Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans pressed ahead Wednesday with one of the central planks of their midterm election campaign, introducing legislation to give parents more of a say in school curriculum.

“That’s what today is all about: It’s about every parent, mom and dad, but most importantly about the students in America,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R–Calif., said in introducing the bill at an event on Capitol Hill.

Reflecting the importance to the GOP agenda, the parents’ bill of rights is the first bill that McCarthy has formally announced as speaker. He was flanked at the event by dozens of parents and young children.

By turning ”parents rights” into a rallying cry, Republicans hope to harness the frustration with schools that reached a boiling point during the pandemic when educators grappled with masking requirements, closures and remote learning for children. Many states with Republican–controlled legislatures have already enacted similar measures.

The proposal comes as the House Judiciary Committee has opened an investigation into the Justice Department and Department of Education for what Republicans contend is the mistreatment of parents who protested “woke” school board policies.

The GOP–led investigation is focusing on a letter the National School Boards Association, which represents school board members around the country, sent to the Justice Department in fall of 2021 outlining more than 20 instances of threats, harassment, disruption, and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states.

The letter cited the arrest that September of an Illinois man for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting. In Michigan, a meeting was disrupted when a man performed a Nazi salute to protest masking.

“We are coming after you,” a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the association. “You are forcing them to wear mask — for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.” It called the board member “a filthy traitor.”

The term “parents’ rights” has been invoked over the last century in disputes related to home–schooling, sex education and even the teaching of foreign languages.

Since the pandemic began, there was a shift where many parents joined a conservative movement pushing for state legislation giving them more oversight of their children’s schools. At issue are library books and course material, transgender students’ use of school bathrooms and the instruction of topics related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Republicans capitalized on the issue during the November’s midterms election after seeing Republican Glenn Youngkin win Virginia’s race for governor in 2021 with his slogan “Parents matter.” The national party embraced the message, with conservative political action committees funneling millions of dollars to school board races in the wake of frustration over remote learning and school mask mandates.

Democrats and education groups have argued that Republicans’ efforts to establish a “parents’ bill of rights” is an overreach that is proving to be more harmful to schools and educators than trying to empower parents.

“McCarthy would rather seek to stoke racial and social division and distract us from what will really help our students thrive: an inspiring, inclusive, and age–appropriate curriculum that prepares each and every one of them for their future,” the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said in a statement Wednesday.

source

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Republicans are considering a new wave of election legislation that could make it easier for residency challenges to knock thousands of people from the voter rolls and ban ballot drop boxes, again catering to those who still deny President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, two years after a GOP-driven election law overhaul in the politically competitive state was signed amid widespread outcry.

“Election deniers will never be satisfied…,” Kristen Nabers, the Georgia director of voting rights group, All Voting is Local, told the state Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday. “They’re just going to keep pushing to perpetuate conspiracy theories in the name of greater transparency.”

But the sponsor says the bill would ease voter concerns and stop counties from interpreting existing law in different ways.

“It’s a confidence bill,” said Georgia Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Max Burns, a Republican from Sylvania. “It’s the ability to make sure, as we implement Georgia law, we follow it consistently. There are a lot of counties who are interpreting the law differently.”

The bill was rewritten multiple times Monday and Tuesday and passed by the Senate Ethics Committee after limited debate, even though Blake Evans, the state elections director, warned members that a provision allowing the state to automatically remove voters who register in another state is illegal under federal law.

After originally proposing to require counties to record video of every drop box, the Ethics Committee decided on the fly during its Tuesday meeting to ban drop boxes statewide, striking out a method of voting that opponents have claimed, without evidence, allowed a massive fraud that stole the 2020 election from Trump.

Burns pledged further changes later in the process.

The bill would also ban counties from hiring election workers who aren’t American citizens and let counties opt out of the state’s electronic ballot markers in favor of hand-marked paper ballots.

A separate bill seeks to make it a felony for county officials to take private money to pay for elections, after Republican attacks on a suburban Atlanta county for taking such money.

