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  • Election officials are fighting a tsunami of voting conspiracy theories

    Election officials are fighting a tsunami of voting conspiracy theories

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    ATLANTA (AP) — Voting machines reversing votes. More voters registered than people eligible. Large numbers of noncitizens voting.

    With less than two weeks before Election Day, a resurgence in conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumors and explaining how elections are run at the same time they’re overseeing early voting and preparing for Nov. 5.

    “Truth is boring, facts are boring, and outrage is really interesting,” says Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees elections in her state. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole with truth. But what we try to do is just get as much information out there as possible.”

    This year’s election is the first presidential contest since former President Donald Trump began spreading lies about widespread voter fraud costing him reelection in 2020. The false claims, which he continues to repeat, have undermined public confidence in elections and in the people who oversee them among a broad swath of Republican voters . Investigations have found no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines four years ago, and each of the battlegrounds states where Trump disputed his loss has affirmed Democrat J oe Biden’s win.

    In the past week, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed a voting machine had changed a voter’s ballot in her Georgia district during early voting, and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, has promoted various conspiracy theories about voting machines and voter fraud both online and at a rally for Trump in Pennsylvania.

    The floodgates are “very much” open, said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who now leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works with state and local election officials.

    “This is making election officials’ lives much more difficult,” he said.

    Eric Olsen, who oversees elections in Prince William County, Virginia, said combatting misinformation has become an important and challenging part of the job.

    “It’s really difficult from our position, a lot of times, because social media feels like a giant wave coming at you and we’re in a little canoe with a paddle,” he said. “But we have to do that work.”

    On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly attempted to sow doubt about the upcoming election – something he did ahead of his two previous bids for the White House. Even after he won in 2016, he claimed he had lost the popular vote because of a flood of illegal votes and he formed a presidential advisory commission to investigate. The commission disbanded without finding any widespread fraud.

    This year, Trump claims that Democrats will cheat again and uses “Too Big to Rig” as a rallying cry to encourage his supporters to vote. Election experts see it as laying the groundwork to again challenge the election should he lose.

    Spreading bogus accusations about elections has other consequences. It’s already led to a wave of harassment, threats and turnover of election workers as well as the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The conspiracy theories that have surfaced in recent weeks are not new. There have long been claims of “vote flipping,” with the most recent ones surfacing in Georgia and Tennessee.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    A claim in Georgia’s Whitfield County was highlighted by Greene on Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” show. Jones has a history of spreading falsehoods and was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax.

    County election officials issued a statement, noting the case involved one voter out of 6,000 ballots that had been cast since early voting began. The ballot was spoiled, and the voter cast a replacement that was counted. Officials said there was no problem with the voting machine.

    Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said every report they’ve seen so far of someone saying their printed ballot didn’t reflect their selections on the touchscreen voting machine has been a result of voter error.

    “There is zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” he said. “Are there elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it? That’s the main situation we have seen. There is literally zero — and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in this state — zero evidence of machines flipping votes. That claim was a lie in 2020 and it’s a lie now.”

    In Shelby County, Tennessee, county election officials said human error was to blame for reports of votes being changed. Voters had been using their fingers instead of a stylus to mark their selections on voting machines, officials said.

    In Washington state, Republican Jerrod Sessler, who is running for the state’s 4th Congressional District seat, shared a video on social media this week that claimed to show how easily fraudulent ballots can be created. But the video did not make clear that voter information on each ballot is checked against the state’s voter list.

    “A ballot returned using fake voter registration information would not be counted and is illegal in Washington state,” Charlie Boisner, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, said in an email.

    Musk recently invoked Dominion Voting Systems as part of his remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania, seeming to suggest its equipment was not trustworthy. Dominion has been at the center of conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election and settled its defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year for $787 million over false claims aired repeatedly on the network. The judge in the case said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations made by Trump allies on the network were true.

    In a statement, Dominion said it was “closely monitoring claims around the Nov. 2024 election” and was “fully prepared to defend our company & our customers against lies and those who spread them.”

    A request for comment from Musk was not immediately returned.

    Musk, who has endorsed Trump, has repeatedly pushed misinformation about voter fraud to his 200 million followers on the X platform, where false information spreads largely unchecked.

    He has often sparred online with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Recently, the two tangled over Musk’s claim that there were more registered voters in Michigan, a presidential battleground state, than people eligible to vote. Benson said Musk was including in his count inactive voters who are scheduled for removal. A federal judge on Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee claiming problems with the state’s voter list.

    During an interview last month, Benson said she was disheartened to see someone in Musk’s position repeating false information.

    “If he was sincerely committed, as he says he is, to ensuring people have access to information, then I would hope that he would amplify the truthful information — the factual, accurate information — about the security of our elections instead of just amplifying conspiracy theories and in a way that directs the ire of many of his followers onto us as individual election administrators,” Benson said. “It’s something that we didn’t have to deal with in 2020 that creates a new battlefront and challenge for us.”

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    Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

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    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Biggest source of new Floridians and Texans last year was other countries

    Biggest source of new Floridians and Texans last year was other countries

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    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The biggest source of new residents to Florida and Texas, the two U.S. states with the largest number of new residents last year, was other countries.

    A little over 45% of the almost 634,000 residents in Florida who said that they had lived in a different state or abroad the previous year came from a foreign country, according to migration data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    Florida, with 23 million residents, had more people who said they had lived in a different place the previous year than any other state, though Texas wasn’t far behind. Of the almost 612,000 Texas residents who had lived elsewhere in the previous year, 43% were from another country. Texas has 30.5 million residents.

    The migration figures don’t show from which countries the new residents arrived.

    Priscila Coronado moved last year to Miami from Guatemala, looking for a better future.

    “I am happy. My dream is to study, learn English and graduate with a nursing degree,” Coronado said. “There is no crime here, and that is an achievement.”

    Among U.S. states, New York was the top producer of new Floridians, and more recently minted Texans had lived in California the year before than any other state.

    But Florida and Texas didn’t just gain residents; some also moved out. Georgia gained the most former Floridians last year, and California had the most ex-Texans.

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    Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report. Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.

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  • Michelle Obama will headline an Atlanta rally aimed at boosting voter turnout

    Michelle Obama will headline an Atlanta rally aimed at boosting voter turnout

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Former first lady Michelle Obama will headline a rally in Atlanta a week before the Nov. 5 election alongside celebrities and civic leaders focusing on engaging younger and first-time voters, as well as voters of color.

    The Oct. 29 event will be hosted by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group that Obama founded in 2018 to “change the culture around voting” and reach out to people who are less likely to engage in politics and elections.

    The rally is likely to help the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in a closely contested state. Obama is one of the party’s best-known figures and gave a speech boosting Harris’ candidacy at the national convention in August.

    It is unclear which celebrities will attend the rally but organizers noted that the group’s co-chairs include professional basketball players Stephen Curry and Chris Paul; musical artists Becky G, H.E.R., Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez and Janelle Monáe; beauty influencer Bretman Rock; and actors Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kerry Washington.

    The group has hosted more than 500 “Party at the Polls” events across the country focused on increasing voter registration and turnout. The events have ranged from pop-up block parties in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Philadelphia to voter registration partnerships with professional sports leagues and music festivals over the past year.

    “The goal is to take the energy and momentum at the rally to the ballot box,” said Beth Lynk, executive director of When We All Vote. “We want to bring the culture, the energy and the momentum together in one big space.”

    Lynk said the group chose Atlanta because of the state’s diversity and the impact that only a handful of voters can make in Georgia. About one-third of Georgia’s electorate is Black alongside rapidly growing Asian American and Latino communities. When We All Vote is focused on engaging college students on campuses in the metropolitan Atlanta area, Lynk said.

    “Something that we have been hearing from young voters is that a lot of people don’t believe that their votes have power. But they do, plain and simple,” Lynk said. “We know that democracy has to work for all of us and that’s what we will be stressing at this rally.”

    The rally will take place just before early voting ends in Georgia on Nov. 1, less than a week before Election Day.

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  • Southwest plans to cut flights in Atlanta while adding them elsewhere. Its unions are unhappy

    Southwest plans to cut flights in Atlanta while adding them elsewhere. Its unions are unhappy

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    DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines plans to eliminate about one-third of its flights to Atlanta next year to save money as it comes under pressure from a hedge fund to increase profits and boost the airline’s stock price.

    The retreat in Atlanta, where Southwest is far smaller than Delta Air Lines, will eliminate more than 300 jobs for pilots and flight attendants, although they will have a chance to relocate, according to the company.

    A Southwest official said Wednesday the airline needs to cut unprofitable routes, and “demand for Atlanta doesn’t support our level of flying.”

    While the airline’s planners “try everything they can before making hard decisions like this one, we have to make this change to help drive us back to profitability,” the Atlanta-based official, Tiffany Laurent, said in a memo to employees.

    Shares of Dallas-based Southwest fell 4.6%.

