The U.S. has more former felons than at any time in the country’s history – about 6.1 million men and women. But whether or not those felons have the basic democratic right to vote varies dramatically state by state – from Florida, where ex-felons wait years to battle through an uncertain process, to Vermont, one of two states in the nation that allows currently incarcerated prisoners the right to vote. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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A life-changing mistake could have cost Dan Close his right to vote, but the state of Vermont said otherwise.

Convicted 14 years ago on a felony charge of selling cocaine, Close was surprised to learn that he could still vote in state and national elections. That’s because Vermont and nearby Maine are the only states in the nation that allow felons to retain their voting rights, even while they are incarcerated or completing their probation sentences.

By contrast, 4.7 million convicted felons nationwide who have completed their sentences are not allowed to vote. The Sentencing Project, a research group, found that 1 in 40 adult Americans accounting for 2.5 percent of the voting age population are impacted by felon disenfranchisement.

Moreover, voting-age black Americans are four times more likely to lose their voting rights than white individuals because of disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system. These ex-felons account for a significant number of voters who will not be able to vote in congressional and gubernatorial races in the Nov. 6 midterm election.

Debt paid, or more to prove?

Many supporters of felon voting rights say convicted criminals pay their debt to society by completing sentences handed down by judges and juries and shouldn’t be further punished. They argue that ex-offenders should be allowed to fully participate in the political process when they rejoin their communities.

Opponents argue that felons have broken the social contract by committing a crime and must prove their worthiness to be fully readmitted into the society. The requirements for regaining voting rights vary from state to state and sometimes can take many years to fulfill.

State processes by which felons prove their worthiness are heavily influenced by two post-Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution addressing equal rights following the end of slavery. The 15th Amendment gave African American men the right to vote, while the 14th Amendment gave states the right to deny felons the vote, as well as the ability to decide the process by which it can be restored.

“People take it for granted — it’s a right. And when any rights are removed, you feel it, you know it,” Close said recently during an interview with VOA in Wilmington, Vermont.

“I think if you’re an American citizen, you should have that right to vote — whether you’re a felon or not,” he added. “If you have an interest in politics and the way your country is going and you want to give your say and your opinion, you should be allowed to.”

But that’s not the case for Yraida Guanipa. She served 11 years in a Florida prison, followed by five years of parole, for drug-related charges. Yet since fully regaining her freedom in 2012, she still can’t vote in Florida.

“Nobody can imagine how painful this (imprisonment and parole) can be, and then this?” she said. “I cannot even vote? Under the process right now, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to vote again if it doesn’t change.”

Florida has the highest felon disenfranchisement rate by population of any state in the nation, with 1.5 million ex-offenders waiting to regain their voting rights. In a state with 29 electoral votes, the restoration of those rights could have a significant impact on future presidential elections. Republican George W. Bush captured the White House in 2000 after defeating Democrat Al Gore by a hair in Florida in a highly contested election ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. In the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump prevailed over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Florida by just 112,911 votes or 1.2 percent of the total.

Guanipa is one of nine plaintiffs in a federal class-action lawsuit alleging the state of Florida’s review process for restoring felons’ voting rights is arbitrary and unfair.

Florida requires felons to wait five to seven years after completing their sentence and any accompanying probation, parole or supervised release before they can submit an application to a state clemency review board for restoration of their voting rights. But the governor has the final say no matter what the clemency board decides.

“There are no set standards, rules or criteria,” said Jon Sherman, the senior counsel at the Fair Elections Legal Network who filed the lawsuit. “They apply these vague standards like, ‘Have you turned your life around. Have you shown sufficient remorse?’ And what’s true for one person won’t be true for another. There’s no consistency in the application of that vague, subjective standard.”

The lawsuit is based on precedents set in U.S. Supreme Court decisions preventing the government from limiting citizens’ First Amendment rights to free speech. This is the first case arguing that the process of denying felons voting rights violates First Amendment protections.

The arbitrary nature of the board’s decisions, Sherman argues, is incompatible with American democratic principles.

“You have state executive officials playing the role of king, essentially,” said Sherman.

Attorneys for Florida governor, Republican Rick Scott, argued that the state constitution gives the governor unfettered discretion in all clemency, pardons and commutations, including the restoration of the right to carry a firearm.

Long before this case is decided, Florida voters will have an opportunity on Nov. 6 to pass Amendment 4, a ballot initiative that would rewrite the state’s constitution to automatically restore felon voting rights upon completion of their sentences. Supporters of the initiative collected nearly 800,000 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. Polls show that anywhere from 60 percent to 70 percent of Floridians support the initiative. At least 60 percent of voters must approve the initiative for it to take effect. 

