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Facebook News tab will soon be unavailable as Meta scales back news and political content

Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.

Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.

Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.

The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.

“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”

Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.

But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the U.S. presidential election and other races get underway.

“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”

Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.

“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.

News makes up less than 3% of what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by over 80% last year.

However, according to a 2023 Pew Research study, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform outpaces the rest: Facebook.

Three in 10 U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, also owned by Meta.

Instagram users recently expressed dissatisfaction with the app’s choice to stop “proactively” recommending political content posted on accounts that users don’t follow. While the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware Meta made the change.


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GOP-backed bill proposing harsher sentences to combat crime sent to Kentucky’s governor

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kentucky wrapped up work Thursday on a sweeping criminal justice bill that would deliver harsher sentences to combat crime. Opponents making a last stand before final passage warned the measure would carry a hefty price tag with no assurances that a tougher approach will lower crime.

The House voted 75-23 after another long debate to send the measure to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. The massive legislation is a priority for many in the GOP supermajority legislature.

The governor has signaled he likes aspects of the sprawling bill but dislikes other sections, including provisions to create the crime of unlawful camping, which critics say would criminalize homelessness.

“It’s hard to comment on a bill that tries to do this many things,” Beshear said recently. “I think it properly should have been split into different bills.”

House Bill 5 — one of the most contentious of the legislative session — would make a multitude of changes to the state’s criminal code, enhancing many current penalties and creating new offenses.

Supporters portrayed the bill as a necessary policy shift that would do more to hold criminals accountable and to make communities safer.

“If you get convicted of a violent crime, you’re going to the big house and you’re going for a long time,” Republican Rep. Jason Nemes said in defending the bill against blistering criticism from Democrats.

One prominent feature would create a “three-strikes” penalty that would lock up felons for the rest of their lives after committing a third violent offense.

Opponents said the measure failed to delve into the root causes of crime and warned of potential skyrocketing costs by putting more people behind bars for longer sentences.

“To increase the penalties may make us on paper look like we feel safer. I do not know that it will make us actually be more safe,” said Democratic Rep. Tina Bojanowski.

To bolster public safety, she suggested such alternatives as temporarily taking guns away from people experiencing mental health crises, better protecting domestic violence victims and improving access to housing — things not addressed by the legislation. Other critics said more effective ways to combat crime would be to raise the minimum wage and spend more on rehabilitative services.

The bill’s supporters focused mostly on urban crime in pushing for tougher policies. A law enforcement report released last year showed that overall serious crime rates fell across Kentucky in 2022, with declines in reports of homicides, robberies and drug offenses.

Opponents said the prospect of more criminal offenders serving longer sentences will saddle the Bluegrass State with significantly higher corrections costs and put more strain on overcrowded jails.

The fiscal note attached to the bill said the overall financial impact was “indeterminable” but would likely lead to a “significant increase in expenditures primarily due to increased incarceration costs.”

The measure would add to the list of violent crimes that require offenders to serve most of their sentences before becoming eligible for release.

Another key section aims to combat the prevalence of fentanyl by creating harsher penalties when its distribution results in fatal overdoses. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid seen as a key factor in the state’s high death toll from drug overdoses.

The section stirring some of the most heated debate would create an “unlawful camping” offense applied to the homeless. It means people could be arrested for sleeping or setting up camp in public spaces — whether on streets, sidewalks, under bridges or in front of businesses or public buildings. A first offense would be treated as a violation, with subsequent offenses designated as a misdemeanor. People could sleep in vehicles in public for up to 12 hours without being charged with unlawful camping.

Several thousand people experience homelessness in Kentucky on a given night, advocates say.

The bill would create a standalone carjacking law with enhanced penalties. Another provision would offer workers and business owners criminal immunity in cases where they use a “reasonable amount of force” to prevent theft or protect themselves and their stores.

The bill’s lead sponsor is Republican Rep. Jared Bauman and the measure drew dozens of cosponsors.


