Politics

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor.

Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election “was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials.”

Previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never released a March 2022 summary of investigative findings, which ruled out most of the fraud claims spread by allies and supporters of former President Donald Trump. Yet a month later, he released an “interim report” that claimed his investigation “revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona.”

He released his April report despite pushback from his investigators who said some of its claims were refuted by their probe. Brnovich was at the time in the midst of a Republican Party primary for U.S. Senate and facing fierce criticism from Trump, who claimed he wasn’t doing enough to prosecute election fraud.

Brnovich, whose primary bid was unsuccessful, also did not release a September memo that systematically refuted a bevy of election conspiracies that have taken root on the right, including allegations of dead or duplicate voters, pre-marked ballots flown in from Asia, election servers connected to the internet and even manipulation by satellites controlled by the Italian military.

“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the September memo read. “The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”

The September memo, which was among the documents released Wednesday, describes an all-encompassing probe that became the top priority for the attorney general’s investigators, who spent more than 10,000 hours looking into 638 complaints. They opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution. President Joe Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.

Mayes said the fraud claims were a waste.

“The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud,” Mayes said in a statement.

Attempts to reach Brnovich for comment were unsuccessful.

Brnovich’s “interim report” claimed that election officials worked too quickly in verifying voter signatures and pointed to a drop in the number of ballots with rejected signatures between 2016 and 2018 and again in 2020. He also claimed that Maricopa County was slow in responding to requests for information.

He made those claims even after investigators who reviewed a draft pushed back, publishing his report largely unchanged following their feedback.

The investigative staff concluded that the county recorder’s office “followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election,” investigators wrote. They also said they found the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”

Arizona became the epicenter of efforts by Trump allies to cast doubt on Biden’s victory. Republican leaders of the state Senate subpoenaed election records and equipment and hired a Florida firm led by a Trump supporter, Cyber Ninjas Inc., to conduct an unprecedented review of the election in Maricopa County.

The Cyber Ninjas review gave Biden more votes than the official count but claimed that their work raised serious questions about the conduct of the election in Maricopa County, home to metro Phoenix and the majority of Arizona’s voters. The investigation by the attorney general’s office found the allegations did not stand up to scrutiny.

“Our comprehensive review of CNI’s audit showed they did not provide any evidence to support their allegations of widespread fraud or ballot manipulation,” Brnovich’s investigators wrote.

Thursday’s release is the latest confirmation that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Biden won the presidency legitimately. Trump continues to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him as he mounts his third bid for the White House, despite reviews and audits saying otherwise in the battleground states he contested and his own administration officials debunking his claims.

Officials in Maricopa County, where nearly all the officials overseeing elections are Republicans, say they endured death threats and verbal abuse due to the suggestions of malfeasance in the Cyber Ninjas review and Brnovich’s “interim report.”

“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Clint Hickman, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said in a statement.

Brnovich’s investigators did conclude that Maricopa County officials did not uniformly follow state election procedures when filling out forms to document the pickup and transport of mail ballots. But they said the errors were procedural and that “investigators did not find anything that would (have) compromised the integrity of the ballots or the final ballot count.”

Investigators interviewed two Republican state lawmakers who publicly claimed they knew of fraud in the election, but wrote that neither Rep. Mark Finchem nor Sen. Sonny Borrelli repeated their claims to investigators — when they could have been subject to criminal charges for false reporting to law enforcement. The investigators said a third lawmaker, Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, declined to speak with them.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Proud Boys member who pleaded guilty to plotting with group leaders to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden told jurors Tuesday that he viewed their far-right extremist organization as “the tip of the spear” after the 2020 election.

Jeremy Bertino, who is testifying against former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants as part of a cooperation deal with federal prosecutors, recalled feeling stunned and then excited when Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Biden.

After the election, Bertino viewed the Proud Boys as leaders of the conservative movement, a perspective fueled by his regular viewership of the conspiracy theory-promoting Infowars website.

“I believed we were supposed to be the leaders of the country, of the right wing,” Bertino said. “The tip of the spear.”

Bertino, 43, of North Carolina, is the only member of the far-right extremist group who has pleaded guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge stemming from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The five Proud Boys associates on trial are charged with the same felony count, a Civil War-era offense punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The trial is scheduled to resume Wednesday with more testimony by Bertino. The trial recessed Tuesday before a prosecutor began questioning Bertino about the Jan. 6 attack.

