Politics

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Few have navigated the turbulent politics of the Trump era like Nikki Haley.

In early 2016, the then-South Carolina governor said she was “embarrassed” by candidate Donald Trump and decried his reluctance to condemn white supremacists. Nine months later, she agreed to join his Cabinet, serving as a key validator as Trump sought to win over skeptical world leaders and voters at home.

And shortly after Trump left the White House, Haley, whose resume by then included an ambassadorship to the United Nations, vowed not to step in the way if he ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Yet on Wednesday, she is poised to become the first major Republican candidate to enter the race against him.

“It’s going to be quite the high-wire act,” said veteran Republican strategist Terry Sullivan. “She says she’s always been an underdog. She will be again.”

The 51-year-old Haley may be the first to take on Trump, but a half-dozen or more high-profile Republicans are expected to join the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination contest over the coming months. Some would-be competitors may be more popular than Haley even in South Carolina, where she lives and has established a campaign headquarters.

Likely rivals include Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian and perhaps the most celebrated elected official in a state where Trump has already locked up endorsements from the governor and its senior senator, Lindsey Graham. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence could also be formidable foes should they run, as widely expected.

Indeed, on the eve of this week’s announcement, there is broad agreement that Haley — the only Republican woman of color expected in the 2024 contest, a politician who loves to remind people that she has never lost an election — is about to be tested as never before.

Trump has stepped up his attacks on Haley in recent weeks. But allies describe the former governor, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, as a savvy executive uniquely positioned to lead a new generation of Republicans. They understand that the fight ahead could get ugly.

“She took the bull by the horns and said, ‘That doesn’t matter to me, I’m going to run,’” said longtime supporter Gavin J. Smith. “She did that when she ran for governor, and that’s what you’re going to see when she runs for president.”

Perhaps more than anyone this young presidential primary season, Haley personifies the Republican Party’s shifting views on Trump. Her reversal on whether to challenge the former president was based less on concerns about his divisive leadership or policy disagreements than the growing belief within the GOP that Trump is losing political strength.

Haley, like the vast majority of her party, largely supported Trump even after he inspired a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. It was not until Trump-backed candidates across several key states were defeated in last fall’s midterm elections that a wave of high-profile Republicans began to openly weigh 2024 bids against him.

New York-based Republican donor Eric Levine says he’s convinced that another Trump Republican nomination would lead to his party’s destruction. Haley, he said, is among the three favorite Trump alternatives.

“I think as a woman of color and a daughter of legal immigrants from India, she’d give the Democratic Party no reason to exist. All their woke crap goes out the window,” Levine said. “I think she’s a spectacular candidate.”

Haley’s announcement will take place Wednesday in Charleston, the historic coastal city where her campaign will be based. Almost immediately, she’ll travel to meet voters in New Hampshire and Iowa.

She’s entrusted her campaign to a collection of senior staff led by longtime aides. Betsey Ankney, who heads up Haley’s PAC, will manage the campaign, with the PAC’s development director, Mary Kate Johnson, as finance director, Haley’s team told The Associated Press.

Longtime Haley adviser Chaney Denton and Nachama Soloveichik, who was a spokeswoman for recently retired Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, will head up communications. Strategist Jon Lerner will serve as senior adviser, and Barney Keller of Jamestown Associates will be Haley’s media consultant.

For Haley, this week’s launch marks a significant step on a long road that began in South Carolina’s “Good Old Boys Club,” she wrote in a Friday fundraising appeal.

“People thought I was too brown … too female … too young … too conservative … too principled,” she wrote.

Born in 1972 in rural South Carolina, Haley has long spoken of a Southern rural childhood in which she felt she didn’t fit. She was raised in the Sikh faith with a mother who wore traditional saris, and a father clad in a turban.

“Nikki has been regularly underestimated,” said Catherine Templeton, a Republican who served Haley in two roles, leading South Carolina’s labor and public health agencies. “But it makes her work harder.”

In her first campaign in 2004, Haley, formerly an accountant, defeated the longest-serving member of South Carolina’s House. After six years in the Legislature, she was considered a longshot when she mounted her 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

The GOP field was filled with more experienced politicians, and at times, she faced blatant racism. Then-state Sen. Jake Knotts appeared on a talk show and used a racial slur in reference to Haley. He apologized, saying it was meant as a joke.

Still, Haley became the first woman and person of color elected South Carolina’s governor — and the nation’s youngest state executive. After winning reelection in 2014, her second term was marred by crisis.