    Southwest executives are expected to detail other changes that it plans to make when it holds an investor meeting Thursday. The session is in response to Elliott Investment Management’s campaign to shake up Southwest’s leadership and reverse a decline in profits over the past three years.

    Southwest will cut 58 flights per day and reduce its presence at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport from 18 to 11 gates, according to the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which says the news is painful for Atlanta-based employees.

    “It is simply amazing that the airline with the strongest network in the history of our industry is now retreating in a major market because this management group has failed to evolve and innovate,” the union said in a memo to pilots.

    Bill Bernal, president of the Transport Workers Union local representing Southwest flight attendants, said his union is outraged by the reduction of Atlanta jobs. He said Southwest assured the union that it would grow in Atlanta.

    “This is gaslighting at its finest,” Bernal said in a memo to union members. “Yet again, flight attendants are paying the price for poor management decisions.”

    A Southwest spokesperson responded, “Decisions like these are difficult for our company because of the effects on our people, but we have a history of more than 53 years of ensuring they are taken care of.”

    While retreating in Atlanta, Southwest published its schedule through next June on Wednesday, and it includes new routes between Nashville and six other cities along with five new red-eye flights from Hawaii to Las Vegas and Phoenix. Those additions start in April.

    Earlier this year, Southwest pulled out of four smaller markets and announced it would limit hiring in response to weakening financial results and delays in getting new planes from Boeing.

    More notably, CEO Robert Jordan said in July that Southwest will begin assigning passengers to seats and set aside nearly one-third of its seats for premium service with more legroom.

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  • In Missouri, Halloween night signs were required at the homes of sex offenders. Until now

    In Missouri, Halloween night signs were required at the homes of sex offenders. Until now

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    ST. LOUIS (AP) — Many states have laws designed to keep children away from convicted sexual offenders on Halloween night, such as curfews for those on offender registries and requirements to keep their porch lights off.

    But a Missouri law mandating a sign at the offender’s home was a step too far, a judge ruled.

    A 2008 law required registered offenders in Missouri to post signs on Oct. 31 that read “No candy or treats at this residence.” U.S. District Judge John Ross ruled this month that the provision violated the First Amendment by forcing “compelled speech,” depriving those on the registry “of their freedom to speak in their own words or to not speak at all.”

    The ruling lets stand other provisions of the Missouri law that require people on the registry on Halloween to remain inside their home from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. and to leave their outdoor lights off.

    The Missouri sign law is unique among states, but some cities and counties have tried similar laws that were either struck down in court or withdrawn as part of lawsuit settlements.

    Ross’ ruling on the Missouri sign law drew a mixed response. Some said extraordinary steps are necessary on a night when children flood the streets and often knock on the doors of strangers. Others said the sign law was unnecessarily cruel — and even counterproductive.

    “I feel like it’s a setback and another example of predators’ rights kind of trumping those of their victims,” said Tara Bishop, a 40-year-old mother of four from southwestern Missouri who operates a Facebook page called Child Predators Exposed with more than 10,000 followers.

    But an extensive examination of crime data published in 2009 in the Sexual Abuse journal found no increased risk of sexual abuse of children on Halloween. Experts say the vast majority of child sexual abuse crimes involve someone known by the victim or the child’s family, and not strangers.

    Janice Bellucci, the lawyer for the Missouri man who challenged the law, said that for those forced to place the sign, the damage is long-lasting.

    “It’s not just stigmatizing you that one day, it stigmatizes you for the rest of your life, as long as you live there,” said Bellucci, who is part of the California-based Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws.

    The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Thomas L. Sanderson of Hazelwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. He was convicted of second-degree sodomy in 2006 after a 16-year-old family friend accused him of sexually touching her. Sanderson, who has maintained his innocence, was sentenced to two years in prison and required to register as a sexual offender for 25 years.

    The Missouri Halloween law was adopted two years later. It is unclear how many of the state’s approximately 26,000 convicted sexual offenders have been charged for violating the statute, or how stringent enforcement has been. The law doesn’t say where the sign must be placed. People on the registry are responsible for making their own signs.

    The lawsuit said Sanderson asked police if he was subject to the law because his conviction happened before its passage. He said he was told he was not, so he continued to host Halloween parties complete with animatronic figures, lights, a bonfire, music and candy, the lawsuit said.

    But the lawsuit said that on Halloween night 2022, police arrived at Sanderson’s home. No sign was posted, and he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for violating the Halloween statute and received probation. He sued last year.

    Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, in court filings, wrote that the state is duty-bound to protect children who can’t make adequate decisions on their own. Bailey’s office said an appeal is planned.

    “I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children. That includes on Halloween,” Bailey, a Republican, said in a statement.

    Alison Feigh, director of Jacob Wetterling Resource Center at Zero Abuse Project, which focuses on helping institutions prevent, recognize and respond to child sexual abuse, said most assaults happen after offenders build relationships with victims and their families. Tactics like signs are not helpful in keeping children safe, she said in an email.

    “These public signs may give a false sense of security to families while not actually preventing child abuse,” Feigh said.

    Other Halloween sign laws also have faced setbacks.

    In Georgia, the Butts County Sheriff’s Office was sued in 2019, with people on registries alleging that authorities trespassed onto their properties to post signs that caused humiliation and anxiety. The signs read: “WARNING! NO TRICK-OR-TREATING AT THIS ADDRESS!! A COMMUNITY SAFETY MESSAGE FROM BUTTS COUNTY SHERIFF GARY LONG.”

    A federal appeals court panel in 2022 said the signage violated the First Amendment.

    In California, Simi Valley required Halloween signs in the yards of registered sexual offenders until reaching a 2013 settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws on behalf of five offenders.

    In January, the alliance filed suit after the sheriff’s office in Marion County, Arkansas, created and posted signs and placed them in the yards of those on the registry. The signs read: “Sorry! No Trick or Treat.” The sheriff’s office later agreed to stop posting or requiring the signs.

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  • Georgia judge blocks ballot counting rule and says county officials must certify election results

    Georgia judge blocks ballot counting rule and says county officials must certify election results

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    ATLANTA (AP) — A judge has blocked a new rule that requires Georgia Election Day ballots to be counted by hand after the close of voting. The ruling came a day after the same judge ruled that county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law.

    The rulings are victories for Democrats, liberal voting rights groups and some legal experts who have raised concerns that Donald Trump’s allies could refuse to certify the results if the former president loses to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in next month’s presidential election. They have also argued that new rules enacted by the Trump-endorsed majority on the State Election Board could be used to stop or delay certification and to undermine public confidence in the results.

    The State Election Board last month passed the rule requiring that three poll workers each count the paper ballots — not votes — by hand after the polls close. The county election board in Cobb County, in Atlanta’s suburbs, had filed a lawsuit seeking to have a judge declare that rule and five others recently passed by the state board invalid, saying they exceed the state board’s authority, weren’t adopted in compliance with the law and are unreasonable.

    In a ruling late Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote, that the hand count rule “is too much, too late” and blocked its enforcement while he considers the merits of the case.

    McBurney on Monday had ruled in a separate case that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they are entitled to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

    Georgia law says county election superintendents — generally multimember boards — “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election, or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

    The two rulings came as early in-person voting began Tuesday in Georgia.

    In blocking the hand count rule, McBurney noted that there are no guidelines or training tools for its implementation and that the secretary of state had said the rule was passed too late for his office to provide meaningful training or support. The judge also wrote that no allowances have been made in county election budgets to provide for additional personnel or expenses associated with the rule.

    “The administrative chaos that will — not may — ensue is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair legal, and orderly,” he wrote.

    The state board may be right that the rule is smart policy, McBurney wrote, but the timing of its passage makes implementing it now “quite wrong.” He invoked the memory of the riot at the U.S. Capitol by people seeking to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021, writing, “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”

    During a hearing earlier Tuesday, Robert Thomas, a lawyer for the State Election Board, argued that the process isn’t complicated and that estimates show that it would take extra minutes, not hours, to complete. He also said memory cards from the scanners, which are used to tally the votes, could be sent to the tabulation center while the hand count is happening so reporting of results wouldn’t be delayed.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    State and national Democratic groups that had joined the suit on the side of the Cobb election board, along with the Harris campaign, celebrated McBurney’s ruling in a joint statement: “From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it.”

    The certification ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the election board in Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta and is a Democratic stronghold. Adams sought a declaration that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she is entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”

    Long an administrative task that attracted little attention, certification of election results has become politicized since Trump tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 general election. Republicans in several swing states, including Adams, refused to certify results earlier this year and some have sued to keep from being forced to sign off on election results.

    Adams’ suit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, argued county election board members have the discretion to reject certification. In court earlier this month, her lawyers also argued county election officials could certify results without including certain ballots if they suspect problems.