The new language reacts to the fears of Republican primary voters who still believe that balloting in Georgia is insecure, despite the state’s 2022 election being conducted without widespread controversy. It would build on the Georgia’s 2021 election law, enacted over bitter opposition, which said every voter in the state could submit an unlimited number of challenges of voter eligibility, shortened the period to request an absentee ballot, and shortened the early voting period before a runoff election

The measure has a long way to go before becoming law, and Tuesday’s improvised changes are likely to draw further opposition. But this year’s proposal could make it possible for activists who have been challenging tens of thousands of registrations across Georgia to knock those voters off the rolls based only on their names appearing on the address change database maintained by the U.S. Postal Service.

County officials have been rejecting most of those challenges, saying that residence, for voting purposes, is more complicated than appearing on a change-of-address list. Officials have generally ruled that a challenger must have first-hand knowledge of someone being unqualified, instead of picking names off a list. But Burns said that he wants counties to require a hearing and possibly remove someone from the rolls based on the lists.

“The most important thing is to ensure that everyone on our voter rolls is a legitimate, legal voter,” Burns said.

Challenges would be thrown out if someone could prove they were in military service, a student attending college away from home, or in federal service in Washington, D.C. But opponents say the list is inaccurate and that the state shouldn’t shift the burden of staying on the rolls back onto voters.

“Every single one of those people has to answer to a voter challenge. That’s how it’s going to work,” said Vasu Abhiraman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. “The conspiracy theorists are going to dig up their names from the change of address registries and they’re going to try to disenfranchise them.”

The measure also strikes at another target of election deniers — ballot drop boxes. Georgia first used drop boxes under an emergency rule during the pandemic in 2020. But Republican activists besieged lawmakers in 2021 with claims that Democrats illegally collected and dropped off ballots at unattended outdoor boxes. The 2021 law codified the use of boxes, but sharply limited how many could be used, requiring that they be inside early in-person voting locations and constantly watched.

The bill had originally proposed that all of Georgia’s 159 counties to record video of every drop box, including making sure “the faces of each person using the drop box are visible,” and make that video freely available online, retaining it for at least four years.

Videos of drop boxes, including some where voters inserted multiple ballots, were a centerpiece of election conspiracy theories, including a movie called “2000 Mules” that suggested Democratic-aligned operatives were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots.

A second measure would make it a felony for county officials to accept money beyond their own tax revenue, except from the state or federal government, to run elections. It’s an amplification of a provision from the 2021 law that made it illegal for elections officials to accept outside money, after Republicans grew alarmed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated more than $400 million to election officials nationwide.

Recently, suburban Atlanta’s DeKalb County accepted $2 million from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence to seek improvements and share best practices. The alliance includes the Center for Tech and Civic Life, Zuckerberg’s main funding vehicle from 2020. That set off a round of condemnations from Republicans that DeKalb had broken the law.

However, the county commission and not the election office accepted the money, and some have said it is legal for elected county commissioners to take grants.

“Pursuing grant funding to supplement operating budgets is a standard and ethical practice for county governments across this state,” DeKalb County Board of Registrations and Elections member Karli Swift told the committee Monday.

___

Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

source

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago is holding a mayoral election Tuesday, but it will likely take weeks — and a runoff election — before a winner is declared. A look at what’s happening:

TUESDAY’S ELECTION

Nine candidates are competing Tuesday for a chance to be Chicago’s next mayor. That includes Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019 and is seeking her second term.

To win the office outright, a candidate needs to receive more than 50% of the vote. That’s unlikely with such a large field, so the race is expected to go to an April 4 runoff between the top two vote-getters.

The election is officially nonpartisan and is not considered or called a primary, though all the candidates seeking to lead the city, a Democratic stronghold, call themselves Democrats.

WHO’S RUNNING?

In addition to Lightfoot, the candidates are U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, former schools CEO Paul Vallas, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, businessman Willie Wilson, state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner, activist Ja’Mal Green and City Council members Sophia King and Roderick Sawyer.

HAVE RUNOFFS BEEN HELD BEFORE?

Municipal elections became nonpartisan and the runoff system was put in place in Chicago starting in 1999. But there wasn’t actually a mayoral runoff needed until 2015. That’s because Mayor Richard Daley easily won reelection in 1999, 2003 and 2007, getting more than 70% of the vote.

After Daley opted not to run again, former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel avoided a runoff in his first mayoral election in 2011. But he was forced into the city’s first mayoral runoff in 2015, after failing to win a majority in the February election. Emanuel faced Garcia, whom he defeated.