She spent weeks attending funerals of Black parishioners gunned down by a self-avowed white supremacist at a Charleston church in 2015. Later that year, she pushed for and signed legislation to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds, where it had flown for more than 50 years.

Haley’s political skills were tested in a different way in 2016, as Trump went from late-night television punchline to serious Republican presidential contender.

She endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio ahead of South Carolina’s high-stakes Republican primary, then backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz once Rubio was knocked out.

Then, Haley described Trump as “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president.” She also said she was “embarrassed” by his attacks against former President George W. Bush and condemned Trump’s reluctance to disavow the KKK.

But shortly after Trump won the presidency, Haley agreed to serve as the new administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level position.

“I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country,” Haley said in a 2018 op-ed.

Later that year, Haley abruptly announced her departure from the U.N. in the wake of an ethics probe, fueling speculation that she might challenge Trump in 2020 or replace Pence on the ticket. Neither happened.

Instead, Haley returned to South Carolina, joined the board of aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. and hit the lucrative speaking circuit, reportedly commanding fees as high as $200,000. She also penned two books.

Her public support for Trump continued even after the attack on the Capitol.

“I’m really proud of the successes of the Trump administration. Whether it was foreign policy or domestic policy, we should embrace those,” she tweeted three weeks after the insurrection.

But it’s unclear whether such platitudes will give Haley much cushion in a party that, for now, remains dominated by Trump and his supporters. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, has already endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid. While she declined to comment directly on Haley’s candidacy, she insisted that Trump would defeat any Republican challenger “by massive margins.”

“It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America,” she said of Trump.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The on-again, off-again Super Bowl interview between President Joe Biden and a Fox Corp. streaming service appears to be off again.

A White House official said Friday evening that it was “inaccurate” to say the interview had been rescheduled, contradicting a Fox Corp. spokesperson who said earlier in the day that it was happening.

The statement appeared to signal the definitive end of a pingpong saga over whether Biden would sit down with Fox interviewers ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday. Presidents traditionally grant an interview to the network that’s broadcasting the football game — in this case, Fox.

However, this year negotiations broke down.

The back-and-forth began Friday with a tweet from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” she wrote. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp. has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”

Fox Soul was created in 2020, and it’s geared toward Black viewers.

Hours later, a Fox Corp. spokesperson released a contradictory statement.

“After the White House reached out to Fox Soul Thursday evening, there was some initial confusion,” the spokesperson said. “Fox Soul looks forward to interviewing the President for Super Bowl Sunday.”

The spokesperson added that the interviewers — Vivica A. Fox, the actress and host of “Cocktails with Queens,” and sportscaster Mike Hill — had arrived in Washington after flying in from the Los Angeles.

But the White House statement later Friday added another twist.

“As we said earlier, we had arranged an interview with FOX Sports Host Mike Hill & Vivica A. Fox with the President ahead of the Super Bowl and Fox Corp. had the interview cancelled,” the statement said. “Fox has since put out a statement indicating the interview was rescheduled, which is inaccurate.”

In 2021, Biden spoke to CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell prior to the game, and last year he spoke with NBC News’ Lester Holt.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s U.S. Senate race is unfolding at a furious pace, with candidates reporting seven-figure fundraising and holding competing rallies and campaign events more than a year before the 2024 primary election.

The fight for the safely Democratic seat held by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who at 89 is the oldest member of Congress, is shaping up as a marquee match-up between nationally known rivals and is likely to become one of the most expensive Senate races in the country next year.

On Saturday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, who rose to prominence as the lead prosecutor in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, gathered hundreds of supporters in a union hall parking lot for a rally in his hometown of Burbank, California, where he implored the cheering crowd, “Let’s go win this thing.”

Schiff, who announced his candidacy last month, said he was running for Senate after two decades in Congress “to build an economy that works for everyone, a democracy that will last for all time and a planet that doesn’t melt beneath our feet.”

A day earlier, Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter brought her Senate campaign to Los Angeles, where she met with local leaders to discuss pollution in lower-income neighborhoods. She said such areas are often overlooked in Washington and Sacramento, where residents’ complaints about unhealthy conditions go unheard.

Porter, a leader in Congress’ progressive wing, built a reputation for her tough questioning of CEOs and other witnesses at congressional hearings — often using a whiteboard to break down information.

Other potential contenders for the seat include Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. If she runs and is elected, Lee would be the only Black woman in the Senate.

