Politics

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit by a group of congressional Democrats who had sought details about a government lease for a Washington hotel covering the time when it was owned by Republican former President Donald Trump.

The court acted after the lawmakers this month voluntarily dropped their 2017 lawsuit against the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that manages federal government real estate, focused on what was called the Trump International Hotel. The justices last month had agreed to hear a bid by President Joe Biden’s administration to block the lawsuit.

Seventeen Democratic members of the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee sued the GSA, seeking information about a 2013 lease of the Old Post Office building just a few blocks from the White House to Trump’s company to convert it into a hotel. The hotel became a gathering spot for Trump supporters, lobbyists and foreign dignitaries.

The Trump Organization last year completed the $375 million sale of the hotel’s lease to an investment firm that planned to rebrand the property.

The case pursued by the lawmakers had tested whether small groups of legislators have the proper legal standing to sue to enforce a federal law aimed at obtaining information from federal agencies. The GSA had rejected several requests by Democrats, whose party was then – as today – in the minority in the House, saying they lacked the authority as individual members to conduct oversight.

A federal judge had previously dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the committee members did not as legislators suffer the kind of legal injury that would entitle them to sue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived the case in 2020, concluding: “A rebuffed request for information to which the requester is statutorily entitled is a concrete, particularized and individualized personal injury.”

Biden’s Justice Department, defending the GSA, had appealed the case to the Supreme Court, saying that the case could set an unwelcome precedent by allowing just a few members of Congress, even fringe members of a minority party, to distract and harass executive branch officials.

David Vladeck, a lawyer representing the lawmakers, said the justices on Monday did “exactly what we asked the Supreme Court to do.”

Vladeck pointed to Democratic U.S. House member Jamie Raskin’s comments this month that the GSA produced the vast majority of records requested, enabling the lawmakers to make public Trump’s receipt of millions of dollars in “emoluments” from foreign governments and the Secret Service, as well as his efforts to conceal millions of dollars in losses from the hotel.

The U.S. Constitution’s “emoluments” clauses bar federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval, and the president from receiving gifts from states. Trump argued that Democratic lawmakers were reading the emoluments clauses too broadly and that the nation’s founders were prohibiting outright bribes.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a bid by a senior Republican state official to defend a map of Louisiana congressional districts that had been challenged by Black voters as discriminatory, sending the closely watched legal battle back to a lower court.

The justices had taken up the case last year but put it on hold pending their ruling in a similar case from Alabama, which they issued on June 8. The justices dismissed the appeal by Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin of a federal judge’s decision that the map delineating Louisiana’s six U.S. House of Representatives districts drawn by the Republican-led state legislature likely discriminated unlawfully based on race.

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick last year directed Louisiana’s legislature create two, rather than just one, House districts where Black voters represent the majority of voters, a decision that could boost Democratic chances of regaining control next year of the House.

In their brief order dismissing the case “as improvidently granted,” they justices said that their action will allow the matter to proceed before the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “for review in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.”

Electoral districts in the United States are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes as measured by a national census, last taken in 2020. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain.

Democrats have accused Republicans of exploiting state legislature majorities to draw electoral maps that dilute the clout of Black and other minority voters. Republicans have said the consideration of race in drawing electoral maps must be limited.

The Louisiana legislature passed the map in February 2022. Democratic Governor Jon Bel Edwards then vetoed it, criticizing the plan for failing to include a second Black-majority district considering that Black voters comprise almost a third of the state’s population. The legislature voted to override the veto.

The map was challenged by Black voters and civil rights groups in two lawsuits. The plaintiffs said the Republican-drawn unlawfully packed large numbers of Black voters into a single district and dispersed the rest into the five others in numbers too small to enable them to elect their preferred candidates.

One of the lawsuits said the Republican-drawn map “continues the State of Louisiana’s long history of maximizing political power for white citizens by disenfranchising and discriminating against Black Louisianans.”

The plaintiffs in court papers said that “stark racially polarized voting almost universally leads to the electoral defeat of Black-preferred candidates” in Louisiana.

