Politics

By James Oliphant and Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis raised $20 million in the second quarter of the year, his campaign said on Thursday, a sign that the Florida governor’s challenge to former President Donald Trump remains viable despite recent struggles.

By comparison, Trump’s main fundraising committee took in about $35 million in the second quarter even as the former president’s legal troubles mounted, a sizeable increase from the previous quarter.

“We are grateful for the investment so many Americans have made to get this country back on track,” DeSantis’ campaign manager, Generra Peck, said in a statement.

The primary super PAC backing DeSantis’ bid, Never Back Down, which handles many on-the-ground operations in early voting states, said separately on Thursday it had brought in $130 million since its formation in March.

The haul appeared to include just over $80 million that the committee received in May from a committee tied to DeSantis’ re-election effort in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial campaign.

Campaign finance experts have argued that the transfer may have flouted campaign-finance rules that require super PACs to be independent of the candidates they support.

MAGA Inc, the Trump counterpart to DeSantis’ Never Back Down, has yet to disclose how much money it has raised this year. But last year it received $60 million from another committee tied to Trump.

DeSantis’ fundraising tally in the six weeks since he launched his campaign suggests a significant share of Republican donors are seeking an alternative to Trump in the party primary that begins early next year. The nominee will face President Joe Biden in November 2024.

Even so, DeSantis largely has been unable to slice into Trump’s commanding lead in early polls, which have had the former president ahead by as many as 30 percentage points.

(Reporting by James Oliphant, Additional reporting by Jason Lange, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, has been voted out of the hardline House Freedom Caucus group after clashing with a fellow lawmaker, a caucus member said.

The move to expel the firebrand Greene from the roughly three-dozen-strong hardline group came weeks after she engaged in a heated clash on the House of Representatives floor with fellow hardliner Representative Lauren Boebert over the latter’s plan to try to force a vote to impeach Democratic President Joe Biden.

“A vote was taken to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from the House Freedom Caucus for some of the things she’s done,” Republican Representative Andy Harris told Politico, adding that Greene’s support for House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy may have also contributed to her ouster from the group.

Harris declined to say how he voted, but called the decision to remove the Georgia congresswoman, who is in her second two-year term, “an appropriate action,” according to Politico.

In a statement to the media on Thursday evening, Greene did not directly address her Freedom Caucus membership but said: “In Congress, I serve Northwest Georgia first, and serve no group in Washington.”

Greene added: “The GOP has less than two years to show America what a strong, unified Republican-led Congress will do when President Trump wins the White House in 2024. This is my focus, nothing else.”

A spokesperson for the House Freedom Caucus, founded in 2015, said in an email: “HFC does not comment on membership or internal process.”

“I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to other fellow, especially female, members,” Harris told Politico, referring to Greene’s profane exchange with Boebert.

“I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was publicly saying things about another member in terms that no one should.”

Politico said Harris was asked whether Greene breaking from the group on the debt limit bill or her support for McCarthy were also factors in her removal. He replied, “I think all of that mattered.”

McCarthy faced a revolt from hardline Republicans, who accused him of betraying an agreement that got him elected to lead the Republican-controlled chamber when he reached a deal with Biden for a compromise debt ceiling legislation.

The hardline Republicans had said McCarthy and his leadership team failed to deliver on promised spending cuts and ignored their input.

Greene has been a controversial figure throughout her short political career. In 2021, when Democrats controlled the House, they stripped Greene of her committee assignments for incendiary remarks that included support for violence against political opponents. She later apologized for the comments.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and David Morgan; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration advanced a key $6.88 billion grant to help build a long-delayed new railway tunnel between New York City and New Jersey, which would be the largest ever federal transportation grant for a single project.

The $17.2 billion Hudson Tunnel Project will repair an existing tunnel and build a new one for passenger railroad Amtrak and state commuter lines between New Jersey and Manhattan.

Any failure of the lines in the current tunnel, which was heavily damaged during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, would hobble commuting in the metropolitan area that produces 10% of the country’s economic output.

The White House called the decision “a critical step towards unlocking up to $6.88 billion in funding” from the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Capital Investment Grants program.

The announcement officially begins the engineering phase of the project and allows the Gateway Development Commission (GDC) to begin utility relocations, real estate acquisitions, demolition, procurement of equipment and materials, and further design.