Feinstein has yet to say if she will seek a seventh term. In recent years, questions have arisen about her cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness. However, her reticence about her future has created a publicly awkward dynamic — the race to replace her is rapidly taking shape, even as the senator remains unclear about her intentions.

Schiff’s rally, held on a nippy, mostly overcast morning, marked the start of a two-week statewide tour, with stops to include San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno and San Francisco.

He was joined by his wife Eve, one of his two children, Alexa, and David McMillan, whom the congressman mentored as a youth and considers part of his family.

After recounting his career as a federal prosecutor, state legislator and member of Congress, Schiff made clear he would anchor his campaign to his role as impeachment manager and Trump’s chief antagonist in Congress. He has been a frequent target of conservatives — Trump in particular — since the then-GOP-led House Intelligence Committee he served on started investigating Trump’s ties to Russia in the 2016 election.

He mentioned “democracy” more than a half-dozen times in the speech. He’s selling T-shirts and coffee mugs on his campaign website, with the slogan “Democracy Matters.” He called Trump, who has announced his 2024 campaign for the presidency, “a demagogue bent on destroying our democracy.”

“We investigated Trump. We impeached him. We held him accountable and then we defeated him at the ballot box,” Schiff said to cheers. “And we will defeat him again, if the GOP is foolish enough to nominate him. He will never see the inside of the Oval Office, never again.”

Trump was impeached in December 2019 on charges he abused the power of the presidency to investigate rival Joe Biden and obstructed Congress’ investigation. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump of both charges. In 2021, he became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, this time for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after he lost the 2020 election. He was again acquitted by the Senate.

Schiff’s other foundational issues include fighting climate change and improving the economy.

“Too many people are working multiple jobs but cannot pay the rent, afford groceries or pay for lifesaving medication,” he said. “Too many children are growing up in poverty and hungry.”

Schiff and Porter, both prolific small-dollar fundraisers, already are dueling over campaign dollars and endorsements. Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is backing Schiff, providing Feinstein retires, and Porter is supported by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats are expected to dominate the contest in the famously liberal state — a Republican hasn’t won a statewide race in California since 2006, and the past two Senate elections had only Democrats on the November ballot.

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin’s biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.

A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.

Many people who voted this past week in the state’s primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.

“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital.

Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.

“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.

She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race.

“It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.

Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.

Those claims were reinforced by an email sent to about 1,700 people in December from Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Election Commission. He said Republicans “can be especially proud” of depressed midterm voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Milwaukee, a heavily Democratic city.

Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.

The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: “We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.

Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.

Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That’s despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information.

Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year’s election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.

That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in health care, education, wealth and incarceration.

Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.

“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”

For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month’s primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.

Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting.

Wisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.

The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.

He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.

“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”

Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want.

But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.

“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.

Several Black votes interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.

“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all,” said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”

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Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

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Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans on Saturday narrowly picked an activist who has promoted unfounded election conspiracies and promised a shakeup to lead the Kansas GOP for the next two years, following weeks of infighting that mirrors the acrimony in the party across the U.S.

Within 30 minutes of the change in the Kansas Republican Party’s leadership, its state committee reviewed a resolution demanding that the U.S. House impeach President Joe Biden for “tyranny” over comments he and his aides made in the summer of 2021 decrying misinformation about coronavirus vaccines spreading within the GOP. The committee tabled the resolution until its next meeting.

The Kansas state committee elected Mike Brown, who has long been active in the GOP in the Kansas City area, as its new chair through the 2024 elections. The vote came three months after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly narrowly won reelection and the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, won another term handily in her Kansas City-area district.

The Kansas party’s retiring chair, Mike Kuckelman, and its two other Republican National Committee members supported RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel when she won reelection last month. But Brown called on McDaniel to resign in December, and he said Saturday that the national GOP is seeing an internal “uprising” from members still upset over COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

“The RNC needs to be paying very close attention to that,” Brown said. “It is the future of our party.”

Last year, Brown ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for Kansas secretary of state. Both he and his opponent, Helen Van Etten, a longtime Topeka activist and former RNC member, promised to revive the Kansas party. But Brown asked fellow Republicans whether they were happy with the results of the past two governor’s races, won by Kelly, and Davids’ election victories.

The vote — with Brown prevailing 90-88 — occurred against the backdrop of the GOP’s unexpectedly poor showing in the 2022 midterms, when it won fewer than expected U.S. House seats and failed to recapture a U.S. Senate majority.