Bertino is the second former Proud Boys member to testify at the trial. The first, Matthew Greene, testified in January that group members were growing increasingly angry about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and were expecting a “civil war.”

Jurors have heard over a month of testimony by government witnesses in the trial of Tarrio, a Miami resident, and co-defendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.

Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president and a member of the group’s national “Elders Council.” Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl was president of a Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York.

Bertino said he believed the election had been stolen from Trump and was hoping the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the election results. He wasn’t in Washington when the Capitol riot erupted. He was stabbed during an altercation in downtown Washington after a Proud Boys march on Dec. 12, 2021, and was still recovering from his injuries on Jan. 6.

Bertino said he became increasingly angry after hearing that his alleged assailant had been freed on bail. He directed much of his anger at police, feeling they had “abandoned” the Proud Boys.

“I felt like they were not on our side anymore,” he testified. “And basically if you were not with us, you were against us.”

Bertino said Tarrio, Nordean and Biggs shared his anger toward police after his stabbing. Bertino added that many Proud Boys began referring to police as “coptifa,” a twist on the term “antifa,” which refers to antifascist activists.

The indictment in Tarrio’s case alleges that the Proud Boys held meetings and communicated over encrypted messages to plan for an attack in the days leading up to Jan. 6. On the day of the riot, Proud Boys dismantled metal barricades set up to protect the Capitol and mobilized, directed and led members of the crowd into the building, according to prosecutors.

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, either. Police arrested him in Washington two days before the Capitol riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a December 2020 protest. Tarrio heeded a judge’s order to leave the city after his arrest.

Bertino joined the Proud Boys’ Charlotte chapter in 2018 after seeing videos of group members fighting with antifascist activists. He said he enjoyed the comradery with men who shared his right-wing political views. He viewed their enemy as “pretty much anybody who didn’t vote the same way we did.”

Bertino said he became “very close” to Tarrio and was friendly with Biggs, Nordean and Rehl, but he only recalls meeting Pezzola once. He met Tarrio in person at a Proud Boys convention in Las Vegas and later at a January 2020 gun rights rally in Virginia, where he said they bonded over their escape from a confrontation with “armed opposition.”

Proud Boys members describe their group as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists.” Bertino said there was tension within the Proud Boys ranks between “rally boys” who relished fighting with antifa in public forums and “party boys” who preferred to drink together.

Bertino recalled his growing anger in the summer of 2020, as protests erupted across the country in response to George Floyd’s killing in police custody. He blamed violence and rioting on antifa, calling them the “foot soldiers of the left wing.”

“I thought we should have gone out there and stopped them, to restore order,” he said.

Bertino pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy in October 2022 and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol. He hasn’t been sentenced yet.

The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection featured video testimony by Bertino at its first hearing last year. The committee showed a clip of Bertino saying that the group’s membership probably tripled after then-President Trump’s comment during a debate with Biden that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.”

In his trial testimony, Bertino recalled feeling stunned and then excited by Trump’s remark.

“I just couldn’t believe the president was talking about our club,” he said. “I thought it was going to grow the club exponentially at that point.”

Bertino joined Tarrio at a bar in Washington on the night of the 2020 presidential election. He said he became a “fourth-degree” member of the Proud Boys — the group’s highest rank — after intervening in a bloody altercation that night.

Jurors saw text messages that Bertino and Tarrio exchanged four days after the election, as news outlets declared a victory for Biden.

“They called it. Now we have to mobilize. Should we roll out to the state houses?” Bertino asked.

“Yes,” Tarrio responded.

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For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Opponents of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell rushed 10 boxes of petitions into City Hall on Wednesday and declared they have enough enough signatures to force a recall of the second-term mayor.

The boxes arrived less than an hour before closing time at the registrar of voters’ office, just meeting the deadline after a six-month drive.

An election to remove New Orleans’ first woman mayor isn’t a sure thing, however. The required number of signatures has been a moving, uncertain target. Neither Eileen Carter nor Belden Batiste, two of the founders of the effort, would say exactly how many signatures were turned in Wednesday. Carter did provide a clue.