Felon disenfranchisement is part of Democrats’ broader concerns over voter suppression nationwide. In the lead-up to the midterm elections, GOP-controlled state legislatures have drawn attention to their strict voter ID laws and maintenance of voter registration rolls. Georgia officials recently prompted nationwide criticism for removing the names of 107,000 voters who had not voted in prior elections.

But earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 against civil rights groups alleging the state of Ohio’s process for purging inactive voters disproportionately impacted minorities.

Analysts say the disenfranchisement of felons has been intertwined with racial relations in this country dating back to the end of the Civil War, when passage of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made denial of the right to vote on the basis of race illegal.

According to Sean Morris Doyle, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, “There were a number of states — including Florida — which when they were forced to acknowledge and accept the 15th Amendment and provide the right to vote to African-American men, simultaneously put into place provisions like this one, which disenfranchise people with felony convictions in their past.”

Doyle said these laws — often referred to as “Black Codes” — were aimed at criminalizing African-American men while denying them the right to vote.

Vermont and Maine — the two states with the highest percentage of white residents — are the outliers in giving current felons the right to vote. Vermont’s approach, which has been on the books since at least 1977, is not popular with all of the state’s residents.

“You pay a price. You’ve lost your freedom,” said Richard Perry, a Springfield, Vermont, resident who has experience with the issue because of his son’s felony conviction for selling marijuana.

Perry said that now that his son is out of jail, he should have the right to vote, but “I just think that, as a rule of thumb, if you’re not free to be out here, then you don’t necessarily need to vote.”

Andrew Kingsbury, a former Vermont corrections officer, said “we’re convoluted in saying that you’re being punished for things you’ve done in society that we don’t deem to be acceptable, and on the other hand saying, ‘Well, you’re allowed to have these benefits and rights.'”

Kingsbury said he did not see much prisoner interest in voting during his time as a corrections officer in Vermont. He does not support Vermont’s law allowing current prisoners the right to vote but said he understands why restoration of the right is an important part of rehabilitation.

“As soon as a person’s reintegrated back into society, and they’re now a contributing member to society in a positive manner,” said Kingsbury, “I believe that they should have all of their rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It’s an opportunity Dan Close is determined to make the most of on Election Day. A fan of President Donald Trump, he said his trip to the polls is “a guarantee —already registered. Ready to rock the red wave.”

Denying convicted felons the restoration of their voting rights after they have fully served their sentences is not the only way that civil rights groups say states have engaged in tactics to suppress the vote of many African Americans, American Indians and other minorities. Here are two other examples:

Exact Match in Georgia

Georgia’s “exact match” law allows county voting officials to disqualify absentee ballots if they have questions about the validity of a signature or if  minor discrepancies in addresses or other voter registration records exist. The “exact match” law approved by the Republican controlled state legislature has been blamed for the suspension of more than 50,000 registration applications in the state this year, according to the Associated Press, with 80 percent submitted by blacks and other minorities.

Last week, just 14 days before the midterm election, a federal court judge ordered Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, to instruct local election officials to stop rejecting absentee ballots containing voter information that doesn’t precisely match state records, but instead designate them as “provisional.” Voters whose ballots were challenged have an opportunity to provide additional documentation to confirm their identities. The ruling in suits brought by three civil liberties groups marked a victory for Kemp’s Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, who is attempting to become the first black woman ever elected governor in the US.  

North Dakota Voter ID Requirements

A law passed last year in North Dakota requires voters to produce a photo identification with a residential home address before they can vote. Several Native American groups promptly challenged its constitutionality in federal court, arguing the requirement poses an unconstitutional obstacle for Native American voters. They noted that a disproportionate number of Native American citizens are homeless and many others, who live on reservations or in rural areas, don’t have residential street addresses.

This voter ID controversy has gained national attention because it may impact the race for the state’s U.S. Senate seat between current Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp and her Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer. So, when a federal court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered the state to allow voters to cast ballots as long as their identification contained a mailing address such as a post office box, it appeared to be a victory for Heitkamp as well as thousands of her Native American supporters. North Dakota election officials were forced to adhere to the court’s order when voters went to the polls for the June primary. But in September the 8th Circuit  Court of Appeals put the lower court’s order on hold. And earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene,  leaving the state’s voter identification law intact.

Now Native American groups are scrambling to devise workarounds to provide voters with proper identification before the Nov. 6 midterm election.
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In the hours before his arrest, as federal authorities zeroed in and secretly accumulated evidence, Cesar Sayoc was in his element: spinning classic and Top 40 hits in a nightclub where he’d found work as a DJ.

As he entertained patrons from a dimly lit booth overlooking a stage at the Ultra Gentlemen’s Club, where Halloween decorations hung in anticipation of a costume party, he could not have known that investigators that very evening were capitalizing on his own mistakes to build a case against him.