In Kansas, the GOP holds a voter registration advantage, which means that Democrats win big races by attracting votes from moderate Republicans and independent voters, while Republicans generally prevail when the party is unified.

“We need to have more unity,” state Rep. Patrick Penn, a Wichita Republican, told fellow GOP committee members. “That’s the crux of it.”

Some Republicans framed the contest between Brown and Van Etten as a fight between an anti-establishment wing and the establishment.

The infighting ahead of Saturday’s vote was especially intense in Johnson County, in the Kansas City area, the state’s most populous county and home for both Brown and retiring State Chair Mike Kuckelman. The county’s affluent suburbs once were GOP strongholds, but since 2018, they’ve become conspicuously more Democratic — and have been crucial to Kelly’s and Davids’ victories.

The Johnson County GOP’s new chair, a Brown ally concerned about the county’s “purple creep,” told GOP state committee members that Kuckelman had been “absolutely abhorrent” in his treatment of Brown. Kuckelman fired back with several emails, including one accusing Brown of being soft in opposing abortion and supporting gun rights.

With the Republican National Committee, McDaniel overcame opposition from the ultra-Make America Great Again wing of the party despite having been picked for the job in 2016 by former President Donald Trump.

In Michigan, two statewide GOP candidates who denied President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020 were seeking party offices ahead of a convention next weekend. In Nebraska last year, Republicans who support Trump fired the state chair during a tumultuous convention following a Trump-backed candidate’s loss in the GOP primary for governor.

Brown has promoted unfounded theories that Trump’s supporters have used to bolster the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. He is a construction contractor who served on the Johnson County Commission before losing his seat in 2020.

Brown lost the GOP primary for secretary of state to Republican incumbent Scott Schwab, who has vouched for the integrity of Kansas elections.

Van Etten, a retired audiologist, served on the RNC from 2008 to 2020. She also is a former member of the state board that oversees Kansas’ higher education system.

She promised state committee members a “very aggressive” program of building local party organizations: “We’re ready and willing to unite the party.”

One supporter, conservative Kansas City-area economist, researcher and consultant Michael Austin, said: “We need experience. We need connections.”

During the state committee meeting, Kuckelman defended current party leaders’ record, noting that the party has no debt.

Kim Borchers, a longtime Topeka activist who serves on the RNC, defended McDaniel and pushed back pointedly on complaints against the party establishment. She had the state committee members with more than five years’ of experience stand.

“Welcome to the establishment,” she said. “I call that commitment.”

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon take control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district after Senate Republicans approved a bill Friday punishing the company over its opposition to the law critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”

The legislation, which now awaits the governor’s signature, would require DeSantis to appoint a five-member board to oversee the government services the district provides in the company’s sprawling properties in Florida.

The vote on the Disney bill ended a special legislative session focused on the conservative agenda of a governor who has leveraged national political tensions to become a national GOP star and potential White House contender.

The session itself, which was hastily called and completed, also signaled DeSantis’ willingness to leverage the Republican supermajority in the statehouse to accomplish his political goals, a strategy he will continue in the coming months as he builds toward his expected presidential candidacy.

The Disney district takeover was initiated last year when Disney publicly opposed “Don’t Say Gay,” which bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and lessons deemed not age-appropriate.

DeSantis moved to penalize the company, directing lawmakers to dissolve the district during a special legislative session in April, beginning a closely watched restructuring process.

Last week, the Republican leaders of the House and Senate, in coordination with the governor, ordered lawmakers to return for another special session to complete the state takeover of the district.

“This all seems a retaliation by the governor for Disney voicing its support for the LGBTQ community,” Democratic Sen. Linda Stewart said Friday before the bill’s passage.

The measure also changes the district’s name from the Reedy Creek Improvement District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and subjects it to various layers of state oversight. Board members are currently named through entities controlled by Disney.

The bill leaves the district and its financial abilities and debt obligations intact, addressing a chief concern of surrounding governments. It also prevents people who have worked with or contracted with a theme park in the past three years from serving on the district’s new governing board.

Having a separate government allows the district to issue bonds and provide zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure services on its land. Republican critics of the district argue it gives Disney a commercial advantage unavailable to others.

“This bill takes an old district and modernized it and updated it,” said Republican Rep. Fred Hawkins, the bill sponsor. “It took rights away that no corporation should have in being able to construct or have an unfair competitive advantage over its competitors.”

The creation of the district was instrumental in the company’s decision to build near Orlando in the 1960s.

