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  • Michigan will choose between Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers for US Senate

    Michigan will choose between Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers for US Senate

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    LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers has secured the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan and will face Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the November election.

    Slotkin and Rogers, long considered the front-runners for their respective party nominations, will now shift focus to the general election. Slotkin enters with a massive fundraising advantage and emerges nearly unscathed from a sparse primary, while Rogers has the backing of national Republican groups and former President Donald Trump.

    Former U.S. Rep. and Republican candidate for Michigan Senate Mike Rogers talks to supporters at a post election gathering, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Lake Orion, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

    Slotkin defeated actor Hill Harper in the Democratic primary, while Republicans chose Rogers over former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash and physician Sherry O’Donnell. Both candidates will now compete for a seat left open by longtime Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s retirement.

    The retiring incumbent joined Slotkin onstage at an event in Detroit shortly after the race was called to endorse her. Slotkin praised Stabenow for her years of service before delivering a speech positioning herself as the “normal” and “rational” candidate.

    North of Detroit, in Oakland County, Rogers thanked supporters at a watch party for “not giving up on politics.” Like Slotkin, Rogers represented a mid-Michigan swing district in Congress, and he similarly positioned himself as the common sense candidate in his speech. No Republican has won a U.S. Senate race in Michigan since 1994.

    With Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the Senate and Republicans in the House, competitive races like those in Michigan have drawn lots of attention. The state’s status as a key presidential swing state raises the stakes for those seats even higher, with party control on the line from the top of the ballot all the way down to the state Legislature.

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    U.S. Senate candidate, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., left, holds hands with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., at a primary election night event in Detroit, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

    Michigan’s open Senate seat is one of a handful of races nationwide that will determine control of the upper chamber in November. With a later congressional primary, Slotkin and Rogers will have a short period to transition from competing against their own party members to appealing to a broader base of voters for the Nov. 5 general election, which may explain why they have campaigned with their eyes on the general election.

    National groups on both sides have already reserved millions of dollars worth of advertisements after the primary. Both Slotkin and Rogers, viewed for months as the overwhelming favorites in their primaries, have skipped debates and refrained from holding large campaign events.

    Several U.S. House seats with primaries on Tuesday could influence the balance of power in the lower chamber, but there, too, the biggest battles will be fought in the fall campaign.

    Slotkin’s entry into the Senate race left her mid-Michigan 7th Congressional District seat open, historically one of the nation’s top battleground districts. Both party candidates ran unopposed in their primaries there, setting the table for a November matchup between Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr. and Republican Tom Barrett.

    Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee’s retirement will leave an open seat in the 8th Congressional District, which extends northward from the outskirts of Detroit and covers areas such as Flint, Saginaw and Midland. First-term state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who had been endorsed by Kildee, defeated state Board of Education President Pamela Pugh and Matt Collier, the former mayor of Flint, to secure the Democratic nomination.

    On the Republican side, former TV anchor Paul Junge defeated Mary Draves, a former chemical manufacturing executive at Dow Inc., and Anthony Hudson to win the GOP nomination. Junge lost to Kildee by over 10 percentage points in 2022.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Meanwhile, several incumbents in battleground districts now have their November matchups set following Tuesday’s primaries.

    U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, who in 2022 became the first Democrat to represent Grand Rapids in decades, will face Paul Hudson, an attorney who defeated Michael Markey Jr. in the western Michigan district’s GOP primary.

    A district just north of Detroit will see a rematch between freshman GOP Rep. John James and Carl Marlinga, a longtime Macomb County prosecutor who defeated three other Democrats in the primary. Marlinga lost to James by 1,600 votes, and national Democrats have made the seat a top target this cycle.

    In a heavily Democratic district encompassing downtown Detroit, U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar defeated Detroit City Council member Mary Waters, who had been endorsed by Mayor Mike Duggan. Thanedar significantly outraised her, and his win likely leaves Detroit — a city that is nearly 80% Black — without Black representation in Congress for a second consecutive term.

    Down-ballot races held primaries across the state on Tuesday. Control of the state House of Representatives will be at stake in November, with all 110 seats up for election. Democrats took control of both chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in four decades in 2022 and will be trying to defend those majorities.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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  • Energy Department awards $2.2B to strengthen the electrical grid and add clean power

    Energy Department awards $2.2B to strengthen the electrical grid and add clean power

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    The Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $2.2 billion in funding for eight projects across 18 states to strengthen the electrical grid against increasing extreme weather, advance the transition to cleaner electricity and meet a growing demand for power.

    The money will help build more than 600 miles of new transmission lines and upgrade about 400 miles of existing lines so that they can carry more current.

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the funding is important because extreme weather events fueled by climate change are increasing, damaging towers and bringing down wires, causing power outages.

    Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas on July 8 and knocked out power to nearly 3 million people, for example. Officials have said at least a dozen Houston area residents died from complications related to the heat and losing power.

    The investments will provide more reliable, affordable electricity for 56 million homes and businesses, according to the DOE. Granholm said the funds are the single largest direct investment ever in the nation’s grid.

    “They’ll help us to meet the needs of electrified homes and businesses and new manufacturing facilities and all of these growing data centers that are placing demands on the grid,” Granholm said in a press call to announce the funding.

    It’s the second round of awards through a $10.5 billion DOE program called Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships. It was funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021. More projects will be announced this fall.

    Among the ones in this round, more than 100 miles of transmission line in California will be upgraded so that new renewable energy can be added quickly and as a response to a growing demand for electricity. A project in New England will upgrade onshore connection points for electricity generated by wind turbines offshore, allowing 4,800 megawatts of wind energy to be added, enough to power about 2 million homes.

    The Montana Department of Commerce will get $700 million. Most of that will go toward building a 415-mile, high-voltage, direct current transmission line across Montana and North Dakota. The North Plains Connector will increase the ability to move electricity from east to west and vice versa, and help protect against extreme weather and power disruptions.

    The Virginia Department of Energy will get $85 million to employ clean electricity and clean backup power at two data centers, one instate and one in South Carolina. The DOE chose this project because the data centers will be responsive to the grid in a new way: They could provide needed electricity to the local grid on a hot day, from batteries, or reduce their energy use in times of high demand. This could serve as a model for other data centers to reduce their impact on a local area, since they place such high demand on the grid, according to the department.

    “These investments are certainly a step in the right direction and they are the right types of investments,” said Max Luke, director of business development and regulatory affairs at VEIR, an early-stage Massachusetts company developing transmission lines capable of carrying five times the power of conventional ones. “If you look at the scale of the challenge and the quantity of grid capacity needed for deep decarbonization and net zero, it’s a drop in the bucket.”

    According to Princeton University’s “Net-Zero America” research, the United States will need to expand electricity transmission by roughly 60% by 2030 and may need to triple it by 2050.

    ___

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

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  • Takeaways from AP’s story on inefficient tech slowing efforts to get homeless people off the streets

    Takeaways from AP’s story on inefficient tech slowing efforts to get homeless people off the streets

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles is the nation’s epicenter of homelessness, where more than 45,000 people live in weather-beaten tent encampments and rusting RVs. But even in the state that is home to Silicon Valley, technology has not kept up with the long-running crisis.

    Billions of dollars have been spent to get homeless people off the streets in the region, but outdated computer systems with error-filled data are all too often unable to provide even basic information.

    Better Angels United is developing a series of apps — to be donated to participating groups — that the nonprofit group hopes could revolutionize shelter and services for homeless people that includes a mobile-friendly prototype for outreach workers. It is to be followed by systems for shelter operators and a comprehensive shelter bed database the region now lacks.

    Here are some of the key findings by The Associated Press:

    What’s going on? No one really knows

    More than 1 in 5 of all homeless people in the U.S. live in Los Angeles County, or about 75,000 people on any given night. The county is the most populous in the nation, home to 10 million people, roughly the population of Michigan.

    Dozens of governments and service groups within the county use a mishmash of software to track homeless people and services that results in what might be called a tech traffic jam. Systems can’t communicate, information is outdated, data is often lost.

    A homeless person wants a shelter, but is a bed available?

    Again, it’s possible no one really knows. No system exists that provides a comprehensive listing of available shelter beds in Los Angeles County. Once a shelter bed is located, there is a 48-hour window for the spot to be claimed. But homeless case workers say that window sometimes closes before they are aware a bed is available.

    “Just seeing … the general bed availability is challenging,” said Bevin Kuhn, acting deputy chief of analytics for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that coordinates homeless housing and services in Los Angeles County.

    Bad data in, bad data out

    One of the big challenges: There is currently no uniform practice for caseworkers to collect and enter information into databases on the homeless people they interview. Some caseworkers might scribble notes on paper, others might tap a few lines into a cellphone, others might try to remember their interactions and recall them later.

    All that information later goes into one or more databases. That leaves data vulnerable to errors, or long lag times before information recorded on the street gets entered.

    Mark Goldin, Better Angels chief technology officer, described L.A.’s technology as “systems that don’t talk to one another, lack of accurate data, nobody on the same page about what’s real and isn’t real.”

    In the home of Silicon Valley, how did tech fall behind?

    There is no single reason, but challenges from the pandemic to the county’s sprawling government structure contributed.

    With the rapidly expanding homeless numbers came “this explosion of funds, explosions of organizations and everyone was learning at the same time. And then on top of that … the pandemic hit,” Kuhn said. “Everyone across the globe was frozen.”

    Another problem: Finding consensus among the disparate government agencies, advocacy groups and elected officials in the county.

    “The size of Los Angeles makes it incredibly complex,” Kuhn added.

    In search of a fix, building the app

    Better Angels conducted over 200 interviews with caseworkers, data experts, managers and others involved in homeless programs as part of developing their software. They found startling gaps: For example, no one is measuring how effective the system is at getting people off the street and into housing and services.

    One of the biggest challenges: Getting governments and service groups to participate, even though Better Angels will donate its software to those in L.A. county.

    “Everything is safe, everything is secure, everything is uploaded, everything is available,” Goldin said.

    But “it’s very difficult to get people to do things differently,” he added. “The more people that use it, the more useful it will be.”

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  • Can tech help solve the Los Angeles homeless crisis? Finding shelter may someday be a click away

    Can tech help solve the Los Angeles homeless crisis? Finding shelter may someday be a click away

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Billions of dollars have been spent on efforts to get homeless people off the streets in California, but outdated computer systems with error-filled data are all too often unable to provide even basic information like where a shelter bed is open on any given night, inefficiencies that can lead to dire consequences.

    The problem is especially acute in Los Angeles, where more than 45,000 people — many suffering from serious mental illness, substance addictions or both — live in litter-strewn encampments that have spread into virtually every neighborhood, and where rows of rusting RVs line entire blocks.