He almost certainly had no idea that lab technicians had linked DNA on two pipe bomb packages he was accused of sending to prominent Democrats to a sample previously collected by Florida state authorities. Or that a fingerprint match had turned up on a separate mailing the authorities say he sent.

And he was probably unaware that investigators scouring his social media accounts had found the same spelling mistakes on his online posts — “Hilary” Clinton, Debbie Wasserman “Shultz” — as on the mailings he’d soon be charged with sending.

​Wealth of clues

In the end, prosecutors who charged Sayoc with five federal crimes Friday say the fervent President Donald Trump supporter unwittingly left behind a wealth of clues, affording them a critical break in a coast-to-coast investigation into pipe bomb mailings that spread fear of election-season violence. The bubble-wrapped manila envelopes, addressed to Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and intercepted from Delaware to California, held vital forensic evidence that investigators say they leveraged to arrest Sayoc four days after the investigation started.

“Criminals make mistakes so the more opportunities that law enforcement has to detect them, the greater chance they’re going to be able to act on that, and that appears to be what happened here,” said former Justice Department official Aloke Chakravarty, who prosecuted the Boston Marathon bombing case.

​First package

But it wasn’t always clear that such a break would come, at least not on Monday when the first package arrived: a pipe bomb delivered via mail to an estate in Bedford, New York, belonging to billionaire liberal activist George Soros. That same day, Sayoc, still under the radar of law enforcement, retweeted a post saying, “The world is waking up to the horrors of George Soros.”

Additional packages followed, delivered the next day for Clinton and Obama and after that to the cable network CNN, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democratic targets of conservative ire.

Each additional delivery created more unease. But together they also provided more leads for the FBI, which mined each pipe bomb for clues at a laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

​A breakthrough

As the packages rolled in, technicians got a breakthrough: a fingerprint and DNA left on a package sent to Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and one of the intended pipe bomb recipients, and DNA on a piece of pipe bomb intended for Obama. The FBI said it had identified no other possible matches on the evidence it had examined.

Besides that, the FBI said, his social media posts that traffic in online conspiracy theories, parody accounts and name-calling include some of the same misspellings as were noticed on the 13 packages he was charged with sending.

The clues, authorities say, led them to a 56-year-old man with a long criminal history who’d previously filed for bankruptcy and appeared to be living in his van, showering on the beach or at a local fitness center.

As the FBI worked around the clock, and as Americans were busy debating the hard-edged political climate and whether Trump had fanned the flames with his rhetoric, it was business as usual for Sayoc as he took to Twitter to denigrate targets like Soros. That was not uncommon for the amateur body builder and former stripper whose social media accounts are peppered with memes supporting Trump and posts vilifying Democrats.

​‘We don’t talk politics’

On Thursday from noon to 9 p.m. as law enforcement grew ever closer, descending on a postal sorting facility in Opa-locka, Florida, Sayoc was working as a disc jockey at a West Palm Beach nightclub where he’d found work in the last two months. There, he spun his music from inside a small dimly lit booth overlooking a stage with performers dancing below. Autographed photos of scantily clad and nude adult entertainers were plastered across the walls like wallpaper.

“I didn’t know this guy was mad crazy like this,” said Stacy Saccal, the club’s manager. “Never once did he speak politics. This is a bar. We don’t talk politics or religion in a bar, you know?”

But Scott Meigs, another DJ at the club, had a different experience.

He said Sayoc had been talking about politics to everybody at the club for the last two weeks, preaching the need to elect Republicans during the November elections. 

“I just figured he was passionate about the upcoming elections,” Meigs said.

The next morning, Sayoc was taken into custody near an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, north of Miami. Across the street, Thomas Fiori, a former federal law enforcement officer, said he saw about 50 armed officers swarm a man standing outside a white van with windows plastered with stickers supporting Trump and criticizing media outlets including CNN.

They ordered him to the ground, Fiori said, and he did not resist.

“He had that look of, ‘I’m done, I surrender,”’ Fiori said.
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A battle is brewing between the Trump administration and some of the president’s biggest supporters in Congress who are concerned that sanctions to be reimposed on Iran early next month won’t be tough enough. 

As President Donald Trump prepares to reimpose a second batch of Iran sanctions that had been eased under the 2015 nuclear deal, conservative lawmakers and outside advisers have become worried that the administration may break a promise to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran. They are angered by suggestions that measures to be announced Nov. 5 won’t include a provision cutting Iran off from a key component of the global financial system. 

The self-described Iran hawks are concerned enough that they have drafted legislation that would require the administration to demand that Iran be suspended from the international bank transfer system known as SWIFT. 