    Judge McBurney wrote that nothing in Georgia law gives county election officials the authority to determine that fraud has occurred or what should be done about it. Instead, he wrote, state law says a county election official’s “concerns about fraud or systemic error are to be noted and shared with the appropriate authorities but they are not a basis for a superintendent to decline to certify.”

    The Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia had joined the lawsuit as defendants with the support of Harris’ campaign. The campaign called the ruling a “major legal win.”

    Adams said in a statement that McBurney’s ruling has made it clear that she and other county election officials “cannot be barred from access to elections in their counties.”

    A flurry of election rules passed by the State Election Board since August has generated a crush of lawsuits. McBurney earlier this month heard a challenge to two rules having to do with certification brought by the state and national Democratic parties. Another Fulton County judge is set to hear arguments in two challenges to rules tomorrow — one brought by the Democratic groups and another filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker. And separate challenges are also pending in at least two other counties.

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  • Members of Congress call on companies to retain DEI programs as court cases grind on

    Members of Congress call on companies to retain DEI programs as court cases grind on

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    NEW YORK (AP) — A group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the largest U.S. companies Tuesday to hold onto their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, saying such efforts give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American dream.

    The 49 House members, led by U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, shared their views in a letter emailed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000. The move follows several major corporations saying in recent months that they would end or curtail their DEI initiatives.

    “Inclusion is a core American value, and a great business practice,” the lawmakers wrote. “By embracing this value, you create safer and fairer workplaces without sacrificing quality or financial success.”

    A handful of U.S. companies, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Lowes and Molson Coors, dialed back their DEI initiatives over the summer. The retreats came in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing affirmative action in college admissions and after conservative activists targeted the prominent American brands over their diversity policies and programs.

    DEI policies typically are intended as a counterweight to discriminatory practices. Critics argue that education, government and business programs which single out participants based on factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation are unfair and the same opportunities should be afforded to everyone.

    “They create toxic environments. They divide people,” Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said of diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives.

    The opponents have had several legislative and legal victories, and dozens more cases are working their way through the courts.

    “These efforts to roll back rights are happening everywhere. They’re happening at the workplace. They’re happening in state legislatures,” Garcia told The Associated Press. “And it needs to stop. And we’ve got to push back and be vocal. We can’t just sit by and allow this to happen.”

    The lawmakers’ letter states that growing numbers of American consumers spend their money with businesses that champion inclusion and are unlikely to continue supporting companies that they see backing down on commitments to bring people together.

    “Continual progress towards more equal policies and benefits decreases the risk that anyone – employees and consumers – will experience discrimination, bias, and other threats to their safety and well-being,” the letter says.

    The letter comes on the heels of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announcing that it filed 110 lawsuits in the past year alleging that employers sexually harassed teenagers, discriminated against workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, engaged in patterns of discrimination and violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, among other violations.

    The lawsuits represent a small fraction of the complaints lodged with the EEOC. The agency received more than 81,000 charges of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2023, which was a 10% increase over 2022, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said.

    For every complaint, the EEOC notified the employer and launched an investigation. Many involved allegations of racial harassment or religious discrimination, Burrows said.

    “Most people don’t even report internally, much less to the federal government, when they experience discrimination, so unfortunately, it’s the tip of the iceberg,” Burrows told the AP.

    She and other commissioners strongly support diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs “because it is in so many ways an antidote to the kinds of practices that lead us to have to go to court,” Burrows said.

    The Manhattan Institute’s Shapiro counters that DEI programs have little to do with civil rights law.

    “The pushback against it is not a pushback against anti-discrimination laws or anything that existed really before 10 years ago or so,” he said. “DEI is divisive. It views people and issues through lenses of identity, classifies people based on privilege hierarchies and intersectional matrices, and is antithetical to a productive working environment.”

    Meanwhile, lawsuits claiming reverse discrimination may be gaining momentum. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided it would hear a lawsuit filed by Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against in her job at the Ohio Department of Youth Services because she was straight.

    “It’s a case that people are expecting will open the courthouse doors to more reverse discrimination suits,” said Jason Schwartz, co-chairman of the labor & employment practice group at Gibson Dunn.

    Circuit courts have disagreed over whether to hold reverse discrimination cases to a higher standard. Some have ruled that if a person from a majority group brings a discrimination case, they have to show more evidence of discrimination than a person from a minority group who files a similar case.

    “The Supreme Court’s interest in that case signals some potential that they’re going to lower the bar,” Schwartz said. “We already see a really massive uptick in these reverse discrimination cases.”

    Groups such as the American Alliance for Equal Rights have pushed back on affirmative action policies at universities and diversity, equity and inclusion policies run by corporations.

    Recently, the Atlanta-based Fearless Fund had to shut down a grant contest for Black women business owners as part of a settlement with the American Alliance for Equal Rights, which argued that race-based programs should be open to everyone, regardless of race.

    “There’s been such an intense focus on all of the risk emanating from the anti-DEI side,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law. “But I do worry sometimes that organizations may be over-correcting for that or worrying a little bit too much about that at the expense of the other side of the equation.”

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  • Don’t fall for fake dentists offering veneers and other dental work on social media

    Don’t fall for fake dentists offering veneers and other dental work on social media

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — If you have stained or chipped teeth, you might be considering veneers, customized teeth coverings that can restore a photogenic smile without more extensive dental work.

    But dentists warn that these pricey cosmetic enhancements are at the center of a worrisome online trend: unlicensed practitioners without proper training or supervision offering low-cost veneers.

    These self-described “veneer techs” often promote themselves on Instagram and TikTok, promising a full set of veneers for less than half of what dentists typically charge. Some also market their own training courses and certifications for people looking to get into the business.

    It’s misleading, health professionals warn — and illegal. All states require dental work, including veneers, to be performed under the supervision of a licensed dentist.

    On Thursday, Georgia law enforcement officials arrested Brandon Diller, who promoted himself to 158,000 Instagram followers as “Atlanta’s top veneer specialist and trainer.” Diller practiced dentistry without a license and sold “training and certificates, which were worthless” and “provided no legitimate or legal credentials,” according to an arrest warrant from Fulton County’s District Attorney’s office.

    Here’s what to know about veneers and how to avoid bogus providers and services:

    What are dental veneers?

    Veneers are thin, custom-made dental coverings used to hide minor imperfections or to fill in gaps between teeth. Unlike crowns or more invasive dental implants, veneers are almost always considered cosmetic dentistry and generally aren’t covered by insurance.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    Dentists usually charge between $1,000 and $2,000 per tooth for veneers, with higher prices for those made from porcelain compared with lower-grade materials.

    Placing veneers involves stripping some of the natural enamel from the tooth and bonding the new covering into place. Because of that process, getting veneers is considered an irreversible procedure, according to the American Dental Association. They are not permanent, and can be expected to last between 5 to 15 years before they degrade and need to be replaced.

    In recent months the ADA has been stepping up warnings about the risks of veneer procedures done by unlicensed individuals.

    “Quality control is lost without the involvement of a licensed dentist,” said Dr. Ada Cooper, a New York-based dentist and ADA spokesperson. “We undergo years of education and training and need to be licensed by various regulatory bodies before we can practice.”

    What are the risks of getting veneers from someone who isn’t licensed?

    Improper veneer procedures can cause a range of health problems, including severe pain, nerve damage and tooth loss.

    Patients need to be anesthetized before the enamel is removed from their teeth.

    “It could be incredibly painful if they’re not anesthetized correctly,” said Dr. Zach Truman, who runs an orthodontics practice in Las Vegas. “You can also go too deep into the tooth and penetrate what’s called the pulp chamber, which contains blood vessels and nerves.”

    One of the biggest problems Truman sees with unregulated veneer work is that customers aren’t getting screened for existing dental problems, such as gum disease and cavities.

    “If you put a veneer on a tooth that has an active cavity, you’re just going to seal it in there and eventually it’s going to progress to tooth loss,” Truman said.

    Dental veneers aren’t the only option for improving the appearance of teeth. Over-the-counter whitening kits can help with minor stains and discoloration. And dentists can sometimes use composite materials to reshape chipped or uneven teeth. But Truman says those fillings are prone to crack and won’t last as long as veneers.

    How can I spot bogus veneer providers online?

    One clue: Many individuals performing unlicensed dental work promote themselves on social media as “veneer technicians.”

    Instead of working out of a dental office they often perform treatments at beauty salons, hotel rooms or private homes. Some advertise multi-city tours and encourage clients to message them to book an appointment in advance.

    Much of the appeal of the services is in their pricing, with some offering a full set of veneers for a flat fee of $4,000 or $5,000. That’s less than half of what patients can generally expect to pay at a dental office.

    Performing dental work without an appropriate license is illegal, the ADA notes.

    Dentists and hygienists are licensed by state governments, who also define the work dental assistants can perform. But in all cases, veneers and other dental procedures must be supervised by a licensed dentist.

