The United States will increase the rotational presence of its forces in Australia, including bomber aircraft and fighter jets, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Tuesday after annual talks between the two allies.

Washington sees Canberra as a vital partner in its efforts to push back against China in the Indo-Pacific and analysts say Australia could have a crucial logistical role to play in the defense of Taiwan against any move by Beijing to reclaim the strategic, self-administered island.

“What we’ve agreed to do is to increase rotations of air, land and sea forces, these are rotational forces obviously, to Australia,” Austin told a news conference after the annual AUSMIN talks that included the two nations’ foreign ministers.

Austin did not provide details on when there would be an increase in the rotations or how many troops, ships and aircraft it would involve.

Austin added that the two countries also agreed to “invite Japan to integrate into our force posture initiatives in Australia.”

Australia’s Northern Territory is already host to frequent military collaborations with the United States. Thousands of U.S. Marines rotate through the territory annually for training and joint exercises, started under former President Barack Obama.

The United States is planning to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to an air base in northern Australia, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters in October, amid heightened tensions with China. read more

Last year, the United States, Britain and Australia created a security deal, known as AUKUS, that will provide Australia with the technology to deploy nuclear-powered submarines, riling China.

Australia has said it needs the long range and stealth capability of nuclear-powered submarines, which would carry conventional weapons.

A Pentagon report on China last week said Beijing was making a diplomatic push to criticize and “subvert” AUKUS. “PRC officials have inaccurately framed AUKUS as an act of nuclear proliferation,” it said.

Canberra has said the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that Australia is party to does not prohibit nuclear propulsion.

The White House coordinator for the region, Kurt Campbell, said earlier this year that “moving forward, everything we do of consequence in the Indo-Pacific, we will do with Australia.”

China is Australia’s largest trading partner and the top market for exported iron ore, but Canberra has grown concerned about Beijing’s military ambitions in the South Pacific after it struck a security pact with the Solomon Islands this year.

A meeting between Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month at the G20 was a step towards normalizing ties but would not bring a shift in Canberra’s defense policy, Australian diplomats said. read more

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Mohamed Assam went to buy groceries at a supermarket close to his home near Paris one April afternoon in 2020. By the time he returned, he had incurred more than 900 euros in fines for nine different infractions without once, he said, coming into contact with a police officer.

The 27-year-old from the Paris suburb of Epinay-sous-Senart said he learned of the fines about a week later, when he received notifications in the post. His alleged offences, which he is contesting, include violating COVID-19 lockdown rules and lacking correct headlights on his quad bike, according to the notices he received from an interior ministry agency reviewed by Reuters.

“It was a surprise, a bad surprise,” said Assam. He now owes thousands of euros in total for fines accrued since 2019, including late payment fees, according to Assam and his lawyer.

French President Emmanuel Macron – facing criticism from rivals who accuse him of being soft on drug dealers and other offenders – has implemented a string of policies aimed at curbing urban crime. Those include greater authority for police to issue fines – a power police have seized upon.

Nationwide, the number of non-traffic related fines has grown by more than six times – to 1.54 million last year from 240,000 in 2018, according to the interior ministry agency for fines. In 2020, when the country underwent multiple COVID-19 lockdowns, the number surpassed 2 million.

Proponents say the fines reduce the burden on the justice system by keeping minor infractions out of court. Critics say the penalties allow police to dispense sanctions at their own discretion, without proper accountability. Some lawyers and rights advocates say this power has resulted in police targeting poorer people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds, leaving some people saddled with hefty debts.

French laws strictly limit the collection of data about an individual’s race or ethnicity, which makes it difficult to determine exactly how the fines impact ethnic minority groups, but the census does collect some figures on immigrants, based on place of birth and nationality. A Reuters review of census-related and some fine-related police data from across France reveals that police have fined people at higher rates in areas with the heaviest percentages of immigrants.

“There is systemic discrimination,” said Alice Achache, a lawyer representing some Paris residents who are challenging fines.

President Macron has previously said there is no “systemic racism” in the French police. His office declined to comment for this report, as did the national police. The interior ministry did not respond to questions. Police in other countries such as the United States and Britain have faced accusations of over-policing and over-sanctioning of minority communities.

