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Tag: Elections

  • Most say voting vital despite dour US outlook: AP-NORC poll

    Most say voting vital despite dour US outlook: AP-NORC poll

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — From his home in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Graeme Dean says there’s plenty that’s disheartening about the state of the country and politics these days. At the center of one of this year’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, he’s on the receiving end of a constant barrage of vitriolic advertising that makes it easy to focus on what’s going wrong.

    But the 40-year-old English teacher has no intention of disengaging from the democratic process. In fact, he believes that the first national election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is “more significant” than in years past.

    “This could very well sway the country in one direction or another,” the Democratic-leaning independent said.

    Dean is hardly alone in feeling the weight of this election. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center of Public Affairs Research finds 71% of registered voters think the very future of the U.S. is at stake when they vote this year. That’s true of voters who prefer Republicans win majorities in Congress, and those who want to see Democrats remain in control, though likely for different reasons.

    While about two-thirds of voters say they are pessimistic about politics, overwhelming majorities across party lines — about 8 in 10 — say casting their ballot this year is extremely or very important.

    The findings demonstrate how this year’s midterms are playing out in a unique environment, with voters both exhausted by the political process and determined to participate in shaping it. That could result in high turnout for a midterm election.

    In the politically divided state of Michigan, for instance, over 150,000 voters have already cast absentee ballots. A total of 1.6 million people have requested absentee ballots so far, surpassing the 1.16 million who chose the option in the 2018 midterm election.

    In follow-up interviews, poll respondents reported distinct concerns about the country’s direction despite agreement that things are not working.

    Rick Moore, a 67-year-old writer and musician in Las Vegas, said he’s dissatisfied with President Joe Biden, and “not just because I’m a Republican.” Moore called him “more of a puppet” than any other president in his lifetime.

    “It’s important to me that Republicans are in control of as much as possible because we’re not going to get rid of the Democratic president anytime soon,” Moore said.

    In general, Moore said, he doesn’t like the way Democratic politicians run their states, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, adding that Democrats are “using the word democracy to make all of us do what they want.”

    “I would just like to see my voice more represented,” he said.

    Since the last midterm elections, voters have grown more negative about the country and people’s rights: 70% say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., up from 58% in October 2018.

    Republicans have become enormously dissatisfied with a Democrat in the White House. While Democrats have become less negative since Donald Trump left office, they remain largely sour on the way things are going.

    Fifty-eight percent of voters also say they are dissatisfied with the state of individual rights and freedoms in the U.S., up from 42% in 2018. About two-thirds of Republicans are now dissatisfied, after about half said they were satisfied when Trump was in office. Among Democrats, views have stayed largely the same, with about half dissatisfied.

    Shawn Hartlage, 41, doesn’t think her views as a Christian are well represented, lamenting that she’d love to vote “for someone that really stood for what you believe,” but that it’s very important to her to vote anyway.

    The Republican stay-at-home mother of two in Washington Township, Ohio, said the direction of the country is “devastating,” noting both inflation and a decline in moral values.

    “I’m scared for my children’s future,” Hartlage said. “You always want to leave things better for them than what you had, but it’s definitely not moving in that direction.”

    Teanne Townsend of Redford, Michigan, agrees that things are moving backward. But the 28-year-old called out abortion, health care and police brutality as especially concerning areas in which rights are being threatened.

    “We have minimum progression in the right direction for a lot of areas, especially for people of minority (groups). Their rights are not the same as those of other races and cultures,” the Democrat, who is African American, said.

    A children’s health and mental health specialist, Townsend said she’s voting for her constitutional right to an abortion this year. If passed, the state’s ballot initiative would guarantee abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution.

    “I feel like it’s just a lot that’s at stake,” Townsend said, adding that she’s both “optimistic and nervous” about the outcome but that it’s “the right thing” for people to be able to vote on it.

    The poll showed majorities of voters overall say the outcome of the midterms will have a significant impact on abortion policy, with Democratic voters more likely than Republican voters to say so. Most voters across party lines say the outcome will have a lot of impact on the economy.

    More voters say they trust the Republican Party to handle the economy (39% vs. 29%), as well as crime (38% vs. 23%). Republicans also have a slight advantage on immigration (38% vs. 33%). The Democratic Party is seen as better able to handle abortion policy (45% vs. 22%), health care (42% vs. 25%) and voting laws (39% vs. 29%).

    Despite the uncertainty in the outcome, Dean in Pennsylvania has faith in the American system to work for the will of the people.

    “I think it’s important that our representatives represent what the majority of people want,” Dean said. “That’s what we claim we do in this country and it feels like it is what should happen. And I am hopeful.”

    ___

    The poll of 961 registered voters was conducted Oct. 6-10 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

    ___

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

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  • EXPLAINER: How Georgia’s midterm runoff elections work

    EXPLAINER: How Georgia’s midterm runoff elections work

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    Two years ago, control of the U.S. Senate came down to Georgia, with two pivotal runoff election wins tipping the chamber’s favor into Democratic hands.

    This fall, it’s possible the newly minted battleground state could again play a major role in how the Senate shakes out, with a marquee contest that, thanks to a third-party candidate, may not be decided until a runoff election a month after Nov. 8.

    Here’s a look at the contenders and how the Georgia Senate race — and perhaps control of the chamber — may not be decided until December:

    WHO ARE THE PLAYERS?

    Most attention in Georgia’s contest has focused on incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican nominee Herschel Walker, whom polls suggest are headed to a tight contest.

    Warnock has campaigned on Democrats’ legislative accomplishments like coronavirus relief and infrastructure reforms. Walker has been beleaguered by a variety of critical attention, including claims he exaggerated his business success, as well as successive reports alleging that he encouraged and paid for a woman’s 2009 abortion and later fathered a child with her.

    There is, however, a third-party candidate who could affect either major-party contender’s ability to get a majority of votes on election night. Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, seeking to become Georgia’s first LGBTQ candidate elected to Congress, lost a 2020 special election to replace the late Rep. John Lewis.

    With an expected close race, it may not take a considerable share of the vote for Oliver, an Atlanta businessman, to force a runoff by keeping Warnock or Walker from getting a majority Nov. 8.

    HOW DOES THE RUNOFF WORK?

    Under Georgia law, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote Nov. 8, the Senate race will go to a runoff four weeks later — on Dec. 6 — between the top two vote-getters.

    State and federal runoffs used to happen on different days, but a measure passed last year combines those into a single date. Before this year, runoffs for federal general elections were held nine weeks later.

    HOW HAS THIS PLAYED OUT BEFORE?

    In 2020, control of the U.S. Senate came down to the twin contests in Georgia, both of which were won by Democrats in runoffs that stretched into the next calendar year. In their 2021 runoff elections, Jon Ossoff and Warnock became the first Democrats to win a U.S. Senate election in Georgia since 2000.

    Those victories put the chamber at its 50-50 party-control mark for the next two years, tilting in Democrats’ control thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Unlike in 2020, only one of those Georgia seats is up this year. In defeating Republican Sen. David Perdue, Ossoff was elected to a full six-year term and won’t be up for reelection until 2026.

    The seat Warnock occupies went up for grabs in August 2019, when GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson announced he was resigning because of failing health. Georgia’s governor appointed Kelly Loeffler to temporarily fill the seat, but she had to run in the November 2020 general election to fill the remaining two years of Isakson’s term.

    Having won that contest, Warnock is now seeking his first full, six-year term.

    WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

    With the Senate so closely divided, any of the 35 races on the ballot this fall could decide the 100-seat chamber’s control. The 2021 wins from Warnock and Ossoff gave President Joe Biden’s nascent administration a boost in Congress, where the Democratic Senate control, coupled with Harris’ tie-breaking votes, helped cement legislative victories on issues like COVID relief packages, the Inflation Reduction Act and a number of administrative appointments.

