Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Jan. 6 committee set out to compile a public record for history of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but its final report has become so much more — a “roadmap to justice,” as Americans come to terms with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The panel unanimously made four criminal referrals Monday against Trump for his role in the “multi-part conspiracy,” that started with his false claims of a stolen election and ended in the mob siege of the Capitol. It’s sending the recommendations to the Justice Department, which is already conducting its own probe.

In adopting its final report, the panel also recommended a congressional ethics investigations for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and other members of Congress over defying congressional subpoenas for information about their interactions with Trump before, during and after the bloody assault.

“The committee is nearing the end of its work, but as a country we remain in strange and uncharted waters,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “Nearly two years later this is still a time of reflection and reckoning.”

He said, “We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice.”

‘ONE MAN’ CAUSED JAN. 6

Over its 18-month investigation, the panel laid out evidence that the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol was not a spontaneous protest, but an orchestrated “scheme” by Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.

Trump urged supporters to come to Washington for a “big rally” Jan. 6. He whipped up supporters in a speech outside the White House. Knowing that some were armed, he sent the mob to the Capitol and encouraged them to “fight like hell” for his presidency as Congress was counting the vote. He tried to join them on Capitol Hill.

All the while, Trump stoked theories from conservative lawyer John Eastman to create alternative slates of electors, switching certain states that voted for Biden to Trump, that could be presented to Congress for the tally. Eastman also faces criminal referral by the committee to Justice.

“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” the panel said in its report.

Said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “Those responsible must be held accountable.”

NO ‘RINGLEADERS GET A PASS’

More than 800 people have been charged in the attack on the Capitol, and the panel showed that many of them were hanging on Trump’s every word in the weeks after the November election.

Along with militant Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, many other Americans stormed the Capitol that day. One said he wanted to “do my part to stop the steal and stand behind Trump.” Others detailed how the fighting only subsided once Trump tweeted hours later they should go home.

In unveiling its decision to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department, the panel indicated the importance of holding Trump and those around him responsible.

“Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a pass,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a constitutional scholar who played a lead role in drafting the documents.

The Department of Justice has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, and the former president’s efforts to upend the election results in Georgia are being probed by prosecutors in the state.

Still, the criminal referrals of a former president are rare, and grave. The panel quieted for a solemn roll call vote as each committee member agreed to adopt the final report and its recommendations for prosecuting Trump on inciting the insurrection and other charges.

“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy,” Raskin said.

GOP LAWMAKERS UNDER SCRUTINY

Top Republicans in Congress — including McCarthy, who is in line to become House speaker when Republicans take control in the new year — face ongoing scrutiny over their actions before, during and after Jan. 6.

McCarthy was in close contact with Trump and White House officials that day, and wanted Trump to call off the rioters and stop the siege. At one point, he sounded “scared,” according to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s testimony before the panel.

Other Republicans referred for ethics investigations by the committee are leaders of the conservative Freedom Caucus vying for power in the new Congress. Among them: Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who is challenging McCarthy for the speaker’s gavel; Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is set to become the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who is the chairman of the Freedom Caucus.

In its report, the committee said it believes these lawmakers and others “should be questioned in a public forum about their advance knowledge of and role in President Trump’s plan to prevent the peaceful transition of power.”

A DIVIDED COUNTRY

Rather than bring the country together, the events of Jan. 6 continue to divide the Congress and the country.

The committee was born from division, established by Democrats after Republicans in Congress blocked the formation of a 9/11-style independent commission that could probe the Capitol attack and make recommendations.

The panel’s purpose was to investigate and report on the “facts, circumstances, and causes” of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — a public record for history.

But after 18 months and 10 public hearings, the panel closed by acknowledging it still has work to do reaching all Americans in a country often riven by partisanship.

“We understood that millions of Americans still lack the information necessary to understand and evaluate what President Trump has told them about the election,” the report said.

The committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, and noted much of the public testimony came from some four dozen Republicans — including Trump’s former attorneys general and other top White House officials.

The hearings “featured a number of members of President Trump’s inner circle refuting his fraud claims and testifying that the election was not in fact stolen,” the report said.

INVESTIGATIONS AHEAD

Later this week, the full report of the committee’s probe — eight chapters, along with videos and transcripts — is set to be released.

Along with it will be recommendations for legislative changes, including proposals for updating the 19th century Electoral Count Act that was strained by Trump’s attempt to challenge the way Congress tallies the votes.

