Former U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York said Friday that he will leave the Republican Party and run as an independent in a bid to return to Congress after having been expelled while facing federal fraud charges.

In social media postings, Santos criticized Friday’s vote by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives to approve a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills.

“After today’s embarrassing showing in the house I have reflected and decided that I can no longer be part of the Republican Party,” Santos said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The Republican Party continues to lie and swindle its voter base. I in good conscience cannot affiliate myself with a party that stands for nothing and falls for everything.”

Santos announced earlier this month that he was challenging Republican Rep. Nick LaLota in the GOP primary in an eastern Long Island district that is different than the one he represented before he was expelled. Among those vying to be the Democratic candidate for the seat is John Avlon, a former CNN anchor.

In December, Santos became just the sixth member in history to be expelled by fellow House colleagues, following a critical House Ethics Committee report that cited “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking by Santos.

Santos has pleaded not guilty to charges including lying to Congress about his wealth, receiving unemployment benefits he didn’t deserve, and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses like designer clothing.

A judge has tentatively scheduled the trial for September, after the primary.

Santos, who has admitted to lying about his job experience and college education during his previous campaign, was bashed again Friday by New York Republicans, who also criticized him when he announced his candidacy.

“George Santos’ expulsion from Congress was good for the nation and his resignation from the Republican Party is good for commonsense conservatives,” LaLota said in a statement. “Santos can watch me defend this important swing district and the November election results from his prison cell as he’s being held accountable for stealing an election and ripping off donors.”

Jesse Garcia, the Suffolk County GOP chair, also weighed in.

“This is nothing more than the continuation of George Santos’ need for celebrity status,” Garcia said in a phone interview. “There is no appetite amongst the voters of the First District, Long Island or even the nation for the Santos clown car show to continue.”

In his X postings, Santos criticized LaLota for voting in favor of the spending package.

“ @nicklalota and @JohnAvlon ill see you boys in November!” Santos wrote, ending the tweet with a kissing emoji.

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By MELISSA GOLDIN (Associated Press)

Conservative influencers and politicians are calling for a boycott of Tyson Foods after false claims spread online saying the multinational meat producer is planning to hire 52,000 people who came to the U.S. illegally.

“Tyson is closing its facility in Perry, Iowa and laying off its 1,200 workers,” reads one X post that had received approximately 20,000 likes and 11,700 shares as of Friday. “Instead, they plan to hire thousands of new illegals in states like New York. #BoycottTyson. Pass it on.”

But the company, the latest in a growing list of businesses targeted with calls for a boycott amid claims of “woke” policies, has no such plans.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Tyson Foods is hiring 52,000 people who entered the U.S. illegally.

THE FACTS: The company has no current plans to hire 52,000 workers in the U.S., a spokesperson for the company said. In addition, all of its workers are required to have legal authorization for employment in the country.

“That is categorically false,” Tyson said of the claims spreading online.

Tyson told The Associated Press that it has between 5-8% of roles open in its 500 U.S. locations at any given time, “all of which are available to anyone who is qualified and legally authorized to work in the United States.”

“Tyson Foods is strongly opposed to illegal immigration,” it wrote in a statement.

The company’s U.S. workforce comprises approximately 120,000 employees, according to Tyson. This means that it currently has roughly between 6,000 to 9,600 open positions.

In 2022, Tyson committed to hiring 2,500 refugees in the U.S. over three years as a member of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a network of more than 400 major multinational companies. Refugees — people who face persecution and were granted entry to the U.S. while living outside the country — are legally authorized to work as soon as they arrive in the U.S.

People granted asylum in the U.S. also face persecution, but applied for protection after they entered the country. Those whose applications are pending typically qualify for work authorization under an Employment Authorization Document, or EAD, 180 days after they file their asylum application. Anyone already granted asylum can legally work without an EAD.

Both refugees and individuals granted asylum have legal status in the U.S. Tyson said that approximately 42,000 of its current U.S. employees are noncitizens with work authorization. Haiwen Langworth, a spokesperson for the Tent Partnership for Refugees, told the AP that Tyson’s 2022 commitment includes people with legal refugee status, as well as others such as asylum seekers or grantees with permission to work.

The false claims appear to stem from a Bloomberg article published March 11 about Tyson’s Tent Partnership for Refugees commitment. Garrett Dolan, associate director of human resources at Tyson, said in the article that the company plans to hire 52,000 people for factory jobs in 2024. According to Tyson, Dolan “misspoke.”

Bloomberg told the AP that it stands by its reporting.

Scripps News published its own article two days later, which reported that Tyson “wants to hire 52,000 asylum seekers for factory jobs.” The outlet has since retracted the story for “serious factual inaccuracies,” writing that it was “unable to verify that number.” But false claims around the figure spread widely on social media.

The reports sparked calls to boycott Tyson, hardly the first company to face opposition to what are often described as “woke” policies. Bud Light sales plunged last year amid conservative backlash over the beer giant’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Target made changes to its LGBTQ+ merchandise ahead of last year’s Pride month after customers confronted workers and tipped over displays.

Rebekah Wolf, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, told the AP that U.S. companies relying on immigrant labor is “nothing new,” especially when it comes to industries such as meat processing with roles considered undesirable by many U.S. citizens.

Wolf said that hiring people willing to take jobs that are not particularly attractive to others is crucial to the economy.

She added that the U.S. has “really robust policies for ensuring that big companies like Tyson are employing people who are authorized to work in the United States.” She also pointed out that many employers have recently struggled to fill jobs given labor shortages.

Tyson announced March 11 that it is closing a pork processing facility in Perry, Iowa, the town’s largest employer. The company did not provide specifics, saying the closure was related to “specific business reasons” and that the decision “is not related to our hiring efforts at other facilities.” The announcement came after the company closed a plant in both Virginia and Arkansas in 2023 and consolidated its corporate operations the year prior.