    Even in the state that is home to Silicon Valley, technology has not kept up with the long-running crisis. In an age when anyone can book a hotel room or rent a car with a few strokes on a mobile phone, no system exists that provides a comprehensive listing of available shelter beds in Los Angeles County, home to more than 1 in 5 unhoused people in the U.S.

    Mark Goldin, chief technology officer for Better Angels United, a nonprofit group, described L.A.’s technology as “systems that don’t talk to one another, lack of accurate data, nobody on the same page about what’s real and isn’t real.”

    The systems can’t answer “exactly how many people are out there at any given time. Where are they?” he said.

    The ramifications for people living on the streets could mean whether someone sleeps another night outside or not, a distinction that can be life-threatening.

    “They are not getting the services to the people at the time that those people either need the service, or are mentally ready to accept the services,” said Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur and CEO of Better Angels.

    The problems were evident at a filthy encampment in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood, where Sara Reyes, executive director of SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, led volunteers distributing water, socks and food to homeless people, including one who appeared unconscious.

    She gave out postcards with the address of a nearby church where the coalition provides hot food and services. A small dog bolted out of a tent, frantically barking, while a disheveled man wearing a jacket on a blistering hot day shuffled by a stained mattress.

    At the end of the visit Reyes began typing notes into her mobile phone, which would later be retyped into a coalition spreadsheet and eventually copied again into a federal database.

    “Anytime you move it from one medium to another, you can have data loss. We know we are not always getting the full picture,” Reyes said. The “victims are the people the system is supposed to serve.”

    The technology has sputtered while the homeless population has soared. Some ask how can you combat a problem without reliable data to know what the scope is? An annual tally of homeless people in the city recently found a slight decline in the population, but some experts question the accuracy of the data, and tents and encampments can be seen just about everywhere.

    Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has pinpointed shortcomings with technology as among the obstacles she faces in homelessness programs and has described the city’s efforts to slow the crisis as “building the plane while flying it.”

    She said earlier this year that three to five homeless people die every day on the streets of L.A.

    On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to start removing homeless encampments on state land in his boldest action yet following a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces.

    There is currently no uniform practice for caseworkers to collect and enter information into databases on the homeless people they interview, including notes taken on paper. The result: Information can be lost or recorded incorrectly, and it becomes quickly outdated with the lag time between interviews and when it’s entered into a database.

    The main federal data system, known as the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, was designed as a desktop application, making it difficult to operate on a mobile phone.

    “One of the reasons the data is so bad is because what the case managers do by necessity is they take notes, either on their phones or on scrap pieces of paper or they just try to remember it, and they don’t typically input it until they get back to their desk” hours, days, a week or even longer afterward, Miller said.

    Every organization that coordinates services for homeless people uses an HMIS program to comply with data collection and reporting standards mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the systems are not all compatible.

    Sam Matonik, associate director of data at L.A.-based People Assisting the Homeless, a major service provider, said his organization is among those that must reenter data because Los Angeles County uses a proprietary data system that does not talk to the HMIS system.

    “Once you’re manually double-entering things, it opens the door for all sorts of errors,” Matonik said. “Small numerical errors are the difference between somebody having shelter and not.”

    Bevin Kuhn, acting deputy chief of analytics for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that coordinates homeless housing and services in Los Angeles County, said work is underway to create a database of 23,000 beds by the end of the year as part of technology upgrades.

    For case managers, “just seeing … the general bed availability is challenging,” Kuhn said.

    Among other changes is a reboot of the HMIS system to make it more compatible with mobile apps and developing a way to measure if timely data is being entered by case workers, Kuhn said.

    It’s not uncommon for a field worker to encounter a homeless person in crisis who needs immediate attention, which can create delays in collecting data. Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority aims for data to be entered in the system within 72 hours, but that benchmark is not always met.

    In hopes of filling the void, Better Angels assembled a team experienced in building large-scale software applications. They are constructing a mobile-friendly prototype for outreach workers — to be donated to participating groups in Los Angeles County — that will be followed by systems for shelter operators and a comprehensive shelter bed database.

    Since homeless people are transient and difficult to locate for follow-up services, one feature would create a map of places where an individual had been encountered, allowing case managers to narrow the search.

    Services are often available, but the problem is linking them with a homeless person in real time. So, a data profile would show services the individual received in the past, medical issues and make it easy to contact health workers, if needed.

    As a secondary benefit — if enough agencies and providers agree to participate — the software could produce analytical information and data visualizations, spotlighting where homeless people are moving around the county, or concentrations of where homeless people have gathered.

    One key goal for the prototypes: ease of use even for workers with scant digital literacy. Information entered into the app would be immediately unloaded to the database, eliminating the need for redundant reentries while keeping information up to date.

    Time is often critical. Once a shelter bed is located, there is a 48-hour window for the spot to be claimed, which Reyes says happens only about half the time. The technology is so inadequate, the coalition sometimes doesn’t learn a spot is open until it has expired.

    She has been impressed with the speed of the Better Angels app, which is in testing, and believes it would cut down on the number of people who miss the housing window, as well as create more reliability for people trying to obtain services.

    “I’m hoping Better Angels helps us put the human back into this whole situation,” Reyes said.

    ___

    Har reported from San Francisco.

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  • After years of fighting Iowa’s strict abortion law, clinics also prepared to follow it

    After years of fighting Iowa’s strict abortion law, clinics also prepared to follow it

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    AMES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy goes into effect Monday, a drastic change that enrages — but doesn’t surprise — Sarah Traxler.

    When Traxler, an OB-GYN based in Minnesota and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, went to high school in a conservative Louisiana town in the 1990s, she saw abortion rights losing ground even then, decades before the U.S. Supreme Court and Iowa’s high court would say there isn’t a constitutional right to abortion.

    “The protections of Roe have just been chipped away at slowly through time,” she told The Associated Press.

    At 8 a.m. Monday in Iowa, the state will join more than a dozen others where abortion access has been sharply curbed in the roughly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

    It’s an outcome Iowa’s abortion providers have been fighting but still prepared for, shoring up abortion access in neighboring states and drawing on the lessons learned where bans went into effect more swiftly.

    States with restrictive laws are “glimpses of our future,” Traxler said. Even with the ability to prepare, she told reporters Friday, “this transition is devastating and tragic for the people of Iowa.”

    Iowa’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law last year, but a judge blocked it from being enforced shortly after the measure went into effect because of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City.

    The Iowa Supreme Court reiterated in June that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold to be lifted. The district court judge’s July 22 orders set July 29 as the first day of enforcement.

    The law prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is roughly at six weeks of pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant. There are limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or when the life of the mother is in danger. Previously, abortion in Iowa was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 44% of the 3,761 total abortions in Iowa in 2021 occurred at or before six weeks. Only six abortions were at the 21-week mark or later.

    Alex Sharp, senior health center manager who runs the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic closest to Des Moines, said staff members overbooked schedules this week, moving up appointments for people seeking abortions who likely would be past the legal limit as of Monday.

    Still, that wasn’t an option for everyone. Almost a third of the people Sharp spoke to said they couldn’t get off work or find daycare before next week. Those patients could work with staff members to find appointments out of state, she said.

    Across the country, the status of abortion has changed constantly since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, with trigger laws immediately going into effect, states passing new restrictions or expansions of access and court battles putting those on hold.

    In states with restrictions, the main abortion options are getting pills via telehealth or underground networks and traveling, vastly driving up demand in states with more access.

    The Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, projected last month that about 20,000 abortions were performed in Kansas in 2023, or 152% more than in 2020. Near Iowa, Illinois saw a 71% increase and Minnesota went up 49%. Providers there expect to see more influx after Monday.

    When the first restrictive laws went into effect, like in Texas, providers had to essentially “figure it out as we went,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health. And even though providers across the country have learned how to work within the limits, “I don’t ever want us to have this seem normal.”

    Hagstrom Miller has been talking with leaders at the independent Emma Goldman Clinic about accepting referrals at the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in Minnesota, where 20% of abortion appointments go to out-of-state travelers, she said. That percentage is expected to increase under Iowa’s new law.

    The region’s Planned Parenthood affiliate also has been making investments for over a year to prepare for Monday. A location added last year in Mankato, Minnesota, is only an hour’s drive from Iowa and recently began providing medication abortion. Just over the state line in Omaha, Nebraska, a facility is quadrupling exam rooms and adding staff.

    Maggie DeWitte, who has worked for decades to advocate against abortion access in Iowa, said it’s to be expected after Dobbs that while some states work to regulate or even eliminate abortion, others are going to be less restrictive.

    “We certainly hope that women would not travel out of state, but we know that that is going to happen,” she said. “So that just has to continue our education efforts to those women to let them know that there are other options out there.”

    Many people don’t know the law was passed or is going into effect, making those conservations even more sensitive. Staff members have had to tell patients they are too far along and it’s too late unless they travel and miss more work, Planned Parenthood’s Sharp said.

    It’s been difficult, she said, even though clinics are as ready as they can be for Monday.

    “We are prepared operationally for it,” Sharp said, “but not emotionally or mentally for it, at all.”

    ___

    Mark Vancleave in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

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  • NYC mayor issues emergency order suspending parts of new solitary confinement law

    NYC mayor issues emergency order suspending parts of new solitary confinement law

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    New York City’s mayor issued an emergency order Saturday suspending parts of a new law intended to ban solitary confinement in local jails a day before it was to take effect, citing concerns for the safety of staff and detainees.

    Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency and signed an order that suspended parts of the law that set a four-hour time limit on holding prisoners who pose safety concerns in “de-escalation confinement” and limit the use of restraints on prisoners while they are transported to courts or within jails.

    The four-hour limit could only be exceeded only in “exceptional circumstances.” In those circumstances, prisoners would be released from de-escalation confinement “as soon as practicable” and when they no longer pose an imminent risk of serious injury to themselves or others, according to the mayor’s order.

    Adams also suspended a part of the law that prohibited jail officials from placing a prisoner in longer-term “restrictive housing” for more than a total of 60 days in any 12-month period. His order says jail officials must review a prisoner’s placement in restrictive housing every 15 days.

    “It is of the utmost importance to protect the health and safety of all persons in the custody of the Department of Correction and of all officers and persons who work in the City of New York jails and who transport persons in custody to court and other facilities, and the public,” Adams wrote in his state of emergency declaration.

    Adams had vetoed the City Council’s approval of the bill, but the council overrode the veto in January.

    City Council leaders did not immediately return messages seeking comment Saturday.

    But council spokesperson Shirley Limongi issued a statement sharply criticizing Adams.

    “Each day Mayor Adams’ Administration shows how little respect it has for the laws and democracy, it sets more hypocritical double standards for complying with the law that leave New Yorkers worse off. In this case, our city and everyone in its dysfunctional and dangerous jail system, including staff, are left less safe. The reality is that the law already included broad safety exemptions that make this ‘emergency order’ unnecessary and another example of Mayor Adams overusing executive orders without justification,” the statement said.

