Politics

(WASHINGTON) — A growing number of Senate Democrats on Tuesday called on New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez to resign after a federal grand jury returned a sweeping indictment against him late last week.

The Senate returned to Washington Tuesday for the first time since Menendez, a Democrat, was indicted on federal bribery charges. While many Senate Democrats were initially slow to react, many of them are now calling for Menendez to step aside, with at least 18 having done so by Tuesday evening.

Most notable is Menendez’s New Jersey Senate colleague Cory Booker. Booker called the allegations against Menendez “hard to reconcile with the person I know,” but said he ultimately concluded that Menendez ought to resign his seat in the Senate.

“Stepping down is not an admission of guilty but an acknowledgement that holding public office often demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal cost,” Booker said in a statement Tuesday morning. “Sen. Menendez has made these sacrifices in the past to serve. And in this case he must do so again. I believe stepping down is the best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving.”

Menendez and his wife, Nadine, are accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for wielding his power to enrich three businessmen — Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daides — and benefit the Egyptian government. Those bribes, according to prosecutors, included gold bars, a luxury convertible car, home mortgage payments and more. Menendez has denied wrongdoing.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the first Senate Democrat to call on Menendez to step down. In a Saturday statement, Fetterman asserted that while Menendez is deserving of a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, he is “not entitled to continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations.”

Menendez seemed to be answering Fetterman’s statement, and calls from others for his resignation, during remarks to gathered press on Monday afternoon.

While defending himself from what he described as “salacious” allegations in the indictment, Menendez called on his fellow lawmakers to be patient as he defends himself in court.

“A cornerstone of the foundation of American democracy and our justice system is the principle that all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. All people. I ask for nothing more and deserve nothing less,” Menendez said. “The court of public opinion is no substitute for our revered justice system. We cannot set aside the presumption of innocence for political expediency when the harm is irrevocable.”

Menendez called on onlookers to “pause and allow the facts to be presented.”

But he did not find a sympathetic audience in many of his fellow Democratic senators.

Since Menendez’s remarks, several additional Senate Democrats have joined Fetterman in his calls for Menendez to resign.

Among them are Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who said Menendez violated the public’s trust.

“Public service is a sacred trust. The specific allegations set forth in the federal indictment indicate to me that Senator Menendez violated that trust repeatedly. While he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, serving in public office is a privilege that demands a higher standard of conduct. Senator Menendez should resign,” Casey said in a statement.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined as well.

“Senator Menendez has broken the public trust and should resign from the U.S. Senate,” Brown said.

Menendez, who is up for reelection 2024, has not yet announced whether he intends to run. But so far, the most vocal of those calling for his resignation are his colleagues who will be on the ballot next November.

Casey and Brown are up next cycle. So, too, are Sens. Jacky Rosen, Tammy Baldwin, Martin Heinrich and Jon Tester, who have joined the chorus calling on Menendez to resign.

Tester’s call was particularly notable as he holds what is largely expected to one of the hardest seats for Democrats to keep next fall, in red Montana.

“I’ve read the detailed charges against Senator Menendez and find them deeply disturbing. While he deserves a fair trial like every other American, I believe Senator Menendez should resign for the sake of the public’s faith in the U.S. Senate,” Tester said in a statement.

Other Democrats include Sens. Kirstin Gillibrand of New York, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal.

On Monday, Menendez seemed to swipe at those who are using his indictment to forward their political campaigns.

“Remember prosecutors are wrong sometimes. Sadly, I know that,” Menendez said. “Instead of waiting for all the facts to be presented, others have rushed to take the opportunity for themselves or those around them.”

Menendez has temporarily stepped away from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee amid allegations.

This is the second time Menendez has been charged with corruption. A 2015 indictment ended in a mistrial in 2018 after a jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts and a judge acquitted him on some charges.

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(WASHINGTON) — A government shutdown could have a “dangerous” impact on the nation’s cyber defenses as well as on state and federal efforts to combat violent crime, a top Justice Department official said Tuesday.

“The cascading effects of something like this is really, I think, quite dangerous and quite irresponsible,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in an interview Tuesday morning with Washington Post Live. “We need to be able to give our employees certainty that they can come to work and do their job.”

With the Oct. 1 funding deadline looming, Monaco raised alarm over the thousands of staffers across DOJ’s 115,000-plus workforce who could be furloughed as a result of a shutdown, as well as grants that could be stalled that aid local police departments around the country.