“The president asked for maximum pressure, not semi-maximum pressure,” said Richard Goldberg, a former aide to a Republican senator and senior adviser to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a group that supports punishing Iran with sanctions. “Maximum pressure includes disconnecting Iranian banks from SWIFT.” 

Trump pledged Thursday to do whatever it takes to pressure Iran to halt what he refers to as its “malign conduct,” such as nuclear and missile development and support for terrorism and groups that destabilize the Middle East. 

“On Nov. 5th, all U.S. sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force,” he told a gathering at the White House to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the 1983 attack on the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which is blamed on Iranian-backed extremists. “And they will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran’s malign conduct. We will not allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to develop the world’s deadliest weapons. Will not happen.” 

Energy, banking sectors

The Nov. 5 sanctions cover Iran’s banking and energy sectors and will reinstate penalties for countries and companies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere that do not halt Iranian oil imports. They could also include measures to force Iran out of SWIFT. 

Despite Trump’s tough stance, the hawks are worried about recent comments from Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin and his staff that suggest Iran will be able to stay connected to SWIFT. They are also concerned the administration will back down on its stated zero-tolerance policy for Iranian oil purchases by granting waivers to certain countries and companies that do not fully stop buying it. 

Iran deal supporters, like the other parties to the agreement, argue that pushing Iran out of SWIFT, the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, will lead to the creation of alternate mechanisms that could supplant it as the leading global institution for financial institutions to send and receive information about banking transactions. They also say expulsion will make it harder for Iran to conduct transactions, such as humanitarian purchases, that will still be allowed after Nov. 5. 

Allowing Iran to remain in SWIFT would make it easier for Tehran to import humanitarian goods like medicine permitted under U.S. sanctions and “would help the United States make clear that its critique of Iran is directed at the regime, not the people of Iran,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury official now with the Center for a New American Security. She added, though, that disconnection would be a “fast track” to isolation. 

The debate underscores the challenges the administration faces as it tries to isolate Iran without the full backing of other world powers who remain supportive of the nuclear deal. 

Although the hawks had been pleased by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal in May and cheered the August reimposition of an initial set of sanctions, they are now seething that Treasury may opt to use existing safeguards to isolate Iran instead of hitting SWIFT members with sanctions if they don’t disconnect Tehran. 

Treasury coy

Treasury has been coy about its intentions, saying only that Mnuchin and the agency have led “an intense economic pressure campaign against Iran as part of this administration’s comprehensive strategy to address the totality of Iran’s malign and destabilizing activity, with much more to come.” 

“Treasury has made it very clear that we will continue to cut off bad Iranian actors, including designated banks, from accessing the international financial system in a number of different ways,” it said. “We will also take action against those attempting to conduct prohibited transactions with sanctioned Iranian entities regardless of the mechanisms used.” 

That less-than-categorical position has rallied the hawks around the legislation prepared by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that would require the administration to impose sanctions on SWIFT members, including some U.S. banks, should it not suspend Iran on its own. 

Federal law currently gives the administration authority to act against Iran’s central bank and other banks covered by terrorism and money-laundering sanctions. Cruz’s legislation, however, would authorize the administration to hit all of Iran’s banks with sanctions and require it to act against SWIFT if it connects any Iranian bank under sanctions to its system, according to a copy seen by the AP. 

In August, Cruz led a group of 16 GOP senators, including Trump allies Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming, in demanding action against SWIFT if Iran is not suspended. Congressional aides say they believe support for his proposed legislation will be strong. “The administration’s maximum pressure campaign will not succeed if the Islamic Republic remains connected to SWIFT,” the senators told Mnuchin.  
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Former U.S. President Barack Obama is blasting President Donald Trump’s Republican Party for allegedly deceiving the American public on a variety of issues, including taxes and health care. 

Obama, Trump’s predecessor in the White House, delivered two fiery speeches Friday in Wisconsin and Michigan, urging people to vote for the states’ Democratic candidates in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. 

“Throughout human history, certainly throughout American history, politicians have exaggerated,” Obama said during a rally in Milwaukee. “But what we have not seen before in our recent public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly lying, making stuff up.” 

“That’s what your governor is doing with these ads — just making stuff up,” Obama said, referring to Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his declarations that he wants to preserve health care for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Democrat Tony Evers is running to unseat Walker. 

The former president pointed out to a crowd of thousands that Republicans have attempted numerous times to repeal his health care law, which protects those with pre-existing conditions. 

“Don’t be hoodwinked. Don’t be bamboozled. Wisconsin, don’t fall for that,” Obama implored. 

Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama seemed to question the integrity of the current administration. 

“In Washington, they have racked up enough indictments to field a football team,” he said. “Nobody in my administration got indicted. So, how is it that they cleaned things up?” 

