MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Democrat who represented southeast Wisconsin in Congress in the 1990s before going on to become a leader in the Assembly and state revenue secretary announced Thursday that he’s running for Congress again.

Peter Barca announced his bid against Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who is seeking a fourth term. Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, previously represented by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, leans Republican but was made more competitive under new boundary lines adopted in 2022.

The seat is a target for Democrats nationally as they attempt to regain majority control of the House. It is one of only two congressional districts in Wisconsin that are viewed as competitive. The other is western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District held by Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

Republicans hold six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats.

Barca, 68, previously held the 1st Congressional District seat from 1993 to 1995. He had previously considered running again for the seat after Ryan stepped down in 2018.

Barca is the first well-known Democrat to get into the race. National Democrats are expected to back Barca’s campaign.

Barca, in a statement announcing his campaign, said his long record of public service showed that he was a fighter for working families and contrasted himself with a “do-nothing, dysfunctional Congress.”

“We need someone to step up and start going to bat for our families again,” he said.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella branded Barca as a “sacrificial lamb” who has “put his out of touch policies ahead of Wisconsinites.”

Steil was elected in 2018 by 12 percentage points, and won reelection by 19 points in 2020 and 9 points in 2022.

Barca was elected to serve in the state Assembly from 1985 until 1993 when he resigned after winning a special election to Congress. After he lost in 1995, former President Bill Clinton appointed him to serve as Midwest regional administrator to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

He was elected again to the Assembly in 2008 and served as Democratic minority leader from 2011 to 2017.

Barca was leader of Democrats in 2011 during the fight over collective bargaining rights. While his Democratic colleagues in the Senate fled to Illinois in an attempt to block passage of a bill that effectively ended collective bargaining for public workers, Barca helped organize a filibuster in the Assembly that lasted more than 60 hours.

Barca stepped down as minority leader, in part over grumbling from fellow Democrats over his support for a $3 billion incentive package for Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing company that had planned to locate a massive facility in his district.

Barca left the Assembly in 2019 when Gov. Tony Evers tapped him to be secretary of the state Department of Revenue. He resigned last month.

NEW YORK (AP) — Jury selection in Donald Trump ’s hush money trial enters a pivotal phase as the former president returns to court Thursday morning. Attorneys still need to pick 11 more jurors to serve on the panel that will decide the first-ever criminal case against a former U.S. commander-in-chief.

Seven jurors were seated Tuesday after being grilled for hours by lawyers on everything from their hobbies to social media posts to their opinion of the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s closely contested presidential race.

Those selected Tuesday include an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.

The first day of Trump’s trial ended on Monday with no one picked to sit on the jury or as one of six alternates. Dozens of prospective jurors were dismissed both days after saying they could not be impartial or had other commitments that would conflict with the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.

The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.

The case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.

Currently:

— Jury selection process follows a familiar pattern with an unpredictable outcome

— Trump lawyers say Stormy Daniels refused subpoena outside a Brooklyn bar

— After 7 jurors were seated in Trump’s trial on Tuesday, he trekked to a New York bodega to campaign

— Only 1 in 3 US adults think Trump acted illegally in New York hush money case, AP-NORC poll shows

— Trump trial: Why can’t Americans see or hear what is happening inside the courtroom?

Here’s the latest:

Former president Donald Trump has left Trump Tower, on his way to court in Manhattan on Thursday for another day of jury selection in his criminal hush money trial.

The jury selection process has moved swifter than expected, prompting Trump when departing the courthouse on Tuesday to complain to reporters that the judge, Juan Merchan, was “rushing” the trial.

The judge has suggested that opening statements could start on Monday.

The seating of the Manhattan jury will be a seminal moment in the case, setting the stage for a trial that will place the former president’s legal jeopardy at the heart of the campaign against Democrat Joe Biden and feature potentially unflattering testimony about Trump’s private life in the years before he became president.

The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee.

Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump, with a prosecutor this week saying that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has completed a book about her years in public life, from legislation she helped enact to such traumatizing moments as the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol and the assault at her San Francisco home that left her husband with a fractured skull.

Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that Pelosi’s “The Art of Power” will be released Aug. 6.

“People always ask me how I did what I did in the House,” Pelosi, the first woman to become speaker, said in a statement. “In ‘The Art of Power,’ I reveal how — and more importantly, why.”

Pelosi, 84, was first elected to the House in 1986, rose to minority leader in 2003 and to speaker four years later, when the Democrats became the majority party. She served as speaker from 2007-2011, and again from 2019-2023, and was widely credited with helping to mobilize support for and pass such landmark bills as the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

She stepped away from any leadership positions after Republicans retook the majority in the 2022 elections, but she continues to represent California’s 11th district.

According to Simon & Schuster, Pelosi also will offer a “personal account” of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters rampaged through the Capitol as Congress voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. She also recounts the night in 2022 when an intruder broke into the Pelosi home and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. (Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time).

“Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family,” the publisher’s announcement reads in part.

Pelosi’s previous book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters,” came out in 2008. In 2022, she was the subject of the HBO documentary “Pelosi in the House,” made by daughter Alexandra Pelosi.

VENICE. Italy (AP) — Jeffrey Gibson’s takeover of the U.S. pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show is a celebration of color, pattern and craft, which is immediately evident on approaching the bright red facade decorated by a colorful clash of geometry and a foreground dominated by a riot of gigantic red podiums.

Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw with Cherokee descent, is the first Native American to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art show. For context, the last time Native American artists were included was in 1932.

Gibson, 52, accepts the weight of the honor, but he prefers to focus on how his participation can forge greater inclusion going forward. Inclusion of overlooked communities is a key message of the main Biennale exhibition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque — Strangers Everywhere,” which runs in tandem with around 90 national pavilions from April 20-Nov. 24.

“The first is not the most important story,” Gibson told The Associated Press this week before the pavilion’s inauguration on Thursday. “The first is hopefully the beginning of many, many, many more stories to come.”

The commission, his first major show in Europe, comes at a pivotal moment for Gibson. His 2023 book “An Indigenous Present” features more than 60 Indigenous artists, and he has two major new projects, a facade commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and an exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Gibson’s eye-catching exhibition titled “the space in which to place me,” features text in beadwork sculptures and paintings taken from U.S. founding documents, music, sermons and proverbs to remind the viewer of the broken promises of equity through U.S. history. The vibrant use of color projects optimism. In that way, Gibson’s art is a call to action.

“What I find so beautiful about Jeffrey’s work is its ability to function as a prism, to take the traumas of the past and the questions about identity and politics and refract them in such a way that things that realities that have become flattened … can become these beautiful kaleidoscopes, which are joyous and celebratory and critical all at the same time,” said Abigail Winograd, one of the exhibition’s curators.

“When I see people walk through the pavilion and kind of gasp when they walk from room to room, that’s exactly what we wanted,” Winograd said.

Entering the pavilion, the beaded bodices of sculptures in human form are emblazoned with dates of U.S. legislation that promised equity, the beading cascading into colorful fringe. A painting quotes George Washington writing, “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth,” in geometric letters that meld into a colorful patterned background.

By identifying specific moments in U.S. history, Gibson said that he wants to underline that “people who are fighting for equity and justice today, we’re not the first.

“This has been a line in the history of American culture. But I’m hoping that people will think about why … some of these things … have either been revoked or have not come into fruition,” he said.

Craft is at the center of Gibson’s art, both in defiance of past tendencies to denigrate Indigenous art and as a way to confront “the traumatic histories of Native American people,” he said.

“There is something very healing about the cycle of making,” Gibson explained.

The pavilion’s intricate beaded sculptures owe a debt to Native American makers of the past without imitating them, employing techniques that are more closely associated with couture to create something completely new. In the way of his forbears, Gibson uses beads sourced from all over the world, including vintage beads from Japan and China, and glass beads from the Venetian island of Murano.

