Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — known for its fun albeit ferocious jabs at Washington — took a more solemn tone this year as President Joe Biden acknowledged the several American journalists under siege in authoritarian countries around the world.

“We are here to send a message to the country and, quite frankly, to the world: The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar, of a free society, not the enemy,” Biden said in his speech.

Also among the 2,600 people attending the gala was Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, who has not been heard from since disappearing at a checkpoint in Syria in 2012. U.S. officials say they operate under the assumption that he is alive and are working to try to bring him home.

“Journalism is not a crime. Evan and Austin should be released immediately along with every other American detained abroad,” Biden said. “I promise you, I am working like hell to get them home.”

“This time last year we were praying for you, Brittney,” Biden said to the basketball star.

The annual black-tie dinner drew a wide array of celebrities and media moguls to Washington, with parties being held across the capital. Among those in attendance were actor Liev Schreiber, singer John Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, the model and television personality.

Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened the dinner with a pre-taped video about the importance of a free and independent press, calling reporters an “ally of the people.” Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were seated on the stage along with comedian Roy Wood Jr., a correspondent for “The Daily Show,” who was the featured entertainer.

While Biden spent the majority of his speech focused on the issue of press freedom, he took time to take jabs at some of his most vocal political critics. The occasion is a familiar and comfortable one for Biden, who attended several of the dinners as vice president to Barack Obama. The Washington event returned last year after being sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Biden was the first president in six years to accept the invitation after Donald Trump shunned the event while in office.

But this year, he came not only as the commander in chief but as a presidential contender.

He started his punchlines with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, taking direct aim at a recent bill Republicans passed that would lift the debt ceiling in exchange for a series of budget cuts, including some of Biden’s key legislative achievements.

“The last time Republicans voted for something that hapless it took 15 tries,” Biden said, referring to the gruesome fight McCarthy endured to become speaker in January.

And he didn’t stop there, going after Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch about his age. “And you call me old?” he told the crowd.

Biden even made a couple of self-deprecating jokes, mostly surrounding criticism of his age as he mounts a second bid for reelection. “I believe in the First Amendment and not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” he said to a roaring crowd.

Wood, who took the stage after Biden, also zeroed in on the president’s age.

“We should be inspired by the events in France. They rioted when the retirement age went up two years to 64,” Wood said. “Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man, begging us for four more years.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Michael Bennet introduced a bill on Thursday that would create a task force to look at U.S. policies on artificial intelligence, and identify how best to reduce threats to privacy, civil liberties and due process.

The popular use of ChatGPT and other AI, which have been used for years to create text, imagery and other content, has sparked a rush around the globe to figure out if and how it should be regulated.

In Washington, national security experts have fretted about its use by foreign adversaries, and teachers have complained about it being used to cheat.

The job of the AI Task Force, which could include cabinet members, will be to identify shortfalls in regulatory oversight of AI and recommend reforms, if needed.

“There’s going to have to be a lot of education around this set of issues because they’re not well understood,” said Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado. “There’s going to be a lot of improvisation and iterative approaches to try to wrestle with this because AI is so new to everyone in the government.”

Under the bill, the task force would include an official from the Office of Management and Budget, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as privacy and civil liberties officers from the Departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Defense and other executive branch agencies.

Under the terms of the bill, the task force would work for 18 months, issue a final report and then shut down.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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By Karen Freifeld

(Reuters) – Michael Cohen on Monday asked a U.S. appeals court to revive his lawsuit against Donald Trump and other government officials, seeking damages for sending him back to prison in retaliation for publishing a tell-all memoir criticizing the former U.S. president.

Lawyers for Cohen said in a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that the judiciary has a responsibility to remediate the harm done by Trump and his subordinates.

“The head of the executive branch wielded his power to have one of his critics silenced, thrown back into prison, and kept in conditions dangerous to his health,” Cohen’s lawyers wrote. “Where such a grievous injury is done to a citizen’s rights and to the nation’s rule of law, there must be a remedy.”