Although Tyson declined to comment when asked how many of the Perry plant workers are non-citizens, it said in a statement that “any insinuation that we would cut American jobs to hire immigrant workers is completely false.”

The company also noted that it has encouraged the Perry employees to apply for other positions at Tyson.

Some social media alleged that following the Perry closure, Tyson will be hiring in New York, where there has been a massive influx of migrants. However, Tyson said that it “does not operate in New York nor does it have any plans to do so.”

___

This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

Should things go according to plan, navigating the streets of downtown River Falls, Wis., on Friday will a bit of a challenge.

The locals wouldn’t have it any other way.

They will be out in force for the parade honoring the University of Wisconsin-River Falls women’s hockey team that won the NCAA Division III national championship on St. Patrick’s
Day, just as they were — 1,800 strong — at sold-out Hunt Arena as the Falcons put a cap on a 31-0 season with the first national title in program history.

Led by Fergus Falls native Joe Cranston, the only coach the program has had in its 25-year existence, the Falcons broke through in spectacular fashion after 12 trips to the NCAA Tournament in the past 13 years and four trips to the Frozen Four, including a runner-up finish in 2016.

“It’s one of those things where all the stars aligned,” the 59-year-old Cranston said. “You always think about winning a national championship, but you don’t think about winning it at home, with your family and all your friends. And your entire community.

“Now, it has happened, and it’s really hard to get our head around it.”

Things began to get very real for Cranston last Sunday night when the home crowd began counting down the final seconds of the 4-1 victory over Elmira, a three-time Division III national champion.

After celebrating at a downtown establishment after the game, the team scattered for spring break, leaving Cranston to plow his way through hundreds of emails and texts — and to reflect on a weekend that was a true whirlwind.

“What was really special was that 25 years of alums came back,” UW-River Falls athletics director Crystal Lanning said. “And every generation was represented. Some of them had T-shirts with (Cranston’s) face printed on them. It really shows the culture the program has.”

Cranston, who has a record of 492-157-41, said that he felt he had teams in each of the past five seasons that could win a national championship. He began this season unsure if this team had what it would take to get it done.

“It’s all about chemistry,” he said in retrospect. “It’s the hardest-working team I’ve ever coached.”

And now, the most accomplished.

“It’s nice to get the monkey off my back,” Cranston said. “We’ve been close so many times. I thought about it quite a bit. I don’t have to think about it anymore.”

The Falcons were led by Maddie McCollins, a fifth-year senior from Maple Grove, with 33 goals and 30 assists this season. But what helped make this team special, Cranston said, was that everyone on the roster contributed.

“I had a kid, Kenzie Dunn, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime against (Wisconsin-)Eau Claire (in the WIAC tournament championship game), and then scored the game-winning goal in the national championship. She was our seventh defenseman.

“I moved her up to forward the last (regular-season) game of the year. Here, she’s never played the position, and she had two game-winning goals in the last five games.”

Sophomore Madison Lavergne, a third-line forward, scored a goal in all three NCAA Tournament games.

To explain how such things can happen, Cranston points out that character matters.

“We don’t look for a certain type of hockey player,” he said, “but it’s gotta be a good kid. And they have to be highly competitive. Everything else from there is doable. At that point they come in, and you begin to teach them to respect everything around you and appreciate everything around you.”

Cranston has returned to his roots time and again to find those who fit the mold. There are 22 Minnesotans on the championship roster.

“Traditionally, we get a lot of northern Minnesota kids — the ‘218ers’,” he said. “I like those kind of hockey players, those kind of kids. A lot of blue-collar kids, lunch-bucket kids. We’re from all over — Hutchinson, Avon, Delano, Buffalo — all these little towns around the state.

“You’re not going to see a lot of Edina, Eden Prairie or Minnetonka kids here. It’s kind of a neat niche we have here.”

And, of course, the kids can play.

“Pretty much all of our recruits could play Division I,” Cranston said. “It’s the difference of wanting to go play Division I out east somewhere and not have your family see you play, and maybe win five games. Or, take Maddie McCollins, who has been here five years, and her record is 121-12-2.

“There’s so many places where you can’t do that. We put a lot of emphasis on the things they can accomplish by coming here.”

The chance to play for Cranston also plays a role in the decision-making process.

“What I appreciate about him is the consistency he brings to the program,” Lanning said. “He sets clear expectations; the players know it from Day 1, and he never wavers from that. They know they are going to work hard and he’s going to be firm, but in the end they see results from it.”

Cranston, a 1990 UW-River Falls graduate, played in the United States Hockey League for the North Iowa Huskies, where he was coached by Bob Motzko, the current men’s coach for the Gophers.

A broken leg put an end to Cranston’s playing career, and he immediately turned to coaching.

“I was a head high school coach while I was still student-teaching in college,” Cranston said. “So I’ve been coaching about 41 years. My dad was a 30-year hockey coach, and I was always helping him with teams growing up.”

Cranston coached boys high school hockey in Somerset, Wis., for 10 years before returning to his alma mater to help start the women’s program.

While he said he has received overtures from other schools over the years, Cranston, who spends his summers traveling to state fairs in the Midwest with his concession business (look for Cranston’s Famous Scotch Eggs On A Stick at the Minnesota State Fair), has settled into a life that suits him just fine.

He said he assured inquiring parents of current high school juniors being recruited that he will be around to see them graduate. That would be six more years behind the bench, which would take him to the traditional retirement age of 65.

He’s planning to blow right through that stop sign.

“People ask me all the time, ‘When are you going to be done?’ ” Cranston said. “I always say that as long as we’re winning and we’re still having fun, we’ll keep at ’er.”

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