While the committee was set up to dissolve at the end of the congressional session, its work is expected to ripple through the other investigations by state and federal officials of Trump and his actions around Jan. 6.

Trump has announced he is running again for the White House. And congressional Republicans may launch their own probes of the Jan. 6 investigation as they take control of the House in the new year.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will make its final public presentation Monday about the unprecedented effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election he lost in 2020. The committee has called it an “attempted coup” that warrants criminal prosecution from the Justice Department.

That is expected to be the committee’s closing argument as it wraps up a year-and-a-half-long inquiry and prepares to release a final report detailing its findings about the insurrection in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans is set to dissolve at the end of the year.

Monday’s meeting will be the committee’s 11th public session since forming in July 2021. One of the first hearings, on June 9, was viewed by more than 20 million people.

What to watch for in Monday’s meeting at 1 p.m. EST:

REFERRING A PRESIDENT

The committee is expected to make both criminal and civil referrals against the former president and his allies, who, according to lawmakers, broke the law or committed ethical violations.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the referrals may include criminal, ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations. Lawmakers have suggested in particular that their recommended charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United State, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and insurrection.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday that he believes Trump committed multiple crimes. Pointing specifically to insurrection, Schiff said that “if you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match.”

“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist, this is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Schiff told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If that’s not criminal then I don’t know what it is.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said last week that the committee’s actions will focus on “key players” where there is sufficient evidence or abundant evidence that they committed crimes.

It will fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges. Even though they are non-binding, the recommendations by the committee would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as special counsel Jack Smith conducts an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump’s actions.

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COMPLICIT LAWMAKERS?

The committee on Monday could also make ethics referrals involving fellow lawmakers.

“We will also be considering what’s the appropriate remedy for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so pertinent to our investigation and why we wanted to bring them in,” Schiff said. “We have weighed what is the remedy for members of Congress. Is it a criminal referral to another branch of government, or is it better that the Congress police its own?”

He said the committee considered censure and ethics referrals and will be disclosing their decision Monday.

Lawmakers who did not comply with subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee included House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, as well as GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama.

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A RECORD FOR HISTORY

Lawmakers have promised that Monday’s session will include a preview of the committee’s final report, expected to be released Wednesday. The panel will vote on adopting the official record, effectively authorizing the release of the report to the public.

The eight-chapter report will include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy, drawing on what the committee learned through its interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses.

It will roughly mirror the series of public hearings the committee held in the summer that detailed the various facets of the investigation, including the role of extremist groups in the violence on Jan. 6, Trump’s attempt to enlist the Justice Department in his schemes and Trump’s coordination with GOP lawmakers to overturn the election results.

Additional evidence, including some of the massive trove of video footage and testimony the committee collected, is expected to be released publicly before the end of the year.

Anticipation for the final report is high. Book publishers are already offering pre-release versions for sale to the public.

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LEGISLATIVE CHANGES

As the committee convenes one final time, a major legislative response to the insurrection could be on the fast-track to passage.

Lawmakers are expected to overhaul the arcane election law that Trump tried to subvert after his 2020 election defeat by including legislative changes in a year-end spending bill.

The proposed overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is one of the many byproducts of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A group of bipartisan lawmakers has been working on the legislation since the insurrection. Trump and his allies tried to find loopholes in that law before the congressional certification of the 2020 vote as the former president worked to overturn his defeat to Biden and unsuccessfully pressured Pence to go along.

The bill, if passed, would amend the 19th century law that, along with the Constitution, governs how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners, ensuring the popular vote from each state is protected from manipulation and that Congress does not arbitrarily decide presidential elections.

The committee is also expected to release its own legislative proposals in its final report, with ideas for how to strengthen and expand the guardrails that protected the Electoral College certification in 2021.

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CLOSING ARGUMENTS

Since its formation, the Jan. 6 committee has strived to build a record for history and deepen the public’s understanding of what led to the Capitol attack and the individuals involved in it.

“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” Raskin said. “Everybody has come on a journey with us and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”

After conducting thousands of interviews — ranging from Trump Cabinet secretaries to members of his own family — and obtaining tens of thousands of documents, congressional investigators say they have created the most comprehensive look at the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

But the 16-month investigation has also provided a road map of sorts for criminal investigations, influencing the probes of Trump and Jan. 6 that are progressing at the local, state and federal level.