Dick ruled that the way the map was drawn by the Republicans likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which for decades has been used to counter racially biased actions in voting and drawing electoral districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 8 in the Alabama case, with two conservative justices joining the three liberals in the majority. They affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Republican-drawn map of that state’s seven House districts diminished the voting power of Black Alabamians in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court in that ruling elected not to further roll back protections contained in the Voting Rights Act as it had done in two major decisions in the past decade.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

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(Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday provided his most detailed plan yet for securing the U.S. southern border with Mexico as he tries to make up ground against Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

At an event in Eagle Pass, Texas, on the Rio Grande river border with Mexico, DeSantis took a swipe at Trump, lumping him with other presidents he said had failed to take action to stem the flow of migrants at the border.

“No excuses on this,” DeSantis said. “Get the job done.”

DeSantis, who announced his presidential bid last month, has struggled to gain momentum against Trump, the ex-president who is seeking another term in the White House. National opinion polls show DeSantis trailing Trump by more than 20 percentage points.

DeSantis’ border-security plan marked his latest effort to appeal to the party’s hardcore conservative voters in the hope of peeling some away from Trump, who has made illegal immigration a core issue of his presidential bids.

After touting his record as Florida governor for weeks on the campaign trail, DeSantis is slowly rolling out national policy programs. Energy and tax plans are in the offing, he said.

As part of his border plan, DeSantis would end so-called “catch and release” and would detain migrants crossing the border until their hearing dates; deny entry to any migrant at the border claiming political asylum; and tax remittances from migrants living in the country illegally to pay for the construction of a border wall.

DeSantis also would move to end so-called “birthright citizenship,” which allows children of migrants born in this country to become U.S. citizens, and allow state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

He vowed as president to employ U.S. law enforcement assets across the border if necessary to stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the United States.

He said he would do as much as possible through unilateral executive action without waiting for Congress to act.

Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship and to continue the hardline immigration policies he instituted as president. His campaign on Monday accused DeSantis of “copying and pasting” Trump’s policy agenda.

While president in 2018, Trump said he planned to issue an executive order to limit birthright citizenship, but never followed through. Many legal scholars at the time were skeptical that Trump could use executive authority to roll back the right.

At the Texas event, DeSantis contended that the border has become a portal through which migrants from around the world enter and said the influx was straining the budgets of local communities.

“There are people from halfway around the world coming through on this southern border because they know all you got to do is show up in the border and you’re going to get a ticket to come into the interior of the United States,” he said.

Ammar Moussa, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, criticized DeSantis’ plan, saying it consists of “political gimmicks that are merely an echo of the same cruel and callous policies of the Trump administration that broke our immigration system.”

President Joe Biden’s administration last week secured a victory before the U.S. Supreme Court when it held that border states could not challenge federal priorities on enforcement of immigration policy.

Speaking with reporters after the event on Monday, DeSantis again defended his use of private planes to relocate migrants from Texas to Democratic-run states such as California and Massachusetts.

“It’s been very effective,” he said, adding that it “will continue to be used.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Mark Heinrich)

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Activists and politicians are marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a nationwide right to abortion by both celebrating it and bashing.

Rallies on both sides were scheduled for Saturday in Washington and across the country.

In a statement, President Joe Biden pledged to protect access and decried the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court’s conservative majority on June 24, 2022, overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, which had been in place for nearly a half-century.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel praised the ruling, which was made possible by former President Donald Trump’s adding three conservative justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office.

“The decision has saved countless lives and set America on a positive course after decades of shameful abortion on-demand practices that put us in a category with China and North Korea,” McDaniel said in a statement.

While there’s far from a universal consensus among voters, public opinion polls have consistently found that the majority oppose the most restrictive bans but also oppose unchecked abortion access at all stages of pregnancy.

In states with the deepest bans, the number of abortions has plummeted to nearly zero. There have been more abortions in states where access has been maintained — especially those closest to those with bans, as women travel for care they used to be able to get closer to home.

There’s also been a rise in use of networks that distribute abortion pills.

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By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump said the federal government has a role in regulating late term abortions, but declined to provide specifics on what that role was in a speech to a conservative audience on Saturday night.

Trump has been relatively quiet on the issue of abortion throughout his campaign for a second term, putting him at odds with other Republican presidential hopefuls including his current biggest threat to the party nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who enacted a six week ban on abortions in his state.

“There of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life,” Trump told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night. “We will defeat the radical Democrat policy of extreme late term abortion.”

Late term abortions, which take place after 21 weeks, are extremely rare, representing just 1% of all abortions, and are often due to fetal abnormalities or threats to the mother’s life.