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Patchwork international regulations govern cargo ships like the one that toppled Baltimore bridge

The patchwork system of safety regulations pertaining to massive cargo ships like the one that toppled a major bridge in Baltimore this week can allow freight transporters to skirt oversight, critics say, making maritime shipping what one expert called “the weakest link in the transportation system.”

The thousands of container ships that carry more than 80% of all goods moved around the world are governed by rules established by the International Maritime Organization in London that are enforced by the various countries where ships are based and ports across the world. And many ships fly the flags of so-called countries of convenience that offer cheap registration fees and tax breaks but may not have robust oversight.

“There’s no strong infrastructure for safety in maritime,” said Jim Hall, who led the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001. “And there’s a lack of adequate oversight of what we have because the Coast Guard is essentially underfunded and doesn’t have the adequate manpower to do the many jobs it is given to do.”

Former U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, who chaired the House Transportation Committee and tried to improve regulations for decades before leaving office last year, said the system encourages ship owners to seek out “the least-regulated place in the world and the cheapest labor that you can exploit and make money.”

“The only protections we have are harbor inspections when ships come to the U.S. Otherwise, it’s a pretty much unregulated, Wild West industry,” DeFazio said.

But regulators and ship owners defend the safety of the industry because regardless of where a ship is based, it’s still supposed to meet the same standards that countries and ports enforce through periodic inspections. Records show that the the ship that struck the bridge in Baltimore — the Dali — was last inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard in New York on Sept. 13. According to data from the shipping information website Equasis, the “standard examination” didn’t identify any deficiencies. That was one of at least 27 inspections the ship underwent at ports around the world since it was built in 2015.

Given the huge amount of freight delivered around the world by some 90,000 ships of all sizes, relatively few accidents are reported, according to the International Chamber of Shipping coalition of ship owners. Insurer Allianz Global said only 38 vessels were lost in 2022, which is down significantly from the 1990s, when more than 200 ships were routinely lost each year.

“The maritime mode of transportation merchant shipping is an incredibly, incredibly safe mode of transportation, not just here in the United States, but worldwide,” U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Gautier said during a White House briefing Wednesday.

The Dali was flagged in Singapore, which has one of the best safety records of any country where ships are based. It’s not listed as one of the 42 countries identified as “flags of convenience” by the International Transport Workers Federation. Authorities in Singapore have said they will conduct their own investigation into the bridge collapse and help U.S. authorities get information they need from the ship’s management company, Synergy Marine Group.

Aside from a problem where the pressure gauges for the Dali’s fuel heaters were found to be illegible last June during an inspection in Chile and a 2016 collision in Belgium when it struck a berth used for mooring vessels in the port of Antwerp, the ship doesn’t appear to have had many issues, according to Equasis.

But another ship that was owned by the Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean, was banned from Australian ports for six months in 2021 after authorities there discovered it had been underpaying its workers and keeping them on board for months after their contracts expired. The 13 workers on the Western Callao were owed tens of thousands of dollars. Even though Grace Ocean owned both ships, a different company managed the Western Callao at the time.

University of Rhode Island Professor Douglas Hales said the Port of Baltimore has a strong set of regulations that appear to have been followed in this incident. That includes when the Dali’s crew issued a mayday call after the ship lost power just before striking one of the bridge’s columns. That warning allowed authorities to stop vehicles from driving onto the bridge.

“There doesn’t appear to be anything that the port administration could have done to prevent this,” Hales said. “This appears to be a failure of the navigation system after the vessel left the port. And so far, there hasn’t been anyone that said that there was an incident before the vessel left the port that people just ignored.”

The National Transportation Safety Board will determine if that’s the case as part of its investigation into the cause of the bridge collapse, but it will be more than a year before the agency issues its final report.

Eight construction workers who were filling potholes went into the water when the bridge collapsed, and two were quickly rescued. Searchers found the bodies of two workers on Wednesday, and the other four are presumed dead.

Roland Rexha, the secretary treasurer of the oldest maritime union in the country, the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, said it takes a major disaster like the fiery train derailment in eastern Ohio last year or the panel flying off of a Boeing 737 Max plane midflight in January before the public realizes there is a problem in the transportation industries.