In Detroit, Obama used the issue of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy. Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential race to Trump, was repeatedly criticized during her campaign for allegedly mishandling classified information on a personal server. 

“They didn’t care about emails and you know how you know? Because if they did, they’d be up in arms right now that the Chinese are listening to the president’s iPhone that he leaves in his golf cart,” Obama said. 

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Trump has continued to use his personal cellphone, even though aides warned that the Chinese and the Russians were eavesdropping on it. 

Obama also seized on a recent Trump comment that he would get Congress to approve a tax-cut bill before the midterm elections. 

“Congress isn’t even in session before the election! He just makes it up!” Obama said. 

Obama also applauded Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer for helping to expand Medicaid, a joint federal and state program that helps cover medical costs for people with limited resources. He said “few people fought against it harder” than Whitmer’s Republican opponent, state Attorney General Bill Schuette. 

Wisconsin and Michigan are key battleground states in the midterm elections. Democrats lost Michigan in the 2016 general election, despite Obama’s visit the day before. Clinton narrowly lost Wisconsin, a defeat that proved crucial to Trump’s victory in the presidential contest.
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Authorities have arrested a 59-year-old man in connection with the mail bombs sent to celebrities, prominent news outlets, and Democratic politicians. The suspect has a long criminal record, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.
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Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News Channel personality who made a rocky transition to softer news at NBC, was fired from her morning show Friday after triggering a furor by suggesting it was OK for white people to wear blackface at Halloween.

“‘Megyn Kelly Today’ is not returning,” NBC News said in a statement. The show occupied the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” program, a time slot that will be hosted by other co-anchors next week, the network said.

NBC didn’t address Kelly’s future at the network. But negotiations over her exit from NBC are underway, according to a person familiar with the talks who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Kelly, said in a statement that she “remains an employee of NBC News and discussions about next steps are continuing.” He did not elaborate.

$20 million a year

Kelly is in the second year of a three-year contract that reportedly pays her more than $20 million a year.

The show’s cancellation came four days after she provoked a firestorm for her on-air comments about blackface as a costume.

“But what is racist?” Kelly said Tuesday. “Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”

Critics accused her of ignoring the ugly history of minstrel shows and movies in which whites applied blackface to mock blacks as lazy, ignorant or cowardly.

Kelly apologized to fellow NBC staffers later in the day and made a tearful apology on her show Wednesday. She did not host new episodes of “Megyn Kelly Today” as scheduled Thursday and Friday.

Awkward start at softer news

Kelly, 47, made her debut as a NBC morning host in September 2017, taking over the 9 a.m. slot at “Today” and saying she wanted viewers “to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear and maybe a little hope to start your day.” She did cooking demonstrations and explored emotional topics. 

She largely floundered with that soft-news focus, and a pair of awkward and hostile interviews with Hollywood figures Jane Fonda and Debra Messing backfired. Kelly briefly found more of a purpose with the eruption of the #MeToo movement.

She made news when interviewing women who accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior and spoke with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and others, as well as women who say they were harassed on Capitol Hill.

Time magazine, which honored “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year, cited Kelly as the group’s leader in the entertainment field. The episode with Trump accusers had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of her biggest audiences.

Lower ratings

But strains continued behind the scenes. Kelly last month publicly called for NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack to appoint outside investigators to look into why the network didn’t air Ronan Farrow’s stories about Weinstein and allowed Farrow to take the material to The New Yorker.

And her ratings have been consistently down from what “Today” garnered in the 9 a.m. hour before Kelly came on board. In its first year, Kelly’s show averaged 2.4 million viewers a day, a drop of 400,000 from the year before.

The latest controversy may have tipped the balance. Both NBC’s “Nightly News” and “Today” did stories on her blackface comment, and weatherman Al Roker said Kelly “owes a big apology to people of color across the country.”

A former corporate defense attorney, Kelly made her name at Fox News discussing politics in prime time. During the first GOP debate in 2015, she asked Trump about calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” Trump later complained about her questions, saying, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

Fox News baggage

Although Kelly may have attempted a fresh start at NBC, she couldn’t always escape her baggage.

Many of her former Fox News Channel viewers were upset by her perceived disloyalty in leaving and her clashes with Trump during the campaign. At the same time, her former association with Fox caused some NBC colleagues and viewers to regard her with suspicion.

While at Fox, Kelly cultivated a reputation for toughness and a willingness to challenge conservative orthodoxy. Her private testimony about former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes’ unwanted sexual advances a decade ago helped lead to Ailes’ firing.

