.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie; editing by Diane Craft)

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By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) -The Texas Senate on Saturday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton on all 16 articles of impeachment he faced before that body, allowing the conservative firebrand to keep his state office.

Paxton, a Republican, has been dogged by corruption allegations since taking office in 2014. He still faces a state trial on securities fraud and is under investigation by the FBI.

But Paxton was vindicated on Saturday by easily winning acquittal on the various allegations of corruption contained in the articles of impeachment, which the Texas House passed by a wide margin in May.

Paxton, an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, repeatedly insisted that he was innocent and that the impeachment trial is a political witchhunt.

“Today, the truth prevailed. The truth could not be buried by mudslinging politicians or their powerful benefactors,” Paxton said in a statement.

Paxton boosted his standing in right-wing circles when, in December 2020, he asked the Supreme Court to throw out results from four states that had cast their votes for Joe Biden in the November election. The court tossed out the case.

In a statement, Trump offered “congratulations to Attorney General Ken Paxton on a great and historic Texas sized VICTORY.”

After closing the impeachment proceedings, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Republican who as president of the Senate presided over the trial, criticized the entire process as a rush job that lacked transparency.

“Millions of taxpayers dollars have been wasted on this impeachment,” Patrick said.

“Our founders expected better. It should have never happened this year, and hopefully it doesn’t again.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a written statement that “the jury has spoken” and that Paxton “has done an outstanding job representing Texas, especially pushing back against the Biden administration.”

Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who voted to convict Paxton, said that “a broken and corrupt system allowed Ken Paxton to abuse the powers of his office” and that “Texas Republicans decided that the corruption and lies of people like Ken Paxton … are fine by them.”

AIDES’ ACCUSATIONS

Paxton faced 16 articles of impeachment. Two-thirds of Texas’ 31 senators – or, 21 senators – had to vote to convict him on any single article. No single article of impeachment saw more than 14 senators vote to find Paxton guilty.

Paxton was accused by several former top aides of corruption and abuse of power, mostly in relation to official actions allegedly carried out to protect a wealthy political donor who was under a federal investigation and to cover up an extramarital affair.

The trial exposed rifts in the Texas Republican Party between the social conservatives, who have held sway for the past decade and back Paxton, and the traditional conservatives, who say his actions have brought shame on the party and the state. Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached by the Republican-dominated Texas House in May.

The trial opened on Sept. 5 and saw a string of former top aides testify at length about what they called his corrupt practices, including making legal maneuvers and using the power of his office to protect Nate Paul, a wealthy political donor and real estate developer, as he faced federal investigations.

In return, Paul allegedly helped facilitate an extramarital affair for Paxton and paid for home renovations.

Tony Buzbee, the main defense lawyer for Paxton, sought to paint the whistleblowers who testified as centrists with a political ax to grind.

The Texas Senate has 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. Paxton’s wife, Angela, is a Republican senator, but was barred from voting in the trial. The last impeachment trial of a statewide officeholder in Texas was in 1917.

Paxton’s impeachment was triggered by his request that House lawmakers approve a $3.3 million settlement he reached with former staff members who accused him of abuse of office and were subsequently fired. State lawmakers did not fund the settlement.

In May, the Texas House, also dominated by Republicans, voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton on 20 articles.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Edited by Donna Bryson, Mark Porter, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)

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By Gram Slattery and James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made their cases to evangelical voters who gathered in Washington for a pair of events on Friday, seeking an edge with a voting bloc likely to play a pivotal role in selecting a 2024 presidential nominee.

The pressure was all on DeSantis, who trails Trump in the Republican presidential primary by nearly 40 percentage points in most opinion polls, including among evangelical voters.

Both candidates spoke at a pair of national summits convened by the Concerned Women of America and the Family Research Council, evangelical advocacy groups that support laws restricting abortion, among other issues.

At the Family Research Council event, DeSantis defended allowing churches to remain open in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing cheers from the ballroom crowd.

“We protected our religious institutions when so many states were running roughshod over people’s rights to practice their faith in full,” he said.