Trump touted his record of appointing three judges to the Supreme Court, which gave the court the conservative majority needed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case which created federal protections for abortion.

The issue of abortion is likely to become a defining one of the 2024 election. Republican candidates are wooing far right Christian voters with commitments to ban the medical procedure – South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has said he would ban it at 15 weeks, and former Vice President Mike Pence has committed to signing a federal ban on it entirely.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 11-12 found that 56% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a politician who supports legislation limiting access to abortion, while 28% would be more likely to.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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By Julia Harte

(Reuters) -Abortion rights supporters and opponents held dueling rallies around the U.S. on Saturday, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized the procedure nationwide.

In Washington, speakers from national abortion rights groups, including Women’s March and NARAL Pro-Choice America, assembled in Columbus Circle to celebrate the defeat of some abortion opponents in the 2022 midterm races and to rally voters ahead of next year’s congressional and presidential elections.

Across town at the Lincoln Memorial, anti-abortion groups, including Students for Life America, hosted a “National Celebrate Life Day Rally.” Former Vice President Mike Pence, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, was among the speakers.

“We’re never going to rest, we’re never going to relent, until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country,” Pence said on Saturday at a pre-rally “tele-townhall” for Iowa, the state that will be first to nominate a Republican candidate for president next year.

A live crowd chanted “four more years” in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris spoke in favor of national legislation to protect abortion rights. A new Republican-backed law takes effect in North Carolina on July 1, cutting the legal window for abortions from 20 to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

“We know this fight will not truly be won until we secure this right for every American, which means ultimately the United States Congress must put back in place what the Supreme Court took away,” Harris said.

The June 24, 2022, Supreme Court ruling allowed U.S. states to ban abortion care for the first time in nearly 50 years. Conservative states have passed a flood of legislation to restrict the procedure, while other states have moved to protect abortion access.

Near-total abortion bans have taken effect in 14 states in the past year, even as opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want abortion legal in all or most cases.

The issue is expected to remain central in next year’s congressional and presidential races, with activists on both sides using the anniversary to mobilize their base to get more politically engaged.

Leading reproductive rights groups – EMILYs List, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund – on Friday announced their endorsements of President Joe Biden and Harris for reelection in 2024.

“A WAKE-UP CALL”

The battle over abortion access is mobilizing candidates as well as voters. The overturn of Roe v. Wade helped convince Democrat Cheyenne Hunt, an attorney and advocate for progressive causes, to run for office in a California congressional district currently led by an anti-abortion Republican.

At an Orange County rally on Saturday to celebrate LGTBQ Pride and decry abortion restrictions, Hunt, 25, said in an interview that the Supreme Court ruling prompted her to run for office at a younger age than she might have.

“Being a young woman in a country where I now have less rights than my mother and grandma did, it’s a dire sign and a wake-up call to many of us Gen-Z women,” she said.

Although California currently has strong reproductive rights protections, some abortion opponents are pushing Congress to pass a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy while Democratic U.S. lawmakers proposed a measure on Thursday that would protect abortion patients and providers from criminalization nationwide. Passage of that measure is unlikely in this deeply divided Congress.

Pence, an outspoken abortion opponent, said at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington on Friday that “every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortion before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard.”

Several of his rivals, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have voiced support for abortion restrictions, without making specific pledges. DeSantis signed a law in Florida this year banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

About 64% of respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May said they were less likely to support a presidential candidate who backed laws severely restricting abortion, while 36% said they were more likely to back such a candidate.

Rallies, marches and concerts in favor of reproductive rights also took place on Saturday in states from Florida to Oregon.

(Reporting by Julia HarteAdditional reporting by Gram SlatteryEditing by Colleen Jenkins, Rosalba O’Brien, Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio)

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By Jonathan Allen and Hannah Beier

DOYLESTOWN, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – On May 12, the library coordinator for Pennsylvania’s Central Bucks School District sent an email to colleagues that some conservative parents and Christian advocacy groups had long prayed to see.

The email instructed school library staff to remove all copies of two books within 24 hours: “Gender Queer”, a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe that includes cartoons of sexual encounters; and “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson, a guidebook with illustrations intended for LGBT students who feel overlooked by standard sex education curriculums.