There is some question whether the Justice Department will act with Trump announced as a 2024 presidential candidate. Schiff expressed worry on Sunday that federal prosecutors may be slow to move on charges as long as Trump is politically relevant. “I think he should face the same remedy, force of law, that anyone else would,” Schiff said.

Still, Monday’s session remains the last word for the committee as its temporary, or “select,” committee status expires at the end of the current Congress.

Once Republicans take the majority next year, they are not expected to renew the committee, instead launching a slew of investigations that will focus on the Biden administration and the president’s family.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Even before President Joe Biden told Democrats his preference for reordering the presidential primary calendar, states began balking.

Officials in Iowa, the leadoff voting state for 40 years, noted a state law mandating that its caucuses take place at least eight days before any other nominating contest. In New Hampshire, the site of the first-in-the-nation primary for more than a century, a state law requires that its presidential primary be held first by at least a week.

Nonetheless, the Democratic National Committee’s rule-making arm on Dec. 2 approved a revamped schedule for early votes for the 2024 presidential primary: first South Carolina, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day, then Georgia and finally Michigan.

States can pass laws with the aim of telling other states what they can and cannot do, but such laws have no force. Any state could enact a law saying it must vote first — without it binding elsewhere.

So what happens if state law clashes with what national party leaders want on voting order? A state must change that law or run the risk that its delegates will not count toward the national nominating total.

WHY ALL THE CHANGES NOW?

The new calendar, awaiting approved by the full DNC, has been in the works for years. The party has long debated putting more diverse states in front of largely white states and moving away from the time-consuming and confusing caucus process.

What accelerated the changes was the debacle of the 2020 Iowa caucuses.

A new smartphone app designed to calculate and report results failed, leading to a telephone backlog that prevented the party from reporting final results for nearly a week after the contest. There were so many irregularities and inconsistencies in the reporting of the results that The Associated Press was unable to declare a winner, though Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is now Biden’s transportation secretary, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders finished essentially tied for the lead.

Biden finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire that year before going on to win the nomination after a dominant performance in South Carolina, the first state with a predominantly Black Democratic base. After that commanding victory, voters in other states followed suit, elevating Biden from a crowded field of candidates.

South Carolina’s vault into the first spot would put it in a premier position in 2024.

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WHAT ARE THE STATES SAYING?

Iowa had been bracing for losing its leadoff slot ever since the 2020 caucus chaos.

Former Iowa Democratic Chair Scott Brennan, a member of the DNC committee that considered the 2024 calendar, voted against the changes to the order of states. He said they would “certainly favor front-runners and billionaire vanity candidates” by not including early-voting states in the center of the country. Ross Wilburn, the current head of the Iowa Democratic Party, said over the weekend that he plans to step down in the wake of the DNC move to put the South Carolina primary ahead.

New Hampshire’s delegation has long threatened to defy Democratic rules and hold its primary first anyway. A state law passed in the 1970s requires that its presidential primary be held first, laying out the purpose as to “protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary.” It also gives the secretary of state the exclusive power to set the primary date.

On news of the revised calendar plan, New Hampshire Democrats appeared ready to spurn the national party. “We will always hold the first in the nation primary, and this status is independent of the president’s proposal or any political organization,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Nevada has been the first voting state in the West since 2008. Last year, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a law changing the contest from a party-run, in-person caucus to a government-run primary election, to be held on the first Tuesday in February in a presidential election year — or, for 2024, on Feb. 6.

While Nevada officials had hoped this would lead to the state’s holding the new first-in-the-nation status, it will still hold significant prominence, especially with early voting beginning on Jan. 27.

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WHAT HAPPENS IF STATES DON’T GO ALONG WITH THE NATIONAL PARTY?

If states defy the DNC, there are a few possible penalties, including refusal to seat delegates at the national convention from any state that held its votes out of order.

That happened in 2008. Florida and Michigan held voting contests before their slots on both parties’ calendars. National Republicans banned half of the delegates from the states. Democrats removed both states’ delegates from the national convention, although the DNC ultimately voted to seat all of the delegates, awarding half a vote to each.

Four years later, states including Florida again scheduled their contests before the early window only then allocated to Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina; all but Nevada moved their votes into January. National party leaders again penalized the rogue states by pulling half of their delegates.