In 2019, Lightfoot went to a runoff against Cook County Board Chair Toni Preckwinkle, a contest that Lightfoot won easily.

WHAT ARE THE TOP ISSUES?

Public safety has been the dominant issue in the race. Violent crime increased in Chicago, as it did in many places, during the pandemic, with the city recording 797 homicides in 2021, according to the Chicago Police Department. That was the highest number in a quarter century.

And while homicides have since decreased, and Chicago’s per capita number is lower than other Midwestern cities such as St. Louis, crimes such as robberies and carjackings are still up and incidents are happening in places where they didn’t before, such as downtown.

Voters also are concerned with the increased cost of living, including property taxes, as well as affordable housing, jobs and education.

WHY IS LIGHTFOOT VULNERABLE?

Lightfoot was elected four years ago as an outsider who would curb corruption at City Hall, at a time when some elected officials were under investigation and cleaning up city government was top of mind for voters. But once in office, Lightfoot’s tenure was consumed by other challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic, protests over police violence, rising crime, a Chicago Teachers Union strike and disputes with the police union over a vaccine mandate for officers.

While the number of homicides has decreased since the pandemic, the annual number is still higher than before Lightfoot took office. She says that the city has a strategy to reduce crime and that it’s working; her rivals say that she isn’t doing enough and that her hand-selected police superintendent should be fired.

Separate of law-and-order issues, Lightfoot has been criticized for a temperament some say is too divisive. And some progressives are angry that she didn’t follow through on campaign promises, such as creating civilian oversight of police early in her administration.

Now Lightfoot, who first ran for office as a progressive, is “trying to thread this needle that’s in the middle,” with Vallas getting support from more conservative voters and several candidates competing for voters who are more to the left, said Constance Mixon, a professor at Elmhurst University who has lived her whole life in Chicago.

source

CHICAGO (AP) — Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will meet in a runoff to be the next mayor of Chicago after voters denied incumbent Lori Lightfoot a second term, issuing a rebuke to a leader who made history as head of the nation’s third-largest city.

Vallas, a former schools CEO backed by the police union, and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, advanced to the April 4 runoff after none of the nine candidates was able to secure over 50% of the vote on Tuesday to win outright.

Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to lead the city, won her first term in 2019 after promising to end decades of corruption and backroom dealing at City Hall. But opponents blamed Lightfoot for an increase in crime that occured in cities across the U.S. during the pandemic and criticized her as being a divisive, overly contentious leader.

She is the first elected Chicago mayor to lose a reelection bid since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, lost her Democratic primary.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Lightfoot called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”

“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said. She told her fellow mayors around the country not to fear being bold.

At his victory party, Vallas noted that Lightfoot had called to congratulate him and asked the crowd to give her a round of applause. In a nod to his campaign promise to combat crime, he said that, if elected, he would work to address public safety issues.

“We will have a safe Chicago. We will make Chicago the safest city in America,” Vallas said.

Johnson on Tuesday night noted the improbability that he would make the runoff, considering his low name recognition at the start of the race.

“A few months ago they said they didn’t know who I was. Well, if you didn’t know, now you know,” Johnson said. He thanked the unions that supported him and gave a special shout-out to his wife, telling the crowd, “Chicago, a Black woman will still be in charge.”

Lightfoot’s loss is unusual for mayors in large cities, who have tended to win reelection with relative ease. But it’s also a sign of the turmoil in U.S. cities following the COVID-19 pandemic, with its economic fallout and spikes in violent crime in many places.

Public safety has been an issue in other recent elections, including the recall of a San Francisco district attorney who was criticized for progressive policies. The pandemic also may shape elections for mayor in other cities this year, such as Philadelphia and Houston, where incumbents cannot run again due to term limits.

There are clear contrasts between Vallas and Johnson.

Vallas served as an adviser to the Fraternal Order of Police during its negotiations with Lightfoot’s administration. He has called for adding hundreds of police officers to patrol the city, saying crime is out of control and morale among officers sunk to a new low during Lightfoot’s tenure.

Vallas’ opponents have criticized him as too conservative to lead the Democratic stronghold. Lightfoot blasted him for welcoming support from the police union’s controversial leader, who defended the Jan. 6 insurrectionists at the Capitol and equated Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate for city workers to the Holocaust.

