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  • First on CNN: New bipartisan bill in Senate could address TikTok security concerns without a ban | CNN Business

    First on CNN: New bipartisan bill in Senate could address TikTok security concerns without a ban | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Five US senators are set to reintroduce legislation Wednesday that would block companies including TikTok from transferring Americans’ personal data to countries such as China, as part of a proposed broadening of US export controls.

    The bipartisan bill led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis would, for the first time, subject exports of US data to the same type of licensing requirements that govern the sale of military and advanced technologies. It would apply to thousands of companies that rely on routinely transferring data from the United States to other jurisdictions, including data brokers and social media companies.

    The legislation comes amid a flurry of proposals to regulate how TikTok and other companies may handle the sensitive and valuable data of Americans — not just their names, email addresses and phone numbers but also potentially their behavioral data such as location information, search and browsing histories and personal interests.

    “Massive pools of Americans’ sensitive information — everything from where we go, to what we buy and what kind of health care services we receive — are for sale to buyers in China, Russia and nearly anyone with a credit card,” Wyden said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill would turn off the tap of data to unfriendly nations, stop TikTok from sending Americans’ personal information to China, and allow nations with strong privacy protections to strengthen their relationships.”

    Lawmakers have scrutinized TikTok, in particular, for its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Much of the existing legislation addressing TikTok at the federal and state level has focused on bans of the app. But Wyden’s bill subjecting US data to export licensing could address the issue without wading into the thorny legal issues surrounding a potential ban, an aide said, and simultaneously avoid giving broad new powers to the executive branch.

    Wednesday’s legislation, known as the Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Surveillance Act, does not identify TikTok by name. Instead, it directs the Commerce Department to maintain lists of countries that are considered trustworthy and untrustworthy for the purposes of receiving US data.

    There would be no restrictions applied to personal information transferred to trustworthy states, and no restrictions on individual internet users’ own transfers of their personal data, but companies seeking to transfer Americans’ personal information to countries outside of the trustworthy list would be required to apply for a license. Transfers to countries on the untrustworthy list would be automatically prohibited unless companies could prove they have a valid reason for a transfer, according to a copy of the bill text reviewed by CNN.

    Factors the Commerce Department would need to consider when building its lists include whether a country has enough of its own privacy safeguards — reflected in laws, regulations and norms — to prevent sensitive US data from being transferred further to one of the untrustworthy countries. Another factor includes whether a country has engaged in “hostile foreign intelligence operations, including information operations, against the United States,” language that appears to refer to China, Russia and other foreign adversaries.

    The Commerce Department would also be authorized to identify the specific types of information that would be subject to licensing requirements, based on their sensitivity, as well as how much information a company could transfer to a non-approved country before needing a license.

    A previous version of the bill was introduced last summer. The newest version, the Wyden aide said, includes fresh language that targets TikTok indirectly by prohibiting data transfers from one company to a parent company that may receive data requests by a hostile foreign government, when the company holds data on more than one million users.

    TikTok has faced criticism from US officials who say the company’s links to China pose a national security risk. TikTok has said it has never received a request for US user data from the Chinese government and would never comply with such a request.

    TikTok has also said it is working on securing US user data by storing it on servers controlled by Oracle and by establishing special US access protocols to prevent unauthorized use of the information.

    Should TikTok abide by its plan, known as Project Texas, Wednesday’s legislation would not affect the company, according to the Wyden aide, but if TikTok or ByteDance did seek to move US user data to China, then those transfers would potentially be subject to the proposed Commerce Department restrictions.

    Congress has made several attempts in recent months to address data transfers to foreign adversaries. In February, House lawmakers advanced a bill that would all but require the Biden administration to ban TikTok over national security concerns about the app. The next month, Senate lawmakers introduced a bill that would give the Commerce Department wide latitude to assess all foreign-linked technologies and to take virtually any measures, up to and including imposing a nationwide ban, to restrict their domestic use.

    Those bills have provoked a backlash from industry and civil liberties groups, as well as among some fellow lawmakers. Among the concerns are their potential impact on Americans’ First Amendment rights and a potential conflict with laws facilitating the free flow of media to and from foreign rivals. Other concerns include whether the breadth of the legislation could give the US government too much power and whether it could end up harming industries that are not the target of the legislation.

    The new bill includes language requiring more input from privacy, civil rights and civil liberties experts, said Justin Sherman, founder and CEO of the research firm Global Cyber Strategies and a senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy who has seen the bill.

    “You don’t load up Excel sheets in a shipping crate and send them to a foreign port,” Sherman said, but data transfers are a “hugely and often ignored problem in national security.”

    “We need to get beyond just looking at a couple mobile apps and platforms, and start looking at all parts of this ecosystem, including how data gets sold and transferred,” Sherman added, “and this bill takes an important look at that issue.”

    Other senators co-sponsoring Wednesday’s legislation include Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. A companion bill in the House will also be unveiled Wednesday, sponsored by Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson and California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo.

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  • Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

    Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday rejected claims the Justice Department interfered in the Hunter Biden probe as the White House insisted President Joe Biden wasn’t involved in his son’s business dealings.

    In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department. The whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son, that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states and that Garland denied a request from Weiss to be named as a special counsel.

    Hunter Biden has since agreed to plead guilty next month to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge. His attorney, Chris Clark, on Friday said “any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible.”

    When pushed on the allegations during a news conference Friday, Garland said that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

    “I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

    Garland rejected any claim that he would not appoint Weiss as a special counsel, stating that “Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.”

    “Mr. Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have,” Garland added. “He had and has complete authority, as I said, to bring a case anywhere he wants in his discretion.”

    Additionally, Garland said he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

    Later Friday, the White House wouldn’t say whether Biden was present in July 2017 when Hunter Biden is alleged to have texted a Chinese business partner, claiming he was sitting with his father, and using that claim as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    The questions referred to a portion of the testimony in which a IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document the whistleblower gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

    The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

    The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pressed repeatedly on the issue, referred questions to the White House Counsel’s Office, insisting the matter had been addressed.

    Ian Sams, a spokesman for the counsel’s office, said in an email that Joe Biden hadn’t been in business with his son. He did not specifically provide information about Joe Biden’s whereabouts when Hunter texted the Chinese businessman on July 30, 2017.

    “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son,” he wrote. “As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved.”

    Asked whether Joe Biden had been involved in coercive business dealings by his son, Jean-Pierre said: “I appreciate the question. I believe my colleague at the White House counsel has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear. I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared.”

    In a statement Friday, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark suggested the messages were written at a time when the president’s son was suffering from addiction.

    “The DOJ investigation covered a period which was a time of turmoil and addiction for my client. Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family,” the statement read.

    President Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business arrangements.

    “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

    This story and its headline have been updated with additional developments on Friday.

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  • Why there won’t be a backlash against the Supreme Court this time | CNN Politics

    Why there won’t be a backlash against the Supreme Court this time | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court handed down several key rulings this past week that dismayed liberals. Chief among them was the court’s decision to disallow colleges and universities from using race or ethnicity as a specific factor in admissions. The court also found that President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan was unconstitutional and that a Colorado web designer could refuse to create websites that celebrate same-sex weddings over religious objections.

    Unlike last year, when the Supreme Court greatly upset liberals by overturning Roe v. Wade, this year’s big rulings by the justices are unlikely to spark a major backlash from the public at large.

    This is well reflected in the public polling. Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, had become massively popular.

    Right before the decision to overturn Roe leaked in May 2022, a Fox News poll found that 63% of registered voters were opposed to such a move while 27% supported it. An ABC News/Washington Post poll put the split at 54% wanting the court to uphold Roe and 28% wanting the decision overturned.

    This majority of Americans who wanted abortion to be legal nationally have maintained their stance since the Supreme Court officially struck down Roe in June 2022. Since that time, abortion supporters have won every related measure placed on the ballot across the country – from deep-blue states like California to ruby-red ones like Kentucky.

    California is an important state to note because voters there faced a 2020 ballot measure to consider the use of race, sex or ethnicity in government institutions (such as education). A clear majority, 57%, voted against allowing state and local entities to consider such factors in public education, employment and contracting decisions.

    When a state that voted for Biden by nearly 30 points is against affirmative action, it shouldn’t be surprising that the nation as a whole is.

    A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that 50% of Americans disapproved of certain colleges and universities taking race and ethnicity into account in admissions decisions to increase diversity. Only 33% approved of the practice.

    This Pew poll is no outlier. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the court decided its case showed that 52% of Americans approved of the decision, while 32% were opposed.

    Some polling before the ruling had shown even more opposition: 70% of Americans in a recent CBS News/YouGov survey indicated that the Supreme Court should not allow colleges to consider race and ethnicity in admissions.

    But perhaps what’s most interesting isn’t how many people are for or against considering race in college admissions. Rather, it’s how many people simply didn’t care enough to pay close attention to the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court.

    When explicitly given the option, a majority (55%) said in a May Marquette University Law School poll that they hadn’t heard enough to form an opinion about the case. (Those who had heard enough were against allowing colleges to use race in admissions.)

    This is quite different from March 2022, when just 30% of Americans hadn’t heard enough to form an opinion about the court potentially overturning Roe v. Wade, when asked the same question by Marquette but about the abortion case. (A plurality of those who had heard enough didn’t want the court to overturn Roe.)

    It’s hard for an issue to galvanize voters when they aren’t paying attention to it.

    The same holds true for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan that the court blocked. A USA Today/Ipsos poll from April indicated that 52% of Americans were familiar with the case and a mere 16% were very familiar with it. (Those who had student loans were more familiar at 71%, though that’s a fairly low percentage for something that could affect them directly.)

    Possibly because of that low familiarity, the percentage of Americans who favor or oppose canceling certain student debt differs greatly depending on how the question is worded. When Marquette didn’t mention Biden or the government specifically in its May poll, a majority (63%) said they favored forgiveness of up to $20,000. It was a much lower 47% in the Ipsos poll.

