NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration is moving to overrule any state laws that may protect consumers’ credit reports from medical debt and other debt issues.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has drafted what’s known as an interpretative rule related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, interpreting the law in a way that says the FCRA should preempt any state laws or regulations when it comes to how debt should be reported to the credit bureaus like Experian, Equifax and Trans Union.
This repeals previous Biden-era rules and regulations that allowed states to implement their own credit reporting bans. More than a dozen states like New York and Delaware prohibit the reporting of medical debt on a consumers’ credit report.
Medical debt is often the most disputed part of a consumer’s credit report, because insurance payments can take time, and oftentimes patients do not have the means to fully pay a medical bill if insurance is not covering a procedure that has already taken place.
The three credit bureaus jointly announced in 2023 they would no longer track any medical debts below $500, which at the time the bureaus said would eliminate 70% of all medical debts reported on consumers’ credit files. But some states have gone further than that. New York, Delaware and others passed laws where medical debts can no longer be reported to the credit bureaus.
The CFPB, which is largely not operating at the moment with the exception of actively repealing previous rules written under President Biden or earlier, says in its rule that Congress intended to “create national standards for the credit reporting system” under the FCRA and state laws run afoul of that intention.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that Americans owe roughly $220 billion in medical debt. In Republican-controlled states like South Dakota, Mississippi, West Virginia and Georgia, roughly one in six Americans have outstanding medical debt, according to the KFF.
Having outstanding, delinquent medical debt can impact the ability for an individual to apply for a mortgage, a credit card or an auto loan.
A spokesperson for the Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NEW YORK (AP) — When the Trump administration froze foreign assistance overnight, urgent efforts began to figure out how to continue critical aid programs that could be funded by private donors.
Multiple groups launched fundraisers in February and eventually, these emergency funds mobilized more than $125 million within eight months, a sum that while not nearly enough, was more than the organizers had ever imagined possible.
In those early days, even with needs piling up, wealthy donors and private foundations grappled with how to respond. Of the thousands of programs the U.S. funded abroad, which ones could be saved and which would have the biggest impact if they continued?
“We were fortunate enough to be in connection with and communication with some very strategic donors who understood quickly that the right answer for them was actually an answer for the field,” said Sasha Gallant, who led a team at the U.S. Agency for International Development that specialized in identifying programs that were both cost effective and impactful.
Working outside of business hours or after they’d been fired, members of Gallant’s team and employees of USAID’s chief economist’s office pulled together a list that eventually included 80 programs they recommended to private donors. In September, Project Resource Optimization, as their effort came to be called, announced all of the programs had been funded, with more than $110 million mobilized in charitable grants. Other emergency funds raised at least an additional $15 million.
Those funds are just the most visible that private donors mobilized in response to the unprecedented withdrawal of U.S. foreign aid, which totaled $64 billion in 2023, the last year with comprehensive figures available. It’s possible private foundations and individual donors gave much more, but those gifts won’t be reported for many months.
For the Trump administration, the closure of USAID was a cause for celebration. In July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency had little to show for itself since the end of the Cold War.
“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio said in a statement.
Going forward, Rubio said the State Department will focus on providing trade and investment, not aid, and will negotiate agreements directly with countries, minimizing the involvement of nonprofits and contractors.
Some new donors were motivated by the emergency
Some private donations came from foundations, who decided to grant out more this year than they had planned and were willing to do so because they trusted PRO’s analysis, Gallant said. For example, the grantmaker GiveWell said it gave out $34 million to directly respond to the aid cuts, including $1.9 million to a program recommended by PRO.
Annie, right, and her husband Jacob Ma-Weaver are photographed in San Francisco, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Annie, right, and her husband Jacob Ma-Weaver are photographed in San Francisco, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Others were new donors, like Jacob and Annie Ma-Weaver, a San Francisco-based couple in their late-thirties who, through their work at a hedge fund and a major tech company respectively, had earned enough that they planned to eventually give away significant sums. Jacob Ma-Weaver said the U.S. aid cuts caused needless deaths and were shocking, but he also saw in the moment a chance to make a big difference.
“It was an opportunity for us and one that I think motivated us to accelerate our lifetime giving plans, which were very vague and amorphous, into something tangible that we could do right now,” he said.
The Ma-Weavers gave more than $1 million to projects selected by PRO and decided to speak publicly about their giving to encourage others to join them.
“It’s actually very uncomfortable in our society —maybe it shouldn’t be — to tell the world that you’re giving away money,” Jacob Ma-Weaver said. “There’s almost this embarrassment of riches about it, quite literally.”
Private donors could not support whole USAID programs
The funds that PRO mobilized did not backfill USAID’s grants dollar for dollar. Instead, PRO’s team worked with the implementing organizations to pare down their budgets to only the most essential parts of the most impactful projects.
For example, Helen Keller Intl ran multiple USAID-funded programs providing nutrition and treatment for neglected tropical diseases. All of those programs were eventually terminated, taking away almost a third of Helen Keller’s overall revenue.
Shawn Baker, an executive vice president at Helen Keller, said as soon as it became clear that the U.S. funding was not coming back, they started to triage their programming. When PRO contacted them, he said they were able to provide a much smaller budget for private funders. Instead of the $7 million annual budget for a nutrition program in Nigeria, they proposed $1.5 million to keep it running.
Another nonprofit, Village Enterprise, received $1.3 million through PRO to continue an antipoverty program in Rwanda that helps people start small businesses. But they were also able to raise $2 million from their own donors through a special fundraising appeal and drew on an unrestricted $7 million gift from billionaire and author MacKenzie Scott that they’d received in 2023. The flexible funding allowed them to sustain their most essential programming during what CEO Dianne Calvi called seven months of uncertainty.
That many organizations managed to hold on and keep programs running, even after significant funding cuts, was a surprise to the researchers at PRO. Since February, the small staff supporting PRO have extended their commitment to the project one month at a time, expecting that either donations would dry up or projects would no longer be viable.
“That time that we were able to buy has been absolutely invaluable in our ability to reach more people who are interested in stepping in,” said Rob Rosenbaum, the team lead at PRO and a former USAID employee. He said they have taken a lot of pride in mobilizing donors who have not previously given to these causes.
“To be able to convince somebody who might otherwise not spend this money at all or sit on it to move it into this field right now, that is the most important dollar that we can move,” he said.
Other donors may wait to see what is next
Dean Karlan, former USAID chief economist, poses at his home, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Evanston, Ill. (AP Photo/Matt Marton)
Dean Karlan, former USAID chief economist, poses at his home, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Evanston, Ill. (AP Photo/Matt Marton)
Not all private donors were eager to jump into the chasm created by the U.S. foreign aid cuts, which happened without any “rhyme or reason,” said Dean Karlan, the chief economist at USAID when the Trump administration took over in January.
Despite the extraordinary mobilization of resources by some private funders, Karlan said, “You have to realize there’s also a fair amount of reluctance, rightly so, to clean up a mess that creates a moral hazard problem.”
The uncertainty about what the U.S. will fund going forward is likely to continue for some time. The emergency funds offered a short term response from interested private funders, many of whom are now trying to support the development of whatever comes next.
For Karlan, who is now a professor of economics at Northwestern University, it is painful to see the consequences of the aid cuts on recipient populations. He also resents the attacks on the motivations of aid workers in general.
Nonetheless, he said many in the field want to see the administration rebuild a system that is efficient and targeted. But Karlan said, he hasn’t yet seen any steps, “that give us a glimpse of how serious they’re going to be in terms of actually spending money effectively.”
Smaller donors also responded
Other emergency funds used a different approach than Project Resource Optimization to respond to frozen foreign assistance. The group, Unlock Aid, which advocated for major reforms to the U.S. Agency for International Development before the cuts, launched their Foreign Aid Bridge Fund in mid-February and closed it at the end of April after raising $2 million from 400 donors and foundations. Their fund accepted applications while prioritizing frontline groups that had diverse revenue sources. They closed the fund after donations slowed and it became clear that the U.S. funding freeze would become a funding cut. Two other groups, Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save, launched a joint Rapid Response Fund that raised $13 million. Their fund did not accept applications but worked closely with PRO to fund some of the programs they had identified. PRO also directed smaller donors to give through the Rapid Response Fund, which had the infrastructure to take both small and large gifts. In all, 1,300 individuals gave to the Rapid Response Fund, the groups said. Katrina Sill, the global health and development lead at Founders Pledge, said most of the 13 grants the fund made went to programs that benefit children. “This is a time to not forget [that] a very small amount of money can make an enormous impact,” she said.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in more than a decade.
The failed sale underscores a continued low appetite for coal among utilities that are turning to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity. Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.
President Donald Trump has made reviving the coal industry a centerpiece of his agenda to increase U.S. energy production. But economists say Trump’s attempts to boost coal are unlikely to reverse its yearslong decline.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The Department of Interior said in a Tuesday statement that last week’s $186,000 bid from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act.
Agency representatives did not provide further details, and it’s unclear if they will attempt to hold the sale again.