Johnson received about $1 million from the Chicago Teachers Union for his campaign and had support from several other progressive organizations, including United Working Families. The former teacher and union organizer has argued that the answer to addressing crime is not more money for police but more investment in mental health care, education, jobs and affordable housing, and he was accused by rivals such as Lightfoot of wanting to defund the police.

Johnson has avoided the word “defund” during the race, and his campaign says he does not want to cut the number of police officers. But in a 2020 radio interview, Johnson said defunding is not just a slogan but “an actual real political goal,” and he sponsored a nonbinding resolution on the county board to redirect money from policing and jails to social services.

Crime was an issue that resonated with voters.

Rita DiPietro, who lives downtown, said she supported Lightfoot in 2019. But she voted for Vallas on Tuesday, saying she was impressed by his detailed strategy to address public safety.

“The candidates all talk about what they’d like to do,” she said. “This guy actually has a plan. He knows how he’s going to do it.”

Lindsey Hegarty, a 30-year-old paralegal who lives on Chicago’s North Side, said she backed Johnson because “he seemed like the most progressive candidate on issues like policing, mental health” and public transit.

Race also was a factor as candidates courted votes in the highly segregated city, which is closely divided in population among Black, Hispanic and white residents. Vallas was the only white candidate in the field. Lightfoot, Johnson and five other candidates are Black, though Lightfoot argued she was the only Black candidate who could win. U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia was the only Latino in the race.

Lightfoot accused Vallas of using “the ultimate dog whistle” by saying his campaign is about “taking back our city,” and of cozying up to the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, whom she calls a racist. A recent Chicago Tribune story also found Vallas’ Twitter account had liked racist tweets and tweets that mocked Lightfoot’s appearance and referred to her as masculine.

Vallas denied his comments were related to race and says his police union endorsement is from rank-and-file officers. He also said he wasn’t responsible for the liked tweets, which he called “abhorrent,” and suggested someone had improperly accessed his account.

Lightfoot touted her record of investing in neighborhoods and supporting workers, such as by increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. She also noted that the city had navigated unprecedented challenges such as the pandemic and its economic and public safety fallout to protests over policing.

Asked if she was treated unfairly because of her race and gender, Lightfoot said: “I’m a black woman in America. Of course.”

Vallas, who has led school systems in Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, lost a 2019 bid for mayor. This time, he was laser-focused on public safety, saying police officers who left the force under Lightfoot’s administration will return if he’s elected.

The other candidates were businessman Willie Wilson, Chicago City Council members Sophia King and Roderick Sawyer, activist Ja’Mal Green and state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner.

___

Associated Press writers Claire Savage and Teresa Crawford in Chicago contributed to this report.

source

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Railroads like the one involved in last month’s fiery crash and toxic chemical release in Ohio would be subject to a series of new federal safety regulations and financial consequences under legislation being introduced Wednesday by the state’s two U.S. senators.

An early copy of the Railway Safety Act of 2023, co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and JD Vance, a Democrat and Republican, respectively, and several others of both parties, was obtained by The Associated Press. The bill responds to the fiery derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, in northeast Ohio near the Pennsylvania border, on Feb. 3, when 38 cars derailed and more burned.

Though no one was injured or killed, the accident and its aftermath imperiled the entire village and nearby neighborhoods in both states. It prompted an evacuation of about half the town’s 4,000 residents, an ongoing multi-governmental emergency response and lingering worries among villagers of long-term health impacts.

The Senate bill aims to address several key regulatory questions that have arisen from the disaster, including why the state of Ohio was not made aware the hazardous load was coming through and why the crew didn’t learn sooner of an impending equipment malfunction.

“Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again,” Vance said in a statement. “We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind.”

All trains carrying hazardous materials, including those that don’t fall under existing regulations for high-hazard flammable loads, would face new requirements under the bill. Rail carriers would need to create emergency response plans, and provide information and advance notification to the emergency response commissions of each state a train passes through.

That provision could mean changes across the industry. Hazardous materials shipments account for 7% to 8% of the roughly 30 million shipments railroads deliver across the U.S. each year. But almost any train – aside from a grain or coal train that carries a single commodity — might carry one or two cars of hazardous materials, because railroads often mix all kinds of shipments together on a train.

The Association of American Railroads trade group says 99.9% of hazardous materials shipments reach their destinations safely, and railroads are generally regarded as the safest option to transport dangerous chemicals across land. Still, the East Palestine accident showed how even one derailment involving hazardous materials can be devastating.

