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  • Landmark Washington climate law faces possible repeal by voters

    Landmark Washington climate law faces possible repeal by voters

    OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Voters in Washington state are considering whether to repeal a groundbreaking law that is forcing companies to cut carbon emissions while raising billions of dollars for programs that include habitat restoration and helping communities prepare for climate change.

    Just two years after it was passed, the Climate Commitment Act, one of the most progressive climate policies ever passed by state lawmakers, is under fire from conservatives. They blame it for ramping up energy and gas costs in Washington, which has long had some of the highest gas prices in the nation.

    The law requires major polluters to pay for the right to do so by buying “allowances.” One allowance equals 1 metric ton of greenhouse gas pollution. Each year the number of allowances available for purchase drops — with the idea of forcing companies to find ways to cut their emissions.

    The law aims to slash carbon emissions to almost half of 1990 levels by the year 2030.

    Those in favor of keeping the policy say not only would repeal not guarantee lower prices, but it would jeopardize billions of dollars in state revenue for years to come. Many programs are already funded, or soon will be, by the money polluters pay — including investments in air quality, fish habitat, wildfire prevention and transportation.

    For months, the group behind the repeal effort, Let’s Go Washington, which is primarily bankrolled by hedge fund executive Brian Heywood, has held more than a dozen events at gas stations to speak out against what they call the “hidden gas tax.”

    The group has said the carbon pricing program has increased costs from 43 to 53 cents per gallon, citing the conservative think tank Washington Policy Center.

    Gas has gone as high as $5.12 per gallon since the auctions started, though it stood at $4.03 in October, according to GasBuddy. And the state’s historic high of $5.54 came several months before the auctions started in February 2023.

    Without the program, the Office of Financial Management estimates that nearly $4 billion would vanish from the state budget over the next five years. During the previous legislative session, lawmakers approved a budget that runs through fiscal year 2025 with dozens of programs funded through the carbon pricing program, with belated start dates and stipulations that they would not take effect if these funds disappear.

    Washington was the second state to launch this type of program, after California, with stringent annual targets. Repeal would sink Washington’s plans to link up its carbon market with others, and could be a blow to its efforts to help other states launch similar programs.

  • Democrat Ruben Gallego faces Republican Kari Lake in US Senate race in Arizona

    Democrat Ruben Gallego faces Republican Kari Lake in US Senate race in Arizona

    PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, faces well-known former television news anchor and staunch Donald Trump ally Kari Lake in Tuesday’s election for U.S. Senate in a state with a recent history of extremely close elections.

    The race is one of a handful that will determine the Senate majority. It’s a test of the strength of the anti-Trump coalition that has powered the rise of Democrats in Arizona, which was reliably Republican until 2016. Arizona voters have rejected Trump and his favored candidates in every statewide election since then.

    Arizona is one of seven battleground states expected to decide the presidency.

    The winner of the Senate race will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose 2018 victory as a Democrat created a formula that the party has successfully replicated ever since.

    Sinema left the Democratic Party two years ago after she antagonized the party’s left wing. She considered running for a second term as an independent but bowed out when it was clear she had no clear path to victory.

    Gallego maintained a significant fundraising advantage throughout the race. He relentlessly attacked Lake’s support for a state law dating to the Civil War that outlawed abortions under nearly all circumstances. Lake tacked to the middle on the issue, infuriating some of her allies on the right by opposing a federal abortion ban.

    Gallego portrayed Lake as a liar who will do and say anything to gain power.

    He downplayed his progressive voting record in Congress, leaning on his up-by-the-bootstraps personal story and his military service to build an image as a pragmatic moderate.

    The son of immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, Gallego was raised in Chicago by a single mother and eventually accepted to Harvard University. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that sustained heavy casualties, including the death of his best friend.

    If elected, he would be the first Latino U.S. senator from Arizona.

    Lake became a star on the populist right with her 2022 campaign for Arizona governor.

    She has never acknowledged losing the race and called herself the “lawful governor” in her 2023 book. She continued her unsuccessful fight in court to overturn it even after beginning her Senate campaign and as recently as last week refused to admit defeat in a contentious CNN interview.

    Her dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that consecutive elections were stolen from Trump and from her endeared her to the former president, who considered her for his vice presidential running mate. But it has compounded her struggles with the moderate Republicans she alienated during her 2022 campaign, when she disparaged the late Sen. John McCain and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.

    She tried to moderate but struggled to keep a consistent message on thorny topics, including election fraud and abortion.

    Lake focused instead on border security, a potent issue for Republicans in a state that borders Mexico and saw record numbers of illegal crossings during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. She promised a tough crackdown on illegal immigration and labeled Gallego a supporter of “open borders.” She also went after his personal life, pointing to his divorce from Kate Gallego shortly before she gave birth. His ex-wife, now the mayor of Phoenix, endorsed Gallego and has campaigned with him.

    Lake spent the last weeks of the campaign trying to win over voters who are backing Trump but were not sold on her.