The leasing act requires bids to be at or above fair market value. At the last successful government lease sale in the region, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy paid $793 million, or $1.10 per ton, for 721 million tons of coal in Wyoming.
President Joe Biden’s administration sought to end coal sales in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, citing climate change.
A second proposed lease sale under Trump — 440 million tons of coal near an NTEC mine in central Wyoming — was postponed last week following the low bid received in the Montana sale. Interior Department officials have not said when the Wyoming sale will be rescheduled.
NTEC is owned by the Navajo Nation of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
In documents submitted in the run-up to the Montana sale, NTEC indicated the coal had little value because of declining demand for the fuel. The Associated Press emailed a company representative regarding the rejected bid.
Most power plants using fuel from NTEC’s Spring Creek mine in Montana and Antelope mine in Wyoming are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Spring Creek also ships coal overseas to customers in Asia. Increasing those shipments could help it offset lessening domestic demand, but a shortage of port capacity has hobbled prior industry aspirations to boost coal exports.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — President Donald Trump, members of his administration and conservative influencers painted a bleak portrait of Portland, Oregon, at a roundtable event at the White House Wednesday, alleging that the city has been besieged by violence perpetrated by “antifa thugs” and that it is essentially a war zone.
“It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country, radicals associated with the domestic terror group antifa that you’ve heard a lot about lately,” Trump said.
But the reality on the ground in Portland is far from the extremes described at the White House.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
The protests
TRUMP: “In Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs have repeatedly attacked our offices and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law.”
THE FACTS: There have been nightly protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland for months, peaking in June when police declared one demonstration a riot. There have also been smaller clashes since then: On Labor Day, some demonstrators brought a prop guillotine — a display the U.S. Department of Homeland Security blasted as “unhinged behavior.”
The protests at the ICE facility, which is outside downtown, have largely been confined to one city block and have attracted a range of participants. During the day, a handful of immigration and legal advocates mill about and offer copies of “know your rights” flyers. Daytime marches to the building have also included older people and families with young children. At night, other protesters arrive, often using megaphones to shout obscenities at law enforcement.
While the administration claims protesters are antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for decentralized far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
The building was closed for three weeks from mid-June to early July because of damage to windows, security cameras, gates and other parts of the facility, federal officials said in court filings submitted in response to a lawsuit brought by Portland and Oregon seeking to block the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard. The building’s main entrance and ground-floor windows have been boarded up.
Protesters have also sought to block vehicles from entering and leaving the facility. Federal officials argue that this has impeded law enforcement operations and forced more personnel and resources to be sent from other parts of the country.
However, in the weeks leading up to the Trump administration’s move to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard on Sept. 28, most nights drew a couple dozen people, Portland police correspondence submitted to the court shows.
Since June, Portland police have arrested at least 45 people, with the majority of those arrests taking place in June. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have charged at least 31 people with crimes committed at the building, including assaulting federal officers; 22 of those defendants had been charged by early July.
Is Portland on fire?
TRUMP: “The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy. And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal, there’s nothing wrong.”
THE FACTS: Fires outside the building have been seen on a handful of occasions. In June, a man was arrested after he lit a flare and tossed it onto a pile of materials stacked against the vehicle gate, according to federal prosecutors, who said the fire was fully extinguished within minutes.
More recently, social media videos of the Labor Day protest showed a small fire lit on the prop guillotine. And in early October, following the announcement of the National Guard’s mobilization, videos on social media showed a protester holding an American flag on fire — and conservative influencer Nick Sortor stomping the fire out.
There have also been some high-profile confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters. In late September, conservative media figure Katie Daviscourt was hit in the face with a flagpole and suffered a laceration, police logs show. In early October, Sortor, who has more than 1 million followers on X, was arrested along with two other protesters following an altercation. Local prosecutors ultimately declined to charge him after finding that one of the protesters had pushed him and that “any physical contact he had with other persons was defensive in nature.”
While Portland police correspondence submitted to the court notes a few instances of “active” energy and disturbances between protesters and counterprotesters, many entries describe low energy and “no issues” in the weeks leading up to the National Guard’s mobilization.
A new tongue-in-cheek website has also launched in recent days: isportlandburning.com shows multiple live cameras in the city and near-real-time data from the city’s fire department.
Shops and sewers
TRUMP: “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have sewers anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows. But most of the retailers have left.”
THE FACTS: This is false. Portland does have sewers — its sewer and stormwater system “includes more than 2,500 miles of pipes, nearly 100 pump stations, and two treatment plants,” according to the city’s website. The largest sewer pipe is the East Side Big Pipe, which has an inside diameter of 22 feet, while the smallest are only six inches in diameter.
Local and state officials have suggested that many of Trump’s claims appear to rely on images from 2020. Portland famously erupted in more than 100 days of large-scale unrest and violent protests after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police that year. Police were unable to keep ahead of splinter groups of black-clad protesters who broke off and roamed the downtown area, at times breaking windows, spraying graffiti and setting small fires.
But Portland has largely recovered from that time. Under a new mayor and police chief, the city has reduced crime, and the downtown — which has more than 600 retail shops, many with glass storefronts — has seen a decrease in homeless encampments and increased foot traffic. This summer was reportedly the busiest for pedestrian traffic since before the coronavirus pandemic, and a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
Gov. Tina Kotek said she told Trump during a phone call that “we have to be careful not to respond to outdated media coverage or misinformation that is out there.”
Accusation of a cover-up
KRISTI NOEM, Homeland Security Secretary: “I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon, and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”
THE FACTS: Noem did visit Portland on Tuesday and met with Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson. Both officials disagree with Noem’s narrative.
Kotek has repeatedly said that “there is no insurrection in Portland,” including in conversations with Trump and Noem, and that the city does not need “military intervention.” She has also continually called for any protests to be peaceful and said that local law enforcement can “meet the moment.” After Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Portland, Wilson said in a statement that the city has protected freedom of expression while “addressing occasional violence and property destruction.”
Observations on the ground in Portland support Kotek’s statement. While the nightly protests at the ICE facility have been disruptive for nearby residents — a charter school relocated this summer to get away from crowd-control devices — life has continued as normal in the rest of the city. There is no evidence of the protests in other areas of the city, including the downtown area about two miles away.
Portland residents have taken to social media to push back against the Trump administration’s statements about their city with the hashtag #WarRavagedPortland, posting photos and videos that show protesters in inflatable unicorn and frog costumes, along with people walking their dogs, riding their bikes and shopping at farmers markets.
BANGKOK (AP) — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Friday that the company is discussing a potential new computer chip designed for China with the Trump administration.
Huang was asked about a possible “B30A” semiconductor for artificial intelligence data centers for China while on a visit to Taiwan, where he was meeting Nvidia’s key manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest chip maker.
“I’m offering a new product to China for … AI data centers, the follow-on to H20,” Huang said. But he added that “That’s not our decision to make. It’s up to, of course, the United States government. And we’re in dialogue with them, but it’s too soon to know.”
Such chips are graphics processing units, or GPUs, a type of device used to build and update a range of AI systems. But they are less powerful than Nvidia’s top semiconductors today, which cannot be sold to China due to U.S. national security restrictions.
The B30A, based on California-based Nvidia’s specialized Blackwell technology, is reported to operate at about half the speed of Nvidia’s main B300 chips.
Huang praised the the Trump administration for recently approving sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China after such business was suspended in April, with the proviso that the company must pay a 15% tax to the U.S. government on those sales. Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, was told to pay the same tax on its sales of its MI380 chips to China.
As part of broader trade talks, Beijing and Washington recently agreed to pull back some non-tariff restrictions. China approved more permits for rare earth magnets to be exported to the U.S., while Washington lifted curbs on chip design software and jet engines. After lobbying by Huang, it also allowed sales of the H20 chips to go through.
Huang did not comment directly on the tax when asked but said Nvidia appreciated being able to sell H20s to China.
He said such sales pose no security risk for the United States. Nvidia is also speaking with Beijing to reassure Chinese authorities that those chips do not pose a “backdoor” security risk, Huang said.
“We have made very clear and put to rest that H20 has no security backdoors. There are no such things. There never has. And so hopefully the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient,” he said.
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog, recently posted a notice on its website referring to alleged “serious security issues” with Nvidia’s computer chips.
It said U.S. experts on AI had said such chips have “mature tracking and location and remote shutdown technologies” and Nvidia had been asked to explain any such risks and provide documentation about the issue.
Huang said Nvidia was surprised by the accusation and was discussing the issue with Beijing.
“As you know, they requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20s for some time. And I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses. And so hopefully this will be resolved,” Huang said.
Unconfirmed reports said Chinese authorities were also unhappy over comments by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggesting the U.S. was only selling outdated chips to China.
Speaking on CNBC, Lutnick said the U.S. strategy was to keep China reliant on American chip technology.
“We don’t sell them our best stuff,” he said. “Not our second best stuff. Not even our third best, but I think fourth best is where we’ve come out that we’re cool,” he said.