“We have more signatures than the mayor got votes,” she said.

Cantrell, who was first elected in 2018, won re-election easily in a low-turnout contest in November 2021, when she received 48,750 votes.

Her second term has been plagued by myriad problems — among them stubborn violent crime, fitful progress on major street projects that have left some city streets a mess and unreliable garbage collection. Questions also have been raised about her personal use of a city-owned apartment.

Petition organizers say she further hurt her own cause when she was seen on a widely circulated social media video showing her gesturing with her middle finger to a passing Mardi Gras parade. The reason for the gesture — whether she was offended by a float theme or by something done or said by a rider — is unclear and the city has said little about it.

“This administration is a gift that keeps on giving,” Carter said.

Cantrell’s communications director, Gregory Joseph, declined to comment on the drive. “We’re just going to keep on doing the work,” he said, repeating a response Cantrell has repeatedly given during the recall drive.

The mayor has said crime is a nationwide problem that took hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. And administration officials have said they’re taking steps to improve the street and garbage issues.

How many valid signatures will be needed is in question. Initially, organizers were seeking in excess of 52,000 signatures, based on state figures showing more than 264,000 registered voters. But research led to the target being lowered to somewhere between 49,000 and 50,000 because some of the voters are deemed inactive for reasons such as not having voted in multiple elections.

Recall organizers have gone to court to have the number lowered even further. They say the Orleans Parish voter registrar has failed to cull hundreds of dead voters from the active rolls — and close to 30,000 people who have moved from the city. That could lower the threshold by around 6,000 voters.

Even as their lawsuit plays out, they are hoping to have a spring election. The registrar has 20 days to certify signatures and then, if enough are verified, send it to Gov. John Bel Edwards. Edwards would have 15 days to set an election. It’s possible a recall could go on the state’s April 29 ballot. But, there are numerous unknowns — including how many signatures will or won’t be deemed legitimate, and any legal challenges Cantrell might make.

Cantrell supporters, early in the recall drive, cast it as an attempt by Republicans to attack a Black woman mayor and Democrat. However, Carter is a prominent Democrat and she stressed that support for the drive has been bipartisan and multiracial.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Trav Robertson, the leader of South Carolina’s Democrats, said Wednesday that he won’t seek another term as party chair as the state prepares to host the party’s first 2024 presidential primary in the nation.

“With the hard work of our leadership — with the teamwork of many — we have made so much progress,” Robertson told The Associated Press ahead of an official announcement. “I look forward to building on these relationships and serving South Carolina into the future.”

Robertson has led the state’s Democrats since 2017, when he took over from Jaime Harrison, who’s now chair of the Democratic National Committee.

While the party’s national prominence has risen, most recently when the DNC voted to make South Carolina the first voting state on its 2024 presidential primary calendar, South Carolina’s Democrats have struggled to notch electoral wins at many levels of office.

Winless in statewide elections since 2006, Democrats hold only one of the state’s seven U.S. House seats. The party last won a Senate race in 1998, and Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to carry the state in a presidential election.

There have been some successes, however. In 2018, Joe Cunningham became the first Democrat to flip a House seat from red to blue in South Carolina in decades, though he lost his reelection bid two years later.

On Wednesday, Harrison on Twitter lauded Robertson’s stewardship of that 2018 victory and his work to secure South Carolina’s No. 1 position on the primary calendar and “a permanent home” for that party’s Columbia headquarters.

“No one works harder!” Harrison said, of Robertson.

Some candidates have already jumped into the race to succeed Robertson, who didn’t say what he planned to do next. Christale Spain, a longtime Democratic political operative, would be the first Black woman to chair the party if elected. Robertson said he would support Spain’s bid.

Spain became the executive director of the state Democratic Party in 2016, worked as political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and served as Sen. Cory Booker’s state director for his 2020 White House bid. She founded 46 Hope Road, a political action committee aimed at energizing voters who had been inactive since President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and worked on Black voter engagement for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2022 midterms.

Also vying for the chairmanship is Brandon Upson, a progressive Democrat who has served as chair of the state party’s Black Caucus. He was an adviser to Tom Steyer’s presidential campaign in South Carolina in 2020. Since then, Upson founded Amplify Action, a national voter registration and mobilization effort.

