WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday took up Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington. And even if the high court resoundingly follows suit, the timing of its decision may be as important as the outcome.

That’s because Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.

The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, which is roughly four months before the election.

Currently:

What to listen for during Supreme Court arguments on Donald Trump and presidential immunity

The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution. Here’s what’s next

What to know in the Supreme Court case about immunity for former President Trump

Trump is in New York for the hush money trial while the Supreme Court hears his immunity case in DC

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court

Here’s the latest:

First up on Thursday was D. John Sauer, making Donald Trump’s argument that he’s immune from criminal prosecution. A former Missouri solicitor general and onetime Supreme Court clerk, Sauer also represented Trump at the appeals court level.

Trump went to those arguments even though he wasn’t required to be there, but he won’t be in the audience at the Supreme Court today. He’s required to be in New York for his hush money trial.

About 30 demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court before arguments, some wearing judicial robes with kangaroo masks and others holding signs like “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied.” That’s an apparent reference to the the timing of the high court’s ultimate decision in the case, which could determine whether a trial can be held before the election in November.

Shortly before arguments were slated to begin, Trump fired off a few posts Thursday on his social media network.

In one, he declared in all caps, “WITHOUT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRESIDENT TO PROPERLY FUNCTION, PUTTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN GREAT AND EVERLASTING DANGER!”

Trump also said that without immunity, a president would just be “ceremonial” and the opposing political party “can extort and blackmail the President by saying that, ‘if you don’t give us everything we want, we will Indict you for things you did while in Office,’ even if everything done was totally Legal and Appropriate.”

Of the nine justices hearing the case, three were nominated by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But it’s the presence of a justice confirmed decades before Trump’s presidency, Justice Clarence Thomas, that’s generated the most controversy.

Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, urged the reversal of the 2020 election results and then attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. That has prompted calls for the justice to step aside from several court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6.

But Thomas has ignored the calls, taking part in the unanimous court decision that found states cannot kick Trump off the ballot as well as last week’s arguments over whether prosecutors can use a particular obstruction charge against Capitol riot defendants.

The justices will probably meet in private a short time after arguments to take a preliminary vote on the outcome. Chief Justice John Roberts would be a prime candidate to take on the opinion for the court, assuming he is in the majority.

They could simply reject Trump’s immunity claim outright, permitting the prosecution to move forward and returning the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to set a trial date.

They could also reverse the lower courts by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for conduct related to official acts during their time in office. Such a decision would stop the prosecution in its tracks.

There are other options, too, including ruling that former presidents do retain some immunity for their official actions but that, wherever that line is drawn, Trump’s actions fall way beyond it.

Yet another possibility is that the court sends the case back to Chutkan with an assignment to decide whether the actions Trump is alleged to have taken to stay in power constitute official acts.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein ’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.

“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the court’s 4-3 decision said. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”

The state Court of Appeals ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein. His accusers could again be forced to retell their stories on the witness stand.

The court’s majority said “it is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”

In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” and said the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Singas wrote.

Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of criminal sex act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.

He will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday appointed Lise Grande as the new special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, the State Department said in a statement.

Grande, who replaces David Satterfield, is currently head of the independent U.S. Institute of Peace. She previously worked for the United Nations for more than 25 years, a career that included running aid operations in Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; writing by Paul Grant)

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in nearly two years as a jump in imports to meet still-strong consumer spending widened the trade deficit, but an acceleration in inflation reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve would not cut interest rates before September.

The slowdown in growth reported by the Commerce Department in a snapshot of first-quarter gross domestic product on Thursday also reflected a slower pace of inventory accumulation by businesses and downshift in government spending. Domestic demand remained strong last quarter.

“This report comes in with mixed messages,” said Olu Sonola, head of economic research at Fitch. “If growth continues to slowly decelerate, but inflation strongly takes off again in the wrong direction, the expectation of a Fed interest rate cut in 2024 is starting to look increasingly more out of reach.”