He also talked up Florida’s law that bans abortion at six weeks, among the most restrictive in the nation. “We have stood up,” he said.

Across town, Trump also addressed the abortion issue, saying that he supports bans with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, a position that was received coolly by the crowd.

“I think its very hard politically if you don’t,” Trump said. “We have a lot of election losses because of this, because (other Republicans) don’t know how to discuss it.”

The longtime president of the council, Tony Perkins, a prominent evangelical leader, did not endorse Trump during his 2016 campaign and has yet to endorse a candidate this time around.

Trump holds a roughly 35 percentage-point lead over DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy among evangelical Christians, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Thursday.

Those voters have stood by the twice-divorced Trump even as he rarely invokes scripture or speaks with an evangelical bent and as he has faced a series of charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a scheme to pay “hush money” to a porn star.

Many Christian activists credit him for helping to bring an end to nationwide abortion rights by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Robert Goss, 77, a retired law-enforcement officer from Locust Dale, Virginia, was awaiting Trump and DeSantis at the Family Research Council event, saying he was still deciding which candidate to support.

Goss said he could be persuaded to vote for Trump again, but “he’s got to get past all the legal things. And I just don’t want four more years of nothing but fighting and bickering. We want to get something done.”

He said he was also considering DeSantis, but “whoever was advising him probably should have told him to wait until ’28. It’s bad timing.”

Hannah Bruce, 25, a political organizer from Idaho who attended the women’s event in Washington, said she was initially interested in DeSantis, but she and most of her peers had turned back to Trump.

“I really was thinking DeSantis would be a perfect person because he’s young, he’s vibrant. He could have been a new JFK,” Bruce said, referring to popular Democratic President John F. Kennedy during the 1960s. “But he wasn’t.”

DeSantis’ advisers are betting he can eat into Trump’s significant polling lead by outperforming among devout Christians, especially those who are affluent and well-educated, according to several people familiar with his strategy.

That could be a major factor in the state of Iowa, where white evangelical voters are expected to turn out in large numbers in the first 2024 Republican nominating contest four months away.

On Thursday, DeSantis unveiled a “Faith and Family Coalition” of more than 70 faith leaders backing him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. All are among the first states to cast ballots in the Republican nominating process.

On Saturday, DeSantis and several other Republican primary contenders are due to speak at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet in Des Moines, another major gathering of religious conservatives. Trump, who has a rocky relationship with some key political figures in Iowa, will not attend.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery and James OliphantAdditional reporting by Jason LangeEditing by Colleen Jenkins, Howard Goller and Kim Coghill)

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(Corrects surname to Hannah Brusven in paragraphs 14-15, not “Bruce”)

By Gram Slattery and James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis descended on Washington on Friday, both looking to win over evangelical Republicans, a voting bloc likely to play a pivotal role in selecting a 2024 presidential nominee.

DeSantis, who along with the rest of a crowded field trails Trump for the nomination, leaned into the culture war rhetoric that features prominently in his campaign, seeking support from social conservatives at a conference hosted by the evangelical Christian group Concerned Women for America.

“They want you to believe that a man can get pregnant,” DeSantis said of Democrats. “They think it’s appropriate to jam sexualized curriculum into elementary school classrooms.”

DeSantis’ advisers are betting he can eat into Trump’s significant polling lead by outperforming among devout Christians, especially those who are affluent and well-educated, according to several people familiar with his strategy.

That could be a major factor in the state of Iowa, where white evangelical voters are expected to turn out in large numbers in the first 2024 Republican nominating contest four months away. President Joe Biden has said he will seek reelection on the Democratic side.

Trump was also scheduled to speak at the Concerned Women for America event on Friday, and both men later were due to appear at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit across town. Former Vice President Mike Pence and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, both Republican hopefuls, also were speaking at the latter event.

DeSantis faces a challenge wooing enough religious conservatives to build a viable coalition.

Trump is ahead in every major Republican demographic, with a roughly 35 percentage-point lead over DeSantis and Ramaswamy among evangelical Christians, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Thursday.