Railroad worker unions argue that operational changes and widespread job cuts across the industry in the past six years have made railroads riskier. They say employees are spread thin after nearly one-third of all rail jobs were eliminated and train crews, in particular, deal with fatigue because they are on call 24/7.

The bill would address that issue by setting train crews at a two-person minimum. The provision isn’t specifically in response to East Palestine — where the train had three crew members — but to an industry trend toward one-person crews. The Federal Railroad Administration was already considering a rule that would require two-person crews, in most instances. That rule was proposed last summer, but the agency is still reviewing thousands of comments it received on it.

Brown said it shouldn’t take a massive railroad disaster for elected officials to work across party lines for their communities.

“Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine and Steubenville and Sandusky,” he said in a statement. “These commonsense bipartisan safety measures will finally hold big railroad companies accountable, make our railroads and the towns along them safer, and prevent future tragedies, so no community has to suffer like East Palestine again.”

Under the plan, the U.S. Department of Transportation would be required to revisit rules on train size and weight, and to work to prevent railroad delays from causing trains carrying hazardous loads to block rail crossings. That’s as train lengths have grown to 2 miles (about 3 kilometers) or more, as railroads streamline operations to reduce their numbers of crews, mechanics and locomotives.

Unions argue the longer trains are more prone to problems, including breaking apart in the middle of a trip, and these monster trains also can clog rail lines, because they may extend farther than the current sidings for pulling off the main tracks.

Brown, Vance and the bill’s other early co-sponsors — who include Democrats Robert Casey Jr. and John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, and Republicans Marco Rubio, of Florida, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri — also would increase the maximum fine that the U.S. Department of Transportation can impose for safety violations. It would raise it from $225,000 to up to 1% of a railroad’s annual operating income, which could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

In addition, the bill requires long-haul railroads to pay for hazardous-materials training for local first responders, including police and EMTs, through an increase in their hazmat registration fees.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the crew involved in the East Palestine accident was alerted by a device designed to detect overheating bearings, but not soon enough to prevent the crash. Even as federal rail regulators urged rail operators Tuesday to reexamine their practices for operating and maintaining such detectors, the Senate proposal would make them more prevalent.

The bill would set nationwide requirements for installing, maintaining and placing the devices — designed to automatically detect wheel bearing and other mechanical issues — and mandate that they scan trains carrying hazardous materials every 10 miles (16 kilometers), twice as often as the East Palestine train was being scanned. No federal requirements exist now for wayside detectors, though the sensors are widespread in the freight rail industry. Currently, railroads are left to decide where to place those detectors and what temperatures should trigger action when an overheating bearing is detected.

The Federal Railroad Administration would be required under the bill to update inspection regulations to assure rail cars carrying hazardous materials receive regular checks by trained mechanical experts. Railcar inspectors previously had about two minutes to inspect every railcar, but now they only get about 30 to 45 seconds to check each car, unions say. And signalmen who maintain signals and warnings at rail crossings have bigger territories to cover, making it harder to keep up with preventative maintenance.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Chris Deluzio, of Pennsylvania, and Ro Khanna, of California, introduced separate rail safety bill in response to the East Palestine derailment in the Republican-controlled House on Tuesday. Its goal is to ensure that trains carrying hazardous materials are properly classified and required to take the corresponding safety precautions.

___

AP Business Writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

source

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman is joining forces with the University of Cincinnati to create a new academic center that will foster civility, open and inclusive dialogue and bipartisanship in politics, the Republican and the university announced Tuesday.

The newly established Portman Center for Policy Solutions will be housed within the university’s School of Public and International Affairs. Through academic programming, fellowships and case studies, it aims to develop future leaders and encourage “results-oriented public service,” a statement said.

“I view this center as a way to encourage young people to engage in public service that focuses on civility, bipartisanship and finding common ground,” Portman said. “Too many are understandably turned off by excessive partisanship, gridlock and harsh language in today’s political dialogue.”

The center was approved by the university’s board Tuesday, following unanimous backing from the faculty. It will offer scholarships, internships and co-op opportunities for students chosen as Portman Fellows, drawing from an endowment that Portman and the university are working to grow to at least $5 million.