In Epinay-sous-Senart, Assam’s town, a Reuters review of data from more than two years of police reports recording incidents involving at least one fine found more than 80% of those incidents occurred in two adjacent neighborhoods where residents say many ethnic minority families live. Of the 478 police reports that recorded fines from April 2018 to July 2020, 403 were from that part of town, according to the local police data, which Reuters obtained via a freedom of information request. The vast majority of the people fined had Arab or African surnames, the data showed.

More than one-third of Epinay-sous-Senart residents ages 25 to 54 are of non-European immigrant background, as are more than half of the town’s children, according to 2017 census data compiled by France Strategie, a government think tank.

The heavy concentration of fines in parts of the town where immigrants live fits a pattern that has played out across France, according to the Reuters review. Police issued 58 COVID-related fines per 1,000 population in the five Paris districts with the highest concentration of residents with non-European backgrounds, based on France Strategie’s figures. That is about 40% higher than the rate of other areas, where police issued almost 42 fines per 1,000 people. read more

Nationwide, the rate of pandemic-related fines in areas where official statistics show a high concentration of immigrants was 54% higher than in other areas between mid March and mid May 2020 during the country’s first nationwide lockdown.

Police also sometimes issue fines remotely and fine the same people repeatedly, including on occasion multiple times within minutes, according to fine recipients and defense lawyers. The burden of these remote and repeat fines falls heavily on minorities, these people say, adding to their suspicion police are targeting ethnic groups.

Issuing fines remotely is a breach of police procedures for non-traffic infractions, according to several legal specialists. Philippe Astruc, the public prosecutor in Rennes, runs the office responsible for processing fines that individuals nationwide dispute. He said police shouldn’t issue a fine without stopping the rule breaker, except in the case of certain road-related rule breaches.

Despite the rules, some lawyers representing fine recipients say remote fining occurs. Achache, the Paris lawyer, said that police know the names of individuals because they regularly conduct identity checks and recipients sometimes don’t even know they’re being fined at the time of the alleged infraction, she said.

Proving bias in fining practices is difficult, some scholars say. Other factors that could explain the geographical disparity in fine rates, sociologists said, include greater concentration of police patrols or higher crime rates in certain areas.

Aline Daillere, a sociologist researching policing at Paris Saclay University, said the Reuters analysis shows “certain categories of the population are very frequently fined,” mostly young men from poorer neighborhoods who are – or are perceived to be – minorities. One possible explanation, she said, is that police are targeting minority populations. But it’s not possible to prove discrimination, she said, without data showing that police treat people of varying ethnicities differently. Such data doesn’t exist.

Augustin Dumas, the municipal police chief of Epinay-sous-Senart until the summer of 2020, denied targeting a particular area or section of the population, saying police responded to complaints by inhabitants. “If someone is doing something wrong, you need to act,” said Dumas, now an elected official in a nearby town.

Macron, who came to power five years ago on a centrist platform and was re-elected this year, has toughened his stance on law and order amid stiff competition from the right. Rights advocates say his government has chipped away at civil liberties while giving greater powers to authorities, such as the ability to close mosques without trial.

The expanded police powers include the right to issue on-the-spot fines. Several new finable offences have been added since 2020, including drug use and loitering in building hallways. The government is seeking to add more police fines as part of a broader security bill. Lawmakers are due to vote on the legislation this month.

The proposed expansion of fines is aimed at providing “efficiency and simplicity,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the upper house of parliament in October. During another debate in the lower house in November, Darmanin denied racial profiling by police in issuing fines.

The new fines the government is proposing, which include penalties for offences like graffiti and stealing petrol, would be marked on a person’s criminal record, unlike fines for minor infractions such as making noise, littering or breaking lockdown restrictions. Either way, what troubles some critics is the lack of judicial oversight.

Justice is being taken out of the courtroom and conducted on the streets, without safeguards such as right to a defense, said Daillere, the sociologist. “If we don’t go in front of a judge, what stops a police officer from giving out a sanction even if there isn’t an infraction?”

NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Born in France to parents from Morocco, Assam said police have stereotyped and “preconceived ideas” about him and his friends of immigrant origin. He said police frequently stop them, which leaves him feeling less than equal to his fellow citizens. “We are regular people like everyone else, we are French, we are proud of being French,” said Assam, over coffee in a neighborhood cafe early this year.