Paper works incorporate vintage beadwork purchased from websites, estate and garage sales in mixed media displays that honor the generations of Native American makers that preceded him.

Still, his art incorporates many traditions and practices that go beyond his Indigenous background.

“I’ve looked at op art, pattern and decoration. I’ve looked at psychedelia, I have taken part in rave culture and queer culture and drag and the whole spectrum,” Gibson said.

“And so for me, I would not be not telling you the whole truth if I only chose to spoke about indigeneity. But my body is an Indigenous body — it’s all funneled through this body,” he said. ”And so my hope is that by telling my experience, that everyone else can project their own kind of intersected, layered experience into the world.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits was unchanged at low levels last week, pointing to continued labor market strength.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits were unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 212,000 for the week ended April 13, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 215,000 claims in the latest week. Claims have been bouncing around in a 194,000-225,000 range this year.

Labor market strength, which is driving the economy, together with elevated inflation have led financial markets and some economists to expect that the Federal Reserve could delay cutting interest rates until September. A few economists doubt that the U.S. central bank will lower borrowing costs this year.

Financial markets initially expected the first rate cut to come in March, which then got pushed back to June and now to September as data on the labor market and inflation continued to surprise on the upside in the first three months of the year.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell backed away on Tuesday from providing any guidance on when rates might be cut, saying instead that monetary policy needed to be restrictive for longer. The central bank has kept its policy rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July. It has raised the benchmark overnight interest rate by 525 basis points since March of 2022.

The claims data covered the period during which the government surveyed businesses and other establishments for the nonfarm payrolls component of April’s employment report. The economy added 303,000 jobs in March.

The Fed’s Beige Book report on Wednesday described employment as rising at a “slight pace overall” since late February, adding that “several districts reported improved retention of employees, and others pointed to staff reductions at some firms.”

It also noted that even as labor supply has improved, “many districts described persistent shortages of qualified applicants for certain positions, including machinists, trades workers and hospitality workers.”

Data next week on the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, will offer more clues on the state of the labor market in April. The so-called continuing claims edged up 2,000 to 1.812 million during the week ending April 6, the claims report showed.

Though still low by historical standards, the slightly elevated level of continued claims suggest it could be taking longer for some of the unemployed workers to land new jobs.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The Maine Legislature approved sweeping gun safety legislation including background checks on private gun sales, waiting periods for gun purchases and criminalizing gun sales to prohibited people before adjourning Thursday morning, nearly six months after the deadliest shooting in state history.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and the Democratic-led Legislature pressed for a number of gun and mental health proposals after the shooting that claimed 18 lives and injured another 13 people, despite the state’s strong hunting tradition and support for gun owners.

“Maine has taken significant steps forward in preventing gun violence and protecting Maine lives,” said Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, who praised lawmakers for listening to their constituents.

The governor’s bill, approved early Thursday, would strengthen the state’s yellow flag law, boost background checks for private sales of guns and make it a crime to recklessly sell a gun to someone who is prohibited from having guns. The bill also funds violence prevention initiatives and opens a mental health crisis receiving center in Lewiston.

The Maine Senate also narrowly gave final approval Wednesday to a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases and a ban on bump stocks that can transform a weapon into a machine gun.

However, there was no action on a proposal to institute a “red flag” law. The bill sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross would have allowed family members to petition a judge to remove guns from someone who is in a psychiatric crisis. The state’s current “yellow flag” law differs by putting police in the lead of the process, which critics say is too complicated.

Lawmakers pushed through the night and into the morning as they ran up against their adjournment date, which was Wednesday. But it didn’t come without some 11th-hour drama. Lawmakers had to approve a contentious supplemental budget before casting their final votes and didn’t wrap up the session until after daybreak.

The Oct. 25 shooting by an Army reservist in Lewiston, Maine’s second-largest city, served as tragic backdrop for the legislative session.

Police were warned by family members that the shooter was becoming delusional and had access to weapons. He was hospitalized for two weeks while training with his unit last summer. And his best friend, a fellow reservist, warned that the man was going “to snap and do a mass shooting.” The shooter killed himself after the attack.