She also created controversy with her stance on race. In 2013, while an anchor at Fox, Kelly addressed the ethnicity of Santa Claus by saying: “For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.”
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President Donald Trump will campaign in eight states in the final days before Nov. 6 U.S. congressional elections, putting most of his attention on tight races in which Republicans have a shot at winning Senate seats, White House officials said Friday.

From Wednesday until Election Day, the president will make campaign stops in Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee, the officials said.

Trump, who was making campaign stops in North Carolina Friday night and in Illinois Saturday, is scrambling to head off a Democratic push to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.

Officials said Trump wants to go to places where races are competitive and where he can make a difference.

“No one Republican, no surrogate, no person can better move the political needle than President Trump,” White House political director Bill Stepien told Reuters.

Democrats had appeared to be in a good position to capture the House, but many races have tightened in recent weeks to the point that some analysts think it is conceivable Republicans could hang on to control.

While realistic about their chances of holding the House, Republicans see a better-than-expected chance of not only holding their current 51-49 Senate majority but adding a small number of seats to their margin.

‘Tremendous momentum’

“I think the Republicans have tremendous momentum,” Trump told reporters at the White House, as he sought to refocus attention on the congressional races rather than the series of bombs sent to prominent Democrats and critics of the president.

A man was charged in Florida earlier Friday in connection with the bombs.

“We have a lot of Senate races where we’re leading, races that frankly were going to be uncontested,” Trump added. “… There are a lot of people in the House, so we’re going to see how that goes. But I think we’re doing very well in the House.”

Bolstered by a recent uptick in his job approval ratings to the high 40s in opinion polls, Trump is hammering away at two major themes: illegal immigration and the contentious Senate confirmation battle over U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who denied accusations of sexual misconduct. He is also promoting a plan for middle-class tax cuts.

Trump’s itinerary

In Florida, Trump will seek to boost the Senate campaign of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who is in a tough race against veteran Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, as well as lend a hand to U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis in his gubernatorial race against Democrat Andrew Gillum.

In Missouri, Trump will try to help Republican Josh Hawley in his bid to unseat Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, while in West Virginia, he will aid Republican Patrick Morrisey in his fight against Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.

Trump will be making a return visit to Montana as he seeks to help Republican Matt Rosendale unseat Democratic Senator Jon Tester, who was instrumental in derailing the president’s nominee for Veterans Affairs, presidential physician Ronny Jackson, earlier this year.

Trump will visit Tennessee on behalf of Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn, who is in a neck-and-neck battle with Democrat Phil Bredesen for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Bob Corker, a Trump critic.

The president will try to give a boost to Republican Brian Kemp in his campaign against Democrat Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia. In Indiana, Trump will campaign for Republican Mike Braun in his attempt to knock out incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly.

And in Ohio, Trump will lend a hand to Republican Mike DeWine in his campaign against Democrat Richard Cordray in the race to succeed Republican John Kasich, another Trump critic, as governor of a state that may be instrumental to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.
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U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington next year.

Bolton said on Friday in the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia: “We have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations.”

 He says no date has been set.

Bolton noted that Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are set to meet in Paris when they attend November 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day.

Putin and Trump held a summit in Helsinki in July amid sharp differences over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and the allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
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U.S. President Donald Trump vowed Friday that those responsible for mailing suspicious packages to former president Barack Obama, other high-profile Democrats and critics of President Trump will be prosecuted to the “fullest extent of the law.”

“These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country,” Trump told an enthusiastic group attending the Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House. “We must never allow political violence to take root in America.”

Federal authorities have detained a person in connection with a series of 12 mailed suspicious packages, a Justice Department official said Friday. Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said authorities are planning to announce more information at a news conference later Friday (at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time).

The detainee has been identified as Cesar Alteri Sayoc Jr., a 56-year-old registered Republican in Florida, according to numerous media outlets citing law enforcement authorities.

Court records show Sayoc has a lengthy criminal history, including a conviction on a 2002 threat to “throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device.” Florida attorney Ronald Lowy, who represented Sayoc, said his client was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb during a conversation with a state utility representative.

Federal authorities apprehended Sayoc just hours after the Federal Bureau of Investigation intercepted two more suspicious packages, one addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker, the other to former National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

The FBI said both packages, which raised the total to 12, were similar to the crude pipe bombs that were addressed in recent days to former president Barack Obama, other high-profile Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Other packages were addressed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. attorney general, two Democratic Party members of Congress and former Central Intelligence Director John Brennan.

The 11th package addressed to Booker was discovered at a mail sorting facility in Florida, the FBI said.

The agency said a 12th package targeting Clapper was addressed to him at cable network CNN and was found at a New York City post office.

Clapper said on CNN Friday morning he was not surprised he was targeted and said the incidents were “serious.”

Shortly before the person was detained Friday Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday law enforcers are “working tirelessly” to resolve the issue and vowed to “find the person or persons responsible and bring them to justice.”