Epinay-sous-Senart sits around 30 kilometers southeast of central Paris with a population of just over 12,000. To the east of the town’s historic quarter is a zone developed in the 1960s, where some people who migrated from France’s former African colonies settled.

Assam lives in this newer part of town in an area known as ‘Les Cineastes,’ a series of modern apartment blocks served by a cafe and a few shops. It was in this and an adjacent neighborhood where police issued the vast majority of fines over the more than two-year period Reuters reviewed.

Epinay-sous-Senart’s rate of violent and non-violent crime is lower than the average for other towns in the same department and the greater Paris region, interior ministry figures for 2021 show.

Dumas, appointed municipal police chief in 2017 by the town’s then center-right mayor, told Reuters his goal was to tackle anti-social behavior and drug dealing.

Some people were fined multiple times, Reuters found. The 478 police reports Reuters reviewed involved a total of 185 people. About one-fifth of the recipients were fined in three or more incidents, according to the police data Reuters obtained. Reuters also examined the contents of the police reports, which revealed some people received multiple fines for the same incident. The reports also showed many fines were issued under local decrees banning outdoor gatherings and allowing police to stop people in specified areas.

Hassan Bouchouf received fines on more than two dozen occasions, according to the town’s fine data. The 37-year-old factory worker told Reuters the police would either tell him to move on or fine him whenever they would see him and his friends socializing outside, even when they had moved to the nearby woods.

“Who am I disturbing?” he said. “Am I waking up the squirrels?”

Bouchouf owes the treasury more than 20,000 euros for fines received between 2017 and 2020, according to a treasury summary dated Aug. 9.

Dumas made no apology for issuing repeat fines. He said people who were fined repeatedly had committed repeated infractions.

The Essonne police department didn’t respond to questions about the fines received by Assam and Bouchouf.

Epinay-sous-Senart’s police have been less active in issuing fines since the arrival of a new mayor and police chief in the summer of 2020, according to the mayor, two police officers and more than a dozen residents interviewed by Reuters. The mayor’s office in Epinay-sous-Senart didn’t respond to requests for data for this period.

Damien Allouch, the town’s center-left mayor elected in June 2020, told Reuters that police continue to issue fines where necessary but said anti-social behavior can be addressed through other means. “Sometimes discussion is enough,” he said.

Allouch didn’t respond to questions about the earlier police data Reuters obtained from the municipality.

Georges Pujals, who served as mayor until 2020 and appointed Dumas, denied there had been discrimination by police. He said that during lockdown, police were applying COVID-related rules set by the government and that a core group of people who received multiple fines were well known to police. He added that municipal police officers carry out their law enforcement duties under the supervision of the public prosecutor.

Assam’s fines led to an even deeper tangle with the police.

After learning of the April 2020 fines, Assam verbally confronted Dumas on the street later that same month, according to both men and a witness. Dumas says Assam threatened him; Assam says he merely insulted Dumas. Both men told Reuters there was no physical violence. The following morning, police arrested Assam at his house, according to Assam.

In November 2020, the Court of Evry found Assam guilty of violence and threats against an official, according to a court document. Assam is appealing a six-month suspended prison sentence, said his lawyer, Clara Gandin, and his appeal is due to be heard in December. Gandin said that police harassed young people in the neighborhood and that she intends to argue that this provocation justifies a lighter sentence.

Separately, Assam has contested the nine fines from his supermarket trip, plus four others from April and May 2020, on various grounds, including that he wasn’t stopped by officers in all cases and that police reports contained insufficient detail, Gandin said. In late November, a police tribunal canceled two of the fines, both COVID-19 related, according to Gandin. He continues to challenge the other 11 fines, which include several related to the quad bike he drove on his supermarket trip.

Reuters found at least 45 people in Epinay-sous-Senart and elsewhere in the greater Paris region who say they were fined without any contact with a police officer, according to recipients and their lawyers. The fines were issued for antisocial behavior, such as making noise, and lockdown breaches between 2017 and 2021, according to the treasury summaries and fine notices shared with Reuters or the lawyers. Almost all of the individuals were immigrants or descendants of immigrants based on their names.

Assam complained about remote fines during a police interview following his April 2020 arrest, according to him and a person close to the local public prosecutor’s office. That prompted a review by the prosecutor’s office, which found that police had issued fines to Assam remotely, that person said.