Republicans accused Democrats of using the tragedy to play on people’s emotions to pass contentious bills.

“My big concern here is that we’re moving forward with gun legislation that has always been on the agenda. Now we’re using the tragedy in Lewiston to force it through when there’s nothing new here,” said Republican Sen. Lisa Keim. “It’s the same old ideas that were rejected year after year. Using the tragedy to advance legislation is wrong.”

But Democrats said constituents implored them to do something to prevent future attacks. They said it would’ve been an abdication of their responsibility to ignore their pleas.

“For the sake of the communities, individuals and families now suffering immeasurable pain, for the sake of our state, doing nothing is not an option,” the governor said in late January when she outlined her proposals in her State of the State address. Those in attendance responded with a standing ovation.

By Andrew Hay

TAOS, New Mexico (Reuters) – A Colt .45 “Peacemaker” revolver, a symbol of the American Wild West, is at the center of actor Alec Baldwin’s fight to avoid criminal prosecution for the 2021 fatal shooting of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a New Mexico movie set.

Baldwin’s 15-month battle with New Mexico state prosecutors is heading towards a July 10 climax when the actor is scheduled to face trial for involuntary manslaughter over Hollywood’s first on-set shooting with a live-round in modern times.

The movie’s weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment on Monday for Hutchins’ death. Baldwin’s legal team is trying to have his indictment thrown out. His lawyers could seek a plea bargain if that fails.

But should the charge hold, Baldwin’s trial is likely to focus on whether he pulled the trigger of his reproduction 1873 Colt .45 after he said he was directed – either by director Joel Souza or Hutchins – to point it at the cinematographer, according to different statements he made to the police and then to media.

Baldwin argues that Hutchins died due to a breakdown in film industry firearms safety protocol, which as an actor he was not responsible for. He said it was not his job to inspect the gun and that he did not pull the trigger after Gutierrez mistakenly loaded a live round instead of an inert dummy.

Firearms and legal experts do not expect a Santa Fe, New Mexico, jury to necessarily see it that way.

In the Southwest United States, where gun ownership is routine, there is a cultural norm to check whether a weapon is loaded and never point it at someone and pull the trigger, according to Ashley Hlebinsky, executive director of the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center.

Some local jurors may not differentiate between handling a gun on a movie set or in real life. Persuading jury members, especially gun owners, that the revolver went off on its own could be a hard sell, said the firearms historian.

Still, Hlebinsky sees a possible path to acquittal for Baldwin: namely, the argument his lawyers laid out in their motion to dismiss that the gun was modified to make it “easier to fire without pulling the trigger.” That motion is now being considered by a judge.

“The defense just have to put doubt into the head of the jury,” said Hlebinksy, who has acted as a firearms expert in court cases on single action Colt .45-type revolvers similar to the “Rust” weapon. “I think they can definitely do that.”

CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS

It was six weeks after the Oct. 21, 2021 shooting that Baldwin said in an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos that he did not pull the trigger of the Italian-made gun.

Days later, the actor told a New Mexico workplace safety inspector that the Pietta reproduction Colt Single Action Army revolver had no mechanical defect.

Baldwin’s statement that the gun “went off” on its own, and his comment that it worked properly, are part of New Mexico state prosecutor Kari Morrissey’s assertion that the “30 Rock” actor has “lied with impunity” about details of the shooting.

“They’re going to have to walk back from that statement a bit,” trial lawyer Neama Rahmani said of Baldwin’s legal team.

The former federal prosecutor expected the actor’s lawyers to frame the incident as “an accidental discharge,” a term meaning the gun fired due to mechanical failure.

He said it was an unusual though not unheard of legal position, most often employed in cases where a defendant was seeking to reduce a charge from murder to manslaughter.

According to Baldwin’s lawyers, someone filed down the full-cock notch of the long Colt .45 after it was supplied brand new to the production, to make it easier to fire.