    The bill had been introduced by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who argued solitary confinement amounts to torture for those subjected to lengthy hours in isolation in small jail cells.

    Williams and other supporters of the new law, including prominent members of New York’s congressional delegation, have pointed to research showing solitary confinement, even only for a few days, increases the likelihood an inmate will die by suicide, violence or overdose. It also leads to acute anxiety, depression, psychosis and other impairments that may reduce an inmate’s ability to reintegrate into society when they are released, they said.

    Adams has insisted there has been no solitary confinement in jails since it was eliminated in 2019. He said solitary confinement is defined as “22 hours or more per day in a locked cell and without meaningful human contact.” He said de-escalation confinement and longer-term restrictive housing are needed to keep violent prisoners from harming other prisoners and staff.

    Jail officials, the guards’ union and a federal monitor appointed to evaluate operations at city jails objected to parts of the new law, also citing safety concerns.

    The law places a four-hour limit on isolating inmates who pose an immediate risk of violence to others or themselves in de-escalation units. Only those involved in violent incidents could be placed in longer-term restrictive housing, and they would need to be allowed out of their cells for 14 hours each day and get access to the same programming available to other inmates.

    Adams’ state of emergency declaration will remain in effect for up to 30 days or until it is rescinded, whichever is earlier, with 30-day extensions possible. The order suspending parts of the new law will be in effect for five days unless terminated or modified earlier.

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  • Wisconsin Republicans ask voters to take away governor’s power to spend federal money

    Wisconsin Republicans ask voters to take away governor’s power to spend federal money

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    Wisconsin Republicans are asking voters to take away the governor’s power to unilaterally spend federal money, a reaction to the billions of dollars that flowed into the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was free to spend most of that money as he pleased, directing most of it toward small businesses and economic development, angering Republicans who argued the Legislature should have oversight.

    That’s what would happen under a pair of related constitutional amendments up for voter approval in the Aug. 13 primary election. The changes would apply to Evers and all future governors and cover any federal money to the state that comes without specific spending requirements, often in response to disasters or other emergencies.

    Democrats and other opponents are mobilizing against the amendments, calling them a legislative power grab that would hamstring governors’ ability to quickly respond to a future natural disaster, economic crisis or health emergency.

    If the amendments pass, Wisconsin’s government “will become even more dysfunctional,” said Julie Keown-Bomar, executive director of Wisconsin Farmers Union.

    “Wisconsinites are so weary of riding the partisan crazy train, but it is crucial that we show up at the polls and vote ‘no’ on these changes as they will only make us go further off the rails,” she said in a statement.

    But Republicans and other backers say it’s a necessary check on the governor’s current power, which they say is too broad.

    The changes increase “accountability, efficiency, and transparency,” Republican state Sen. Howard Marklein, a co-sponsor of the initiative, said at a legislative hearing.

    The two questions, which were proposed as a single amendment and then separated on the ballot, passed the GOP-controlled Legislature twice as required by law. Voter approval is needed before they would be added to the state constitution. The governor has no veto power over constitutional amendments.

    Early, in-person absentee voting for the Aug. 13 election begins Tuesday across the state and goes through Aug. 11. Locations and times for early voting vary.

    Wisconsin Republicans have increasingly turned to voters to approve constitutional amendments as a way to get around Evers’ vetoes. Midway through his second term, Evers has vetoed more bills than any governor in Wisconsin history.

    In April, voters approved amendments to bar the use of private money to run elections and reaffirm that only election officials can work the polls. In November, an amendment on the ballot seeks to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in local elections.

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    Republicans put this question on the August primary ballot, the first time a constitutional amendment has been placed in that election where turnout is much lower than in November.

    The effort to curb the governor’s spending power also comes amid ongoing fights between Republicans and Evers over the extent of legislative authority. Evers in July won a case in the Wisconsin Supreme Court that challenged the power the GOP-controlled Legislature’s budget committee had over conservation program spending.

    Wisconsin governors were given the power to decide how to spend federal money by the Legislature in 1931, during the Great Depression, according to a report from the Legislative Reference Bureau.

    “Times have changed and the influx of federal dollars calls for a different approach,” Republican Rep. Robert Wittke, who sponsored the amendment, said at a public hearing.

    It was a power that was questioned during the Great Recession in 2008, another time when the state received a large influx of federal aid.

    But calls for change intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic when the federal government handed Wisconsin $5.7 billion in aid between March 2020 and June 2022 in federal coronavirus relief. Only $1.1 billion came with restrictions on how it could be spent.

    Most of the money was used for small business and local government recovery grants, buying emergency health supplies and paying health care providers to offset the costs of the pandemic.

    Republicans pushed for more oversight, but Evers vetoed a GOP bill in 2021 that would have required the governor to submit a plan to the Legislature’s budget committee for approval.

    Republican increased the pressure for change following the release of a nonpartisan audit in 2022 that found Evers wasn’t transparent about how he decided where to direct the money.

    One amendment specifies the Legislature can’t delegate its power to decide how money is spent. The second prohibits the governor from spending federal money without legislative approval.

    If approved, the Legislature could pass rules governing how federal money would be handled. That would give them the ability to change the rules based on who is serving as governor or the purpose of the federal money.

    For example, the Legislature could allow governors to spend disaster relief money with no approval, but require that other money go before lawmakers first.

    Opposing the measures are voting rights groups, the Wisconsin Democratic Party and a host of other liberal organizations, including those who fought to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice.

    Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobbying group, and the Badger Institute, a conservative think tank, were the only groups that registered in support in the Legislature.

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  • Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news stories spread to millions more swiftly than ever before

    Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news stories spread to millions more swiftly than ever before

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    James Peeler’s phone blew up with messages as he drove home from church in Texas. Reading a book on her couch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Wendy Schweiger spied something on Facebook. After finishing a late-night swim in the Baltic Sea off Finland, Matti Niiranen clicked on a CNN livestream.

    Each learned that President Joe Biden had abandoned his re-election bid minutes after he dropped a statement online without warning on a summer Sunday.

    Eight days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, it marked the second straight July weekend that a seismic American story broke at a time most people weren’t paying attention to the news. Biden’s announcement was a startling example of how fast and how far word spreads in today’s always-connected world.

    “It seemed like a third of the nation knew it instantly,” said longtime news executive Bill Wheatley, “and they told another third.”

    News travels fast, as they say

    Wheatley, now retired and summering in Maine, had sat down to check his email and absent-mindedly refreshed the CNN.com home site on his computer. If he didn’t learn the news that way, text messages from friends would have alerted him soon after.

    At 1:46 p.m. Eastern Time, the moment Biden posted his announcement on X, an estimated 215,000 people happened to be logged on to one of 124 major U.S. news websites. Fifteen minutes later, those sites had 893,000 readers, according to Chartbeat.

    On apnews.com, 3,580 people entered the site during the 1:46 p.m. minute. Nearly an hour later, at 2:43 p.m., The Associated Press’ online news destination site hit the afternoon’s peak of 18,936 new visitors. CNN.com and its news app saw its usage quintuple within 20 minutes of the news breaking, the network said.

    Television networks broke into regular programming for the story between 1:50 and 2:04 p.m. During the relatively quiet quarter-hour before 2 p.m., a total of 2.69 million people were watching either CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC, the Nielsen company said. The audience on those three networks swelled to 6.84 million between 2 and 4 p.m. Eastern. Add ABC and CBS, which also had special coverage in those hours, and there were at least 9.27 million following the story on television.

    How did everybody get there so quickly? As Wheatley suggested, word of mouth played a big role. To his credit, Peeler said he didn’t open his text messages until stopping his car.

    Many people also have alerts set up on their phone.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    • Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
    • AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
    • Stay informed. Keep your pulse on the news with breaking news email alerts. Sign up here.

    “Our phones are constantly chirping at us and we have them with us all the time,” said Brian Ott, a media and communications professor at Missouri State University and author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”

    Ott and his wife were traveling in Belgrade, Serbia, and, with the time difference, had gone to bed on Sunday night before Biden made his announcement. Ott found out the next morning when he checked news sites online and told his wife when she woke up.

    “Oh, I already know,” she responded. She had logged on to X when she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

    Since then, as he has moved on to Italy, visiting Rome and Florence, Ott said everyone he’s run into who hears he speaks English has wanted to talk to him about Biden.

    “My sense is that the compulsion is the same for everyone,” he said. “In our digital world, information is capital, and everyone wants to demonstrate their capital.”

    Finding out in various ways

    At his summer house in Pyharanta, Finland, Niiranen has taken a keen interest in U.S. politics, which the semiretired writer said dates to his time as an exchange student in Michigan. He had gone for a swim after 10 p.m. on Sunday, since daylight lingers longer there.

    Niiranen had read speculation that Biden might drop out, so when he sat down on his deck after getting out of the water, he checked the CNN stream and found that was the case.

    “Interesting election you have there!” he said. “I’ll be watching it.”

    Visiting family in Canaan, New Hampshire, Tracy Jasnowski was having a mostly unplugged week because of spotty internet service. Once a day, adults and children alike retreated with their devices to a spot on the lawn where the service is more consistent. That’s when she found out.

    “Honestly, I thought I might vomit,” she said. “I was shocked. I was cast adrift. I had no idea that would happen.”

    Even if she hadn’t learned it then, Jasnowski said she quickly got text messages from friends. And when her father woke up from his nap, he turned on Fox News.

    A generation or two earlier, people would have to be watching TV or listening to the radio to hear a special report about momentous news, said Wheatley, a former executive at NBC News. Then people would spread it by telling friends or family. Now with social media, text alerts and websites available at a click, news moves “much, much faster.”

    “The next logical question,” he said, “is how accurate is it?”

    Get it first, but first get it right

    It’s a mantra drummed into young journalists: Get the news fast but, more importantly, get it right. A mistake on a major, breaking story can derail a career. This month’s big stories illustrated the pressure that comes with the need for speed.

    Almost immediately after Biden’s announcement, it became a major part of the story journalists were filing that he hadn’t endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him. He did within a half hour, but that’s an eternity for those who want to raise questions or float conspiracy theories.

    Similarly, video of the Trump rally where shots were fired appeared instantly on television screens. But most initial news reports were extremely cautious, sticking to what was known: Trump was hurried off the stage by Secret Service agents. Blood was visible. There was a noise that sounded like gunshots.

    That, in turn, led some to criticize journalists for being too wary, too reluctant to call it an assassination attempt. Yet not all facts are quickly known; nearly two weeks later, at a congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said it still wasn’t fully clear whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or shrapnel. The next day, the FBI announced it had concluded it was a bullet.