   Cohen is appealing U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman’s dismissal of his lawsuit in November.

   Liman said that while his decision did “violence” to Cohen’s constitutional rights, Cohen was not entitled to damages under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said the lower court was correct when it dismissed Cohen’s “meritless” case.

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes.

   He was released in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but thrown back in prison two months later after questioning an agreement that barred the book’s publication, communicating with the media and social media.

Another judge ordered Cohen’s release 16 days later, finding he had been targeted with retaliation.

The book, “Disloyal: A Memoir” topped the New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list in September 2020.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and various prison officials are also defendants in Cohen’s lawsuit. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, which represented the other defendants, declined to comment.

Cohen is a central witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal case against Trump over a $130,000 hush money payment to silence porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts, and said the encounter with Daniels never happened.

He is also suing Cohen for $500 million in damages in federal court in Miami, accusing him of “spreading falsehoods” and failing to keep attorney-client communications confidential.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) -North Carolina’s highest court on Friday ruled that state law does not bar lawmakers from drawing congressional and state legislative maps for partisan benefit, boosting Republicans’ odds next year of maintaining their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The decision – divided along party lines – appears to clear the way for the Republican-controlled legislature to craft new, political advantageous maps for the 2024 elections, which could net them as many as four additional U.S. House seats.

Republicans currently control the 435-member House by a narrow nine-seat margin.

Friday’s ruling vacated the court’s previous decision, issued barely more than a year ago when Democratic judges controlled the court, that had found partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution.

After the court threw out a Republican-drawn map, the two parties split the state’s 14 seats evenly in November under a court-approved map.

In the same election, Republicans flipped two Democratic seats on the North Carolina Supreme Court, securing a 5-2 conservative majority. In February, the new majority agreed to rehear the redistricting case at the request of Republican lawmakers, an extraordinarily rare move in the court’s history.

In a 146-page opinion on Friday, Chief Justice Paul Newby noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had also found that federal courts have no jurisdiction to address partisan gerrymandering.

“Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text,” Newby wrote for the majority. “Those limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering.”

In a scathing dissent, Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, accused the court’s Republicans of pursuing their own political agenda at the expense of voters’ rights, calling it one of the court’s “darkest moments.”

“Today, the Court shows that its own will is more powerful than the voices of North Carolina’s voters,” she wrote.

‘WORST DECISION EVER’

Voting rights groups decried the decision as an attack on democracy itself.

“I think it’s the worst decision the North Carolina Supreme Court perhaps has ever made,” Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, told reporters.

In a statement, Phil Berger, the Republican leader in the North Carolina Senate, said the ruling affirmed “that our constitution cannot be exploited to fit the political whims of left-wing Democrats.”

In a separate decision, the court’s conservative judges also upheld a Republican-backed voter identification law that the court’s previous Democratic majority had struck down as racially discriminatory.

Friday’s ruling also calls into question whether the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a decision in one of the year’s most important cases.

North Carolina Republicans had appealed last year’s redistricting decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they advanced a once-fringe legal theory that has gained traction in conservative legal circles: the independent state legislature doctrine.

Under the theory, state courts have no authority to review lawmakers’ actions regarding federal elections, including redistricting and voting rules.

Democrats have warned that adopting the theory would allow Republicans to enact new restrictions that undermine fair elections, while Republicans contend it would rein in state judges intent on usurping lawmakers’ power.

When the North Carolina court agreed to rehear the case, however, the U.S. Supreme Court asked for additional briefing from the parties about whether it still had legal jurisdiction over the matter.

Now that the North Carolina court has vacated the decision that formed the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court’s review, the U.S. Supreme Court may conclude it no longer has a role to play in resolving the matter.

(Reporting by Joseph AxEditing by Bill Berkrot and Aurora Ellis)

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By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) – A day after all five women in the South Carolina state senate banded together to block a proposed abortion ban, Republican Senator Sandy Senn posted a picture of the group on her Facebook page calling the three Republicans, one Democrat and one Independent “united and unstoppable.”