Lucien Haag, an independent gun expert hired by the state, testified at Gutierrez’s trial that the full-cock notch was worn down and broken off by FBI testing, rather than filing.

FBI tests of the gun found it was in normal working condition when it arrived at their lab in Quantico, Virginia, after the shooting. An investigator had to hit the hammer with a mallet to make it fire without pulling the trigger, the blows damaging the hammer and trigger, according to the FBI.

Baldwin risks jeopardizing his credibility if he changes his story on the trigger, said lawyer Kate Mangels. She expected him to continue to blame others for firearm safety failures as prosecutors accuse him of negligence, both as an actor and the film’s most powerful producer.

“At this juncture it would be difficult for Baldwin’s defense team to change course,” said Mangels, a partner at entertainment law firm Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir.

Hlebinsky, the firearms expert, said movie-set armorers she knows, who have seen pictures of the hammer on Baldwin’s gun, are uncertain whether the full cock notch was worn down by mallet blows or filing. She expected Baldwin’s legal team to find a firearms expert to testify it was the latter.

“I don’t think anyone can say 100% what happened,” she said of the gun.

(Reporting By Andrew Hay; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Aurora Ellis)

By Leah Douglas, Cassandra Garrison and Marcelo Teixeira

(Reuters) – Texas farm groups warn of a disastrous season ahead for citrus and sugar as Mexican and U.S. officials try to resolve a dispute over a decades-old water treaty that supplies U.S. farmers with critical irrigation.

The neighboring countries have tussled over the 1944 treaty before, but the current drought-driven water shortages are the most severe in nearly 30 years and add to existing political tensions over genetically modified corn.

Under the treaty designed to allocate shared water resources, Mexico is required to send 1.75 million acre-feet of water from the Rio Grande to the U.S. over a five-year cycle.

Now in year four, Mexico has sent only about 30% of its expected deliveries, the lowest amount at this point of any four- or five-year cycles since 1992, according to data from the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), which oversees the treaty.

The last sugar mill in Texas has shut down due to the lack of water, at a time of low U.S. supplies and high prices for the sweetener.

“This water is impacting not only the farmers, but it’s impacting the employment of citizens within our community,” U.S. Representative from Texas Monica De La Cruz told Reuters.

Manuel Morales, secretary of the Mexican section of the IBWC, said Mexico is working to comply with its commitments but that the water shortage is due to climate change and the treaty allows more time to deliver water in the event of extraordinary drought.

Mexico’s national water authority, Conagua, says severe drought has gotten worse and the country is facing the worst drought conditions since 2011.

Some residents have protested in Mexico City after going without running water for weeks.

De La Cruz and three other members of Texas’ Congressional delegation met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 11 to ask the State Department to do more to enforce the treaty.

Blinken on the call committed to speaking with Mexican officials about the issue, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A State Department spokesperson said the agency is closely following the water shortages and has urged Mexico to sign a revised water agreement.

U.S. IBWC spokesperson Frank Fisher said commission officials from both countries have met several times since 2023 to renegotiate aspects of the treaty in hopes of increasing reliability.

Both countries have had agricultural water shortages in recent decades, Fisher said.

CROSS-BORDER DROUGHT

Texas’s half-billion-dollar citrus industry is heavily dependent on water from Mexico, especially with drought conditions growing more severe in the region, said Dale Murden, president of the industry group Texas Citrus Mutual.

“You can’t count completely on rainfall. It’s nice when it happens, but you need to control the water on the tree,” he said.

Texas is the third-largest citrus state behind California and Florida.

Data from the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System shows below-normal precipitation and moderate to severe drought conditions in the region.

For Texas sugarcane farmers, the outlook this season is “complete and absolute despair,” said Sean Brashear, president and CEO of Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers.

The group in February shut its sugar mill in Santa Rosa, Texas, after 51 years of operation due to the lack of water from Mexico.

Though Texas is not a major sugar producing state, global sugar supplies are tight and the closure will likely lead to increased U.S. sugar imports, said broker and supply chain services provider Czarnikow.