    Earlier this year, Illinois law enforcement officials arrested a woman running a business called the Veneer Experts after she posted videos of herself fitting braces, veneers and other dental products without a license. She was previously arrested in Nevada on similar allegations of practicing dentistry without a license.

    What are the best ways to find legitimate dental providers?

    The ADA maintains a website detailing the training and licensing requirements for dentists across the U.S. Most states also maintain websites where you can lookup and verify licensure information and find any past disciplinary actions for dentists and other health professionals.

    “It’s really critical to understand that dentistry is a regulated health care profession that requires formal educations and licensure,” Cooper said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Voters in North Carolina and Georgia have bigger problems than politics. Helene changed everything

    Voters in North Carolina and Georgia have bigger problems than politics. Helene changed everything

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    VILAS, N.C. (AP) — Brad Farrington pulls over to grab a case of water bottles being passed out in Vilas, a small rural community tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s on his way to help a friend who lost much of what he owned when Hurricane Helene blew through last weekend.

    His friend, like countless others across western North Carolina, is starting over, which explains why Farrington isn’t thinking too much about politics or the White House race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris right now.

    “I don’t believe people’s hope is in either people that are being elected,” he said.

    Farrington pauses, then gestures toward a dozen volunteers loading water and other necessities into cars and trucks.

    “I believe we’re finding a lot more hope within folks like this,” he said.

    In the election’s final weeks, people in North Carolina and Georgia, influential swing states, are dealing with more immediate concerns: widespread storm damage. If that weren’t enough, voters in Watauga County, a ticket-splitting Appalachian county that has become more Democratic in recent years, must contend with politicians laying blame while offering support as they campaign in a race that could be decided by any small shift.

    Large uprooted trees litter the sides of roads, sometimes blocking driveways. Some homes in Vilas are inaccessible after bridges collapsed and roads crumbled. More populous areas like Boone, home of Appalachian State University, saw major flooding.

    Residents wonder where are missing friends and relatives, is there enough food and water to last until new supplies arrive and how will they rebuild.

    The focus is on survival, not politics — and may remain that way for weeks.

    Politicians travel to affected battleground states

    Trump and Harris have visited North Carolina and Georgia five times since the storm hit. Trump was in North Carolina on Friday, and Harris was there the next day.

    After Trump went to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, 20-year-old Fermin Herrera said the former president clinched his vote with his display of caring, not out of any frustration with how President Joe Biden and Harris, the vice president, are handling the federal disaster response. Herrera already leaned toward voting for Trump.

    “I feel like everybody’s kind doing what they can,” he said. “All the locals are appreciating the help that’s coming.”

    Trump, who has his own mixed record on natural disaster response, attacked Biden and Harris for what he said was a slow response to Helene’s destruction. Trump accused the Democrats of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” and said there wasn’t enough Federal Emergency Management Agency money because it was spent on illegal immigrants. There is no evidence to support either claim.

    “I’m not thinking about voters right now,” Trump insisted after a meeting with Gov. Brian Kemp, R-Ga., on Friday. “I’m thinking about lives.”

    Biden pushed back hard, saying he is “committed to being president for all of America” and has not ordered aid to be distributed based on party lines. The White House cited statements from the Republican governors of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee expressing satisfaction with the federal government’s response.

    FEMA’s head, Deanne Criswell, told ABC’s “This Week” that this “truly dangerous narrative” of falsehoods is “demoralizing” to first responders and creating “fear in our own employees.”

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Criticism of aid efforts so soon after a natural disaster is “inappropriate,” especially when factoring in the daunting logistical problems in western North Carolina, said Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who specializes in disaster recovery. He said the perilous terrain from compromised roads and bridges and the widespread lack of power and cellphone service make disaster response in the region particularly challenging.

    Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has made several stops in western North Carolina, including Watauga County and surrounding areas, and Biden viewed the extensive damage via an aerial tour.

    A focus on recovering and rebuilding

    In Watauga County, Jessica Dixon was scraping muck and broken furniture off the ground with a shovel, then dumping it in the bucket of a humming excavator. The 29-year-old stood in a home she bought two years ago. It’s now gutted after a rush of water forced Dixon, her boyfriend and their two dogs to flee to safety.

    Without flood insurance, Dixon is not sure what will happen over the next month. She said she filled out a FEMA application but hasn’t checked her email since. She had given the presidential election some thought before Helene, but now she’s preoccupied with cleaning her home.

    “It wouldn’t change my views on anything,” said Dixon, who was planning to vote for Harris.

    The presidential election isn’t top of mind for 47-year-old Bobby Cordell, either. He’s trying to get help to neighbors in western Watauga County, which has become inaccessible in some parts.

    His home near Beech Mountain is one of those places, he said, after a bridge washed away. Cordell rescued his aunt from a mudslide, then traveled to Boone and has been staying in Appalachian State’s Holmes Convocation Center, which now serves as a Red Cross emergency shelter.

    He’s trying to send disaster relief back where he lives by contacting officials, including from FEMA. That conversation, he said, “went very well.”

    Accepting help isn’t easy for people in the mountains, he said, because they’re used to taking care of themselves.

    Now, though, the people who are trapped “need everything they can get.”

    Helping neighbors becomes more important in Helene’s aftermath

    Over the past week of volunteering at Skateworld, where Farrington stopped for water, it’s become harder for Nancy Crawford to smile. She’s helped serve more than 1,000 people, she said, but the emotional toll has started to settle in for “a lot of us that normally are tough.”

    That burden added to the weight she was already feeling about the election, which she said was “scary to begin with.” Crawford, a registered Republican, said she plans to vote for Harris. As a Latina of Mexican descent, she thinks Trump’s immigration policies would have harmful effects on her community.

    The storm, she said, likely won’t change her vote but has made one thing evident.

    “It doesn’t matter what party you are, we all need help,” she said.

    Jan Wellborn had a similar thought as she made her way around the Watauga High School gym collecting supplies to bring to coworkers in need. A 69-year-old bus driver for the school district, she said the outpouring of support she’s seen from the community has been a “godsend.”

    She takes solace from the county’s ability to pull together. The election matters, she said, but helping people make their way through a harrowing time matters more.

    “The election, it should be important,” Wellborn said. “But right now we need to focus on getting everybody in the county taken care of.”

    ——

    Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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  • US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

    US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government’s top disaster relief official said Sunday that false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — spread most prominently by Donald Trump — are “demoralizing” aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance.

    “It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” said Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do. We have had the complete support of the state,” she said, referring to North Carolina.

    AP AUDIO: Correspondent Julie Walker reports after the deluge, lies and misinformation are clouding the recovery effort from Hurricane Helene.

    Republicans, led by the former president, have helped foster a frenzy of misinformation over the past week among the communities most devastated by Helene, promoting a number of false claims, including that Washington is intentionally withholding aid to people in Republican areas.

    Trump accused FEMA of spending all its money to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally, while other critics assert that the government spends too much on Israel, Ukraine and other foreign countries.

    “FEMA absolutely has enough money for Helene response right now,” Keith Turi, acting director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery said. He noted that Congress recently replenished the agency with $20 billion, and about $8 billion of that is set aside for recovery from previous storms and mitigation projects.

    There also are outlandish theories that include warnings from far-right extremist groups that officials plan to bulldoze storm-damaged communities and seize the land from residents. A falsehood pushed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., asserts that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democrat Kamala Harris.

    Criswell said on ABC’s “This Week” that such baseless claims around the response to Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230, have created a sense of fear and mistrust from residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground.

    “We’ve had the local officials helping to push back on this dangerous — truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear of trying to reach out and help us or to register for help,” she said.

    President Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday that his administration “will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders –- regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

    Meantime, FEMA is preparing for Hurricane Milton, which rapidly intensified into a Category 1 storm on Sunday as it heads toward Florida.

    “We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said.

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  • Jimmy Carter at 100: A century of changes for a president, the US and the world since 1924

    Jimmy Carter at 100: A century of changes for a president, the US and the world since 1924

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    Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to reach the century mark.

    The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, will turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrating in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924.

    Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life.

    Booms most everywhere — but not Plains

    FILE – The Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Ave. past the Treasury Building in Washington D.C. in 1925. (AP Photo, File)

    Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. The global population has more than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to more than 8.1 billion. It already had more than doubled to 4.36 billion by the time he became president.

    That boom has not reached Plains, where Carter has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. His wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, also was born in Plains.

    Their town comprised fewer than 500 people in the 1920s and has about 700 today; much of the local economy revolves around its most famous residents.

    When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It’s now 75.

    TV, radio and presidential maps

    NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map in the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC’s John Chancellor made Carter’s states red and Ford’s blue. Some other early versions of color electoral maps used yellow and blue because red was associated with Soviet and Chinese communism.