The senators came together across parties on Thursday to force any discussion of the near-total ban into 2024, their success the latest indication that not all Republicans agree with the strictest abortion bans.

“Republican leaders from other states are supporting moderate stances, and people I don’t even know have started contributing to my campaign,” Senn posted above the photo on Friday.

The group’s successful filibuster of the near-total abortion ban came on the same day that the legislature in Nebraska defeated a ban on most abortions after six weeks by just one vote.

Their actions are the latest signal that some Republicans are starting to see the strictest abortion bans as possible political liabilities in a country where most voters hold more moderate views on the topic.

Earlier this month, Wisconsin voters elected liberal judge Janet Protasiewica to the state Supreme Court, flipping control to a liberal majority ahead of rulings on an abortion ban and other matters that could play a role in the 2024 presidential election.

“I don’t judge someone who is pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life,” former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the only female candidate in the Republican Presidential race, said in a speech this week interpreted as showing a softer approach than many Republicans on the issue.

Some Republican strategists have pointed to the party’s struggle to win key recent races, saying the relentless focus by some state legislatures on banning abortion over the past year have backfired. In Kansas last summer, voters roundly defeated a measure that would have made it easier to ban abortion in that state.

South Carolina Republicans have tried three times this legislative session to ban abortion, according to Senn, who favors a statewide referendum on the issue.

The vote to “continue,” or delay, discussion of the proposed ban passed by just one vote on Thursday, state records show. The motion to end the women’s filibuster also failed by one vote.

In Nebraska, a bill to ban most abortions at six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant, also failed by just one vote, with two senators not voting.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence appeared before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Pence was inside U.S. District Court in Washington for more than seven hours, ABC News and NBC News reported earlier. Representatives for Pence had no comment.

The former vice president’s appearance before the grand jury comes as he is exploring a possible challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Security was beefed up at the federal courthouse in Washington and a bomb-sniffing dog was spotted in the hallway.

Trump, who announced late last year his bid for the White House for 2024, was recently indicted in a separate probe in New York over alleged hush payments.

On Wednesday, Trump lost an appeal to block Pence from testifying in the special counsel probe, according to CNN.

Earlier this month, Pence disclosed that he would not appeal a judge’s ruling that required him to testify to the federal grand jury about conversations he had with Trump leading up to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Special Counsel Jack Smith took over the probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including a plot to submit phony slates of electors to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

Ahead of the 2021 Capitol attacks by Trump supporters, the then-president repeatedly lambasted Pence for refusing to try to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s win in the 2020 election.

Trump is also facing other legal hurdles as well, including a separate special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents and a probe in Georgia related to alleged interference with the state’s 2020 election.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Kanishka Singh, Sarah N. Lynch and Costas Pitas; writing by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Doina Chiacu, Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman)

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By Nathan Layne

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) -Donald Trump said on Thursday that if he wins the 2024 presidential election, he will order the Justice Department to investigate “radical” county and state prosecutors whom he accused, without evidence, of targeting conservatives.

In a campaign speech, the former president, who faces multiple criminal investigations, said the prosecutors were “persecuting conservatives” and touched on his policy positions and personal grievances as he painted himself as a victim of the so-called Deep State.

“On day one of my new administration, I will direct the DOJ to investigate every radical district attorney and attorney general in America for their illegal, racist … enforcement of the law,” Trump told more than 1,000 supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Trump faces at least four criminal investigations including a federal probe into his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and a recent New York indictment related to a hush money payment to a porn star. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the investigations politically motivated.

The call for federal probes of prosecutors fits what critics have described as Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric on the campaign trail. On Thursday, he repeated plans for a “truth and reconciliation commission” as part of a purge of the federal bureaucracy.

Trump also sought to reframe the choice between him and President Joe Biden. Biden, a Democrat, launched his re-election campaign two days ago with a video promising to protect personal freedoms from “extremists” linked to the former Republican president.