    Now, whether Democrats can hold on to one of the two Senate seats they won two years ago may serve as a test of whether the longtime Republican stronghold continues a shift to swing state territory, thanks in part to demographic shifts, particularly in the economically vibrant area of metropolitan Atlanta.

    In 2018, Democrat Stacey Abrams galvanized Black voters in her bid to become the country’s first African American woman to lead a state, a campaign she narrowly lost. She’s running again this year, in a rematch with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

    ___

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

    ___

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

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  • These Democrats flipped House in 2018. 2022 will be harder.

    These Democrats flipped House in 2018. 2022 will be harder.

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Moments after she flipped a longtime Republican congressional seat in 2018, Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne declared that “Washington doesn’t have our back and we deserve a heck of a lot better.”

    Now seeking a third term in one of the most competitive House races, Axne is sounding a similar tone, telling voters she’s delivered for Iowans “while Washington politicians bicker.”

    But Axne and other Democrats from the class of 2018 are campaigning in a much different political environment this year. The anxiety over Donald Trump’s presidency that their party harnessed to flip more than 40 seats and regain the House majority has eased. In its place is frustration about the economy under President Joe Biden.

    And many districts that were once competitive have been redrawn by Republican-dominated state legislatures to become more friendly to the GOP.

    “It was a very different world,” pollster John Zogby said of 2018. “Inflation’s now where we haven’t seen in 40 years and it affects everybody. And this is the party in power. With campaigns, you don’t get to say, ‘But it could have been’ or ’But look at what the other guy did.’”

    Many swing-district Democrats elected four years ago were buoyed by college-educated, suburban voters, women and young people shunning Trump. That means many defeats for second-term House Democrats could be read as opposition to Trump no longer motivating voters in the same way — even though the former president could seek the White House again in 2024.

    Trump continues to shape politics in a far more present sense, too. He’s dominated the national Republican Party despite spreading lies about 2020′s free and fair presidential election and now facing a House subpoena for helping incite the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.

    Tom Perez, who headed the Democratic National Committee from 2017 until 2021, noted that midterm cycles are historically tough for the president’s party and that — plus grim U.S. economic news — would normally raise the question “are Democrats going to get shellacked?”

    Instead, Perez thinks many of the toughest congressional races remain close because of the strength of Democrats elected four years ago.

    “All these folks from the Class of ’18, what they have in common is they’re really incredibly competent, accomplished and they’ve earned the trust of voters in their districts across the ideological spectrum,” said Perez, co-chair of the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “That, to me, is why we have a chance here, not withstanding the headwinds of the moment, is that incredible combination of candidate quality contrasted with the extreme views of the people who are running against them.”

    In all, 66 new Democrats won House races in 2018, flipping 41 Republican seats. Their party gave back many of those gains in 2020, with Republicans taking 14 new seats. Those GOP victories included defeating a dozen Democrats elected to the House for the first time the previous cycle.

    The Democratic House losses were overshadowed by Biden beating Trump. But this time, the ranks of the 2018 Democratic House class further dwindling may draw more attention — especially if it helps the GOP gain the net five seats it needs to reclaim the chamber’s majority.

    In addition to Axne, Democrats who may be vulnerable include Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Elaine Luria of Virginia. Another Virginia Democrat, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, as well as Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Angie Craig of Minnesota and Sharice Davids of Kansas all also may face tough reelections.

    “The question is, is it going to have similarities to ’18 or not in the sense of democracy being on the ballot and a reaction to Trump,” former California Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda, who was elected in 2018 but narrowly lost his reelection bid, said of next month’s election. “Based on polling and the primaries, it doesn’t seem like the voting public is holding Republicans responsible for the Big Lie.”

    Perez is more sanguine: “The midterm election is supposed to be a referendum on the president, but Donald Trump continues to inject himself” into the nation’s politics.

    House turnover is common among both parties. By early 2018, almost half of the 87 House Republicans newly elected when their party took control of the chamber during the 2010 tea party surge were gone. More lost that November.

    Still, the 2018 class was notable as the largest influx of first-year House Democrats in four-plus decades, and the chamber’s youngest and most diverse ever.

    Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said 2018 was also the largest class of new women elected to the House since 1992, with 35 Democrats and one Republican. But 2020 also saw 28 new women elected to Congress, and some were Republicans who defeated Democrats who’d won for the first time the last cycle.

    “We had a couple of very strong years in a row, one for Democrats and one for Republicans,” Walsh said of women in the House. She said that means that even if the 2018 House Democratic class gets smaller this year, ”I would not look at one election cycle and say the face of Congress is going back to old, white men.”

    Republicans, meanwhile, have 32 Hispanic nominees and 23 Black nominees running for the House this cycle — both party records. They say their chances of winning the chamber’s majority are built more on high inflation and crime rates rising in some places than Trump or last year’s insurrection.

    “We have a choice between commonsense and crazy,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. “And Americans will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot as a result.”

    The Democrats’ 2018 House class won’t dissolve completely. Some incumbents are seeking reelection in safely blue districts, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Lucy McBath of Georgia and Colin Allred of Texas, who was the class’ co-president.

    Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, the other co-president, beat fellow 2018 Democratic House class member Andy Levin when the two incumbents squared off in this year’s Democratic primary based on their state’s new map.

    One Democratic 2018 House class member ousted in 2020, former New York Rep. Max Rose, is now running to get back to Congress. Another member, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, has since become a Republican.

    Former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman was a Republican elected in 2018 but lost his 2020 GOP primary. Riggleman is now appearing in a TV ad praising Spanberger.

    “She’s trying to change Congress and make it work,” Riggleman says in the ad. “She puts country first.”

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  • Biden vows abortion legislation as top priority next year

    Biden vows abortion legislation as top priority next year

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden promised Tuesday that the first bill he sends to Capitol Hill next year will be one that writes abortion protections into law — if Democrats control enough seats in Congress to pass it — as he sought to energize his party’s voters just three weeks ahead of the November midterms.

    Twice over, Biden urged people to remember how they felt in late June when the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, fresh evidence of White House efforts to ensure the issue stays front of mind for Democratic voters this year.

    “I want to remind us all how we felt when 50 years of constitutional precedent was overturned,” Biden said in remarks at the Howard Theatre, “the anger, the worry, the disbelief.”

    He repeatedly lambasted Republicans nationwide who have pushed for restrictions on the procedure, often without exceptions, and told Democrats in attendance that “if you care about the right to choose, then you gotta vote.”

    As he has done all year, Biden emphasized that only Congress can fully restore abortion access to what it was before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe. But he also acknowledged “we’re short a handful of votes” now to reinstate abortion protections at the federal level, urging voters to send more Democrats to Congress.

    “If we do that, here’s the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade,” Biden said. “And when Congress passes it, I’ll sign it in January, 50 years after Roe was first decided the law of the land.”

    That’s a big if.

    For Biden to follow through on his pledge, Democrats would have to retain control of the House and pick up seats in the Senate — an unlikely scenario considering current political dynamics. Abortion rights have been a key motivating factor for Democrats this year, although the economy and inflation still rank as chief concern for most voters.

    Abolishing the filibuster — the legislative rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to advance in the Senate — amid opposition in their own ranks will also pose a significant challenge for Democrats.

    Long resistant to any revisions to Senate institutional rules, Biden said in the days after the June decision to overrule Roe that he would support eliminating the supermajority threshold for abortion bills, just as he did on voting rights legislation.

    But two moderate Democrats — Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz., and Joe Manchin, W.Va. — support keeping the filibuster. Sinema has said she wants to retain the filibuster precisely so any abortion restrictions backed by Republicans would face a much higher hurdle to pass in the Senate.

