Home

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Democrat who represented southeast Wisconsin in Congress in the 1990s before going on to become a leader in the Assembly and state revenue secretary announced Thursday that he’s running for Congress again. Peter Barca announced his bid against Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who is seeking a fourth term. Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, previously represented by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, leans Republican but was made more competitive under new boundary lines adopted in 2022. The seat is a target for Democrats nationally as they attempt to regain majority control of the House. It is one of only two congressional districts in Wisconsin that are viewed as competitive. The other is western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District held by Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. Republicans hold six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats. Barca, 68, previously held the 1st Congressional District seat from 1993 to 1995. He had previously considered running again for the seat after Ryan stepped down in 2018. Barca is the first well-known Democrat to get into the race. National Democrats are expected to back Barca’s campaign. Barca, in a statement announcing his campaign, said his long record of public service showed that he was a fighter for working families and contrasted himself with a “do-nothing, dysfunctional Congress.” “We need someone to step up and start going to bat for our families again,” he said. National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella branded Barca as a “sacrificial lamb” who has “put his out of touch policies ahead of Wisconsinites.” Steil was elected in 2018 by 12 percentage points, and won reelection by 19 points in 2020 and 9 points in 2022. Barca was elected to serve in the state Assembly from 1985 until 1993 when he resigned after winning a special election to Congress. After he lost in 1995, former President Bill Clinton appointed him to serve as Midwest regional administrator to the U.S. Small Business Administration. He was elected again to the Assembly in 2008 and served as Democratic minority leader from 2011 to 2017. Barca was leader of Democrats in 2011 during the fight over collective bargaining rights. While his Democratic colleagues in the Senate fled to Illinois in an attempt to block passage of a bill that effectively ended collective bargaining for public workers, Barca helped organize a filibuster in the Assembly that lasted more than 60 hours. Barca stepped down as minority leader, in part over grumbling from fellow Democrats over his support for a $3 billion incentive package for Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing company that had planned to locate a massive facility in his district. Barca left the Assembly in 2019 when Gov. Tony Evers tapped him to be secretary of the state Department of Revenue. He resigned last month. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Jury selection in Donald Trump ’s hush money trial enters a pivotal phase as the former president returns to court Thursday morning. Attorneys still need to pick 11 more jurors to serve on the panel that will decide the first-ever criminal case against a former U.S. commander-in-chief. Seven jurors were seated Tuesday after being grilled for hours by lawyers on everything from their hobbies to social media posts to their opinion of the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s closely contested presidential race. Those selected Tuesday include an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers. The first day of Trump’s trial ended on Monday with no one picked to sit on the jury or as one of six alternates. Dozens of prospective jurors were dismissed both days after saying they could not be impartial or had other commitments that would conflict with the trial, which is expected to last several weeks. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign. The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred. The case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial. Currently: — Jury selection process follows a familiar pattern with an unpredictable outcome — Trump lawyers say Stormy Daniels refused subpoena outside a Brooklyn bar — After 7 jurors were seated in Trump’s trial on Tuesday, he trekked to a New York bodega to campaign — Only 1 in 3 US adults think Trump acted illegally in New York hush money case, AP-NORC poll shows — Trump trial: Why can’t Americans see or hear what is happening inside the courtroom? Here’s the latest: Former president Donald Trump has left Trump Tower, on his way to court in Manhattan on Thursday for another day of jury selection in his criminal hush money trial. The jury selection process has moved swifter than expected, prompting Trump when departing the courthouse on Tuesday to complain to reporters that the judge, Juan Merchan, was “rushing” the trial. The judge has suggested that opening statements could start on Monday. The seating of the Manhattan jury will be a seminal moment in the case, setting the stage for a trial that will place the former president’s legal jeopardy at the heart of the campaign against Democrat Joe Biden and feature potentially unflattering testimony about Trump’s private life in the years before he became president. The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump, with a prosecutor this week saying that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has completed a book about her years in public life, from legislation she helped enact to such traumatizing moments as the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol and the assault at her San Francisco home that left her husband with a fractured skull. Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that Pelosi’s “The Art of Power” will be released Aug. 6. “People always ask me how I did what I did in the House,” Pelosi, the first woman to become speaker, said in a statement. “In ‘The Art of Power,’ I reveal how — and more importantly, why.” Pelosi, 84, was first elected to the House in 1986, rose to minority leader in 2003 and to speaker four years later, when the Democrats became the majority party. She served as speaker from 2007-2011, and again from 2019-2023, and was widely credited with helping to mobilize support for and pass such landmark bills as the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. She stepped away from any leadership positions after Republicans retook the majority in the 2022 elections, but she continues to represent California’s 11th district. According to Simon & Schuster, Pelosi also will offer a “personal account” of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters rampaged through the Capitol as Congress voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. She also recounts the night in 2022 when an intruder broke into the Pelosi home and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. (Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time). “Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family,” the publisher’s announcement reads in part. Pelosi’s previous book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters,” came out in 2008. In 2022, she was the subject of the HBO documentary “Pelosi in the House,” made by daughter Alexandra Pelosi. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