    In other words, it’s common that there’s more to a story than meets the eye, and the frenzy of initial breaking news requires strong adherence to the facts available at the moment, no matter what becomes clear later.

    When Peeler arrived at his destination in Texas last week and checked on what his friends had texted him about Biden, he called up the websites of local TV network affiliates. In Pennsylvania, Schweiger turned immediately to the AP and The New York Times online.

    Both were grateful they had someplace they considered reliable to learn the facts.

    “I operate under the assumption that news is 24 hours, and that you always have people that can be pressed into service for anything at any time,” Schweiger said.

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

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  • Here’s a look at some of the false claims made during Biden and Trump’s first debate

    Here’s a look at some of the false claims made during Biden and Trump’s first debate

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    President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump traded barbs and a variety of false and misleading information as they faced off in their first debate of the 2024 election.

    Trump falsely represented the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a relatively small number of people who were ushered in by police and misstated the strength of the economy during his administration.

    The latest on the Biden-Trump debate

    • The debate was a critical moment in Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s presidential rematch to make their cases before a national television audience.
    • Take a look at the facts around false and misleading claims frequently made by the two candidates.
    • Both candidates wasted no time sparring over policy during their 90-minute faceoff. These are the takeaways.

    Biden, who tends to lean more on exaggerations and embellishments rather than outright lies, misrepresented the cost of insulin and overstated what Trump said about using disinfectant to address COVID. Here’s a look at the false and misleading claims on Thursday night by the two candidates.

    ___

    JAN. 6

    TRUMP: “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol and in many cases were ushered in by the police.”

    THE FACTS: That’s false. The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the deadliest assault on the seat of American power in over 200 years. As thoroughly documented by video, photographs and people who were there, thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill in what became a brutal scene of hand-to-hand combat with police.

    In an internal memo on March 7, 2023, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said that the allegation that “our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’” is “outrageous and false.” A Capitol Police spokesperson confirmed the memo’s authenticity to The Associated Press. More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. More than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes, and 200 others have been convicted at trial.

    ___

    TRUMP, on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s actions on Jan. 6: “Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard and she turned them down.”

    THE FACTS: Pelosi did not direct the National Guard. Further, as the Capitol came under attack, she and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called for military assistance, including from the National Guard.

    The Capitol Police Board makes the decision on whether to call National Guard troops to the Capitol. It is made up of the House Sergeant at Arms, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol. The board decided not to call the guard ahead of the insurrection but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun, and the troops arrived several hours later.

    The House Sergeant at Arms reported to Pelosi and the Senate Sergeant at Arms reported to McConnell. There is no evidence that either Pelosi or McConnell directed the security officials not to call the guard beforehand. Drew Hammill, a then-spokesperson for Pelosi, said after the insurrection that Pelosi was never informed of such a request.

    ___

    TAXES AND REGULATIONS

    TRUMP, on Biden: “He wants to raise your taxes by four times.”

    THE FACTS: That’s not accurate.

    Trump has used that line at rallies, but it has no basis in fact. Biden actually wants to prevent tax increases on anyone making less than $400,000, which is the vast majority of taxpayers.

    More importantly, Biden’s budget proposal does not increase taxes as much as Trump claims, though the increases are focused on corporations and the wealthy. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for individuals are set to expire after 2025, because they were not fully funded when they became law.

    ___

    TRUMP, referring to Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s victory: “On January 6th we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever on January 6th.”

    THE FACTS: The current federal income tax was only instituted in 1913, and tax rates have fluctuated significantly in the decades since. Rates were lower in the 1920s, just prior to the Great Depression. Trump did cut taxes during his time in the White House, but the rates weren’t the lowest in history.

    Government regulations have also ebbed and flowed in the country’s history, but there’s been an overall increase in regulations as the country modernized and its population grew. There are now many more regulations covering the environment, employment, financial transactions and other aspects of daily life. While Trump slashed some regulations, he didn’t take the country back to the less regulated days of its past.

    ___

    INSULIN

    BIDEN: “It’s $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400.”

    THE FACTS: No, that’s not exactly right. Out-of-pocket insulin costs for older Americans on Medicare were capped at $35 in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law. The cap took effect last year, when many drugmakers announced they would lower the price of the drug to $35 for most users on private insurance. But Biden regularly overstates that many people used to pay up to $400 monthly. People with diabetes who have Medicare or private insurance paid about $450 yearly prior to the law, a Department of Health and Human Services study released in December 2022 found.

    ___

    CLIMATE CHANGE

    TRUMP, touting his environmental record, said that “during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever” and that he supports “immaculate” air and water.

    THE FACTS: That’s far from the whole story. During his presidency, Trump rolled back some provisions of the Clean Water Act, eased regulations on coal, oil and gas companies and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. When wildfires struck California in 2020, Trump dismissed the scientific consensus that climate change had played a role. Trump also dismissed scientists’ warnings about climate change and routinely proposed deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. Those reductions were blocked by Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

    ___

    ABORTION

    TRUMP: “The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth.”

    THE FACTS: Trump inaccurately referred to abortions after birth. Infanticide is criminalized in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.

    Abortion rights advocates say terms like this and “late-term abortions” attempt to stigmatize abortions later in pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are exceedingly rare. In 2020, less than 1% of abortions in the United States were performed at or after 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Abortions later in pregnancy also are usually the result of serious complications, such as fetal anomalies, that put the life of the woman or fetus at risk, medical experts say. In most cases, these are also wanted pregnancies, experts say.

    ___

    RUSSIA

    TRUMP on Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Russia: “He should have had him out a long time ago, but Putin’s probably asking for billions and billions of dollars because this guy pays it every time.”

    THE FACTS: Trump is wrong to say that Biden pays any sort of fee “every time” to secure the release of hostages and wrongfully detained Americans. There’s also zero evidence that Putin is asking for any money in order to free Gershkovich. Just like in the Trump administration, the deals during the Biden administration that have brought home hostages and detainees involved prisoner swaps — not money transfers.

    Trump’s reference to money appeared to be about the 2023 deal in which the U.S. secured the release of five detained Americans in Iran after billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets were transferred from banks in South Korea to Qatar. The U.S. has said that that the money would be held in restricted accounts and will only be able to be used for humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food.

    ___

    COVID-19

    BIDEN: Trump told Americans to “inject bleach” into their arms to treat COVID-19.

    THE FACTS: That’s overstating it. Rather, Trump asked whether it would be possible to inject disinfectant into the lungs.

    “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute,” he said at an April 2020 press conference. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”

    ___

    SUPER PREDATORS

    TRUMP: “What he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years he called them ‘super predators.’ … We can’t forget that – super predators … And they’ve taken great offense at it.”

    THE FACTS: This oft-repeated claim by Trump dating back to the 2020 campaign is untrue. It was Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, who used the term “super predator” to advocate for the 1994 crime bill that Biden co-authored more than thirty years ago. Biden did warn of “predators” in a floor speech in support of his bill.

    ___

    MIGRANTS

    TRUMP, referring to Biden: “He’s the one that killed people with a bad border and flooding hundreds of thousands of people dying and also killing our citizens when they come in.”

    THE FACTS: A mass influx of migrants coming into the U.S. illegally across the southern border has led to a number of false and misleading claims by Trump. For example, he regularly claims other countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions to send to the U.S. There is no evidence to support that.

    Trump has also argued the influx of immigrants is causing a crime surge in the U.S., although statistics actually show violent crime is on the way down.

    There have been recent high-profile and heinous crimes allegedly committed by people in the country illegally. But FBI statistics do not separate out crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. Studies have found that people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes. For more than a century, critics of immigration have sought to link new arrivals to crime. In 1931, the Wickersham Commission did not find any evidence supporting a connection between immigration and increased crime, and many studies since then have reached similar conclusions.

    Texas is the only state that tracks crimes by immigration status. A 2020 study published by the National Academy of Sciences found “considerably lower felony arrest rates” among people in the United States illegally than legal immigrants or native-born.

    Some crime is expected given the large population of immigrants. There were an estimated 10.5 million people in the country illegally in 2021, according to the latest estimate by Pew Research Center, a figure that has almost certainly risen with large influxes at the border. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated the foreign-born population at 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the total, with most states seeing double-digit percentage increases in the last dozen years.

    ___

    CHARLOTTESVILLE

    BIDEN, referring to Trump after the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017: “The one who said I think they’re fine people on both sides.”

    THE FACTS: Trump did use those words to describe attendees of the deadly rally, which was planned by white nationalists. But as Trump supporters have pointed out, he also said that day that he wasn’t talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists in attendance.

    “You had some very bad people in that group,” Trump said during a news conference a few days after the rally, “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

    He then added that he wasn’t talking about “the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” Instead, he said, the press had been unfair in its treatment of protesters who were there to innocently and legally protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

    The gathering planned by white nationalists shocked the nation when it exploded into chaos: violent brawling in the streets, racist and antisemitic chants, smoke bombs, and finally, a car speeding into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring dozens more.

    ___

    ECONOMY

    TRUMP: We had the greatest economy in history.”

    THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. First of all, the pandemic triggered a massive recession during his presidency. The government borrowed $3.1 trillion in 2020 to stabilize the economy. Trump had the ignominy of leaving the White House with fewer jobs than when he entered.

    But even if you take out issues caused by the pandemic, economic growth averaged 2.67% during Trump’s first three years. That’s pretty solid. But it’s nowhere near the 4% averaged during Bill Clinton’s two terms from 1993 to 2001, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, growth has been stronger so far under Biden than under Trump.

    Trump did have the unemployment rate get as low as 3.5% before the pandemic. But again, the labor force participation rate for people 25 to 54 — the core of the U.S. working population — was higher under Clinton. The participation rate has also been higher under Biden than Trump.

    Trump also likes to talk about how low inflation was under him. Gasoline fell as low as $1.77 a gallon. But, of course, that price dip happened during pandemic lockdowns when few people were driving. The low prices were due to a global health crisis, not Trump’s policies.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    • Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
    • AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
    • Stay informed. Keep your pulse on the news with breaking news email alerts. Sign up here.

    Similarly, average 30-year mortgage rates dipped to 2.65% during the pandemic. Those low rates were a byproduct of Federal Reserve efforts to prop up a weak economy, rather than the sign of strength that Trump now suggests it was.

    ___

    MILITARY DEATHS

    BIDEN: “The truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any — this decade — any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.”

    ”THE FACTS: At least 16 service members have been killed in hostile action since Biden took office in January 2021. On Aug. 26, 2021, 13 died during a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, as U.S. troops withdrew from the country. An enemy drone killed three U.S. service members at a desert base in Jordan on Jan. 28 of this year.