They were being removed under a new book-challenge policy enacted last July by the Republican majority on the school district’s board of directors after a series of grueling public meetings that have divided the wealthy district north of Philadelphia. Under the policy, a parent can challenge a book in a school library if it depicts implied or actual nudity or “sexual acts” and a committee of district staff then reviews it.

Pulling the two books, both reviled by conservatives around the country, was another hyper-local victory in a broader national effort nurtured by Christian conservative groups to expand parents’ direct control over what school staff can share with their children, particularly on matters of sex, identity and race. Liberal groups say the effort amounts to censorship and even bigotry, with disproportionate harm to LGBT students and those in other minority groups.

Similar battles have unfolded across the country since the COVID-19 pandemic’s mask mandates and school closures turned school boards into some of the most fiery crucibles of U.S. political debate.

“What Bucks County has become is really this microcosm of the division that we see across the country, where people on both sides are so sure that they’re right,” said Tabitha Dell’Angelo, one of the three Democrats on the school board who voted against the policy.

According to two people involved in the drafting of Policy 109.2, it was written with advice and legal counsel from Christian non-profit organizations allied with the influential national group the Family Research Council, which advocates for religious freedoms and against LGBT rights.

Dana Hunter, a Republican and the chair of the school board, said she sought advice from Jeremy Samek, senior counsel at the Independence Law Center and the Pennsylvania Family Institute. Because Samek’s groups offered legal counsel on Policy 109.2 on a pro bono basis, Hunter said, she was under no obligation to inform other board members that she was working with him.

Two board members said they and the other Democrat on the board were not aware of the extent of those groups’ involvement until they were informed by Reuters.

Video of a board meeting shows that when Dell’Angelo repeatedly asked who wrote the book policy ahead of the vote, the Republican members refused to say. Republicans have a majority of six to three on the board.

A few months after passing Policy 109.2, the board’s Republicans passed another policy in January requiring teachers to appear neutral on “partisan, political, or social policy matters.” It codified and broadened an earlier instruction from the district’s school superintendent that teachers take down any rainbow pride flags displayed in classrooms, saying they had become “a flashpoint for controversy and divisiveness.”

Hunter and Samek said they worked together on drafting that policy, too.

LITERARY MERIT

A loose network of local conservative parents were vocal advocates of the book-challenge policy at the school board’s monthly meetings, standing at the microphone during public comment to read aloud the most sexually explicit passages from books they objected to.

A first draft of the policy, written in early 2022 by district library staff and modeled on guidance from the American Association of School Librarians, stated that staff must consider the “literary merit” of a book in deciding to acquire or keep it.

The rewritten policy that passed in July omitted the “literary merit” requirement, and allowed parents to seek the removal of books from the district’s school libraries if they contain actual or implied depictions of “sexual acts” or nudity.

“It’s a very reasonable policy,” said board chair Hunter.

The book-challenge policy became part of a broader complaint by the families of LGBT students in Central Bucks of a “hostile educational environment,” compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. The complaint has triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights; the district has spent about $1 million on legal fees defending itself, according to board members.

In an interview, Samek of the Pennsylvania Family Institute said his work included making sure the policies were “viewpoint-neutral” in order to comply with the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

“There are things that everybody would agree, including the ACLU, that you shouldn’t be giving to kids,” said Samek, who does not live in the school district.

The Pennsylvania Family Institute is listed by the Family Research Council as one of its 49 “State Family Policy Councils.” The groups are all part of a national network of Christian groups that oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender-affirming medical care for transgender people.

Hunter said she was not aware of those positions, but thought them irrelevant.

“What does that stance have anything to do with age-appropriate material for libraries? It doesn’t,” she said.

In November, Samek shared with Hunter and the district superintendent a draft of a policy that would prevent transgender students playing on school sports teams of the gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, according to emails obtained under Pennsylvania’s freedom of information law. The policy proposal is yet to be presented to the full board.

Dell’Angelo, one of the board’s Democrats, said it was wrong to involve groups that oppose LGBT rights in public school policy, and unethical to do so in secret.

“I absolutely see why people are alarmed,” she said. “They say ‘We’re not against gay kids,’ but then you’re soliciting advice from this group? It doesn’t match up. Now you’re telling on yourself. Now we see how you really think.”

Parents, teachers and students who opposed the book-challenge efforts said the excerpts read aloud at board meetings were taken out of context, ignoring the books’ larger values.