Disney officials had told the state they planned to build a futuristic city that would include a transit system and urban planning innovations, so the company needed autonomy in building and deciding how to use the land. The futuristic city never materialized and instead morphed into a second theme park that opened in 1982.

Separately on Friday, Republicans in the House gave final passage to two bills that amount to technical fixes to key DeSantis initiatives on immigration and voter fraud. The proposals now move to the governor’s office to be signed into law.

One bill is meant to cut off a legal challenge to the governor’s migrant relocation program, which began last year when DeSantis used taxpayer dollars to fly a group of South American migrants from Texas to the liberal enclave resort island of Martha’s Vineyard.

The trip drew legal questions because the administration paid for the flight using money intended to remove migrants who were located in Florida, not migrants who were in any other state.

The legislation creates a dedicated program in the governor’s office on migrant relocation and specifies that future flights could move migrants from anywhere in the U.S. The measure increases the likelihood of additional trips as DeSantis continues his criticism of federal border policy along his path to an expected 2024 presidential bid.

Republicans have repeatedly said the bill would help migrants by taking them to sanctuary cities and states, while Democrats have slammed the program as a political stunt meant to serve the governor’s political ambitions.

The other proposal is meant to strengthen the prosecutorial power of the governor’s election police unit, clarifying in state law that the statewide prosecutor has authority to prosecute election crimes in federal and state races.

“This ensures fraud will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, as it should,” said Republican Rep. Juan Alfonso Fernandez-Barquin.

Some cases tied to the election police unit have been dismissed by judges who said the statewide prosecutor did not have jurisdiction to bring charges.

DeSantis pushed lawmakers to create the election police unit last year to address Republican concerns about voter fraud, which have proliferated among conservatives following former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he reelection was stolen.

The unit, housed in the governor’s department of state, reviews fraud allegations and conducts preliminary investigations, with a special group of state police officers who pursue violations.

Democrats have said the unit is meant to dissuade people from voting and that it is unnecessary since local prosecutors can investigate and charge voter fraud.

“This is a fear tactic and it’s voter suppression, plain and simple,” said Rep. Dianne Hart, a Democrat.

DeSantis is expected to sign the bills into law. Lawmakers will return to Tallahassee in early March for their regular legislative session, where they are expected to approve another slate of DeSantis priorities on guns, education, capital punishment and abortion.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence is a milestone moment in an ongoing Justice Department special counsel investigation. But it doesn’t guarantee he’s going to be testifying before a grand jury anytime soon.

Pence is the latest official in former President Donald Trump’s administration to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, but the push for Pence’s testimony is unique because he’s the highest-ranking official known to have been summoned.

The subpoena, the most aggressive step to date taken by special counsel Jack Smith, sets the stage for a potential dispute over executive privilege, creating a dynamic that could test — or at least delay — the Justice Department’s ability to get from Pence the testimony it believes it needs.

Representatives for Pence have not said publicly whether he intends to comply with the subpoena or will instead look to try to limit his grand jury appearance or avoid it altogether. Trump, for his part, has not said whether he plans to assert executive privilege to prevent Pence’s cooperation. But some legal experts say he faces significant hurdles in succeeding if he tried to do so.

“This will be fairly straightforward because the Department of Justice will be able to make a very compelling showing for the testimony,” said W. Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration.

Spokespeople for Pence and Smith declined to comment on the subpoena, which a person familiar with the matter said followed back-and-forth negotiations between the two sides. A lawyer for the former vice president did not return emails seeking comment. Pence has been represented by veteran attorney Emmet Flood, who over decades in Washington has navigated other high-profile political figures through executive privilege disputes.

Pence’s interest to investigators is obvious. Despite having only a ceremonial role in overseeing the election, Pence was hectored for weeks by Trump to help him stay in power, with the president falsely insisting that Pence could simply reject the results and send them back to the battleground states he contested.

Some of the Trump loyalists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Pence was presiding over the counting of electoral votes chanted ” “Hang Mike Pence!” as the vice president was steered to safety.

Since then, Pence, who is considering launching a 2024 presidential bid against Trump, has distanced himself from the former president, saying last year that “President Trump is wrong” and that “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Despite that criticism, Pence opted against testifying voluntarily before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and was never subpoenaed to appear. Whether he views cooperation with the grand jury differently is unclear, as is whether he and his lawyers will try to avoid being forced to discuss private conversations with Trump.

In the event he does ultimately testify, a subpoena might give him a degree of political cover, helping him avoid further alienating Trump supporters he may need for his own election bid by allowing him to say that he was compelled to cooperate rather than did so voluntarily.