    Surveys that did identify the proposal as Biden’s plan tend to be in the same ballpark, with a split public and a sizable percentage unsure.

    The ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 45% approved of the court striking down Biden’s student debt plan, with 40% disapproving. About a sixth (16%) of the public was undecided.

    This jibes with polling before the court’s decision was announced. An NBC News poll from last year showed that 43% said Biden’s plan was a good idea compared with 44%, who said it was a bad idea. Just over 10% had no opinion.

    The USA Today/Ipsos survey found that 43% of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to allow the government’s student loan forgiveness plan to move forward, while 40% did not. Another 17% had no opinion.

    (I should point out that those with student debt were more likely to want government forgiveness in all these surveys, though about 80% of Americans don’t have student loan debt.)

    The public was similarly split about the court ruling in favor of the Colorado web designer who refuses to make wedding websites for same-sex couples over religious objections. According to the ABC News/Ipsos poll, 43% of Americans agreed with the court’s decision, 42% disagreed and 14% were undecided.

    There was limited polling on this case before the ruling, though none of it indicated massive opposition. A majority (60%) in a Pew poll that specifically mentioned “wedding websites” and “same-sex marriages” indicated they believed business owners should be allowed to refuse services if it violated their religious or personal beliefs.

    The polling on Roe v. Wade didn’t look anything like this last year. There were no close splits in opinion. People were consistently against overturning Roe, and they cared a lot about it. This led to a historically strong performance for the party in the White House during the 2022 midterm elections and a major backlash against the Supreme Court.

    The current polling on affirmative action in college admissions, Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and allowing people to opt out of certain services to married LGBTQ couples if they believe it goes against their religion suggests that court’s opinions on those issues aren’t likely to have a similar impact.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

    Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

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    Nairobi, Kenya
    CNN
     — 

    Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.

    In late May, the former employees, who were based in the Ghanaian capital Accra, accepted Twitter’s

    (TWTR)     offer to pay them three months worth of severance, the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have not received the money or any further communication, the sources said.

    “They literally ghosted us,” one former Twitter Africa employee told CNN.

    “Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms.”

    The former employees say they reluctantly agreed to the severance package without benefits, even though it was less than what colleagues elsewhere received.

    “Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” another former employee told CNN.

    The former employees spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they said they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their exit terms.

    According to Carla Olympio, an attorney who is representing the former employees, the last communication from Twitter or its lawyers was in May, shortly after settlement was agreed.

    CNN reached out to Twitter for comment on the status of the severance package for the former employees in the Ghana office but received an automated response – a poop emoji. It’s unclear whether Twitter still has a media relations department.

    In March, Musk tweeted that Twitter would respond to all press inquiries with the poop emoji. He completed a deal to buy the social media platform in October.

    CNN also asked Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations for comment. A spokesperson said they are investigating the claims.

    Whether Ghanaian authorities can compel Twitter to comply with the settlement is uncertain. The former employees and their attorney say the offer was never finalized.

    The dozen or so team members were laid off just four days after the social network opened a physical office in Accra last November.

    Some of them said they had moved to Ghana from other African nations, and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country.

    “Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” Olympio said.

    Twitter and Musk face multiple lawsuits where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staffers what they are owed.

    Last week, a former US employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company didn’t pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised last November prior to mass layoffs.

    The plaintiff said Twitter promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, the plaintiff said they received a total of three months of pay, according to the lawsuit. In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

    In April, Musk told the BBC more than 6,000 people had been laid off since he completed his acquisition of the company in late October.

    “We’re exploring our options with respect to causes of action against Twitter in various jurisdictions including Ghana,” Olympio told CNN.

    Twitter did not open negotiations with the African team until after CNN reported in November that they had been offered separation terms that differed from those offered to departing staff in Europe and North America.

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  • US Supreme Court faces ‘outright defiance’ from Alabama | CNN Politics

    US Supreme Court faces ‘outright defiance’ from Alabama | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    It was a legitimate surprise when the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court ordered Alabama’s conservative-dominated state government last month to redraw its congressional map and include either a second majority-Black congressional district or something quite close to it.

    It may be equally surprising that Alabama appears to have said no.

    Instead of simply complying with the Supreme Court’s order in the Allen v. Milligan case, Alabama’s legislature redrew the congressional map to lower the Black voting-age population in the existing Democratic seat held by Rep. Terri Sewell from about 55% to just over 50% and then increased a second district’s Black population percentage to about 40%.

    The new map approved by Alabama’s legislature and governor will go before federal courts for review in August, so this story is far from over.

    And it will combine with fights over congressional maps in other states, especially New York, in such a way that control of the House could very much be at stake.

    Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, seemed to defend the legislature’s insolence in the face of the federal courts’ orders when it approved the new map Friday.

    “The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.

    CNN’s Dianne Gallagher noted in her report that the old congressional map was invalidated by a three-judge federal district court panel that included two judges nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump.

    They concluded the plan by which Alabamians selected their congressional delegation in 2022 likely violated the Voting Rights Act because Black voters have “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”

    Before the 2022 midterm election, the US Supreme Court had tabled action on Alabama’s map, which helped Republicans win the barely there four-seat House majority they currently hold.

    Gallagher and CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote last month that the Allen v. Milligan decision could have consequences for other states and reignite a series of lawsuits in multiple states.

    “Outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s order,” is how Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, described the new map to CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.

    “In this moment, it is up to our federal courts to protect Black voters and also to protect their own authority here,” she later added.

    The background here is that Alabama’s population is about 27% Black, but the Black population in the state is focused on a number of counties that are overwhelmingly African American – an area known as the state’s Black Belt, although it is named for the area’s fertile soil. The interest of giving the voters of the Black Belt, many of whom are Black, representation in Congress, is all over the Supreme Court’s decision.

    Coincidentally, earlier this year, President Joe Biden named Alabama’s Black Belt, site of many key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, as a National Heritage Area.

    To Nelson, the math suggests that since Black Alabamians represent about a quarter of the state’s population, they should get representation from more than one of the seven lawmakers representing Alabama in Congress.

    But the issue is larger than simple math since Alabama, both historically and currently, is marked by polarized voting conditions.

    “This is a mandate by civil rights laws to make sure that there’s fairness in our systems, that Black voters and other voters who have been historically discriminated against have an opportunity to have representatives who will speak to their interests and give voice to their concerns,” she said.

    Alabama had asked the Supreme Court to essentially nullify Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, something many court watchers thought the conservative majority was primed to execute.

    But Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined liberals on the court to throw out the Alabama map.

    The Supreme Court also rejected out of hand the idea that the Gulf Coast area represents a community of interest on par with the Black Belt. The new map, according to the state attorney general’s office, still tries to keep the Gulf Coast community together in a single district.

    In a statement, the attorney general’s office argued the new map is fair and complies with the principles of the Voting Rights Act and seeks to unite the Black Belt counties.

    The other political story here is that, like most congressional districts nationwide, not one of the districts in which Alabamians voted in the 2022 midterm elections was even relatively competitive. The only winning candidate who got less than two-thirds of the vote was the Democrat, Sewell. And she still got more than 63% of the heavily Democratic district.

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  • The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

    The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Opportunity is ripe for Republicans to win back the Senate next year – if they can land the candidates to pull it off.

    The GOP needs a net gain of one or two seats to flip the chamber, depending on which party wins the White House in 2024, and it’s Democrats who are defending the tougher seats. Democrats hold seven of the 10 seats that CNN ranks as most likely to flip party control next year – and the top three are all in states former President Donald Trump carried twice.

    But this spring’s recruitment season, coming on the heels of a midterm cycle marred by problematic GOP candidates, will likely go a long way toward determining how competitive the Senate map is next year.

    National Republicans got a top pick last week, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing his Senate bid in West Virginia – the seat most likely to flip party control in 2024. (Rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising figures and historical data about how states and candidates have performed.) But Justice appears headed for a contentious and expensive primary. And in many other top races, the GOP hasn’t yet landed any major candidates.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are thankful that most of their vulnerable incumbents are running for reelection, while a high-profile House member has largely cleared the field for one of their open Senate seats.

    Pollster asked Democrats who they like for 2024. Here’s what he found

    The unknown remains West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Responding to Justice’s candidacy, Manchin – who has said he’ll decide about running by the end of the year – had this to say to CNN about a potentially messy GOP primary: “Let the games begin.”

    The anti-tax Club for Growth’s political arm has already committed to spending $10 million to back West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. And tensions between the club, which has turned against Trump, and more establishment Republicans could become a feature of several top Senate races this cycle, especially with the National Republican Senatorial Committee weighing more aggressive involvement in primaries to weed out candidates it doesn’t think can win general elections.

    In the 2022 cycle, most of Trump’s handpicked candidates in swing states stumbled in the general election. But the former president picked up a key endorsement this week from NRSC Chair Steve Daines. The Montana Republican has stayed close with Trump, CNN has previously reported, in a bid to ensure he’s aligned with leadership.

    Democrats defending tough seats have previously used GOP primaries to their advantage. Manchin survived in 2018 in part because his opponent was state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. That wasn’t an accident. Democrats had spent big attacking one of his primary opponents to keep him out of the general election.

    Last year’s midterms underscored that candidates really do matter after Republicans failed to harness favorable national winds in some key races. In a presidential year, the national environment is likely to loom large, especially with battleground states hosting key Senate races. It will also test whether some of the last remaining senators who represent states that back the opposite parties’ presidential nominees can hold on.

    President Joe Biden, who carried half of the states on this list in 2020, made official last week that he’s running for reelection. The GOP presidential field is slowly growing, with Trump still dominating most primary polling. It’s too early to know, however, what next year’s race for the White House will look like or which issues, whether it’s abortion or crime or the economy, will resonate.