Many Christian activists credit Trump for helping to bring an end to nationwide abortion rights by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

On Thursday, DeSantis unveiled a “Faith and Family Coalition” of more than 70 faith leaders backing him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. All are among the first states to cast ballots in the Republican nominating process.

DeSantis’ campaign on Thursday released a digital ad featuring his “God over government” message, in which he pledges to fight against what he describes as infringements on religious liberty by overzealous law enforcement.

On Saturday, DeSantis and several other Republican primary contenders are due to speak at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet in Des Moines, another major gathering of religious conservatives. Trump, who has a rocky relationship with some key political figures in Iowa, will not attend.

DeSantis’ reception on Friday was warm, though not rapturous.

Hannah Brusven, 25, a political organizer from Idaho who attended the women’s event in Washington, said she was initially interested in DeSantis, but she and most of her peers had turned back to Trump.

“I really was thinking DeSantis would be a perfect person because he’s young, he’s vibrant. He could have been a new JFK,” Brusven said, referring to popular Democratic President John F. Kennedy during the 1960s. “But he wasn’t.”

(Reporting by Gram Slattery and James OliphantAdditional reporting by Jason LangeEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith on Thursday opposed Donald Trump’s request to remove the federal judge overseeing the criminal case accusing the former U.S. president of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

Smith, whose office is prosecuting the case against Trump, said there was “no valid basis” for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to recuse herself from the case over prior statements she made in court that appeared to reference Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, filed a legal motion on Monday asking Chutkan to step aside from the case, arguing that her prior statements raised questions about her impartiality and would taint the proceedings.

The filing cited remarks Chutkan made at two sentencing hearings for defendants convicted of taking part in the Capitol riot, including one in which she said rioters were motivated by “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”

Trump has frequently criticized Chutkan on social media since she was assigned to preside over the case.

The case, which accuses Trump of three schemes to try to overturn his defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden, is one of four criminal cases facing Trump as he runs to retake the White House. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and accused prosecutors of political motivations.

Chutkan, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, has strongly condemned the attack on the Capitol and has given some rioters more severe sentences than prosecutors sought.

U.S. prosecutors said Chutkan’s remarks do not clear the high legal bar that requires federal judges to remove themselves from a case. Judges typically recuse if they have a financial interest in the outcome or a personal connection to someone involved.

Chutkan will make the initial determination on whether to step aside.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rhiannon Hampson drives hundreds of miles across Maine’s countryside each week as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s top rural development official in the state, and says she’s never seen so many newly paved roads and rebuilt bridges as in the past year.

Replacement of Maine’s century-old Ticonic Bridge in Waterville and upgrades to the airport in Presque Isle are among the thousands of projects nationwide funded by President Joe Biden’s bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure law.

But that fact is often lost on the people that use them, Hampson said. “We’ve had historic levels of funding in the last couple of years,” she said, “but maybe it’s just harder for us in rural spaces to see the breadth of it.”

The disconnect lies at the crux of Biden’s efforts to win back parts of rural America – home to one of every five Americans – that swung heavily to Donald Trump and the Republicans in the last two presidential elections.

Getting credit for economic gains is key to Biden’s 2024 reelection, and nowhere is that fight harder than in rural areas of the U.S., where frustrations have grown among generally older, whiter voters after decades of industrial decline and job losses in the face of globalization and declining agriculture.

Biden’s campaign plans an aggressive outreach to rural voters, who account for 30% of the electorate in swing states North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin, around 22% in Pennsylvania, and about 61% in Maine.

Reuters spoke to more than two dozen Democratic officials, local politicians, activists and academics who said years of neglect of rural areas, skepticism about government spending and divisions over social issues such as abortion and education mean Biden faces an uphill battle.

Trump widened his lead among rural voters to 65% in 2020 from 59% in 2016. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republican candidates got 69% of the rural vote.

Biden’s problems in Maine’s rural second district, which backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 before embracing Trump, are a microcosm of the issue nationwide, says Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Orono.

Biden won the coastal, more populated first district, taking three of the state’s four electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska are the only U.S. states that split electoral votes, the other 48 are ‘winner takes all.’)

