Post Politics Now Biden meets with South African leader, relatives of Americans detained in Russia

The campaign of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor, released a statement on Friday saying the candidate — whose stroke in May resulted in some hearing and speech issues — recently had his cognitive skills examined and the results are normal.

The statement comes ahead of an Oct. 25 debate between Fetterman and his Republican opponent, celebrity physician Mehmet Oz, who has increasingly sought to make Fetterman’s health an issue. Oz has his own history of dispensing unfounded medical advice on his reality show.

Whose free speech matters more: people who write on social media sites like Facebook, or private tech companies, like Facebook?

The question has become increasingly unavoidable.

Recently a law passed in Texas prevents social media companies from removing posts based on a user’s political ideology. But groups representing tech giants say they opposed the law because it strips them of “their speech rights” and from “making constitutionally protected editorial decisions.”

The law was blocked earlier by a lower court, but on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld it.

A coalition of Asian American groups is launching a $10 million campaign to turn out Asian and Pacific Islander voters this fall across five swing states and California — an effort the group’s executive director frames as key to Democratic victories in November.

The multilingual campaign will include in-person canvassing in addition to mail, digital and phone outreach, according to the coalition, Asian American Power Network. In swing-state Pennsylvania, for instance, the coalition says it plans to use 15 languages, make more than 2.5 million phone calls and door-knocks and send more than a half-million pieces of mail. Other states the coalition will target are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada.

Mary Peltola made national news when she defeated Sarah Palin and more than a dozen other candidates in a special election for Alaska’s sole House seat. She is the first Alaska Native to represent Alaska in either chamber; and the first Democrat to hold that seat in a half-century.

But that race was only to fill the remainder of her late predecessor’s term, which is roughly 16 weeks. She will face Palin and others in the regularly scheduled election this November.

On Tuesday, Peltola was sworn in and began voting as a member of the House.

Judge Aileen Cannon has appointed Raymond J. Dearie, a former chief federal judge in New York, to sort through more than 11,000 documents — including classified materials — that FBI agents seized from former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence last month.

Who is he? And what exactly will he do?

The Post’s Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett share some things you need to know:

• He is a former chief federal judge in New York and President Ronald Reagan (R) nominated him to the federal bench in Brooklyn.
• He previously served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees sensitive national security cases.
• Dearie has been ordered by Cannon to complete his review of the documents by Nov. 30.
• Because Dearie previously served on the FISA court, it will probably not take much time or effort to get him authorized to review the classified material.

You can read Perry and Devlin’s full analysis here.

After undergoing surgery, Republican Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Sanders says she is cancer free, Azi Paybarah reports.

“During a checkup earlier this month, my doctor ordered a biopsy on an area of concern in my neck and the test revealed that I had thyroid cancer,” Sanders said. “Today, I underwent a successful surgery to remove my thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes and by the grace of God I am now cancer-free.”

Sanders included a statement from her physician, John R. Sims, who said her cancer was “Stage I papillary thyroid carcinoma,” which he described as the most common type of thyroid cancer. Sims said Sanders will require “adjuvant treatment with radioactive iodine” and called her prognosis was excellent.

The Arkansas native and daughter of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) managed her father’s unsuccessful presidential run in 2016 before joining Donald Trump’s campaign as senior communications adviser. She also served as a spokeswoman during Trump’s first presidential campaign.

She left the White House as press secretary in June 2019. At the time, Trump urged her to run for governor.

Before federal agents recovered a dozen boxes containing hundreds of documents marked classified from former president Donald Trump’s home in Florida last month, Trump’s team told government officials the boxes contained only “news clippings,” according to people familiar with those conversations.

That assertion was made in a September 2021 conversation between top National Archives lawyer Gary Stern and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin, who said his knowledge of the contents of the boxes was based on a conversation he had with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, people familiar with the call said.

In the weeks before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, a political action committee supporting the Republican’s campaign ran online ads asking people to vote on a destination.

“Where should Biden’s buses of illegal immigrants be sent?” the ad asked, suggesting the options Delaware, Washington, California or New York.

The PAC paid far more to run the ad around the United States than in Florida, the one place where DeSantis is on the ballot. (He is widely considered a potential contender for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.) It spent $10,000 to $15,000 to play the ad on YouTube nationwide, receiving between 800,000 and 900,000 views since Aug. 31, according to Google’s advertising disclosures. In Florida, the PAC spent less than $700, and the ad was viewed 50,000 to 60,000 times, Google’s disclosures show.