    ___

    PRESIDENTIAL RECORD

    BIDEN: “159, or 58, don’t know an exact number, presidential historians, they’ve had meetings and they voted, who is the worst president in American history … They said he was the worst in all American history. That’s a fact. That’s not conjecture.”

    THE FACTS: That’s almost right, but not quite. The survey in question, a project from professors at the University of Houston and Coastal Carolina University, included 154 usable responses, from 525 respondents invited to participate.

    ___

    GEORGE FLOYD PROTESTS

    TRUMP, on Minneapolis protests after the killing of George Floyd: “If I didn’t bring in the National Guard, that city would have been destroyed.”

    THE FACTS: Trump didn’t call the National Guard into Minneapolis during the unrest following the death of George Floyd. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz deployed the National Guard to the city.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Elliot Spagat, Eric Tucker, Ali Swenson, Christina Cassidy, Amanda Seitz, Stephen Groves, David Klepper, Melissa Goldin and Hope Yen contributed to this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Trump wasn’t exonerated by the presidential immunity ruling, even though he says he was

    FACT FOCUS: Trump wasn’t exonerated by the presidential immunity ruling, even though he says he was

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    Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday misrepresented in a social media post what the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday ruling on presidential immunity means for his civil and criminal cases.

    “TOTAL EXONERATION!” he wrote in the post on his Truth Social platform. “It is clear that the Supreme Court’s Brilliantly Written and Historic Decision ENDS all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me, including the WHITE HOUSE AND DOJ INSPIRED CIVIL HOAXES in New York.”

    But none of Trump’s pending cases have been dismissed as a result of the ruling, nor have the verdicts already reached against him been overturned. The ruling does amount to a major victory for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, whose legal strategy has focused on delaying court proceedings until after the 2024 election.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: The Supreme Court’s ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution means “total exoneration” for former President Donald Trump.

    THE FACTS: Although the historic 6-3 ruling is a win for Trump, he has not been exonerated and his legal troubles are far from over. A delay of his Washington trial on charges of election interference has been indefinitely extended as a result. Also, he still faces charges in two other criminal cases, and the verdicts already reached against him in a criminal and a civil case have not been overturned.

    Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former U.S. attorney for the state’s Eastern District, told The Associated Press that Trump’s claim is “inaccurate for a number of reasons.”

    “The court found immunity from prosecution, not exoneration,” she wrote in an email. “The court did not say that Trump’s conduct did not amount to criminal behavior. Just that prosecutors are not allowed to prosecute him for it because of the special role of a president and the need to permit him to make ‘bold’ and ‘fearless’ decisions without concern for criminal consequences.”

    McQuade wrote that Trump’s case over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate won’t be affected, as it arose from conduct committed after he left the White House. She added that any impact on his New York hush money trial “seems unlikely” since the crimes were committed in a personal capacity.

    “In addition, the Court’s opinion is solely focused on immunity for criminal conduct,” McQuade continued, explaining that it will not protect him from civil liability in his cases regarding defamatory statements about advice columnist E. Jean Carroll or fraudulent business practices conducted at the Trump Organization.

    Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The Supreme Court’s conservative majority said former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and are presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts. Unofficial, or private, actions are exempt from such immunity.

    This means that special counsel Jack Smith cannot proceed with significant allegations in his indictment accusing Trump of plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, or he must at least defend their use in future proceedings before the trial judge.

    The case has not been dismissed. It was instead sent back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who must now “carefully analyze” whether other allegations involve official conduct for which the president would be immune from prosecution. The trial was supposed to have begun in March, but has been on hold since December to allow Trump to pursue his Supreme Court appeal.

    However, the justices did knock out one aspect of the indictment, finding that Trump is “absolutely immune” from prosecution for alleged conduct involving discussions with the Justice Department.

    The opinion also stated that Trump is “at least presumptively immune” from allegations that he tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral vote win. But prosecutors can try to make the case that Trump’s pressure on Pence can still be part of the case against him, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

    It is all but certain that the ruling means Trump will not face trial in Washington ahead of the 2024 election, as the need for further analysis is expected to tie up the case for months with legal wrangling over whether actions in the indictment were official or unofficial, the AP has reported.

    Trump is facing charges in two other criminal cases, one over his alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election and the other over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House. Trump’s lawyers have asserted presidential immunity in both cases, but a ruling on the matter has not been made in either.

    The former president was convicted in May of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial in New York. After Monday’s ruling, the New York judge who presided over that trial postponed Trump’s sentencing until at least September and agreed to weigh the impact of the presidential immunity decision.

    Trump was ordered in February to pay a $454 million penalty as part of a civil fraud lawsuit, for lying about his wealth for years as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House. It is still under appeal.

    In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996 and for defaming her over the allegations, awarding her $5 million. Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million in January by a separate jury for Trump’s continued social media attacks against her. An appeal of the former decision was rejected in April. The latter case is still being appealed.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Trump’s misleading claims about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol

    FACT FOCUS: Trump’s misleading claims about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump said during his debate with President Joe Biden last week that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol involved a “relatively small” group of people who were “in many cases ushered in by the police.”

    But that’s not what happened. Thousands of his supporters were outside the Capitol that day and hundreds broke in, many of them beating and injuring law enforcement officers in brutal hand-to-hand combat as the officers tried to stop them from storming through windows and doors. There is ample video evidence of the violence, and more than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot.

    Many of those who broke into the Capitol were echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud, and some menacingly called out the names of lawmakers — particularly then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to try to object to Biden’s legitimate win. The rioters interrupted the certification of Biden’s victory, but lawmakers who had evacuated both chambers returned that night to finish.

    Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee to challenge Biden, has not only continued to mislead voters about what happened that day but has also heaped praise on the rioters, calling them “hostages” and promising to pardon them if he is elected. A look at some of his false claims:

    ‘PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY’

    CLAIM: At the debate, Trump was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper what he would say to any voters “who believe that you have violated your constitutional oath through your actions, inaction on January 6, 2021, and worry that you’ll do it again?” Trump simply replied: “Well, I didn’t say that to anybody. I said peacefully and patriotically.”

    THE FACTS: In a speech on the White House Ellipse the morning of Jan. 6 to thousands of supporters, Trump did tell the crowd to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But he also used far more incendiary language when speaking off the cuff in other parts of the speech, such as telling the crowd: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

    Trump did not address Tapper’s question about his inaction as his supporters broke into the building and injured police. More than three hours elapsed between the time his supporters violently breached the Capitol perimeter and Trump’s first effort to get the rioters to disperse. He released a video message at 4:17 p.m. that day in which he asked his supporters to go home but reassured them, “We love you, you’re very special.”

    Some rioters facing criminal charges have said in court they believed they had been following Trump’s instructions on Jan. 6. And evidence shown during trials illustrates that far-right extremists were galvanized by a Trump tweet inviting his supporters to a “wild” protest on Jan. 6. “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!” wrote one Oath Keepers member who was convicted of seditious conspiracy.

    POLICE ‘LET THEM IN’

    CLAIM: Trump said at the debate: “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol. And in many cases were ushered in by the police.” The next day, Trump said at a rally: “So many of these people were told to go in, right? The police: ‘Go in, go in, go in.’”

    THE FACTS: More than 100 Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers were injured, some severely, as they tried to keep the rioters from breaking into the Capitol. In some cases police retreated or stepped aside as they were overwhelmed by the violent, advancing mob, but there is no evidence that any rioter was “ushered” into the building.

    In an internal memo last year, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said that the allegation that “our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’” is “outrageous and false.” Manger said police were completely overwhelmed and outnumbered, and in many cases resorted to de-escalation tactics to try to persuade rioters to leave the building.

    The Capitol Police said in a statement this week that “under extreme circumstances, our officers performed their duties to the best of their ability to protect the members of Congress. With the assistance of multiple law enforcement agencies and the National Guard, which more than doubled the number of officers on site, it took several hours to secure the U.S. Capitol. At the end of the day, because of our officers’ dedication, nobody who they were charged with protecting was hurt and the legislative process continued.”

    NATIONAL GUARD RESPONSE

    CLAIM: Trump said he offered 10,000 National Guard troops to Pelosi and “she now admits that she turned it down.” Referring to a video Pelosi’s daughter took that day, Trump claimed that Pelosi said, “I take full responsibility for January 6.”

    THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that he offered National Guard troops to the Capitol and that his offer was rejected. He has previously said he signed an order for 20,000 troops to go to the Capitol.

    While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about whether the National Guard would be called ahead of the joint session, he issued no such order or formal request before or during the rioting, and the guard’s arrival was delayed for hours as Pentagon officials deliberated over how to proceed.

    In a 2022 interview with the Democratic-led House committee that investigated the attack, Christopher Miller, the acting Defense secretary at that time, confirmed that there was no order from the president.

    The Capitol Police Board makes the decision on whether to call National Guard troops to the Capitol, and two members of that board — the House Sergeant at Arms and the Senate Sergeant at Arms — decided through informal discussions not to call the guard ahead of the joint session that was eventually interrupted by Trump’s supporters, despite a request from the Capitol Police. The House Sergeant at Arms reports to the Speaker of the House, who was then Pelosi, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms reported to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. But Pelosi’s office has said she was never informed of the request.

    The board eventually requested the guard’s assistance after the rioting was underway, and Pelosi and McConnell called the Pentagon and begged for military assistance. Pence, who was in a secure location inside the building, also called the Pentagon to demand reinforcements.

    In a video recently released by House Republicans, Pelosi is seen in the back of a car on Jan. 6 and talking to an aide. In the raw video recorded by her daughter, Pelosi is angrily asking her aide why the National Guard wasn’t at the Capitol when the rioting started. “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” she asks.

    “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there and we should have, this is ridiculous,” Pelosi says, while her aide responds that security officials thought they had sufficient resources. “They clearly didn’t know and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” Pelosi says in the video.

    There is no mention of a request from Trump, and Pelosi never said that she took “full responsibility for Jan. 6.”

    In a statement, Pelosi spokesman Ian Krager said Trump’s repeated comments about Pelosi are revisionist history.

    “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th,” Krager said. “The Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”

    ‘INNOCENT’ RIOTERS

    CLAIM: Trump said to Biden during the debate, “What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, what you have done, how you’ve destroyed the lives of so many people.”

    THE FACTS: Echoing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, rioters at the Capitol engaged in hand-to-hand combat with police and a slew of rioters were carrying weapons, including firearms, knives, brass knuckle gloves, a pitchfork, a hatchet, a sledgehammer and a bow. They also used makeshift weapons, including flagpoles, a table leg, hockey stick and crutch, to attack officers. Police officers were bruised and bloodied, some dragged into the crowd and beaten. One officer was crushed in a doorframe and another suffered a heart attack after a rioter pressed a stun gun against his neck and repeatedly shocked him. One rioter has been charged with climbing scaffolding and firing a gun in the air during the melee.