    So for now, the parties are focused on what they can control: candidates. Even though the 2024 map is stacked in their favor, Republicans can’t win with nobody. But there’s plenty of time for would-be senators to get into these races. Some filing deadlines – in Arizona, for example – aren’t for nearly another year. And there’s an argument to be made that well-funded or high-profile names have no reason to get in early.

    Here’s where the Senate map stands 18 months from Election Day.

    Incumbent: Democrat Joe Manchin

    joe manchin 2024 senate race

    Sen. Joe Manchin isn’t one to shy away from attention – and he’s getting plenty of it by keeping everyone guessing about his reelection plans. Assuming he runs, Democrats will have a fighting chance to defend this seat in a state Trump carried by 39 points in 2020. The senator has repeatedly broken with the White House – on Biden’s first veto and the White House’s debt ceiling stance, for example.

    Without Manchin, Democrats know West Virginia is all but lost. Manchin raised only $371,000 in this year’s first fundraising quarter, which ended March 31, and Republicans are already attacking him, with One Nation – the issue advocacy group aligned with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell – launching an ad campaign tying him to the Inflation Reduction Act. (The senator went on Fox News last week and threatened to back a repeal of his own bill.) Still, Manchin has nearly $10 million in the bank, as well as outside cover from Democratic-allied groups.

    Republicans will likely be spending quite a lot of time and money attacking each other in the primary. The Club for Growth’s political arm is backing House Freedom Caucus member Alex Mooney, while Gov. Jim Justice will likely have backup from GOP party leaders. The wealthy governor, who was first elected as a Democrat before switching parties in 2017, has high name ID and is close with Trump. Mooney also has Trumpian credentials, having won a member-on-member House primary last year with the former president’s endorsement. The congressman is already attacking the governor in an ad as “Liberal Jim Justice,” using imagery of his opponent in a face mask.

    Incumbent: Democrat Jon Tester

    jon tester 2024 senate race

    Democrats got welcome news with Sen. Jon Tester’s announcement that he’s running for a fourth term – and that he raised $5 million in the first quarter (more than a million of which came from small-dollar donors). Tester is running in Trump country – Montana backed the former president by 16 points in 2020 – but like Manchin he has a well-established brand to draw on, which includes breaking with Biden when he needs to. (Tester also voted for a GOP resolution to roll back a Biden administration ESG investing rule, which prompted the president’s first veto.) The GOP field is still taking shape. Republicans are interested in retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, a businessman with the potential to self-fund, and state Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

    Another potential candidate is Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester in 2018 after winning the GOP nomination with the help of the Club for Growth, which has recently been at odds with Trump. Rosendale made a telling appearance at Mar-a-Lago in April for Trump’s post-indictment speech after snubbing the former president’s pick for House speaker in January when he didn’t back Kevin McCarthy. The congressman hasn’t said yet whether he’s running, but he raised only about $127,000 in the first quarter of the year – well short of what he’d need for a competitive Senate bid.

    Incumbent: Democrat Sherrod Brown

    sherrod brown 2024 senate race

    Sen. Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide race in Ohio over the past decade, so the big question for 2024 is whether he can defy expectations again in his red-trending state. Trump has twice carried the Buckeye State by 8 points, and his handpicked candidate, JD Vance, defeated Democrat Tim Ryan by about 6 points in last year’s Senate race despite the Republican’s campaign struggles.

    Brown is much more of an institution in Ohio than Ryan, and he’s built up relationships not just among White working-class communities but urban centers too. He raised $3.6 million in the first quarter of the year. Two wealthy Republicans are in the race to try to take him on – businessman Bernie Moreno, whom Trump has praised, and state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Both men ran for Senate in 2022, but Moreno dropped out ahead of the primary. Dolan, who ran as a moderate conservative less than enthralled with Trump and his election lies, finished third in a crowded field. Rep. Warren Davidson and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose could also jump into this year’s GOP race.

    Incumbent: Independent Kyrsten Sinema

    kyrsten sinema 2024 senate race

    Arizona has the potential to be one of the most interesting races this cycle, but a lot depends on whether Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema runs for reelection. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who’s running to her left, outraised the incumbent $3.8 million to $2.1 million in the first quarter. Sinema has a clear cash-on-hand advantage – nearly $10 million to Gallego’s $2.7 million.

    Earlier this month, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb became the first major Republican to enter the race, leaning into a law enforcement message. But the filing deadline isn’t until next April, so there’s still plenty of time for others to jump in. Some Republicans are anxious about the potential entry of Kari Lake, last year’s losing gubernatorial nominee, who still maintains she won. She’d likely be popular with the base in a state that’s become a hotbed of election denialism, but her candidacy could pose a serious risk for the party in a general election. The NRSC recently pushed her to move away from election conspiracy theories, CNN reported.

    Former attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh and Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost last year’s gubernatorial primary to Lake, have also met with NRSC officials, CNN reported. Also in the mix could be Republican businessman Jim Lamon, who lost the party nod for the state’s other Senate seat last year. Republicans would like to see Sinema run because she and Gallego would likely split the vote on the left. But they’ve got their work cut out from them in landing a candidate who can appeal to the GOP base without alienating the general electorate in a state that narrowly backed Biden in 2020.

    Incumbent: Democrat Jacky Rosen

    jacky rosen 2024 senate race

    Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is, as expected, running for reelection, touting her middle-class roots and bipartisan legislative wins in an announcement video in April. “Nevada is always a battleground,” the senator says – a reminder that Democrats don’t want to take this state for granted. Rosen was first elected in 2018 – a midterm year – by 5 points. Last fall, her Democratic colleague, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than a point.

    The state tends to get bluer in presidential years, but Biden and Hillary Clinton both carried it only by about 2 points. Republicans don’t yet have a major name in the race, but they’re watching two defeated candidates from last year – Army veteran Sam Brown, who lost the GOP Senate nod, and attorney April Becker, who lost a bid for a redrawn House seat.

    Incumbent: Democrat Tammy Baldwin

    tammy baldwin 2024 senate race

    Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced earlier this month that she’s running for a third term, giving Democrats an automatic advantage for now over Republicans, who have no declared candidates in this perennial battleground state. Baldwin raised $2.1 million in the first quarter, ending with nearly $4 million in the bank.

    Establishment Republicans have expressed strong interest in Rep. Mike Gallagher. Even Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently bought Senate web domain names, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he thought his fellow congressman should run. But there’s little sign that Gallagher, the chair of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is interested. Two businessmen with the ability to tap into or raise significant resources could be in the mix – Eric Hovde, who lost the GOP Senate nomination in 2012, and Scott Mayer. And then there’s controversial former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who could draw support in a GOP primary but seriously complicate a general election for Republicans.

    Democrats are feeling good about the recent state Supreme Court election, which the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points, flipping control of the bench to liberals. Still, the competitiveness of this state – which Biden carried by about half a point after Trump had won it by a similar margin four years earlier – shouldn’t be underestimated.

    Incumbent: Democrat Debbie Stabenow (retiring)

    debbie stabenow 2024 senate race

    Rep. Elissa Slotkin has mostly cleared the Democratic field of major rivals in the race to succeed retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow in another Midwestern battleground state. A few less-known names are in, and actor Hill Harper – of “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY” – could throw his hat in the Democratic ring, but it’ll be hard to rival Slotkin’s fundraising. She brought in about $3 million in the first quarter.

    On the GOP side, State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder announced her campaign in mid-February, but she hadn’t raised much money by the end of the first quarter. Former Rep. Peter Meijer could run, but his vote to impeach Trump would likely kill his prospects of winning the nomination – unless it were a heavily splintered primary field. Other possible GOP names include businessman Kevin Rinke and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who finished second and sixth, respectively, in last year’s gubernatorial primary. (Craig was a write-in candidate after failing to make the ballot because of invalid signatures.)

    Michigan Democrats did well last year – retaining the top three executive offices and flipping the state legislature – and they feel optimistic about their chances in the state in a presidential year. Still, Biden only won the state by less than 3 points. And while Slotkin has experience winning tough races, a lot may depend on whom the GOP nominates and which way the national winds are blowing next year.

    Incumbent: Democrat Bob Casey

    bob casey 2024 senate race

    Democrats breathed another sigh of relief when Sen. Bob Casey, who disclosed a prostate cancer diagnosis earlier this year, announced that he was running for a fourth term. A former state auditor general and treasurer and the son of a two-term governor, Casey is well known in the Keystone State. He most recently won reelection by 13 points against a hard-line congressman who had tied himself closely to Trump.

    This year, national Republicans are eyeing former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who lost the GOP nomination for Senate last year, as a top-tier recruit. Upon Casey’s reelection announcement, McCormick immediately attacked him, saying in a statement that a vote for Casey was “a vote for Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer.” The wealthy Republican has been on tour promoting his new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” and has hired staff but has yet to launch a campaign.

    And consternation remains among national Republicans that losing 2022 gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano could jump into the race. An election denier who lost by 15 points last fall, Mastriano could jeopardize the race for Republicans. His candidacy would likely inspire a concerted effort by national Republicans to defeat him in the primary.

    Incumbent: Republican Ted Cruz

    ted cruz 2024 senate race

    Texas and Florida – both in a far different category of competitiveness compared with the rest of the states on this list – are trading places this month. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is running for reelection after passing on another presidential bid. He raised $1.3 million in the first quarter – relatively little for a massive, expensive state – and ended March with $3.3 million in the bank. He’s proved to be a compelling boogeyman for the left, with Democrat Beto O’Rourke raising millions to try to unseat him in 2018, ultimately coming up less than 3 points short.

    After a gubernatorial loss last year, O’Rourke hasn’t made any noise about this race. But Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who raised about half a million dollars in the first quarter, is looking at it. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, is also weighing a bid, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Still, unseating Cruz in a state Trump won by nearly 6 points in 2020 will be a tall order.