If he does not wish to comply, he may look for Trump to intervene by invoking executive privilege, a doctrine meant to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process. Such an action could result in closed-door arguments before the D.C. court’s chief federal judge, Beryl Howell.

Even then, though, the prospects for success is uncertain at best, in part because the privilege is not absolute and courts have held it can be overcome if the evidence being sought is deemed necessary for a criminal trial or a grand jury proceeding.

The Supreme Court made that clear in a 1974 decision that forced President Richard Nixon to turn over damning Oval Office recordings, saying using the principle to “withhold evidence that is demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial would cut deeply into the guarantee of due process of law and gravely impair the basic function of the court.”

Trump has also been unsuccessful in asserting executive privilege in instances where the current Biden administration disagrees. For instance, the Biden White House repeatedly rejected Trump efforts to use executive privilege to prevent the National Archives and Records Administration from producing presidential records about Jan. 6 to the House committee. The Supreme Court in January 2022 also rebuffed Trump’s efforts to withhold the documents.

Other Trump administration officials have already testified before the grand jury, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his top deputy as well as Pence’s own chief of staff, Marc Short.

Former Trump administration national security adviser Robert O’Brien has also been subpoenaed by the special counsel as part of the Jan. 6 investigation and a separate probe into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss the action.

“It’s a little uncomfortable that that evidence is being sought from his vice president. But the law has not generally differentiated among people in a White House,” Eggleston said.

Other potential complicating factors include the fact that the episodes investigators presumably want to question Pence about — such as Trump’s efforts to influence counting of the votes — don’t concern conventional presidential duties likes the ones typically thought to be shielded by executive privilege, said Daniel Farber, a presidential powers expert and Berkeley Law professor.

He also wrote in detail about many of those episodes in a book published last year, “So Help Me God.” That includes descriptions of a Trump pressure campaign aimed at getting Pence to reject the election results, as well as numerous conversations ahead of Jan. 6, when Pence says he told Trump that he did not believe he had the power to do what Trump wanted.

“I think there are arguments that Pence can make or the Trump could make,” Farber said. “And of course, you can never 100% predict what the courts will do. But it doesn’t seem like an especially strong argument.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met at the White House on Friday and reflected on how their nations were tested in their respective battles to preserve democracy, with the U.S. president declaring that democracy ultimately “prevailed” over the far-right mobs that stormed their governments’ halls of power in an attempt to overturn election victories.

Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump in a fraught 2020 race, securing victory with thin margins in several battleground states. In Brazil’s recent election, its tightest since its return to democracy over three decades ago, Lula, the leftist leader of the Workers’ Party, squeaked out a win against right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who earned the nickname “Trump of the Tropics” and was an outspoken admirer of the former U.S. president.

Both Trump and Bolsonaro sowed doubts about the vote, without presenting evidence, but their claims nevertheless resonated with their most die-hard supporters. In the U.S. Capitol, Trump supporters staged the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection seeking to prevent Biden’s win from being certified. Last month, thousands of rioters stormed the Brazilian capital aiming to oust the newly-inaugurated Lula.

“Both our nations’ strong democracies have been tested of late … very much tested,” Biden said at the start of their Oval Office meeting. “But both in the United States and Brazil, democracy prevailed.”

Lula said that he was moving to restore Brazil on the world stage after Bolsonaro’s term.

“Brazil marginalized itself for four years,” Lula said. “His world started and ended with fake news.”

Biden joked that Lula’s complaint “sounds familiar,” an apparent knock on Trump.

Both Biden and Lula sought to spotlight that Brazil’s democracy remains resilient and that relations between the Americas’ two biggest democracies are back on track.

The leaders also discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, insecurity in Haiti, migration and climate change, including efforts to stem deforestation of the Amazon, according to the White House.

During his 2020 run for the White House, Biden proposed working with global partners to create a $20 billion fund that would encourage Brazil to change its approach to the Amazon, and there was speculation that the U.S. administration would use the visit to announce a major contribution. But following the meeting, the leaders said in joint statement that the Biden administration only “announced its intent to work with Congress to provide funds for programs to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund.”

The Amazon Fund is the most important international cooperation effort to preserve the rainforest, raising donations for efforts to prevent, monitor and combat deforestation and promote sustainability.