The local public prosecutor’s office said it couldn’t comment on Assam’s case. But it told Reuters that after reviewing a 2020 complaint about remote fines, the local prosecutor sent mayors a letter to remind police of the rules. The letter, reviewed by Reuters, said that lockdown-related “fines can only be issued after direct contact with the person.”

“This confirms that the prosecutor is perfectly aware that there has been remote fining” and the fines are “not legal because they cannot be issued without physical contact,” Gandin, Assam’s lawyer, told Reuters.

The criticism over police fines comes amid broader allegations of discrimination by police. One flash point has been police identity checks.

In a significant ruling, the Paris Court of Appeal in 2021 found discrimination was behind police identity checks of three high school students – French nationals of Moroccan, Malian and Comorian origin – at a Paris train station in 2017. Each individual received 1,500 euros in compensation, plus legal costs, the court said at the time.

Last year, Assam and more than 30 other Epinay-sous-Senart residents filed a complaint with the French state’s rights watchdog, the Defenseur des Droits, about the town police’s approach to fines during the pandemic.

Remote fining constitutes “systemic discrimination” by police towards young men of North African or Subsaharan African origin, said the April 2021 submission, prepared by Gandin and other lawyers. It alleges police engaged in remote and repetitive fining, which it described as “police harassment.”

Complaints about police fines have mounted since then. In March, about 60 residents from three Paris neighborhoods filed a joint complaint to the Defenseur des Droits with similar allegations. The watchdog is investigating about 10 complaints alleging improper police fines, mostly from Paris, according to a person familiar with the matter. The organization can make policy recommendations and help challenge rights violations but doesn’t have the power to cancel court or administrative decisions, a watchdog spokesperson said.

Claire Hedon, head of the Defenseur des Droits, declined to comment on the probes. But she said the problem with fines is that they can be issued arbitrarily and are difficult to challenge. “The principle of justice is to be able to appeal,” she said.

Debts accrued as a result of fines can continue to weigh heavily on individuals, lawyers say.

After a period of unemployment, Assam recently said he found a job in sales, speaking in early November. He said he continued to receive letters about his court proceedings as well as notices from the authorities saying they will send bailiffs or seize money he owes from his bank account. The warnings leave him stressed, he said.

“Letters come to the house, I don’t even open them anymore,” he said.

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Global stocks posted a third straight day of losses and the dollar rose on Tuesday as the market weighed how long the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates high and “restrictive” to the U.S. economy.

Stocks on Wall Street fell, with all sectors in the red with the exception of utilities (.SPLRCU). The major bourses in Europe also declined as concerns mounted about a global slowdown before a raft of major central bank rate decisions next week.

MSCI’s all-country world index (.MIWD00000PUS), a gauge of stock performance in 47 countries, fell 1.26% to mark its third down day in a row after hitting a three-month high last week.

The dollar gained against the euro, yen, British pound and Canadian dollar, among other major currencies.

Treasury yields fell, but more at the long end of maturities than the short end, which deepened the inverted yield curve, a market indicator of a looming recession. The gap between yields on two- and 10-year notes was -83.7 basis points.

The market needs to recognize that a recession most likely is a reality, not just a hypothetical scenario, and that valuations need to go lower, said Jason Pride, chief investment officer of private wealth at Glenmede in Philadelphia.

“During recessions, markets on average price at a discount to fair value, which they have not yet done,” Pride said. “There is not a single instance in which a market has bottomed before the recession started.”

Data released on Monday showing U.S. services industry activity unexpectedly picked up in November and last week’s robust U.S. payrolls report have raised doubts about how soon the Fed might ease monetary policy. The Fed aims to slow growth by reducing credit and money available for banks to lend.

Futures show the market expects the Fed’s peak terminal rate to rise to 4.974% next May, but by December 2023 to have fallen to 4.534% on speculation the Fed will cut rates to help the economy rebound from an expected slowdown.

“We believe we hit the lows already and it’s not going to be a straight line up, but a choppy road ahead,” said King Lip, chief investment strategist at BakerAvenue Wealth Management in San Francisco.

“We’re in the minority in terms of our forecast because a lot of the colleagues we’ve been speaking to are much more pessimistic,” he said.

Among the biggest drags on the benchmark S&P 500 index was Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) after European Union regulators ruled its Facebook and Instagram units should not require users to agree to personalized ads based on their digital activity.