VENICE. Italy (AP) — Jeffrey Gibson’s takeover of the U.S. pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show is a celebration of color, pattern and craft, which is immediately evident on approaching the bright red facade decorated by a colorful clash of geometry and a foreground dominated by a riot of gigantic red podiums. Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw with Cherokee descent, is the first Native American to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art show. For context, the last time Native American artists were included was in 1932. Gibson, 52, accepts the weight of the honor, but he prefers to focus on how his participation can forge greater inclusion going forward. Inclusion of overlooked communities is a key message of the main Biennale exhibition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque — Strangers Everywhere,” which runs in tandem with around 90 national pavilions from April 20-Nov. 24. “The first is not the most important story,” Gibson told The Associated Press this week before the pavilion’s inauguration on Thursday. “The first is hopefully the beginning of many, many, many more stories to come.” The commission, his first major show in Europe, comes at a pivotal moment for Gibson. His 2023 book “An Indigenous Present” features more than 60 Indigenous artists, and he has two major new projects, a facade commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and an exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Gibson’s eye-catching exhibition titled “the space in which to place me,” features text in beadwork sculptures and paintings taken from U.S. founding documents, music, sermons and proverbs to remind the viewer of the broken promises of equity through U.S. history. The vibrant use of color projects optimism. In that way, Gibson’s art is a call to action. “What I find so beautiful about Jeffrey’s work is its ability to function as a prism, to take the traumas of the past and the questions about identity and politics and refract them in such a way that things that realities that have become flattened … can become these beautiful kaleidoscopes, which are joyous and celebratory and critical all at the same time,” said Abigail Winograd, one of the exhibition’s curators. “When I see people walk through the pavilion and kind of gasp when they walk from room to room, that’s exactly what we wanted,” Winograd said. Entering the pavilion, the beaded bodices of sculptures in human form are emblazoned with dates of U.S. legislation that promised equity, the beading cascading into colorful fringe. A painting quotes George Washington writing, “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth,” in geometric letters that meld into a colorful patterned background. By identifying specific moments in U.S. history, Gibson said that he wants to underline that “people who are fighting for equity and justice today, we’re not the first. “This has been a line in the history of American culture. But I’m hoping that people will think about why … some of these things … have either been revoked or have not come into fruition,” he said. Craft is at the center of Gibson’s art, both in defiance of past tendencies to denigrate Indigenous art and as a way to confront “the traumatic histories of Native American people,” he said. “There is something very healing about the cycle of making,” Gibson explained. The pavilion’s intricate beaded sculptures owe a debt to Native American makers of the past without imitating them, employing techniques that are more closely associated with couture to create something completely new. In the way of his forbears, Gibson uses beads sourced from all over the world, including vintage beads from Japan and China, and glass beads from the Venetian island of Murano. Paper works incorporate vintage beadwork purchased from websites, estate and garage sales in mixed media displays that honor the generations of Native American makers that preceded him. Still, his art incorporates many traditions and practices that go beyond his Indigenous background. “I’ve looked at op art, pattern and decoration. I’ve looked at psychedelia, I have taken part in rave culture and queer culture and drag and the whole spectrum,” Gibson said. “And so for me, I would not be not telling you the whole truth if I only chose to spoke about indigeneity. But my body is an Indigenous body — it’s all funneled through this body,” he said. ”And so my hope is that by telling my experience, that everyone else can project their own kind of intersected, layered experience into the world.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits was unchanged at low levels last week, pointing to continued labor market strength. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits were unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 212,000 for the week ended April 13, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 215,000 claims in the latest week. Claims have been bouncing around in a 194,000-225,000 range this year. Labor market strength, which is driving the economy, together with elevated inflation have led financial markets and some economists to expect that the Federal Reserve could delay cutting interest rates until September. A few economists doubt that the U.S. central bank will lower borrowing costs this year. Financial markets initially expected the first rate cut to come in March, which then got pushed back to June and now to September as data on the labor market and inflation continued to surprise on the upside in the first three months of the year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell backed away on Tuesday from providing any guidance on when rates might be cut, saying instead that monetary policy needed to be restrictive for longer. The central bank has kept its policy rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July. It has raised the benchmark overnight interest rate by 525 basis points since March of 2022. The claims data covered the period during which the government surveyed businesses and other establishments for the nonfarm payrolls component of April’s employment report. The economy added 303,000 jobs in March. The Fed’s Beige Book report on Wednesday described employment as rising at a “slight pace overall” since late February, adding that “several districts reported improved retention of employees, and others pointed to staff reductions at some firms.” It also noted that even as labor supply has improved, “many districts described persistent shortages of qualified applicants for certain positions, including machinists, trades workers and hospitality workers.” Data next week on the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, will offer more clues on the state of the labor market in April. The so-called continuing claims edged up 2,000 to 1.812 million during the week ending April 6, the claims report showed. Though still low by historical standards, the slightly elevated level of continued claims suggest it could be taking longer for some of the unemployed workers to land new jobs. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com