The fund has mostly been financed by Norway, and has received a total $1.29 billion. In 2019, Bolsonaro dissolved the steering committee that selects sustainable projects to finance. He argued the rainforest is a domestic affair. In response, Germany and Norway froze their donations. After Lula took office, Germany’s government announced a fresh donation.

Climate was a prominent topic in two recent phone calls between the leaders since Lula’s October victory, according to the White House.

After their meeting Friday, reporters asked Lula whether the U.S. would join the initiative. Lula responded that he believes so and that its participation is necessary.

“I didn’t specifically discuss an Amazon Fund. I discussed the need for rich countries to assume the responsibility of financing all the countries that have forests,” he said, specifically noting Brazil then listing its South American neighbors.

But Lula’s biggest objective going into the visit was securing ringing support for the legitimacy of his presidency as unease continues at home. It remains unclear how the animus Bolsonaro generated will be channeled going forward, and some opposition lawmakers allied with the former president are already calling for Lula’s impeachment. Lula sacked the army’s commander, with the defense minister citing “a fracture in the level of trust” in the force’s top levels.

“You have the environment and other stuff, but Lula sitting down with Biden is an exercise in coup-proofing Brazil’s democracy,” said Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university and think tank. “There is still genuine concern in the Brazilian government about the armed forces, and the biggest partner in containing the armed forces is the United States.”

Bolsonaro, who is facing several investigations in Brazil, traveled to Florida during the final days of his presidency and has remained there since. He applied late last month for a six-month tourist visa to extend his U.S. stay. A group of Democratic lawmakers urged Biden to expel the former president on the grounds that the U.S. shouldn’t provide safe harbor to would-be authoritarians.

The White House and State Department have declined to comment on Bolsonaro’s visa status, citing privacy concerns.

Analysts have noted that Bolsonaro’s absence from Brazil is a welcome change for Lula, and he told CNN earlier Friday that he didn’t plan to discuss the former president with Biden.

Lula also met with several lawmakers, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and union officials before his meeting with Biden.

“It is enormously important for the future of this planet that we stop the deforestation of the Amazon,” Sanders said after his meeting. “Bolsonaro encouraged that in a terrible way. Lula has turned that around, but Brazil is going to need help globally. The issue of the Amazon is not just a Brazilian issue. It’s a global issue.”

Ukraine marked a divergence between the Lula and Biden. Lula previously said the country was as much to blame for the war as Russia, though he more recently clarified that he thought Russia was wrong to invade.

Lula has declined to provide Ukraine with munitions, and he told reporters Friday night that he had proposed to Biden the creation of a group of nations to negotiate peace.

“I am convinced that we need to find a way out to put an end to this war,” he said. “The first thing is ending the war, then negotiating what will happen.”

Asked about Lula’s proposal, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it is up to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to determine “if and when negotiations are appropriate, and certainly under what circumstances.”

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Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A local elections regulator in rural New Mexico who was recently declared missing from work and replaced is now facing possible sanctions from a commission that oversees ethics and conduct by government officials.

The civil lawsuit against Yvonne Otero was filed Tuesday by the State Ethics Commission. It alleges that Otero used her office for personal gain and to exchange favors, seeking sanctions that include fines of up to $5,000.

Otero, a Republican elected as Torrance County clerk in 2020, was replaced in office last month by a decision of the board of county commissioners. The all-Republican board says Otero went missing from work and abandoned her duties. Linda Jaramillo was appointed in her place to serve as clerk through 2024.

Jacob Candelaria, an attorney for Otero, called the misconduct allegations by the State Ethics Commission “outlandish, sexist and politically motivated,” and said that Otero has not abandoned her elected post.

“We intend to vigorously defend against these allegations,” he said Friday.

Separately, Otero has petitioned the state Supreme Court to reinstate her as county clerk.

Otero’s conduct has come under scrutiny at the same time that Torrance County officials grapple with simmering mistrust about voting systems.

Torrance was one of a handful of rural counties in New Mexico that considered delaying certification of the results of its June 2022 primary election as angry crowds gave voice to unproven conspiracy theories about voting systems. Commissioners later ordered a hand-tally of primary ballots and assigned a county manager to ensure adequate preparations for the general election.

Commissioners last year accused Otero in a censure resolution of harassing employees of the clerk’s office and botching the certification of the county’s ballot-counting machines in the run-up to the November 2022 election. Machines were recertified.