Wall Street also was led lower by other megacap stocks, including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 1.03%, the S&P 500 (.SPX) slid 1.44% and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 2%. In Europe, the STOXX 600 index (.STOXX) closed down 0.58%.

The dollar rose as investors waited for next week’s expected 50 basis points rate hike by the Fed.

The euro fell 0.24% to $1.0466, while the yen weakened 0.21% at 137.03 per dollar.

Euro zone government bond yields fell after two European Central Bank officials signaled inflation and rates may be close to peaking in the run-up to a raft of major central bank decisions.

The ECB, the Bank of England and the Fed all meet next week to discuss monetary policy. The Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday offered a glimpse of decisions to come after raising interest rates to decade highs and sticking with a prediction of more hikes ahead.

All eyes will be on the release next Tuesday of November’s U.S. consumer price index data, which will provide insight into the pace of inflation.

The yield on U.S. 10-year notes fell 6.6 basis points to 3.533%.

Oil prices fell in a volatile market as the dollar stayed strong and economic uncertainty offset the bullish impact of a price cap placed on Russian oil and the prospects of a demand boost in China.

On Monday, crude futures recorded their biggest daily drop in two weeks.

U.S. crude futures fell $2.68 to settle at $74.25 a barrel, while Brent settled down $3.33 at $79.35.

U.S. gold futures settled up 0.1% at $1,782.40 an ounce.

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As countries prepare to negotiate a new global agreement to protect Earth’s environment, the head of the United Nations warned there was no time to lose.

“Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates to the COP15 biodiversity summit at an opening ceremony on Tuesday in Montreal.

“This conference is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction,” he said.

More than 1 million species, especially insects, are now threatened with extinction, vanishing at a rate not seen in 10 million years. As much as 40% of Earth’s land surfaces are considered degraded, according to a 2022 U.N. Global Land Outlook assessment.

Negotiators hope that the two-week U.N. summit yields a deal that ensures there is more “nature” — animals, plants, and healthy ecosystems — in 2030 than what exists now. But how that progress is pursued and measured will need to be agreed by all 196 governments under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Ahead of the talks beginning in earnest on Wednesday, observers warned that the process was already looking like a struggle. Three days of pre-summit talks that ended Monday failed to deliver a clean draft agreement for negotiation ahead of the summit’s close on Dec. 19.

“Some progress has been made, but not so much as needed or expected,” CBD executive secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told a news conference Tuesday. “I don’t feel the delegates went as far as we had expected.”

More than 10,000 participants, including government officials, scientists and activists, are attending the summit amid calls by environmentalists and businesses to both protect natural resources and halt the loss of species.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed the need for countries to protect 30% of their land and waters by 2030 – a key request of the United Nations. He also said Canada would put $350 million toward international biodiversity finance.

“There are lots of disagreements between governments,” Trudeau said. “But if we can’t agree as a world on something as fundamental as protecting nature, then nothing else matters.”

The U.N. biodiversity talks, held every two years, have never garnered the same attention as the world’s main environmental focus – the annual U.N. talks on climate change. But there is increasing awareness that protecting nature and controlling climate change go hand-in-hand.

Healthy ecosystems such as forests and seagrass beds are key to controlling global warming. At the same time, rising global temperatures are increasingly threatening many ecosystems as well as species unable to adapt quickly or to move to cooler climes.

Overall, the U.N. hopes to persuade all countries to pledge to put at least 30% of their land and sea areas under conservation by 2030 – a target often referred to as the “30-by-30” goal. Currently, only about 17% of the world’s land area falls under some sort of protection, while less than 8% of the global ocean is protected.

Another 22 potential targets are also being considered, from curbing pesticide use to canceling some $500 billion in subsidies for activities that cause damage to nature.

But the draft deal is still riddled with bracketed phrases – indicating a lack of agreement, negotiators said. While previous iterations of the agreement had about 900 brackets, that number ballooned up to about 1,400 during the discussion in the days ahead of COP15.

Some of the toughest areas include whether to include efforts to curb climate-warming emissions, whether to impose a deadline for phasing out pesticides, and how to ensure poor nations will have the funding needed to restore degraded areas.

Even the 30-by-30 goal gets tricky in the details, given that some nations hold vast land or ocean areas teeming with wildlife, while others do not. Some indigenous groups have also pushed against the goal, which they see as potentially threatening their land rights.