Trump said the U.S. was a “failing nation” and pointed to economic data on Thursday showing U.S. economic growth slowed dramatically in the first three months of 2023.

“The choice in this election is now between strength or weakness, between success or failure, between safety or anarchy, between peace or conflict, and prosperity or catastrophe,” Trump said.

Trump’s remarks assume that both he and Biden will win their party’s nominations. Trump appeared to be consolidating his support in the race for the Republican nomination and travels to New Hampshire in hope of capturing the early nominating state.

The former president, who handily won New Hampshire’s primary in 2016, had a sizeable national lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 49% to 23%, among self-identified Republicans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 21-24.

In a mocking moment, Trump drew applause when he shuffled around the stage pretending he was struggling to find the exit, suggesting he may revive a theme from his 2020 campaign when he portrayed Biden as elderly and lacking energy and acuity.

In February the president’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, issued Biden a clean bill of health and said he was fit to continue his duties. Biden, 80, is the oldest person ever to serve as U.S. president. Trump is 76.

Trump on Thursday repeated the false claim that his election loss in 2020 was due to systemic fraud orchestrated by the Democrats.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman)

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By Jacqueline Thomsen

(Reuters) – Top U.S. Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer on Thursday warned the chief judge of a Texas federal court in a letter that Congress could intervene unless he agrees “to reform the method of assigning cases to judges” in the district.

Schumer told U.S. Chief District Judge David Godbey of the Northern District of Texas, where plaintiffs have frequently sued to challenge Biden administration policies, that they have taken advantage of the rules “to hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims.”

Godbey did not immediately return a request for comment.

Schumer pointed to the court’s rules assigning civil cases filed in certain court divisions to one judge. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump, is one such judge: Any cases filed in his Amarillo division are automatically assigned to him.

That includes the recent legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Kacsmaryk earlier this month ruled to suspend approval of the medication, but the U.S. Supreme Court last week blocked those restrictions, leaving the pill accessible for now.

A federal statute allows individual district courts to determine how their cases are assigned. Schumer’s letter said other courts have rules to randomly assign district judges to cases across divisions.

If plaintiffs are allowed to “hand-pick their preferred judges and effectively guarantee their preferred outcomes, Congress will consider more prescriptive requirements,” Schumer wrote.

Complaints of “judge shopping” have grown since Kacsmaryk’s ruling in the abortion pill case and other cases related to Biden’s policy agenda.

Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono on Wednesday introduced legislation that would require lawsuits affecting national policies to be relegated to the federal trial court in Washington, citing such concerns.

The Biden administration has accused Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of judge shopping, including in a lawsuit challenging last year’s $1.7 trillion federal government funding law.

Paxton’s office is fighting an effort to transfer the case from the Northern District of Texas to Washington or Austin, the state’s capital. The judge in that case has not yet ruled on the motion.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen)

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By Jack Queen and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -E. Jean Carroll, a writer accusing Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, pushed back during a cross-examination on Thursday, exclaiming: “He raped me whether I screamed or not.”

Asked by Trump’s lawyer why she did not scream during the alleged attack, Carroll said she was panicked and “not a screamer” by nature.

“People always ask, ‘Why didn’t you scream?’ It keeps women silent,” Carroll told the lawyer, Joe Tacopina, on the third day of a trial in her civil case against the former U.S. president in Manhattan federal court.

She forcefully denied Tacopina’s suggestion that she waited more than two decades to come forward about her encounter with Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room to sell more copies of her 2019 memoir.

Carroll, 79, said she felt compelled to go public after rape allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017 prompted many other women to share their accounts of sexual abuse.

“It caused me to realize that staying silent does not work,” Carroll said.

“Woman after woman stood up,” Carroll said before her six-man, three-woman jury. “I thought, well, this may be a way to change the culture of sexual violence.”

After dozens of questions from Tacopina about her failure to scream, Carroll lost patience and raised her voice. “I’m telling you: he raped me whether I screamed or not,” she said.