The parties could penalize candidates directly, perhaps by denying them prime speaking slots at national conventions. But University of New Hampshire political scientist David Moore said he doubted that ramifications would be severe enough to keep states such as New Hampshire from defying the calendar.

“I don’t know right now how committed the Democratic Party is to penalizing Iowa and New Hampshire if they go rogue,” he said.

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WHAT ABOUT THE REPUBLICANS?

The Republican National Committee has already decided to keep Iowa as the first contest on its presidential calendar. For months, potential GOP hopefuls have been making trips as the field begins to form.

RNC members also voted unanimously to keep New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in the early-voting window.

South Carolina’s parties, and not its lawmakers, set primary dates, so Democrats have no concern of their 2024 voting date being held up by the GOP-controlled Legislature.

No date has been set for Georgia’s GOP presidential preference primary in 2024.

Gabriel Sterling is a top official in the office of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has sole responsibility for setting primary dates. Sterling said the agency “has been telling Democrats for over a year that we will do nothing that would require having two dates” for the parties’ primaries. He said that because of the national GOP’s calendar, holding Georgia’s Republican primary before March 1 “would cut their delegate count in half.”

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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The head of the Iowa Democratic Party plans to step down in the wake of a vote by the national party to put the South Carolina primary ahead of Iowa’s caucuses, which have long been the first presidential nominating contest in the country.

Ross Wilburn announced Saturday that he won’t run for reelection as party chairman in January.

“No one can predict the future. But I have the utmost faith that whoever takes up the mantle next will guide our party with grace through the challenges ahead, as we all continue to work on growing our party and electing Democrats who will fight for the ideas we know are supported by a strong majority of Iowans,” Wilburn said in a statement.

In addition to losing their first-in-the-nation status, Democrats lost several key races in the state last month as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley cruised to reelection and two longtime Democratic office holders lost their positions.

The next chairman will lead Iowa Democrats as they decide whether to comply with the national party’s decision or follow a state law that requires the caucuses to be held at least eight days before any other presidential nominating contest.

If the state party doesn’t go along with the national party’s decision, Iowa Democrats will run the risk that its delegates will not count toward the national nominating total.

Wilburn, who was the party’s first Black chairman, will remain a state representative.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohioans would be required to present photo ID at the polls and have fewer days to apply for absentee ballots or to vote early in person under sweeping elections legislation that cleared the Republican-state Legislature early Thursday as lawmakers worked through the night to finish their current session.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said later Thursday that he would need to read the final bill before deciding whether to sign it.

“The last two secretaries of state have both said that we have a very good system in the state of Ohio,” DeWine said. “It’s easy to vote, hard to cheat, so I think we already have a good system in the state of Ohio.”

Besides imposing Ohio’s first photo ID requirement on voters, the legislation outlaws curbside voting and allows for ballot drop boxes but limits those to one per county. Both practices were popularized during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020.

It also prohibits governments from prepaying return postage on mail-in ballots and steps up the calendar for final ballot counting.

Democrats and voting rights advocates said the changes create additional hurdles for voters.

“There is no need to change anything,” objected Democratic Rep. Richard Brown, of Canal Winchester, who said the legislation doesn’t solve any existing problem but would create new ones.

GOP lawmakers said it will protect the integrity of Ohio’s elections and restore voter confidence at a time of great public doubt.

State Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, called it a “good step forward” but also said it was a missed opportunity. Seitz had backed legislation with additional provisions such as automated voter registration and allowing multiple drop boxes in a county, and he suggested that the final compromise might have been more to Democrats’ liking if they’d been more willing to work with the sponsors on that measure.

Lawmakers also had considered a resolution to place an issue on next year’s ballot that would call for requiring a 60% supermajority to pass future constitutional amendments. That didn’t make it to a final vote, but it could be reintroduced after the new General Assembly is seated next month and begins the next two-year legislative session.

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PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. government sued Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the state Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.

Ducey told U.S. officials earlier this week that Arizona is ready to help remove the containers, which he says were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wants the U.S. government to say when it will fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall as it announced it would a year ago.

The U.S. “owes it to Arizonans and all Americans to release a timeline,” he wrote in a Tuesday letter, responding to news of the pending federal complaint.

Border security was a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a key issue for Republican politicians.

The Department of Justice complaint asks the court for Arizona to be ordered to halt placement and remove the containers in remote San Rafael Valley in southeastern Cochise County.