“Folks who have life and safety missions will continue to do their work,” Monaco said. “But all of the support that they have, all of the work that they do and that we fund with our state and local partners — when we talk about violent crime, the lion’s share of that work to combat violent crime, it’s being done by our state and local law enforcement partners.”

“Our ability to fund those efforts, to work in partnership — all of that is dramatically reduced and hindered by a government shutdown,” she added.

A contingency plan released this week shows that roughly 85% of the department’s workforce will be expected to remain on the job even if there is a lapse in funding, either because their roles involve protecting human life or property or their compensation is funded by a revenue stream separate from annual appropriations.

That would include, for example, officials on the staff of all three special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland — who are expected to continue their investigations even if the government shuts down.

Federal courts and other judiciary operations are expected to begin running out of money around Oct. 13 after exhausting court fees and other leftover balances.

Criminal cases would continue uninterrupted, according to the department, though civil litigation could be “curtailed or postponed” as a result of a shutdown.

In her remarks Tuesday, Monaco also raised concerns about the approaching expiration of a key surveillance program used by the government to collect communications from foreign targets overseas who message on U.S.-based communications platforms.

For months, Monaco and other senior law enforcement officials from the Biden administration have been engaged in a full-court press to persuade Congress to reauthorize the program — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — before it’s due to expire at the end of the year.

That campaign has been further complicated by recent disclosures from the FBI of how analysts have at times abused the program by conducting improper searches on the system seeking information on Americans.

The FBI has said it has implemented a number of reforms to protect against future abuses, and has reported significant improvements in the last year showing a drop in improper queries. While negotiations to reauthorize Section 702 could be further stymied in the event of a government shutdown, Monaco argued allowing the program to lapse would eliminate one of the most “vital” tools in the government’s arsenal to protect against foreign threats such as cyber attacks and terrorism.

“If we lose this authority it is catastrophic for our national security efforts,” Monaco said. “It is vital to our ability to understand threats — from cyber threats, to nation-state adversaries, to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, plans and intentions across a whole host of threats.”

Monaco said she supported reauthorizing the program “with appropriate changes” that would assure Americans “we are using this tool in accordance with our responsibilities under the law and under the Constitution.”

“That’s what we owe the American people,” she added.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday again rejected Alabama’s push not to have to add a second Black district to their election map, with the justices refusing a request to halt a lower court order that outside experts will draw new districts for the 2024 elections.

The brief order did not note any dissents from the court. The state, led by Republicans, had sought an emergency stay.

In September, a three-judge federal panel found that that a GOP-drafted plan likely did not comply with the Voting Rights Act as it did not create a second district in which Black voters would likely be able to elect their preferred candidate.

The federal ruling that originally struck down Alabama’s map in 2022 ordered the Legislature to draw “two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”

About 27% of Alabama residents are Black, according to census data. Only one of its seven districts is represented by a Black lawmaker.

The state Legislature had passed their latest congressional map in late July, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a month earlier that the previous map violated the civil rights law.

Defenders of the now-rejected map argued they had achieved “something quite close,” as the lower federal court ordered. Under that plan, Black voters comprised 39.93% of Alabama’s 2nd District and 50.65% of the 7th District.

In their sharply worded opinion on Sept. 5, the federal panel disagreed.

“Law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so,” U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco and U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer wrote.

There are political implications for the redistricting, as Democrats believe an additional minority district will be favorable to them, given that Black voters in Alabama favor Democrats.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down on Tuesday that the state will “now be encumbered with a racially gerrymandered, court-drawn map for the 2024 election cycle” and called the maps with two majority-Black districts an “absurd disfigurement.”

“It is now clear that none of the maps proposed by Republican supermajorities had any chance of success. Treating voters as individuals would not do. Instead, our elected representatives and our voters must apparently be reduced to skin color alone. No Alabamian—black, white, Republican, or Democrat—can look at the court-drawn maps that will soon be imposed on us and see anything other than the prioritization of race above all else. Our communities, local economies, and basic geography will be cast aside in the radical pursuit of racial quotas. There simply is no other explanation for the absurd disfigurement,” he said.

Marshall said that his office would continue their fight to defend the 2023 map.

“We will comply with the district court’s preliminary injunction order, while building our case for the 2023 map, which has yet to receive a full hearing. We are confident that the Voting Rights Act does not require, and the Constitution does not allow, ‘separate but equal’ congressional districts,” he concluded.

A statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, the plaintiffs in the suit against the original maps, said, in part: “This additional representation in Congress will undoubtedly change lives, especially for the hundreds of thousands of Alabamians residing in the Black Belt who suffer from lack of healthcare access, job opportunities, and crumbling infrastructure. We look forward to a new era in our state’s history, in which power is shared and Black voices are heard.”

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump submitted “fraudulent valuations” for assets that were then used by himself, his eldest sons and his business to obtain better loan and insurance terms, a judge in New York decided Tuesday.

The judge’s determination came as he granted partial summary judgment in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ multimillion-dollar civil fraud lawsuit.

Judge Arthur Engoron cites “false and misleading square footage” of Trump’s Fifth Avenue apartment among other faulty valuations.

The judge immediately canceled all of the defendants’ business certificates in New York, and ordered that they must recommend no more than three potential independent receivers to manage the dissolution of the canceled LLCs within 10 days.

This severely restricts Trump’s ability to conduct business in New York going forward

The judge said Trump and the other defendants have a “propensity to engage in persistent fraud,” severely undercutting the defense Trump will offer when the case goes on trial next month.

Engoron wrote in his order that Trump, his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr., and the other defendants fraudulently inflated the value of properties including Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s own triplex apartment, 40 Wall Street, Trump Park Avenue, multiple golf courses and an estate in upstate New York.

Trump inflated the value of his own Trump Tower residence between $114 million and $207 million, including claiming the property was triple its actual size in square feet, Engoron ruled.

“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron said in his order.

Engoron also found that Trump inflated the value of his Mar-a-Lago club by at least 2,300%, claiming the property assessed by the county between $18 million and $27.6 million was actually worth between $426,529,614 and $612,110,496.

In total, Engoron wrote that the New York attorney general “submitted conclusive evidence” that the defendants overvalued their assets between $812 million and $2.2 billion dollars.

A lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office had earlier described “staggering” misrepresentations about the value of Trump’s properties and assets, arguing that Trump engaged in a prolonged “bait-and-switch” to lower his tax burden while inflating his assets to obtain favorable loan terms.

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(WASHINGTON) — At an event Tuesday highlighting her contributions to American diplomacy as the 67th secretary of state, Hillary Clinton barbed her political rivals, issuing thinly veiled criticisms of her one-time presidential opponent Donald Trump and taking direct aim at Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

After being introduced by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, she thanked him for the contributions he had made so far, remarking that at one point it would have been nearly unthinkable for the United States and its allies to remain united behind Ukraine because of what she described as damage done during the Trump administration — without ever calling out the former president by name.

“We had burned so bridges with our allies and our friends, so reinstating a foreign policy that plays to the best of American values, that puts our interests and security front and center but does it in a way that actually brings people to us, not pushes them away — would have been thought to be extremely difficult, and indeed it was,” she said at the State Department ceremony. “But it was accomplished.”

Before the veil was dropped from her portrait, which depicts the former first lady standing in front of an American flag, Clinton commented that it had been a long time since she had seen the painting “between Covid, between not wanting to finish it during the last administration,” drawing laughter from the crowd of State Department employees and other guests.

Clinton also took time to thank the current and former Foreign Service officers and civil servants in the room for their contributions, calling their often-unsung work “vital to our nation’s security” and enumerating their accomplishments during her time in office and after.

“We continued to build on our human rights commitments, women’s rights, gay rights, the rights of all people to have a chance to live up to their own God-given potential. And we have seen the continuation of a lot of the values and priorities that we worked on into the Biden administration, in looking across the globe, defending democracy in Ukraine, expanding NATO,” she said.

“Just as an aside: Too bad, Vladimir. You brought it on yourself,” Clinton quipped, referencing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, where fighting has reached a stalemate more than a year into the war despite bullish early predictions about Russia’s chances of success.

In his remarks introducing Clinton, Blinken extolled her trailblazing stances and said he admired her tough approach to Russia.

“A lot of what’s now recognized as universal, what’s commonly accepted, Secretary Clinton helped make it that way. She led with America’s values and interests, calling out Putin for who he really is from the start,” he said.

“Secretary Clinton has often said that America’s leadership in the world is like a relay race. Presidents, secretaries, entire generations are handed the baton and asked to run a leg of the race and then hand it off as best we can,” Blinken added. “Secretary Clinton, your leg of the race helped revitalize the power and the purpose of American diplomacy. It reminded the world of who America is, what we stand for, and helped us achieve our mission.”

Clinton was accompanied on the stage by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan.

In his speech, Blinken thanked Clinton for indirectly introducing him to Ryan when they both worked at the White House during her time as first lady.