Federal investigators searched a massive mail sorting facility in Florida late Thursday, after determining that at least one of the pipe bombs was processed there. They are specifically looking at the southern part of the state of Florida as a source of some of the packages, according to media reports.

U.S. President Donald Trump is largely blaming the media for the angry political atmosphere in America that critics contend has led to what is being regarded as a wide-scale assassination attempt.

On Friday, he directed his ire at CNN.

Trump’s Thursday tweet came as suspected explosive devices addressed to actor Robert De Niro and former Vice President Joe Biden were found Thursday.

Pressed by reporters Thursday on whether there could be a link between Trump’s insults of political opponents and the bombs, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders replied, “the president is certainly not responsible for sending suspicious packages to someone no more than [Democratic Party Senator] Bernie Sanders was responsible for a supporter of his shooting up a baseball field practice last year.”

Throughout the day on Wednesday, leaders from both the major parties called for a return to civility in the political arena.

The U.S. Secret Service said the package addressed to Clinton was discovered late Tuesday, intercepted at a mail screening facility near her home in a New York suburb where she lives with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

A separate package addressed to Obama, according to the Secret Service, was intercepted at a screening facility at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a 365-hectare military facility in Washington.

Two suspect packages were sent to California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, one intended for her office in the nation’s capital and the other for her home district office. The first was intercepted at a congressional mail sorting center in the state of Maryland, and the second discovered by postal inspectors at the Los Angeles Central Mail Sorting Facility.

The first in the series of explosive devices was found Monday in a mailbox outside the New York home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a major donor to Democratic candidates.
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Less than two weeks before crucial midterm congressional elections, a new element of fear and uncertainty has been injected into the campaign in the wake of pipe bombs that were sent to several prominent Democrats.

Federal authorities announced Friday morning that a suspect in the bomb investigation was arrested.  News media, quoting law enforcement sources, said the man was arrested in Plantation, Fla., which is near Miami. Local television stations broadcast footage of police examining a white van with political stickers covering its windows. The vehicle was covered with a tarp and hauled away on a truck.

The mail bombs sparked a renewed focus on the sharp political rhetoric that has long defined the current divisive atmosphere, with calls from both parties to temper the partisanship ahead of congressional elections.

WATCH: Trump Calls for Unity, Blames Media Amid Bomb Threats

​A softer Trump?

While announcing the arrest during a White House event, President Donald Trump called on Americans to show unity.

“We must never allow political violence to take root in America,” Trump said.

On the campaign trail in Wisconsin late Wednesday, President Donald Trump made a similar appeal for calm.

“We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. It will happen,” he said.

But Trump later blasted the news media in a tweet. 

During his remarks in Wisconsin, Trump also made a plea to moderate the heated political rhetoric on both sides.

“Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective. We have to do that.”

Democrats respond

Democrats pounced on that, countering that Trump has been a key instigator of political tension with his partisan attacks.

Senate Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement criticizing the president for condoning violence and dividing Americans.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said any effort to temper rhetoric should start at the top.

“This is a very painful time in our nation. It is a time when people are feeling a lot of hatred in the air, and incidents like this exacerbate that pain and exacerbate that fear,” de Blasio said.

Trump has aggressively gone after Democrats in the midterm campaign, including at a recent rally in Montana.

“The Democrat Party has become too extreme to be trusted with power. Their radical policies are a danger to your family and to your country,” Trump said to cheers from the crowd in Missoula.

Trump also emphasized issues that he believes will appeal to his base.

“This will be an election of (Supreme Court Justice Brett) Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense. That is what it is going to be. It is going to be an election of those things,” he said.

WATCH: Bomb Scares Inject Fear and Uncertainty into Midterms

Republicans believe their voters have become energized in the wake of the bitter confirmation battle over Kavanaugh.

And in recent days the president has stoked immigration fears by highlighting the caravan of Central American migrants moving through Mexico.

Immigration remains a core motivator for Trump’s base, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said.

“We can’t be a country without borders. No country in the world allows anybody they want to come in without recourse, and we should not be any different than that,” Lewandowski said.

​Obama’s role

For their part, Democrats are countering with a furious get-out-the-vote effort in the final days of the campaign with help from former President Barack Obama.

“The stakes are high. The consequences of anybody here not turning out and doing everything you can to get your friends, neighbors and family to turn out,” Obama told Democrats at a recent rally in Nevada. “The consequences of you staying home would be profoundly dangerous to this country, to our democracy.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden has also been active on the campaign trail.

“Folks, we know who Donald Trump is. We know. But here’s the deal, guys. The public has to know who we are as Democrats.”

Biden campaigned in Indiana on behalf of Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.