The U.S. imports around a third of its sugar and has increased imports of highly taxed, pricey sugar since countries holding low-tariff import quotas failed to fulfill them.

IBWC’s Morales said the weather conditions have led to lower levels in the Rio Grande River basin.

    “It is not a question of only affecting users on the U.S. side, we in Mexico are also suffering the consequences of this shortage,” Morales said.

The USDA in April reduced its estimate for Mexico’s 2023/24 sugar production to the lowest in 10 years.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington, Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City, and Marcelo Teixeira in New York; writing by Leah Douglas; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Josie Kao)

By Ted Hesson

GOLDEN VALLEY, Arizona (Reuters) – A restrictive abortion ban revived in Arizona is providing a new opening for Democrats in the runup to the Nov. 5 election and putting Republicans in a tricky political bind as they try to win over moderates in the battleground state.

U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, the leading Democratic candidate in a closely watched U.S. Senate race, has criticized Republican former President Donald Trump for paving the way for the Arizona Supreme Court last week to reinstate a near-total abortion ban based on an 1864 law written during the U.S. Civil War and when women lacked the right to vote. 

The top Republican candidate in the race, former television newscaster Kari Lake, once praised the 1864 law, a stance Gallego highlighted in a new digital ad this week. Lake has since reversed her position and has spoken with Arizona lawmakers about overturning it, an adviser said.

Lake did not address abortion during her speech, however, and instead focused on Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of border security and other Republican priorities on Saturday outside a restaurant in Golden Valley, Arizona, in the state’s staunchly conservative northwest corner.

Roughly 100 people gathered to hear Lake speak at Great American Pizza and Subs, an establishment that greets visitors outside with a mural promoting Trump’s re-election campaign and inside with Trump-themed art and patriotic decor. A local group raffled off an assault rifle beforehand.

Lake blasted Biden’s approach to border security as record numbers of migrants have been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally during his presidency. She ripped Gallego for calling Trump’s border wall “stupid” in 2017.

“My first act as U.S. senator will be to write a short piece of legislation that fully funds the border wall and expedites the construction immediately,” Lake said to cheers.

Arizona is a swing state that could play a decisive role in the presidential race, as well as control of the U.S. Senate. Strategists in both parties said the ruling outlawing nearly all abortions would push moderate voters in Arizona toward Democrats, while also mobilizing young voters, women and voters of color. 

Democratic efforts in the Arizona legislature on Wednesday to overturn the ban, which would take effect within 60 days, were blocked by Republicans. 

Immigration is a top issue for voters and particularly animating for Republicans, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows. The issue could be especially relevant in Arizona, a border state where crossings have risen in the past year. Polls in recent months show Gallego with a slight edge against Lake.

State data shows 35% of Arizona voters are registered Republicans, 29% Democrats and 36% independent and other parties.

Lake hit on familiar themes – blaming the news media for opposition to Trump and hitting Biden for gas and food prices. She criticized “fake news media,” singling out a Reuters journalist who appeared to be the only reporter in attendance. One attendee suggested such reporters be charged with treason and arrested.

When asked about the state’s abortion ban after her remarks, Lake told Reuters states should be able to decide their abortion laws, potentially leaving it available in some places. 

“I’m pro-life and I’m not going to apologize that I want to save babies and help women,” she said. 

Robert Hall, the pro-Trump owner of the restaurant where the event took place, backs conservative causes, including gun rights, and had a 9 mm pistol on his hip. When it comes to abortion, he said it should be legal but rare, adding he still plans to vote for Trump and Lake if she wins the Republican nomination.

“I personally believe that it’s a woman’s choice,” he said. “That’s between her and the Lord.”   

‘TRUMP DID THIS’

Following the April 9 court decision reviving the 160-year-old abortion ban, the Biden campaign and Arizona Democrats raced to hammer Trump for opening the door to the ruling.

Trump appointed three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who in 2022 helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide. 

Trump, like Lake, has tried to distance himself from the Arizona ruling, saying the court went too far.