“I spent an inordinate amount of time in the first lady’s office on the other end of the old executive office building and also in the East Wing. And that was, in fairness, all because a certain member of her staff,” he said, referencing Ryan. “Of all the things I have gratitude for the Clintons for, number one is bringing my wife Evan into my life.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents prior to becoming president has grown into a sprawling examination of Obama-era security protocols and internal White House processes, with investigators so far interviewing scores of witnesses, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from special counsel Robert Hur’s office have been interviewing witnesses for nearly nine months, targeting an expansive constellation of former aides — from high-level advisers to executive assistants and at least one White House attorney. Several sources estimated that as many as 100 witnesses have already been interviewed, with interviews conducted as recently as last week and some witnesses asked to return for follow-up interviews.

Sources who were present for some of the interviews, including witnesses, told ABC News that authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden’s vice presidency, but that — based on what was said in the interviews — it seemed to them that the improper removal of classified documents from Biden’s office when he left the White House in 2017 was more likely a mistake than a criminal act.

Nevertheless, the special counsel has reached no final determinations and the investigation is ongoing, ABC News was told.

In January, shortly after news first surfaced that classified documents had been found at a personal office used by Biden after his vice presidency, Blinken, a long-time aide to Biden, said he and Biden were both “surprised to learn that there were any government records taken.” It’s unclear what Blinken told Hur’s team in his voluntary interview with them.

For a high-stakes special counsel investigation into a sitting president, Hur has operated largely under the radar since his appointment in January — avoiding the attention and media scrutiny of special counsel Jack Smith’s probes into former President Donald Trump.

But ABC News learned from sources that Hur’s team has cast a wide net, gathering documents dating back to the early days of the Obama administration and drilling into questions about the task of securely updating the vice president on highly sensitive matters.

Investigators have shown witnesses email chains dating back to at least 2010 and asked for context about those exchanges, sources said. Witnesses have also been pressed about the use of cabinets and safes, sources said.

It has been publicly reported that investigators searched for documents dating back to Biden’s tenure in the Senate.

Sources said investigators are asking witnesses, especially former military aides, granular questions about internal procedures for handling classified materials, apparently seeking to understand the minutiae of how the vice president obtained, consumed, and discarded classified briefing materials.

Of particular interest to investigators, according to multiple sources, was any context surrounding Biden’s tendencies for notetaking and document retention, including where he stored documents, briefing books, notes, and notecards. Prosecutors also asked the witnesses about an iPad and cell phone Biden kept for personal use, and whether they were aware if he ever handled classified materials on those devices, the sources said.

Investigators also asked witnesses about how Biden’s closest aides handled classified records, according to sources. Michelle Smith, a former executive assistant to Biden who is now deceased, has been brought up in some interviews. ABC News previously reported that Kathy Chung, Smith’s successor as executive assistant, met with investigators earlier this year.

Spokespersons for Hur, the State Department, Biden’s personal attorney, and the White House declined to comment for this story. An attorney representing Blinken also declined to comment.

Hur has vowed to conduct a “fair, impartial, and dispassionate” investigation, following the facts “thoroughly” and “without fear or favor.”

A series of revelations precipitated Hur’s ascent to special counsel. In late 2022, the White House told the National Archives that documents bearing classification markings had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. — the location of Biden’s private office after his term as vice president expired in early 2017.

From 2017 to 2019, Blinken was the managing director of the Penn Biden Center, and before that he served as Biden’s national security adviser during President Barack Obama’s first term, with their association going back more than two decades, beginning when Biden was still a U.S. senator.

After the classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center late last year, Blinken told reporters he “had no knowledge of it at the time” but “would cooperate fully” with the Justice Department’s review. The White House similarly said that it would cooperate.

Biden’s personal attorney later informed investigators that additional classified records were identified in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home — a development that marked a tipping point in the Justice Department’s decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate further, sources told ABC News in January.

In all, about 25 documents marked classified were found in locations associated with Biden.

Biden has sought to downplay his legal exposure. One week after Hur’s appointment, in response to reporters’ questions about why he did not reveal the documents before November’s midterm elections, Biden replied that “we found a handful of documents” that had been “filed in the wrong place” and that he was cooperating with the National Archives and the Justice Department.

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” he said.

Meanwhile, special counsel Smith’s team has aggressively pursued former President Trump and two aides in his investigation into Trump’s handling of classified records after leaving office. In their indictment against Trump, prosecutors allege a months-long conspiracy to block government efforts to retrieve classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in the summer of 2020, including by allegedly hiding those documents from the FBI and Trump’s own attorney.