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.6% annualized rate last quarter, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said. Growth was largely supported by consumer spending. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP rising at a 2.4% rate, with estimates ranging from a 1.0% pace to a 3.1% rate.

The economy grew at a 3.4% rate in the fourth quarter. The first quarter growth’s pace was below what U.S. central bank officials regard as the non-inflationary growth rate of 1.8%.

Inflation surged, with the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy increasing at a 3.7% rate after rising at 2.0% pace in the fourth quarter.

The so-called core PCE price index is one of the inflation measures tracked by the Fed for its 2% target. 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.

Consumer spending grew at a still-solid 2.5% rate, slowing from the 3.3% growth pace rate notched in the fourth quarter.

Economists worry that lower-income households have depleted their pandemic savings and are largely relying on debt to fund purchases. Recent data and comments from bank executives indicated that lower-income borrowers were increasingly struggling to keep up with their loan payments.

Business inventories increased at a $35.4 billion rate after rising at a $54.9 billion pace in the fourth quarter. Inventories subtracted 0.35 percentage point from GDP growth.

The trade deficit chopped off 0.86 percentage point from GDP growth. Excluding inventories, government spending and trade, the economy grew at a 3.1% rate after expanding at a 3.3% rate in the fourth quarter.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for an American believed to be held by the Taliban for nearly two years are asking a United Nations human rights investigator to intervene, citing what they say is cruel and inhumane treatment.

Ryan Corbett was abducted Aug. 10, 2022, after returning to Afghanistan, where he and his family had been living at the time of the collapse of the U.S.-based government there a year earlier. He arrived on a valid 12-month visa to pay and train staff as part of a business venture he led aimed at promoting Afghanistan’s private sector through consulting services and lending.

Corbett has since been shuttled between multiple prisons, though his lawyers say he has not been seen since last December by anyone other than the people with whom he was detained.

In a petition sent Thursday, lawyers for Corbett say that he’s been threatened with physical violence and torture and has been malnourished and deprived of medical care. He’s been held in solitary confinement, including in a basement cell with almost no sunlight and exercise, and his physical and mental health have significantly deteriorated, the lawyers say.

Corbett has been able to speak with his family by phone five times since his arrest, including last month. His family has not been able to see him — his only visits have been two check-ins from a third-party government — and their characterizations of his mistreatment are based on accounts from recently released prisoners who were with him and his openly dispirited tone in conversations.

“During Mr. Corbett’s most recent call with his wife and children, Mr. Corbett indicated that the mental torture and anguish have caused him to lose all hope,” said the petition, signed by the Corbett family attorneys, Ryan Fayhee and Kate Gibson.

The petition is addressed to Alice Edwards, an independent human rights investigator and the special rapporteur for torture in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the U.N. It asks Edwards, who was appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, to “urgently reach out to the Taliban to secure Mr. Corbett’s immediate release and freedom from torture, as guaranteed by international law.”

“This situation is just dragging on, and I’m increasingly concerned and taking steps that I hope will make a difference and help the situation — just increasingly concerned and panicking about Ryan’s deteriorating health and physical and mental health,” Corbett’s wife, Anna, said in an interview. “And that was leading me to take this next step.”

The U.S. government is separately working to get Corbett home and has designated him as wrongfully detained. A State Department spokesman told reporters last month that officials had continually pressed for Corbett’s release and were “using every lever we can to try to bring Ryan and these other wrongfully detained Americans home from Afghanistan.”

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry in Afghanistan said this week that it had no knowledge of Corbett’s case.

Corbett, of Dansville, New York, first visited Afghanistan in 2006 and relocated there with his family in 2010, supervising several non-governmental organizations.

The family was forced to leave Afghanistan in August 2021 when the Taliban captured Kabul, but he returned the following January so that he could renew his business visa. Given the instability on the ground, the family discussed the trip and “we were all pretty nervous,” Corbett’s wife said.