Indigenous protesters and allies disrupted Trudeau’s speech on Tuesday, beating drums and unfurling a banner that read “Indigenous genocide = ecocide. To save biodiversity, stop invading our lands.”

Trudeau is one of the only world leaders expected to attend the summit. Negotiators have said that the absence of most world leaders could make it tougher to reach an ambitious agreement.

China was due to hold the summit in the city of Kunming but postponed the event four times from its original date in 2020 due to COVID before agreeing to hold the talks in Montreal.

Montreal police have put up a 3-meter (10-foot) fence around the downtown summit venue, Palais des congres, and are preparing for thousands of student protesters expected to swarm the Montreal’s streets to demand a strong deal to protect nature.

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Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican former football star Herschel Walker faced off on Tuesday in a runoff vote that will determine whether Democrats can expand their razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate and solidify Georgia as a battleground state in the next presidential election.

The race is also a last test of Donald Trump’s clout with voters as he seeks the Republican nomination to challenge President Joe Biden in 2024. The former president had a mixed record in his most competitive endorsements for Congress in the November midterm elections, including Walker.

Walker’s campaign has been plagued by repeated policy gaffes and a variety of allegations, including claims by former girlfriends that he encouraged them to get abortions, although he has campaigned for the procedure to be outlawed. He has denied the accusations.

Retired firefighter Keith Fields, 58, showed up an hour before polls opened in Smyrna to cast his ballot for Walker because of his stance on immigration, taxes and abortion without exceptions.

“It’s not so much Herschel as the man – but I do like the man – but I’m also voting for the policies that he is going to vote for,” Fields said.

The runoff set early voting records in Georgia in a race that has become the most expensive of the 2022 U.S. midterm election season, with more than $400 million spent so far. The contest went to a runoff after neither candidate secured 50% of the vote in the Nov. 8 first round.

A victory by Warnock would give Democrats a 51-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, which would make it slightly easier to advance Biden’s nominees for judicial and administrative posts.

While most legislation would still require Republican support, Biden’s Democratic Party would be able to more easily pass bills that are high priorities.

The individual power of Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to block Democratic-led legislation, as they have done in the past, would be diluted if Warnock voted with the rest of his caucus.

A Walker win, on the other hand, would mean that the Senate would be back to the 50-50 split of the past two years.

On a wider scale, a Warnock victory could solidify Georgia as a battleground in presidential elections. It also would be another midterm defeat at the polls for a protege of Trump, who spurred Walker to run.

The U.S. Justice Department said it was sending monitors to polling places to ensure Georgia complies with federal voting rights laws. The department has expressed concerns about possible violations of voting rights in Georgia.

Polls close at 7 p.m. (0000 Wednesday GMT). At least 1.87 million people cast their votes before Election Day, equal to 47% of the Nov. 8 turnout.

Turnout was steady, with wait times averaging one minute across the state, said Gabe Sterling, a state election official. “We will exceed 1 million today on top of the 1.9 million already cast,” he said on Twitter.

Analysts say the early votes likely tilted Democratic, which a strong Election Day turnout by Walker’s Republican supporters would offset.

“We should not rest on our laurels. The job is not done. The truth is my opponent could still win this election,” Warnock told a crowd in Norcross, Georgia, on Tuesday.

Warnock is pastor of the historic Atlanta church where assassinated civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Both Warnock and Walker are Black.

Along with the abortion claims, former girlfriends have accused Walker of domestic abuse. He has also faced accusations that he maintains his primary residence in Texas, not Georgia.

Walker has denied the charges, but they may have discouraged some Republican voters. Warnock edged him 49.44% to 48.49% in November, even as Republican Governor Brian Kemp and other statewide Republican candidates easily won re-election.

Cobb County resident Guri Ben-Hashal, 60, who works in real estate, said he cast a vote against Walker. “I feel that Herschel Walker is unsuitable for the job, to say the least,” he said.

At a diner in Marietta, Walker deflected questions about his character, which Warnock has made a centerpiece of his campaign.

“Right now I put my character up against Raphael Warnock any day,” Walker said on Tuesday.

Georgians deserve a senator “who will listen to women,” Warnock told supporters as he spoke about abortion rights.