According to the indictment, when the FBI then searched Mar-a-Lago in August of last year, agents found more than 100 documents marked classified that Trump allegedly failed to turn over in defiance of a federal grand jury subpoena.

In Biden’s case, all of the classified documents found in locations associated with Biden were voluntarily provided to the government, Biden’s lawyers said at the time.

“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced,” an attorney for Biden said in a statement after Hur’s appointment.

Trump and his aides have denied the allegations against them and pleaded not guilty.

ABC News’ Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s dog Commander bit another Secret Service officer on Monday, according to a statement from a Secret Service spokesperson.

Commander, a purebred German shepherd, bit the Secret Service officer around 8 p.m. Monday. The officer was treated by medical personnel, according to a Secret Service spokesperson.

This would be the 11th known instance of Commander biting a Secret Service officer and acting aggressive.

U.S. Secret Service emails obtained by Judicial Watch in July via a Freedom of Information Act request describe 10 incidents of the German Shepherd biting people in a four-month period — including one incident that resulted in the victim, a Secret Service agent, being transported to a hospital after getting treatment from White House medical personnel, according to the emails.

The Bidens had another dog, Major, who behaved aggressively, including biting Secret Service and White House staff. They eventually sent the dog, also a German shepherd, to live with friends in Delaware.

Commander joined the first family at the White House in December 2021. He was gifted to Biden by his brother James and his sister-in-law for his birthday. The family also has a cat, Willow.

ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.

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(DETROIT) — With national attention drawn toward the United Auto Workers amid their strike, and as 75% of Americans back them in their negotiations, according to Gallup polling published in August, the 2024 presidential front-runners are increasingly angling to boost their ties to workers.

Donald Trump plans to skip the second Republican presidential debate on Wednesday to instead court unionized employees with remarks outside Detroit. President Joe Biden joined the picket line in Michigan just a day before.

A sitting president attending a strike is without precedent in modern history, and while the White House insists that shouldn’t signal Biden is inserting himself in the ongoing talks, administration officials also say it reflects his continued support for workers.

On the picket line on Tuesday afternoon, Biden took control of a bullhorn to express his support for the striking auto workers.

Biden, wearing a UAW black baseball cap, told the workers to “stick with it” because they “deserve a significant raise” and “other benefits.”

Political experts believe there is electoral value in Biden’s position as well.

“It’s important that Biden be viewed as on the side of the unions, especially since the unions currently have their highest level of support in memory from the public,” Matt Grossmann, director of the Michigan-based Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, told ABC News.

Democrats have historically relied on union support to buoy their campaigns, with double-digit margins of union household voters favoring the party over Republicans in some past races, according to exit polling.

But Trump’s victory in 2016 was powered, in part, by him earning more union votes than other Republicans.

In 2016, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton struggled with union voters in states like Michigan and Ohio, exit polls showed. Trump won both.

Four years later, Biden narrowly won Michigan and two other Rust Belt states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that had gone for Trump in 2016.

Some of Trump’s appeal with union voters has been credited to his opposition to free trade agreements in comparison to Clinton. Trump also vowed to revive domestic manufacturing — a pledge the Biden White House is now quick to contend that they, and not Trump, have better sought to fulfill through new investments and regulations.

According to government statistics, Michigan and Pennsylvania were in approximately the top fourth of states with the highest proportion of unionized workers in 2022. Wisconsin, too, had a higher rate than more than 20 other states.

In 2020, Biden won union households 56-40% over Trump, exit polling found.

“I am a union man, period,” Biden told Pittsburgh laborers when he launched his 2020 campaign. Four years later, he again held his first campaign rally of the cycle in front of union workers in Pennsylvania.

Jonathan Hanson, a lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said Democrats should keep thinking about how to reach union workers.

“I think Democrats should be concerned about what is their message that’s going to appeal to these voters,” Hanson told ABC News. “They didn’t do so well in responding to Trump’s use of campaigning against trade agreements in 2016. That seemed to work pretty well for him.”

Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan told reporters last week that in 2016 Trump had an ability “to understand people’s concerns and their anxieties,” something she said made her take that election seriously.

“Michigan is not a blue state. We are a purple state,” Dingell said, adding that “nobody can take Michigan for granted.”

Rep. Haley Stevens, also a Michigan Democrat, agreed: “Certainly our state is in play.”

But the two lawmakers laid into Trump, criticizing him for his plans to speak to laborers in the state, suggesting it was insincere.