    Democratic Senate candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the party’s two best chances to flip seats currently held by Republicans — have both said they support eliminating the filibuster in order to pass abortion legislation. Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman has actively campaigned on being the 51st vote for priorities such as legalizing abortion, codifying same-sex marriage protections, and making it easier for workers to unionize — all measures that would otherwise be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate.

    Abortion — and proposals from some Republicans to impose nationwide restrictions on the procedure — have been a regular fixture of Biden’s political rhetoric this election cycle, as Democrats seek to energize voters in a difficult midterm season for the party in power in Washington.

    In fundraisers and in political speeches, Biden has vowed to reject any abortion restrictions that may come to his desk in a GOP-controlled Congress. Like he did on Tuesday, Biden has also urged voters to boost the Democratic ranks in the Senate so enough senators would not only support reinstating abortion nationwide, but would change Senate rules to do it.

    Opponents of abortion rights have also sought to capitalize on the issue, with Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, saying Tuesday that the stakes of next month’s midterm elections “could not be higher.”

    “Doubling down on an extreme agenda of abortion on demand until birth won’t stop Democrats from losing Congress, even with the abortion industry spending record sums to elect them,” Dannenfelser said. “Biden’s party is on the wrong side and stunningly out of touch.

    On Tuesday, Biden made a pointed appeal to young voters, who traditionally participate in lower rates than other age demographics in midterm elections. Though his remarks were primarily focused on abortion, Biden also mentioned his decisions to forgive billions of dollars in student loan debt and to issue pardons for marijuana possession — moves popular with younger voters.

    “What I am saying is, you represent the best of us. Your generation will not be ignored, will not be shunned and will not be silent,” Biden said, adding: “In 2020, you voted to deliver the change you wanted to see in the world. In 2022, you need to exercise your power to vote again for the future of our nation and the future of your generation.”

    Court decisions and state legislation have shifted — and sometimes, re-shifted — the status of abortion laws across the country. Currently, bans are in place at all states of pregnancy in 12 states. In another, Wisconsin, clinics have stopped providing abortions though there’s dispute over whether a ban is in effect. In Georgia, abortion is banned at the detection of cardiac activity — generally around six weeks and before women often know they’re pregnant.

    Meanwhile, codifying Roe remains a broadly popular position. In a July AP-NORC poll, 60% of U.S. adults said they believe Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

    Even with the economy dominating so much of the midterm discourse, abortion has been a touchstone in high-profile contests from Ohio to Arizona, especially as Democrats try to trap Republicans between their most ardent anti-abortion base voters who want absolute or near-total bans and a majority of U.S. adults that wants at least some legal access to elective abortions.

    For instance, in Georgia, Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker went so far in his only debate against Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, as to deny his previous support for a national abortion ban with no exceptions. Despite Walker’s previous statements captured on video, he insisted Warnock misrepresented his position. Walker said in the debate that he backs a Georgia statute outlawing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy – an effective ban for some women because it’s so early they don’t yet know they’re pregnant. The law includes exceptions for later abortions in cases of rape, incest and involving health risks to a woman.

    Warnock, meanwhile, avoided direct questions about whether he’d support any abortion limits, instead turning the question to Walker’s position.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, N.J., and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

    ___

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

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  • Police: Campaign signs found booby-trapped with razor blades

    Police: Campaign signs found booby-trapped with razor blades

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    NEWTOWN, Pa. — Political signs in southeastern Pennsylvania have been found booby-trapped with razor blades, which resulted in sliced fingers for one resident, police said.

    Upper Makefield Township police said Sunday that a campaign sign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro was placed without permission on someone’s property, and while trying to remove it the resident found that razor blades had been “placed around the perimeter of the sign.”

    “Obviously, this was designed to inflict punishment on anyone who attempted to remove the sign,” police said in a social media post.

    Police said they inspected all campaign signs and found razor blades placed around the perimeter of signs for two other Democratic candidates, John Fetterman and Ashley Ehasz. Fetterman is running for U.S. Senate and Ehasz for U.S. House.

    Police said their investigation continues and warned residents to exercise caution in removing signs placed on their property without permission, and to call them if “any implements” have been installed on the signs.

    “Over the past election cycles, we have dealt with theft of signs, vandalism of signs, neighbor disputes, etc., but this is the first time we have dealt with this situation,” police in the Bucks County community said, calling it “totally unacceptable and a disgusting act.”

    “No matter your political affiliation, no matter your candidate preference, resorting to this type of depravity is unacceptable and criminal. We can do better and must,” police said.

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  • CBS News poll shows GOP on track to regain House majority

    CBS News poll shows GOP on track to regain House majority

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    CBS News poll shows GOP on track to regain House majority – CBS News


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    A new CBS News Battleground Tracker poll shows Fepublicans in the lead in the race to control the House of Representatives. CBS News executive director of elections and surveys Anthony Salvanto joins “Red and Blue” to discuss the latest on the midterms.

    Be the first to know

    Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.


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  • Swedish Parliament elects conservative prime minister

    Swedish Parliament elects conservative prime minister

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    STOCKHOLM — The Swedish parliament on Monday elected Ulf Kristersson — the conservative Moderate Party leader — as prime minister at the head of a minority coalition that is being supported by a once-radical far-right party.

    Kristersson, 59, was elected by a vote of 176 to 173 and will present his government on Tuesday. His three-party coalition does not have a majority, but in Sweden, prime ministers can govern as long as there is no parliamentary majority against them.

    After a month of talks with the anti-immigration populist Sweden Democrats, Kristersson presented an agreement that gave them an unprecedented position of influence in Swedish politics. They took over 20% of the vote at the Sept. 11 election.

    Kristersson’s center-right coalition government is made up of his party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, but he has said it will remain in “close collaboration” with the Sweden Democrats. He depends on the support of the Sweden Democrats to secure a majority in Parliament, enabling them to influence government policy from the sidelines.

    The Sweden Democrats were founded in the 1980s by far-right extremists. They toned down their rhetoric and expelled openly racist members under Jimmie Akesson, who took over the party in 2005.

    Akesson, who doesn’t consider his party far-right, said he would have preferred Cabinet seats for the Sweden Democrats, but he supported the deal that would give his party influence over government policy, including on immigration and criminal justice.

    Since the election, the populist party has landed the chairmanships of four parliamentary committees, giving it the ability to wield more influence in mainstream Swedish politics.

    Kristersson will be replacing Magdalena Andersson, who heads Sweden’s largest party, the Social Democrats, which now are in opposition. He backs Sweden’s historic bid to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

    “It feels great, I am grateful,” Kristersson told a press conference. “ I am happy about the trust that I have received from the Riksdag. I am also humbled by the tasks that lie ahead of us.”

    The center-left opposition heavily criticized the new governing coalition, with Lena Hallgren of the Social Democrats, calling it “a strange construction.”

    Many said it represented a paradigm shift in Sweden and would damage its image in the world as an egalitarian and tolerant nation. Nooshi Dadgostar, the leader of the former communist Left Party, said her parents who fled from Iran could never have imagined that Sweden would embark on an authoritarian path.

    “What is happening now in Sweden is frightening,” she told Parliament.

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  • Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Lula face off in first debate of run-off

    Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Lula face off in first debate of run-off

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    The free-wheeling debate rules allowed the candidates to roam the stage as they traded jabs and personal insults.

    Far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and left-wing rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traded jabs and insults as they squared off in their first head-to-head debate in the second and final round of Brazil’s presidential election.

    Lula attacked Bolsonaro as a “little dictator” and the “king of fake news,” while Bolsonaro accused Lula of lying, corruption and a “disgraceful” record in a two-hour televised debate on Sunday night.

    Voters go to the polls on October 30 to choose the man who will become Brazil’s next president with 76-year-old Lula, the charismatic but tarnished former president, holding the lead over Bolsonaro.