    Incumbent: Republican Rick Scott

    rick scott 2024 senate race

    Sen. Rick Scott has a history of close elections – he was first elected in 2018 by a fraction of a point following two prior narrow wins for governor. But GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won commanding victories last fall, suggesting the state is getting redder.

    Democrats don’t seem to have a major candidate as yet, but whoever opposes Scott is likely to use his controversial policy proposal – released last year during his NRSC chairmanship – against him. Scott’s plan had originally proposed sunsetting all federal programs every five years, but the senator later added a carve-out for Medicare and Social Security amid backlash from his own party. His most immediate headache could come in the form of intraparty attacks along those lines – and others.

    Attorney Keith Gross has launched a primary challenge, alluding in his announcement video to Scott’s tenure as the head of a hospital chain company that the Justice Department investigated for health care fraud. While the company pleaded guilty to fraudulent Medicare billing, among other things, and paid $1.7 billion in fines, Scott wasn’t charged with a crime. It’s unclear how much of his own money Gross, who previously ran for office in Georgia as a Democrat, would put into a campaign.

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  • Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

    Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

    Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

    The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

    The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

    The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

    “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

    When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

    When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

    “It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

    Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

    Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

    “I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

    When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

    Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

    Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

    Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

    The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

    Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

    The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

    “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

    When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

    “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

    Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

    That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

    “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

    While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

    Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

    There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

    But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

    “If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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  • House passes bill to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

    House passes bill to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration’s one-time student loan forgiveness program is facing a fresh threat from House Republicans while it awaits a ruling from the Supreme Court about whether the proposal can take effect.

    The House voted Wednesday to pass a resolution seeking to block the forgiveness program as well as end the pandemic-related pause on federal student loan payments.

    Two Democrats, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, joined Republicans in voting for the bill.

    The proposed forgiveness program, which promises up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief to millions of low- and middle-income borrowers, was halted by lower courts late last year before any student debt was canceled. The pause on payments, which has been in place since March 2020, is set to end later this year.

    President Joe Biden has pledged to veto the Republican-led resolution if it passes in both the House and Senate. The administration said that the resolution would “weaken America’s middle class.”

    “The president’s plan is a good one. It’s a popular one. And it will help prevent borrowers from default when loan payments restart this summer,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier Wednesday.

    But Republicans argue that the student loan forgiveness program is unlawful and shifts the cost of the debt to taxpayers who chose not to go to college or already paid off their student loans. Blocking the program could reduce the deficit by nearly $320 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

    “President Biden’s so-called student loan forgiveness programs do not make the debt go away, but merely transfer the costs from student loan borrowers onto taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,” said Rep. Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, in a statement released when he introduced the resolution in March.

    Even though Biden has pledged to veto the bill, votes in the House and Senate could force more moderate members of the Democratic Party to take a public stance regarding the student loan forgiveness program. Some lawmakers have been critical of the proposal in the past.

    The Senate has yet to schedule a vote on the resolution, but nearly all of the 49 Republican senators have signed on as sponsors.

    Republican lawmakers introduced their joint resolution in late March, using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation.

    If the student loan forgiveness program is allowed to move forward, individual borrowers who made less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 a year could see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

    If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness.

    While the debt relief would help borrowers with student loans now, the program wouldn’t change the cost of college in the future – and some critics argue that it could even lead to an increase in tuition.

    In February, the Supreme Court heard two legal challenges to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. One was filed by six Republican-led states, and the other was brought by two student loan borrowers who did not qualify for the full benefits of the program. The individuals are backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative organization.

    The lawsuits argue that the Biden administration is abusing its power and using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to cancel student debt.

    The White House has said that it received 26 million applications before a lower court in Texas put a nationwide block on the program in November, and that 16 million of those applications have been approved for relief.

    No debt has been canceled yet. But if the Supreme Court allows the program to take effect, it’s possible the government moves quickly to forgive those debts.

    If the justices strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

    The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.

    Biden has extended the pause on federal student loan payments several times. Accounts have been frozen and most federal borrowers have not been required to make a payment for more than three years.

    But the pause is set to end later this year. The Biden administration has tied the restart date to the litigation over the separate student loan forgiveness program. Payments are set to resume 60 days after the Supreme Court issues its ruling or 60 days after June 30, whichever comes first.

    But the Biden administration has also made some lesser-known but potentially longer-lasting changes to the federal student loan system.

    New rules set to take effect in July could broaden eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is aimed at helping government and nonprofit workers. And a new income-driven repayment plan proposal is meant to lower eligible borrowers’ monthly payments and reduce the amount they pay back over time. Parts of that new repayment plan are expected to go into effect later this year.

    The Department of Education has also made it easier for borrowers who were misled by their for-profit college to apply for student loan forgiveness under a program known as borrower defense to repayment, as well as for those who are permanently disabled.

    Altogether, the Biden administration has approved more than $66 billion in targeted loan relief to nearly 2.2 million borrowers.

    This headline and story have been updated with additional information.

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  • Oversight chairman halts plan to advance Wray contempt proceedings following deal over FBI document | CNN Politics

    Oversight chairman halts plan to advance Wray contempt proceedings following deal over FBI document | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer is scrapping his plans to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress after the two sides reached an agreement over an FBI document that includes an unverified allegation that Joe Biden, while vice president, was involved in a bribery scheme involving a foreign national.

    Comer, a Kentucky Republican, accepted the FBI’s offer to allow all members on the House Oversight panel to view the internal law enforcement document he initially subpoenaed, known as an FD-1023, in exchange for halting contempt proceedings. The FBI will also make two additional documents available to Comer and the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin, according to Comer’s statement announcing the agreement. As a result of the deal, Comer removed Thursday’s scheduled committee meeting to refer Wray for contempt from the schedule.

    “Allowing all Oversight Committee members to review this record is an important step toward conducting oversight of the FBI and holding it accountable to the American people,” Comer said in a statement.

    In response to the deal, Raskin said in a statement, “Chairman Comer’s acceptance of these further accommodations comes after he has spent weeks attacking the FBI despite its extraordinary efforts to provide Committee Republicans the information they claim to seek.”

    CNN first reported the FBI’s offer earlier Wednesday.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had said earlier in the day that Comer and Wray were planning to speak Wednesday night to negotiate, and signaled that he would accept the FBI’s offer and cease contempt efforts if all committee members could view the document in question.

    “He needs to show it to every Republican and every Democrat on the committee. If he is willing to do that, then there’s not a need to have contempt. But if he doesn’t follow through with that, then there would be a need for contempt,” McCarthy said of Wray.

    Earlier this week, senior FBI officials briefed Comer and Raskin. Previously, Comer had said he wanted the FBI to actually turn the document over to him.

    While the FBI had previously declined to hand over a hard copy of the document, noting it contains unverified information from a confidential human source, the bureau said it was willing to hold a briefing with members of the panel and allow them to view the document as early as Wednesday, sources told CNN, in an effort to stave off contempt of Congress proceedings.

    The alleged bribery claims documented in the 1023 form surfaced years ago under the Trump administration and eventually became part of Delaware US Attorney David Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden, which remains ongoing, people briefed on the matter said. The 1023 includes allegations related to Hunter Biden, as well as Joe Biden, according to people familiar with matter.

    The FBI interviewed the informant, who was known to the bureau and had considered him a trusted source based on interactions in a previous investigation. Investigators were unable to corroborate the claims, but Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady, who then-Attorney General William Barr had appointed to review allegations brought to the Justice Department by Rudy Giuliani, decided to send the informant’s allegations to Weiss, who was already leading the Hunter Biden probe.

    It’s unclear what additional steps the FBI took to investigate the claims, but Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden has since narrowed in scope to focus on alleged tax violations and a possible false statement.

    The White House has denied the allegation and dismissed the GOP probe as a political stunt.

    The decision to halt contempt proceedings comes as a number of House Republicans have been pushing to hold Wray in contempt.

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a member of the Oversight Committee, told CNN she plans to vote in favor of contempt.

    “I voted to hold people in contempt up here before. If you don’t follow through with the subpoena, there are consequences to it,” she said. “They’ve stonewalled, they’ve obfuscated, they’ve bullshitted, you know what I mean? It’s like, just follow the law.”

    GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also a member of the Oversight panel, told CNN, “It’s an unclassified form. Just showing it to our chairman and to the ranking member, Congressman Raskin, that’s not enough. We subpoenaed the form. And so, the form needs to be handed over. This is his job – Chris Wray’s job.”

    “If the director of the FBI is flouting subpoenas from Congress, I’m fully supportive of every effort to enforce the subpoena,” GOP Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee told CNN.

    This story and headline have been updated to reflect additional developments.

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  • Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    With a sense of relief that the conservative Supreme Court did not use a major Alabama redistricting case to further gut the Voting Rights Act, civil rights advocates and election attorneys are preparing for a new flood of redistricting litigation lawsuits challenging political maps – especially in the South – they say discriminate against minorities.

    In the 5-4 case decided Thursday, Alabama must now draw a second majority-Black US congressional district after Republicans were sued by African American voters over a redistricting plan for the 27% percent Black state that made White voters the majority in six of the seven districts.

    The six White majority districts are represented by Republicans; the Black majority district is represented by a Democrat.

    “I don’t think it’s going to stop Republicans from drawing racist maps,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause, told CNN. “But I think that this empowers those of us pushing back and fighting that.”

    The majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by the court’s three liberals and, in most parts, by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – effectively maintained the status quo around how courts should approach Voting Rights Act lawsuits that allege a legislative map discriminates by race.

    By letting old precedent around the Voting Rights Act to stand in the case, called Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court has likely emboldened voting rights advocates to bring cases they previously thought would have been doomed.

    Several election law attorneys and voting rights advocates have suggested to CNN they believe the decision could have a ripple effect across the South, in states like Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas where cases claiming Section 2 violations are already working through the courts.