“It’s just laughable, and it’s not welcome,” Stevens said.

A closer look at Biden and Trump on unions

Trying to draw a contrast between the former president and Biden, Dingell argued last week of Trump, “The truth is that he was one of the most anti-worker presidents this country ever had.”

Trump’s aides have returned fire at Biden for announcing his trip to the picket line after Trump had announced his own speech in Michigan, on the same night as a Republican presidential primary debate that he is skipping.

“Joe Biden’s trip to Michigan is nothing more than a cheap photo op as he finds himself between a rock and a political hard place,” Trump adviser Jason Miller wrote on social media. Miller also criticized Biden for not undoing environmental regulation that Miller argued while harm auto manufacturers. Biden has said he wants to invest in car companies as they shift to make electric vehicles as part of a broader push to address climate change.

In office, Trump worked to renegotiate the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new trading pact that the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions, praised at the time as something “that working people can proudly support.”

But critics have pointed to the incongruence between many of Trump’s comments and actions.

In his inaugural address, Trump denounced “politicians [who] prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed.” He later hailed electronics manufacturer Foxconn’s investment in Wisconsin at a groundbreaking ceremony, only for the scope of the company’s involvement to drastically scale back in the following years, according to local reports.

The Trump administration also asked the Supreme Court to decide in favor of a petition that ultimately curbed unions’ ability to solicit dues. Additionally, Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), issued a memo that labeled Uber drivers as contractors, rather than employees, effectively stripping them of federal protection to unionize.

Since taking office, Biden has taken steps to signal his abiding support for unions, including his day-one move to fire Robb. He’s also signed a bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes a requirement that American-made iron, steel and other material be used in construction projects funded by the law — though waivers could be granted.

But Biden found himself at odds with the labor movement last year when he signed legislation to force railroad workers to accept a deal — which his administration played a role in negotiating — in order to avoid a strike. Biden said he was “reluctant” to do so but said a work stoppage’s potential impact to the economy outweighed the concerns of the group of laborers who held out on accepting the agreement.

The AFL-CIO endorsed Biden earlier this year. The UAW has not made any endorsement.

‘Unions are always part of our path’

Democrats did not wait until the UAW strike to start maneuvering. Last month, during a motorcycle tour across Michigan to tout Democratic legislative victories, Sen. Gary Peters made a stop at a UAW union hall in Lansing where he delivered fiery remarks in support of their cause — as they geared up for a strike authorization vote — crediting them with strengthening the middle class and the country.

Peters, who leads Democrats’ senate campaign committee, later told reporters, “Unions are always part of our path. … We work together. When you lock arms, that’s how you’re victorious.”

Some Republican presidential hopefuls have struck a different tone. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley has criticized Biden for “emboldening” unions, adding that she believes taxpayers will pay for the UAW’s strike.

“We’re all gonna suffer from this,” Haley, who calls herself a “union buster,” said in a Fox News interview.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, asked by a voter in Iowa last week if, as president, he would insert himself in labor negotiations, pointed to then-President Ronald Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers who went on strike in the 1980s.

“He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired,'” Scott said of Reagan. “Simple concept to me, to the extent that we could use that once again.”

The senator has also recently said, when asked about UAW, “I support workers.”

But he has panned the union’s demand, in light of high auto company profits, for a 46% raise over a four-year period and a four-day work week, something fellow 2024 GOP candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called a “problem.”

Grossmann said these criticisms could hurt both candidates in 2024 if they are their party’s presidential nominee.

“It’s potentially good in a Republican primary, but it’s definitely not a general election in Michigan,” Grossmann said. “There is a history of Republicans trying to be more pro-labor in Michigan.”

Other candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have instead focused their criticism on Biden’s push for a transition to electric vehicles as part of his effort to tackle climate change, rather than the union members.

The electric vehicle transition is of concern for many UAW members who feel the move could negatively impact their jobs, and that unease is in part why the union has so far withheld an endorsement of Biden.

“What I think the UAW leadership is doing is really trying to put pressure on the president,” said Hanson, with the University of Michigan. “I think they know that Biden is wanting their support in the upcoming election next year, and they’re using that as leverage.”

With UAW President Shawn Fain publicly voicing his opposition to Trump being reelected, it’s not likely the former president will secure the UAW’s endorsement. But Grossmann predicts that if Trump sufficiently talks about union issues, he could bypass leadership and woo the rank and file.

“If Trump visibly sides with the union workers and against the companies enough to get flack within the Republican Party, then that might cause this issue to increase in salience and give the Republicans more of an opportunity,” Grossman said.