    Lula criticised Bolsonaro over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, attacking his resistance to vaccines and embrace of unproven medications such as hydroxychloroquine.

    “Your negligence led to 680,000 people dying, when more than half could have been saved,” the ex-metalworker told the president.

    Bolsonaro later took the offensive and targeted Lula for corruption scandals during the 14 years that his Workers Party governed Brazil. Dozens of business leaders and politicians, including Lula, were arrested in a sweeping crackdown on corruption, and Lula spent time in jail on a bribery conviction that was later overturned by Brazil’s Supreme Court.

    “Your past is disgraceful … You did nothing for Brazil but stuff public money in your pockets and those of your friends,” the 67-year-old former army captain told Lula.

    Customers at a Brasilia bar watch the debate on a big screen. Lula is ahead in the hard-fought race [Adriano Machado/Reuters]

    ‘Nail-biting’

    Lula won 48 percent of the votes in the first round of the election, with Bolsonaro securing 43 percent, far more than opinion polls had suggested.

    His unexpectedly strong performance set the stage for a hard-fought run-off with both candidates ramping up their rhetoric and unleashing bruising personal attacks in TV commercials.

    “This is a nail-biting election,” said Al Jazeera’s Brazil correspondent Monica Yanakiew. “Both candidates are fighting for every single vote although Lula is still the favourite.”

    The free-wheeling debate rules allowed the candidates to roam the stage and approach the cameras, which both did frequently although they rarely looked at each other, with the notable exception of one tense silence that Bolsonaro finally interrupted by putting his hand on Lula’s shoulder with a smile.

    As has been the case for much of the campaign, far more time was spent on personal attacks than substantive discussion.

    “Policy proposals have lost their central role, and accusations have taken their place,” political scientist Christopher Mendonca told the AFP news agency.

    Bolsonaro’s campaign was counting on Sunday’s debate to help close the gap with Lula, who still has a lead of roughly 5 percentage points, based on surveys by pollster Datafolha.

    Neither candidate detailed in the debate how they would raise the money to extend a more generous welfare programme, which both have promised to do without breaking federal budget rules.

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  • Brazil’s da Silva, Bolsonaro clash in 1st one-on-one debate

    Brazil’s da Silva, Bolsonaro clash in 1st one-on-one debate

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    SAO PAULO — Brazil’s former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro clashed in their first one-on-one debate Sunday, two weeks before the presidential election’s runoff.

    Debates in the election’s first round featured several other candidates, none of whom garnered more than 5% of the Oct. 2 vote. During the debates, they were largely distractions from the two obvious frontrunners.

    On Sunday, the two repeatedly called each other liars during an encounter lasting about 1 ½ hours. The term was used more than a dozen times by each of the candidates in the TV Band debate that, otherwise, was less aggressive than many analysts had expected.

    “You are a liar. You lie every day,” da Silva said during one exchange. Bolsonaro frequently said: “You can’t come here to tell people these lies.”

    Earlier this month, da Silva, who is universally known as Lula, won the election’s first round with 48% of the vote compared to Bolsonaro’s 43%. Polls indicate the leftist former president, who governed between 2003-2010, remains the frontrunner, though his lead has shrunk considerably.

    Each candidate focused on the issues that, according to polls, represent their adversary’s weak points: for Bolsonaro, the COVID-19 pandemic that killed 680,000 Brazilians, and for da Silva, corruption scandals involving his Workers’ Party.

    Da Silva and Bolsonaro are expected to take part in one more debate, days before the vote, on TV Globo, Brazil’s most popular network.

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  • Kari Lake Refuses To Say If She Would Accept Election Loss

    Kari Lake Refuses To Say If She Would Accept Election Loss

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    Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for Arizona governor, refused to say whether she would accept an election loss against Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs in this year’s midterm election on Nov. 8.

    In an interview with host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State Of The Union” on Sunday, Lake repeatedly asserted that she was going to win the election after Bash asked her multiple times if she would accept the election results.

    “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” Lake said, while also claiming that Hobbs was racist.

    During the exchange, Bash asked Lake, “If you lose, will you accept that?”

    To which Lake replied again: “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that results.”

    Both Lake and Hobbs were scheduled to participate in a televised debate on Arizona PBS on Oct. 12, but Hobbs refused to participate because she believed Lake was “only interested in creating a spectacle” and called Lake a “conspiracy theorist.”

    “Kari Lake has made it clear time and time again that she’s not interested in having substantive, in depth conversations about the issues that matter to Arizonians,” Hobbs told Bash on Sunday’s CNN broadcast. “She only wants a scenario where she can control the dialogue, and she’s refused to sit down in a one-on-one lengthy conversation to really clarify with Arizonians where she is on the issues.”

    Lake was initially scheduled to appear in an interview with Arizona PBS this Wednesday in lieu of the debate, though that appearance was later canceled after Arizona Citizens Clean Election Commission, which partnered with PBS to organize the debate, backed out.

    Lake is a former Fox News reporter. Hobbs currently serves as Arizona’s Secretary of State. According to a Fox 10 Phoenix/InsiderAdvantage poll, Lake currently leads the governor’s race by four points, polling at 49.3% to Hobbs’ 45.6% as of Thursday.

    Lake is a staunch Trump supporter who’s been endorsed by the former president and has received major backing from controversial Republican figures including Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and MyPillow CEO and conspiracist Mike Lindell.

    She’s also a peddler of election fraud claims pushed by Trump, who continues to claim that there was widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election despite the Justice Department finding no evidence of it.

    Lake recently made headlines when she said both Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump have “BDE,” commonly known as “big dick energy.”

    “I’ll tell you what he’s got ― I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but he’s got BDE,” she said, referring to DeSantis. “Anybody know what that means? Ask your kids about it later.”

    “He’s got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has,” she continued. “And frankly, he has the same kind of BDE that we want all of our elected leaders to have.”

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  • Schumer says he and Pelosi were ‘resolute’ about calling in the military to stop ‘hooligans’ on Jan. 6

    Schumer says he and Pelosi were ‘resolute’ about calling in the military to stop ‘hooligans’ on Jan. 6

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    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attends a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., September 28, 2022. 

    Mary F. Calvert | Reuters

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke Sunday about his experience during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, stating that he, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “were resolute” about calling in the military and continuing the electoral vote count.

    “Speaker Pelosi and I were resolute that first the military should come in and remove people from the Capitol. The Capitol Police were overwhelmed,” Schumer said according to reports from NBC News. “And we called the Secretary of Defense. We call[ed] the governors of Virginia and Maryland who had national guard as well as the D.C. police and urge[d] them to send reinforcements to the Capitol to make sure that these hooligans were removed.” 

    Schumer’s account follows the Jan. 6 House select committee’s ninth public hearing Thursday afternoon, where members took a broad look at the findings from its investigation, interspersed with new clips and information.

    The hearing showed new clips of Pelosi and others calling multiple Trump administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, to urge them to take action to quell the riot as they hid from the mob that overran the Capitol.

    Some of the footage, captured by Pelosi’s daughter, showed Schumer and other members of Congress running to a secure location, according to NBC News.

    Schumer said that one good moment from the day came when Republicans and Democrats came together and decided to continue counting the electoral vote.

    “One good moment was when the four leaders, two Democrats and two Republicans got together at about five o’clock and said we are not going to let these hooligans stop the government process,” he said. “They would have succeeded. If we would have delayed counting the electoral vote, lord knows what would have happened.” 

    The House select committee unanimously voted Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump about his actions surrounding the insurrection in a move that has been under consideration for some time.

    The vote marks the boldest step yet for the bipartisan panel, which has so far issued more than 100 subpoenas and interviewed more than 1,000 people throughout its investigation.