He said that with maritime shipping being the oldest transportation industry, with its international regulations that rely on many different countries for enforcement, it may have the most problems.

“When I talk about those other transportation industries, the maritime industry is the worst offender of safety violations, of labor violations than any other industry,” Rexha said.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.


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Sen. Bob Menendez decides not to delay May trial with appeal of judge’s ruling

NEW YORK (AP) — New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez will not appeal a judge’s ruling on Constitutional grounds that would have delayed his May trial, his lawyers said Thursday.

The Democrat’s lawyers notified the Manhattan federal judge who will preside over the May 6 trial in a letter that the senator’s decision was “principally motivated by his desire to proceed to trial and establish his innocence without further delay.”

He has pleaded not guilty to corruption charges filed after investigators discovered gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home.

Prosecutors say the gold and cash resulted from bribes that he and his wife received in exchange for favors Menendez carried out for three New Jersey businessmen.

Earlier this month, Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled that multiple warrants used to conduct 2022 searches of the Democrat’s email accounts and his home were properly sought and carried out.

The warrants had been contested by Menendez under provisions of the Constitution that would have allowed an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prior to a trial if the senator chose to go that route.

The senator’s lawyers had claimed the warrants were “riddled with material misrepresentation and omissions that deceived the authorizing magistrate judge.”

Stein said any omissions in the warrants were not intentional or material for searches of his home in June 2022 that resulted in the discovery of over $100,000 worth of gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash. Prosecutors said much of the gold and cash was hidden in closets, clothing and a safe.

Menendez, 70, said the cash found in the house was personal savings he had put away for emergencies. After his fall arrest, Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but said he would not resign from Congress.

Besides Menendez, his wife, Nadine, and two businessmen also have pleaded not guilty to charges. A third businessman facing charges has pled guilty in a cooperation deal with prosecutors that calls for him to testify at trial.

According to an indictment, Menendez and his wife accepted gold bars and cash from a real estate developer in return for the senator using his clout to get that businessman a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Menendez also was charged with helping another New Jersey business associate get a lucrative deal with the government of Egypt.


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House Republicans invite President Biden to testify at public hearing as impeachment inquiry stalls

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify before Congress as part of their impeachment inquiry into him and his family’s business affairs.

Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Democratic president, inviting him to sit for a public hearing to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses.

“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the Committee, as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from Members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

While it is highly unlikely that Biden would agree to appear before lawmakers in such a setting, Comer pointed to previous examples of presidents’ testifying before Congress.

“As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974,” Comer continued.

The invitation comes as the monthslong inquiry into Biden is all but winding down as Republicans face the stark reality that it lacks the political appetite from within the conference to go forward with an actual impeachment. Nonetheless, leaders of the effort, including Comer are facing growing political pressure to deliver something after months of work investigating the Biden family and its web of international business transactions.

The White House has repeatedly called the inquiry baseless, telling Republicans to “move on” and focus on “real issues” Americans want addressed.

“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesman Ian Sams said in a social media post last week. “Call it a day, pal.”

The committee has asserted that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.

But despite dedicating countless resources over the past year, interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden, Republicans have yet to produce any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.

Democrats have remained unified against the inquiry, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on Oversight, calling for his GOP counterpart to end the investigation absent any credible evidence.

“The GOP impeachment inquiry has been a circus,” Oversight Democrats wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. “Time to fold up the tent.”

Seeking testimony from the president could ultimately be the inquiry’s final act. Late last year, Republicans leading the investigation had privately discussed holding a vote on articles of impeachment in the new year, but growing criticism from within their party forced a shift in strategy. Now, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a move that will be largely symbolic and unlikely to be taken up by the department.

___ AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.


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Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers want to make public statements about stolen money. FBI says Murdaugh lied

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Lawyers for convicted killer Alex Murdaugh want to release to the public statements he made to the FBI about what happened to million of dollars he stole from clients and his South Carolina law firm and who might have helped him steal the money.