The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million is about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment have held up work in recent days.

“Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on federal lands,” the complaint reads. The action also seeks damages to compensate the United States to fix any damage along the border.

The Justice Department sued on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service it oversees.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement from Washington that the project “is not an effective barrier, it poses safety hazards to both the public and those working in the area and has significantly damaged public land.”

“We need serious solutions at our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” Vilsack said.

The complaint was applauded by U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona. He called the project an “illegal junkyard border wall.”

Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal complaint “should be the beginning of the end of Doug Ducey’s lawless assault on protected national forestlands and endangered wildlife.”

Ducey wrote federal officials after being informed of their intent to file the complaint and rejected their argument that the containers “present serious public safety risks and environmental harms.”

“The number one public safety risk and environmental harm has come from inaction by the federal government to secure our border,” Ducey wrote, with the January 2021 halt in the building of Trump’s border wall resulting in “an ever-increasing number of migrants who continue to flow into the state.”

Ducey’s move comes amid a record flow of migrants arriving at the border. U.S. border officials have stopped migrants 2.38 million times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Trump’s presidency, in 2019.

Ducey also rejected the U.S. government’s claims that the containers interfere with the ability of federal agencies to carry out their official duties, as well as to complete construction of border infrastructure in some areas.

He said he was encouraged by the Biden administration’s earlier announcement it would fill gaps in the wall, but that was a year ago.

“Arizona had no other choice but to address the crisis at its southern border and began erecting a temporary border barrier,” the governor wrote.

Hobbs has said she considers the project a political stunt, but hasn’t decided what to do about the containers after her Jan. 5. inauguration.

Ducey sued federal officials over their objections to the container wall Oct. 21, insisting that Arizona holds sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot (18.2 meter) strip the containers rest on and has a constitutional right to protect residents from “imminent danger of criminal and humanitarian crises.”

Ducey’s container wall effort began in late summer in Yuma in western Arizona, a popular crossing point, with scores of asylum-seekers arriving daily and often finding ways to circumvent the new barriers. The containers filled areas left open when Trump’s 450-mile (724 km) border wall was built. But remote San Rafael Valley — the latest construction site — is not typically used by migrants and was not contemplated in Trump’s wall construction plan.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed legislation Friday to fund the government for an additional week as lawmakers race to finish work on a full-year spending package before they head home for the holidays and a new Congress is sworn in.

Congress in September passed a bill to keep the government running through midnight Friday. The latest extension funds federal agencies through Dec. 23. It passed the Senate on Thursday evening by a vote of 71-19.

“Negotiations keep trending in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work left to do and not enough time to do it, unless we extend government funding for another week,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in urging lawmakers to support the stopgap measure.

The roughly $1.7 trillion package being negotiated would finance the day-to-day operations of government agencies for the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Federal spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare is not part of the annual appropriations process and is not included in the package.

House Republicans overwhelmingly have called for a longer-term extension into early next year so they could have a bigger role in setting spending levels for the agencies. Democrats in the House were able to advance the bill with little GOP support earlier this week.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, has made the case that passing a full-year spending bill this Congress is better than the alternatives because it ensures a sizable increase in spending for defense.

“If a truly bipartisan full-year bill without poison pills is ready for final Senate passage by late next week, I’ll support it for our Armed Forces,” McConnell said Wednesday. “Otherwise, we’ll be passing a short-term continuing resolution into the new year.”

Some Senate Republicans disagreed with efforts to pass a spending bill before House Republicans could take charge. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., said he supported providing a short-term extension into next year because that would mean “more Republican priorities” in the final package.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the lead Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has said the two parties were about $25 billion apart on overall spending. But lawmakers announced Tuesday night that they had reached agreement on a “framework” that should allow negotiations to be completed by next week.

The final bill is also expected to include the Biden administration’s request for another $37 billion in aid to Ukraine as well as other bipartisan priorities, including an election measure designed to prevent another Jan. 6 insurrection. The bill would make it more difficult for lawmakers to object to a particular state’s electoral votes and make clear that the constitutional role of the vice president in the proceedings is solely ministerial.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Five weeks after Election Day, winning candidates in Pennsylvania from governor to Congress are waiting for their victories to become official.

An effort that appears to be at least partially coordinated among conservatives has inundated counties with ballot recount requests even though no races are close enough to require a recount and there has been no evidence of any potential problems.