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  • With far-right leaders, Italy remembers WWII roundup of Jews

    With far-right leaders, Italy remembers WWII roundup of Jews

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    ROME — Italy’s far-right political leadership marked the 79th anniversary of the World War II roundup of Rome’s Jews on Sunday with calls for such horror to never occur again, messages that took on greater significance following a national election won by a party with neo-fascist roots.

    Giorgia Meloni, who is expected to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the war’s end, phoned the leader of Rome’s Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, to commemorate the anniversary, according to a community spokesman.

    Meloni said in a statement that the anniversary serves as a “warning so that certain tragedies never happen again.” She said all Italians bear the memory “that serves to build antibodies against indifference and hatred, to continue to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.”

    On the morning of Oct. 16, 1943 during the German occupation of Italy, 1,259 people were arrested from Rome’s Ghetto and surrounding neighborhoods and brought to a military barracks near the Vatican, bound for deportation to Auschwitz. Only 16 survived.

    Meloni called it a “tragic, dark and incurable day for Rome and Italy,” that ended with the “vile and inhuman deportation of Roman Jews at the hands of the Nazi-Fascist fury: women, men and children were snatched from life, house by house.”

    Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in Sept. 25 national election — about 26% — and is expected to head a government along with the right-wing League and center-right Forza Italia. Her party traces its roots to the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by the remnants of Benito Mussolini’s final government in the Nazi puppet state in Salo, northern Italy. It remained a small right-wing party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance, which sought to distance itself from its neo-fascist origins.

    Meloni, who joined the MSI as a teenager and headed the National Alliance youth branch, founded Brothers of Italy in 2012 along with another former MSI and National Alliance member, Ignazio La Russa, who was elected president of the Senate this week. La Russa has proudly shown off his Mussolini memorabilia collection and, early on in the pandemic, suggested Italians use the fascist salute rather than shake hands in a tweet that he blamed on an underling that was quickly removed.

    On Sunday, La Russa also commemorated the anniversary of the roundup, saying it was “one of the darkest days of our history.”

    “It is the duty of everyone, starting with the highest institutions, to pass on the memory so that similar tragedies will never happen again in the future. To the Jewish community, today as always, my sincere closeness,” he said in a Facebook post.

    Italy’s other political leaders also commemorated the anniversary with tweets, messages and statements. Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, attended a commemoration in the Ghetto itself alongside Dureghello and other members of the Jewish community. They paused for a moment in front of a wreath outside Rome’s main synagogue alongside Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni.

    The community launched a social media campaign #16ottobre43 with a video scrolling the names of the people killed “whose only ‘guilt’ was that of being Jewish.”

    Dureghello recalled that the anniversary marked “the date in which we remember the first Nazi-Fascist deportation of the Roman Jews. Men, women and children torn from their homes and sent to die. Keeping the memory alive is a moral imperative that serves to extinguish the sirens of hatred and fanaticism.”

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  • Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly outraises GOP opponent Blake Masters going into final weeks of midterm campaign

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly outraises GOP opponent Blake Masters going into final weeks of midterm campaign

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    Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, appears in an undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on October 5, 2022.

    Handout | Via Reuters

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly outraised his opponent, Republican Blake Masters, in the third quarter, according to Federal Election Commission Records.

    Kelly’s campaign went into October, weeks before the midterm elections, with almost six times the amount of cash on hand.

    Kelly’s campaign raised just over $21 million from July 14 until Sept. 30. Masters, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, brought in over $4.7 million over that same time period.

    Kelly’s campaign went into October with over $13 million on hand while Masters had just above $2.8 million in his war chest. One of Masters’ top individual donations was a $4,950 contribution from the National Rifle Association. Masters, a wealthy businessman, contributed over $570,000 last quarter to his own campaign.

    Election Day is Nov. 8.

    The race was once seen as a strong pickup opportunity for Republicans in the battle for control of the Senate, but Kelly has been ahead in many of the most recent polls. A RealClearPolitics polling average has Kelly ahead by 4.5 points. The Cook Political Report marks the race as “lean Democrat.”

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters (R-AZ) on stage during a rally ahead of the midterm elections, in Mesa, Arizona, October 9, 2022.

    Brian Snyder | Reuters

    The Senate is split 50-50, with Democrats having to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris for tie-breaking votes.

    A spokesperson for Kelly’s team pointed CNBC to a recent statement by campaign manger Emma Brown touting the senator’s fundraising haul. A spokeswoman for the Masters campaign did not return a request for comment.

    The lag in Masters’ fundraising versus Kelly has been a theme throughout the campaign. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows that going into the third quarter, Kelly had raised over $52 million while Masters had brought in just under $5 million.

    The fundraising in the most recent quarter by both campaigns doesn’t include the amount raised by outside groups supporting each candidate. Saving Arizona, a pro-Masters super PAC that once saw $15 million from Masters’ ally and former boss, billionaire Peter Thiel, raised over $4 million from mid-July through the end of September. The super PAC, which can raise and spend an unlimited amount of money, has over $1.9 million on hand.

    Although Thiel did not contribute to the super PAC last quarter, some of the more recent top donations include a $3 million contribution from shipping supply magnate Richard Uihlein and $1 million from cryptocurrency executives Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

    Thiel has signaled that, with Masters behind Kelly in both fundraising and the polls, he’ll continue to fundraise for his former employee. Masters was until earlier this year the chief operating officer at Thiel Capital.

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  • Biden makes late push across West aiming to deliver votes for Democrats

    Biden makes late push across West aiming to deliver votes for Democrats

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    President Joe Biden strode into the telephone bank at a crowded union hall and eagerly began making calls and eating doughnuts — one frosted, one glazed — to try and deliver votes for Democrats.

    “What a governor does matters,” the president said, giving a pep talk to volunteers who were making Friday night calls for gubernatorial hopeful Tina Kotek and other candidates. “It matters! It matters, it matters, it matters!”

    Before he left Portland on Saturday, the president planned to attend a reception for Kotek and speak about his administration’s efforts to bring down costs for Americans.

    It was the final stop on a four-day swing through Oregon, California and Colorado that has encapsulated Biden’s strategy for turning out voters on Election Day, Nov. 8: flex the levers of government to help boost candidates, promote an agenda aimed at strengthening an uncertain economy and haul in campaign cash.

    And this: show up for candidates when Mr. Biden can be helpful, but steer clear of places where a visit from a president with approval ratings under 50% may not be as welcome.

    Throughout the trip, Mr. Biden had to compete for the spotlight and contend with a troubling new inflation report and rising gas prices.

    In Oregon, Democratic officials hope that the president can help consolidate the party’s support behind Kotek. The party is in danger of losing the governor’s race in the traditional Democratic stronghold as Betsy Johnson — who has quit both the Democratic and Republican parties — has run a well-financed race against Kotek and the GOP nominee Christine Drazan.

    The settings throughout the president’s trip were tailor-made for him.

    In Los Angeles on Thursday, at a construction site for an extension on the city’s subway line, he spoke about his massive infrastructure law. Giant cranes rose up behind him as he stood before bulldozers and excavators. Many on hand were hard-hat workers in construction orange.

    The stop neatly combined many of the president’s agenda’s successes: investments in infrastructure, job creation, fighting climate change by promoting mass transit.

    “When you see these projects in your neighborhood — cranes going up, shovels in the ground, lives being changed — I want you to feel the way I do: pride,” Mr. Biden said. “Pride in what we can do when we do it together. This is what I mean when I say we’re building a better America.”

    But his remarks came as the government reported that consumer prices, excluding volatile food and energy costs, jumped 6.6% in September from a year ago — the fastest such pace in four decades. Mr. Biden acknowledged that people were being “squeezed by the cost of living. It’s been true for years, and folks don’t need a report to tell them they’re being squeezed.”