But after that first uneventful trip, he returned to the country in August 2022 to train and pay his staff and resume a business venture that involved consulting services, microfinance lending and evaluating international development projects.

While on a trip to the northern Jawzjan province, Corbett and a Western colleague were confronted by armed members of the Taliban and were taken first to a police station and later to an underground prison.

Anna Corbett said that when she learned her husband had been taken to a police station, she got “really scared” but that he was optimistic the situation would be quickly resolved.

That, however, did not happen, and Anna Corbett, who has three teenage children and makes regular trips to Washington, said she’s trying to advocate as forcefully as she can while not letting “anxiety take over.”

“I feel like it’s the uncertainty of all of it that just is so difficult because you just don’t know what’s going to come at you — what call, what news,” she said. “And I’m worried about Ryan and the effect of the trauma on him and then also on my kids, just what they’re experiencing. I’ve tried to protect them the best I could, but this is so difficult.”

___

Associated Press writer Riazat Butt in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote Thursday to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight of broadband internet rescinded under former President Donald Trump.

The commission voted 3-2 in October to advance the proposal to reinstate open internet rules adopted in 2015 and re-establish the commission’s authority over broadband internet. The FCC will vote to give final approval Thursday.

Net neutrality refers to the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

“It is time to have broadband oversight, national net neutrality rules and policies that ensure the internet is fast, open, and fair,” said FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.  

Reinstating the rules has been a priority for President Joe Biden, who signed a July 2021 executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic President Barack Obama.

Democrats were stymied for nearly three years because they did not take majority control of the five-member FCC until October.

Under Trump, the FCC had argued the net neutrality rules were unnecessary, blocked innovation and resulted in a decline in network investment by internet service providers, a contention disputed by Democrats.

A group of Republican lawmakers including House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Senator Ted Cruz called the plan “an illegal power grab that would expose the broadband industry to an oppressive regulatory regime” giving the agency and states power to impose rate regulation, unbundling obligations and broadband taxing authority.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Amazon.com, Apple, Alphabet and Meta Platforms, back net neutrality, arguing the rules “must be reinstated to preserve open access to the internet.”

USTelecom, whose members include AT&T, Verizon and others, called reinstating net neutrality effort “entirely counterproductive, unnecessary, and an anti-consumer regulatory distraction.”

Despite the 2017 repeal, a dozen states now have net neutrality laws or regulations in place. Industry groups abandoned legal challenges to those state requirements in May 2022.

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by William Maclean)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returned to court Thursday morning as witness testimony in his hush money trial entered a third day.

The trial resumed at the same time that the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in Washington over whether he should be immune from prosecution for actions he took during his time as president.

At his trial in Manhattan, veteran tabloid publisher David Pecker took the stand earlier in the week, testifying about his longtime friendship with the former president and a pledge he made to be the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Pecker returned to the stand Thursday.

The testimony was sought to bolster prosecutors’ premise that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 election through a “catch-and-kill” strategy to buy up and then spike negative stories. Key to that premise are so-called hush money payments that were paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, along with the doorman.

Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of those payments and falsely recorded them as legal expenses.

He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.

___

Currently:

— No one is above the law. Supreme Court will decide if that includes Trump while he was president

— Investigator says Trump, allies were uncharged co-conspirators in plot to overturn Michigan election

— Trump trial day 6 highlights: David Pecker testifies on ‘catch-and-kill’ scheme

— Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial

— The hush money case is just one of Trump’s legal cases. See the others here

___

Here’s the latest:

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker took the stand Thursday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York and recalled receiving a telephone call from Trump during the tabloid’s pursuit of former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s claims of an extramarital affair.

“When I got on the phone, Mr. Trump said to me, ‘Karen is a nice girl. Is it true that a Mexican group is looking to buy her story for $8 million?’” Pecker said. “I said, ‘I absolutely don’t believe there’s a Mexican group out there looking to buy her story for $8 million.’”