If it meets all requirements including securing non-federal matching funds, the White House will consider awarding up to $6.88 billion for the project.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said plan sponsors are also applying for an additional $3.8 billion from a Federal Railroad Administration program “which hasn’t yet been awarded, to address any potential cost increases.”

New Jersey Democratic Senators Cory Booker said the announcement “puts this project on track to receive the substantial federal investments and will enhance “the lives of millions of commuters.”

The project has been debated in Washington for over a decade since a New York City-area rail tunnel was damaged when Superstorm Sandy flooded parts of the city. The 112-year-old rail tunnel carries 200,000 passenger trips per day on New Jersey Transit and Amtrak along the Northeast Corridor.

In 2010, then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie pulled state funding for the tunnel project. The administration of then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress were at odds over whether the federal government should help fund the tunnel replacement.

Schumer said the Trump administration “made many efforts to derail the project, including slashing its funding and critical programs that would fund its construction.”

New Jersey and New York are expected to put up about half the $17.2 billion cost, Schumer said.

The Gateway Program aims to overhaul much of the aging infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor rail line between Newark, New Jersey, and New York City.

Last month, Amtrak applied for $8 billion in government grants to modernize bridges, tunnels and other aging infrastructure along the busy Washington to Boston corridor.

Amtrak said on Thursday acceptance of the tunnel project into the engineering phase “has been years in the making, and we are thrilled to be even closer to the start of major construction on this critical Gateway Program project.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang)

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By Jasper Ward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday urged the Department of Justice to open criminal and civil investigations into Florida’s transportation of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Sacramento in recent months.

“It is unconscionable to use people as political props by persuading them to travel to another state based on false or deceptive representations,” Newsom said in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“We urge the USDOJ to investigate potential violations of federal law by those involved in this scheme.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, last year arranged to transport dozens of migrants to the Massachusetts vacation island of Martha’s Vineyard. It was part of a campaign by Republican governors in Texas and Florida to shift some of the immigration burden to Democratic-run cities further north.

Florida also acknowledged a role in sending two flights of migrants to California last month, saying all of them traveled voluntarily.

Results of a Bexar County sheriff investigation into the Martha’s Vineyard flight concluded that individuals were “induced to accept free travel based on false representations” that they would be transported from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard and receive housing, education and employment opportunities, Newsom said.

A referral for potential criminal prosecution for that flight is pending with the Bexas County District Attorney’s Office and the California Department of Justice has opened criminal and civil investigations into the circumstances of the Sacramento flights.

“Although separate investigations into potential violations of state laws remain active, the U.S. Department of Justice has a unique capability to investigate cases where, as here, the scheme stretches from Massachusetts to California and touches upon no fewer than five states,” Newsom said.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Richard Chang)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, has been voted out of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus group in the House of Representatives, Politico reported on Thursday.

“A vote was taken to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from the House Freedom Caucus for some of the things she’s done,” Republican Representative Andy Harris was quoted as saying by the political news outlet.

The Maryland Republican declined to say how he voted, but called the decision to remove the Georgia congresswoman, who is in her second two-year term, “an appropriate action,” according to Politico.

Greene’s office was not immediately available for comment.

A House Freedom Caucus spokesperson said in an email: “HFC does not comment on membership or internal process.”

The formal vote came shortly after reports that Greene and fellow caucus member Representative Lauren Boebert got into a heated clash on the House floor last month, with Greene hurling insults at Boebert.

“I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to other fellow, especially female, members,” Harris told Politico, referring to Greene. “I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was publicly saying things about another member in terms that no one should.”

Politico said Harris was asked whether Greene breaking from the group on the debt limit bill or her support for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy were also factors in her removal. He replied, “I think all of that mattered.”

McCarthy faced a revolt from hardline Republicans, who accused him of betraying an agreement that got him elected to lead the Republican-controlled chamber when he reached a deal with Democratic President Joe Biden for compromise debt ceiling legislation. The hardline Republicans had said McCarthy and his leadership team failed to deliver on promised spending cuts and ignored their input.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s main fundraising committee raised more than $35 million during the April-June period, a campaign official said, nearly twice what the group gathered in the prior three months.

The acceleration in fundraising could be a sign that Trump’s 2024 campaign coffers are benefiting from the former president’s legal problems.

Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in June on charges that include mishandling classified documents after he left the White House in 2021. Prosecutors in New York City charged him in April in a separate case involving an alleged hush-money payment to a porn star.