Nearly all, 94%, of the nation’s job growth has happened in urban counties since 2000, Suzanne Mettler, a politics and policy professor at Cornell, and Trevor Brown, a PhD student there, wrote in a 2022 study on Democrats and the rural-urban divide.

Trump and other Republican candidates have stoked the resentment felt by many rural Americans over what they see as a push by urban “elites” to enforce their views on education, guns and gender identity, Mettler and Brown wrote.

Ron Kaufman, a Republican National Committee member from Massachusetts, said rural voters are more focused on the high price of gasoline and other pocketbook issues than big government investments that might take years to boost the local economy while also adding to the national debt.

While inflation has dropped since hitting a 40-year peak of 9.1% in the summer of 2022, food costs remain high and gasoline prices are surging, which hits harder at Americans in rural areas who drive longer distances.

“They see this administration being a disaster for the American people on issues they care about like going to the pump,” said Kaufman, a former adviser to Utah Senator Mitt Romney who also worked for President George H. W. Bush.

BILLIONS FOR HEALTH, ENERGY

Democratic officials said they plan to double down on their messaging in select rural areas ahead of the 2024 election, touting the billions of dollars in federal funding that have flowed to rural areas since Biden took office in infrastructure, semiconductor and inflation-focused laws.

That includes $20 billion for rural health systems, $20 billion for clean-energy agriculture projects, $11 billion for rural electrification and $13 billion towards rural clean energy projects, the White House calculates.

“We’re in a moment of unprecedented opportunity for rural America, when you look at the investments that have been made,” said Tom Perez, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee who took over in June as Biden’s top liaison to governors, mayors and other elected officials.

Political veterans, even those who support Biden, remain skeptical.

“This administration is doing more than anyone has in a long time to help advanced farming, but I’m not sure if it will translate – at least in the short term – into changing voting patterns in rural America,” said John Piotti, a Democrat and CEO of the American Farmland Trust, who served eight years in Maine’s state legislature.

Even young voters – who historically support Democrats, Pew and other data show – voted for Republican candidates in rural areas in 2022 by a margin of 64% to 33%, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

White House internal polling shows rural Americans are “overwhelmingly supportive” of some specific Biden policies, like those that expand health care and veterans benefits, said one Biden official. The Kaiser Family Foundation and Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, show these issues have bipartisan voter support.

But voters are not giving Biden credit.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 60% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation, and many who voted for him in 2020 are not sure they will again.

“You get out into the rural areas, and the folks are older and don’t have the educational level. The cultural, moral values are different,” said James Gimpel, a professor at University of Maryland.

USDA data shows 21% of working-age adults in rural areas have at least a bachelor’s degree compared to 37% in urban areas. In 2022, voters with a college degree or more formal education cast ballots for Democratic candidates by a margin of 56% to 43%, Pew Research found.

Democrats might be better off trying to pick up voters on the fringes of suburbia, Gimpel said.

‘BLEEDING HEART’ DEMOCRATS

Maine has been allocated about $4.6 billion in COVID relief funds since Biden took office, and another $2.5 billion for airports, roads and bridges, broadband expansion, and climate resilience, state officials said.

Maine’s roughly 106,000 veterans – just under 10% of the state’s population – also stand to gain from the PACT Act, which offers expanded benefits to veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxins during their military service.

Dick Bouchard, a Vietnam war veteran from Poland, Maine, said he still views Trump as a better steward of the economy, although Trump’s multiple indictments, which include charges he conspired to overturn the 2020 election, have given him pause.

“Biden and [Democratic] Maine Governor Janet Mills: they’re too much bleeding hearts. They say yes to everyone and anything,” he said.

Democratic Representative Jared Golden, who represents Maine’s second district, warned Biden against overplaying his economic hand.

    “It may be true that inflation and unemployment are trending in the right direction but that doesn’t mean the economy is booming,” he said in a statement to Reuters.

TRUMP ‘FILLED A VACUUM’

Many rural Democrats in the state say they are frustrated after years of begging for yard signs and attention from the party.