    According to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights media platform that tracks election litigation, there are 31 active federal cases involving Voting Rights Act redistricting claims similar to those in the Alabama case.

    “I suspect that there are a number of states with lawyers who were considering filing a lawsuit similar to the Milligan lawsuit, but they held off because the prospects of how everyone thought Milligan would go were so dim. But now, you’re going to have a whole range of suits filed,” said Alabama voting rights attorney J.S. “Chris” Christie, who filed one of the two lawsuits that were before the justices in the Milligan case.

    “Some of those will win, and some of them won’t. All redistricting suits are not the same,” Christie said, noting that Kavanaugh did not join an important part of Roberts’ opinion, depriving that section of a majority.

    Still, he said, “Lawyers who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged and are going to pursue those cases aggressively, knowing that the Voting Rights Act precedents are there.”

    The ruling was a shock. The right-leaning high court, sometimes in decisions penned by Roberts himself, had been on a spree of landmark rulings over the last several years that had whittled down the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And in the flurry of emergency litigation last year ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court repeatedly put on hold lower court rulings – including in the Alabama case – that would have ordered the redrawing of political maps ahead of last year’s elections, helping Republicans to narrowly reclaim the US House.

    That meant that, at least in Alabama, the election was carried out under a redistricting plan that the Supreme Court has now affirmed to be likely unlawful.

    “The fact remains that the Supreme Court previously allowed the same map that they just determined unconstitutionally, and systemically diluted Black votes be used in the 2022 election,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

    In Alabama, lower courts said early last year that the state’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. The courts ordered it redrawn in a way that was expected to produce a second majority-Black district, which would have shifted the partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from 6-1 to 5-2.

    But, in February 2022, the Supreme Court put those decisions on hold until the justices could hear and decide the case themselves.

    At the heart of the dispute in the Alabama case was the way that, under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, race was used to determine if a map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, like racial minorities. Alabama was putting forward an argument for a supposedly “race-blind” approach to VRA redistricting compliance, that if endorsed, would have defanged the provision.

    Already, the Supreme Court led by Roberts had gutted a separate provision of the VRA that required certain jurisdictions (including Alabama and other states in the South) with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies to get federal approval for the maps that they drew.

    The Supreme Court’s emergency move last year to allow the Republican-drawn Alabama map to stay in place had cascading effects in lawsuits across the country.

    Some cases, like a challenge brought to Alabama’s state legislative redistricting plan, were put on hold.

    In a Georgia case that concerned both the congressional and state legislative redistricting plans, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in at least some of the districts they were challenging, but he declined to grant the preliminary injunction, in part citing the Supreme Court’s emergency order.

    The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also froze a lower court order in a legal challenge brought against Louisiana’s congressional map that made similar arguments as the Milligan case, as Louisiana legislators had drawn just one majority-Black district of the six districts in the 33% percent Black state.

    The justices paused the case, where a federal judge was preparing to redraw the Louisiana map if the Republican lawmakers refused to do so, and said they were taking up the lawsuit but putting it on hold until the Milligan case was decided.

    Now the challengers’ lawyers in that case are anticipating that the Supreme Court will send it back to lower courts, where they were poised to prevail under the approach to VRA redistricting cases that the justices have now left undisturbed.

    Cases in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere that inched ahead while the Milligan case was pending will go to trial without the threat that the challengers would need to prove their case under a drastically different Section 2 standard.

    “If anything, we no longer need to make adjustments that we had potentially been preparing for because the state of the law remains unchanged,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Sarah Chen, whose group is involved in several challenges to Texas maps, including a lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting plan.

    “The Supreme Court did not endorse the radical changes proposed by Alabama in their arguments, the same changes that are also endorsed by opposing counsel in this Galveston redistricting matter,” Chen added.

    While challenges to statewide maps are what get the most national attention, the ruling’s effect on how the VRA is applied to local races like county commission elections and school board seats “is really going to impact voters’ everyday lives,” according to Christie, the Alabama voting rights attorney, who said that Thursday’s opinion will be “huge” in a newly filed challenge to a county commission map in the state.

    “Attorneys who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged to pursue these cases knowing that the VRA precedent is there,” he said.

    Even before they get into a courtroom, voting rights advocates see the Milligan ruling as valuable for discouraging state and local map drawers from diminishing the political power of communities of color, as it squelched expectations that the Supreme Court was about to make VRA challenges more difficult to bring.

    “I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court opinion but it remains the commitment of the Secretary of State’s Office to comply with all applicable election laws,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the Alabama case, said in a statement after the ruling.

    In North Carolina, voting rights advocates had been reeling from a major defeat with the state Supreme Court recently ruling that North Carolina courts couldn’t police partisan gerrymandering. (Litigation over the state’s congressional plan is also before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that does not concern the Voting Rights Act). They are finding a silver lining in that, thanks to Thursday’s ruling, the GOP legislators will be redrawing North Carolina’s political maps knowing Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters remain in force.

    “We would hope that they would really take this decision to heart that they would make a genuine good faith effort to comply with Section 2,” said Hilary Harris Klein, the senior counsel for voting rights with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

    Thursday’s ruling, said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “puts state legislatures and local redistricting bodies on notice that the Voting Rights Act is here to stay and if they deny communities of color the representation they deserve, that they will face lawsuits.”

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  • Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

    Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s onetime Defense secretary said Sunday that the former president should not be trusted with the nation’s secrets again should the allegations made in his federal indictment over his handling of classified documents prove true.

    “Based on his actions – again, if proven true – under the indictment by the special counsel, no,” Mark Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation security risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured,” he said.

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information.” The former president denies any wrongdoing.

    Esper’s critical remarks about his onetime boss follow damning language by another high-profile Trump administration official – former Attorney General Bill Barr – who said last week that Trump was “toast” if even half of the details in his indictment were true.

    “The revelations are very troubling, disturbing,” Esper said Sunday when asked by Tapper if Trump’s actions put America’s national security at risk. “Yes, I do. If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation. And, look, no one is above the law. And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account.”

    Trump fired Esper as his Defense secretary in November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the presidential election.

    Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said he was “not going to defend the behavior” listed in the indictment against Trump but the government would need to prove its case as the legal process moves forward.

    The Ohio Republican also said he had “grave concern” about the way documents were stored not just as it pertained to Trump but to Biden as well. A separate special counsel is leading an investigation into Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.

    ‘Grave concern’: GOP House Intel Chair on classified Trump docs – full interview

    “The chair and ranking (member) of both the House Intel and Senate Intel (committees) have seen some of the documents, both from the Biden cache and the Trump documents itself. And I can tell you that, from having looked at both of those documents, I have grave concern about both of those type of documents being out in an unsecured place,” Turner said. “Both of them included details of national security issues that should not have been outside of a controlled environment.”

    Turner also previewed a closed-door meeting Tuesday his committee will be holding with John Durham, the special counsel who concluded in a report released last month that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

    “We’re pulling him in to our committee to say, ‘OK, now that we have seen that there were abuses, that this was wrong, and that there are problems with (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) itself, what are the recommendations that you think we should pursue?’” Turner said.

    Durham is expected to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

    His 300-plus page report states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” to launch its Trump-Russia investigation but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    Durham, however, did not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

    This report has been updated with additional details.

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  • Biden marks anniversary of Dobbs decision by calling on Congress to ‘restore the protections of Roe v. Wade’ | CNN Politics

    Biden marks anniversary of Dobbs decision by calling on Congress to ‘restore the protections of Roe v. Wade’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris joined a trio of key reproductive rights activist groups to mark the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision Friday, highlighting what’s expected to be a major Biden campaign plank for the 2024 presidential election.

    “MAGA Republicans made clear that they don’t intend to stop with the Dobbs decision. No, they won’t, until they get a national ban on abortion,” Biden said, promising to issue a veto if a national ban is ever passed by Congress.

    The Biden administration and campaign have been making an all-hands-on-deck push for reproductive rights messaging this week ahead of Saturday’s anniversary of the ruling that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade, harnessing the moment on an issue that animated voters in 2022 and they believe will do so again in 2024.

    “Since that dark June day last year, each of you has worked tirelessly to fight back. In the Dobbs decision, the court, particularly – practically, dared the women of America to be heard,” Biden said.

    Biden and Harris held the event with three reproductive rights groups – EMILYs List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund – that announced they have endorsed the Biden-Harris campaign in the reelection push.

    “Your support was critical last time around. And we were so grateful for it,” Biden said, noting the organizing efforts of all three groups and how important that will be for his reelection push.

    Along with other recent endorsements from unions and climate activists, the backing of the reproductive rights groups Friday illustrates the central core of Biden’s reelection push.

    “Over the last week or so we’ve seen extraordinary support from three of the most important voices in the country coming together to get behind this campaign – organized labor, climate leaders, and all of you,” Biden said at the Mayflower hotel in Washington, DC.

    Friday’s event comes after Harris held a roundtable conversation on reproductive rights on MSNBC Tuesday and is also set to give a major speech on the Saturday anniversary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    And first lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted an emotional conversation Tuesday with four women who shared their stories of how the Dobbs decision and subsequent state bans on abortion impacted their own medical care.

    “The Dobbs decision was devastating, and Joe is doing everything he can do to fight back,” the first lady said. “But the only way that we can ensure that every woman has the fundamental freedoms she deserves is for Congress to make the protections of Roe v. Wade the law of the land once again.”

    While there are limited steps Biden can take at the executive level, he has signed multiple executive orders aimed at shoring up access to abortion rights and called on Congress to codify Roe v. Wade.

    On Friday, the president will sign an executive order strengthening access to contraception, the Biden administration told CNN. The executive order directs the secretary of Treasury, secretary of Labor, and secretary of Health and Human Services to consider guidance guaranteeing private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act covers all FDA-approved methods of contraception, in contrast to current guidance, which only mandates coverage for one contraceptive product per FDA category.

    But there is no action he can take to restore the nationwide right to an abortion.