Portman also is donating his U.S. House and Senate papers and other materials to the center, for use by fellows as case studies in civil, bipartisan problem-solving that seeks out differing points of view.

The university said the Portman Center will be more intensely focused on civility in politics than two other public policy programs named for former Ohio senators: the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University and the (George) Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service at Ohio University.

source

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn’t step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.

The claims and the company’s handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems.

The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network’s commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, “Yes. They endorsed.”

The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump’s claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.

An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers.

The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump’s top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims.

Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was “an extremist,” according to Dominion’s court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was “really bad” for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani’s “judgment was bad” and he was “an extreme partisan,” according to a deposition excerpt.

Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: “I could have. But I didn’t,” he replied.

Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company.

Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the “chain of command” at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting “known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable.”

Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced “zero evidentiary support” for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue.

Dominion’s contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired, they said, “has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence.”

The “handful of selective quotes” cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, according to Fox Corp. attorneys. “Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges,” they wrote. “The answer — every single time, for every single witness — was no.”

Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.

source

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Philadelphia state Rep. Joanna McClinton on Tuesday became the first woman to serve as speaker of the Pennsylvania House, ascending to the chamber’s top position on the strength of a fresh one-vote Democratic majority.

“It was almost 250 years before a woman could stand at this desk, not just to give a prayer, but to get the gavel,” McClinton said after being sworn in. “That’s pretty incredible.”

The leadership reshuffling came nearly two months after Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat, became the surprise choice for speaker. Democrats flipped a net of 12 seats in November to retake majority control by the narrowest of margins after more than a decade, but their control did not become effective until their candidates won three special elections earlier this month.

Rozzi said Tuesday he was willingly stepping aside after being speaker since Jan. 3, but is remaining a House member. Rozzi’s top legislative priority, a two-year window for victims to file otherwise outdated lawsuits with claims of child sexual abuse, passed the House last week but faces an uncertain fate in the GOP-majority Senate.

“I will not allow the allure of power or the trappings of office to keep me from doing what is right. I was not elected by the people for this office and I will not stand in the way of the woman who was,” Rozzi said in floor remarks. He called McClinton “one of the most intelligent and compassionate women I have met in politics.”

In nominating her, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, noted McClinton is also the second African American to serve as speaker, after the late Speaker Leroy Irvis, who held the position in the late 1970s. The vote for McClinton over the Republican nominee, Rep. Carl Walker Metzgar of Somerset County, was 102-99, reflecting two absences.

“She’s brilliant, formidable, and she gives voice to our values in ways that ring so true it reverberates around this chamber,” said Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny.

McClinton, 40, a state lawmaker since 2015, grew up in southwest Philadelphia, where she still lives, and attended La Salle University and Villanova Law School. She has worked as a public defender and a state Senate attorney. She had been the Democratic floor leader since 2020, and was also the first woman to hold that position.

Democrats will have to reshuffle their leadership ranks and get rules passed about how the chamber operates. McClinton vowed that the House will “have rules that protect women, people of color, LGBTQIA+, because this is Pennsylvania, where democracy was born.”

Rozzi said his own rules proposal, developed after holding several public hearings around the state to gather suggestions, will be made public “in the near future.” A woman lobbyist’s account of being sexually harassed by an unnamed House Democrat, told publicly during one of Rozzi’s meetings, is fueling interest in allowing people who don’t work for the Legislature to be able to file formal sexual misconduct complaints with the House.

source

BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) — A rural Arizona county board that was embroiled last year in voting machine conspiracies voted Tuesday to give responsibility for elections through 2024 to the county’s elected Republican recorder, a move the state attorney general’s office suggested may be illegal.

The two Republicans on the three-member Cochise County Board of Supervisors backed the agreement giving administrative election duties to county Recorder David Stevens, another Republican. Democrat Ann English voted against it, saying the legality of the measure needed to be studied.

“I hope we don’t regret it,” English said.

Judd said she felt comfortable moving ahead, and noted that the board could abandon the agreement if things didn’t work out.

“I just don’t want to put it off,” she said.

One of the two Republicans who voted in favor of the measure was Tom Crosby, who is the subject of a recall effort.

English said that in light of the caution from the attorney general’s office, “I think we are acting in an inappropriate and ill-advised way.”