“The national Democrats packed up and left, and Trump filled the vacuum,” said Paul Tewes, who headed Obama’s campaign in Iowa in 2008, and says he had to buy a yard sign for his mother in northern Maine during the last election.

Matt Hildreth, executive director of RuralOrganizing.org, a national group focused on Senate races in Ohio, Montana and presidential swing states, said his group had identified 100 rural counties with key congressional and Senate races and found that half did not have Democratic county chairs.

    “Those are the kind of places where we can’t coordinate with the Democratic Party because there’s nobody for us to coordinate with,” he said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Heather Timmons and Suzanne Goldenberg)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s chances of re-election are being jeopardized by voters’ concerns over his age, the economy and crime, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, creating an opportunity for Republican challenger Donald Trump to return to the White House.

The opinion poll found Democrat Biden, 80, tied in a hypothetical November 2024 election against Trump, 77, the former president who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, with both receiving 39% of the vote and one in five voters undecided.

Democrats held a strong advantage among voters most concerned about protecting abortion rights, while Republicans had an edge among those worried about crime, the poll found.

Trump remains politically viable despite a battery of federal and state criminal charges revolving around his attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election win and his mishandling of classified documents since leaving office. He is expected to spend much of next year in courtrooms standing trial while also campaigning.

But in a worrisome result for Biden, Trump held a small advantage in the seven states where the 2020 presidential election was closest: Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Michigan. In those states, Trump led with 41% to Biden’s 35%, and 24% undecided.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online nationwide from Sept. 8 through Sept. 14, gathering responses from 4,413 U.S. adults. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 2 percentage points.

More than a year remains before voters will start to cast ballots, plenty of time to change their minds.

Large numbers of voters appear to be up for grabs, the poll found.

Biden faces the risk of losing independent voters, whom he won decisively in 2020. If the election were held now, Trump had 32% support among independents to Biden’s 30%, effectively a tie with the a 38% plurality still undecided, the poll found.

Biden held an early advantage among voters who said they were completely certain they would vote next year – they favored the Democrat 49%-38% with just 13% undecided. Since his 2020 loss, Trump has continued to falsely claim that his defeat was the result of fraud, which could serve to undercut some of his supporters’ faith in the electoral process.

ABORTION RIGHTS ADVANTAGE

Biden had the upper hand on an issue of protecting abortion rights, which the poll showed was animating Democrats and resonating outside Biden’s party as well. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

Eighty-eight percent of Democrats rated abortion rights as important for how they will vote and one in six said it was the most important issue or the only one they really cared about.

Moreover, one in three Republicans thought the Democratic Party had the best approach on the issue, while independents favored Democrats over Republicans on abortion rights by more than two-to-one.

Voters expressed concern over Biden’s age and his fitness for office. Seventy-seven percent of respondents, including 65% of Democrats, said Biden is too old to be president, while just 39% said Biden was mentally sharp enough for the presidency.

By comparison, 56% of poll respondents said Trump is too old for the office, while 54% said he was mentally sharp enough to handle the challenges of the presidency.

Both men are viewed favorably by about 40% of the electorate, but 43% of Americans find Trump “very unfavorable” as compared to 38% for Biden.

Crime was on the minds of voters across both parties. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in the poll, including strong majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents, said crime would be an important issue for determining their vote.

Republicans could benefit: Independents favored Republicans over Democrats on the issue by 34% to 22%, according to the poll.

Finally, voters continue to be worried about the state of the economy despite the White House’s insistence that it remains in solid shape, with 73% of respondents saying their economic situation was about the same or worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asked if they expected their economic situation to be better a year from now, only 35% answered in the affirmative.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

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By Richard Cowan and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A day after tech CEOs met with lawmakers about how to regulate artificial intelligence, two key senators said Congress may first need to tackle the potential impact of AI on elections.

Lawmakers are especially concerned about the use of AI to creates content that falsely depicts candidates in political advertisements to influence federal elections.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters a day after the AI forum that included technology leaders including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai that election AI legislation may need to move faster.