Vice President Kamala Harris flew from Washington, D.C., to Tucson, on Friday to emphasize the Biden campaign’s message blaming Trump. Gallego, a Latino and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in Iraq, joined her on Air Force 2 and criticized Lake’s earlier endorsement of the ban.

“Trump did this and Kari Lake was cheerleading the whole way,” he said, speaking to reporters on the flight. “It doesn’t matter what happens from now on. The voters are just not going to trust her.”

Gallego said his internal campaign polling showed Latino voters, and younger Latinos especially, were concerned about abortion rights.

A third of Arizona residents are Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data, above the national average, and the community’s median age is 27 – a decade younger than the median for Arizonans overall.

Jennifer Contreras, a 33-year-old school administrator in Tucson, told Reuters that she strongly opposes Trump’s agenda, including the moves that led to Arizona’s abortion ban. 

Contreras, a queer woman born in Tucson to Mexican parents, said she planned to vote for Biden and Gallego even though they are not as progressive as she would prefer. She said her family members would follow her lead because they looked to her for guidance.

“If I vote, 10 other people vote the same way I do,” she said.

While migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border have been steady in recent months, the figures remain higher than under previous administrations. A spike in crossings could potentially elevate the issue, putting more pressure on Gallego.

“Donald Trump killed the border bill and Donald Trump killed our abortion protections,” Gallego said on Friday aboard Air Force 2. “And these are the two things that are going to cost them in the election in Arizona.”

At a remote stretch of the border near Sasabe, Arizona, on Sunday, Reuters encountered three dozen migrants from Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, India, Bangladesh and Albania. Gail Kocourek, a volunteer with the humanitarian group Tucson Samaritans, offered them water and food as they trekked along the border wall.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Golden Valley, Arizona; Editing by Mica Rosenberg, Mary Milliken and Aurora Ellis)

By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 15 members of the storied Kennedy political family will endorse U.S. President Joe Biden at a Philadelphia campaign event on Thursday in a rebuke of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s independent bid for office.

Biden, a Democrat, faces Republican Donald Trump in a November re-match of the 2020 election. But members of both parties have bristled over the possibility that the candidacy of Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, or another third-party bid could spoil either of their chances.

Kennedy, son of the slain U.S. senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, made his name as an environmental lawyer, before becoming known as an anti-vaccine advocate, and with an eclectic mix of political views. He is backed by 15% of registered voters, versus 39% for Biden and 38% for Trump, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Many in Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s elite family – prominent Democrats since the 19th century – have broken with him over his views.

“I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behavior would have horrified my father, Robert F. Kennedy,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s younger sister Kerry Kennedy will say at the Biden campaign event, according to prepared remarks. “Daddy stood for equal justice, human rights, and freedom from want and fear. Just as President Biden does today.”

Kerry Kennedy and other members of the family are then expected to join local volunteers in door-knocking and phone-banking on Biden’s behalf, campaign aides said.

The event comes as Biden spends his third day this week in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state for his re-election bid. Biden needs strong turnout from Philadelphia’s Black community to win the state, and the Kennedys became icons for many African American families because of their advocacy for civil rights.

Biden, only the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, has long spoken of how he was inspired by the family’s political legacy.

In his 2007 book “Promises to Keep,” Biden describes himself as a young man moved to get into public service by the Kennedy brothers and the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., “swept up in their eloquence, their conviction, the sheer size of their improbable dreams.” A bust of President Kennedy sits in the Oval Office.

When Biden was later elected to Congress, fellow Senator Ted Kennedy would become one of his closest friends. Ted, John and Robert Sr. were brothers.

The family ties have continued in the years since. Dozens of members of the Irish American family joined Biden at the White House for St. Patrick’s Day last month.

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the slain president, was appointed ambassador to Australia by Biden. She had served as ambassador to Japan under Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I have a big family,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr told Reuters last month. “Many of them are working in my campaign. Not everybody agrees with me.”

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Mary Milliken and Leslie Adler)