“Some books do contain depictions of sex, but I think that’s just an accurate portrayal of teenagers and adults,” said Leo Burchell, an 18-year-old transgender student who graduated this month from a district high school. “Banning those books that are about sex or about nudity or about rape is not going to stop it from happening.”

Earlier this year, Shannon Harris, a mother of two district students, and another parent filed challenges with the district to about 60 books they viewed as having inappropriate sexual content. A third of the books feature LGBT characters or topics while two thirds do not, which Harris said belied opponents’ “false narrative” of homophobic or transphobic motives behind the policy. Those books are pending review.

Besides the two books removed in May, three other books, including two with LGBT themes, have been reviewed by committees of district staff, who voted to keep them on high-school library shelves.

Harris’s advocacy had cost her many friends, she said, but she had no regrets.

“I am a Christian,” she said, “and what I believe is that what I should be doing is advocating for the good of everybody, because that’s what God would want.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Hannah Beier; editing by Paul Thomasch and Claudia Parsons)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in the U.S. Congress have introduced legislation aimed at expunging the former president’s two impeachments, a legislative maneuver without precedent in U.S. history.

Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House of Representatives Republican, and hardline Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a pair of resolutions that if enacted would aim to change the record “as if such articles had never been passed.” Republicans control the House 222-212.

Trump, who is running for reelection in 2024, was twice impeached by the then-Democratic-controlled House, in December 2019 over Ukraine and again in January 2021 for his actions ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Both times he was acquitted by Senate Republicans. Trump was just the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House and is the only one in U.S. history to have been impeached twice. The effort to expunge his impeachment is without historical precedent.

Georgetown University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, whose expert advice Republicans sometimes seek, noted that the U.S. Constitution contains no provision for expunging impeachments.

“It is not like a constitutional DUI. Once you are impeached, you are impeached,” Turley said in an email.

Turley said expungement could still be historically significant by declaring the earlier impeachments in error. “However, that is the view of a different Congress at a different time,” he said.

Greene’s two-page resolution would expunge the 2019 impeachment, saying he was “wrongfully accused of misconduct.” Stefanik’s six-page measure would overturn his 2021 impeachment on grounds that his opponents failed to prove that he committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Democrats called the move questionable, saying it demonstrated Republican fealty to the former president.

“The legality of doing it is highly questionable. That won’t stop the Republicans from doing it, and it’s just further placating Donald Trump,” said Representative Dan Goldman, who was lead Democratic counsel in the 2019 impeachment.

But Greene insisted the move was necessary, calling Trump’s impeachments “a witch hunt,” one of the former president’s favorite terms for the various legal probes he faces.

He is the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal charges, with prosecutors in New York charging him over hush money payments to a porn star and a federal special prosecutor charging him with unlawfully keeping national security documents after leaving office.

Greene has separately introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, two members of his Cabinet, FBI Director Christopher Wray and a U.S. attorney prosecuting participants in the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

On Wednesday, House Republicans censured Democratic Representative Adam Schiff over his leading role in the 2019 Trump impeachment.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters that overturning the 2019 impeachment had merit, alleging that Schiff had lied about Trump’s wrongdoing.

Democrats reject Republican allegations against Schiff, saying he was instead targeted for partisan retribution.

The legislation followed an effort by hardline Republican Representative Lauren Boebert to force an impeachment vote against Biden on Wednesday, a move that her own party sidelined by sending the resolution to two congressional committees.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back Friday against claims from IRS whistleblowers that the Justice Department interfered with the investigation into Hunter Biden, saying more broadly that attacks on the department’s independence are corrosive.

The Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released a transcript of testimony from Gary Shapley, an IRS official who, among other things, claimed that Garland had denied a request from U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware to be appointed special counsel. That designation would have would have given Weiss the same status as the prosecutor leading the investigation into former President Donald Trump.

Weiss never made such a request, Garland said Friday, and always had full authority to file charges wherever and however he saw fit against President Joe Biden’s son. And Garland added that if Weiss — first appointed U.S. Attorney by Donald Trump — agrees to testify before Congress, the Justice Department will not stand in the way.

“He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own,” Garland said. “I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him for bringing a prosecution given that he has that authority.”

More broadly, Garland forcefully rebutted criticism from Republicans that a plea agreement for the president’s son on tax and gun charges made public this week reflects political influence in the American justice system. Republicans have denounced the deal as evidence of a “two-tiered system of justice” with the way former President Donald Trump has been treated by the DOJ.