China’s ruling Communist Party has made self-reliance in advanced technology a strategic priority, though it still relies on foreign semiconductor knowhow for much of what it produces.
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AP Videojournalist Taijing Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to own a piece of Intel, less than two weeks after demanding the Silicon Valley pioneer dump the CEO that was hired to turn around the slumping chipmaker. If the goal is realized, the investment would deepen the Trump administration’s involvement in the computer industry as the president ramps up the pressure for more U.S. companies to manufacture products domestically instead of relying on overseas suppliers.
What’s happening?
The Trump administration is in talks to secure a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for converting government grants that were pledged to Intel under President Joe Biden. If the deal is completed, the U.S. government would become one of Intel’s largest shareholders and blur the traditional lines separating the public sector and private sector in a country that remains the world’s largest economy.
Why would Trump do this?
In his second term, Trump has been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are helping to power the craze around artificial intelligence, to pay a 15% commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.
Trump’s interest in Intel is also being driven by his desire to boost chip production in the U.S., which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the U.S. will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.
Didn’t Trump want Intel’s CEO to quit?
That’s what the president said August 7 in an unequivocal post calling for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign less than five months after the Santa Clara, California, company hired him. The demand was triggered by reports raising national security concerns about Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies while he was a venture capitalist. But Trump backed off after Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, who applauded the Intel CEO for having an “amazing story.”
Why would Intel do a deal?
The company isn’t commenting about the possibility of the U.S. government becoming a major shareholder, but Intel may have little choice because it is currently dealing from a position of weakness. After enjoying decades of growth while its processors powered the personal computer boom, the company fell into a slump after missing the shift to the mobile computing era unleashed by the iPhone’s 2007 debut.
Intel has fallen even farther behind in recent years during an artificial intelligence craze that has been a boon for Nvidia and AMD. The company lost nearly $19 billion last year and another $3.7 billion in the first six months of this year, prompting Tan to undertake a cost-cutting spree. By the end of this year, Tan expects Intel to have about 75,000 workers, a 25% reduction from the end of last year.
Would this deal be unusual?
Although rare, it’s not unprecedented for the U.S. government to become a significant shareholder in a prominent company. One of the most notable instances occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 when the government injected nearly $50 billion into General Motors in return for a roughly 60% stake in the automaker at a time it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The government ended up with a roughly $10 billion loss after it sold its stock in GM.
Would the government run Intel?
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC during a Tuesday interview that the government has no intention of meddling in Intel’s business, and will have its hands tied by holding non-voting shares in the company. But some analysts wonder if the Trump administration’s financial ties to Intel might prod more companies looking to curry favor with the president to increase their orders for the company’s chips.
What government grants does Intel receive?
Intel was among the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act, but it hasn’t been able to revive its fortunes while falling behind on construction projects spawned by the program.
The company has received about $2.2 billion of the $7.8 billion pledged under the incentives program — money that Lutnick derided as a “giveaway” that would better serve U.S. taxpayers if it’s turned into Intel stock. “We think America should get the benefit of the bargain,” Lutnick told CNBC. “It’s obvious that it’s the right move to make.”
MIAMI (AP) — Smartmatic, the elections-technology company suing Fox News for defamation, is now contending with a growing list of criminal allegations against some of its executives — including a new claim by federal prosecutors that a “slush fund” for bribing foreign officials was financed partly with proceeds from the sale of voting machines in Los Angeles.
The new details about the criminal case surfaced this month in court filings in Miami, where the company’s co-founder, Roger Pinate, and two Venezuelan colleagues were charged last year with bribing officials in the Philippines in exchange for a contract to help run that country’s 2016 presidential elections. Pinate, who no longer works for Smartmatic, has pleaded not guilty.
To buttress the case, federal prosecutors are seeking to introduce evidence they argue shows that some of the nearly $300 million the company was paid by Los Angeles County to help modernize its voting systems was diverted to a fund controlled by Pinate through the use of overseas shell companies, fake invoices and other means.
Smartmatic itself hasn’t been charged with breaking any laws, nor have U.S. prosecutors accused Smartmatic or its executives of tampering with election results. Similarly, they haven’t accused Los Angeles County officials of wrongdoing, or said whether they were even aware of the alleged bribery scheme. County officials say they weren’t.
But the case against Pinate is unfolding as Smartmatic is pursuing a $2.7 billion lawsuit accusing Fox of defamation for airing false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox says it was legitimately reporting newsworthy allegations.
Smartmatic said the Justice Department’s new filing was filled with “misrepresentations” and is “untethered from reality.”
“Let us be clear: Smartmatic wins business because we’re the best at what we do,” the company said in a statement. “We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate.”
Fox questions Smartmatic’s dealings in LA
Still, Fox has gone to court to try to get more information about L.A. County’s dealings with Smartmatic. The network has long tried to leverage the bribery allegations to undermine Smartmatic’s narrative about its business prospects – a key component in calculating any potential damages — and portray it as a scandal-plagued company brought low by its own legal problems, not Fox’s broadcasts.
South Florida-based Smartmatic was founded more than two decades ago by a group of Venezuelans who found early success working for the government of the late Hugo Chavez, a devotee of electronic voting. The company later expanded globally, providing voting machines and other technology to help carry out elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia.
It was awarded its contract to help with Los Angeles County elections in 2018. The contract, which Smartmatic continues to service, gave the company an important foothold in what was then a fast-expanding U.S. voting-technology market.
But Smartmatic has said its business tanked after Fox News gave President Donald Trump’s lawyers a platform to paint the company as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
Fox itself eventually aired a piece refuting the allegations after Smartmatic’s lawyers complained, but it has aggressively defended itself against the defamation lawsuit in New York.
“Facing imminent financial collapse and indictment, Smartmatic saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election,” the network’s lawyers said in a court filing.
Smartmatic has disputed Fox’s characterization in court filings as “lies” and “another attempt to divert attention from its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation.”
LA clerk deposed about trip, gifted meal
As part of its effort to investigate Smartmatic’s work in Los Angeles, Fox has sued to force LA County Clerk Dean Logan to hand over public records about his dealings with Smartmatic’s U.S. affiliate.
Fox’s lawyers also questioned Logan in a deposition about a dinner a Smartmatic executive bought for him at the members-only Magic Castle club and restaurant in Los Angeles and a Smartmatic-paid trip that Logan made to Taiwan in 2019 to oversee the manufacturing of equipment by a Smartmatic vendor. U.S. prosecutors claim that vendor was deeply involved in the alleged kickback scheme in the Philippines. The five-day trip included business class airfare, hotel and numerous meals as well as time for sightseeing, Fox said.
“The trip’s itinerary demonstrates that the trip was not a financial inspection or audit. It was a boondoggle,” Fox said in court filings.
Logan, who did not report the gifts in his financial disclosures, said in his 2023 deposition that the meal at the Magic Castle was a “social occasion” unrelated to business and that he was not required to report the trip to Taiwan because his visit was covered by the contract.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Logan’s office, said in a statement that the bribery allegations are unrelated to the company’s work for L.A. County and that the county had no knowledge of how the proceeds from its contract would be used. All of Smartmatic’s work has been evaluated for compliance with the contract’s terms, Sanchez added, and as soon as Pinate was indicted he and the other defendants were banned from conducting business with the county.
As for the trip to Taiwan, Sanchez said another county official joined Logan for the trip and the two conducted several on-site visits and conducted detailed reviews of electoral technology products that were required prior the start of their manufacturing. Logan’s spouse accompanied him on the trip, but at the couple’s own expense, the spokesman added.
“Unfortunately, this is an attempt to use the County as a pawn in two serious legal actions to which the County is not a party,” Sanchez said.
Smartmatic has settled two other defamation lawsuits it brought against conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network over their 2020 U.S. election coverage. Settlement terms weren’t disclosed.
Prosecutors claim bribe paid in Venezuela
U.S. prosecutors in Miami have also accused Pinate of secretly bribing Venezuela’s longtime election chief by giving her a luxury home with a pool in Caracas. Prosecutors say the home was transferred to the election chief in an attempt to repair relations following Smartmatic’s abrupt exit from Venezuela in 2017 when it accused President Nicolas Maduro ‘s government of manipulating tallied results in elections for a rubber-stamping constituent assembly.
Smartmatic has denied the bribery allegations, saying it ceased all operations in Venezuela in 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and has never sought to secure business there again.
“There are no slush funds, no gifted house,” the company said. Instead, it accused Fox of engaging in “victim-blaming” and attempts to use “frivolous” court filings “to smear us further, twisting unproven Justice Department allegations.”
Rumors spread online Friday that the U.S. government will soon be issuing stimulus checks to taxpayers in certain income brackets.
But Congress has not passed legislation to authorize such payments, and, according to the IRS, no new stimulus checks will be distributed in the coming weeks.