Trump then asked Pecker what he should do, the ex-publisher said. Pecker testified that he told Trump, “I think you should buy the story” and keep it quiet.

“I believed the story was true,” Pecker explained. “I thought it would be very embarrassing to himself and to his campaign.”

Prosecutors asked the judge Thursday as former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial resumed to consider whether he violated a gag order four more times with remarks he made outside court this week.

Among others, prosecutor Christopher Conroy flagged comments that Trump made just Thursday morning at an early-morning press event about David Pecker. Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who has been testifying as a prosecution witness, returned to the stand Thursday.

Trump had said Pecker has “been very nice,” which Conroy characterized as “a message to Pecker: Be nice.” He argued that it’s also a message to other potential witnesses that Trump has a platform and will use it to attack them if they aren’t kind to him.

The judge hasn’t immediately ruled on Conroy’s request to hold Trump in contempt and levy “appropriate sanctions.”

Donald Trump’s motorcade arrived at the courthouse in lower Manhattan as his criminal hush money trial readied to resume Thursday.

After a morning campaign event in midtown, the former president returned to Trump Tower, then left again in the motorcade.

Addressing reporters in the hallway before court resumed, Trump began by speaking not about the trial, but instead the economy, griping about gas prices and the latest economic numbers.

He again addressed the Supreme Court, which is hearing oral arguments Thursday on whether he’s immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“I would have loved to have been there,” Trump said.

Donald Trump, visiting construction workers for a campaign stop Thursday before heading to court in his criminal hush money case, was dismissive when asked about prosecutors’ push for the judge to hold him in contempt of violating a gag order because of his social media posts.

“Oh, I have no idea,” Trump said when asked whether he would pay the $1,000 fine for each of 10 posts. He then said, “They’ve taken my constitutional right away with a gag order.”

Trump also briefly remarked on his friendship with tabloid publisher David Pecker, who began testimony Tuesday and is expected to retake the stand again Thursday.

Trump was asked by reporters what he thought of the testimony and when he last spoke to Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, and Trump responded by saying, “David’s been very nice, a nice guy.”

Donald Trump addressed Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments from New York, where he was visiting construction workers for a campaign stop before heading to court in his criminal hush money case.

“A president has to have immunity,” he told reporters as a crowd cheered behind him. If you don’t have immunity, you just have a ceremonial president.”

He again complained that the judge in his case in New York wouldn’t excuse him from court to attend the Supreme Court arguments in person. Criminal defendants are expected to appear in court every day during their trials.

Donald Trump is accused of falsifying internal Trump Organization records as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.

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.

Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid to pay McDougal $150,000 in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill” in which a publication pays for exclusive rights to someone’s story with no intention of publishing it, either as a favor to a celebrity subject or to gain leverage over the person.

Prosecutors say Trump’s company reimbursed Cohen and paid him bonuses and extra payments, all of which were falsely logged in Trump Organization records as legal expenses. Cohen has separately pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments.

David Pecker, formerly the publisher of the National Enquirer, took the stand both Monday and Tuesday and testified about how his longtime friendship with the former president culminated in an agreement to warn Donald Trump’s personal lawyer about stories that could damage the White House hopeful’s 2016 campaign and help quash them.

Pecker told the court that the agreement followed an August 2015 meeting with Trump, Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks. He further testified that he told the National Enquirer bureau chiefs to be on the lookout for any stories involving Trump and said he wanted them to verify the stories before alerting Cohen.

“I told him that we are going to try to help the campaign and to do that I want to keep this as quiet as possible,” Pecker testified. “I did not want anyone else to know this agreement I had and what I wanted to do.”

Donald Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — a charge punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if the judge would seek to put him behind bars.

A conviction would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to pardon himself if found guilty. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Judge Juan M. Merchan has yet to rule on whether or not Donald Trump violated a gag order barring him from making public statements about witnesses in his hush money case.