This is the third Senate runoff in two years in the divided state – and the second for Warnock, who first won the seat in a runoff in January 2021. Republicans won a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the Nov. 8 election, but fell short of the “red wave” that some in the party had forecast, despite flagging approval ratings for Biden.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll finished on Tuesday, Biden’s approval rating dipped to 38%, down 2 points from a week earlier. The poll has a credibility interval — a measure of precision — of 4 percentage points either way.

While Biden did not campaign for Warnock, former President Barack Obama rallied for him in Atlanta last week, urging voters, “Let’s finish the job!”

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Donald Trump’s legal woes deepened on Tuesday when his real estate company was found guilty of carrying out a 15-year-long criminal scheme to defraud tax authorities, further coloring the former U.S. president’s 2024 re-election campaign.

Following Tuesday’s verdict, the New York state judge set a sentencing date for Jan. 13. The Trump Organization – which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world – faces up to $1.6 million in fines over the conviction.

The company had pleaded not guilty. Trump himself was not charged in the case.

While the fine is not expected to be material for a company of the Trump Organization’s size, the conviction by a jury could complicate its ability to do business by spooking lenders and partners.

Allen Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, had pleaded guilty and was required to testify against the Trump Organization as part of his plea agreement.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Futerfas, vowed to appeal the verdict.

The special counsel overseeing two federal investigations has issued grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin as part of an inquiry into efforts to overturn the Republican former president’s loss in the 2020 U.S. election.

The subpoenas also sought communications involving a list of Trump’s attorneys during the 2020 campaign including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Justin Clark, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Nov. 18, three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential run, appointed Jack Smith special counsel to take over two Justice Department investigations. The other investigation focuses on Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents after leaving office.

The Justice Department is investigating a failed attempt by Trump allies to overturn the 2020 results by submitting batches of phony slates of electors – for the state-by-state system that determines presidential election winners – to the U.S. National Archives and trying to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Trump for retaining government records, including some marked as classified, after leaving office in January 2021.

FBI agents carried out a court-approved Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. About 100 documents marked as classified were among the thousands of records seized. Investigators also are investigating possible obstruction of the probe.

Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday dealt a blow to Trump, reversing a judge’s appointment of an independent arbiter to vet documents seized by the FBI from his Florida home and allowing all of the records to be used in a criminal investigation of the former president.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a civil lawsuit filed in September that her office uncovered more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and the Trump Organization between 2011 and 2021.

James, a Democrat, accused Trump of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain lower interest rates on loans and get better insurance coverage.

James is seeking to permanently bar Trump and his children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump from running companies in New York state, and to prevent them and his company from buying new properties and taking out new loans in the state for five years.

James also wants the defendants to hand over about $250 million that she says was obtained through fraud.

Trump has called the attorney general’s lawsuit a witch hunt. A lawyer for Trump has called James’ claims meritless.

In a Manhattan federal court complaint, the former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll accuses Trump of battery at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan 27 years ago and of lying by denying that he raped her.

Carroll, 78, brought the battery claim on Nov. 24 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a new law giving sexual assault victims a one-year window to sue alleged abusers, even if the statute of limitations has expired.

Trump, 76, has denied raping Carroll or knowing her at the time, and said she was “not my type.” His first denial in June 2019 prompted her to sue for defamation five months later.

Both sides are awaiting appeals court decisions addressing Trump’s argument that he was legally immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit because he had spoken in his capacity as president.

Carroll is seeking unspecified damages. To support her battery claim, she said Trump caused her lasting psychological harm, and left her unable to sustain a romantic relationship.

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters said on Tuesday that the panel had decided to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.

A referral does not necessarily mean that the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation of the riot, will decide to file charges.

The Democratic-led House Select Committee has spent more than a year investigating the attack on the Capitol after the then-Republican president gave a fiery speech falsely claiming that his defeat by Biden was the result of fraud.

Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage and then-Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress and staff ran for their lives amid the chaos.

A subcommittee of the panel has been studying whether to issue criminal referrals for Trump and some of his closest associates.

A special grand jury was empanelled in May for a Georgia prosecutor’s inquiry into Trump’s alleged efforts to influence that state’s 2020 election results.

The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.

Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.

Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionally protected free speech.

In a separate lawsuit, a California federal judge said on Oct. 19 that Trump knowingly made false voter fraud claims in a Georgia election lawsuit, citing emails the judge reviewed.

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