THE FACTS: This is false. Taxpayers will not receive new stimulus checks of any amount this summer, an IRS official said. Stimulus checks, also known as economic impact payments, are authorized by Congress through legislation and distributed by the Treasury Department. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri last month introduced a bill that would send tax rebates to qualified taxpayers using revenue from tariffs instituted by President Donald Trump. Hawley’s bill has not passed the Senate or the House.
The IRS announced early this year that it would distribute about $2.4 billion to taxpayers who failed to claim on their 2021 tax returns a Recovery Rebate Credit — a refundable credit for individuals who did not receive one or more COVID-19 stimulus checks. The maximum amount was $1,400 per individual.
Those who hadn’t already filed their 2021 tax return would have needed to file it by April 15 to claim the credit. The IRS official said there is no new credit that taxpayers can claim.
Past stimulus checks have been authorized through legislation passed by Congress. For example, payments during the coronavirus pandemic were made by possible by three bills: the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act; the COVID-related Tax Relief Act; and the American Rescue Plan Act.
In 2008, stimulus checks were authorized in response to the Great Recession through the Economic Stimulus Act.
The Treasury Department, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, distributed stimulus payments during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession. The Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, formed in 2012, played a role as well during the former crisis.
Hawley in July introduced the American Worker Rebate Act, which would share tariff revenue with qualified Americans through tax rebates. The proposed rebates would amount to at minimum $600 per individual, with additional payments for qualifying children. Rebates could increase if tariff revenue is higher than expected. Taxpayers with an adjusted annual gross income above a certain amount — $75,000 for those filing individually — would receive a reduced rebate.
Hawley said Americans “deserve a tax rebate.”
“Like President Trump proposed, my legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” Hawley said in a press release.
Neither the Senate nor the House had passed the American Worker Rebate Act as of Friday. It was read twice by the Senate on July 28, the day it was introduced, and referred to the Committee on Finance.
President Donald Trump has projected himself as a peacemaker since returning to the White House in January, touting his efforts to end global conflicts.
In meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders Monday, Trump repeated that he has been instrumental in stopping multiple wars but didn’t specify which.
“I’ve done six wars, I’ve ended six wars, Trump said in the Oval Office with Zelenskyy. He later added: “If you look at the six deals I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”
He raised that figure Tuesday, telling “Fox & Friends” that “we ended seven wars.”
But although Trump helped mediate relations among many of these nations, experts say his impact isn’t as clear cut as he claims.
Here’s a closer look at the conflicts.
People take pictures of smoke rising from an Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo, File)
People take pictures of smoke rising from an Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo, File)
Israel and Iran
Trump is credited with ending the 12-day war.
Israel launched attacks on the heart of Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership in June, saying it wanted to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon — which Tehran has denied it was trying to do.
Trump negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran just after directing American warplanes to strike Iran’s Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. He publicly harangued both countries into maintaining the ceasefire.
Evelyn Farkas, executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, said Trump should get credit for ending the war.
“There’s always a chance it could flare up again if Iran restarts its nuclear weapons program, but nonetheless, they were engaged in a hot war with one another,” she said. “And it didn’t have any real end in sight before President Trump got involved and gave them an ultimatum.”
Lawrence Haas, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council who is an expert on Israel-Iran tensions, agreed the U.S. was instrumental in securing the ceasefire. But he characterized it as a “temporary respite” from the ongoing “day-to-day cold war” between the two foes that often involves flare-ups.
Egypt and Ethiopia
This could be described as tensions at best, and peace efforts — which don’t directly involve the U.S. — have stalled.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River has caused friction between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan since the power-generating project was announced more than a decade ago. In July, Ethiopia declared the project complete, with an inauguration set for September.
Egypt and Sudan oppose the dam. Although the vast majority of the water that flows down the Nile originates in Ethiopia, Egyptian agriculture relies on the river almost entirely. Sudan, meanwhile, fears flooding and wants to protect its own power-generating dams.
During his first term, Trump tried to broker a deal between Ethiopia and Egypt but couldn’t get them to agree. He suspended aid to Ethiopia over the dispute. In July, he posted on Truth Social that he helped the “fight over the massive dam (and) there is peace at least for now.” However, the disagreement persists, and negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have stalled.
“It would be a gross overstatement to say that these countries are at war,” said Haas. “I mean, they’re just not.”
Indian security officers patrol in armored vehicles in Pahalgam, Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22, 2025, after assailants indiscriminately opened fired at tourists. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
Indian security officers patrol in armored vehicles in Pahalgam, Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22, 2025, after assailants indiscriminately opened fired at tourists. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
Trump has claimed that the U.S. brokered the ceasefire, which he said came about in part because he offered trade concessions. Pakistan thanked Trump, recommending him for the Nobel Peace Prize. But India has denied Trump’s claims, saying there was no conversation between the U.S. and India on trade in regards to the ceasefire.
Although India has downplayed the Trump administration’s role in the ceasefire, Haas and Farkas believe the U.S. deserves some credit for helping stop the fighting.
“I think that President Trump played a constructive role from all accounts, but it may not have been decisive. And again, I’m not sure whether you would define that as a full-blown war,” Farkas said.
Serbia and Kosovo
The White House lists the conflict between these countries as one Trump resolved, but there has been no threat of a war between the two neighbors during Trump’s second term, nor any significant contribution from Trump this year to improve their relations.
Kosovo is a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008. Tensions have persisted ever since, but never to the point of war, mostly because NATO-led peacekeepers have been deployed in Kosovo, which has been recognized by more than 100 countries.
During his first term, Trump negotiated a wide-ranging deal between Serbia and Kosovo, but much of what was agreed on was never carried out.
People protest in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, against the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels’ advances into eastern Congo’s capital, Goma, on Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Samy Ntumba Shambuyi, File)
People protest in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, against the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels’ advances into eastern Congo’s capital, Goma, on Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Samy Ntumba Shambuyi, File)
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Trump has played a key role in peace efforts between the African neighbors, but he’s hardly alone and the conflict is far from over.
Eastern Congo, rich in minerals, has been battered by fighting with more than 100 armed groups. The most potent is the M23 rebel group backed by neighboring Rwanda, which claims it is protecting its territorial interests and that some of those who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide fled to Congo and are working with the Congolese army.
The Trump administration’s efforts paid off in June, when the Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers signed a peace deal at the White House. The M23, however, wasn’t directly involved in the U.S.-facilitated negotiations and said it couldn’t abide by the terms of an agreement that didn’t involve it.
The final step to peace was meant to be a separate Qatar-facilitated deal between Congo and M23 that would bring about a permanent ceasefire. But with the fighting still raging, Monday’s deadline for the Qatar-led deal was missed and there have been no public signs of major talks between Congo and M23 on the final terms.
Armenia and Azerbaijan
Trump this month hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House, where they signed a deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict between the two nations. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the signed document a “significant milestone,” and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hailed Trump for performing “a miracle.”
The two countries signed agreements intended to reopen key transportation routes and reaffirm Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s commitment to signing a peace treaty. The treaty’s text was initialed by the countries’ foreign ministers at that meeting, which indicates preliminary approval. But the two countries have yet to sign and ratify the deal.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter conflict over territory since the early 1990s, when ethnic Armenian forces took control of the Karabakh province, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, and nearby territories. In 2020, Azerbaijan’s military recaptured broad swaths of territory. Russia brokered a truce and deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to the region.
In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a lightning blitz to retake remaining portions. The two countries have worked toward normalizing ties and signing a peace treaty ever since.
This photo released by the Royal Thai Army shows an injured Thai soldier who stepped on a land mine, being airlifted to a hospital in Ubon Ratchathani province, Thailand, July 23, 2025. (The Royal Thai Army via AP, File)
This photo released by the Royal Thai Army shows an injured Thai soldier who stepped on a land mine, being airlifted to a hospital in Ubon Ratchathani province, Thailand, July 23, 2025. (The Royal Thai Army via AP, File)
Cambodia and Thailand
Officials from Thailand and Cambodia credit Trump with pushing the Asian neighbors to agree to a ceasefire in this summer’s brief border conflict.
Cambodia and Thailand have clashed in the past over their shared border. The latest fighting began in July after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers. Tensions had been growing since May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a confrontation that created a diplomatic rift and roiled Thai politics.
Both countries agreed in late July to an unconditional ceasefire during a meeting in Malaysia. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pressed for the pact, but there was little headway until Trump intervened. Trump said on social media that he warned the Thai and Cambodian leaders that the U.S. would not move forward with trade agreements if the hostilities continued. Both countries faced economic difficulties and neither had reached tariff deals with the U.S., though most of their Southeast Asian neighbors had.
According to Ken Lohatepanont, a political analyst and University of Michigan doctoral candidate, “President Trump’s decision to condition a successful conclusion to these talks on a ceasefire likely played a significant role in ensuring that both sides came to the negotiating table when they did.” ___ Associated Press reporters Jon Gambrell, Grant Peck, Dasha Litvinova, Fay Abuelgasim, Rajesh Roy, and Dusan Stojanovic contributed.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tourism in Las Vegas is slumping this summer, with resorts and convention centers reporting fewer visitors compared to last year, especially from abroad, and some officials are blaming the Trump administration’s tariffs and immigration policies for the decline.