Get the voters to the polls

American University political science expert David Barker told VOA that both parties are now focused on mobilizing their voters.

“What both sides need, though, is for their people to turn out on Election Day. And traditionally, that is more critical for Democrats, because Republicans are just more inclined to do it no matter what.”

Democrats remain confident of gains Nov. 6, said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a center-left policy group.

“There is a blue wave coming. The question is, how big? I believe that Democrats will take back the House. I don’t think they will take back the Senate at this point,” Kessler said.

Recent polls suggest Republicans may be rallying to keep some of the Senate seats in states Trump won easily in 2016.

“And some of what has happened in recent days with the Kavanaugh hearing and Republicans kind of coming home as a party are helping in that area,” said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “So, it will be mostly a win for Democrats, with probably a bright spot in the Senate for Republicans.”

It remains to be seen how the late focus on security and immigration will impact the final days of the midterm campaign, a classic October surprise that could determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.
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Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a plan to lower prices for some prescription drugs, saying it would stop unfair practices that force Americans to pay much more than people in other countries for the same medications. 

“We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country,” Trump said in a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services. 

“Same company. Same box. Same pill. Made in the exact same location, and you would go to some countries and it would be 20 percent of the cost of what we pay,” said Trump, who predicted the plan would save Americans billions. “We’re fixing it.” 

But consumers take note: 

— The plan would not apply to medicines people buy at the pharmacy, just ones administered in a doctor’s office, as are many cancer medications and drugs for immune system problems. Physician-administered drugs can be very expensive, but pharmacy drugs account for the vast majority of what consumers buy. 

— Don’t expect immediate rollbacks. Officials said the complex proposal could take more than a year to be put into effect. 

In another twist, the plan is structured as an experiment through a Medicare innovation center empowered to seek savings by the Affordable Care Act. That’s the law also known as “Obamacare,” which Trump is committed to repealing. 

Trump has long promised sweeping action to attack drug prices, both as president and when he was running for the White House. He made his latest announcement just ahead of the Nov. 6 elections, with health care high among voters’ concerns. 

Under the plan, Medicare payment for drugs administered in doctors’ offices would gradually shift to a level based on international prices. Prices in other countries are lower because governments directly negotiate with manufacturers. 

Drugmakers immediately pushed back, arguing the plan amounts to government price-setting. 

“The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation,” Stephen Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. “These proposals are to the detriment of American patients.” 

Trump is linking the prices Americans complain about to one of his long-standing grievances: foreign countries the president says are taking advantage of U.S. research breakthroughs. 

Drug pricing expert Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes called the plan “a pretty substantive proposal” but one that faces “serious political challenges.” 

“The rhetoric about finally dealing with foreign freeloading suggests that we are going to take steps to get other countries to pay their fair share for innovation,” Bach added. But that’s “quite literally the opposite of what is being proposed. What is being proposed is that we freeload off of other countries’ ability to negotiate more effectively.” 

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were dismissive. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said if Trump wants to save seniors money, he should seek congressional approval for Medicare to negotiate prices for its main prescription drug program, Part D. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, “It’s hard to take the Trump administration and Republicans seriously about reducing health care costs for seniors two weeks before the election.” 

The health insurance industry, at odds with drugmakers over prices, commended the administration’s action. 

As an experiment, the proposal would apply to half the country. Officials said they’re seeking input on how to select the areas that will take part in the new pricing system. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said politics would have nothing to do with it. 

In advance of Trump’s speech, HHS released a report that found U.S. prices for the top drugs administered in doctors’ offices are nearly twice as high as those in foreign countries. The list includes many cancer drugs. Medicare pays directly for them under its Part B coverage for outpatient care. 

Physician-administered drugs cost Medicare $27 billion in 2016. HHS says the plan would save Medicare $17.2 billion over five years. Beneficiaries would save an estimated $3.4 billion through lower cost-sharing. 

The plan could meet resistance not only from drugmakers but also from doctors, now paid a percentage of the cost of the medications they administer. However, HHS officials said the plan was designed so it would not cut into doctors’ reimbursements. 

Azar said more plans were being developed on drug costs. 

“This is not the end of the road, the end of the journey,” he said. “There is more coming.” 

Trump has harshly criticized the pharmaceutical industry, once asserting that the companies were “getting away with murder.” But it’s largely been business as usual for drugmakers even as Trump has predicted “massive” voluntary price cuts. 

A recent Associated Press analysis of prices for brand-name drugs found far more increases than cuts in the first seven months of this year. The analysis found 96 price hikes for every price cut. The number of increases slowed somewhat, and they were not quite as steep as in past years, the AP found. 

The Trump administration proposal is open for public comment for 60 days.  
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