South Carolina Democrats will select their next party chair at their spring convention.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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This story has been corrected to show Spain’s job with Sen. Booker was on his White House bid, not his reelection bid.

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What the justices decide to do in this case and a related one it heard Tuesday is important particularly because the companies have been shielded from liability on the internet, allowing them to grow into the giants they are today.

In Wednesday’s case, the family of a man killed in the Reina nightclub attack in Istanbul sued Twitter, Facebook and YouTube parent Google under the terrorism law. Nawras Alassaf’s family members, who are U.S. citizens, say the companies aided and abetted the attack because they assisted in the growth of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack. A lower court let the lawsuit go forward.

The platforms argue that they can’t be sued because they did not knowingly or substantially assist in the Reina attack. If the justices agree, they don’t have to reach bigger questions about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and whether it protects platforms when they recommend content.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — National groups on both sides of the abortion fight on Wednesday pledged significant spending in the race for a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, tossing the perennial battleground state into the spotlight of the searing debate over abortion access.

The winner of the April 4 general election will determine majority control of the court, which is expected to rule on cases affecting abortion, gerrymandered legislative districts and voting rights heading into the 2024 presidential election. The court, with a 4-3 conservative tilt, came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in the state in 2020, and both major parties are preparing for another close margin in next year’s presidential contest.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who campaigned as an abortion rights supporter and received the most votes in Tuesday’s primary, wasted no time attacking her Republican-backed opponent, Dan Kelly. Both are seeking to replace a retiring conservative justice.

Protasiewicz (pronounced Pro-tuh-SAY-witz) launched a pair of new television ads Wednesday, including one labeling Kelly an “extremist” because of his position on abortion. Kelly is endorsed by the state’s three largest anti-abortion groups, while Protasiewicz is endorsed by EMILY’s List, which works nationwide to elect Democratic abortion rights supporters.

State and national Planned Parenthood political groups say they expect to spend in the seven figures, but would say only that their total would be more than $1 million to support Protasiewicz. Their strategy will include radio, TV and online advertising, plus direct mail. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has hired staff across the state to support door-to-door and other campaign efforts.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most influential groups in the anti-abortion movement, said it had committed “six figures” to helping elect Kelly during the primary campaign through mailers, phone calls and text messages. The group said in a statement that it plans to continue supporting Kelly during the general election through its Women Speak Out campaign organization.

Protasiewicz told supporters at her victory party that if Kelly wins, he will vote to uphold Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortions, a claim repeated in her new ad. The law, enacted a year after Wisconsin became a state, went back into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. A Democratic-backed lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban is expected to make its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court this year or the next.

Kelly has expressed opposition to abortion in the past, including in a 2012 blog post in which he said the Democratic Party and the National Organization for Women were committed to normalizing the taking of human life. Kelly also has done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life.

He has cited Protasiewicz’s support for abortion rights as evidence that she’s willing to rule based on “personal tastes and desires” rather than what the law dictates.

“It is just unbelievable that a judicial candidate would do that,” Kelly said Wednesday on WTMJ-AM radio. “But that’s the fight. It really is to maintain the constitutional order in the state of Wisconsin, to make sure that we live under the rule of law and not the rule of Janet.”

Spending on the race is expected to to shatter the previous high for a state supreme court race, which was $15.2 million in Illinois in 2004.

More than $9 million has already been spent on the primary for television ads by both sides, according to a tally by AdImpact Politics. Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein has given at least $1.5 million to Fair Courts America, a group that ran ads supporting Kelly.

Outside groups spent about $2.5 million to benefit Kelly and about an equal amount attacking his conservative primary challenger, whom Democrats viewed as a tougher potential general election opponent. While the race is officially nonpartisan, the candidates have clear positions that lean liberal or conservative on some major topics.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party endorsed Protasiewicz immediately after her win and is also poised to spend big on the race. It raised $3.5 million in the first five weeks of the year, compared with just $56,000 by the Wisconsin Republican Party.

While turnout in off-year spring elections is always fairly low, there are signs it will be higher this year. Turnout for Tuesday’s primary neared 21%, the highest in at least 20 years.

Republicans are trying to motivate conservative voters by placing two measures opposed by Democrats on the April ballot, including one asking if certain adults must be searching for work to receive “welfare benefits.”