    Still, the Biden campaign believes that reproductive rights will be a key motivator for voters, with imagery of abortion rights protesters figuring prominently in the first seconds of Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign launch video.

    In the 2022 midterm elections, about 27% of voters cited abortion as the issue most important to them, according to the preliminary results of the national and state exit polls conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

    The event also comes as the campaign begins to build coalitions and momentum around key issues important to Democratic voters. Last week, Biden attended an event rolling out an endorsement from four major environmental groups. He also held an event with gun safety activists in Connecticut. And over the weekend, he touted support from leading unions with remarks focused on the economy.

    Nearly one year ago, in the moments after the Supreme Court’s historic ruling, Biden said he was stunned by the “extreme” decision.

    “With Roe gone, let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” he warned in remarks at the White House.

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  • Impeachment push set to take center stage in House, bringing new chapter for GOP | CNN Politics

    Impeachment push set to take center stage in House, bringing new chapter for GOP | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans are preparing to let the push for potential impeachment proceedings dominate their agenda over the next few months, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces growing pressure from an increasingly restive right flank eager to take aim at President Joe Biden and his Cabinet.

    The increased focus on impeachment — with Biden’s attorney general and homeland security secretary the highest on the GOP’s list — underscores how Republicans are quickly shifting their focus to red-meat issues that could fire up their base, even as some in their conference are nervous about voter backlash over the more aggressive approach.

    Between July and September, Republicans are slated to hear high-profile testimony from a trio of Biden Cabinet officials who have been top impeachment targets on the right: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    Just this week, a new focus emerged for McCarthy when he announced that Republicans are prepared to open an impeachment inquiry into Garland if an IRS whistleblower’s claim about alleged meddling in the Hunter Biden case holds up, an idea that has been heavily promoted by the far-right bloc of his conference.

    McCarthy’s comments then set off fresh momentum. He appeared side by side with House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan on Fox News Wednesday night to reaffirm his position. And on Thursday, Jordan, along with House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith requested transcribed interviews with Department of Justice, FBI and IRS officials involved in the Hunter Biden case, including US Attorney David Weiss, the Trump-appointed attorney who oversaw the criminal investigation. Garland has rejected claims that the Justice Department improperly interfered in the probe.

    The moves come amid pressure on House GOP leaders and committee chairmen to launch official impeachment proceedings – potentially on Biden himself. House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green said he is conducting a “five phase” investigation into Mayorkas over problems at the southern border that could culminate in an impeachment recommendation to the House Judiciary Committee, which Green expects to finish by this September. His committee is also expected to include a review of Biden’s handling of the border as part of that impeachment probe.

    “We’re looking at all the things that they’re failing to do,” Green told CNN. “There’s not going to be that much of a change other than we’ll dig into the actual actions of the president in conjunction with what’s happened.”

    With patience on the right wearing out, one hardline GOP member, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, tried to force a snap floor vote last week on impeaching Biden, though Republican leaders rebuffed the effort and referred the matter to relevant committees instead.

    “We’ve been investigating this failure at the southern border now for a little while … and now the House has asked us to add the president’s actions into this,” Green said. “And we’ll dig into that too.”

    Conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has introduced a slew of impeachment articles against Biden and various Cabinet members, has also signaled she intends to force floor votes on her resolutions, meaning the issue is sure to take center stage for the House GOP in the weeks and months ahead.

    “I’ve talked to everyone here until I’m blue in the face for a long time about impeachment,” Greene told CNN.

    It all represents a new chapter for the nascent House Republican majority – and particularly for McCarthy, who has up until this point been reluctant to lean into impeachment proceedings, instead insisting that his committee chairs focus on gathering evidence and holding hearings before going down that route. And he has instead tried to channel his conference’s focus on messaging bills like energy and immigration.

    Many in McCarthy’s conference are uncertain about the new focus.

    “Impeachment should be treated in the serious matter it deserves,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Nebraska swing district and said he would review the facts before deciding how to proceed with any impeachment proceedings. “We’ve lowered the bar over the last four years, and it’s not healthy.”

    After facing backlash from conservatives for cutting a debt limit deal with Biden and as the clock ticks toward the 2024 elections, McCarthy has started to warm up to the idea of impeaching a member of Biden’s Cabinet – whether it be Garland or Mayorkas or both, according to multiple sources familiar with this thinking. The move could win over some on his right flank.

    McCarthy has also faced pressure behind closed doors as members like Greene have met with him to personally make their case for why the House GOP should launch impeachment proceedings.

    And McCarthy will need every ounce of conservative support he can get as he heads into spending season, where he may be forced to ultimately compromise with Democrats once again and fall short of the demands from the far right.

    “I think what the House is going to do, we’re going to continue to investigate. We’re going to continue to follow this chain of evidence,” Rep. Byron Donalds, a member of the hardliner House Freedom Caucus, told CNN after the IRS whistleblower testimony was revealed. “I think the evidence is leading us to clear issues of obstruction of Justice at the Department of Justice. And with the White House.”

    Impeaching a Cabinet official has only happened once in US history when William Belknap, the secretary of war, was impeached by the House before being acquitted by the Senate in 1876. But some in the GOP view the idea of charging a Cabinet member with committing a high crime or misdemeanor as an easier sell than impeaching Biden himself.

    Yet McCarthy would still have some serious work to do in wrangling the votes for impeachment, with some moderate and vulnerable House Republicans still concerned about the optics of the politically contentious move, which would be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Some of those Republican holdouts serve on the House Judiciary Committee, whose panel would be responsible for launching any official impeachment proceedings.

    “I don’t know why we have members on Judiciary that can’t vote for impeachment,” Greene told CNN.

    In the meantime, committees are expected to plug away with their investigative work. The House Oversight panel intends to conduct transcribed interviews with witnesses in the investigations into Biden’s mishandling of classified material and potential Biden family influence peddling, an Oversight Committee aide told CNN, while Weiss faces a deadline of next week to hand over documents related to the Hunter Biden probe.

    And in addition to taking aim at Biden, some key Republicans are pushing the House to take up a symbolic effort to clear Trump’s name, in just another example of how Republicans are using their power to run defense for Trump. Last week, Greene and House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik introduced a pair of resolutions to expunge both of Trump’s impeachments – something McCarthy also said he supports.

    “It is past time to expunge Democrats’ sham smear against not only President Trump’s name, but against millions of patriots across the country,” Stefanik said in a statement.

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  • Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

    Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered a slew of federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” that’s posted on the platforms.

    The injunction notes that the government can still communicate with the companies as part of efforts to curb illegal activity and address national security threats.

    The order applies to agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI as well as officials such as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

    The agencies and officials, Doughty said, are prohibited from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

    Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in the lawsuit that social media companies “include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok,” as well as a number of other online platforms.

    CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

    Meta declined to comment. CNN also reached out to Twitter, Google and TikTok for comment.

    The lawsuit brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in 2022 represents a novel way to pursue “censorship” claims accusing the Biden administration of effectively silencing conservatives by leaning on the private social media companies.

    Though Doughty hasn’t yet ruled on the merits of the two states’ claims, his order Tuesday represents their most significant victory yet in the ongoing lawsuit. The judge had previously ordered the administration to produce documents identifying government officials and the nature of their communications with social media platforms.

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  • Elizabeth Holmes could be released from prison two years earlier than expected | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes could be released from prison two years earlier than expected | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Disgraced former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes could be out of prison nearly two years earlier than expected, according to the projected release date posted by the Bureau of Prisons.

    Holmes reported to a Texas prison camp in late May after being sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison at the end of last year. The Bureau of Prisons online database now reports, however, that Holmes’ expected release date is December 29, 2032 – which would take roughly two years off of her full sentence.

    The discrepancy appears to be due to how the Bureau of Prisons calculates its estimated release date.

    A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons told CNN that the agency cannot comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but said that inmates can earn Good Conduct Time (or GCT) that is calculated into their projected release date. Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court.

    Moreover, inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, the spokesperson said, pointing to a range of other factors that could go into calculating the agency’s estimated release date, including an inmate’s participation in various prison programs. These factors that go into calculating an estimated release date are not unique to Holmes’ case, but standard for inmates.

    Holmes is currently serving out her sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a minimum security federal prison camp that is approximately 100 miles from Houston. Her request to remain free on bail while she fights to overturn her conviction was denied by an appellate court in May.

    Holmes was once an icon in the tech world, serving as a poster child for the limitless ambitions and potential of Silicon Valley. She is now one of the rare tech executives to be serving prison time after being convicted early last year on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running Theranos.

    Theranos was valued at $9 billion at its peak – making Holmes a paper billionaire. The company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy. It also came to light that Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.

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  • New lawsuit claims Elon Musk’s Twitter owes more severance to former employees | CNN Business

    New lawsuit claims Elon Musk’s Twitter owes more severance to former employees | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A former Twitter employee on Wednesday filed a new lawsuit against Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, alleging that the company failed to provide the full amount of severance it had promised employees prior to mass layoffs last November.

    The lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in California and seeks class action status, asks the court to order Musk and Twitter to pay the additional severance benefits allegedly owed to former employees, in an amount no less than $500 million.

    The complaint was brought on behalf of Courtney McMillian, a former human resources leader at Twitter who was part of the mass layoffs Musk conducted the week after he bought the company last year. It alleges that Twitter made repeated assurances to employees about its severance plan amid Musk’s takeover in an effort to retain workers. In particular, the complaint claims that Twitter had promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, Musk’s Twitter provided laid off employees with a total of three months of pay, including the state and federally mandated notice periods.

    In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

    Musk has cut around 80% of Twitter’s staff from prior to the takeover in his nine months owning the company.

    The lawsuit is just the latest legal action brought against Twitter by former employees with severance-related claims. More than 1,500 former employees have filed arbitration claims, after Twitter pushed for anyone who had signed an arbitration agreement while working at the company to pursue their claims out of court.