Stevens would replace Lisa Marra, who was the country’s respected elections director before she recently resigned from the nonpartisan position after five years. Marra had objected to unsuccessful efforts by Republicans on the board to conduct a full hand count of last year’s mid-term vote amid conspiracies that ballot tabulators were illegal or faulty.

Arizona’s Solicitor Joshua Bendor sent a letter to Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre on Monday, warning that he had “serious questions about the legality of the Board’s intended course of action.” He noted that there was nothing in state statutes to allow a county board to give its recorder full administrative responsibility for elections.

In Arizona, elected recorders such as Stevens already play a part in elections. They register voters, distribute mail ballots and verify signatures on the ones sent back, while the nonpartisan election director handles the counting.

Stevens is friends with former GOP state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended former President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol riot, and who ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, Arizona’s top election post. Finchem said he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Arizona.

Stevens recently joined a nonprofit founded by Finchem that he says focuses on election integrity.

source

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature has for years entertained a host of unsupported theories about fraudsters manipulating election results since Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.

But lawmakers reached a limit for what they will tolerate last week, when a daylong hearing about elections ended with a presentation accusing a wide range of politicians, judges and public officials of taking bribes from a Mexican drug cartel.

Republican leaders raced Monday to distance themselves from the claims after they caught fire over the weekend on social media, where accounts that routinely share unsubstantiated claims of election fraud covered them widely. It was an embarrassment for an election fraud movement that has mostly found a sympathetic, or at least tolerant, ear among Arizona legislative Republicans.

House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen, both Republicans, pinned blame for the presentation on Rep. Liz Harris, a newly elected Republican who led a door-to-door canvassing effort searching for proof of fraud following the 2020 election. Her effort drew scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division, who warned about potential voter intimidation.

“What should have been a joint hearing to examine commonsense election reforms devolved into disgraceful fringe theater,” Toma said in a statement Monday. “I’m not alone in believing that it was irresponsible and bad judgment for Ms. Harris to invite a person to present unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations in a legislative forum.”

Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

Arizona Republican lawmakers have given wide leeway for people claiming to be election experts to share unsubstantiated or disproven claims in hearings at the Capitol. They’re widely shared among right wing media figures and carry the imprimatur of an official legislative proceeding.

Last week’s hearing was just the latest in a series of similar events since the start of the year, though it was the first to catch such widespread backlash.

The focus on election conspiracies has persisted despite the drubbing that Republicans took in last year’s election. The GOP was shut out of the state’s top offices after voters rejected Republicans who promoted election lies.

Still, the ranks of election deniers in the Legislature grew as moderate Republicans declined to run for re-election or lost GOP primaries.

Petersen, the Senate president, said he agreed to allow last week’s controversial hearing at the request of Harris and Toma, adding that Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli asked to review materials before they were presented but was not shown the bribery allegations.

“I assure you, had he known about the report, he would not have allowed it to be included,” Petersen said in a statement. “This was definitely not the proper venue to make such allegations, nor to assess the credibility of such statements.”

Even Sen. Wendy Rogers, who is deeply enmeshed in the national “stop the steal” movement of Trump supporters who claim the election was rigged and refused to back down when she was censured by the Senate last year, backtracked this time.

“To our knowledge, none of the people named had charges filed, have prosecutions pending, nor had any convictions made against them,” Rogers said in a statement Sunday night. Rogers is chair of the Senate Elections Committee.

The allegations came at the end of a daylong hearing of the elections committees in the state House and Senate, which Democrats boycotted. They were offered in a 40-minute presentation by Jacqueline Breger, an insurance agent from Scottsdale, who attributed them to a report written by John Thaler, who she said was an attorney with a background in fraud investigations.

Thaler alleged, without reliable evidence, that two women working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel used fraudulent mortgage documents to launder money to a wide range of officials, both Republicans and Democrats. Online sleuths discovered the women Thaler accused of facilitating the fraud were his ex-wife and her mother.

Thaler has a history of filing lawsuits accusing them of carrying out wide-ranging conspiracies. A federal judge last year dismissed one of his lawsuits, calling it “a delusional and fantastical narrative.”

Thaler responded to a request for comment with an email questioning Toma’s ethics.

“Speaker Toma is in no position to make any comment cocerning (sic) findings related to election integrity or in what forum they should be presented,” Thaler wrote.

source