    Image

    FILE – Former Presidents George Bush, left, and Jimmy Carter, right, stand with President Clinton during a kick-off rally for the President’s volunteer summit at Marcus Foster Stadium in Philadelphia, PA., April 27, 1997. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)

    It wasn’t until the 1990s that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and red for GOP-won states. “Red state” and “blue state” did not become a permanent part of the American political lexicon until after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

    Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first presidential television appearance. Warren Harding became the first radio president two years before Carter’s birth.

    Attention shoppers

    There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, but you could order a build-it-yourself house from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom model went for $2,025, which was slightly less than the average worker’s annual income.

    Image

    FILE – College student Chuck McManis watches President Jimmy Carter’s nationally televised energy speech from a service station in Los Angeles, as a gas station attendant fills up a customer’s car, July 15, 1979. (AP Photo/Mao, File)

    Walmart didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. Ballpark prices: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of gas, 11 cents.

    Inflation helped drive Carter from office, as it has dogged President Joe Biden. The average gallon in 1980, Carter’s last full year in office, was about $3.25 when adjusted for inflation. That’s just 3 cents more than AAA’s current national average.

    From suffragettes to Kamala Harris

    The 19th Amendment that extended voting rights to women — almost exclusively white women at the time — was ratified in 1920, four years before Carter’s birth. The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans passed in 1965 as Carter was preparing his first bid for Georgia governor.

    Now, Carter is poised to cast a mail ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. Grandson Jason Carter said the former president is holding on in part because he is excited about the chance to see Harris make history.

    Image

    FILE – Former President Jimmy Carter, right, and Atlanta Braves team owner Ted Turner, left, watch early play during Game 6 of the National League Championship Series in Atlanta, Oct. 14, 1998. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)

    Immigration, isolationism and ‘America First’

    For all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around.

    Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism — all elements of the right in the ongoing Donald Trump era. In 2024, Trump is promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, while tightening legal immigration. He has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

    Five months before Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The law created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission mostly to migrants from western Europe. Asians were banned entirely. Congress described its purpose plainly: “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan followed in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington promoting white supremacy.

    Trump also has called for sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs intended to help U.S. manufacturers. After stock market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to help American farmers. The Great Depression followed anyway. In the 1930s, as Carter became politically aware, the political right that countered FDR was driven in part by a movement that opposed international engagement. Those conservatives’ slogan: “America First.”

    Image

    FILE – Former President Jimmy Carter pulls notes out of his pocket before delivering remarks during a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Aug. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

    America’s and Carter’s pastime

    Carter is the Atlanta Braves’ most famous fan. Jason Carter says the former president still enjoys watching his favorite baseball team.

    In the 1990s, when the Braves were annual features in the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were often spotted in the owner’s box with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then Turner’s wife. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter’s failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory four years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting in the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record.

    When Carter was born, the Braves were still in Boston, their original city. Ruth had just completed his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 home runs to that point (still 430 short of his career total) and the original Yankee Stadium — “The House that Ruth Built” — had been open less than 18 months.

    Booze, Billy and Billy Beer

    Prohibition had been in effect for four years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted until he was 9. The Carters were never prodigious drinkers. They served only wine at state dinners and other White House functions, though it’s a common misconception that they did so because of their Baptist mores. It was more because Carter has always been frugal: He didn’t want taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn’s personal money) to cover more expensive hard liquor.

    Carter’s younger brother Billy, who owned a Plains gas station and died in 1988, had different tastes. He marketed his own brand, Billy Beer, once Carter became president. News sources reported that Billy Carter snagged a $50,000 annual licensing fee from one brewer. That’s about $215,000 today. The president’s annual salary at the time was $200,000 — it’s now $400,000.

    The debt: More Carter frugality

    The Times Square debt clock didn’t debut until Carter was in his early 60s and out of the White House. But for anyone counting the $35 trillion debt, Carter doesn’t merit much mention. The man who would wash Ziploc bags to reuse them added less than $300 billion to the national debt, which stood below $1 trillion when he left office.

    Other presidents

    Carter has lived through 40% of U.S. history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and more than a third of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took office in 1789 — nine before Carter was president, his own and seven since.

    When Carter took office, just two presidents, John Adams and Herbert Hoover, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush all reached at least 93.

    ——-

    This story was first published on Sep. 28, 2024. It was updated on Oct. 1, 2024 to correct that only one other former president, John Adams, lived to be at least 90. Herbert Hoover died at 90 in 1964.

    ___

    Follow Barrow at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

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  • Reality TV star Julie Chrisley resentenced to 7 years in bank fraud and tax evasion case

    Reality TV star Julie Chrisley resentenced to 7 years in bank fraud and tax evasion case

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    ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday resentenced Julie Chrisley to seven years in prison for her conviction on bank fraud and tax evasion charges, declining the reality TV star’s request for less time in prison than was originally imposed.

    Chrisley and her husband, Todd Chrisley, gained fame on their show, “Chrisley Knows Best,” which followed their tight-knit family and extravagant lifestyle. A jury in 2022 found them guilty of conspiring to defraud community banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans. The Chrisleys were also found guilty of tax evasion by hiding their earnings.

    A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions but found a legal error in how the trial judge had calculated Julie Chrisley’s sentence by holding her accountable for the entire bank fraud scheme. The appellate panel sent her case back to the lower court for resentencing.

    Julie Chrisley’s attorney, Alex Little, asked the judge to reduce his client’s sentence to no more than five years. He argued that she was a minor player in the crimes, that her “scattered offenses” were “dramatic mistakes.” He also noted that she has behaved well and taken advantage of enrichment opportunities during her 20 months in prison so far, receiving more than 70 certificates.

    In a court filing, Little had argued that Chrisley’s two youngest children are struggling with “day-to-day functioning” because of their mother’s absence.

    Federal prosecutor Annalise Peters urged the judge to reimpose the seven-year sentence. She argued that prosecutors had been conservative in charging the Chrisleys, that Julie Chrisley was a “core part” of a fraudulent scheme and that she had not apologized, shown remorse or admitted wrongdoing.

    Chrisley’s good behavior in prison does not cancel out an “11-year journey of fraud after fraud after fraud,” Peters said.

    Peters said she felt sympathy for Chrisley’s family but that their suffering was “a natural consequence of this defendant’s criminal choices.”

    Chrisley, dressed in a navy blue prison uniform and with her formerly blond hair now dark brown, addressed the judge.

    “I apologize for my actions and what led me to where I am today,” she said, later adding that her time in prison has been “the most difficult time in my life” and has been hard on her family.

    “I cannot ever repay my children for what they have had to go through, and for that I am sorry,” she said.

    Before the Chrisleys became reality television stars, they and a former business partner submitted false documents to banks in the Atlanta area to obtain fraudulent loans, prosecutors said during their trial. They accused the couple of spending lavishly on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, and using new fraudulent loans to pay off old ones. Todd Chrisley then filed for bankruptcy, according to prosecutors, walking away from more than $20 million in unpaid loans.

    U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross said that when she originally sentenced Chrisley she took into account her age, health and the fact that she was a caretaker for young children and elderly parents. Ross said she imposed a sentence that fell below the guidelines for Chrisley’s crimes and situation and below what prosecutors had requested. That departure from the guidelines was not based on the loss amount or the number of years that Chrisley was involved, so her sentence will not change, Ross said.

    The judge noted that many people she has sent to prison have children and most don’t have the resources or the support system the Chrisleys have.

    “It saddens me every time I see children going through that,” Ross said, later adding that she reminds herself, “I am not the one who made the choices to put the children in that situation.”

    Two of Chrisley’s adult children, Savannah and Chase, attended the hearing. Savannah Chrisley, who spoke in support of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy at the Republican National Convention in July, told reporters outside the courthouse that the prosecution and sentencing of her parents was politically motivated.

    “That’s what you get with an Obama-appointed judge,” she said as her mother was led out of the courtroom by U.S. marshals. Ross was appointed to the bench by then-President Barack Obama and took the bench in November 2014.

    She said her mother will appeal the new sentence.

    Todd Chrisley is serving a sentence of 12 years behind bars. The couple was originally ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution, but Ross said Wednesday that the amount now stands at $4.7 million.

    Todd Chrisley, 56, is at a minimum security federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, with a release date in September 2032, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons website. Julie Chrisley, 51, had been held at a facility in Lexington, Kentucky, and is expected to return there.

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  • Suspicious packages sent to election officials in at least 6 states

    Suspicious packages sent to election officials in at least 6 states

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    Suspicious packages were sent to election officials in at least six states on Monday, but there were no reports that any of the packages contained hazardous material.

    Powder-containing packages were sent to secretaries of state and state election offices in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming and Oklahoma, officials in those states confirmed. The FBI and U.S. Postal Service were investigating. It marked the second time in the past year that suspicious packages were mailed to election officials in multiple state offices.

    The latest scare comes as early voting has begun in several states less than two months ahead of the high-stakes elections for president, Senate, Congress and key statehouse offices around the nation, causing disruption in what is already a tense voting season.