Murdaugh’s attorneys made the request in a court filing Thursday after federal prosecutors asked a judge earlier this week to keep the statements secret. They argued that Murdaugh wasn’t telling the truth and that his plea deal on theft and other charges should be thrown out at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Monday.

Prosecutors think Murdaugh is trying to protect an attorney who helped him steal and that his assertion that more than $6 million in the stolen money went to his drug habit is not true. Releasing the statements could damage an ongoing investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

But Murdaugh’s attorneys said FBI agents can just black out any information they don’t want to make public while leaving the bulk of the statements available so people can judge the allegations themselves.

“To allow the Government to publicly accuse Murdaugh of breaching his plea agreement while also allowing the Government to hide all purported evidence supporting that accusation from the public would violate the public’s right to the truth,” attorneys Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian wrote.

Murdaugh, 55, is already serving life without parole in state prison after a jury found him guilty of murder in the shootings of his wife and younger son. He later pleaded guilty to stealing money from clients and his law firm in state court and was sentenced to 27 years, which South Carolina prosecutors said is an insurance policy to keep him behind bars in case his murder conviction was ever overturned.

The federal case was supposed to be even more insurance, with Murdaugh agreeing to a plea deal so his federal sentence would run at the same time as his state sentences.

Murdaugh’s lawyers said if prosecutors can keep the FBI statements secret, Monday’s court hearing in Charleston would have to be held behind closed doors, denying Murdaugh’s rights to have his case heard in public.

The FBI said it interviewed Murdaugh three times last year. After agents concluded he wasn’t telling the whole truth about his schemes to steal from clients and his law partners, they gave him a polygraph in October.

Agents said Murdaugh failed the test and federal prosecutors said that voided the plea deal reached in September where he promised to fully cooperate with investigators.

Prosecutors now want Murdaugh to face the stiffest sentence possible since the plea agreement was breached and serve his federal sentence at the end of any state sentences.

Each of the 22 counts Murdaugh pleaded guilty to in federal court carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. Some carry a 30-year maximum.

State prosecutors estimated Murdaugh stole more than $12 million from clients by diverting settlement money into his own accounts or stealing from his family law firm. Federal investigators estimate at least $6 million of that has not been accounted for, although Murdaugh has said he spent extravagantly on illegal drugs after becoming hooked on opioids.

Investigators said that as Murdaugh’s financial schemes were about to be exposed in June 2021, he decided to kill his wife and son in hopes it would make him a sympathetic figure and draw attention away from the missing money. Paul Murdaugh was shot several times with a shotgun and Maggie Murdaugh was shot several times with a rifle outside the family’s home in Colleton County.

Murdaugh has adamantly denied killing them, even testifying in his own defense against his lawyers’ advice.

Federal prosecutors said Murdaugh did appear to tell the truth about the roles banker Russell Laffitte and attorney and old college friend Cory Fleming played in helping him steal.

Laffitte was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, while Fleming is serving nearly four years behind bars after pleading guilty.


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Republican states file lawsuit challenging Biden’s student loan repayment plan

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A group of Republican-led states is suing the Biden administration to block a new student loan repayment plan that provides a faster path to cancellation and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.

In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, 11 states led by Kansas argue that Biden overstepped his authority in creating the SAVE Plan, which was made available to borrowers last year and has already canceled loans for more than 150,000.

It argues that the new plan is no different from Biden’s first attempt at student loan cancellation, which the Supreme Court rejected last year. “Last time Defendants tried this the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal. Nothing since then has changed,” according to the lawsuit.

The Education Department declined to comment on the lawsuit but noted that Congress in 1993 gave the department the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans.

“The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” the department said in a statement.

Biden announced the SAVE repayment plan in 2022, alongside a separate plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for more than 40 million Americans. The Supreme Court blocked the cancellation plan after Republican states sued, but the court didn’t examine SAVE, which was still being hashed out.

The new lawsuit was filed this same week the White House hosted a “day of action” to promote the SAVE Plan. The Biden administration says more than 7.7 million borrowers have enrolled in the plan, including more than 5 million who have had their monthly payments reduced to $100 or less because they have lower yearly incomes.