    President Biden Delivers Remarks In Southern California On Lowering Costs For American Families
    IRVINE, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 14: U.S. President Joe Biden (L) poses for photos after he delivered remarks on lowering costs for American families at Irvine Valley College in Orange County on October 14, 2022 in Irvine, California.

    Mario Tama / Getty Images


    Democratic candidates have been far more likely to appear with the president at official White House events underscoring their achievements than at overt campaign events. In California, Mr. Biden was joined by state lawmakers and the city’s mayor, and he called them out individually. Rep. Karen Bass, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, made a takeout run with Mr. Biden to a taco shop.

    The president raised $5 million at a fundraiser in the Brentwood backyard of TV producer Marcy Carsey. Guests included fashion designer Tom Ford and actor-filmmaker Rob Reiner.

    In Colorado, the president designated the first national monument of his administration at Camp Hale, a World War II-era training site, with a group of Democrats by his side. His audience in a canyon of stunning views, tall pines and bright yellow aspens included Sen. Michael Bennet, who is facing a tough reelection campaign and had worked for the new monument. Democrats hope the designation, popular in the state, will boost Bennet’s numbers.

    Early voting is underway in California and begins next week in Oregon and Colorado. The president notably stayed away from states where his presence could hurt Democrats, so far skipping Nevada and Arizona, where Democratic senators are tough races.

    Democrats are trying to retain power in the face of widespread economic uncertainty and the traditional midterm headwinds against the party in power. Republicans, aiming to regain the House and Senate, think they can capitalize on gas prices, inflation and the economy.

    During his taco stop, Mr. Biden’s chicken quesadilla order ran to $16.45, but he handed the clerk $60 and asked him to use the change to pay the next patron’s bill.

    It was the kind of personal connection the president loves. But while the moment was unfolding, the headlines in Los Angeles focused on a bitter City Council clash over racist remarks, while in Washington, it was all about how the House voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump on his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

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  • Why Meloni’s win in Italy not sitting well with Berlusconi

    Why Meloni’s win in Italy not sitting well with Berlusconi

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    ROME — The honeymoon is finished even before any marriage of political convenience in Italy could be formalized.

    The resounding victory by far-right leader Giorgia Meloni in the Sept. 25 general election isn’t sitting well with 86-year-old Silvio Berlusconi, the former three-time conservative premier who, four decades her senior, fancies himself the elder statesman of Italy’s political right.

    Meloni is expected to be asked next week by Italy’s president to try to create a governing coalition with campaign allies Berlusconi and right-wing leader Matteo Salvini and become premier. Behind-the-scenes divvying up of ministries in what would be Italy’s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II started after her Brothers of Italy party took 26% of the ballots cast, more than those won by the forces of Salvini and Berlusconi combined.

    The knives carving out those Cabinet posts are proving particularly sharp.

    Salvini on Saturday issued a sort of call for a truce between Meloni and Berlusconi so that three allies’ bid to rule Italy isn’t derailed.

    “I am sure that even between Giorgia and Silvio that harmony, which will be fundamental to government, well and together, for the next five years, will return,” Salvini said in a statement released by his anti-migrant League party about the escalating post-election tensions.

    A spat between Berlusconi and Meloni turned ugly when the former premier and a media mogul scrawled a list of derogatory adjectives about her on stationery emblazoned with the name of his villa near Milan. He positioned it in the Senate in plain view for photographers covering the election on Thursday of the upper parliamentary chamber’s president.

    “Giorgia Meloni,” wrote Berlusconi, jotting down that her ways are “presumptuous, bossy, arrogant, offensive.” A fifth adjective, “ridiculous,” appeared to have been scribbled over, said Italian media, who magnified the image.

    As much as political differences — Berlusconi bills himself a staunch champion of the European Union, while Meloni has said national interests should prevail over any conflicting EU priorities — their spat seemed patriarchal.

    “In Berlusconi’s etiquette, the woman is courted and maybe even venerated, but a true male cannot take orders from her, let alone accept that she says ‘no,’” wrote Massimo Gramellini in the daily Corriere della Serra, in his front-page fixture that takes aim at political foibles.

    By all accounts, Meloni had vetoed a ministry for a close political aide of Berlusconi who is one of his several female political proteges.

    With his self-described weakness for young women, Berlusconi has launched the political careers of female lawmakers from Forza Italia, the center-right party he created three decades ago.

    Reflecting Berlusconi’s pique, nearly all of his senators refused to vote for Meloni’s pick for Senate president, Ignazio La Russa, a long-time fascist nostalgist who helped Meloni, now 45, establish Brothers of Italy in 2012 as she forged her far-right political ascent.

    The Forza Italia boycott delivered a stiff rebuke to her. Meloni, known for her spunk and sharp tongue, wasn’t blinking.

    “It seems like a point was missing among those listed by Berlusconi — that I can’t be blackmailed,” Meloni told private Italian TV La7.

    Meloni already stood her ground during the election campaign. When opinion surveys indicated that she was by far the front-runner over Berlusconi and Salvini, those two unsuccessfully tried to wiggle out of long-standing pact that the top-getter in campaign coalitions would become premier should their forces prove victorious.

    Together, the leaders’ three parties command a comfortable majority in the newly seated Parliament.

    Still, Meloni needs the forces of Berlusconi and Salvini for any viable coalition.

    Salvini chafed for days when it appeared Meloni wouldn’t let him become interior minister, a post he held in 2018-2019 and used to crack down on migrants arriving by the tens of thousands on smugglers boats or rescue ships. On Friday, Meloni’s forces backed the election to the presidency of the lower Chamber of Deputies of a League lawmaker, Lorenzo Fontana, an ultraconservative who, like Salvini, has openly admired Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Late Friday, the five-pointed star symbol of the Red Brigades, the extreme left group which terrorized Italy in the 1970s while extreme-right militants were also launching attacks, was scrawled along with La Russa’s name on a Brothers of Italy neighborhood office. It is the very office where Meloni cut her political teeth as a teenager in the youth wing of a neo-fascist predecessor of her own party.

    Meloni on Saturday retweeted her party’s description of the vandalism as “clear reference to the dramatic years that we don’t want to live through again and vowed in a tweet to “unite the Nation, not divide it as someone is trying to do.”

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  • Trump won’t be the Republican nominee in 2024, ex-GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan predicts

    Trump won’t be the Republican nominee in 2024, ex-GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan predicts

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    House Speaks Paul Ryan greets US President Donald Trump as he arrives on stage to speak at the National Republican Congressional Committee March Dinner at the National Building Museum on March 20, 2018 in Washington, DC.

    Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

    Former President Donald Trump will not be the Republican Party’s White House nominee in the 2024 election, former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan predicted.

    “Trump’s unelectability will be palpable by then,” Ryan said in an interview with consulting firm Teneo that aired Thursday. Ryan is vice chairman of the firm.

    “We all know that he’s much more likely to lose the White House than anybody else running for president on our side of the aisle, so why would we want to go with that?” the former lawmaker from Wisconsin said.

    “Whether he runs or not, I don’t really know if it matters,” Ryan added. “He’s not going to be the nominee, I don’t think.”

    Ryan, who in 2012 was the presidential running mate of now-Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and succeeded John Boehner as House speaker in 2015, has worked in the private sector since leaving Congress in 2018.

    Ryan had a tumultuous relationship with Trump before and after his one term in the White House.

    As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump bombarded Ryan with insults, labeling him weak and disloyal. Ryan had refused to continue campaigning for Trump late in the election, following the release of an Access Hollywood recording from 2005 in which Trump is heard bragging about groping women.

    Since leaving elected office, Ryan has urged the GOP to ditch Trump, who remains the de facto leader of the party and the likeliest candidate to clinch the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

    Trump has openly floated the possibility of launching another White House bid, though he has yet to make an official announcement. Trump lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, but never conceded the race and continues to falsely claim the election was rigged against him.

