GOP rallies around Trump following FBI search of his estate NEW YORK (AP) — For much of the year, small cracks in Donald Trump’s political support have been growing. Dissatisfied Republican primary voters began to consider new presidential prospects. GOP donors grappled with damaging revelations uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee. S everal party leaders pondered challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 nomination. But after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Florida estate, the Republican Party unified swiftly behind the former president. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who likely represents Trump’s strongest potential primary challenger, described the Biden administration as a “regime” and called Monday’s Mar-a-Lago search for improperly taken classified documents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents. ” The GOP push to portray Trump as the victim of a politicized Justice Department ignored the potential criminal misconduct that justified the search in the eyes of a federal judge. It overlooked Trump’s role in hiring now-vilified FBI Director Chris Wray, who also served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department. The Biden White House, meanwhile, said it had no prior knowledge of the search. ___ Rep. Scott Perry says FBI agents seized his cellphone WASHINGTON (AP) — U. S. Rep. Scott Perry said his cellphone was seized Tuesday morning by FBI agents carrying a search warrant. The circumstances surrounding the seizure were not immediately known. Perry, though, has been a figure in the congressional investigation into President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Former senior Justice Department officials have testified that Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, had “an important role” in Trump’s effort to try to install Jeffrey Clark — a top Justice official who was pushing Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud — as the acting attorney general. In a statement Tuesday, Perry said three agents visited him while he was traveling Tuesday with his family and “seized my cell phone. ” He called the action “banana republic tactics. ” “They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” Perry said. “I’m outraged – though not surprised – that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress. ” ___ Did Trump break the law? FBI search raises fresh questions WASHINGTON (AP) — The year was 2016, the presidential candidate under investigation was Hillary Clinton and the FBI director at the time, James Comey, laid out the factors the Justice Department weighs in deciding whether to charge someone with mishandling classified records. Fast forward to 2022 and that tutorial proves instructive as another candidate from that election, Donald Trump, is entangled in an FBI probe related to sensitive government documents. Whether an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence is a prelude to criminal charges is unknown. The action Monday nonetheless focuses attention on the thicket of statutes that govern the handling of government records, though the department’s own history of prosecutorial discretion — some high-profile investigations have ended without charges or in misdemeanor plea deals — makes it hard to forecast with certainty what might happen this time. “These are statutes that have historically not been enforced to the fullest extent,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. Much remains uncertain about Monday’s search, including precisely what documents the FBI was looking for — Trump says agents opened a safe — or why it acted when it did. But people familiar with the matter say it relates to an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified material in boxes of White House records the National Archives and Records Administration recovered from Mar-A-Lago earlier this year. ___ Michels wins Wisconsin GOP governor primary, will face Evers MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Tim Michels, a wealthy businessman endorsed by former President Donald Trump, won the Republican primary for Wisconsin governor on Tuesday and will face Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in a contest that could reshape elections in the marquee battleground. Michels defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who was endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and had backing from establishment Republicans, including ex-Gov. Scott Walker. In his victory speech, Michels said the race will be about “standing up for the hardworking people of Wisconsin. They have been left behind by the Democratic Party that just wants to focus on the social issues. ” He promised to focus on jobs and the economy. Evers’ campaign called Michels “the most extreme and divisive nominee possible, one that will tell Donald Trump anything just to keep his endorsement. Both Michels and Kleefisch falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged, a lie Trump has pushed in an effort to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Michels said decertifying the results of the 2020 contest was not a priority but said “everything will be on the table. ” He supports other changes to voting and elections, including dismantling the bipartisan commission that runs Wisconsin elections. ___ Takeaways: Johnson vs. Barnes in premier US Senate race WASHINGTON (AP) — Ron Johnson, the most vulnerable Republican senator up for reelection, will take on Wisconsin’s Democratic lieutenant governor in November in one of this year’s most closely watched Senate contests. Meanwhile, voters in Vermont are poised to send a woman to Congress for the first time in the state’s 231-year history. Takeaways from election results Tuesday night: TOUGH FIGHT IN WISCONSIN SENATE RACE If you take his word for it, Johnson shouldn’t be running this year. The Wisconsin Republican had pledged to step down after two terms, only to reverse himself this year. ___ Afghan man charged in killing of 2 Muslims in Albuquerque Police announced a breakthrough Tuesday in the killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, charging a man from Afghanistan — himself a Muslim — with two of the slayings and identifying him as a prime suspect in the other killings that put the entire community on edge. Muhammad Syed, 51, was taken into custody a day earlier after a traffic stop more than 100 miles away, authorities said. Three of the four ambush shootings happened in the last two weeks. Police Chief Harold Medina said it was not clear yet whether the deaths should be classified as hate crimes or serial killings or both. Investigators received a tip from the city’s Muslim community that pointed toward Syed, who has lived in the U. S. for about five years, police said. Police were looking into possible motives, including an unspecified “interpersonal conflict. ” ___ US inflation will likely stay high even as gas prices fall WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans may finally be catching a break from relentlessly surging prices — if just a slight one — even as inflation is expected to remain painfully high for months. Thanks largely to falling gas prices, the government’s inflation report for July, to be released Wednesday morning, is expected to show that prices jumped 8. 