The attempt to delay certification could foreshadow a potential strategy for the 2024 presidential election, if the results don’t go the way disaffected voters want in one of the nation’s most closely contested states.

Recounts have been sought in 172 voting precincts across 40% of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. That led to nine counties missing their Nov. 29 certification deadline, though all but one has since certified.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, in a response to The Associated Press on Wednesday, gave no date for certifying the results statewide but said it planned to comply with a request from the clerk of the U.S. House to send certification documents to Congress by mid-December. Wednesday was Dec. 14.

Chris Deluzio, a Pittsburgh Democrat elected in November to the U.S. House, said the delay has had only a minor effect on him so far. Without his win being official, however, the congressman-elect doesn’t get to send out mail at no charge, as other members of Congress do, for example.

“I think if people are able to come to the courts and delay certification results without any real evidence, that’s a problem, and I see some abuse of that process here,” Deluzio said.

Judges authorized at least 19 precinct recounts in six counties. Those requesting the recounts said they wanted to check the accuracy of the state’s election equipment and processes, echoing the conspiracy claims of voting machine manipulation for which there is no evidence.

Brittany Crampsie, a political consultant involved with Democratic campaigns in Pennsylvania, said she expects the recount tactic to continue “as long as Donald Trump and his acolytes remain prevalent in the Republican Party.”

“In a lot of these cases, it’s entirely political and it’s a waste of taxpayer funds,” Crampsie said.

Rural county commissions in Arizona and New Mexico delayed or threatened to delay certification of primary or general elections results this year, in each case without evidence that anything was amiss in the vote counting.

An AP survey of the Pennsylvania precinct recounts found the recount challenges altered vote tallies barely or not at all. The absence of any problems led one county judge to urge state legislators to amend Pennsylvania’s recount law.

Westmoreland Common Pleas Judge Harry Smail Jr., in a footnote to orders granting recounts, said such demands ought to be accompanied by specific claims of error or fraud.

“A sustained failure to address this deficiency will continue to burden the courts, elections bureaus, elections boards, county executive branches and the voting public by allowing manufactured challenges without a scintilla of evidentiary support to any and possibly all election certification processes in future elections,” Smail wrote.

Rep. Leanne Krueger, who leads the state House Democratic Campaign Committee, said those who deny the results of the 2020 presidential election have been trying to stop election certification for several years.

“These petitions are unsuccessful largely because they’re not grounded,” Krueger said. “And every time there’s a request for the county board of elections to do something like this, they are forcing the spending of taxpayer money on elections that have already been decided.”

By state law, recounts must be done for all election districts where ballots were cast in a given race. For statewide contests, that would mean all precincts in a county. There is an exception to permit more narrow recounts if the petitioners claim “a particular act of fraud or error occurred” and they provide some evidence to support that.

A lack of any evidence or particular claim was the grounds cited by many of the judges who rejected recount petitions.

At least two of the recount requests were supported by local Republican Party groups. It’s unclear whether the wider request effort also is linked to Audit the Vote PA, a group founded in early 2021 out of the false belief that something was wrong with the 2020 presidential results in Pennsylvania, where Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Audit the Vote PA founder Karen Taylor filed a recount petition in Westmoreland County.

The group’s co-founder, Toni Shuppe, said during a Nov. 28 question-and-answer session on the social media platform Rumble that people had found a way to submit petitions, but she didn’t attribute the effort to her organization.

“It’s our sacred vote, and this movement isn’t going away and people aren’t going to shut up,” Shuppe said in the online forum, urging that ballots be counted by hand.

The requests have generally sought hand counts in the races for governor and U.S. Senate, but some also have asked to double-check the vote totals for U.S. House and for state representative. Many used a form letter with blank spaces to fill in the precinct and county.

The AP precinct survey did not turn up any recount requests driven by candidates who lost close contests.

Several petitioners were turned down because they worked as election officials on Nov. 8 and certified the results as accurate. Others were rejected for not living in the precinct for which a recount was requested or for not paying a required $50 bond.

Some counties targeted for recounts had already sent their totals in to the Department of State before being notified of the legal actions, but others had not yet certified or had certified only partial results.

Lycoming County elections chief Forrest Lehman said defending a single recount petition required making copies of poll books and collecting a variety of records.