Democrats say they are prepared to keep making their case to workers.

“When these negotiations are done, we need to go out and fight like blank,” Dingell said.

ABC News’ Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Justin Gomez, Lalee Ibssa, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Rin Kim, Molly Nagle and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will join the United Auto Workers picket line Tuesday in his strongest show of support yet for union members striking against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Biden announced Friday on X that he would travel to Wayne County, Michigan, “to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create.”

It’s a move some experts are calling apparently unprecedented in modern political history, something the White House has been quick to tout.

“He supports the UAW workers and tomorrow what you’re going to see is historic,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, although she declined to give further details on where exactly Biden will be, exactly what he’ll do and what the trip will entail. “This is going to be a historic visit.”

At the same time, Jean-Pierre was peppered with reporter questions about whether the president is officially siding with the striking workers’ demands by joining the picket line, and how his appearance is consistent with the White House claim he’s not getting involved in the negotiations.

“He is standing with the workers,” she said. “We are not involved in negotiations. That is something for them to decide what is going to work for the parties that are involved, but he is standing with the auto workers.”

Biden’s appearance will come one day before former President Donald Trump arrives in Michigan — a 2024 battleground — to campaign in lieu of participating in the second Republican primary debate Wednesday night. Trump announced earlier this month he would give a speech to current and former union workers. Jason Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, criticized Biden’s upcoming trip as a “cheap photo op” and reaction to Trump’s plans.

The White House said Monday Trump’s schedule didn’t factor into Biden’s decision to accept an invitation from UAW President Shawn Fain to join members on the picket line.

UAW launched its strike against the “Big 3” U.S. automakers on Sept. 15 after failing to reach a contract agreement. The union, which is conducting a “stand-up” strike, recently expanded its walk outs with 38 new locations targeting Stellantis and GM.

Key among the union demands are a 36% pay increase over four years and a 32-hour work week.

But Jean-Pierre during Monday’s briefing repeatedly declined to say if Biden, who touts himself as the most pro-union president, supported those specific requests when asked by ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang.

“I’m not gonna get into the details of what’s being negotiated right now on the table with certainly with the parties,” Jean-Pierre replied.

“What we’re saying is that we support the auto workers,” Jean-Pierre said, adding at one point that he “stands by the side of the workers.”

Biden has said he believes union workers deserve their “fair share” of the record earnings of the companies. He’s added that it’s time for a “win-win agreement” between the union and automakers.

ABC’s Wang also pressed Biden on whether he supports the UAW demands later Monday afternoon.

“I think the UAW gave up an incredible amount back when the automobile industry was going under. They gave up everything from their pensions on, and they saved the automobile industry,” Biden responded.

“And I think that now that the industry is roaring back, they should — they should participate in the benefit of that,” Biden continued. “And if you take a look at the significant increase in salaries for the executives and growth for the industry, they should benefit from it. So yes, I support — I always support the UAW.”

The move is not without political risk for Biden as he runs for reelection.

He originally tapped two top officials — acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior adviser Gene Sperling — to offer their support to both parties in reaching agreement. Biden’s announcement last Friday that he would join the picket line came hours after UAW’s Fain publicly extended an invitation.

“We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket line from our friends and families all the way up to the President of the United States,” Fain said in a video. “We invite you to join us in our fight.”

ABC’s This Week co-host Martha Raddatz asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg whether Biden joining the picket line is a “good idea.”

“That’s where he stands,” Buttigieg responded. “He’s a pro-worker president. He is an unapologetically pro-union president. And, you know, not just in contrast to the anti-union policies of the Trump administration, but really with respect to presidents of both parties over the last half century. He’s proud of the fact that he is the most pro-union and pro-worker among them. And, by the way, getting this right.”

Buttigieg also said he believed the companies and auto sector will “benefit in the long run” from the deal.

Asked if Biden had spoken recently with the three auto companies, Jean-Pierre said she had no calls to read out to reporters.

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(WASHINGTON) — Newly introduced legislation seeks to protect individuals nationwide from being misrepresented by certain kinds of digital content known as “deepfakes,” a category that includes deceptive political messages, computer-generated sexual abuse material and more.

“We know that weaponized deception can be extremely harmful to our society,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who authored the proposal and introduced it last week in the House, reviving a proposal she previously put forth in 2019. “This bill is meant to take us into the 21st century and establish a baseline so we can discern who is intending to harm us.”