The challenge was filed in federal court in Topeka, Kansas, by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. It asks a judge to halt the plan immediately. Along with Kansas, the suit is backed by Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

“In a completely brazen fashion, the president pressed ahead anyway,” Kobach said during a news conference at the Kansas Statehouse. “The law simply does not allow President Biden to do what he wants to do.”

Biden’s new repayment plan is a modified version of other income-based repayment plans that the Education Department has offered since the ’90s. The earliest versions were created by Congress to help struggling borrowers, capping payments at a portion of their income and canceling any remaining debt after 20 or 25 years.

The new plan offers more generous terms than ever, offering to reduce monthly payments for more borrowers and canceling loans in as little as 10 years. Unlike other plans, it prevents interest from snowballing as long as borrowers make their monthly payments.

The plan’s provisions are being phased in this year, and the quicker path to cancellation was originally scheduled to take effect later this summer. But the Biden administration accelerated that benefit and started canceling loans for some borrowers in February.

Biden said it was meant “to give more borrowers breathing room so they can get out from under the burden of student loan debt.”

Instead of creating a new plan from scratch, the Education Department amended existing plans through federal regulation. Supporters saw it as a legal maneuver that put the plan on firmer grounding, anticipating a challenge from Republicans.

But in the new lawsuit, Kobach argues that Biden needed to go through Congress to make such significant changes.

The states argue that Biden’s plan will harm them in many ways.

With such a generous repayment plan, fewer borrowers will have an incentive to go into public service and pursue the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, the states argue. They predict more state employees will leave their jobs, and it will worsen public schools’ struggles to recruit and retain teachers.

They argue the plan will inject hundreds of billions of dollars in loan relief into the U.S. economy, which would require states to increase fraud protection efforts. The plan “will create enormous opportunities for fraudsters to exploit student debt borrowers that would not otherwise exist,” according to the suit.

If successful, it would effectively kill the last remnant of Biden’s first attempt at widespread student loan relief. After the Supreme Court blocked his wider plan last year, Biden ordered the Education Department to craft a new plan using a different legal justification. The agency is now pursuing a more limited plan for mass cancellation.

___

Binkley reported from Washington

___

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


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Biden restores endangered species protections rolled back by Trump

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – The Biden administration on Thursday restored some protections under the Endangered Species Act rolled back under former President Donald Trump, giving the federal government more leeway to designate plants or animals as threatened or endangered.

The 51-year-old Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973, is credited with helping to save the bald eagle, the California condor and numerous other animals and plants on the brink of extinction.

In 2019, the Trump administration ordered changes to the law to ease costs to the taxpayer and businesses. Those changes gave consideration to the economic costs on industries such as mining and timber of decisions to designate a species as threatened or endangered.

The reversal will mean “listing decisions and critical habitat designations are based on the best available science,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement on Thursday.

“These revisions underscore our commitment to using all of the tools available to help halt declines and stabilize populations of the species most at risk,” said the agency’s director Martha Williams.

The move by the Trump administration had been criticized by environmental groups for putting money over science.

Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the media at the time that the revisions fit squarely within Trump’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing protection and recovery goals.

The Biden administration also restored the so-called “blanket rule” that gives the same protection to species and habitats designated as threatened as those under the higher designation of endangered, when appropriate, the wildlife service said.

John Calvelli, executive vice president of public affairs at the non-profit environmental group Wildlife Conservation Society, applauded the move.

“Conservation work is never done, as 1 million species are at risk of extinction,” he said in an interview. “The Biden-Harris administration’s steps today to strengthen the Endangered Species Act, ensuring science is at the center of decisions to protect wildlife, is great news for all of nature.”

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)


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House Speaker Mike Johnson will send Mayorkas impeachment to the Senate next month

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday indicated he will send articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate shortly after Congress returns to Washington next month.