The city known for lavish shows, endless buffets and around-the-clock gambling welcomed just under 3.1 million tourists in June, an 11% drop compared to the same month in 2024. There were 13% fewer international travelers, and hotel occupancy fell by about 15%, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Mayor Shelley Berkley said tourism from Canada — Nevada’s largest international market — has dried up from a torrent “to a drip.” Same with Mexico.
“We have a number of very high rollers that come in from Mexico that aren’t so keen on coming in right now. And that seems to be the prevailing attitude internationally,” Berkley told reporters this month.
AP AUDIO: Las Vegas tourism is down. Some blame Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown
AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a drop in tourism in a major U.S. city.
A Trump slump
Ted Pappageorge, head of the powerful Culinary Workers Union, called it the “Trump slump.” He said visits from Southern California, home to a large Latino population, were also drying up because people are afraid of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
“If you tell the rest of the world they’re not welcome, then they won’t come,” Pappageorge said.
The Vegas dip mirrors a national trend. The travel forecasting company Tourism Economics, which in December 2024 anticipated the U.S. would have nearly 9% more international arrivals this year, revised its annual outlook to predict a 9.4% drop. Some of the steepest declines could be from Canada, the company said. Canada was the largest source of visitors to the U.S. in 2024, with more than 20.2 million, according to U.S. government data.
Canadian airline data shows fewer passengers from north of the border are arriving at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. Air Canada saw its passenger numbers fall by 33% in June compared to a year earlier, while WestJet had a 31% drop. The low-cost carrier Flair reported a whopping 62% decline.
Travel agents in Canada said there’s been a significant downturn in clients wanting to visit the U.S. overall, and Las Vegas in particular. Wendy Hart, who books trips from Windsor, Ontario, said the reason was “politics, for sure.” She speculated it was a point of “national pride” that people were staying away from the U.S. after President Donald Trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state.
“The tariffs are a big thing too. They seem to be contributing to the rising cost of everything,” Hart said.
The sky’s not falling
At the downtown Circa Resort and Casino, international visits have dipped, especially from Canada and Japan, according to owner and CEO Derek Stevens. But the downturn comes after a post-pandemic spike, Stevens said. And while hotel room bookings are slack, gaming numbers, especially for sports betting, are still strong, he said.
“It’s not as if the sky is falling,” he said. Wealthier visitors are still coming, and Circa has introduced inexpensive package deals to lure those with less money to spend.
“There have been many stories written about how the ‘end is near’ in Vegas,” he said. “But Vegas continues to reinvent itself as a destination worth visiting.”
On AAA’s annual top 10 list of top Labor Day destinations, Las Vegas slipped this year to the last spot, from No. 6 in 2024. Seattle and Orlando, Florida — home to Disney World — hold steady in the top two spots, with New York City moving up to third for 2025.
Reports of declining tourism were news to Alison Ferry, who arrived from Donegal, Ireland, to find big crowds at casinos and the Vegas Strip.
“It’s very busy. It has been busy everywhere that we’ve gone. And really, really hot,” Ferry said. She added that she doesn’t pay much attention to U.S. politics.
Recession-proof businesses
Just off the strip, there’s been no slowdown at the Pinball Museum, which showcases games dating back to the 1930s. Manager Jim Arnold said the two-decade-old attraction is recession-proof because it’s one of the few places that offers free parking and admission.
“We’ve decided that our plan is just to ignore inflation and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Arnold said. “So you still take a quarter out of your pocket and put it in a game, and you don’t pay a resort fee or a cancelation fee or any of that jazz.”
But Arnold said he’s not surprised overall tourism might be slowing, citing skyrocketing pricing at high-end restaurants and resorts that “squeezes out the low-end tourist.”
The mayor said the rising cost of food, hotel rooms and attractions also keeps visitors away.
“People are feeling that they’re getting nickeled and dimed, and they’re not getting value for their dollar,” Berkley said. She called on business owners to “see if we can’t make it more affordable” for tourists.
“And that’s all we want. We want them to come and have good time, spend their money, go home,” the mayor said. “Then come back in six months.”
But Trump’s grandiose claim is mathematically impossible.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 1,500%. I don’t mean 50%, I mean 14 — 1,500%.”
THE FACTS: This is false. Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications. The Trump administration has taken steps to lower prescription drug prices, but experts say there’s no indication costs have seen such a massive drop.
Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center, called Trump’s claim “total fiction” made up by the Republican president. He agreed that it would amount to drug companies paying customers, rather than the other way around.
“I find it really difficult to translate those numbers into some actual estimates that patients would see at the pharmacy counter,” said Mariana Socal, an associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University who studies the U.S. pharmaceutical market. She added that Trump’s math is “really hard to follow.”
Asked what Trump was using to back up his claim, White House spokesman Kush Desai said: “It’s an objective fact that Americans are paying exponentially more for the same exact drugs as people in other developed countries pay, and it’s an objective fact that no other Administration has done more to rectify this unfair burden for the American people.”
The White House provided a chart of price differentials for drugs in the U.S. and comparable countries, but did not offer any other evidence. On Sunday, Trump also described cuts to drug prices as a future development, not that already happened.
“So we’ll be dropping drug prices,” he said. “It will start over the next two to three months by 1,200, 1,300 and even 1,400%.”
Prices for most prescription drugs — unbranded generics are the exception — are higher in the U.S. than they are in other high-income countries. This is in large part due to the way drug prices are negotiated in the United States.
Trump made his recent appeal in letters to 17 pharmaceutical manufacturers, the White House announced last week. He asked them to reduce costs in the U.S. by matching the lowest prices of prescriptions drugs in other comparably developed countries. Some drugmakers have since indicated that they are open to cutting costs.
This move follows an executive order Trump signed in May setting a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices in the U.S. or face new limits in the future over what the government will pay.
The federal government has the most power to shape the price it pays for drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid. It’s unclear what — if any — impact the Trump administration’s efforts will have on millions of Americans who have private health insurance.
Socal pointed out that if drug manufacturers had cut costs to the extent Trump claims, they would be shouting it from the rooftops, especially given the heat they’ve taken over the years for their pricing practices.
“My expectation would be that they would make announcements — public announcements — and that those announcements would come way in advance of the actual effective dates when those price cuts would come into effect,” she said.
Joyce agreed that there has been no indication of a substantial cut.
“Not at all, not at all, none whatsoever,” he said. “And let alone 1,500.”
In his three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Donald Trump dug in on his false claims about voting, election fraud and his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Rogan helped encourage some of these claims.
The interview, released late Friday, came on the same day that the former president, on his social media network, re-posted threats to prosecute lawyers, voters and election officials he deems to have “cheated” in the 2024 election.
Here’s a look at some of the claims by the Republican nominee for president and the truth.
Trump did lose the 2020 election
WHAT TRUMP SAID: “I won by like — they say I lost by like — I didn’t lose.”
THE FACTS: Trump did lose in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s claims that fraud cost him the race were investigated repeatedly.
Trump’s own attorney general said there were no signs of significant fraud. The Republican-run state Senate in Michigan, one of the swing states where Trump claimed fraud occurred, came to the same conclusion after a lengthy investigation. An investigation by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau in Wisconsin, ordered by the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature in another state Trump claimed to have been defrauded from winning, also found no substantial fraud.
Rogan chortled when Trump was arguing, correctly, that his loss was close. Trump lost the election narrowly in six swing states. If about 81,000 votes had flipped, Trump could have won Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin and gotten enough support in the Electoral College to remain president.
Trump misstated that margin as 22,000 votes.
Judges ruled against Trump on the merits repeatedly
WHAT TRUMP SAID: “What happened is judges don’t want to touch it. They would say, ‘you don’t have standing.’ They didn’t rule on the merits.”
THE FACTS: That’s not true. Trump and his supporters lost more than 50 lawsuits trying to overturn the election.
A group of Republican-affiliated election lawyers and legal scholars reviewed all 64 of the Trump lawsuits challenging the 2020 election and found only 20 of them were dismissed by judges before a hearing on the merits. In 30 cases, the rulings against Trump came after hearings on the merits.
In the remaining 14 cases, the report for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution found, Trump and his allies dropped their lawsuits before they even got to the merits phase. “In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims,” the report states.
Almost every state already uses paper ballots
WHAT TRUMP SAID: “We should go to paper ballots.”
THE FACTS: Trump and Rogan both argued that voting machines are unreliable and that the United States should rely on paper ballots. Trump even cited his billionaire tech mogul supporter Elon Musk’s enthusiasm for such a change.
Almost all of the country already made that switch, however.
In 2020, more than 90% of the election jurisdictions in the U.S. used paper ballots, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The next year, the federal Election Assistance Commission changed its guidelines to recommend every jurisdiction use paper.
The only state not to use a voting system with paper ballots or a paper trail of any sort is Republican-run Louisiana.