    The rioters broke through windows and doors, ransacking the Capitol and briefly occupying the Senate chamber. Senators had evacuated minutes earlier. They also tried to break into the House chamber, breaking glass windows and beating on the doors. But police held them off with guns drawn.

    About 900 of the rioters have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds of them receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years. Hundreds of people who went into the Capitol but did not attack police or damage the building were charged only with misdemeanors.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Barbara Whitaker, Alanna Durkin Richer, Melissa Goldin and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

    ___

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  • FACT FOCUS: Online reports falsely claim Biden suffered a ‘medical emergency’ on Air Force One

    FACT FOCUS: Online reports falsely claim Biden suffered a ‘medical emergency’ on Air Force One

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    False reports that President Joe Biden had a “medical emergency” while traveling back to Delaware on Friday after a campaign stop in Wisconsin, spread widely on social media on Friday. They were without merit.

    Here’s a look at the facts.

    ___

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden had a “medical emergency” aboard Air Force One on Friday.

    AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There were no signs of a medical emergency on the flight, according to an Associated Press reporter who was traveling with Biden. Air Force One arrived at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, at 7:22 p.m. The president exited the plane on his own, saluted and spoke with an officer at the base of the stairs and took a question from a reporter before leaving the airport.

    THE FACTS: As Biden returned to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, after a campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday social media users falsely claimed that the president had suffered a “medical emergency” aboard Air Force One.

    Air Force One landed in New Castle, Delaware, at 7:22 p.m. about the same time posts started spreading about Biden’s alleged medical emergency.

    “I just received a tip from an anonymous source,” reads one X post. “My source says that Joe Biden is currently experiencing a medical emergency on Air Force One as I type this. No further details are known.”

    Another X post states: “Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One right now. Press access has been removed.” It had received approximately 15,000 likes and 10,900 shares as of Saturday morning.

    The posts presented no evidence that such an event occurred. Press access was not removed.

    Video shows Biden walking down the steps of Air Force One in Delaware, speaking with an officer, answering a reporter’s question about whether he would watch a highly anticipated interview he did with ABC News’ George Stephanopolous and getting into a car, all without issue.

    There were no signs of an emergency aboard Air Force One and the press was not denied access to the plane at any point, according to an AP reporter who was traveling on Air Force One with Biden during the flight from Wisconsin to Delaware. The reporter added that press was able to move about the plane as usual and that a door separating press from Biden’s top staff was open for most of the flight.

    White House spokesperson Andrew Bates called the claim “100% false” in an X post on Friday night.

    Other posts claimed that the press did not see Biden when the presidential motorcade arrived at his home Friday night and that his campaign had canceled upcoming events as a result of the supposed emergency.

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    A press pool was in Biden’s motorcade when he was dropped off at his Wilmington home, according to the AP reporter who was traveling with the president. The reporter said journalists did not see him enter the house, but they routinely do not see him enter his Wilmington home because it is set back from the street and it is typical to only see the motorcade going through the gates leading to the house.

    Biden had no public events planned for Saturday. He was scheduled to speak at a National Education Association convention on Sunday, but canceled after the union’s staff announced a strike on Friday.

    “President Biden is a fierce supporter of unions and he won’t cross a picket line,” his campaign said in a statement. “The President is still planning to travel to Pennsylvania this weekend.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Colleen Long and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

    ___

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  • Minutes after Trump shooting, misinformation started flying. Here are the facts

    Minutes after Trump shooting, misinformation started flying. Here are the facts

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Within minutes of the gunfire, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump spawned a vast sea of claims — some outlandish, others contradictory — reflecting the frightening uncertainties of the moment as well as America’s fevered, polarized political climate.

    The cloudburst of speculation and conjecture as Americans turned to the internet for news about the shooting is the latest sign of how social media has emerged as a dominant source of information — and misinformation — for many, and a contributor to the distrust and turbulence now driving American politics.

    Mentions of Trump on social media soared up to 17 times the average daily amount in the hours after the shooting, according to PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives. Many of those mentions were expressions of sympathy for Trump or calls for unity. But many others made unfounded, fantastical claims.

    “We saw things like ‘The Chinese were behind it,’ or ‘ Antifa was behind it,’ or ‘the Biden administration did it.’ We also saw a claim that the RNC was behind it,’” said Paul Bartel, senior intelligence analyst at PeakMetrics. “Everyone is just speculating. No one really knows what’s going on. They go online to try to figure it out.”

    Here’s a look at the claims that surfaced online following the shooting:

    Claims of an inside job or false flag are unsubstantiated

    Many of the more specious claims that surfaced immediately after the shooting sought to blame Trump or his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, for the attack.

    Some voices on the left quickly proclaimed the shooting to be a false flag concocted by Trump, while some Trump supporters suggested the Secret Service intentionally failed to protect Trump on the White House’s orders.

    The Secret Service on Sunday pushed back on claims circulating on social media that Trump’s campaign had asked for greater security before Saturday’s rally and was told no.

    “This is absolutely false,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote Sunday on X. “In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”

    Videos of the shooting were quickly dissected in partisan echo chambers and Trump supporters and detractors looked for evidence to support their beliefs. Videos showing Secret Service agents moving audience members away from Trump before the shooting were offered as evidence that it was an inside job. Images of Trump’s defiantly raised fist were used to make the opposite claim — that the whole event was staged by Trump.

    “How did the USSS allow him to stop and pose for a photo opp if there was real danger??” wrote one user, using the abbreviation for the U.S. Secret Service.

    Social media bots helped amplify the false claims on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, according to an analysis by the Israeli tech firm Cyabra, which found that a full 45% of the accounts using hashtags like #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting were inauthentic.

    An image created using artificial intelligence — depicting a smiling Trump moments after the shooting — was also making the rounds, Cyabra found.

    Moments like this are ‘cannon fodder’ for extremists

    Conspiracy theories quickly emerged online that misidentified the suspected shooter, blamed other people without evidence and espoused hate speech, including virulent antisemitism.

    “Moments like this are cannon fodder for extremists online, because typically they will react with great confidence to whatever has happened without any real evidence” said Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “People will fall into spirals and will advance their own ideologies and their own conclusions.”

    Before authorities identified the suspect, photos of two different people circulated widely online falsely identifying them as the shooter.

    In all the speculation and conjecture, others were trying to exploit the event financially. On X on Sunday morning, an account named Proud Patriots urged Trump supporters to purchase their assassination-attempt themed merchandise.

    “First they jail him, now they try to end him,” reads the ad for the commemorative Trump Assassination Attempt Trading Card. “Stand Strong & Show Your Support!”

    Republicans cast blame on Biden

    After the shooting, some Republicans blamed Biden for the shooting, arguing sustained criticisms of Trump as a threat to democracy have created a toxic environment. They pointed in particular to a comment Biden made to donors on July 8, saying “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”

    Ware said that comment from Biden was “violent rhetoric” that is “raising the stakes,” especially when combined with Biden’s existential words about the election. But he said it was important not to make conclusions about the shooter’s motive until we know more information. Biden’s remarks were part of a broader approach to turn scrutiny on Trump, with no explicit call to violence.

    Trump’s own incendiary words have been criticized in the past for encouraging violence. His lies about the 2020 election and his call for supporters to “fight like hell” preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which led to his second impeachment on charges of incitement of insurrection. Trump also mocked the hammer attack that left 80-year-old Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former House speaker, with a fractured skull.

    Surveys find that Americans overwhelmingly reject violence as a way to settle political differences, but overheated rhetoric from candidates and social media can motivate a small minority of people to act, said Sean Westwood, a political scientist who directs the Polarization Research Lab at Dartmouth College.

    Westwood said he worries that Saturday’s shooting could spur others to consider violence as a tactic.

    “There is a real risk that this spirals,” he said. “Even if someone doesn’t personally support violence, if they think the other side does, and they witness an attempted political assassination, there is a real risk that this could lead to escalation.”

    ___

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

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  • Harris makes a pre-taped appearance on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ to urge Americans to vote

    Harris makes a pre-taped appearance on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ to urge Americans to vote

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris crashed the season finale of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” urging Americans to vote in an appearance that was taped before President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid.

    The episode caps the series’ ninth season and is streaming Friday on Paramount+. It opens with an announcer saying that programing is being interrupted for an “extra special ‘Drag Race’ viewing party.”

    The scene cuts to the Democratic vice president smiling broadly and saying into the camera, “Hi, everyone. It’s Kamala Harris. Each day, we’re seeing our rights and freedoms under attack, including the right of everyone to be who they are, love who they love — openly and with pride.”

    Clad in a purple suit that nicely complements the hot-pink couch where she’s seated with actor Cheyenne Jackson and surrounded by other celebrities and stars from the show, Harris continues: “So, as we fight back against these attacks, no one is alone.”

    “We are all in this together, and your vote is your power, so please make sure your voice is heard this November and register to vote,” the vice president concludes.

    That prompts Jackson to proclaim, “Can I get an amen?” and Harris and others happily cry, “Amen!” The vice president, like many on the set, holds up her hands in a gesture of praise before adding, “Now on with the show.”

    Harris and others then clap to RuPaul’s song “A Little Bit of Love,” as some of the assembled hoist placards promoting the website vote.gov. Harris laughs along as one sign is mistakenly held upside down. RuPaul, the show’s host, does not appear in the clip.

    Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, is not the first Democratic politician to appear on the show, which is based in Los Angeles. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a guest judge in 2020.

    Biden announced he was leaving the presidential race and endorsing Harris last weekend. The vice president has since stepped up her campaign and travel schedule.

    ___

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  • FCC pursues new rules for AI in political ads, but changes may not take effect before the election

    FCC pursues new rules for AI in political ads, but changes may not take effect before the election

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    NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission has advanced a proposal that would require political advertisers to disclose their use of artificial intelligence in broadcast television and radio ads, though it is unclear whether new regulations may be in place before the November presidential election.

    The proposed rules announced Thursday could add a layer of transparency in political campaigning that some tech watchdogs have called for to help inform voters about lifelike and misleading AI-generated media in ads.

    “There’s too much potential for AI to manipulate voices and images in political advertising to do nothing,” the agency’s chairwoman, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, said Thursday in a news release. “If a candidate or issue campaign used AI to create an ad, the public has a right to know.”

    But the FCC’s action is part of a federal turf war over the regulation of AI in politics. The move has faced pushback from the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who previously accused the FCC of stepping on his own agency’s authority and has warned of a possible legal challenge.

    Political candidates and parties in the United States and around the world already have experimented with rapidly advancing generative AI tools, though some have voluntarily disclosed their use of the technology. Others have weaponized the technology to mislead voters.