    Several of the states reported a white powder substance found in envelopes sent to election officials. In most cases, the material was found to be harmless. Oklahoma officials said the material sent to the election office there contained flour. Wyoming officials have not yet said if the material sent there was hazardous.

    The packages forced an evacuation in Iowa. Hazmat crews in several states quickly determined the material was harmless.

    “We have specific protocols in place for situations such as this,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement after the evacuation of the six-story Lucas State Office Building in Des Moines. “We immediately reported the incident per our protocols.”

    A state office building in Topeka, Kansas, was also evacuated due to suspicious mail sent to both the secretary of state and attorney general, Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson April M. McCollum said in a statement.

    Topeka Fire Department crews found several pieces of mail with an unknown substance on them, though a field test found no hazardous materials, spokesperson Rosie Nichols said. Several employees in both offices had been exposed to it and had their health monitored, she said.

    In Oklahoma, the State Election Board received a suspicious envelope in the mail containing a multi-page document and a white, powdery substance, agency spokesperson Misha Mohr said in an email to The Associated Press. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which oversees security for the Capitol, secured the envelope. Testing determined the substance was flour, Mohr said.

    State workers in an office building next to the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne were sent home for the day pending testing of a white substance mailed to the secretary of state’s office.

    Suspicious letters were sent to election offices and government buildings in at least six states last November, including the same building in Kansas that received suspicious mail Monday. While some of the letters contained fentanyl, even the suspicious mail that was not toxic delayed the counting of ballots in some local elections.

    One of the targeted offices was in Fulton County, Georgia, the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important swing states. Four county election offices in Washington state had to be evacuated as election workers were processing ballots cast, delaying vote-counting.

    The letters caused election workers around the country to stock up the overdose reversal medication naloxone.

    Election offices across the United States have taken steps to increase the security of their buildings and boost protections for workers amid an onslaught of harassment and threats following the 2020 election and the false claims that it was rigged.

    ___

    Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri. Volmert reported from Lansing, Michigan. Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

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  • Judge rejects former Trump aide Mark Meadows’ bid to move Arizona election case to federal court

    Judge rejects former Trump aide Mark Meadows’ bid to move Arizona election case to federal court

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    PHOENIX (AP) — A judge has rejected a bid by Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, to move his charges in Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court, marking the second time he has failed in trying to get his charges out of state court.

    In a decision Monday, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi said Meadows missed a deadline for asking for his charges to be moved to federal court, didn’t offer a good reason for doing so and failed to show that the allegations against him related to his official duties as chief of staff to the president.

    Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia in what authorities allege was an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Trump’s favor. He had unsuccessfully tried to move charges in the Georgia case last year. It’s unknown whether Meadows will appeal the decision. The Associated Press left phone and email messages for two of Meadows’ attorneys.

    While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors said Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat. Meadows has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Georgia.

    In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.

    The decision sends Meadows’ case back down to Maricopa County Superior Court.

    In both Arizona and Georgia, Meadows argued his charges should be moved to federal court because his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff and that he has immunity under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law trumps state law.

    Arizona prosecutors said Meadows’ electioneering efforts weren’t part of his official duties at the White House.

    Meadows last year tried to get his Georgia charges moved but his request was rejected by a judge whose ruling was later affirmed by an appeals court. Meadows has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.

    The Arizona indictment says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election. Prosecutors say Meadows also had arranged meetings and calls with state officials to discuss the fake elector conspiracy.

    Meadows and other defendants are seeking a dismissal of the Arizona case.

    Meadows’ attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people trying to get ideas in front of Trump — or “seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”

    In denying the former chief of staff’s request, Tuchi said Meadows wasn’t indicted for facilitating communications to and from the president or staying updated on what was going on in Trump’s campaign.

    “Instead, the State has indicted Mr. Meadows for allegedly orchestrating and participating in an illegal electioneering scheme,” the judge wrote. “Few, if any, of the State’s factual allegations even resemble the secretarial duties that Mr. Meadows maintains are the subject of the indictment.”

    In all, 18 Republicans were charged in late April in Arizona’s fake electors case. The defendants include 11 Republicans who had submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, another Trump aide and five lawyers connected to the former president.

    In August, Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors that led to the dismissal of her charges. Republican activist Loraine Pellegrino became the first person to be convicted in the Arizona case when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation.

    The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges in Arizona.

    Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.

    The 11 people who were nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state.

    A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

    Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

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  • Ahmaud Arbery’s family is still waiting for ex-prosecutor’s misconduct trial after 3 years

    Ahmaud Arbery’s family is still waiting for ex-prosecutor’s misconduct trial after 3 years

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    SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Three years after a former Georgia district attorney was indicted on charges alleging she interfered with police investigating the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the case’s slow progression through the court system has sputtered to a halt, one the presiding judge insists is temporary.

    Jackie Johnson was the state’s top prosecutor for coastal Glynn County in February 2020, when Arbery was chased by three white men in pickup trucks who had spotted him running in their neighborhood. The 25-year-old Black man died in the street after one of his pursuers shot him with a shotgun.

    Johnson transferred the case to an outside prosecutor because the man who initiated the deadly chase, Greg McMichael, was her former employee. But Georgia’s attorney general says she illegally used her office to try to protect the retired investigator and his son, Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shots.

    Both McMichaels already have been convicted and sentenced to prison in back-to-back trials for murder and federal hate crimes. So has a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, whose cellphone video of the shooting triggered a national outcry over Arbery’s death. A court heard their first appeals six months ago.

    The criminal misconduct case against Johnson has moved at a comparative crawl since a grand jury indicted her on Sept. 2, 2021, on a felony count of violating her oath of office and a misdemeanor count of hindering a police officer.

    While the men responsible for Arbery’s death are serving life sentences, the slain man’s family has insisted that justice won’t be complete until Johnson stands trial.

    “It’s very, very important,” said Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother. “Jackie Johnson was really part of the problem early on.”

    Johnson has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. After losing reelection in 2020, she told The Associated Press that she immediately recused herself in the handling of Arbery’s killing because of Greg McMichael’s involvement.

    Dozens of Black Lives Matter and Black Panther protesters gather outside the Glynn County Courthouse where the trial of Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan is held, Nov. 22, 2021, in Brunswick, Ga. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File)

    Johnson’s case has stalled as one of her attorneys, Brian Steel, has spent most of the past two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug against racketeering and gang charges. Jury selection in the case took 10 months, prosecutors began presenting evidence last November and they are still calling witnesses.

    Senior Judge John R. Turner, who was assigned to Johnson’s case, insists there is nothing he can do but wait.

    “If anyone’s concerned that the case is being shuffled under the rug, I can guarantee you it’s not,” Turner told the AP in a phone interview. “It’s moving at a snail’s pace, but it will move forward eventually.”

    After Arbery was killed, Greg McMichael told police that he and his son had armed themselves and chased the Black man, suspecting he was a fleeing criminal. Bryan, who didn’t know any of the men, made a similar assumption after seeing them pass his home and joined in his own truck.

    The indictment against Johnson alleges she told police they shouldn’t arrest Travis McMichael. It also accuses her of “showing favor and affection” to Greg McMichael by calling on George Barnhill, a district attorney in a neighboring judicial circuit, to advise police about how to handle the shooting.

    Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appointed Barnhill four days later to take over as outside prosecutor. Carr has said he picked Barnhill without knowing he already had advised police that he saw no grounds for arrests in Arbery’s death.

    Barnhill stepped aside after a few weeks, but not before he sent a letter to police captain arguing the McMichaels acted legally and Arbery was killed in self-defense.

    After Johnson was charged, she reported to jail for booking and was released without having to post bond. Her attorneys waived a formal reading of the charges before a judge and she has yet to appear in court. The judge denied legal motions by Johnson’s lawyers to dismiss the case last November. Court records show no further developments over the past 10 months.

    “Securing an indictment is just one step in our ongoing pursuit of justice for Ahmaud Arbery and his family,” Carr said in a statement. “We have never stopped fighting for them, and we look forward to the opportunity to present our case in court.”

    Johnson’s attorneys, Steel and John Ossick, did not respond to emails and a phone message seeking comment. They have argued in court filings there is “not a scintilla of evidence” that she hindered police.

    Prosecutors responded with a court filing that listed 16 calls between phones belonging to Johnson and Greg McMichael in the weeks following the shooting.

    Two legal experts who aren’t involved in the case said there is no deadline for Johnson to stand trial. She hasn’t been jailed, so there is little pressure to expedite her case.

    Steel’s prolonged absence because of the Atlanta gang trial likely isn’t the only factor slowing the case, Atlanta defense attorney Don Samuel said.

    Courts remain saddled with a backlog of cases since the COVID-19 lockdowns, he said. And the attorney general’s office has a limited staff of criminal prosecutors with their own busy caseloads.