Merchan held a hearing Tuesday on prosecutors’ earlier request that Trump be held in contempt of court and fined at least $3,000 for allegedly violating his gag order.

Prosecutors cited 10 posts on Trump’s social media account and campaign website that they said breached the order, which bars him from making public statements about witnesses in the case.

They called the posts a “deliberate flouting” of the court’s order.

In one post, from April 10, Trump described his former lawyer-turned-foe Michael Cohen and porn actor Stormy Daniels as “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”

Prosecutors are seeking a $1,000 fine — the maximum allowed by law — for each of the first three alleged violations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has a great economic story to tell voters a decade from now, less so in 2024.

On Thursday, the Democratic president will head to upstate New York to celebrate Micron Technology’s plans to build a campus of computer chip factories made possible in part with government support. But the initial phase of the project would open the first plant in 2028 and the second plant in 2029, with more time expected for the next two factories to be completed.

Staring down a rematch with Republican Donald Trump, Biden is asking voters to believe in a vision for the U.S. economy that is still largely a promise. This at a moment when voters are most worried about enduring pressures from high inflation, which have led most to rate Biden poorly on the economy.

Biden is campaigning on the future, just as Trump, the former president, taps into a past when U.S. manufacturing was the world standard. The Democrat is trying to convince voters to think about how historians will later recall his presidency.

“We’re going to look back on this 20 years from now and be talking about what a revolutionary period this was for the country,” Biden told unionized electricians last week. “We’re going to make a real gigantic difference.”

It’s a unique message in an era of near-instant gratification. Compared to when Biden began in politics in the 1970s, people can immediately stream music and videos on their smart phones, order a pizza with finger swipe or text a friend thousands of miles away.

Trump, for his part, is telling voters that Biden’s policies will hurt jobs tied to making gasoline-powered autos and ultimately send work to China. On Tuesday, he vented about how the rising value of the dollar against foreign currencies would hobble U.S. manufacturing by making American-made goods too costly.

“It sounds good to stupid people, but it is a disaster for our manufacturers and others,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are actually unable to compete and will be forced to either lose lots of business, or build plants, or whatever, in the ‘smart’ Countries.”

The former president at a recent Pennsylvania rally lamented the loss of factory jobs that once made the United States “the greatest country in the history of the world,” saying that the country has since “lost its confidence, willpower and sight.”

The Biden administration helped jumpstart the Micron project by agreeing to provide $6.1 billion in government support that will also cover a memory chip factory in Idaho that would be operating in 2026. The money also helps pay for the first two factories in Clay, New York, but not the second pair to be opened later. The funding is part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act that, along with the administration’s funding for renewable energy projects, has boosted factory construction spending to record levels.

There are also factories planned by Intel in Arizona and Ohio, TSMC in Arizona, Samsung in Texas and other chipmakers. Their efforts will power artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, among other technologies that Biden believes will cement America’s position as the world’s largest economy. Biden has gone to Arizona and Ohio to celebrate chip factories and previously went to New York in 2022 for the Micron project.

For decades, voters have heard politicians pledging a manufacturing boom without much to show for it. Factory employment peaked in the late 1970s and has steadily drifted downward because of automation, outsourcing to cheap countries and the closures that come with each recession.

In celebrating the Micron project, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, noted that Trump, while president, famously told voters that electronics maker Foxconn would open a sprawling set of factories in Wisconsin.

At the time, Trump took a victory lap, saying that the Taiwan-headquartered company would be bringing manufacturing jobs to the United States.

“I will tell you they wouldn’t have done it here, except that I became president, so that’s good,” Trump said in June 2018.

That project notoriously flamed out, feeding a sense of cynicism about what the government can do. Microsoft agreed in 2023 to buy the land for a data center after Foxconn failed to deliver on its 13,000 promised jobs.