What to know about the 2024 Election
Republicans and Democrats encouraged mail voting during the pandemic
WHAT TRUMP SAID: “They used COVID to cheat.”
THE FACTS: Trump’s central argument is that a grand Democratic conspiracy changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic to make mail voting more popular and that the conspirators then rigged the election against him through those mail votes. That’s not what happened.
When the pandemic first hit during the 2020 presidential primary in March, Republican and Democratic election officials quickly switched to encourage mail voting to avoid crowded polls. This was relatively uncontroversial until Trump turned against it, claiming it would lay the seeds for potential fraud.
In doing so, Trump was returning to his usual playbook, claiming that any election he doesn’t win is fraudulent. He made that claim about the first contest he lost, Iowa’s 2016 Republican caucus. He even claimed he lost the popular vote in 2016 because of voting by illegal immigrants, though a presidential commission he empaneled to find evidence of it disbanded without finding any proof.
The 2020 election was free of significant fraud
THE FACTS: Isolated cases of voters fraud have long occurred, but in modern times have not reached the levels needed to sway a national election. An Associated Press review found fewer than 475 cases in all six battleground states that Trump lost by more than a combined 300,000 votes — far too little to change the outcome.
NEW YORK (AP) — The video was seen millions of times across social media but some viewers were suspicious: It featured a young Black woman who claimed Vice President Kamala Harris left her paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago.
In an emotional retelling from a wheelchair, the alleged victim said she “cannot remain silent anymore” and lamented that her childhood had “ended too soon.”
Immediately after the video was posted on Sept. 2, social media users pointed out reasons to be wary. The purported news channel it came from, San Francisco’s KBSF-TV, didn’t exist. A website for the channel set up just a week earlier contained plagiarized articles from real news outlets. The woman’s X-ray images shown in the video were taken from online medical journals. And the video and the text story on the website spelled the alleged victim’s name differently.
The caution was warranted, according to a new Microsoft threat intelligence report, which confirms the fabricated tale was disinformation from a Russia-linked troll farm.
The tech giant’s report released Tuesday details how Kremlin-aligned actors that at first struggled to adapt to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race have now gone full throttle in their covert influence efforts against Harris and Democrats.
It also explains how Russian intelligence actors are collaborating with pro-Russian cyber “hacktivists” to boost allegedly hacked-and-leaked materials, a strategy the company notes could be weaponized to undermine U.S. confidence in November’s election outcome.
The findings reveal how even through dramatic changes in the political landscape, groups linked to America’s foreign adversaries have redoubled their commitment to sway U.S. political opinion as the election nears, sometimes through deeply manipulative means. They also provide further insight into how Russia’s efforts to fight pro-Ukrainian policy in the U.S. are translating into escalating attacks on the Democratic presidential ticket.
Russia-linked actors have spent several months seeking to manipulate American perspectives with covert postings, but until this point, their efforts saw little traction. Notably, some of the recent examples cited in the Microsoft report received significant social media engagement from unwitting Americans who shared the fake stories with outrage.
“As the election approaches, people get more heated,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center said in an interview. “People tend to take in information from sources they don’t really know or wouldn’t even know to evaluate.”
Microsoft explained that the video blaming Harris for a fake hit-and-run incident came from a Russian-aligned influence network it calls Storm-1516, which other researchers refer to as CopyCop. The video, whose main character is played by an actor, is typical of the group’s efforts to react to current events with authentic-seeming “whistleblower” accounts that may seem like juicy unreported news to U.S. voters, the company said.
The report revealed a second video disseminated by the group, which purported to show two Black men beating up a bloodied white woman at a rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The video racked up thousands of shares on the social platform X and elicited comments like, “This is the kind of stuff to start civil wars.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
Microsoft’s report also pointed to another Russian influence actor it calls Storm-1679 that has recently pivoted from posting about the French election and the Paris Olympics to posting about Harris. Earlier this month, the group posted a manipulated video depicting a Times Square billboard that linked Harris to gender-affirming surgeries.
The content highlighted in the report doesn’t appear to use generative artificial intelligence tools. It instead uses actors and more old-school editing techniques.
Watts said Microsoft has been tracking the use of AI by nation states for more than a year and while foreign actors tried AI initially, many have gone back to basics as they’ve realized AI was “probably more time-consuming and not more effective.”
Asked about Russia’s motivation, Watts said the Russia-aligned groups Microsoft tracks may not necessarily support particular candidates, but they are motivated to undermine anyone who “is supporting Ukraine in their policy.”
At a forum in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to suggest jokingly that he would support Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming U.S. election. Intelligence officials have said Moscow prefers Trump.
The Harris campaign declined to comment. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
Earlier this summer, Microsoft found that Iranian groups have also been laying the groundwork to stoke division in the election by creating fake news sites, impersonating activists and targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack.
U.S. intelligence officials are preparing criminal charges in connection with that attack, which targeted the Trump campaign, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Microsoft’s new report also touches on how a Chinese-linked influence actor has used short-form video to criticize Biden and Harris and to create anti-Trump content, suggesting it doesn’t appear interested in supporting a particular candidate.
Instead, the company said, the China-aligned group’s apparent goal is to “seed doubt and confusion among American voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.”
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NEW YORK (AP) — Foreign adversaries have shown continued determination to influence the U.S. election –- and there are signs their activity will intensify as Election Day nears, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday.
Russian operatives are doubling down on fake videos to smear Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, while Chinese-linked social media campaigns are maligning down-ballot Republicans who are critical of China, the company’s threat intelligence arm said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Iranian actors who allegedly sent emails aimed at intimidating U.S. voters in 2020 have been surveying election-related websites and major media outlets, raising concerns they could be preparing for another scheme this year, the tech giant said.
The report serves as a warning – building on others from U.S. intelligence officials – that as the nation enters this critical final stretch and begins counting ballots, the worst influence efforts may be yet to come. U.S. officials say they remain confident that election infrastructure is secure enough to withstand any attacks from American adversaries. Still, in a tight election, foreign efforts to influence voters are raising concern.
Microsoft noted that some of the disinformation campaigns it tracks received little authentic engagement from U.S. audiences, but others have been amplified by unwitting Americans, exposing thousands to foreign propaganda in the final weeks of voting.
Russia, China and Iran have all rejected claims that they are seeking to meddle with the U.S. election.
“The presidential elections are the United States’ domestic affairs. China has no intention and will not interfere in the US election,” the Chinese Embassy said in a statement.
“Having already unequivocally and repeatedly announced, Iran neither has any motive nor intent to interfere in the U.S. election; and, it therefore categorically repudiates such accusations,” read a statement from Iran’s mission to the United Nations.
A message left with the Russian Embassy was not immediately returned on Wednesday.
The report reveals an expanding landscape of coordinated campaigns to advance adversaries’ priorities as global wars and economic concerns raise the stakes for the U.S. election around the world. It details a trend also seen in the 2016 and 2020 elections of foreign actors covertly fomenting discord among American voters, furthering a divide in the electorate that has left the nation almost evenly split just 13 days before voting concludes.
“History has shown that the ability of foreign actors to rapidly distribute deceptive content can significantly impact public perception and electoral outcomes,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, said in a news release. “With a particular focus on the 48 hours before and after Election Day, voters, government institutions, candidates and parties must remain vigilant to deceptive and suspicious activity online.”
Russian actors have spent recent months churning out both AI-generated content and more rudimentary spoofs and staged videos spreading disinformation about Harris, Microsoft’s analysts found.
What to know about the 2024 Election
Among the fake videos were a staged clip of a park ranger impersonator claiming Harris killed an endangered rhinoceros in Zambia, as well as a video sharing baseless allegations about her running mate Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials also attributed to Russia this week. Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, condemned Russia’s efforts.
Another Russian influence actor has been producing fake election-related videos spoofing American organizations from Fox News to the FBI and Wired magazine, according to the report.
China over the last several months has focused on down-ballot races, and on general efforts to sow distrust and democratic dissatisfaction. A Chinese influence actor widely known as Spamouflage has been using fake social media users to attack down-ballot Republicans who have publicly denounced China, according to Microsoft’s analysts.
Candidates targeted have included Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, all of whom are running for reelection, the report said. The group also has attacked Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
All four politicians sent emailed statements condemning China’s aggression against American political candidates and its efforts to weaken democracy.
In its statement, the Chinese embassy said U.S. officials, politicians and media “have accused China of using news websites and social media accounts to spread so-called disinformation in the US. Such allegations are full of malicious speculations against China, which China firmly opposes.”
Iran, which has spent the 2024 campaign going after Trump with disinformation as well as hacking into the former president’s campaign, hasn’t been stymied by ongoing tension in the Middle East, according to the Microsoft report.
Quite the opposite, groups linked to Iran have weaponized divided opinions on the Israel-Hamas War to influence American voters, the analysts found. For example, an Iranian operated persona took to Telegram and X to call on Americans to sit out the elections due to the candidates’ support for Israel.