Trump has disputed all the charges, saying he is the victim of a political witch hunt – an argument he uses regularly in his e-mailed fundraising appeals. In one such email, he also said, “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after YOU,” a theme he has echoed on the stump.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted the day after Trump’s federal indictment, a vast majority of Republicans believe those charges are politically motivated.

Trump is the front-runner in a crowded field seeking the Republican presidential nomination for next November’s election. His chief rival in that contest, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, only declared his candidacy in May and has yet to disclose how much money he has raised.

The Trump campaign official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide further details on the second quarter fundraising, which was carried out by Trump’s Save America Joint Fundraising Committee.

But the more than $35 million in reported donations far outstripped the $18.8 million that the joint committee raised in the first three months of the year.

The joint committee’s most recent fundraising appeals disclose that 90% of the money it raises go to Trump’s campaign, while the other 10% go to a separate group that helps fund Trump’s legal expenses.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; editing by Ross Colvin and Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cocaine discovered in the White House on Sunday was found in a cubby hole at a West Wing entry where visitors place electronics and other belongings before taking tours, said a source familiar with the matter.

A probe was under way to determine who may have left the cocaine in the cubby hole, the source said. “They’re checking visitor logs and … looking at cameras. Those are the next steps. Cross-checking.”

The substance was found during a routine Secret Service sweep on Sunday evening. A Secret Service spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The agency did not say how much cocaine was found.

The discovery led to a brief closure of the White House complex on Sunday. President Joe Biden and his family were not at the White House then.

Biden did not answer questions that reporters shouted at him about the cocaine on Wednesday.

Administration officials are able to offer tours of parts of the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office, to friends and family members. People who are not members of staff must leave electronics and other belongings in the storage cubicles before taking a tour.

“It was in one of the cubbies,” the source said.

Biden and his family returned to the White House early on Tuesday after spending the holiday weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. Family members who visit the Bidens traditionally use the East Wing, the source said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Heather Timmons, David Gregorio and Howard Goller)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.

The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.

The litigation was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, used Twitter to welcome the injunction and called it a win for free speech.

The order also mentioned by name officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.

Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.

The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.

Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.

U.S. officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about COVID vaccines to curb preventable deaths.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, Twitter, and Alphabet’s YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Alistair Bell, Heather Timmons and Bill Berkrot)

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By Tim Reid and Nathan Layne

(Reuters) – Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more.

Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state.

“I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well,” he said.

The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full-throated support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The two parties have hemorrhaged money in recent years, undermining Republican efforts to win back the ultra-competitive states that could determine who wins the White House and control of the U.S. Congress in next November’s elections, according to a Reuters review of financial filings, plus interviews with six major donors and three election campaign experts.

Arizona’s Republican Party had less than $50,000 in cash reserves in its state and federal bank accounts as of March 31 to spend on overheads such as rent, payroll and political campaign operations, the filings show. At the same point four years ago, it had nearly $770,000.

The Michigan party’s federal account had about $116,000 on March 31, a drop from nearly $867,000 two years ago. It has yet to disclose updated financial information for its state account this year.

The two parties have “astonishingly low cash reserves,” said Seth Masket, director of the non-partisan Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, adding that state parties play a key election role, helping promote candidates, fund get-out-the-vote efforts, pay for ads and recruit volunteers.

“Their ability to help candidates is severely limited right now.”

The Arizona party spent more than $300,000 on “legal consulting” fees last year, according to its federal filings, which do not specify the type of legal work paid for.

In that period, legal fees were paid to a firm that had filed lawsuits seeking to overturn Trump’s defeat in Arizona, according to separate campaign and legal disclosures. Money was also paid to attorneys who represented Kelli Ward, the former party chair when the Justice Department subpoenaed her over her involvement in a plan to falsely certify to Congress that Trump, and not Democratic President Joe Biden, had won Arizona, plus when a congressional committee subpoenaed her phone records.

More than $500,000 was also spent in Arizona on an election night party and a bus tour for statewide Trump-backed candidates last year, the financial filings show. All of those candidates, who supported the former president’s election-steal claims, lost in last November’s midterms.

It’s not just Weiser who’s had enough.

Five other Republican donors to the Arizona or Michigan parties, who have each donated tens of thousands of dollars over the past six years, told Reuters they had also ceased giving money, citing state leaders’ drives to overturn the 2020 election, their backing of losing candidates who support Trump’s election conspiracy and what they view as extreme positions on issues like abortion.