Schumer said an interview that voters will find that this time is different, predicting they will see the United States as pulling ahead of China on the technologies that are essential for national security and economic growth, allowing more jobs and needed technology to stay in America.

“We want to be proud of our economy and there was too much of a feeling that we were losing out to China and other countries,” Schumer said.

By Lisa Richwine

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Taylor Swift concert ticket debacle two years ago is leading state and federal lawmakers to take aim at sales practices that they say are deceptive or predatory to music fans.

A main goal of venues and musicians is to outlaw speculative sales when a seller offers a ticket they do not yet have. In some cases, they ask thousands of dollars for a ticket that they can buy later from the primary seller for $200 or less and reap the profit.

In Maryland, a new law will make speculative ticket sales illegal starting July 1.

“This is a huge first step,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, communications director for I.M.P., the company that operates Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and other venues that often receive complaints if consumers pay high prices or fail to receive promised tickets.

Arizona recently cleared similar legislation and nicknamed the measure the “Taylor Swift Act.” When fans were unable to snag Eras Tour tickets through Ticketmaster, many paid thousands to buy them through resellers, also known as secondary sellers, or were tricked by sites selling fake tickets.

Swift has not commented on the ticketing proposals, and a representative for the singer did not respond to a request for comment.

Nationwide, bills have been introduced in two dozen states to address event ticketing practices, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Illinois, a ban on speculative tickets has passed the state Senate. The Colorado House has cleared legislation to require more pricing transparency and a ban on websites designed to mimic legitimate ticket sales sites, which may trick consumers into thinking they are buying directly from a venue.

At the same time, venues and the world’s biggest musicians are pushing for federal reforms.

Companies including Ticketmaster and SeatGeek committed to greater transparency, known as “all-in” or “upfront” pricing of a ticket’s cost with fees from the beginning, at a White House event last summer with President Joe Biden, part of his effort to crack down on what he called “junk fees” imposed by ticket companies, banks, airlines and others.

“There’s more to do to address the problem of online ticketing,” Biden said at the time.

ARTISTS BACK FEDERAL BILL

On Thursday, 250 artists including Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Green Day and Fall Out Boy voiced support for the Fans First Act, a bill pending in the U.S. Senate. No votes on the measure have been scheduled.

The legislation would prevent speculative ticket sales when a seller does not have a ticket. It also would require “all-in” pricing, outlaw deceptive websites and strengthen enforcement of penalties for bot usage to scoop up tickets.

“We are joining together to say that the current system is broken,” the artists said in a letter to congressional sponsors of the legislation. “Predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price.”

So-called spec tickets often are advertised with warnings such as “only 4 left!,” falsely suggesting to consumers that they should buy immediately or miss out. In some cases, actual tickets never turn up or brokers send fraudulent tickets.

Ticket-selling platforms said they supported some of the proposed legislative changes.

Ticketmaster, a unit of Live Nation Entertainment that sells primary and secondary tickets, said it backed bans on speculative sales and deceptive websites, as well as better enforcement of anti-bot legislation.

StubHub “does not allow the sale of speculative tickets, and sellers found to be in breach of our seller policy face consequences such as fines and removal from the platform,” a company spokesperson said. If a buyer has an issue, “StubHub will find an equivalent or better ticket to get a buyer into an event, or provide a full refund.” 

The company said it supports U.S. House and Senate versions of a bill called the Ticket Act. The House version would outlaw speculative ticketing, among other practices, while the Senate measure calls for all-in pricing.

Venues and artist groups have formed a coalition called Fix the Tix, led by the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), that is pushing for passage of the Fans First Act, which they say offers the strongest protections for ticket buyers.

Stephen Parker, executive director of NIVA, said that bill is “the most fan- and artist-friendly ticketing legislation that Congress has ever introduced.”

“It makes illegal the abusive, predatory behaviour from predatory resale platforms and ticket brokers,” he said, and also calls for a national evaluation of the ticket resale market.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mary Milliken and Diane Craft)