“Some things may have to go sooner than others and elections is one of the things that we may have to try to do soonest,” Schumer said on Thursday.

The appearance in the campaign of digitally alerted photos in June of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump showed how the technology is turbocharging its way into the 2024 presidential race as a slew of new “generative AI” tools make it cheap and easy to create convincing deepfakes.

Republican Senator Mike Rounds said “one of the priorities that I would like to see as one of the first steps out there because the election is coming up on us quickly.”

Experts say the proliferation of AI tools could make it far easier to, for instance, conduct mass hacking campaigns or create fake profiles on social media to spread false information and propaganda.

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of four senators including Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Josh Hawley proposed legislation to prohibit “distribution of materially deceptive AI-generated audio, images, or video relating to federal candidates in political ads or certain issue ads.”

Rounds added: “There are going to be bad people out there and other countries that will make life miserable because they don’t want democracy to succeed.” He said it will be “a real challenge” to get agreement on such legislation “on both sides.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Rick Cowan in Washington; Editing by Licoln Feast.)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York state appeals court judge on Thursday temporarily halted the scheduled Oct. 2 trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and his family business, a spokesman for the court said.

The order came after the former U.S. president sued Justice Arthur Engoron, the trial judge overseeing the case, accusing him and James of defying a court order that could narrow the lawsuit, according to a report in the Daily Beast.

According to the court spokesman, appeals court Justice David Friedman granted an interim stay of the trial, and referred the matter to a five-judge panel, which expects to rule in the last week of September.

The trial could still begin on Oct. 2 depending on how the appeals court, known as the First Department, rules.

Friedman’s stay does not apply to a scheduled Sept. 22 hearing before Engoron on both sides’ motions for summary judgment, which can proceed as planned, the court spokesman said.

James wants a ruling that Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent, while the defendants want most or all of the attorney general’s claims dismissed. Engoron has said the trial could last until near Christmas.

Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. James’ office did not immediately respond to similar requests.

James has said a “mountain of evidence” shows how Trump and his associates lied over a decade about his assets and net worth, which she says may have been inflated by as much as $3.6 billion, to obtain better terms on loans and insurance.

She is seeking a $250 million fine, and to bar Trump and his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump from leading the family business, the Trump Organization. Her lawsuit in September 2022, after a three-year probe.

In July, the appeals court said statutes of limitations may preclude James from suing over claims that arose before July 13, 2014, or Feb. 6, 2016, and said Engoron should decide which could proceed.

Trump holds a dominant lead in the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination.

He has denied wrongdoing, and called James’ case part of a Democratic “witch hunt.”

In January, Engoron said the “witch hunt” argument did not justify a dismissal, and said some defense arguments were “borderline frivolous even the first time defendants made them.”

(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden told top American rabbis on Thursday that he felt antisemitism has “risen to record levels” and was a big challenge for the entire country, while also taking a dig at Republican former President Donald Trump over the issue.

“Antisemitism has risen to record levels,” Biden said in a call with U.S. rabbis to commemorate the Jewish High Holidays.

“In the past several years, it has been given too much oxygen,” Biden added.

The Democratic president said in the call that the 2017 “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, made him decide that he should run for president.

The rally followed months of protests over the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Hundreds of white nationalists traveled to Charlottesville in August 2017, with some marching on the University of Virginia campus carrying torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!”

Trump, who was president at the time, was criticized for initially saying there were “fine people on both sides” after the rally devolved into violent clashes.

“That is when I decided I had to stay engaged instead of walking away,” Biden said in the call on Thursday, quoting Trump’s remarks from then. The president added: “Silence is complicity.”

Trump denies allegations of antisemitism.

The social and political climate in the United States has become fertile ground for antisemitism in recent years, according to a report released in April by advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Tel Aviv University.

Expressions of hatred against Jews have become “mainstreamed and normalized,” and incidents of violence, vandalism, and harassment of Jews have increased, the report had said.

More than 3,600 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the United States in 2022, more than in any year since ADL began tracking the issue in 1979.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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