The Republican speaker said he would send the two articles on April 10. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to swear in senators as jurors in the trial the next day, according to his office. The House impeached Mayorkas on a razor-thin party-line vote in February, but Johnson had delayed sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate while Congress addressed funding for the government.

Impeachment for Mayorkas, who would be the first Cabinet secretary to receive the punishment in nearly 150 years, is expected to quickly fizzle in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Republicans took the action against Mayorkas to rebuke his handling of the nation’s southern border, but critics, including a few Republicans, say the House did not demonstrate that the Cabinet secretary’s actions reached the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.

“House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense,” Schumer said after the House acted.

But Johnson argued in a statement that Mayorkas has “violated the public trust and willfully refused to follow federal immigration laws.”

“He deserves to be impeached and the American people demand that those responsible for the border crisis be held accountable,” Johnson said.

Still, some GOP senators have expressed skepticism about the House argument, and a conviction is highly unlikely. Two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict as opposed to the simple majority needed to impeach in the House. That means all Republicans as well as a substantial number of Democrats would have to vote to convict Mayorkas.

However, a comprehensive trial would allow Republicans to continue to hammer on the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Johnson urged Schumer to hold “a full public trial” to show he cared about “ending the devastation caused by Biden’s border catastrophe.”


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Trump backers try again to recall Wisconsin GOP Assembly speaker as first effort stalls

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Backers of former President Donald Trump are launching a second effort to recall Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office after the first attempt appears to have failed.

Recall organizers filed paperwork to start a second recall effort on Wednesday, just a day after they asked a court to give them more time to rehabilitate signatures that Vos challenged on the first recall petition. Organizers on Thursday said they weren’t giving up hope on the first attempt, calling the new one a “concurrent” effort.

Vos was initially targeted for recall because he refused to impeach the state’s top elections official or proceed with attempting to decertify President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin. His actions angered Trump, who accused Vos of covering up election corruption, while Trump’s followers mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge in 2022 and are now trying to force a recall election.

The second recall effort says he should be recalled because of his “tacit support for the Chinese Communist Party,” lack of commitment to election integrity, bocking lower prescription drug costs and “flagrant disrespect for his own constituents by calling them ‘whack-jobs, morons and idiots.’”

Vos made that comment last week when deriding the recall effort, including mocking their claims that he is secretly working for the Chinese government.

“The whack jobs who are running the recall against me said I am agent of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said at a WisPolitics.com luncheon. “That was the last text that they sent out in desperation to show people somehow that I am not a conservative Republican.

Vos, the longest serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history, declined Thursday to comment on the latest recall effort.

Recall organizer Matthew Snorek did not return an email seeking comment. Recall organizers said in a statement Thursday that their goal was “to fortify the integrity of the recall process, ensuring that each step we take is marked by precision, transparency, and trust.”

Ultimately, it’s up to the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission to determine whether enough valid signatures are gathered to force a recall election. The commission has not voted on the first filing, but its initial review found that not enough valid signatures collected from residents of the district Vos was elected to represent.

But because Vos now lives in a different district under new maps the Legislature passed, the elections commission has asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to clarify where any recall would take place. Determining that would also dictate where petition signatures must come from and how many need to be collected.

The Supreme Court has not said yet whether it will rule on that question or when.

Recall organizers faced a Tuesday deadline to rebut challenges Vos made to their signatures. Instead, they asked the Dane County circuit court to give it more time to review the challenges. In a court filing, organizers asked that they have until five days after the Supreme Court rules on which district boundary is in effect.

The circuit court scheduled a Friday hearing in that case.

Vos has said the first recall petition fell “woefully short” of the signatures needed, no matter what legislative district is used, and was rife with fraud and criminal activity. The Racine County district attorney was also investigating claims that the petitions included names of people who did not sign it.

The elections commission has until April 11 to decide whether there are enough valid signatures on the original petition to order a recall election. Its decision can be appealed in court. If successful, the recall is likely to be scheduled in June.

The new recall petition would be due May 28, which means any recall election likely wouldn’t be until September. That would put it after the Aug. 13 primary, where Vos could face a challenge ahead of the November general election.


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