In a potentially positive sign for Democrats, the total primary votes for Protasiewicz and another liberal candidate who finished a distant fourth were nearly 8 percentage points higher than the votes for Kelly and the other conservative.

Kelly was endorsed by Trump in 2020, when he was on the same ballot as the Democratic presidential primary and trying to win a full term on the court after serving four years following an appointment.

He ended up losing that race to Justice Jill Karofsky by more than 10 percentage points. Afterward he worked for both the state and national Republican parties, including advising on the scheme in Wisconsin to have fake electors cast ballots for Trump.

“This is an election that we know is going to largely focus on abortion and the ability to make a healthcare decision, and other important issues like voting rights and redistricting,” Democratic strategist Melissa Baldauff said. “These are issues that the people of Wisconsin are very clear on their position and are not aligned with Dan Kelly.”

Republican leaders urged unity following the bitter primary battle between Kelly and conservative Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow.

“Now is the time to unite and ensure our Supreme Court stays in conservative hands,” Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson tweeted Wednesday.

Dorow urged her supporters to back Kelly.

Wisconsin is not the only battleground state with a high-stakes supreme court election this year.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are hoping to win a vacant seat to narrow the Democratic majority from 4-2 to 4-3. The primary is May 16 and the general election is Nov. 7.

That court has handled a number of high-profile election cases in the past two years, including deciding disputes over the state’s mail-in voting law and rejecting bids to effectively overturn Biden’s victory.

___ Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Wednesday he will seek reelection to a fourth term in 2024, a boost to Democrats’ hopes of maintaining a seat in the Republican-leaning state as they try to hang on to their narrow Senate majority.

Tester, 66, said he was seeking reelection to continue standing up for veterans and to “lower costs,” which his campaign said referred to rising expenses for housing, health care, child care and other needs.

“I know that people in Washington don’t understand what a hard day’s work looks like or the challenges working families are facing in Montana,” the Democrat said Wednesday in a statement obtained by The Associated Press. “Montanans need a fighter holding Washington accountable.”

As a third-generation farmer and former music teacher, Tester has leaned on a folksy speaking style and populist-themed messages to overcome his Republican opponents in each of the last three elections. He narrowly prevailed each time by drawing independents and centrist Republicans while distancing himself from party leaders in Washington.

The state’s political landscape has shifted sharply since Tester was first elected in 2006, and he has been the sole Democrat holding statewide office for the past two years.

The race could draw a fierce GOP primary contest between U.S. Reps. Ryan Zinke and Matt Rosendale. Zinke, who served as interior secretary in the Trump administration, said he will consider a Senate campaign, while Rosendale has declined to say if he will run.

Rosendale, a hard-right conservative, tried and failed to unseat Tester in 2018, with then-President Donald Trump making repeated appearances in Montana on the Republican’s behalf. Trump won Montana by 20 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election and 16 percentage points in the 2020 election, but Tester defeated Rosendale by 3.5 percentage points.

In his past elections, Tester stressed a handful of issues — agriculture, health care, reproductive choice and support for veterans. He avoided direct confrontations with national Republican figures such as Trump, who bore a grudge against Tester for derailing his Veterans Affairs nominee, then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, with revelations of misconduct.

In 2018, Tester was the only Democratic senator from a Republican-leaning state to win his reelection bid after voting against Trump’s Supreme Court picks.

Tester, who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, sponsored legislation that expanded health care services for millions of service members exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits at military bases.

He’s advocated for campaign finance reform but has sometimes ranked as the top congressional recipient of campaign donations from lobbyists, including in 2012 and 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. His campaign has raised more than $4 million in cash since his 2018 reelection and had almost $3 million remaining as of Jan. 1, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Before running for the Senate, Tester, who still works on his family farm, taught music at an elementary school in the small town of Big Sandy in central Montana and was later elected to the town’s school board. He served in the state Senate from 1999 to 2007, spending the last two years as the chamber’s president.

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He warned that there were “hard and bitter days ahead,” but pledged that the United States and its allies would “have Ukraine’s back” as the war enters its second year.

“Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow and forever,” he said at the Royal Castle, a historical landmark in Warsaw, before a cheering crowd of Polish citizens and Ukrainian refugees.