    But Kate Mueting, a lawyer working on the suit, said that Wednesday’s case relies on a federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, that the firm argues was exempt from Twitter’s arbitration agreement. That means that, if the suit is granted its request for class action status, former employees may be able to participate whether or not they signed the arbitration agreement.

    Twitter is also facing lawsuits from vendors, landlords and business partners who claim the company has failed to pay what they are owed, as well as music publishers who have alleged copyright infringement on the platform. A lawyer for the company last week also sent a letter threatening to sue Meta over its new rival platform, Threads.

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  • Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

    Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges related to 2020 election subversion, a stunning third time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.

    But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.

    University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen – one of the country’s leading experts on election law – said Trump still has a path to serving as president should he win reelection in 2024.

    “The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN.

    Could a president serve from prison? That’s less clear.

    “How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.

    The newest criminal counts against Trump include: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    Those are in addition to a total of 40 counts in a separate federal indictment related to the special counsel’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, as well as 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan related to an alleged hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving an adult film star.

    If Trump were to be convicted before the 2024 election and win the contest, he could try to grant himself a pardon, according to Hasen.

    “Whether he can do so is untested. The Supreme Court may have to weigh in,” Hasen said, adding that Trump could potentially appeal a conviction to the conservative Supreme Court.

    Special counsel Jack Smith told reporters that he will seek a “speedy trial,” but if Trump was to be elected before a trial concluded, he may be able dismiss it entirely.

    Robert Ray, an attorney who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, said on CNN following Trump’s June indictment in the classified documents case that the former president “would control the Justice Department” if reelected, adding that if the documents case was pending at that time, “he just dismisses the case.”

    Asked about the latest indictment, Trump defense attorney John Lauro told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he thinks a potential trial could last “nine months or a year.”

    Lauro said he will need to see the evidence but that his client deserves as much time as any other American. “Every single person in the United States is entitled to due process, including the former president,” he said.

    If Trump is convicted of a felony at the federal level or in New York, he would be barred from voting in his adoptive home state of Florida, at least until he had served out a potential sentence.

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  • Why Israel’s instability matters to the US | CNN Politics

    Why Israel’s instability matters to the US | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The pictures from Israel are incredible: seas of protesters rising up across the country.

    A general strike interrupted daily life and threatens to cripple the economy.

    The country’s defense minister has been sacked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    The flashpoint for all of this is Netanyahu’s controversial plan to change the country’s judicial system, weaken its Supreme Court and give Israel’s parliament – the Knesset, which is currently controlled by his government – more say over appointing justices.

    Netanyahu’s government acknowledged the pushback and hit a monthlong pause on that judicial overhaul plan late Monday, perhaps trying to cool things down without abandoning the plan.

    Read updates from throughout Monday.

    Frustration with the court extends beyond Netanyahu, but his effort just so happens to coincide with his trial for corruption. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and any link between the judicial changes and his trial – but not everyone takes his denials at face value.

    “He’s embraced this judicial reform movement – it’s actually a revolution movement – to try to give him the ability to stack … the Supreme Court in a way that people, Israelis generally, suspect is designed to protect him from the consequences of the prosecution, the trial that he’s now going through,” former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk noted on CNN on Monday.

    “So, it looks like it’s more of a personal agenda than a national agenda that he’s pursuing.”

    Netanyahu has defended the plan, which he argued in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper maintains the judiciary’s independence without allowing it to be “unbridled.”

    Indyk noted that other members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have their own reasons for wanting to overhaul the country’s Supreme Court.

    Far-right allies of Netanyahu don’t want the court to protect Palestinian land rights in the West Bank, Indyk said, and religious parties don’t want the court to force their orthodox religious students to serve in the army like other Israelis.

    CNN’s Hadas Gold, who has been reporting all day from the protests, has an in-depth look at the judicial overhaul effort, who supports it and why it has created so much controversy. Read her story.

    The protests have been building for months, but it is a general strike that shut down daily life and the firing by Netanyahu of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that appear to have changed the situation.

    “It’s clear that he’s lost control of the country,” Indyk said. “There’s never been a general strike like this, which is shutting down the ports, the airport, the hospitals, schools.”

    Netanyahu has few options to pull back from the judicial overhaul plan, Amir Tibon, a senior editor at the Haaretz newspaper, said on CNN International on Monday.

    “On the one hand, he’s got a coalition that is based purely on Israel’s right wing, ultra-religious, far-right nationalistic political elements,” Tibon said, noting that those elements have long wanted to curb the power of the Supreme Court, which they see as a liberalizing force in Israel that has pushed for LGBTQ and women’s rights in the country.

    “On the other hand, the people protesting in the streets in Israel against this judicial overhaul, this is really the backbone of the Israeli economy,” Tibon said. “It’s the high-tech industry, it’s academia, a lot of people are from the high ranks of the military.”

    Gallant, before his firing, warned the country’s military could dissolve if there is a perception it is sliding away from democracy.

    Tibon envisioned another flare-up in a month if the judicial overhaul plan returns, and worried that the Knesset could be on a collision course with the courts.

    “Israel’s enemies are watching this and rubbing their hands in glee,” Indyk said. “And that affects American national security interests as well because we depend on Israel to stabilize the region.”

    President Joe Biden, who Indyk noted has a long history with Netanyahu, “needs to adopt the ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk’ approach, put his arm around Bibi (a commonly used nickname for Netanyahu) and say, listen old pal, you need to back off and you need to do it quickly – not just for the sake of Israel, which we care about deeply. But also for the sake of American national security interests.”

    Netanyahu may bristle at Americans trying to influence the judicial overhaul plan, but he has similarly gotten involved in domestic US politics. He actively campaigned in the US against the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration and got very close to former President Donald Trump, who ended it. The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has since soured.

    Efforts by the Biden administration to reinstate the deal have so far failed.

    The US subsidizes Israel’s security to the tune of billions of dollars. In addition to a 10-year agreement to give Israel $3.3 billion in financing annually, the US also spends $500 million per year on the country’s missile defense system. In fact, Israel is “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II,” according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

    Biden, like most US politicians, likes to say that US support for Israel is absolute, but there is growing frustration with Israel among his Democratic Party.

    In fact, Democrats’ sympathies are now more likely to lay with Palestinians over Israel for the first time since Gallup started tracking the issue in 2001. That shift is driven mostly by young Americans – millennials born between 1980 and 2000.

    There is more vocal opposition to Israel’s policy moves among Democratic lawmakers.

    “What Bibi is doing is alarming, appalling, and perilous for the relationship between our two countries,” Sen. Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter. “We stand for democracy.”

    The Biden administration is set to convene its second virtual summit to promote democracy this week, an incredible coincidence as it watches a key democracy struggle. Israel has been invited to participate, and Netanyahu is scheduled to partake in the summit on Wednesday, though he is not listed on the public schedule of the event. US officials familiar with the planning told CNN’s White House team that there are no plans to change Netanyahu’s participation in the event as of now.

    Ultimately, the stakes are much larger than the judicial overhaul push that has set the recent events off.

    “It’s about what is the nature of Israel,” the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “Will Israel remain a Jewish democratic state or (become) a nondemocratic … dictatorship or more religious country.”

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  • Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

    Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The New York grand jury hearing the case against Donald Trump was set to break for several weeks. The former president’s lawyers believed on Wednesday afternoon they had at least a small reprieve from a possible indictment. Trump praised the perceived delay.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had other plans.

    Thursday afternoon, Bragg asked the grand jury to return an historic indictment against Trump, the first time that a current or former US president has been indicted. The surprise move was the final twist in an investigation that’s taken a long and winding road to the history-making charges that were returned this week.

    An indictment had been anticipated early last week – including by Trump himself, who promoted a theory he would be “arrested” – as law enforcement agencies prepared for the logistics of arraigning a former president. But after the testimony of Robert Costello – a lawyer who appeared on Trump’s behalf seeking to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen – Bragg appeared to hit the pause button.

    Costello’s testimony caused the district attorney’s office to reassess whether Costello should be the last witness the grand jury heard before prosecutors asked them to vote on an indictment, multiple sources told CNN.

    So they waited. The next day the grand jury was scheduled to meet, jurors were told not to come in. Bragg and his top prosecutors huddled the rest of the week and over the weekend to determine a strategy that would effectively counter Costello’s testimony in the grand jury.

    They called two additional witnesses. David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, appeared on Monday. The other witness, who has still not been identified, testified on Thursday for 35 minutes in front of the grand jury – just before prosecutors asked them to vote on the indictment of more than 30 counts, the sources said.

    Trump and his attorneys, thinking Bragg might be reconsidering a potential indictment, were all caught off-guard, sources said. Some of Trump’s advisers had even left Palm Beach on Wednesday following news reports that the grand jury was taking a break, the sources added.

    After the indictment, Trump ate dinner with his wife, Melania, Thursday evening and smiled while he greeted guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, according to a source familiar with the event.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump has been ongoing for years, dating back to Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance. Its focus shifted by mid-2020 to the accuracy of the Trump Org.’s financial statements. At the time, prosecutors debated legal theories around the hush money payments and thought they were a long shot. At several points, the wide-ranging investigation seemed to have been winding down – to the point that prosecutors resigned in protest last year. One even wrote a book critical of Bragg for not pursuing charges against Trump released just last month.

    The specific charges against Trump still remain under seal and are expected to be unveiled Tuesday when Trump is set to be arraigned.

    There are questions swirling even among Trump critics over whether the Manhattan district attorney’s case is the strongest against the former president amid additional investigations in Washington, DC, and Georgia over both his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at his Florida resort.

    Trump could still face charges in those probes, too, which are separate from the New York indictment.

    But it’s the Manhattan indictment, dating back to a payment made before the 2016 presidential election, that now sees Trump facing down criminal charges for the first time as he runs again for the White House in 2024.

