TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas' Democratic governor on Friday vetoed proposed tax breaks for anti-abortion counseling centers while allowing restrictions on college diversity initiatives approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature to become law without her signature.

Gov. Laura Kelly also vetoed a bill with bipartisan support to increase the penalties for killing a law enforcement dog or horse, a move that the GOP leader who pushed it called “political pettiness.” In addition, she rejected two elections measures fueled at least in part by the influence of people promoting baseless election conspiracies among Republicans.

Kelly's action on the bill dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives stood out because it broke with her vetoes last year of anti-DEI measure from the current state budget.

The new law, taking effect July 1, prohibits state universities, community colleges and technical schools from requiring prospective students or applicants for jobs or promotions to make statements on their views about diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Kelly let it become law only two days after the state's higher education board adopted its own, narrower ban on the same practices.

“While I have concerns about this legislation, I don’t believe that the conduct targeted in this legislation occurs in our universities," Kelly said in her message on the bill, contradicting statements made by GOP legislators.

Legislators are scheduled to return Thursday from a spring break and wrap up their work for the year in six days. Top Republicans immediately pledged to try to override Friday’s vetoes.

Republicans in about two dozen states have sought to limit DEI initiatives, arguing that they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal political orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted new anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses.

The new policy from the Kansas Board of Regents applies only to state universities and does not specify any penalties, while the new law will allow a fine of up to ,000 for each violation.

Backers of DEI programs say they are being misrepresented. The American Psychological Association defines diversity, equity and inclusion as a framework to guide “fair treatment and full participation of all people,” especially those in minority groups.

“We need to move forward and focus our efforts on making college more affordable and providing students from all backgrounds with the tools they need to succeed,” Kelly said in her message on the bill.

With the bill helping the state's nearly 60 anti-abortion centers, Kelly's veto was expected because she is a strong supporter of abortion rights. She already has vetoed two other measures championed by abortion opponents this year.

But GOP lawmakers in Kansas have had increasing success in overriding Kelly’s actions. Republican leaders appear to have the two-thirds majorities necessary in both chambers on abortion issues and appeared close on the DEI bill.

The latest abortion measure would exempt anti-abortion centers that provide free services to prospective mothers and new parents from paying the state's 6.5% sales tax on what they buy and give donors to them income tax credits totaling up to million a year.

Kelly said in her veto message that it is not appropriate for the state to “divert taxpayer dollars to largely unregulated crisis pregnancy centers.”

The bill also includes provisions designed to financially help parents who adopt or want to adopt children.

“Governor Kelly has shown once again that her only allegiance is to the profit-driven abortion industry, and not to vulnerable Kansas women, children, and families,” Jeanne Gawdun, a lobbyist for Kansans for Life, the state's most influential anti-abortion group, said in a statement.

Abortion opponents in Kansas are blocked from pursuing the same kind of severe restrictions or bans on abortion imposed in neighboring states, including Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. A Kansas Supreme Court decision in 2019 declared that access to abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution, and a statewide vote in August 2022 decisively affirmed that position.

“This bill goes against the wishes of Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message.

Kelly also has clashed repeatedly with Republicans on voting rights issues.

One of the election bills she vetoed would stop giving voters an extra three days after Election Day to return mail ballots to election officials. Many Republicans said they are responding to constituents' concerns that accepting ballots after Election Day compromises the integrity of election results — though they are fueled by lies from ex-President Donald Trump.

The other elections bill would prohibit state agencies and local officials from using federal funds in administering elections or promoting voting without the Legislature's express permission. Republicans see spending by the Biden administration as an attempt to improperly boost Democratic turnout.

But Kelly chided lawmakers for “focusing on problems that do not exist."

“I would urge the Legislature to focus on real issues impacting Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message on the second bill.

The veto of the bill on police dogs was perhaps Kelly's most surprising action. Increased penalties have had bipartisan support across the U.S., and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this week signed a measure this week.

The Kansas measure was inspired by the November death of Bane, an 8-year-old Wichita police dog, who authorities say was strangled by a suspect in a domestic violence case. It would allow a first-time offender to be sentenced to up to five years and fined up to ,000.

Kelly said the issue needed more study, saying the new penalties for killing a police dog would be out of line with other, more severe crimes, “without justification."

But House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican and the bill's biggest champion, said: “This veto is a slap in the face of all law enforcement.”