    The FCC is proposing requiring broadcasters to ask political advertisers whether their content was created using AI tools, such as text-to-image creators or voice-cloning software. The agency also aims to require broadcasters to make an on-air announcement when AI-generated content is used in a political ad and include a notice disclosing the use of AI in their online political files.

    The commission acknowledges it would not have authority over streaming, leaving the growing political advertising industry on digital and streaming platforms unregulated at the federal level.

    After the commission’s 3-2 vote, the proposal will move into a 30-day public comment period, followed by a 15-day reply period. Commissioners are then expected to finalize and pass a rule. It is unclear whether there is time for it to go into effect before a presidential election that is just over three months away.

    Jonathan Uriarte, a spokesperson for Rosenworcel, said the chairwoman “intends to follow the regulatory process but she has been clear that the time to act is now.”

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    After Rosenworcel announced her proposed rule in May, FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey, a Republican, sent her a letter cautioning her against the move.

    “I am concerned that parts of your proposal would fall within the exclusive jurisdiction” of the FEC and would “directly conflict with existing law and regulations, and sow chaos among political campaigns for the upcoming election,” he wrote.

    If the FCC moves forward, it could create “irreconcilable conflicts” between the agencies that may end up in federal court, he said in the letter.

    A Republican commissioner at the FCC, Brendan Carr, has agreed with Cooksey and voted against the proposal. In a statement Thursday, Carr argued the move was illegal and problematic so close to a presidential election, with the regulations likely to take effect after early voting has already begun in many places.

    “Far from promoting transparency, the FCC’s proposed rules would mire voters in confusion, create a patchwork of inconsistent rules, and encourage monied, partisan interests to weaponize the law for electoral advantage,” Carr wrote.

    But the FEC’s vice chair, Democrat Ellen Weintraub, has supported the proposal, saying in a June letter to Rosenworcel that “no one agency currently has the jurisdiction or capacity to address every aspect of this large and complicated issue.”

    Cooksey said in a statement Thursday that the FCC should “abandon this misguided proposal.”

    “Every American should be disturbed that the Democrat-controlled FCC is pushing ahead with its radical plan to change the rules on political ads mere weeks before the general election,” he said. “Not only would these vague rules intrude on the Federal Election Commission’s jurisdiction, but they would sow chaos among political campaigns and confuse voters before they head to the polls.”

    The FCC maintains it has authority to regulate on the issue under the 1934 Communications Act and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

    Robert Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, said he supports the FCC’s proposed rule as the U.S. is “barreling toward elections which may be distorted, or even decided, by political deepfakes.”

    Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, commended the FCC, saying in an emailed statement that “it is vital that our federal agencies work to ensure that voters are able to discern fact from fiction.”

    Congress has not passed laws directing the agencies on how they should regulate AI in politics. Some Republican senators have circulated legislation intending to block the Democratic-led FCC from issuing its new rules. Meanwhile, the FEC is considering its own petition on regulating deepfakes in political ads.

    In the absence of federal action, more than one-third of states have created their own laws regulating the use of AI in campaigns and elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    In February, the FCC ruled that robocalls containing AI-generated voices are illegal, a step that empowered the commission to fine companies that use AI voices in their calls or block the service providers that carry them.

    ___

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

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  • Justice Department defends group’s right to sue over AI robocalls sent to New Hampshire voters

    Justice Department defends group’s right to sue over AI robocalls sent to New Hampshire voters

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    CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The federal Justice Department is defending the legal right to challenge robocalls sent to New Hampshire voters that used artificial intelligence to mimic President Joe Biden’s voice.

    Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke and U.S. Attorney Jane Young filed a statement of interest Thursday in the lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters against Steve Kramer — the political consultant behind the calls — and the three companies involved in transmitting them.

    Kramer, who is facing separate criminal charges related to the calls, has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed in March, but the companies filed a motion to dismiss last month. Among other arguments, they said robocalls don’t violate the section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits attempting to or actually intimidating, threatening or coercing voters and that there is no private right of action under the law.

    The Justice Department countered that the law clearly allows aggrieved individuals and organizations representing them to enforce their rights under the law. And it said the companies were incorrect in arguing that the law doesn’t apply to robocalls because they are merely “deceptive” and not intimidating, threatening or coercive.

    “Robocalls in particular can violate voting rights by incentivizing voters to remain away from the polls, deceive voters into believing false information and provoke fear among the targeted individuals,” Young said in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office commends any private citizen willing to stand up against these aggressive tactics and exercise their rights to participate in the enforcement process for the Voting Rights Act.”

    At issue is a message sent to thousands of New Hampshire voters on Jan. 21 that featured a voice similar to Biden’s falsely suggesting that voting in the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary two days later would preclude them from casting ballots in November. Kramer, who paid a magician and self-described “digital nomad” who does technology consulting $150 to create the recording, has said he orchestrated the call to publicize the potential dangers of AI and spur action from lawmakers.

    He faces 26 criminal charges in New Hampshire, along with a proposed $6 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission, which has taken multiple steps in recent months to combat the growing use of AI tools in political communications.

    On Thursday, it advanced a proposal that would require political advertisers to disclose their use of artificial intelligence in broadcast television and radio ads, though it is unclear whether new regulations may be in place before the November presidential election.

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  • Trump and Vance team up to campaign in Minnesota, a state that hasn’t backed the GOP in 52 years

    Trump and Vance team up to campaign in Minnesota, a state that hasn’t backed the GOP in 52 years

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    ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — As the presidential campaign enters a critical final 100 day stretch, Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, rallied supporters on Saturday in a state that hasn’t backed a GOP candidate for the White House since 1972.

    The rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was designed as a sign of the campaign’s bullishness about its prospects across the Midwest, particularly when President Joe Biden was showing signs of weakness ahead of his decision to exit the campaign. Trump, who won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to lose them four years later, has increasingly focused on Minnesota as a state where he’d like to put Democrats on defense.

    The rally is something of a gamble, potentially forcing the likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats to devote resources in a state they would likely otherwise ignore. But it could also be a risk for Trump if he spends time in places that might prove to be a reach with Harris leading the ticket when he could otherwise focus on maintaining his support in more traditional battlegrounds.

    Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half to cheering crowds holding signs supporting police and calling for the deportation of migrants in the country illegally. He continued a pattern of escalating attacks against Harris on immigration and crime.

    He called her a “crazy liberal” and accused her of wanting to “defund the police,” while he said by contrast, he wants to “overfund the police.”

    “She has no clue, she’s evil,” Trump said, suggesting Harris had failed at her tasks related to the border as vice president. “Kamala Harris’ deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president.”

    Trump called out Harris for a 2020 post she made after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police. The post had encouraged people to help protesters by donating to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which had been working on reforming the bail system and posted criminal bail for people as part of a campaign to address inequities in the system.

    Though Harris did not contribute to the fund herself, her tweet was among those from celebrities and high-profile people that helped donations flow into the cash-strapped nonprofit, helping it quickly raise $34 million. In the immediate aftermath of the protests and unrest, the group actually spent little bailing out protesters.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

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    Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, called Trump’s attack line “a desperate lie from a desperate campaign” that can’t change the fact that its candidate has been convicted of multiple felonies.

    Trump also knocked Harris as an “absolute radical” on abortion, seemingly sensing an opening to attack her on the issue after she has become the Biden administration’s most vocal proponent of abortion rights. He wrongly suggested Harris wants abortion “right up until birth and after birth.” Infanticide is criminalized in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.

    Yet the former president also recycled much of his past material targeting Biden, showing how his campaign has sought to keep Biden’s pitfalls fresh in voters’ minds even after the president has ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris.

    Trump’s remarks followed a spirited speech from Vance, in which he leaned heavily into issues that animate the GOP base, particularly security at the U.S.-Mexico border and crime. He also took a broadside against the news media, arguing that journalists were comparing the first Black woman and person of south Asian descent to lead a major party ticket to Martin Luther King, Jr.

    In May, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made explicit appeals to the iron-mining range in northeast Minnesota, where he hopes a heavy population of blue-collar and union workers will shift to Republicans after years of being solidly Democratic.

    Appealing to that population has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats who are being vetted to potentially be Harris’ running mate.

    Walz posted on the social platform X on Friday poking fun at Trump’s visit to his state.

    “Donald Trump is coming back to the State of Hockey tomorrow for the hat trick,” Walz wrote. “He lost Minnesota in ’16, ’20, and he’ll lose it again in ’24.”

    Saturday’s rally took place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. After surviving the July 13 assassination attempt on him at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump has only had events at indoor venues. But he said in a post on his social media network Saturday that he will schedule outdoor stops and the “SECRET SERVICE HAS AGREED TO SUBSTANTIALLY STEP UP THEIR OPERATION.”

    Secret Service officials would not say whether the agency had agreed to expand operations at Trump’s campaign events or had any concerns about him potentially resuming outdoor gatherings. “Ensuring the safety and security of our protectees is our highest priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday. “In the interest of maintaining operational integrity, we are not able to comment on specifics of our protective means or methods.”

    Earlier Saturday, Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, laying out a plan to embrace cryptocurrency if elected and promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower.”

    Trump didn’t always support cryptocurrency but has changed his attitude toward the digital tokens in recent years and in May, his campaign started accepting donations in cryptocurrency.

    Also Saturday, Harris ramped up her campaign for president with her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee.

    The event in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million-plus more than the original goal set for the event before Biden dropped out of the race.

    ___

    Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Brian Slodysko in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.

    ___

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

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  • ‘Gen Z feels the Kamalove’: Youth-led progressive groups hope Harris will energize young voters

    ‘Gen Z feels the Kamalove’: Youth-led progressive groups hope Harris will energize young voters

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    CHICAGO (AP) — “ Brats for Harris.” “ We need a Kamalanomenon. ” “ Gen Z feels the Kamalove.”

    In the days since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Gen Z voters jumped to social media to share coconut tree and “brat summer” memes — reflecting a stark shift in tone for a generation that’s voiced feeling left behind by the Democratic Party.

    Youth-led progressive organizations have warned for months that Biden had a problem with young voters, pleading with the president to work more closely with them to refocus on the issues most important to younger generations or risk losing their votes. With Biden out of the race, many of these young leaders are now hoping Harris can overcome his faltering support among Gen Z and harness a new explosion of energy among young voters.

    Since last Sunday, statements have poured out from youth-led organizations across the country, including in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as leaders thanked Biden for stepping aside and celebrated the opportunity to organize around a new candidate. On Friday, a coalition of 17 youth-led groups endorsed Harris.

    “This changes everything,” said Zo Tobi, director of communication for the Movement Voter Project, a national progressive funding group focusing on youth-led organizations, when he heard the news that Biden was dropping out of the race and endorsing Harris. “The world as it is suddenly shifted into the world as it could be.”