    Samuel also questioned whether prosecutors have a strong case against Johnson. Even if she opposed charging the McMichaels in Arbery’s death, he said, prosecutors haven’t accused her of taking bribes or similar blatant corruption.

    District attorneys “have a huge amount of discretion to make decisions about what cases to pursue,” Samuel said. “The notion that we’re going to start prosecuting DAs for prosecuting or not prosecuting strikes me as really being on the edge of propriety.”

    Danny Porter, the former district attorney for Gwinnett County in metro Atlanta, said prosecutors like Johnson have a legitimate role in advising police on whether or not to arrest suspects before an investigation is complete.

    As for Johnson’s recommendation in 2020 that the attorney general replace her with another prosecutor who concluded Arbery’s killing was justified, Porter said: “I don’t think that’s a violation of the law, though it might have made them mad.”

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  • How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events

    How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events

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    Mass shootings have effects on communities that are felt long after the day’s tragedy. School shootings in particular can have physical, emotional and behavioral effects on kids — even if the shooting occurred on the other side of the country.

    Exposure to school shootings, even if indirectly, is shown to disrupt people’s sense of safety and stability, said Sonali Rajan, professor at Columbia University, who studies firearm-related harms on children.

    Talking about it can help.

    Parents aren’t alone in this task. Many health experts, including psychologists and grief counselors, remind people there are resources to support students’ mental and emotional health as they grieve and process.

    Here’s how they say families should address traumatic experiences with their kids.

    Don’t avoid the conversation

    It takes time to process emotions, regardless of age, so adults should start by taking care of themselves. That said, experts encourage parents to have conversations with their children and not avoid the topic, if kids indicate a willingness to talk about it.

    “If they are not hearing about it from you as their parent, they will hear about it from their friends at school,” says Emilie Ney, director of professional development at the National Association of School Psychologists.

    It’s OK for caregivers to say they don’t have all the answers and not force the conversation, according to guidance from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Being available and patient is key.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    This isn’t just a job for parents and guardians. All adults should remember to be available for the kids in their life. After all, not all children have trusted adults they can speak with, said Crystal Garrant, chief program officer at Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group that works to prevent suicides and mass shootings.

    For instance, she said, adults who work in before-school or after-school programs should ask the kids in their care open-ended questions, do community-building activities or provide kids with other opportunities to share openly. They may not have the opportunity to do so otherwise.

    Tailor the talk to the child’s age

    How much children are able to understand a situation will depend on their age and development, Ney said.

    “There is no specific age target for these conversations,” said Garrant, who has a 9-year-old daughter. “But make sure that younger children understand the word that you’re using. When we say safety, what does it mean to feel safe? How does it feel in your body? What does it sound like when you’re not safe?”

    Some children may have emotional and behavioral responses to traumatic events, such as anxiety, nightmares or difficulty concentrating.

    Younger children need simple information and reassurances their schools and homes are safe, guidance from the National Association of School Psychologists notes. Older children have a deeper capacity for understanding and could benefit from hearing about what agency they might have to keep themselves safe.

    Validate big feelings about school shootings

    Recognizing, acknowledging and validating children’s emotions are key, said Beverly Warnock, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children based in Cincinnati.

    “You need to get those feelings out and be honest,” she said. “Don’t try to squash the feelings or not talk about it. It’s something that will be with you for the rest of your life.”

    The process of navigating emotions after a shooting can be confusing and frustrating for people, Ney said.

    “The stages of grief are not necessarily sequential. People may go in and out of the various different phases, and it may be that it doesn’t really hit someone until a week later,” Ney said.

    Psychologists hope to reassure people their feelings are normal and they don’t have to pretend they are unaffected.

    “Even if you didn’t know anyone involved, even if they were very far away from you, it is okay to grieve,” Ney said. “It shows that you care about others.”

    After acknowledging the emotional response, Warnock said, there is comfort in knowing life goes on.

    “You will find a coping skill, and you will be able to enjoy life again,” she said. “You may not feel that way now, but it does happen. It’s just going to take some time.”

    If you need more help

    If you or someone you know are experiencing distress because of a mass shooting, you can call the 24/7 National Disaster Distress Helpline. The number is 1-800-985-5990, and Spanish speakers can press “2” for bilingual support. To connect directly to a crisis counselor in American Sign Language, call 1-800-985-5990 from your videophone.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election

    GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election

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    Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over the 2024 election through a series of court disputes that could even run past Nov. 5 if results are close.

    Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

    After Donald Trump made ” election integrity ” a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls.

    Democrats are countering with what they are calling “voter protection,” rushing to court to fight back against the GOP cases and building their own team with over 100 staffers, several hundred lawyers and what they say are thousands of volunteers.

    Despite the flurry of litigation, the cases have tended to be fairly small-bore, with few likely impacts for most voters.

    “When you have all this money to spend on litigation, you end up litigating less and less important stuff,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.

    The stakes would increase dramatically should Trump lose and try to overturn the results. That’s what he attempted in 2020, but the court system rejected him across the board. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits trying to reverse President Joe Biden’s win.

    Whether they could be successful this year depends on the results, experts said. A gap of about 10,000 votes — roughly the number that separated Biden and Trump in Arizona and Georgia in 2020 — is almost impossible to reverse through litigation. A closer one of a few hundred votes, like the 547-vote margin that separated George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida in 2000, is much more likely to hinge on court rulings about which ballots are legitimate.

    “If he loses, he’s going to claim that he won. That goes without saying,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said of Trump. “If it looks like what we had last time … I expect we’ll see the same kind of thing.”

    Trump has done nothing to discourage that expectation, saying he would accept the results of the election only if it’s “free and fair,” raising the possibility it would not be, something he continues to falsely contend was the case in 2020. He also continues to insist that he could only lose due to fraud.

    “The only way they can beat us is to cheat,” Trump said at a Las Vegas rally in June.

    To be clear, there was no widespread fraud in 2020 or any election since then. Reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump disputed his loss reaffirmed that Biden won. And Trump’s attorney general said there was no evidence that fraud tipped the election.

    Trump installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which then named attorney Christina Bobb as the head of its election integrity division. Bobb is a former reporter for the conservative One America News Network who has been indicted by Arizona’s attorney general for being part of an effort to promote a slate of Trump electors in the state, even though Biden won it.

    Echoing Trump, the RNC said it’s trying to counter Democratic mischief.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    “President Trump’s election integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process and securing the election,” RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk said in a statement. “While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November.”

    This time around, Democrats say they’re prepared for whatever Republicans might do.

    “For four years, Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have been scheming to sow distrust in our elections and undermine our democracy so they can cry foul when they lose,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “But also for four years, Democrats have been preparing for this moment, and we are ready for anything.”

    The highest-profile litigation so far has been in Georgia, over new rules from a Republican-appointed majority on the State Board of Elections, which has echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories. The rules could allow members of local election boards to try to refuse to certify results, a gambit Trump supporters have tried, unsuccessfully, to reverse losses in 2020 and 2022.

    A Trump-aligned group sued to have courts declare that election board members have that power while Democrats sued to overturn the new rules. GOP Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has questioned the wisdom of the board changing procedures so close to the election. Legal experts say the state board’s rules conflict with longstanding state law that certification is not optional.

    Whether local boards delay or refuse to certify the results from the upcoming election has been a growing concern, especially after a handful of local officials took that step during this year’s primaries. But experts say the fears of a certification crisis are overblown, in large part because most state laws are clear that state or local boards must certify the official results brought to them by election offices. The courtroom remains the most important venue for candidates who want to challenge results.

    “Trying to deny certification is a really poorly thought out theory,” Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, said on a Thursday call with reporters. “It has never worked.”

    The litigation to date has often been about relatively esoteric matters, but some cases could have implications after November if Trump loses. The RNC has filed lawsuits in Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina alleging the states need to remove inactive or ineligible voters from their rolls. Late last month, Republicans sued North Carolina over a favorite issue — the risk of noncitizens voting, which is rare. They contend the state wasn’t doing enough to safeguard against it.

    So far none of the claims have succeeded. But if Trump loses in those states by a narrow margin, that sort of pre-election litigation could pave the way for him to claim in court that the vote was invalid.

    The other area that could have ramifications in November and beyond is whether mail ballots arriving after Election Day can be counted. Nineteen states allow that as long as the ballots are sent before polls close. The RNC sued to overturn this provision in Nevada and Mississippi, but both cases were dismissed by judges.

    The RNC appealed those cases, and the first is scheduled to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this month. It’s the sort of issue that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Some Trump allies in 2020 hoped the court would declare him the winner, but the late-arriving mail ballot litigation at the time showed the limits of that tactic.

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state had to count mail ballots that arrived up to four days after Election Day. Republicans then appealed that ruling to the nation’s highest court, and late-arriving mail was counted separately in November 2020 while everyone waited for the Supreme Court to weigh in.

    In the end, the Supreme Court didn’t take up the case. Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, so the 10,000 late-arriving mail ballots wouldn’t have even made a difference.