Biden’s speech came one day after his daring, unannounced trip to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Kyiv stands strong,” Biden declared. “Kyiv stands proud.”

Before his speech, Biden met with Polish President Andrzej Duda as he began a series of consultations with allies to prepare for an even more complicated stage of Russia’s invasion.

“We have to have security in Europe,” Biden said at the presidential palace in Warsaw. “It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.”

He described NATO as “maybe the most consequential alliance in history,” and he said it’s “stronger than it’s ever been” despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hopes that it would fracture over the war in Ukraine.

Earlier Tuesday, Putin announced that Moscow would suspend its participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States.

The so-called New START Treaty caps the number of long-range nuclear warheads they can deploy and limits the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.

Biden laid into Putin throughout speech, but did not mention the START suspension.

He said the visit was “a sign that the free world, and its biggest leader, the president of the United States, stands by them.”

On Wednesday, Biden plans to meet again with Duda along with other leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of the easternmost members of NATO military alliance.

The conflict in Ukraine — the most significant war in Europe since World War II — has already left tens of thousands of people dead, devastated Ukraine’s infrastructure system and damaged the global economy.

While Biden is looking to use his whirlwind trip to Europe as a moment of affirmation for Ukraine and allies, the White House has also emphasized that there is no clear endgame to the war in the near term, and the situation on the ground has become increasingly complex.

Biden and Zelenskyy discussed capabilities that Ukraine needs “to be able to succeed on the battlefield” in the months ahead, Sullivan said. Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. and European allies to provide fighter jets and long-range missile systems known as ATACMS — which Biden has declined to provide so far. Sullivan declined to comment on whether there was any movement on the matter during the leaders’ talk.

Biden dismissed the notion of waning American support during his visit to Kyiv.

“For all the disagreement we have in our Congress on some issues, there is significant agreement on support for Ukraine,” Biden said while in Kyiv. He described the conflict as “about freedom of democracy at large.”

Ahead of the trip, the White House spotlighted Poland’s efforts to assist Ukraine. More than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees have settled in Poland since the start of the war and millions more have crossed through Poland on their way to other countries. Poland has also provided Ukraine with $3.8 billion in military and humanitarian aid, according to the White House.

The Biden administration announced last summer that it was establishing a permanent U.S. garrison in Poland, creating an enduring American foothold on NATO’s eastern flank.

“The truth of the matter is the United States needs Poland and NATO as much as NATO needs the United States,” Biden told Duda on Tuesday.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — As Sen. Tim Scott weighs mounting a 2024 presidential candidacy, the Republican was in Iowa on Wednesday delivering a message of “a new American sunrise,” articulating a positive vision that sets him apart from some possible rivals who have focused more on railing against cultural divides.

“I see 330 million Americans getting back to celebrating our shared blessings again, tolerating our differences again, and having each other’s backs again,” Scott plans to say at Drake University in Des Moines, according to advance excerpts provided to The Associated Press. “We need new leaders who will lift us up, not tear us down.”

If he follows through with a campaign, the South Carolinian’s upbeat manner could distinguish him during a GOP primary. Many of Scott’s fellow Republicans who have courted Iowa’s influential evangelical conservatives in recent weeks have focused on themes such as denying systemic racism in the U.S. or curbing transgender rights.

Scott, the Senate’s sole Black Republican, doesn’t shy away from such terrain. He has spoken of “woke superiority.”

But in the speech, he describes a “new American sunrise. Even brighter than before.”

That nod toward inclusion has generally been absent from other Republicans who have recently swung through Iowa, which is poised to hold the first contest in next year’s push for the GOP presidential nomination. Shortly after launching her presidential campaign last week, Nikki Haley was in suburban Des Moines stoking contempt for “woke ideology” and arguing “a national self-loathing has taken over our country.”

Likewise, former Vice President Mike Pence, who is weighing a presidential candidacy, in Cedar Rapids last week headlined a rally to oppose an eastern Iowa school district’s policy allowing transgender students to request a gender-affirming plan without their parents’ knowledge.

“Across the country, parents rights are being trampled by a politically correct nanny state that’s ruining our schools and telling parents they have no role in their child’s education,” he said.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Brett Foto and his fiancee were vacationing in Phoenix last fall when they heard about a rally nearby for Kari Lake, then running for governor of Arizona.