    As the campaign enters a new phase, both Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are delivering messages aimed at younger voters who could prove decisive in some of the most hotly contested states.

    Harris recorded a brief video message shown Saturday at a conference of Gen Z activists and elected officials in Atlanta.

    “We know young voters will be key, and we know your vote cannot be taken for granted,” Harris told the gathering, highlighting her support for gun safety, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and action to combat climate change.

    Eve Levenson, the national youth engagement director for Harris’ campaign, attended the conference in Atlanta, and she praised young voters across the country for their response to the vice president’s elevation to likely nominee.

    “As amazing as it is to see the tremendous youth enthusiasm online, what has been even more incredible is how that online energy has already translated into a tangible desire to take action and get involved with our campaign,” she said, citing new voter registrations, small donations from young voters and student requests to help start campus-based campaign organizations.

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    Trump, in his own address Friday in Florida to a conference on faith hosted by Turning Point USA, derided Harris as an “incompetent” and a “far left” vice president. He vowed to champion religious Americans’ causes in a second White House term.

    “With your vote, I will defend religious liberty in all of its forms,” Trump told the conservative group that focuses on high school, college and university campuses. “I will protect Christians in our schools and our military and our government and our workplaces and our hospitals, in our public square and I will also protect other religions.”

    John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who has worked with Biden, said the “white-hot energy” among young people is something he hasn’t seen since former President Barack Obama’s campaign. While there’s little reliable polling so far, he described the dynamic as “a combination of the hopefulness we saw with Obama and the urgency and fight we saw after the Parkland shooting.”

    In many ways, it was the first time many young people felt heard and felt like their actions could have an impact on politics, he and several young leaders said.

    “It’s reset this election in profound ways,” he said. “People, especially young people, for so long, for so many important reasons have been despondent about politics, despondent about the direction of the country. It’s weighed on them. And then they wake up the next morning, and it seems like everything’s changed.”

    About 6 in 10 adults under 30 voted for Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, but his ratings with the group have dipped substantially since then, with only about a quarter of the group saying they had a favorable opinion of him in the most recent AP-NORC poll, conducted before Biden withdrew from the race.

    That poll, along with polls from The New York Times/Siena and from CNN that were conducted after Biden dropped out, suggest that Harris starts off with somewhat better favorable ratings than Biden among young adults.

    Sunjay Muralitharan, vice president of College Democrats of America, said it felt like a weight was lifted off his chest when Harris entered the race.

    Despite monthly coalition calls between youth-led groups and the Biden campaign, Muralitharan spent months worrying about how Biden would fare among young voters as he watched young people leave organizations such as the College Democrats and Young Democrats to join more leftist groups.

    College Democrats issued statements and social media posts encouraging the party to prioritize young people and to change course on the war in Gaza and have “worked tirelessly to get College Dems programming” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this summer. But they received limited outreach in return, Muralitharan said.

    A Harris campaign represents an opportunity to move in a new direction, he said. The vice president has shown her vocal support for issues important to young voters such as climate change and reproductive rights, Muralitharan said, adding that she may also be able to change course and distance herself from Biden’s approach to the war in Gaza.

    “The perpetual roadblock we’ve run into is that Biden is the lesser of two evils and his impact on the crisis in Gaza,” he said. “For months, we’ve been given this broken script that’s made it difficult for us to organize young voters. But that changes now.”

    Santiago Mayer, executive director of the Gen Z voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden campaign “created an entirely new framework for operating with youth organizations” that can now be transitioned into supporting Harris’ campaign.

    “Gen Z loves VP Harris, and VP Harris loves Gen Z,” he said. “So we’re ready to get to work for her.”

    ___

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

    ___

    Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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  • Justice Department says TikTok collected US user views on issues like abortion and gun control

    Justice Department says TikTok collected US user views on issues like abortion and gun control

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — In a fresh broadside against one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department is accusing TikTok of harnessing the capability to gather bulk information on users based on views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion and religion.

    Government lawyers wrote in documents filed late Friday to the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to enable TikTok employees to speak directly with ByteDance engineers in China.

    TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that has wound up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China, federal officials said.

    One of Lark’s internal search tools, the filing states, permits ByteDance and TikTok employees in the U.S. and China to gather information on users’ content or expressions, including views on sensitive topics, such as abortion or religion. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported TikTok had tracked users who watched LGBTQ content through a dashboard the company said it had since deleted.

    The new court documents represent the government’s first major defense in a consequential legal battle over the future of the popular social media platform, which is used by more than 170 million Americans. Under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, the company could face a ban in a few months if it doesn’t break ties with ByteDance.

    The measure was passed with bipartisan support after lawmakers and administration officials expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or sway public opinion towards Beijing’s interests by manipulating the algorithm that populates users’ feeds.

    ”’Intelligence reporting further demonstrates that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to (Chinese government) demands to censor content outside of China,” Casey Blackburn, a senior U.S. intelligence official, wrote in a filing that supported the government’s arguments.

    The Justice Department warned, in stark terms, of the potential for what it called “covert content manipulation” by the Chinese government, saying the algorithm could be designed to shape content that users receive.

    “By directing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate that algorithm, China could for example further its existing malign influence operations and amplify its efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions,” the brief states.

    The concern, the Justice Department said, is more than theoretical, alleging that TikTok and ByteDance employees are known to engage in a practice called “heating” in which certain videos are promoted in order to receive a certain number of views. While this capability enables TikTok to curate popular content and disseminate it more widely, U.S. officials posit it can also be used for nefarious purposes.

    Federal officials are asking the court to allow a classified version of the legal brief, which would not be accessible to the two companies.

    Nothing in the redacted brief “changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement.

    “The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the 1st Amendment,” Haurek said. “As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”

    In the redacted version of the court documents, the Justice Department said another tool triggered the suppression of content based on the use of certain words. Certain policies of the tool applied to ByteDance users in China, where the company operates a similar app called Douyin that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.

    But Justice Department officials said other policies may have been applied to TikTok users outside of China. TikTok was investigating the existence of these policies and whether they had ever been used in the U.S. in, or around, 2022, officials said.

    The government points to the Lark data transfers to explain why federal officials do not believe that Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle, is sufficient to guard against national security concerns.

    In its legal challenge against the law, TikTok has heavily leaned on arguments that the potential ban violates the First Amendment because it bars the app from continued speech unless it attracts a new owner through a complex divestment process. It has also argued divestment would change the speech on the platform because it would create a version of TikTok lacking the algorithm that has driven its success.

    In its response, the Justice Department argued TikTok has not raised any valid free speech claims, saying the law addresses national security concerns without targeting protected speech, and argues that China and ByteDance, as foreign entities, aren’t shielded by the First Amendment.

    TikTok has also argued the U.S. law discriminates on viewpoints, citing statements from some lawmakers critical of what they viewed as an anti-Israel tilt on the platform during the war in Gaza.

    Justice Department officials disputes that argument, saying the law at issue reflects their ongoing concern that China could weaponize technology against U.S. national security, a fear they say is made worse by demands that companies under Beijing’s control turn over sensitive data to the government. They say TikTok, under its current operating structure, is required to be responsive to those demands.

    Oral arguments in the case is scheduled for September.

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  • Nebraska governor seeks shift to sales taxes to ease high property taxes. Not everyone is on board

    Nebraska governor seeks shift to sales taxes to ease high property taxes. Not everyone is on board

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    LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen has announced a broad tax plan for an upcoming special legislative session that would cut property taxes on average in half — including for his own home and family farm in eastern Nebraska valued at more than $6 million.

    Pillen announced the plan Thursday with the backing of several fellow Republicans in the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature. But not all Republicans are on board, and it remains to be seen if he can get the 33 votes needed to break a filibuster to get it passed.

    The proposal, which could be debated after the special session begins July 25, would vastly expand the number of goods and services subject to the state’s 5.5% sales tax to items such as candy, soda and CBD products, and to services like pet grooming, veterinary care and auto repairs. Most groceries and medicine would remain exempt.

    Another portion of the plan would see the state foot the estimated $2.6 billion cost of operating K-12 public schools, which are now largely funded through local property taxes. It would also cap the growth of property tax revenue.

    Opponents say the plan would shift the tax burden from wealthy home and landowners to low-income residents who can least afford to pay more for the goods and services they need. Pillen countered that “they have choices on what they buy and how much they’ll pay for that.”

    OpenSky Policy Institute, a Nebraska tax spending watchdog group, said it’s still trying to gather details but worried the proposal will amount to a disproportionate tax shift to the working class.

    “The plan proposes a significant re-invention of the way we fund public schools, and we believe that should merit the time, deliberation and collaboration necessary to get it right,” said Dr. Rebecca Firestone, executive director of OpenSky. “We don’t believe that a special session is the appropriate vehicle for initiating such a fundamental change.”

    But Pillen reiterated Thursday that annual revenue from property taxes has risen dramatically in the last 20 years — from about $2 billion in 2003 to more than $5 billion last year. The last five years alone saw a $1 billion jump in property tax revenue. For comparison, revenue collected last year from individual and corporate income taxes was $3.6 billion and from sales tax was $2.3 billion. Pillen said his shift to sales taxes would “better balance Nebraska’s three-legged tax stool.”

    If not addressed soon, Pillen said the rapidly increasing property taxes could force elderly people who’ve already paid off their mortgage out of their homes.

    “It’s running ranchers off the ranch and running people out of their homes,” he said.

    The governor has been crisscrossing the state holding townhalls to try to bolster support. On Thursday, he announced an online dashboard that allows residents to type in their address and receive an estimate of how much their property tax bill would decrease under his plan.

    The dashboard showed Pillen’s home and farm in Columbus is valued at about $6.2 million and that his taxes on the property would drop from about $113,400 logged last year to $59,580.

    Real estate taxes have skyrocketed across the country as U.S. home prices have jumped more than 50% in the past five years, leading a bevy of states to pass or propose measures to reign in property taxes.

    Nebraska has one of the highest average property tax rates in the nation at 1.46% — tied with New York and behind Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey, according to Bankrate.

    A person’s property tax can vary greatly, even within the same county, based on local school and government subdivision tax levies. But in 2023, the average annual tax bill on a Nebraska home worth about $420,000 was more than $6,100.

    All state lawmakers and most residents agree the state’s property taxes are too high, said state Sen. Ray Aguilar of Grand Island. Aguilar is a Republican who usually supports Pillen’s agenda, but not in this case.

    “The governor is telling me he has the votes for this, but I don’t think so,” Aguilar said Thursday. “The people I’ve been talking to don’t think so, either.”

    Aguilar’s main criticism is that the plan represents little more than a tax shift and doesn’t do enough to cut taxes.

    “It’s a problem for working people and for manufacturers. I just don’t think this is the solution,” he said.

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