Microsoft’s report also said it observed an Iranian group compromising an account of a notable Republican politician who had a different account targeted in June. The company would not name the individual but said it was the same person who it had referenced in August as a “former presidential candidate.”
The report also warned that the same Iranian group that allegedly posed as members of the far-right Proud Boys in intimidating emails to voters in 2020 has been scouting swing-state election-related websites and media outlets in recent months. The behavior could “suggest preparations for more direct influence operations as Election Day nears,” Watts said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement that the allegations in the report “are fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”
Even as Russia, China and Iran try to influence voters, intelligence officials said Tuesday there is still no indication they are plotting significant attacks on election infrastructure as a way to disrupt the outcome.
If they tried, improvements to election security means there is no way they could alter the results, Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Intelligence officials on Tuesday also warned that Russia and Iran may try to encourage violent protests in the U.S. after next month’s election, setting the stage for potential complications in the post-election period.
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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
“Truth is boring, facts are boring, and outrage is really interesting,” says Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees elections in her state. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole with truth. But what we try to do is just get as much information out there as possible.”
In the past week, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed a voting machine had changed a voter’s ballot in her Georgia district during early voting, and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, has promoted various conspiracy theories about voting machines and voter fraud both online and at a rally for Trump in Pennsylvania.
The floodgates are “very much” open, said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who now leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works with state and local election officials.
“This is making election officials’ lives much more difficult,” he said.
Eric Olsen, who oversees elections in Prince William County, Virginia, said combatting misinformation has become an important and challenging part of the job.
“It’s really difficult from our position, a lot of times, because social media feels like a giant wave coming at you and we’re in a little canoe with a paddle,” he said. “But we have to do that work.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly attempted to sow doubt about the upcoming election – something he did ahead of his two previous bids for the White House. Even after he won in 2016, he claimed he had lost the popular vote because of a flood of illegal votes and he formed a presidential advisory commission to investigate. The commission disbanded without finding any widespread fraud.
This year, Trump claims that Democrats will cheat again and uses “Too Big to Rig” as a rallying cry to encourage his supporters to vote. Election experts see it as laying the groundwork to again challenge the election should he lose.
The conspiracy theories that have surfaced in recent weeks are not new. There have long been claims of “vote flipping,” with the most recent ones surfacing in Georgia and Tennessee.
What to know about the 2024 Election
A claim in Georgia’s Whitfield County was highlighted by Greene on Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” show. Jones has a history of spreading falsehoods and was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax.
County election officials issued a statement, noting the case involved one voter out of 6,000 ballots that had been cast since early voting began. The ballot was spoiled, and the voter cast a replacement that was counted. Officials said there was no problem with the voting machine.
Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said every report they’ve seen so far of someone saying their printed ballot didn’t reflect their selections on the touchscreen voting machine has been a result of voter error.
“There is zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” he said. “Are there elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it? That’s the main situation we have seen. There is literally zero — and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in this state — zero evidence of machines flipping votes. That claim was a lie in 2020 and it’s a lie now.”
In Shelby County, Tennessee, county election officials said human error was to blame for reports of votes being changed. Voters had been using their fingers instead of a stylus to mark their selections on voting machines, officials said.
In Washington state, Republican Jerrod Sessler, who is running for the state’s 4th Congressional District seat, shared a video on social media this week that claimed to show how easily fraudulent ballots can be created. But the video did not make clear that voter information on each ballot is checked against the state’s voter list.
“A ballot returned using fake voter registration information would not be counted and is illegal in Washington state,” Charlie Boisner, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, said in an email.
Musk recently invoked Dominion Voting Systems as part of his remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania, seeming to suggest its equipment was not trustworthy. Dominion has been at the center of conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election and settled its defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year for $787 million over false claims aired repeatedly on the network. The judge in the case said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations made by Trump allies on the network were true.
In a statement, Dominion said it was “closely monitoring claims around the Nov. 2024 election” and was “fully prepared to defend our company & our customers against lies and those who spread them.”
A request for comment from Musk was not immediately returned.
He has often sparred online with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Recently, the two tangled over Musk’s claim that there were more registered voters in Michigan, a presidential battleground state, than people eligible to vote. Benson said Musk was including in his count inactive voters who are scheduled for removal. A federal judge on Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee claiming problems with the state’s voter list.
During an interview last month, Benson said she was disheartened to see someone in Musk’s position repeating false information.
“If he was sincerely committed, as he says he is, to ensuring people have access to information, then I would hope that he would amplify the truthful information — the factual, accurate information — about the security of our elections instead of just amplifying conspiracy theories and in a way that directs the ire of many of his followers onto us as individual election administrators,” Benson said. “It’s something that we didn’t have to deal with in 2020 that creates a new battlefront and challenge for us.”
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Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Utah voters will cast ballots for the full range of federal and state offices in the Nov. 5 general election, including president, Congress, governor, state Legislature and others.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican former President Donald Trump and half a dozen third-party candidates are competing for Utah’s six electoral votes to replace outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden. It has been 60 years since a Democratic presidential candidate has won Utah.
GOP Congressman John Curtis, Democrat Caroline Gleich and independent candidate Carlton Bowen are squaring off to replace Republican U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, who announced last year he would not seek a second term.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox is running for reelection against Democratic state Rep. Brian King and three other candidates on the ballot. Cox received 64% of the vote in 2020.
Two constitutional amendments are on the ballot but votes for or against them won’t count after state courts voided the measures. Both amendments, however, remain on the ballot to keep printing and other election deadlines on track. One amendment would have allowed state lawmakers to rewrite citizen-approved initiatives and the other asked voters to consider changing how state income tax revenue is spent.
Polls close in Utah at 10 p.m. ET. Utah’s elections are conducted predominantly by mail, and all registered voters are sent absentee ballots, which can returned to a drop box or by mail. Mailed votes must be postmarked by Nov. 4, the day before Election Day. Utah tallies advance ballots prior to Election Day.
Utah counted a third of its votes after Election Day in 2022 and those additional ballots favored Democrats by 4 percentage points. That’s a substantial change from recent prior elections when the shift expanded the margin of victory for Republicans by one half to almost a full percentage point. The main counties to watch for additional votes have been Davis, Salt Lake and Utah.
Utah has been solidly Republican. Lyndon Johnson was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win there, carrying the state in 1964.
Still, Utah bears watching. As the state’s Mormon population has dropped, Utah has become more diverse. And some of the state’s Mormon voters have half-heartedly embraced Trump. Although Trump won Utah by 18 and 20 percentage point margins in 2016 and 2020, he far underperformed previous GOP nominees, who carried the state by nearly 30- to almost 50-point margins from 2000 through 2012.
The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the 2024 election in Utah:
What to know about the 2024 Election
Election Day
Nov. 5.
Poll closing time
10 p.m. ET.
Presidential electoral votes
6 awarded to statewide winner.
Key races and candidates
President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Jill Stein (Green) vs. Chase Oliver (Libertarian) vs. Cornel West (unaffiliated) and three others.
U.S. Senate: Curtis (R) vs. Gleich (D) and one other.
Governor: Cox (R) vs. Smith King (D) and three others.
Other races of interest
U.S. House, state Senate, state House, attorney general, auditor, state Board of Education, treasurer and ballot measures.
First votes reported, Nov. 3, 2020: 10:01 p.m. ET.
By midnight ET: about 63% of total votes cast were reported.
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Associated Press writer Maya Sweedler contributed to this report.
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Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP 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.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Alabama voters head to the polls on Nov. 5 with a newly drawn congressional district and a long history of Republican dominance in the state on the line.
The Democratic candidate for president hasn’t carried Alabama since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Since then, the state has become reliably red. Both U.S. senators, six of the state’s seven members of the U.S. House and the governor are Republicans. Former President Donald Trump won the state by 28 percentage points in 2016 and 26 points four years later.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and three independent candidates round out the field on the presidential ballot. Alabama has nine electoral votes.
Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District was redrawn this year after the Supreme Court ruled that the state had illegally diluted the influence of Black voters. The district stretches across the lower third of the state and includes the cities of Mobile and Montgomery. Democrat Shomari Figures and Republican Caroleene Dobson are both seeking the open seat. Its voting-age population is 49% Black, up from 30% from when the district was reliably Republican.
The current representative, Barry Moore, opted to run in the neighboring 1st District where he beat incumbent Jerry Carl in the primary. The other five incumbent representatives are running for reelection in their current seats.
Neither senator nor the governor is on the ballot this year, and the state’s lone ballot measure would affect only Franklin County.
Alabama doesn’t offer early in-person voting. It also is one of the few states that still requires an excuse to vote by mail. As a result, nearly all Alabama voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day. In recent elections, the state has reported more than 80% of its votes between poll close and midnight on Election Day.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the 2024 election in Alabama:
Election Day
Nov. 5.
Poll closing time
8 p.m. ET (portions of some counties that operate in Eastern Time have the option to close at 7 p.m. Eastern).