TRUMP LAWYER ALLEGES MONEY MOTIVE

Trump’s legal team sought to undermine Carroll’s credibility after she testified in graphic detail on Wednesday that Trump, now 76, raped her in the Bergdorf dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.

Tacopina pressed Carroll on her inability to remember exactly when the encounter happened, and suggested she made up the story to generate publicity for the memoir, “What Do We Need Men For?”

“For two decades, Ms. Carroll, you never told the police and never revealed the story in your hundreds of columns,” Tacopina said.

Carroll acknowledged she did not immediately shower, see a doctor or call the police, and confided only in her friends Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin.

She said feelings of shame or fear of retaliation often kept women from reporting rape. Carroll said she also feared Trump would use his wealth against her.

“One of my biggest fears absolutely came true,” Carroll said. “He has two tables of lawyers here today.”

Carroll had testified on Wednesday that Trump, who had been shopping at Bergdorf for lingerie for another woman, coaxed her into a dressing room, slammed her into a wall and raped her.

Trump has consistently denied Carroll’s allegations and said she made them up to sell her memoir and hurt him politically, a theme Tacopina touched on.

The 76-year-old Trump leads the Republican field in the 2024 presidential campaign.

He has not attended the trial and is not required to be there. While Carroll testified, Trump was in Manchester, New Hampshire, at a campaign event.

‘A CHANCE TO BE HEARD,’ CARROLL SAYS

Carroll, a registered Democrat, is seeking unspecified damages from Trump, saying his denials ruined her career and invited a flood of online harassment that persists.

She is suing Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York state law letting adults who claim they were sexually abused sue their alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have run out.

Carroll is also suing for defamation over an October 2022 post by Trump on his Truth Social platform where he called the rape a hoax and scam, said Carroll was “not my type!” and accused Carroll of concocting a tale to sell her memoir.

On Thursday, prior to cross-examination, Carroll finished being questioned by her lawyer Michael Ferrara.

She maintained that suing Trump was a means of “getting my name back” after being subjected to a “wave of slime” from Trump supporters, and denied she did it for publicity or revenge.

“I like attention,” she said. “I don’t particularly like getting attention for suing Donald Trump. Getting attention for being raped is hard.”

Tacopina is expected to continue cross-examining Carroll when the trial resumes on Monday. The trial is expected to last one to two weeks.

Birnbach, co-author of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” and Martin, a former New York City news anchor, are expected to testify on Carroll’s behalf.

(Reporting by Jack Queen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

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By Nathan Layne

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) -Donald Trump used his first campaign event since President Joe Biden officially entered the 2024 election race to portray their differences in stark and apocalyptic terms, arguing a Biden re-election would lead to “conflict” and “anarchy.”

Speaking to more than 1,000 supporters, many wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, Trump sought to reframe the choice between the two men. Biden, a Democrat, launched his re-election campaign two days ago with a video promising to protect personal freedoms from “extremists” linked to the former Republican president.

“The choice in this election is now between strength or weakness, between success or failure, between safety or anarchy, between peace or conflict, and prosperity or catastrophe,” Trump said in a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“With your vote on November 5th, 2024, we are going to crush Joe Biden.”

Trump’s remarks assume that both he and Biden will win their party’s nominations. Trump appeared to be consolidating his support in the race for the Republican nomination and travels to New Hampshire in hope of capturing the early nominating state.

The former president had a sizeable national lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 49% to 23%, among self-identified Republicans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 21-24.

Benefiting from a large field of candidates and tapping into the angst of working-class voters, Trump handily won New Hampshire’s primary in 2016 in a prelude to victories across the Northeast and ultimately the Republican nomination.

In a mocking moment, Trump drew applause when he shuffled around the stage pretending he was struggling to find the exit, suggesting he may revive a theme from his 2020 campaign when he portrayed Biden as elderly and lacking energy and acuity.

In February the president’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, issued Biden a clean bill of health and said he was fit to continue his duties. Biden, 80, is the oldest person ever to serve as U.S. president. Trump is 76.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman)

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