Attorney Ashley Gorski, representing four Chinese nationals who live in the state, told a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that “Florida is unlawfully restricting housing for Chinese people.” The law bars Chinese nationals and citizens from other countries that Florida sees as a threat from buying property near military installations and other “critical infrastructure.”

She compared it to long-overturned laws from the early 20th century that barred Chinese from buying property.

“It is singling out people from particular countries in a way that is anathema to the equal protection guarantees that now exist,” Gorski told the court.

But Nathan Forrester, the attorney representing the state, told judges Charles Wilson, Robert Luck and Barbara Lagoa that the law lines up with the Biden administration's national security concerns, including threats posed by the Chinese government.

“It is not about race,” Forrester said. “The concern is about the Chinese government, and that is what this law is designed to do. The concern is the manipulation of the Chinese government.”

This case comes nearly a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law, which prohibits citizens of China and some other countries from purchasing property in large swaths of Florida. It applies to properties within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of military installations and other critical infrastructure. The law also applies to agricultural land.

At the time, DeSantis called China the country’s “greatest geopolitical threat” and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party, a frequent target in his failed attempt to land the Republican presidential nomination. The law also affects citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia and North Korea. However, Chinese citizens and anybody selling property to them face the harshest penalties.

Luck and Lagoa both served on the Florida Supreme Court in 2019 after being appointed by DeSantis. Later that year, Luck and Lagoa were appointed to the federal court by then-President Donald Trump. Wilson was appointed to the court in 1999 by then-President Bill Clinton.

Throughout the arguments, Luck expressed skepticism of whether Gorski's clients had standing to bring the lawsuit, asking how they specifically had been harmed.

Gorski replied that the law prevents Chinese citizens from getting home mortgages in Florida and that it declares “some kind of economic war" against China. She said it could have significant foreign policy implications.

“Congress vested only the president with the authority to prohibit a transaction because it is a major decision with significant foreign policy implications," she said.

But Luck pushed back, saying the state used U.S. policy as its guidepost in drafting the law. “Florida took it from what the federal was doing and piggybacked,” he said.

Forrester noted that the Biden administration didn’t file a brief in support of Gorski's clients.

Wilson pointed out that Florida has nearly two dozen military bases and that “critical infrastructure” is a broad term. He asked Forrester whether those restrictions would leave any place in Florida that someone from the barred countries could buy property. Forrester said maps were still being prepared.

In the original complaint filed to the Tallahassee district court last May, the attorneys representing Yifan Shen, Zhiming Xu, Xinxi Wang and Yongxin Liu argued the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses by casting "a cloud of suspicion over anyone of Chinese descent who seeks to buy property in Florida.”

But U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, refused to block the law, saying the Chinese nationals had not proved the Legislature was motivated by an “unlawful animus" based on race.

___

Associated Press writer Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Jeffrey Gibson’s takeover of the U.S. pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show is a celebration of color, pattern and craft, which is immediately evident on approaching the bright red facade decorated by a colorful clash of geometry and a foreground dominated by a riot of gigantic red podiums.

Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw with Cherokee descent, is the first Native American to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art show. For context, the last time Native American artists were included was in 1932.

Gibson, 52, accepts the weight of the honor, but he prefers to focus on how his participation can forge greater inclusion going forward.

“The first is not the most important story," Gibson told The Associated Press this week before the pavilion’s inauguration on Thursday. “The first is hopefully the beginning of many, many, many more stories to come."

The commission, his first major show in Europe, comes at a pivotal moment for Gibson. His 2023 book “An Indigenous Present" features more than 60 Indigenous artists, and he has two major new projects, a facade commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and an exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Gibson’s eye-catching exhibition titled “the space in which to place me," features text in beadwork sculptures and paintings taken from U.S. founding documents, music, sermons and proverbs to remind the viewer of the broken promises of equity through U.S. history. The vibrant use of color projects optimism. In that way, Gibson’s art is a call to action.

“What I find so beautiful about Jeffrey’s work is its ability to function as a prism, to take the traumas of the past and the questions about identity and politics and refract them in such a way that things that realities that have become flattened … can become these beautiful kaleidoscopes, which are joyous and celebratory and critical all at the same time," said Abigail Winograd, one of the exhibition’s curators.

“When I see people walk through the pavilion and kind of gasp when they walk from room to room, that’s exactly what we wanted," Winograd said.

Entering the pavilion, the beaded bodices of sculptures in human form are emblazoned with dates of U.S. legislation that promised equity, the beading cascading into colorful fringe. A painting quotes George Washington writing, “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth," in geometric letters that meld into a colorful patterned background.