    Trump’s conspiracy claims before and after that election spurred thousands of supporters to swarm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a joint session of Congress had convened to confirm Biden’s victory. Ryan said he “found himself sobbing” as he watched the Capitol riot unfold, according to a recent book.

    In his interview with Teneo, Ryan said the only reason Trump is still in power is because “everybody’s afraid of him.”

    “He’s going to try to intimidate people out of the race as long as he can,” Ryan said.

    That fear of Trump will cause other GOP presidential contenders to delay their decisions to run, waiting for “somebody else to take the first plunge,” Ryan predicted. After Trump attacks that first person, “they can follow in behind,” Ryan said, likening the situation to a “prisoner’s dilemma.”

    But that ultimately won’t stop would-be candidates from throwing their hats in the ring, he said.

    “The one inexhaustible power in politics is ambition, you can count on that. There’s a handful of people who are going to run because it’s really the only cycle they can run, and they can’t wait until 2028,” Ryan said.

    “They’ve got to go now if they’re ever going to go, and they don’t want to die not ever trying,” he added.

    “As soon as you get sort of the herd mentality going, it’s unstoppable. So I think the fact that he pulls so much poorer than anybody else running for president as a Republican against a Democrat is enough right there,” Ryan said. “He’s gonna know this, and so whether he runs or not, I don’t really know if it matters, he’s not going to be the nominee, I don’t think.”

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  • Saudis say US sought 1 month delay of OPEC+ production cuts

    Saudis say US sought 1 month delay of OPEC+ production cuts

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia said Thursday that the U.S. had urged it to postpone a decision by OPEC and its allies — including Russia — to cut oil production by a month. Such a delay could have helped reduce the risk of a spike in gas prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections next month.

    A statement issued by the Saudi Foreign Ministry didn’t specifically mention the Nov. 8 elections in which U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to maintain his narrow Democratic majority in Congress. However, it stated that the U.S. “suggested” the cuts be delayed by a month. In the end, OPEC announced the cuts at its Oct. 5 meeting in Vienna.

    Holding off on the cuts would have likely delayed any rise in gas prices until after the elections.

    Rising oil prices — and by extension higher gasoline prices — have been a key driver of inflation in the U.S. and around the world, worsening global economic woes as Russia’s months-long war on Ukraine also has disrupted global food supplies. For Biden, gasoline prices creeping up could affect voters. He and many lawmakers have warned that America’s longtime security-based relationship with the kingdom could be reconsidered.

    The decision by the Saudi Foreign Ministry to release a rare, lengthy statement showed how tense relations between the two countries have become.

    The White House pushed back on Thursday, rejecting the idea that the requested delay was related to the U.S. elections and instead linking it to economic considerations and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    “We presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets, and that they could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting to see how things developed,” said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council.

    “Other OPEC nations communicated to us privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision, but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction,” he added.

    U.S.-Saudi ties have been fraught since the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which Washington believes came on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Meanwhile, higher energy prices provide a weapon Russia can use against the West, which has been arming and supporting Ukraine.

    The statement by the Saudi Foreign Ministry acknowledged that the kingdom had been talking to the U.S. about postponing OPEC+’s 2 million barrel cut announced last week.

    “The government of the kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the U.S. administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences,” the ministry said in its statement.

    The ministry’s statement confirmed details from a Wall Street Journal article this week that quoted unnamed Saudi officials saying the U.S. sought to delay the OPEC+ production cut until just before the midterm elections. The Journal quoted Saudi officials as describing the move as a political gambit by Biden ahead of the vote.

    The kingdom also criticized attempts to link its decision to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    “The kingdom stresses that while it strives to preserve the strength of its relations with all friendly countries, it affirms its rejection of any dictates, actions, or efforts to distort its noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility,” it said. “Resolving economic challenges requires the establishment of a non-politicized constructive dialogue, and to wisely and rationally consider what serves the interests of all countries.”

    Both Saudi Arabia and the neighboring United Arab Emirates, key producers in OPEC, voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution Wednesday to condemn Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of four Ukrainian regions and demand its immediate reversal.

    Once muscular enough to grind the U.S. to a halt with its 1970s oil embargo, OPEC needed non-members like Russia to push through a production cut in 2016 after prices crashed below $30 a barrel amid rising American production. The 2016 agreement gave birth to the so-called OPEC+, which joined the cartel in cutting production to help stimulate prices.

    The coronavirus pandemic briefly saw oil prices go into negative territory before air travel and economic activity rebounded following lockdowns around the world. Benchmark Brent crude sat over $92 a barrel early Wednesday, but oil-producing nations are worried prices could sharply fall amid efforts to combat inflation.

    Biden, who famously called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” during his 2020 election campaign, traveled to the kingdom in July and fist-bumped Prince Mohammed before a meeting. Despite the outreach, the kingdom has been supportive of keeping oil prices high in order to fund Prince Mohammed’s aspirations, including his planned $500 billion futuristic desert city project called Neom.

    On Tuesday, Biden warned of repercussions for Saudi Arabia over the OPEC+ decision.

    “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done, with Russia,” Biden said. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be — there will be consequences.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

    Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump, demanding his personal testimony as it unveiled startling new video and described his multi-part plan to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to his supporters’ fierce assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    With alarming messages from the U.S. Secret Service warning of violence and vivid new video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders pleading for help, the panel showed the raw desperation at the Capitol. Using language frequently seen in criminal indictments, the panel said Trump had acted in a “premeditated” way ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, despite countless aides and officials telling him he had lost.

    Trump is almost certain to fight the subpoena and decline to testify. On his social media outlet he blasted members for not asking him earlier — though he didn’t say he would have complied — and called the panel “a total BUST.”

    “We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6′s central player,” said Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s vice chair, ahead of the vote.

    In the committee’s 10th public session, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, the panel summed up Trump’s “staggering betrayal” of his oath of office, as Chairman Bennie Thompson put it, describing the then-president’s unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

    While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish, more a nod to history than an effective summons, the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

    In one of its most riveting exhibits, the panel showed previously unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning for help during the assault as Trump refused to call off the mob.

    Pelosi can be seen on a call with the governor of neighboring Virginia, explaining as she shelters with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others that the governor of Maryland has also been contacted. Later, the video shows Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders as the group asks the Defense Department for help.

    “They’re breaking the law in many different ways,” Pelosi says at one point. “And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”

    The footage also portrays Vice President Mike Pence — not Trump — stepping in to help calm the violence, telling Pelosi and the others he has spoken with Capitol Police, as Congress plans to resume its session that night to certify Biden’s election.

    The video was from Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker.

    In never-before-seen Secret Service messages, the panel produced evidence that extremist groups provided the muscle in the fight for Trump’s presidency, planning weeks before the attack to send a violent force to Washington.

    The Secret Service warned in a Dec. 26, 2020, email of a tip that members of the right-wing Proud Boys planned to outnumber the police in a march in Washington on Jan. 6.

    “It felt like the calm before the storm,” one Secret Service agent wrote in a group chat.

    To describe the president’s mindset, the committee presented new and previously seen material, including interviews with Trump’s top aides and Cabinet officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia — in which some described the president acknowledging he had lost.

    Ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump once looked up at a television and said, “Can you believe I lost to this (expletive) guy?”

    Cabinet members also said in interviews shown at the hearing that they believed that once legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

    “In my view, that was the end of the matter,” Barr said of the Dec. 14 vote of the Electoral College.

    But rather than the end of Trump’s efforts, it was only the beginning — as the president summoned the crowd to Washington on Jan. 6.