7% from a year earlier — still a sizzling pace but a slowdown from the 9. 1% year-over-year figure in June, which was the highest in four decades. The forecast by economists, if it proves correct, would raise hopes that inflation might have peaked and that the run of punishingly higher prices is beginning to ease slightly. There have been other hopeful signs, too, that the pace of inflation may be moderating. At the same time, an array of other economic developments are threatening to keep intensifying inflation pressures. The pace of hiring is robust and average wages are up sharply. And even as gas prices fall, inflation in services such as health care, rents and restaurant meals is accelerating. Price changes in services tend to be sticky and don’t ease as quickly as they do for gas, food or other goods. Those trends suggest that overall inflation may not drop significantly anytime soon. President Joe Biden has already pointed to falling gas prices as a sign that his policies — such as releases of oil from the nation’s strategic reserve — are helping combat the higher costs that have hammered household budgets, particularly for lower-income families. ___ Large explosions rock Russian military air base in Crimea KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Powerful explosions rocked a Russian air base in Crimea and sent towering clouds of smoke over the landscape Tuesday in what may mark an escalation of the war in Ukraine. At least one person was killed and several others were wounded, authorities said. Russia’s Defense Ministry denied the Saki base on the Black Sea had been shelled and said instead that munitions had blown up there. But Ukrainian social networks were abuzz with speculation that it was hit by Ukrainian-fired long-range missiles. Videos posted on social networks showed sunbathers on nearby beaches fleeing as huge flames and pillars of smoke rose over the horizon from multiple points, accompanied by loud booms. Crimea Today News said on Telegram that witnesses reported fire on a runway and damage to nearby homes as a result of what it said were dozens of blasts. Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted an unidentified ministry source as saying the explosions’ primary cause appeared to be a “violation of fire safety requirements. ” The ministry said no warplanes were damaged. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said sarcastically on Facebook: “The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again recalls the rules of fire safety and the prohibition of smoking in unspecified places. ” ___ Nebraska woman charged with helping daughter have abortion OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — A Nebraska woman has been charged with helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy at about 24 weeks after investigators uncovered Facebook messages in which the two discussed using medication to induce an abortion and plans to burn the fetus afterward. The prosecutor handling the case said it’s the first time he has charged anyone for illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks, a restriction that was passed in 2010. Before the U. S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, states weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks. In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess, 41, tells her then 17-year-old daughter that she has obtained abortion pills for her and gives her instructions on how to take them to end the pregnancy. The daughter, meanwhile, “talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body,” a detective wrote in court documents. “I will finally be able to wear jeans,” she says in one of the messages. Law enforcement authorities obtained the messages with a search warrant, and detailed some of them in court documents. In early June, the mother and daughter were only charged with a single felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. It wasn’t until about a month later, after investigators reviewed the private Facebook messages, that they added the felony abortion-related charges against the mother. The daughter, who is now 18, is being charged as an adult at prosecutors’ request. ___ Serena Williams says ‘countdown has begun’ to retirement Saying “the countdown has begun,” 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams announced Tuesday she is ready to step away from tennis so she can turn her focus to having another child and her business interests, presaging the end of a career that transcended sports. In an essay released Tuesday by Vogue magazine, and a post on Instagram — the sorts of direct-to-fans communication favored these days by celebrities, a category she most definitely fits — Williams was not completely clear on the timeline for her last match, but she made it sound as if that could be at the U. S. Open, which begins Aug. 29 in New York. “There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction. That time is always hard when you love something so much. My goodness do I enjoy tennis. But now, the countdown has begun,” Williams, who turns 41 next month, wrote on Instagram. “I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just (as) exciting Serena. I’m gonna relish these next few weeks. ” Williams, one of the greatest and most accomplished athletes in the history of her — or any other — sport, wrote in the essay that she does not like the word “retirement” and prefers to think of this stage of her life as “evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me. ” “I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads,” she wrote. “I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next. ” The Associated Press.