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  • Prosecutor challenges Mark Meadows’s bid to move Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court

    Prosecutor challenges Mark Meadows’s bid to move Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court

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    PHOENIX (AP) — A prosecutor urged a judge on Thursday to reject former Donald Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows’ bid to move his charges in Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court, saying his actions in trying to overturn the 2020 election results weren’t part of his job at the White House.

    Meadows has asked a federal judge to move the case to U.S. District Court, arguing his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff and that he has immunity under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law trumps state law.

    The former chief of staff, who faces charges in Arizona and Georgia in what state authorities alleged was an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Trump’s favor, had unsuccessfully tried to move state charges to federal court last year in an election subversion case in Georgia.

    Prosecutor Krista Wood said Meadows’ electioneering efforts weren’t part of his official duties at the White House. “He is not authorized to meddle in the state’s administration of elections,” Wood said.

    The prosecutor pointed to messages received and sent by Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 election, including a text Meadows sent to then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey two weeks after Election Day saying former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was trying to reach the governor to talk about the election results.

    Meadows attorney George Terwilliger maintained his client’s messages and actions were part of his official duties and suggested important context about the messages was missing. “I don’t think the court can rely on those text messages,” Terwilliger said.

    While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors said Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat.

    In 2020, President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.

    While Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office had said Meadows missed the deadline for asking a court to move the charges to federal court, Meadows’ attorneys say another federal law allows for cases to be moved to federal court at a later time for good cause.

    Terwilliger said he waited to try to move Meadows’ Arizona charges to federal court until after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a July ruling that gave former presidents broad immunity from prosecution. U.S. District Judge John Tuchi, who was nominated to the federal bench by then-President Barack Obama, didn’t say when he would issue his ruling on Meadows’ request.

    Last year, Meadows tried to get his Georgia charges moved to federal court, but his request was rejected by a judge, whose ruling was later affirmed by an appeals court. The former chief of staff has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.

    The Arizona indictment also says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election. Prosecutors say Meadows also had arranged meetings and calls with state officials to discuss the fake elector conspiracy.

    Meadows and other defendants are seeking a dismissal of the Arizona case.

    Meadows’ attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people trying to get ideas in front of Trump — or “seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”

    In all, 18 Republicans were charged in late April in Arizona’s fake electors case. The defendants include 11 Republicans who had submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, another Trump aide and five lawyers connected to the former president.

    In early August, Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Giuliani, signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors that led to the dismissal of her charges. Republican activist Loraine Pellegrino also became the first person to be convicted in the Arizona case when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation.

    Meadows and the other remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges in Arizona.

    Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.

    Eleven people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors had met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state in the 2020 election.

    A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

    Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

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  • Future of sports streaming market, consumer options under further scrutiny after Venu Sports ruling

    Future of sports streaming market, consumer options under further scrutiny after Venu Sports ruling

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    With the U.S. Open tennis tournament beginning Monday and college football kicking into high gear, this was supposed to be the week when some expected the Venu Sports streaming service to have a soft launch at least.

    Instead, the joint venture between ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been sidelined by a federal court’s preliminary injunction, and its future is very much up in the air.

    The Aug. 16 ruling by United States District Judge Margaret M. Garnett that Fubo was likely to be successful in proving that the joint venture would violate antitrust laws put the brakes on what was an ambitious timeline to get Venu Sports up and running. ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu announced their plans to offer a sports streaming service on Feb. 6. They immediately got questions from competitors and sports leagues on how it would work.

    Irwin Kishner, co-chair of the Sports Law Group with New York law firm Herrick, said getting the service up and running in less than seven months would be a tall order.

    “You can certainly put a deadline to try to get things going. But, I think that was somewhat aspirational as opposed to likely,” Kishner said.

    Garnett has scheduled a pretrial conference for Sept. 12. According to a memo Garnett sent to both parties on Monday, if the case goes to trial, the earliest it would begin is late February.

    Kishner said he wasn’t surprised about the ruling given the Biden Administration’s priority on antitrust matters.

    “Having three of the biggest providers of sports content in one equity, you can certainly make a colorful argument that might thwart competition,” Kishner said.

    Venu Sports would include offerings from 14 linear networks — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS, truTV — as well as ESPN+.

    Before the case goes to trial, though, streaming companies and cable and satellite providers hope the ruling will advance discussions regarding how media companies sell their content. Will it continue to be bundling — where if a consumer wants to get ESPN, they often have to subscribe to a package that includes Disney Channel, Freeform, FX and National Geographic — or will there eventually be a day when a viewer can subscribe to ESPN only?

    DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun said in a letter to subscribers last week that collaboration between programmers and distributors will be necessary to reverse the tide of cord cutting.

    “We agree with Venu’s shrouded market-sizing estimates that were unearthed during the trial that recognize an ‘ocean of opportunity’ to offer consumers skinnier packages. However, we disagree with Venu’s anti-competitive strategy and believe that TV distributors should have the same flexibility to thrive alongside (direct-to-consumer) services by offering genre-based packages that extend beyond sports to include locals, entertainment, news, family, movies, and others,” Thun wrote.

    It is debatable whether bundling or a la carte offerings offer the greatest savings. For example, Venu Sports announced on Aug. 1 that it would be available for $42.99 per month. The lowest-priced tiers of Paramount+ and Peacock would be a combined $14 per month.

    Recent spats between cable companies and networks over distribution agreements have also centered recently on companies trying to get the networks to include direct-to-consumer offerings in the agreements.

    In last year’s agreement between Charter Communications and Walt Disney Company, Disney included the Disney+ Basic ad-supported offering, ESPN+ and ESPN’s future direct-to-consumer service to customers of certain Spectrum TV packages.

    Anthony Palomba, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, noted that networks are competing not only against themselves but also with other streaming companies, TikTok, YouTube and Twitch for attention, especially among younger consumers.

    “The problem with the media industry is that, with more competition, there may be a drive to push down prices … but because these firms are competing with user-generated content firms, this creates a really difficult dynamic for them to navigate,” Palomba said. “How do you create further competition against these firms? By spending more? Getting more celebrities? People continue to be drawn to user-generated content regardless of these tactics. Until this issue is resolved, I believe you’ll see further attempts at consolidation and bundling across the media and entertainment sectors.”

    The Fubo/Venu case is one of many high-profile court proceedings involving major media deals.

    Warner Bros. Discovery has sued the NBA for not accepting its matching offer for one of the packages in the league’s upcoming 11-year media rights deal. The league filed a motion in New York state court in Manhattan last week to have the case dismissed.

    Attorneys representing “NFL Sunday Ticket” subscribers are expected to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals a judge’s decision to overturn a jury’s $4.7 billion verdict in the class-action lawsuit against the NFL. It will be the second time since the case started in 2015 that it has gone to the 9th Circuit.

    Diamond Sports — which owns 18 networks under the Bally Sports banner — has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed for protection in March 2023. Diamond, though, is inching closer to having its financial affairs in order, including finalizing deals to continue carrying games for 22 NBA and NHL teams.

    ___

    AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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  • A top Delta executive is leaving weeks after the airline’s slow response to tech outage

    A top Delta executive is leaving weeks after the airline’s slow response to tech outage

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    Delta Air Lines said Friday that its chief operating officer will leave the company next week after a little more than a year in the airline business to take another job.

    The departure of Michael Spanos comes a few weeks after Delta canceled thousands of flights during a botched recovery from a global technology outage,

    Spanos spent most of his career at PepsiCo and the Pepsi Bottling Group and was CEO of amusement-park operator Six Flags Entertainment before joining Delta in June 2023. He is one of three executive vice presidents of the Atlanta-based airline.

    In a regulatory filing, Delta gave no reason for Spanos’ departure — only that he would receive severance benefits that he is due under the company’s plan for officers and directors. Spanos received compensation valued at $8.6 million last year, mostly in stock awards.

    CEO Ed Bastian said in a note to employees that Spanos told him “earlier this summer” he was considering leaving Delta. A spokesperson said this happened before the technology outage.

    Bastian wrote that Spanos will move in September to another company, which he did not identify. The CEO credited Spanos with improving Delta’s performance, and added that Delta will not name a new chief operating officer.

    Chief operating officers typically run the day-to-day affairs of a company and report directly to the CEO. They are often considered the second-ranking executive, but at Delta, President Glen Hauenstein is generally seen as playing that role.

    Delta was hit harder than any other U.S. carrier by last month’s technology outage that started with a faulty upgrade from cybersecurity-software provider CrowdStrike to computers running on Microsoft Windows.

    Other airlines recovered within a couple days, but Delta canceled about 7,000 flights over five days as it struggled to reposition crews and match them with planes.

    The U.S. Transportation Department is investigating the meltdown, and Delta is pursuing $500 million in damages from CrowdStrike and Microsoft. The tech companies say Delta refused help and made misleading claims.

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