“We felt compelled to be ready for anything,” Lehman said. “That certainly took hours of my time and then hours of our solicitor’s time.”

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Schultz 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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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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NEW YORK (AP) — Struggling to unify after another disappointing election, the Republican National Committee is consumed by an increasingly nasty leadership fight as the GOP navigates its delicate relationship with former President Donald Trump.

With a vote for RNC chair not scheduled until late January, the public feud may get worse before it gets better.

“It’ll be ugly as hell for a while,” says longtime RNC member Ron Kaufman.

The family fight to lead the party has been largely overshadowed for national attention by the equally contentious struggle to become the new Republican House Speaker, with that election set for the first week in January. But both represent critical selections as the GOP works to overcome six years of electoral underperformance heading into another presidential election.

As the Republicans’ national political arm, the RNC will raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars in building or rebuilding the party’s framework, in campaign messaging and in the year-long presidential nomination process that will begin in earnest before long.

Ronna McDaniel, Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the committee and the niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, is running for a fourth consecutive term. But the 49-year-old is facing a rising wave of discontent from Trump’s “MAGA” movement, even as the former president stays silent — at least, for now.

In an interview, McDaniel said she notified Trump of her intention to seek another term but did not explicitly ask for his support. She said she “didn’t think it would be appropriate to be asking for any endorsements” given that party rules require the RNC to remain neutral in the next presidential primary.

McDaniel demurred when asked whether she wanted Trump’s support.

“I think the most important support right now is the members,” she said. “These are leaders in the party, the grassroots leaders.”

California attorney Harmeet Dhillon has emerged as the MAGA favorite to challenge McDaniel, who secured commitments from more than 100 of the RNC’s 168 voting members earlier this month. Dhillon is working aggressively to peel away some of that support ahead of the formal vote at next month’s annual winter meeting in southern California.

Dhillon said she also notified Trump of her candidacy in a brief phone call shortly before she made her intentions public this month. She did not explicitly ask for his endorsement either, although she said the president did not discourage her from challenging McDaniel.

Dhillon, whose law firm earned more than $400,000 representing Trump and his political organizations in the 2022 midterms, said she would leave her law practice if elected chair. The 53-year-old California attorney, who was born in India, also vowed to remain independent in what is expected to be a crowded 2024 presidential primary contest.

Still, Dhillon defends Trump against those Republicans who blame him for the party’s disappointing performance in the November midterm elections. The GOP won a narrow House majority, but a host of Trump’s hand-picked candidates lost key elections for the Senate and governor.

“It’s not any one person’s fault. And I frankly think it’s a little too convenient to say it’s Donald Trump’s fault. Donald Trump hasn’t been the president for the last two years,” Dhillon said.

Instead of criticizing Trump, Dhillon railed against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, a frequent Trump target, for not investing enough money in important Senate contests. Actually, McConnell and his allies spent tens of millions of dollars more than Trump’s political action committee in the midterms.

“You have Mitch McConnell, because he hates Trump, refusing to support candidates that President Trump endorsed, which I think is really appalling. And I blame him for the Senate losses,” Dhillon said.

Meanwhile, McDaniel is facing criticism from a growing chorus of Republicans largely outside the RNC’s 168 voting members who are eager to change course after three consecutive disappointing election seasons. Her critics include several high-profile Trump loyalists, including Fox News hosts and prominent MAGA figures on social media.

She has some unlikely supporters within the committee as well.

One frequent Trump critic, RNC member Bill Palatucci, said he would support Dhillon because McDaniel has essentially become Trump’s “tool” in recent years. He cited her decisions to stay silent on some of Trump’s more egregious behavior and to spend millions of dollars on his legal fees.

“There’s just gotta be a change,” Palatucci said, describing the committee commitments to McDaniel as “soft.” “RNC members are experienced pols who know how to look you right in the eye and say, ‘I love you,’ and then walk into the voting booth and slit your throat.”

At the same time, those RNC members are being flooded with emails from rank-and-file Republican voters and activists who support Dhillon’s candidacy. The deluge comes after Dhillon and her allies shared the entire committee’s personal emails on social media.

Steve Scheffler, an Iowa-based RNC member who supports McDaniel, said he’s receiving 50 to 70 emails each day from Republicans, many of them angry, weighing in on the leadership fight.

“Most of them are like, ‘Ronna’s gotta go,’” Scheffler said.

Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward said she’s received “a few thousand emails” in recent days.

“NOT ONE regular person not affiliated with the current RNC apparatus has urged me to retain Ronna Romney McDaniel as Chair,” Ward tweeted.

Trump remains a wildcard.

The former president has stayed out of the public fight, but key members of his team — including senior adviser Susie Wiles — have notified members in private conversations that Trump remains supportive of McDaniel’s reelection.

Trump’s allies note that his strategy could change at any time — especially as conservative media line up against McDaniel.

Wiles also defended McDaniel publicly on Friday following a report in conservative media, written by a Dhillon supporter and legal client, that the RNC had spent millions of dollars on private jets, limousines, donor mementos and floral arrangements under McDaniel’s watch.

Wiles noted that such RNC spending was sometimes to cover purchases that came at the discretion of the Trump White House.

“Someone leaving this info out of any criticism of RNC spending — and Ronna McDaniel, in particular — is not painting a complete picture,” Wiles told The Associated Press.

Indeed, RNC budget committee chair Glenn McCall described reports of excess spending as “a gross misrepresentation” in a letter to members. Costs associated with luxury car rentals and private jets, he wrote, were largely connected to Trump or other candidates.

McDaniel’s supporters are eager to highlight her success in fundraising, arguably the GOP chair’s most important responsibility. She has raised more than $1.5 billion during her tenure, according to McCall.

Meanwhile, Dhillon is ratcheting up her attacks against McDaniel.

She raised questions about McDaniel’s management of RNC funds, accused her of offering members key positions in exchange for their support and suggested the chair was behind an anonymous email smear campaign.

But more than anything, Dhillon says she’s running because she wants the party to win again: “I’m tired of losing.”

For her part, McDaniel warns that such intense divisions within her party could do serious damage.

“The race I’m running is about unity,” she said. “If we continue to fight and be so hateful to each other to the point where Republicans won’t vote for other Republicans, we’re giving the Democrats what they want.”

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s departing Secretary of State was served a subpoena last month as part of the U.S. Department of Justice special counsel’s investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results.

The subpoena required Barbara Cegavske to either appear in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., on Dec. 9 or provide a litany of documents detailing communications with officials. Those documents mirrored the special counsel’s subpoenas in other key swing states.

Cegavske’s office opted to provide documents, of which there was only one, with officials who were not on the DOJ’s request list. In a statement Thursday evening, Cegavske’s office said that document was provided “out of an abundance of caution.”

Special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the Justice Department investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

It’s part of the first known round of subpoenas by Smith, who was named special counsel last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Officials in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona received subpoenas as well. Clark County, Nevada’s most populous county which includes Las Vegas, also received a subpoena.

Cegavske’s subpoena, obtained Thursday evening by The Associated Press through an open records request submitted this week, was dated Nov. 22, nearly two weeks after Nevada’s high-profile midterm races were some of the last in the nation to be called.

The DOJ requested identical documents from other key swing states and counties it subpoenaed.

Those included “any and all communications in any form” between June 1, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, “to, from or involving” Trump, his campaign, lawyers and aides, including former campaign officials and lawyers such as Sidney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Cegavske’s office had no records detailing communication with any of the Trump campaign officials listed on the subpoena, but did provide one document anyway.

They submitted an October 2020 Zoom meeting invite between the office and Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald, who was one of several who signed certificates falsely stating that Trump won Nevada in 2020, as well as others who signed fake certificates or have sought to overturn or discredit elections in Nevada.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we included communications with the NVGOP and RNC in our search, and that was the only record found during the time frame in question,” spokesperson Jennifer Russell said in an email to the AP on Thursday.

All of the states the DOJ subpoenaed are key battlegrounds that Trump and his allies targeted as they tried to overturn the election.

Cegavske, who was not eligible for reelection after serving two terms, has been the only current statewide-elected Republican critic of voter-fraud conspiracy theories, and one of the most vocal. She has overseen elections in the state since 2014, and has repeatedly defended the results as reliable and accurate despite attacks from Trump and other Republicans — which led Nevada’s Republican party to censure her.

Her investigation found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud throughout the state.

Trump took to his social media app last month to try and discredit this year’s midterm election results in Clark County, to which the county responded by saying Trump was “misinformed about the law and our election processes that ensure the integrity of elections in Clark County.”

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Stern 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. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.

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