    The panel showed clips of Trump at his rally near the White House that day saying the opposite of what he had been told. He then tells supporters he will march with them to the Capitol. That never happened.

    “There is no defense that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” said Cheney. “No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in our constitutional republic, period.”

    Thursday’s hearing opened at a mostly empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing. Police officers who fought the mob filled the hearing room’s front row.

    The House panel said the insurrection at the Capitol was not an isolated incident but a warning of the fragility of the nation’s democracy in the post-Trump era.

    “None of this is normal,” Cheney said.

    Along with interviews, the committee is drawing on the trove of 1.5 million pages of documents it received from the Secret Service, including an email from Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of the main lawsuits Trump’s team had brought against the election results.

    “Just fyi. POTUS is pissed,” the Secret Service message said.

    White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, recalled Trump being “fired up” about the court’s ruling.

    Trump told Meadows “something to the effect of: ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out,’” Hutchinson told the panel in a recorded interview.

    Thursday’s session served as a closing argument for the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress. Cheney lost her primary election, and Kinzinger decided not to run.

    The committee, having conducted more than 1,000 interviews and obtained countless documents, has produced a sweeping probe of Trump’s activities from his defeat in the November election to the Capitol attack.

    Under committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December. The committee will dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in January.

    At least five people died in the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol Police.

    More than 850 people have been charged by the Justice Department, some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles. Several leaders and associates of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with sedition.

    Trump faces various state and federal investigations over his actions in the election and its aftermath.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

    More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

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  • Holocaust survivor opens Senate as far-right to govern Italy

    Holocaust survivor opens Senate as far-right to govern Italy

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    ROME — Italy’s Fascist past and its future governed by a party with neo-fascist roots came to an emotional head Thursday when a Holocaust survivor presided over the first seating of Parliament since general elections last month.

    Liliana Segre, a 92-year-old senator-for-life, opened the session in the upper chamber, subbing in for a more senior life senator who couldn’t attend. Her speech formally launched the sequence of events that is expected to bring the Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Sept. 25 elections and has its origins in a neo-fascist movement, to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II.

    Speaking to the Senate, Segre marveled at the “symbolic value” of the coincidence of her role and the historic moment that Italy is witnessing. She noted that she was presiding over the Senate as Italy soon marks the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome, which brought Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to power, and as war rages once again in Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “Today, I am particularly moved by the role that fate holds for me,” Segre told the hushed chamber. “In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome that began the Fascist dictatorship, it falls to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy, which is the Senate of the Republic.”

    Segre was one of the few Italian children who survived deportation to a Nazi death camp, and she has spent recent decades telling Italian schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Her advocacy led President Sergio Mattarella to name her a senator-for-life in 2018 as Italy marked the anniversary of the introduction of fascist-era racial laws discriminating against Jews.

    In her speech, Segre choked up as she recalled that those laws forbade Jewish children like her from attending school.

    “It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo, remembering that that same little girl who on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by the racist laws to leave her elementary school bench empty. And that, by some strange fate, that same girl today finds herself on the most prestigious bench, in the Senate.”

    Her emotional remarks brought the 200 senators to their feet in applause, including the Brothers of Italy delegation headed by Ignazio La Russa. La Russa, who once proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia, was later elected Senate speaker.

    The Brothers of Italy, headed by Giorgia Meloni, has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials and drew fascist sympathizers into its ranks. It remained a small far-right party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance and worked to distance itself from its neo-fascist past.

    Meloni was a member of the youth branches of MSI and the National Alliance and founded Brothers of Italy in 2012, keeping the tricolor flame symbol of the MSI in her party logo.

    During the campaign, amid Democratic warnings that she represented a danger to democracy, Meloni insisted that the Italian right had “ handed fascism over to history for decades now, ” and had condemned racial laws and the suppression of democracy.

    Segre didn’t refer to the party by name in her speech, but she said Italian voters had expressed their will at the ballot box.

    “The people have decided. It is the essence of democracy,” Segre said. “The majority emerging from the ballot has the right to govern, and the minority has the similarly fundamental obligation to be in the opposition.”

    Looking ahead to the upcoming legislature, she called for a civilized debate that does not degenerate into hateful speech and respects the Italian Constitution.

    She cited in particular the Constitution’s Article 3, which states that all Italian citizens are equal under the law “without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion or personal or social condition.”

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  • NBC reporter’s comment about Fetterman draws criticism

    NBC reporter’s comment about Fetterman draws criticism

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    NEW YORK — An NBC News correspondent who interviewed Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman says an on-air remark she made about him having difficulty following part of their conversation should not be seen as a commentary on his fitness for office after he suffered a stroke.

    But reporter Dasha Burns’ comment that Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding small talk prior to their interview has attracted attention — and Republicans have retweeted it as they seek an advantage in the closely followed Senate race between Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz.

    Fetterman, a Democrat, suffered a stroke on May 13, and his health has emerged as a major issue in the campaign.

    Burns’ Friday interview with Fetterman, which aired Tuesday, was his first on-camera interview since his stroke. He used a closed-captioning device that printed text of Burns’ questions on a computer screen in front of him.

    Fetterman appeared to have little trouble answering the questions after he read them, although NBC showed him fumbling for the word “empathetic.” Burns said that when the captioning device was off, “it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation.”

    “This is just nonsense,” business reporter and podcaster Kara Swisher, who had a stroke herself in 2011, said on Twitter. “Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk.”

    Swisher recently conducted an interview with Fetterman for her podcast and said, “I was really quite impressed with how well he’s doing. Everyone can judge for themselves.” Swisher has called attacks on Fetterman because of his health “appalling.”

    A New York magazine reporter, Rebecca Traister, who interviewed the candidate for a cover story titled “The Vulnerability of John Fetterman,” tweeted that his “comprehension is not at all impaired. He understands everything. It’s just that he reads it and responds in real time … It’s a hearing/auditory challenge.”

    Burns said she understands that different reporters had different experiences with Fetterman.

    “Our reporting did not and should not comment on fitness for office,” Burns tweeted on Wednesday. “This is for voters to decide. What we push for as reporters is transparency. It’s our job.”

    Stories about the interview aired on “NBC Nightly News” and the “Today” show.

    Fetterman, 53, has been silent about releasing medical records or allowing reporters to question his doctors. He’s been receiving speech therapy and released a letter in June from his cardiologist, who said he will be fine and able to serve in the Senate if he eats healthy foods, takes prescribed medication and exercises.

    Problems with understanding and using language are common in recovering stroke victims, said Kevin Sheth, director of the Yale University Center for Brain and Mind Health. Some completely recover, some have continued impairments, he said.

    “There is an arc to the trajectory of recovery that varies from person to person,” Sheth said.

    But he cautioned that, without an examination, people should not make judgments about Fetterman’s condition based on his use of a language-assistance device.

    Burns’ statement about Fetterman has already been tweeted by political opponents, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee.

    The conservative website Townhall.com tweeted Burns’ quote, without making clear she had been referring to small talk and not the interview itself.

    Doug Andres, press secretary for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, tweeted that it was weird to see liberals attack a reporter for doing her job.

    “It’s almost like that whole thing about respecting and trusting the media is only true when it’s convenient for them,” he wrote.

    Swisher said in her podcast that her mother, a Pennsylvania resident, told her she didn’t think Fetterman should be in the U.S. Senate after suffering a stroke — even though her own daughter had recovered from one.

    Swisher said producers of the podcast refrained from cleaning up Fetterman’s interview — such as removing extraneous phrases like “um” or “you know” — so listeners could get an unvarnished view of how Fetterman responded to questions.

    In the podcast, Fetterman had little trouble with the word “empathy.”

    “Listen to the interview,” Swisher tweeted this week. “Even my rabidly GOP mother had to admit she was wrong.”

    ———

    Associated Press correspondent Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

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