“It’s too bad we let the right wing of our party take over the operations,” said Jim Click, whose family has been a longtime major Republican donor in Arizona. He and other donors said they would give money directly to candidates or support them through other political fundraising groups.

Kristina Karamo, chair of the Michigan state party, didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story. In the campaign for her position, she said that she wanted to break ties with established donors, accusing them of exploiting the party for their own gain, and wants to rely more on grassroots members.

Ward, who stepped down as Arizona party chair in January after four years at the helm, told Reuters that she and her team had always had revenues to cover outgoings and had left her successor at least three months’ operating expenses plus a “robust fundraising operation.”

Dajana Zlaticanin, a spokesperson for new chair Jeff DeWit, said that when he took over, “cash reserves were extremely low and previous bills kept coming in.” Contributions are on the uptick, she said, with over $40,000 raised in May.

The Republican National Committee, which oversees Republican political operations nationally, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the finances of the two state parties.

‘I SEE NO SUN COMING OUT’

Arizona and Michigan, both won by Biden in 2020, are among just a handful of swing states that will likely decide the race for the presidency in November 2024.

Not all Republican parties have fared as badly financially as Arizona and Michigan. For example, the swing state of North Carolina – where Republican leaders haven’t focused so heavily on Trump’s election-steal fight – ended 2022 with nearly $800,000 in its federal accounts, according to the filings.

It is difficult to get a complete picture of parties’ finances, though, given time lags in disclosures and because not all of their accounts are subject to reporting requirements.

Furthermore, state parties don’t rely solely on individual donors, they also receive money from national party organizations, outside groups and political action committees.

Michigan was a hotbed of conspiracy theories after Trump lost the 2020 election, and this month Karamo was fined by a county judge for filing a lawsuit that made unfounded claims about voting irregularities in Detroit.

Tensions over transparency have started to boil over.

Last week former state party budget chairman Matt Johnson launched a broadside against Karamo, two days after she removed him from his post, accusing her of keeping his committee in the dark about the party’s finances.

“As far as we could tell from the piecemeal information we received, the party’s fundraising had been extremely meager, and the spending was so far out of proportion with income as to put us on the path to bankruptcy,” he said.

Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said the financial figures disclosed so far by the party underscore the difficult task of supporting operations without the financial backing of big donors.

    “They are effectively broke and I don’t see the clouds parting and the sun coming out on their fundraising abilities,” he said.

‘DETRIMENTAL TO CAMPAIGNS’

The review of the two Republican state parties’ filings shows that a near shut-off of the donor spigot is contributing to their financial woes.

The Michigan party’s federal account took in $51,000 in the fist three months of this year, putting it on pace to raise less than a quarter of its haul in the first half of 2019, the same period in the last presidential election cycle.

In March, Karamo told a gathering of local officials that the party had $460,000 in liabilities after the 2022 midterm elections. While not unusually large, the debt would normally be covered by fresh fundraising.

The Arizona party, meanwhile, raised roughly $139,000 in the first three months of this year, according to state and federal filings. In the comparable period in 2019, in the months after the 2018 midterm elections, it raised more than $330,000.

New Arizona chair DeWit, who was NASA’s chief financial officer in the Trump administration, is working to make the party attractive to donors again by focusing on winning elections, spokesperson Zlaticanin said.

Some donors in Michigan said they had started talking with each other about how best to bypass the state party and support individual Republican candidates. But the state party’s organizational heft will be hard to replicate, said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party.

    “You have to have boots on the ground and you can’t build that kind of infrastructure quickly enough to win the 2024 election,” Timmer said.

Jonathan Lines, who preceded Ward as Arizona’s party chairman up to 2019, said he expected new donor money to mostly go to political action committees, and other groups who fund campaigns, rather than the state party.

“But not having the state party well funded is detrimental to many Republican campaigns next year,” he added. (This story has been refiled with a corrected picture caption)

(Reporting by Tim Reid and Nathan Layne, editing by Ross Colvin and Pravin Char)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.

The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluations its options.

The order also mentioned by name officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.

Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.

The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.

Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.

U.S. officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about COVID vaccines to curb preventable deaths.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, Twitter, and Alphabet’s YouTube did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Alistair Bell, Heather Timmons and Bill Berkrot)

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