By identifying specific moments in U.S. history, Gibson said that he wants to underline that “people who are fighting for equity and justice today, we’re not the first.

“This has been a line in the history of American culture. But I’m hoping that people will think about why … some of these things … have either been revoked or have not come into fruition,” he said.

Craft is at the center of Gibson’s art, both in defiance of past denigration of craft and as a way to confront “the traumatic histories of Native American people,” he said.

“There is something very healing about the cycle of making," Gibson explained.

The pavilion’s intricate beaded sculptures owe a debt to Native American makers of the past without imitating them, employing couture techniques to create something completely new. In the way of his forebears, Gibson uses beads sourced from all over the world, including vintage beads from Japan and China, and glass beads from the Venetian island of Murano.

Paper works incorporate vintage beadwork purchased from websites, estate and garage sales in mixed media displays that honor the generations of Native American makers that preceded him.

Gibson's themes fit well into the message of inclusion of the main Biennale exhibition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque -- Strangers Everywhere,” which runs in tandem with around 90 national pavilions from April 20-Nov. 24.

His personal history has placed him firmly in what he calls the “diasporic history of Indigenous people.” His father's job took his family abroad when he was a child to Germany and then South Korea, and he later studied in Chicago and London. His partner is Norwegian artist Rune Olsen.

Through all of this, Gibson has picked up traditions and practices that go beyond his Indigenous background.

“I’ve looked at op art, pattern and decoration. I've looked at psychedelia, I have taken part in rave culture and queer culture and drag and the whole spectrum," Gibson said.

"And so for me, I would not be telling you the whole truth if I only chose to speak about indigeneity. But my body is an Indigenous body — it’s all funneled through this body,'' he said. ”And so my hope is that by telling my experience, that everyone else can project their own kind of intersected, layered experience into the world.”

CHICAGO (AP) — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests.

So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Across Chicago, Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city's newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.

“Our voices are not valued nor heard,” says Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth.

Chicago is one of several big American cities grappling with a surge of migrants. The Republican governor of Texas has been sending them by the busload to highlight his grievances with the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

To manage the influx, Chicago has already spent more than 0 million of city, state and federal funds to provide housing, health care, education and more to over 38,000 mostly South American migrants who have arrived in the city since 2022, desperate for help. The speed with which these funds were marshaled has stirred widespread resentment among Black Chicagoans. But community leaders are trying to ease racial tensions and channel the public's frustrations into agitating for the greater good.

The outcry over migrants in Chicago and other large Democrat-led cities is having wider implications in an election year: The Biden administration is now advocating a more restrictive approach to immigration in its negotiations with Republicans in Congress.

Since the Wadsworth building reopened as a shelter, Young has felt “extreme anxiety” because of the noise, loitering and around-the-clock police presence that came with it. More than anything, she and other neighbors say it is a reminder of problems that have been left unsolved for years, including high rates of crime, unemployment and homelessness.

“I definitely don’t want to seem insensitive to them and them wanting a better life. However, if you can all of a sudden come up with all these millions of dollars to address their housing, why didn’t you address the homeless issue here,” said Charlotte Jackson, the owner of a bakery and restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood.

“For so long we accepted that this is how things had to be in our communities," said Chris Jackson, who co-founded the bakery with his wife. "This migrant crisis has made many people go: ‘Wait a minute, no it doesn’t.’”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment for this story.

The city received more than 0 million from the state and federal government to help care for migrants after Johnson appealed to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden. The president will be in Chicago in August to make his reelection pitch at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Some Black Chicagoans are protesting the placement of shelters in their neighborhoods, but others aim to turn the adversity into an opportunity.

“Chicago is a microcosm to the rest of the nation,” said the Rev. Janette C. Wilson, national executive director of the civil rights group PUSH for Excellence. Black communities have faced discrimination and underinvestment for decades and are justifiably frustrated, Wilson said. The attention the migrants are receiving is deserved, she added, but it's also a chance for cities to reflect on their responsibility to all underserved communities.

“There is a moral imperative to take care of everybody,” Wilson said.

After nearly two years of acrimony, the city has begun to curb some accommodations for migrants – which has caused its own backlash. The city last month started evicting migrants who overstayed a 60-day limit at shelters, prompting condemnation from immigrant rights groups and from residents worried about public safety.