Otero’s petition to the Supreme Court argues that county commissioners decided without proper evidence or due process that she had abandoned her duties as clerk. Otero also is challenging the constitutionality of a statute that was used to remove and replace her. The court has yet to respond.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina on Wednesday became the nation’s only state without a woman on its Supreme Court — a development that comes amid increasing Republican scrutiny of the court that narrowly struck down the conservative state’s abortion ban last month.

The Republican-led Legislature chose Judge Gary Hill to replace the high court’s lone female justice, Kaye Hearn, who had reached the court’s retirement age and who wrote the leading opinion in the 3-2 ruling overturning the state’s 2021 abortion ban.

Hill was the only candidate for the position remaining after two female candidates, Judges Stephanie McDonald and Aphrodite Konduros, dropped out on Jan. 17, which was the day candidates could begin seeking legislators’ support. Although nominees have previously left such races when they decided they lacked the votes, the departures have not often happened so swiftly.

Hearn’s departure and the abortion ruling have led to ardent discussions over gender diversity in the courts and the merits of South Carolina’s fairly unique judicial selection system. In most states, voters or the governor take the lead in choosing who sits on state courts. South Carolina and Virginia are the only two states where lawmakers exercise almost complete power over filling the bench.

Under the current process, lawmakers consider a pool of up to three candidates for the high court who have been deemed qualified by a Judicial Merit Selection Commission comprised of four members of the public and six legislators. Candidates must then get a majority of the votes cast in a joint session of the General Assembly.

Tensions reached a flashpoint during a Jan. 25 floor speech by state Sen. Sandy Senn. The Charleston Republican accused House Republicans of forcing the two women out after holding informal polls purportedly showing that neither would win. House Speaker Murrell Smith denied the allegations of premature pledging in a statement to the Post and Courier.

“The smartest candidate, I believe, would’ve been the judge who left my partnership 12 years ago,” Senn said in reference to McDonald, her former law firm colleague.

“I fear that her loss is partly my fault because she got painted with a brush that I guess I set forth,” added Senn, a vocal opponent of last year’s efforts to further restrict abortion rights.

Senn criticized the lack of gender diversity throughout the judiciary and called it “embarrassing” that the family court is the only place where women hold a majority of seats.

Hill received support Wednesday from 140 of South Carolina’s 170 lawmakers. None of the five female state senators voted for him.

Although many legislators agreed that gender should not be the sole factor, some women shared Senn’s disappointment in the lack of female candidates. Others emphasized their focus on a nominee’s background or philosophy.

“I would just like to say on the behalf of the women here, that we believe in merit,” Republican state Rep. April Cromer said Wednesday during a House Freedom Caucus news conference. “To base it on anything other than what their qualifications are is discrimination.”

The abortion decision continued to cast a shadow over the session. Hours before lawmakers convened to select Hill, the state Supreme Court denied state Attorney General Alan Wilson’s petition for a rehearing.

“As we’ve said previously, we respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision,” Wilson said Wednesday in a statement. “The issue is now in the legislature’s hands.”

Republican leaders have quickly advanced differing abortion bans in both chambers this week.

Meanwhile, various changes to judicial selection have been proposed this legislative session. In his State of the State speech, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster called for gubernatorial appointments “with the advice and consent of the state Senate” in a method that would resemble the federal government’s model.

But leading lawmakers do not like the alternatives. They are unmoved by public elections that recently drew millions of advertising dollars in some places. Similarly unappealing to them are gubernatorial nominations like those in New York, where an intraparty fight broke out earlier this year after liberal legislators deemed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee too conservative.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has endorsed “tweaks.” One bill would allow the Judicial Merit Commission to advance all qualified candidates, rather than just three potential nominees.

Republican state Rep. Adam Morgan of the House Freedom Caucus reiterated his support Wednesday for a bill that would bar lawmakers’ family members from election to judicial office while the legislator serves in the General Assembly.

The concerns are not entirely new. A 1996 law banned lawmakers from seeking court positions until one year after either leaving office or failing to file for reelection. Every person who sat on the state Supreme Court in the 1990s had served in the Legislature at some point in their careers.

No lawmakers expressed concerns over Hill’s qualifications. The newest South Carolina Supreme Court justice assumed his position after a lengthy legal career. The 1989 University of South Carolina Law School graduate served as a circuit judge for 13 years before his most recent election to the state appeals court in 2017.

“Admittedly, he is well-to-serve as a Supreme Court justice in this state,” Democratic Rep. Beth Bernstein said Tuesday at a committee hearing on a proposed abortion ban. “But by his election we will not have a female Supreme Court justice in this state — the only state in the nation.”

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James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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