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    Meanwhile, Arizona has two of the closest races for U.S. House, where Republicans David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani are seeking reelection in districts that voted for Biden in 2020.

    Schweikert, now in his seventh House term, faces a challenge from former three-term Democratic state lawmaker Amish Shah in Arizona’s 1st District, which includes north Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley.

    While Republicans hold a voter registration advantage in the affluent district, it has trended toward the center as college-educated suburban voters have turned away from Trump, reluctantly voting for Democrats or leaving their ballots blank. Redistricting ahead of the 2022 midterms accelerated the trend.

    Schweikert won reelection by just 3,200 votes in 2022 against a relatively unknown challenger who got minimal support from national Democrats. Shah, an emergency room doctor, emerged as the primary winner among a field of six Democrats.

    In the 6th District, Ciscomani is seeking a second term in a rematch against Democrat Kirsten Engel, whom he defeated by 1.5 percentage points in 2022. The district, which includes a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border, runs from Tucson east to the New Mexico state line.

    Ciscomani, a former aide to Ducey who immigrated from Mexico as a child, calls border enforcement his top priority but has distanced himself from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

    Engel, a law professor at the University of Arizona and a former state legislator, has pointed out Ciscomani rejected a major bipartisan border bill in February that would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to expel migrants when asylum claims become overwhelming.

    Of Arizona’s nine representatives in Congress, six are Republicans and three are Democrats.

  • Georgia Democratic prosecutor pursuing election case against Trump faces Republican challenger

    Georgia Democratic prosecutor pursuing election case against Trump faces Republican challenger

    ATLANTA (AP) — A Republican lawyer who interned in the White House under Donald Trump is challenging Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who brought charges against the former president over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

    Courtney Kramer worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Trump presidency and is active in GOP organizations. She’s the first Republican to run for district attorney in Fulton County since 2000.

    Fulton County, which is home to 11% of the state’s electorate and includes most of the city of Atlanta, is a Democratic stronghold.

    Willis took office in January 2021 after beating her predecessor — and former boss — longtime District Attorney Paul Howard in a bitter Democratic primary fight in 2020.

    She made headlines just a month into her tenure when she announced in February 2021 that she was investigating whether Trump and others broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden. Two and a half years later, after an investigation that included calling dozens of witnesses before a special grand jury, she obtained a sprawling racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 others in August 2023.

    Four people have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the remaining defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

    When she entered the district attorney’s race in March, Kramer said the Trump prosecution was a politically motivated case and a waste of resources. But she said if she becomes district attorney she will recuse herself from that case because she worked with two of the defendants.

    Kramer, 31, said one of her top priorities will be to focus on “front-end prosecution,” which she said involves reviewing cases quickly when they come in so decisions can be made about the bond, discovery can be provided to defense lawyers and a decision can be made about whether an early plea offer can be used to resolve the case.

    Willis, 53, said she is proud of a pre-indictment diversion program she started and a program in schools to encourage students to choose alternatives to gangs and crime, as well as reductions in homicides and the backlog of unindicted cases during her tenure. She said she would focus on creating more county resources for domestic violence victims during a second term.

  • GOP senator from North Dakota faces Democratic challenger making her 2nd US Senate bid

    GOP senator from North Dakota faces Democratic challenger making her 2nd US Senate bid

    BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A Republican U.S. senator from North Dakota who wrested the seat away from a Democrat in 2018 is facing a challenge Tuesday from another Democrat making her second Senate run.

    U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer is confronting Democrat Katrina Christiansen in his bid for reelection in the conservative Great Plains state with a majority of Republican voters.

    A former U.S. House member and public utilities regulator, Cramer, 63, captured the seat from Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in 2018 in one of the most closely watched Senate races that year.

    Christiansen, who ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Sen. John Hoeven in 2022, cast herself as a problem solver and highlighted her rural and impoverished upbringing amid the nation’s farm crisis in challenging Cramer. The 43-year-old opponent has a doctorate in agricultural engineering and had worked as an engineer at an ethanol plant before taking a position as an assistant engineering professor at the University of Jamestown.

    Cramer is a longtime supporter of former President Donald Trump. He’s known for his approachable but blunt manner. He has been a player for decades in state GOP politics, including as a young state party chairman in the early 1990s when Republicans began turning the tables on North Dakota’s then-dominant Democrats.

    Christiansen argued that since heading to Washington, Cramer has lost touch with North Dakota issues. She raised those claims in one television ad featuring rancher Frank Tomac, who supports Trump and says, “When they go to Washington like Kevin Cramer, folks back home suffer.”

    Cramer served in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2019, and on the state’s Public Service Commission from 2003 to 2012. He also has served as state tourism director and economic development and finance director under then-Gov. Ed Schafer.

    Cramer has been campaigning while his son Ian Cramer faces charges in connection with a December 2023 vehicle pursuit and crash that killed a sheriff’s deputy, Paul Martin, in Mercer County northwest of the state capital of Bismarck. Ian Cramer pleaded guilty to all the charges, including a homicide offense, in September and has yet to be sentenced.