No matter that they don’t live or vote in Arizona. Lake was going places, an emerging star on the populist right, and they had to see her.

“We’re seeing something very interesting tonight,” said Foto, a 52-year-old sales representative who lives outside Denver. “We’re going to look back and say, ‘We saw her when we went to this little hangar in Phoenix.’”

Lake went on to lose that race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, a setback that would typically thwart political ambitions. But among conservatives, defeat has done little to erode Lake’s standing. If anything, her refusal to acknowledge her loss only enhances her stature well beyond Arizona.

In the months since the election, Lake has popped up at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate and a palatial California hotel, where she unsuccessfully lobbied members of the Republican National Committee to defeat Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. A more recent swing through Iowa sparked speculation about whether she may run for president or angle for a role as Trump’s running mate if he clinches the GOP nomination again.

Wherever she is, she’s doubling down on the formula that enthralled the Republican base but was rejected by a broader electorate: unflinching fealty to Trump, a relentless focus on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and tough talk about securing the U.S.-Mexico border with force.

Lake will have another chance to showcase her bond with the GOP base next month with a prominent speaking role at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Washington.

“She speaks MAGA,” Chuck Coughlin, a longtime political consultant in Arizona who was one of former Gov. Jan Brewer’s top advisers, said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “She’s better than Trump in many respects. She’s a cultural warrior. She expresses their angst and anxiety over the way the country’s going.”

Meanwhile, Lake is continuing to fight her loss in the Arizona appellate courts, which rejected her election challenge Thursday. She vowed to take her lawsuit to the state Supreme Court. She held a campaign-style rally this month to draw attention to her case.

“Kari Lake is the total package. She’s articulate. She’s confident. She’s beautiful, but not in a threatening way,” said Linda Greulich, a 70-year-old retiree in Phoenix. “And I think if she wants to stay in politics, I see her going all the way to the top.”

The flurry of activity comes as Lake considers running for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kyrsten Sinema, an independent and former Democrat. She met recently with National Republican Senatorial Committee officials in Washington.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona, yet they’ve struggled to win during the Trump era. The GOP lost three straight Senate races in Arizona as ticket-splitting voters who mostly support Republicans refused to vote for candidates closely aligned with Trump.

Eleven percent of voters identifying as Republicans voted for Hobbs last year, compared with just 4% of Democrats who voted for Lake, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in Arizona.

Sinema has not said whether she’ll run for a second term, a decision that could have a monumental impact on the battle for control of the Senate. Democrats worry a three-way race between Sinema, a Democrat and a Republican will scramble the formula that’s worked so well for them, creating an opening for a candidate like Lake.

Other Republicans looking at running include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. Also considering a bid are Jim Lamon, Blake Masters and Karrin Taylor Robson, candidates in 2022 for either the Senate or governor.

Lake is pushing back against those in the GOP trying to move past claims of election fraud that have proved toxic in swing states, including Arizona, where Lake and three other Trump-backed Republicans lost their races. She told Iowans, who are proud of their role in vetting presidential hopefuls, to press candidates about “where they stand on stolen elections.”

“We need to make sure all of these candidates think that election integrity is a No. 1 issue,” she said.

Lake was a news anchor for nearly 30 years in the Phoenix market. She left the Fox affiliate in 2021, saying journalism had strayed into advocacy. She began her campaign for governor a short time later, channeling Trump with frequent attacks on the news media she left behind.

She records every interaction with reporters, often posting contentious exchanges on social media and earning plaudits from her fans, and she still attracted unprecedented attention from global media.

Money has continued to pour in for Lake since her loss. Her campaign raised $2.6 million from Election Day through the end of the year, with the biggest haul coming on the day the race was called for Hobbs.

She’s raised more money through a nonprofit group her advisers created in December, which doesn’t have to disclose details about its donations and has become her main fundraising vehicle.

Foto, who saw Lake on his Arizona vacation, was not deterred by her loss to Hobbs and hopes she’ll take another stab at running for office.

“I pray for that to happen and I pray for that for this country,” Foto said by phone. “I think we need people like her to make sure of a strong future for all of us.”

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