Clarke told ABC News that her DEEPFAKES Accountability Act would provide prosecutors, regulators and particularly victims with resources, like detection technology, that Clarke believes they need to stand up against the threat posed by nefarious deepfakes.

AI-generated content has exploded in recent years due to the accessibility and ease of use of generative tools. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence capable of producing content including text, images, audio and video with a simple prompt.

As recently as a few years ago, a user would have needed a certain level of technical skill to use AI to make content, but now it’s just a matter of downloading an app or clicking a few buttons on a website.

While some uses of the technology are positive, such as in helping automate tasks, experts have pointed to a number of other ways in which the tools are being used for illicit purposes — from phone scams and online extortion to the creation and distribution of deepfakes, which can be impersonations of public figures or even false, sexual images based on someone’s likeness.

Clarke’s proposed regulation also comes ahead of a presidential election in which accessibility to generative-AI tools is giving candidates or their supporters the ability to produce real-looking fakes in order to advance partisan messages.

“We are already seeing [political groups] using generative AI to try to harm their opponents,” University of California, Berkeley, computer science professor Hany Farid told ABC News.

“It’s so easy to do,” Farid warned.

And the examples have already started piling up — from images falsely depicting what appears to be President Joe Biden in a Republican Party ad to an outside political group supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ White House bid using AI technology to fabricate former President Donald Trump’s voice.

Google announced earlier this month that it will require all verified election advertisers to clearly disclose any use of synthetic media that makes it appear as if a person is saying or doing something they didn’t say or do. Additionally, any ads that use AI to alter footage of real events or generate a realistic scene must be clearly labeled, according to the platform.

At this time, there is no national legislation specifically addressing deepfakes or deceptive uses of generative AI, but earlier this month the nation’s biggest technology executives convened in a closed-door meeting with U.S. senators to discuss possible government regulation.

Clarke’s bill was originally created to focus on people who find themselves misrepresented in a deepfake, a senior aide to her told ABC News.

If passed, the legislation would require creators to label all deepfakes uploaded to online platforms and make transparent any alterations made to a video or other type of content.

Under Clarke’s bill, users who fail to label “malicious deepfakes” would face a criminal penalty including prison time and fines. This category would encompass deepfakes related to sexual content, criminal conduct, incitement of violence and foreign interference in elections.

“This sends a signal to bad actors that they won’t get away with deceiving people,” Clarke said.

All other types of deepfakes would be subject to civil penalties, including a private right of action like suing for damages.

The legislation also seeks to address harms caused by nonconsensual deepfake pornography, which is often described by experts as image-based sexual abuse.

Experts say there’s an entire commercial industry that thrives on creating and sharing digitally created content of sexual abuse, including websites that have hundreds of thousands of paying members. Few resources exist for victims who find their likeness being used and manipulated in this way.

It’s unclear how quickly others in the House might take up Clarke’s bill or if it will garner sufficient support to pass. Because of the limitations it places on content, Clarke knows that it could also be subject to legal challenges under the First Amendment. But she says she believes the text, which was drafted with legal advice, is sound.

Some experts like Henry Ajder, who has previously mapped the use of deepfakes online, believes the scope of the bill may be too narrow.

“It is good to see legislation that is trying to capture harms caused by deepfakes and synthetic media,” Ajder said. “But this specific framing potentially misses a whole range of synthetic media that isn’t just about human subjects — like the fake image of the Pentagon ablaze that caused the financial markets to” briefly dip earlier this year.

Clarke’s bill would further require all creators of deepfakes to include content credentials — that is, the origins and entire history of a piece of content, including how it was captured and how it was changed. Under the legislation, online platforms that host generative AI content would also be required to display the origins of that content.

As previously reported by ABC News, content credential technology allows creators to record any changes made to a piece of content and display it when published to increase transparency and promote authenticity.

A coalition of companies, working together as the Content Authenticity Initiative, has been developing a way for this technology to be used by any digital platform that wishes to incorporate it into their systems. They hope this new standard will restore trust in what users see online.

Some social media platforms are already moving in the direction of labeling all AI-generated content. Last week, TikTok announced it was launching a new tool that will help creators label their AI-generated content.

The social media platform says it does not allow synthetic media of public figures if the content is used “for endorsements or violates any other policy.”

“I think our regulators are asking a lot of good questions, and they’re having hearings, and we’re having conversations and we’re doing briefings and I think that’s good. And I think a lot of this is creating public awareness,” said Farid, the computer science professor. “I think that’s a necessary but not sufficient step. I think we have to now act on all of this.”

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