    It was just weeks before the 2016 election when Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump. (Trump has denied the affair.) Cohen was later reimbursed $420,000 by the Trump Organization to cover the original payment and tax liabilities and to reward him with a bonus.

    That payment and reimbursement are keys at issue in the investigation.

    Cohen also helped arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story claiming a 10-month affair with Trump. Trump also denies an affair with McDougal. During the grand jury proceedings, the district attorney’s office has asked questions about the “catch and kill” deal with McDougal.

    When Cohen was charged by federal prosecutors in New York in 2018 and pleaded guilty, he said he was acting at the direction of Trump when he made the payment.

    At the time, federal prosecutors had determined they could not seek to indict Trump in the scheme because of US Justice Department regulations against charging a sitting president. In 2021, after Trump left the White House, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York decided not to pursue a case against Trump, according to a recent book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

    But then-Manhattan District Attorney Vance’s team had already picked up the investigation into the hush money payments and begun looking at potential state law violations. By summer 2019, they sent subpoenas to the Trump Org., other witnesses, and met with Cohen, who was serving a three-year prison sentence.

    Vance’s investigation broadened to the Trump Org.’s finances. New York prosecutors went to the Supreme Court twice to enforce a subpoena for Trump’s tax records from his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. The Trump Org. and its long-time chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg were indicted on tax fraud and other charges in June 2021 for allegedly running an off-the-books compensation scheme for more than a decade.

    Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the charges last year and is currently serving a five-month sentence at Rikers Island. Prosecutors had hoped to flip Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, but he would not tie Trump to any wrongdoing.

    Disagreements about the pace of the investigation had caused at least three career prosecutors to move off the investigation. They were concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges, CNN and others reported last year.

    Vance authorized the attorneys on the team to present evidence to the grand jury near the end of 2021, but he did not seek an indictment. Those close to Vance say he wanted to leave the decision to Bragg, the newly elected district attorney.

    Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January 2022. Less than two months into his tenure, two top prosecutors who had worked on the Trump case under Vance abruptly resigned amid a disagreement in the office over the strength of the case against Trump.

    On February 22, 2022, Bragg informed the prosecution team that he was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, CNN reported. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, resigned the next day.

    In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said he believed Trump was guilty of numerous felonies and said that Bragg’s decision to not move forward with an indictment at the time was “wrong” and a “grave failure of justice.”

    “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by CNN.

    At that point, the investigation was focused on Trump’s financial statements and whether he knowingly misled lenders, insurers, and others by providing them false or misleading information about the value of his properties.

    Prosecutors were building a wide-ranging falsified business records case to include years of financial statements and the hush money payments, people with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN. But at the time, those prosecutors believed there was a good chance a felony charge related to the hush money payment would be dismissed by a judge because it was a novel legal theory.

    Dunne and Pomerantz pushed to seek an indictment of Trump tied to the sweeping falsified business records case, but others, including some career prosecutors, were skeptical that they could win a conviction at trial, in part because of the difficulty in proving Trump’s criminal intent.

    Despite the resignations of the prosecutors on the Trump case, Bragg’s office reiterated at the time that the investigation was ongoing.

    “Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. That’s what we’re doing,” Bragg told CNN in April 2022. “The investigation is very much ongoing.”

    At the same time that Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump lingered last year, another prosecution against the Trump Org. moved forward. In December, two Trump Org. entities were convicted at trial on 17 counts and were ordered to pay $1.6 million, the maximum penalty, the following month.

    Trump was not personally charged in that case. But it appeared to embolden Bragg’s team to sharpen their focus back to Trump and the hush money payment.

    Cohen was brought back in to meet with Manhattan prosecutors. Cohen had previously met with prosecutors in the district attorney’s office 13 times over the course of the investigation. But the January meeting was the first in more than a year – and a clear sign of the direction prosecutors were taking.

    As investigators inched closer to a charging decision, Bragg was faced with more public pressure to indict Trump: Pomerantz, the prosecutor who had resigned a year prior, released a book about the investigation that argued Trump should be charged and criticized Bragg for failing to do so.

    “Every single member of the prosecution team thought that his guilt was established,” Pomerantz said in a February interview on “CNN This Morning.”

    Asked about Bragg’s hesitance, Pomerantz said: “I can’t speak in detail about what went through his mind. I can surmise from what happened at the time and statements that he’s made since that he had misgivings about the strength of the case.”

    Bragg responded in a statement saying that more work was needed on the case. “Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said.

    Prosecutors continued bringing in witnesses, including Pecker, the former head of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. In February, Trump Org. controller Jeffrey McConney testified before the grand jury. Members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, also appeared. In March, Daniels met with prosecutors, her attorney said.

    And Cohen, after his numerous meetings with prosecutors, finally testified before the grand jury in March.

    The second week of March, prosecutors gave the clearest sign to date that the investigation was nearing its conclusion – they invited Trump to appear before the grand jury.

    Potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges.

    Behind the scenes, Trump attorney Susan Necheles told CNN she met with New York prosecutors to argue why Trump shouldn’t be indicted and that prosecutors didn’t articulate the specific charges they are considering.

    Trump, meanwhile, took to his social media to predict his impending indictment. In a post attacking Bragg on March 18, Trump said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

    “Protest, take our nation back,” Trump added, echoing the calls he made while he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

    Trump’s prediction would turn out to be premature.

    Trump’s call for protests after a potential indictment led to meetings between senior staff members from the district attorney’s office, the New York Police Department and the New York State Court Officers – who provide security at the criminal court building in lower Manhattan.

    Trump’s lawyers also made a last-ditch effort to fend off an indictment. At the behest of Trump’s team, Costello, who advised Cohen in 2018, provided emails and testified to the grand jury on Monday, March 20, alleging that Cohen had said in 2018 that he had decided on his own to make the payment to Daniels.

    Costello’s testimony appeared to delay a possible indictment – for a brief time at least.

    During the void, Trump continued to launch verbal insults against Bragg, calling him a “degenerate psychopath.” And four Republican chairmen of the most powerful House committees wrote to Bragg asking him to testify, which Bragg’s office said was unprecedented interference in a local investigation. An envelope containing a suspicious white powder and a death threat to Bragg was to delivered to the building where the grand jury meets – the powder was deemed nonhazardous.

    The grand jury would not meet again until Monday, March 27, when Pecker was ushered back to the grand jury in a government vehicle with tinted windows in a failed effort to evade detection by the media camped outside of the building where the grand jury meets.

    Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s who had a history of orchestrating so-called “catch and kill” deals while at the National Enquirer, was involved with the Daniels’ deal from the beginning.

    Two days after Pecker’s testimony, there were multiple reports that the grand jury was going into a pre-planned break in April. The grand jury was set to meet Thursday but it was not expected to hear the Trump case.

    Instead, the grand jury heard from one last witness in the Trump case on Thursday, whose identity is still unknown. And then the grand jury shook up the American political system by voting to indict a former president and 2024 candidate for the White House.

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  • First on CNN: A new group of Twitter vendors is suing the company for alleged unpaid bills | CNN Business

    First on CNN: A new group of Twitter vendors is suing the company for alleged unpaid bills | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A group of Twitter vendors on Tuesday filed a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the company has failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in overdue bills.

    The four firms — captioning services company White Coat Captioning, consulting group YES Consulting and public relations firms Cancomm and Dialogue México — allege that Twitter is in breach of their contracts and has yet to pay bills ranging from around $40,000 to $140,000 for services they provided the company last year.

    Tuesday’s lawsuit, which was filed in California Northern District Court and first reported by CNN, refers to the companies suing Twitter as “small businesses without the resources, time, and money to litigate these claims on their own.”

    The lawsuit comes as new Twitter owner Elon Musk attempts to slash costs after buying the company for $44 billion, a significant amount of which came from debt financing. It also adds to the growing list of legal actions Twitter is facing from landlords, business partners and former employees claiming the company has failed to pay what they are owed since Musk’s takeover.

    Twitter is also facing lawsuits from at least one landlord claiming it has missed rent payments, a private jet company for unpaid bills for executive flights and an event production company who said Twitter failed to pay it after canceling the “Chirp Conference” it had been set to organize in November after Musk took over the company.

    The latest suit was filed by Shannon Liss-Riordan, who has also filed four proposed class action lawsuits and hundreds of arbitration demands on behalf of Twitter employees laid off following Musk’s takeover in pursuit of additional severance they allege they were promised by the company prior to Musk’s takeover. Some former workers have also alleged sex and disability discrimination and other issues, which the company has argued in court are without merit.

    Twitter has moved to dismiss many of the lawsuits in court. Twitter, which fired much of its media relations team last fall, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new lawsuit.

    “Elon Musk told Twitter vendors that, if they want to get paid, then sue,” Liss-Riordan said in a statement to CNN, referring to comments reportedly made by the Twitter owner. “Well, he’s now getting his wish. Businesses, like employees, should not have to sue to get paid what they are owed.”

    In the new lawsuit, White Coat Captioning said it provided real-time captioning services for events and classes for Twitter employees who were hard of hearing or spoke languages other than English. The company alleged that it began contacting Twitter in November about overdue and pending invoices for services rendered under a contract signed in March 2022.

    “Twitter reassured White Coat Captioning it had processed and would pay these invoices, but it never did,” the firm alleged in the complaint. In January, the firm claims that Twitter said it was conducting an “additional review” of the invoices. Twitter owes the captioning company around $42,000, according to the complaint.

    YES Consulting, which said it provided leadership training to Twitter employees per an agreement signed in March 2022, alleges that Twitter owes it approximately $49,000 for services provided between August and November last year.

    Latin American public relations firm Dialogue also alleges that Twitter has failed to pay approximately $140,000 for eight invoices for services provided in November and December of last year.

    The vendors are seeking damages in the amount each company is allegedly owed by Twitter, as well as interest.

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