Presidential electoral votes
9 awarded to statewide winner.
Key race and candidates
President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Independent) vs. Jill Stein (Independent) vs. Chase Oliver (Independent).
Other races of interest
U.S. House, state Supreme Court, Civil Appeals, Criminal Appeals, Public Service Commission, state Board of Education and a ballot measure.
By midnight ET: about 84% of total votes cast were reported.
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AP writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.
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Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP 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.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier says he “made a mistake” during his interview with Kamala Harris in not airing video of a Donald Trump comment, something Harris pointed out to him in real time.
Baier made that admission on Thursday roughly 24 hours after his interview with the Democratic presidential candidate was aired. Just under 8 million people watched the session, Harris’ first sit-down with a Fox News Channel journalist during the campaign.
It wasn’t immediately clear, however, what Baier meant by saying he made a mistake.
Their exchange over the Trump video, one of the most contentious of the interview, came after Harris criticized her Republican opponent for saying that he might have to call out the National Guard or military to deal with “the enemy within,” whom he defined as “radical left lunatics.”
Baier then said his colleague, Harris Faulkner, had asked Trump about his “enemy within” comment earlier in the day, “and this is how he responded.” The clip showed Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anybody, and criticized “phony investigations” of him, cracking a joke his audience laughed at.
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within … that’s not what you just showed,” Harris said.
Speaking a day later, Baier said that when he asked his staff for video to play during the interview, he was expecting to get two clips — one that showed Trump making the “enemy within” comment to Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, and the one from Faulkner’s town hall that was played during the Harris interview.
“Take a listen to what I meant to roll,” Baier said on Thursday. He then aired both clips back to back.
Yet during the interview, Baier had given no indication that he meant to air the “enemy within” comment at all, even after Harris had pointed it out. For that reason, his explanation of a mistake met with some skepticism online.
“Newsflash: When wrong clips run (which happens) hosts can easily say `Sorry that was the wrong clip,’” former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson wrote on “X.” “He or his producers would have know it was the wrong one right then.”
There was no immediate comment from a Fox representative on Friday to clarify what Baier meant.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A rare copy of the U.S. Constitution printed 237 years ago and sent to the states to be ratified was sold for $9 million at an auction Thursday evening in North Carolina.
Brunk Auctions sold the document, the only copy of its type thought to be privately owned, at a private auction. The name of the buyer was not immediately released.
Bidding took just over seven minutes, with bids coming in at $500,000 intervals mostly over the phone. There was a pause at $8.5 million, then another after someone on the phone bid $9 million.
“Just another second or two. Savor it a little bit selling here at nine million,” said auctioneer and auction house owner Andrew Brunk.
Brunk was thankful. The auction was originally set for Sept. 28 but was delayed after Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage throughout Asheville and western North Carolina.
“It’s a privilege to have it here. It’s been quite a ride,” Brunk said.
Part of a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million is displayed on a screen at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Brunk Auctions owner Andrew Brunk takes bids for a copy of a painting shortly before a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution was sold for $9 million in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Lauren Brunk waits to see if a bidder on the phone wants to make a bid during an auction that included a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
The copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting it be sent to the states to be ratified by the people.
It’s one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that Congress, Charles Thomson. Just eight are known to still exist and the other seven are publicly owned.
Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, essentially certifying them.
What happened to the document up for auction Thursday between Thomson’s signature and 2022 is not known.
A 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million is displayed at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
FILE – An 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that will be put up for auction is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, file)
A Brunk auction employee waits to see if a bidder on the phone wants to make a bid during an auction that included a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Two years ago, a property was being cleared out in Edenton in eastern North Carolina that was once owned by Samuel Johnston. He was the governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789 and oversaw the state convention during his last year in office that ratified the Constitution.
The copy was found inside a squat, two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a can of stain on top, in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and a dusty book case, before the old Johnston house was preserved. The document was a broad sheet that could be folded one time like a book.
Along with the Constitution on the broad sheet printed front and back is a letter from George Washington asking for ratification. He acknowledged there would have to be compromise and that certain rights the states enjoyed would have to be given up for the nation’s long-term health.
FILE – Part of an 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that will be put up for auction is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, on Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, file)
FILE – Auctioneer Andrew Brunk, left, and historian Seth Kaller, right show off a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that will be put up for auction at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., on Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, file)
Brunk Auctions owner Andrew Brunk takes bids for a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million in Asheville, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
The Constitution copy wasn’t the only seven-figure purchase Thursday. A watermarked 1776 first draft of the Articles of Confederation went for $1 million.
Also sold for $85,000 was a 1788 Journal of the Convention of North Carolina at Hillsborough where representatives spent two weeks debating whether ratifying the Constitution would put too much power with the federal government instead of the states.
Auction officials were not sure what the Constitution document would go for because there is so little to compare it to. The last time a copy of the Constitution that was sent to the states sold, it was for $400 in 1891.
In 2021, Sotheby’s of New York sold one of only 14 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for the Continental Congress and delegates to the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record for a book or document.
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This story corrects that Andrew Brunk is the owner of the auction house that sold the document and not the owner of the document.
NEW YORK (AP) — A group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the largest U.S. companies Tuesday to hold onto their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, saying such efforts give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American dream.
The 49 House members, led by U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, shared their views in a letter emailed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000. The move follows several major corporations saying in recent months that they would end or curtail their DEI initiatives.
“Inclusion is a core American value, and a great business practice,” the lawmakers wrote. “By embracing this value, you create safer and fairer workplaces without sacrificing quality or financial success.”
A handful of U.S. companies, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Lowes and Molson Coors, dialed back their DEI initiatives over the summer. The retreats came in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing affirmative action in college admissions and after conservative activists targeted the prominent American brands over their diversity policies and programs.
DEI policies typically are intended as a counterweight to discriminatory practices. Critics argue that education, government and business programs which single out participants based on factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation are unfair and the same opportunities should be afforded to everyone.
“They create toxic environments. They divide people,” Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said of diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives.
The opponents have had several legislative and legal victories, and dozens more cases are working their way through the courts.
“These efforts to roll back rights are happening everywhere. They’re happening at the workplace. They’re happening in state legislatures,” Garcia told The Associated Press. “And it needs to stop. And we’ve got to push back and be vocal. We can’t just sit by and allow this to happen.”
The lawmakers’ letter states that growing numbers of American consumers spend their money with businesses that champion inclusion and are unlikely to continue supporting companies that they see backing down on commitments to bring people together.
“Continual progress towards more equal policies and benefits decreases the risk that anyone – employees and consumers – will experience discrimination, bias, and other threats to their safety and well-being,” the letter says.
The letter comes on the heels of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announcing that it filed 110 lawsuits in the past year alleging that employers sexually harassed teenagers, discriminated against workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, engaged in patterns of discrimination and violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, among other violations.
The lawsuits represent a small fraction of the complaints lodged with the EEOC. The agency received more than 81,000 charges of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2023, which was a 10% increase over 2022, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said.
For every complaint, the EEOC notified the employer and launched an investigation. Many involved allegations of racial harassment or religious discrimination, Burrows said.
“Most people don’t even report internally, much less to the federal government, when they experience discrimination, so unfortunately, it’s the tip of the iceberg,” Burrows told the AP.
She and other commissioners strongly support diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs “because it is in so many ways an antidote to the kinds of practices that lead us to have to go to court,” Burrows said.
The Manhattan Institute’s Shapiro counters that DEI programs have little to do with civil rights law.
“The pushback against it is not a pushback against anti-discrimination laws or anything that existed really before 10 years ago or so,” he said. “DEI is divisive. It views people and issues through lenses of identity, classifies people based on privilege hierarchies and intersectional matrices, and is antithetical to a productive working environment.”
Meanwhile, lawsuits claiming reverse discrimination may be gaining momentum. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided it would hear a lawsuit filed by Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against in her job at the Ohio Department of Youth Services because she was straight.
“It’s a case that people are expecting will open the courthouse doors to more reverse discrimination suits,” said Jason Schwartz, co-chairman of the labor & employment practice group at Gibson Dunn.
Circuit courts have disagreed over whether to hold reverse discrimination cases to a higher standard. Some have ruled that if a person from a majority group brings a discrimination case, they have to show more evidence of discrimination than a person from a minority group who files a similar case.
“The Supreme Court’s interest in that case signals some potential that they’re going to lower the bar,” Schwartz said. “We already see a really massive uptick in these reverse discrimination cases.”
Groups such as the American Alliance for Equal Rights have pushed back on affirmative action policies at universities and diversity, equity and inclusion policies run by corporations.
Recently, the Atlanta-based Fearless Fund had to shut down a grant contest for Black women business owners as part of a settlement with the American Alliance for Equal Rights, which argued that race-based programs should be open to everyone, regardless of race.
“There’s been such an intense focus on all of the risk emanating from the anti-DEI side,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law. “But I do worry sometimes that organizations may be over-correcting for that or worrying a little bit too much about that at the expense of the other side of the equation.”