In a separate statement Friday, Biden’s lawyer denounced the idea that the investigation cut any corners, and said it would be “dangerously misleading” to make conclusions based on the Shapley transcript.

The transcript included a message Hunter sent to a business associate alluding to “sitting with his father,” seemingly suggesting that his father was aware of his business dealings. Shapley acknowledged the investigation didn’t turn up evidence to prove that, instead finding that it was likely untrue.

Weiss’ office referred request for comment about the whistleblower testimony to a June 7 letter he wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan saying he had “ultimate authority” over the investigation.

The testimony from IRS agent Shapley and a second unnamed agent who worked on the case detailed what they called a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” and delaying enforcement actions in the Hunter Biden case.

Shapley said Weiss told him and others during an October 2022 meeting that he had been denied special counsel status. Transcripts released Thursday include an email with Shapley’s notes from the meeting, and a response from a supervisor saying his notes “covered it all.”

A representative for Shapley called on Weiss and the Justice Department to explain the discrepancy.

The Hunter Biden plea deal came days after the special counsel on the Trump case filed a historic 37-count indictment alleging mishandling of classified documents, which the former president has denied. Trump has likened the Hunter Biden agreement to a “mere traffic ticket.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some of the Republican Party’s most powerful evangelical Christian voices are gathering to celebrate a ruling that sent shockwaves through American politics and stripped away a constitutional protection that stood for almost a half century.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, GOP presidential candidates will be urged to keep pushing for stronger abortion restrictions, even as Democrats insist the issue will buoy them ahead of the 2024 election.

Former President Donald Trump, whose three nominees to the high court allowed for the reversal of nationwide abortion rights, will give the keynote address Saturday night, the anniversary of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Many of his Republican rivals are set to speak Friday, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said the conference’s dates were negotiated years ago, so the fact that it’s falling on the Dobbs anniversary is a “serendipitous coincidence.”

“But we’re certainly going to do everything that we can, as an organization and as a pro-life and pro-family movement, to give our candidates a little bit of a testosterone booster shot and explain to them that they should not be on the defensive,” Reed said. “Those who are afraid of it need to, candidly, grow a backbone.”

Such a political pep talk may be necessary since Democrats hope fighting to preserve the right to an abortion can energize their base and help the party hold the Senate, flip the House and reelect President Joe Biden.

Even Trump has suggested that strict abortion restrictions were a weakness for Republicans, posting on his social media site in January that the party’s underwhelming midterm performance “wasn’t my fault” and instead blaming “’the ’abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother.”

The Supreme Court ruling paved the way for near-total bans in some Republican-led states, though voters in others rejected state constitutional referendums that would have removed virtually any abortion right protections. Democrats have vowed to codify the right to an abortion in federal law, but don’t have the votes in Congress to do so.

Among the GOP candidates, DeSantis and Pence support bans after six weeks of pregnancy. Scott has backed a 15-week ban, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is speaking to the conference on Saturday, has said she supports a federal ban but has not said at what point in pregnancy she would seek to ban abortions.

Trump, meanwhile, has avoided specifying what national limits, if any, he would support on abortion.

One major pro-life group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has said it would not support any White House candidate who did not, at a minimum, support passing a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Those attending the gathering will encourage the presidential candidates to “shift the focus and shift the language” around abortion, Reed said, so as to “frame the narrative, not around stages of gestation — whether weeks or months or trimesters, which I think is falling into the trap of the left — but talking about the unborn child.”

Pence, an evangelical Christian, will be speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition event for the first time since 2021, when he was booed by some and faced shouts of “traitor.” That event, held in Florida, came months after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when Pence defied Trump’s unprecedented demands to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

The former vice president is also expected to speak Saturday at the National Celebrate Life Rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite evangelicals’ initial reluctance to back Trump in 2016, Reed said the former president’s administration had a strong abortion record to point to. He said Trump also impressed evangelicals by moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, which the evangelical movement supported because of the deep religious significance of the area.

“I think the bar has been raised and I think the ceiling is going to keep moving up,” Reed said of evangelicals’ expectations for pro-Israel, anti-abortion presidential primary candidates.

That’s because, he said, the candidates understand “there is no path to the Republican nomination for president that doesn’t go through the evangelical vote.”

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