West Virginia lawmakers oust delegate-elect on house arrest who made terroristic threats

News

West Virginia lawmakers oust delegate-elect on house arrest who made terroristic threats

2025-01-09 08:13 Last Updated At：08:31

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia delegate-elect was ousted Wednesday while confined to his house on charges related to terroristic threats against his colleagues.

Joseph de Soto, who recently became a Democrat, was elected in November to represent the southern part of Berkeley County in West Virginia's 91st district as a Republican. He was arrested in December after saying God had called on him to kill several members of the Legislature, including House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and House Majority Leader Pat McGeehan, who are both Republicans.

De Soto, 61, was released on bond on Dec. 23 by the Berkeley County Magistrate Court, and was ordered to home confinement while awaiting grand jury deliberations. The terms of his confinement stipulate that he can't contact those he allegedly threatened or have access to any deadly weapons.

The Republican majority House of Delegates vote to declare de Soto’s seat vacant, which means the governor must appoint someone from his district to fill it. Gov.-elect Patrick Morrisey, also a Republican, is scheduled to be inaugurated on Monday to replace outgoing Gov. Jim Justice, who is headed to the U.S. Senate.

The decision followed a tense back-and-forth on the House floor about due process between Democratic Del. Shawn Fluharty and McGeehan, who was explaining the resolution to vacate de Soto's seat.

Fluharty said the state constitution holds that a lawmaker-elect must refuse to take the oath for the seat to be declared vacant, and asked McGeehan if there was any evidence de Soto had refused.

“Look, this guy needs to go — I absolutely agree with that," Fluharty said. “But I want us to do it properly.”

“I think the refusal is that he is incarcerated right now on home confinement,” McGeehan responded.

Later, when Fluharty asked again whether de Soto had had the opportunity to take the oath, McGeehan told him: “You can ask the prison.”

Fluharty noted that several other delegates-elect were unable to be at the Capitol on Wednesday, but there weren't any resolutions calling to vacate their seats. He said he feared a procedural error could lead to legal action.

The proper way to remove de Soto would have been to send a proposal for his expulsion through the House Judiciary Committee, which won't meet until February, Fluharty said.

McGeehan said the other members who weren't present did so because of unplanned circumstances or conflicts that arose. In de Soto’s case, he couldn’t have been at the Capitol Wednesday because he on house arrest.

The disagreement came after Democratic Del. Mike Pushkin made a failed amendment to require that, if declared vacant, de Soto's seat be filled by a Democrat. Although elected as a Republican, de Soto changed his party to Democrat the day before his arrest.

West Virginia's Constitution states that vacancies must be filled by the governor from a list of three people submitted by the party executive committee “of the same political party with which the person holding the office immediately preceding the vacancy was affiliated at the time the vacancy occurred.” Pushkin said in his view, that means a Democrat should be appointed to replace de Soto.

Despite the rejection of Pushkin's amendment, the Berkeley County Democratic Committee sent out a press release shortly afterward asking Democrats in the county who are interested in the position to reach out.

De Soto was elected to his first term in the West Virginia House as a Republican representing part of Berkeley County in the state’s eastern panhandle in November, receiving 72% of the vote in the general election after defeating two other Republicans in the May primary.

If convicted, de Soto could face a maximum fine of $25,000 and three years in prison.

Trump holds off on TikTok ban after he almost closed deal with ByteDance, AP Source says

2025-04-05 04:38 Last Updated At：04:41

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday said he is signing an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 75 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.

The order was announced as White House officials believed they were nearing a deal for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors, with China's ByteDance maintaining a minority position, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Beijing hit the brakes on a deal Thursday after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs around the globe, including against China. ByteDance representatives called the White House to indicate that China would no longer approve the deal until there could be negotiations about trade and tariffs, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive details of the negotiations.

Congress had mandated that the platform be divested from China by Jan. 19 or barred in the U.S. on national security grounds, but Trump moved unilaterally to extend the deadline to this weekend, as he sought to negotiate an agreement to keep it running. Trump has recently entertained an array of offers from U.S. businesses seeking to buy a share of the popular social media site, but China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its closely held algorithm, has publicly insisted the platform is not for sale.

But on Friday it became uncertain whether a tentative deal could be announced after the Chinese government’s reversal of its position complicated TikTok’s ability to send clear signals about the nature of the agreement that had been reached for fear of upsetting its negotiations with Chinese regulators.

Trump instead announced he was signing an executive order to extend a 75-day pause on the ban that was set to go into effect Saturday.

The near-deal was constructed over the course of months, with Vice President JD Vance’s team negotiating directly with several potential investors and officials from ByteDance.

The plan called for a 120-day closing period to finalize the paperwork and financing. The deal also had the approval of existing investors, new investors, ByteDance and the administration.

The Trump administration had confidence that China would approve the proposed deal until the tariffs went into effect. Trump indicated Friday that he can still get a deal done during the 75-day extension.

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”

Trump added, “We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal.”

A spokesperson for ByteDance confirmed in a statement that the company has been discussing a “potential solution” with the U.S. government but noted that an “agreement has not been executed.”

“There are key matters to be resolved,” the spokesperson said. “Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritizes user safety, and China’s Foreign Ministry has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries.

Trump’s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the 2024 law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for ByteDance to divest. That law was passed with bipartisan support in Congress and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.

If the extension keeps control of TikTok’s algorithm under ByteDance’s authority, those national security concerns persist.

Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak, said that if the algorithm is still controlled by ByteDance, then it is still “controlled by a company that is in a foreign, adversarial nation-state that actually could use that data for other means.”

“The main reason for all this is the control of data and the control of the algorithm,” said Pierson, who served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade. “If neither of those two things change, then it has not changed the underlying purpose, and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented.”

The Republican president’s executive orders have spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office, but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep. None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok.

The law allows for one 90-day reprieve, but only if there’s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress. Trump’s actions so far violate the law, said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota.

Rozenshtein pushed back on Trump’s claim that delaying the ban is an “extension.”

“He’s not extending anything. This continues to simply be a unilateral non enforcement declaration,” he said. “All he’s doing is saying that he will not enforce the law for 75 more days. The law is still in effect. The companies are still violating it by providing services to Tiktok.

“The national security risks posed by TikTok persist under this extension, he said.

Vitus Spehar, who runs the TikTok account @UndertheDeskNews, said that although they benefit from the extension, they are “concerned about the precedent Trump has set for directing his Department of Justice to not enforce laws passed by Congress.”

“I’d like to see a bill passed to repeal the ban, and an end to this back and forth once and for all,” they said.

The extension comes at a time when Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.

Terrell Wade, a comedian, actor and content creator with 1.5 million followers on TikTok under the handle @TheWadeEmpire, has been trying to grow his presence on other platforms since a ban was threatened in January.

“I’m glad there’s an extension, but to be honest, going through this process again feels a bit exhausting,” he said. “Every time a new deadline pops up, it starts to feel less like a real threat and more like background noise. That doesn’t mean I’m ignoring it, but it’s hard to keep reacting with the same urgency each time.”

He is keeping up his profile on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook in addition to TikTok.

“I just hope we get more clarity soon so creators like me and consumers can focus on other things rather than the ‘what ifs,’” he said.

——

AP Business Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this story.