Marlita Ingram, a school guidance counselor who lives in the South Shore neighborhood, said she is concerned about the resources being shared “equitably” between migrants and longtime residents. But she also believes “it doesn’t have to be a competition” and sympathizes with the nearly 6,000 migrant children now enrolled in Chicago's public schools.

As the potential for racial strife rises, some activists are pointing to history as a cautionary tale.

Hundreds of thousands of Black southerners moved to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of greater freedoms and economic opportunities. White Chicagoans at the time accused them of receiving disproportionate resources from the city, and in 1919 tensions boiled over.

In a surge of racist attacks in cities across the U.S. that came to be known as “Red Summer,” white residents burned large swaths of Chicago’s Black neighborhoods and killed 38 Black people, including by lynching.

“Those white folks were, like, ‘Hell no, they’re coming here, they’re taking our jobs,’'' said Richard Wallace, founder of Equity and Transformation, a majority-Black community group that co-hosted in a forum in March to improve dialogue between Black and Latino residents.

He hears echoes of that past bigotry — intentional or not — when Black Chicagoans complain about the help being given to migrants. “How did we become like the white folks who were resisting our people coming to the city of the Chicago?” he said.

Labor and immigrant rights organizers have worked for years to tamp down divisions between working class communities. But the migrant crisis has created tensions between the city’s large Mexican American community and recently arrived migrants, many of whom hail from Venezuela.

“If left unchecked, we all panic, we’re all scared, we’re going to retreat to our corners,” said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity, a majority-Hispanic labor rights group. “The truth is that this city wouldn’t work without Black and Latino people.”

Black Americans’ views on immigration and diversity are expansive. The Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to adopt a more inclusive immigration policy.

About half of Black Americans say the United States’ diverse population makes the country strong, including 30% who say it makes the U.S. “much stronger,” according to a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many leaders in Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago are trying to strike a balance between acknowledging the tensions without exacerbating them.

“Our church is divided on the migrant crisis,” said the Rev. Chauncey Brown, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Maywood, Illinois, a majority-Black suburb of Chicago where some migrants are living in shelters.

There has been a noticeable uptick of non-English speakers in the pews, many of whom have said they are migrants in need of food and other services, Brown said. Some church members cautioned him against speaking out in support of migrants or allotting more church resources to them. But he said the Bible’s teachings are clear on this issue.

“When a stranger enters your land, you are to care for them as if they are one of your own,” he said.

____

Matt Brown is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on social media.

____

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kenneth Almons says he began a sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions — for armed robbery — stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later.

Now 51, Almons told lawmakers Wednesday that he has worked hard and remained law-abiding since his release at age 23, and he wants to be able to vote.

“It would mean I am no longer considered a nobody,” Almons said. “Because when you don't have a voice, you're nobody.”

Mississippi is among the 26 states that remove voting rights from people for criminal convictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Mississippi's original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for 10 felonies, including bribery, theft and arson. The state’s previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.

In 1950, Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Attorneys representing the state in one lawsuit argued that those changes “cured any discriminatory taint,” and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court agreed in 2022.

To have voting rights restored, people convicted of any of the crimes must get a pardon from the governor or persuade lawmakers to pass individual bills just for them, with two-thirds approval of the House and Senate. Lawmakers in recent years have passed few of those bills, and they passed none in 2023.

Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi's felony disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court said in June that it would not reconsider the 2022 5th Circuit decision.

The same appeals court heard arguments on the other case in January and has not issued a ruling.

In March, the Republican-controlled Mississippi House voted 99-9 to pass a bill that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights for anyone convicted of theft, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, forgery, bigamy or “any crime interpreted as disenfranchising in later Attorney General opinions.” The restoration would occur five years after conviction or after release from prison, whichever is later.

Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, killed the bill when she didn't bring it up for consideration before a March 21 deadline. In response to questions Wednesday, Hill told The Associated Press she blocked it because “we already have some processes in place” to restore voting rights person by person.

Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Democrat from Columbus, led a House hearing Wednesday and said restoring voting rights “is a fundamental human rights issue.”

“Let us remember that the fight for voting rights is a fight for justice, equality and democracy itself," Karriem said.

Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, served as an election commissioner before winning a House seat in 2019. She said a constituent called her upset one year because he went to his longtime precinct and his name had been removed from the list of registered voters. Summers found out the man had been convicted of a disenfranchising felony.

Democratic Sen. Hillman Frazier of Jackson filed a bill to restore the man's voting rights, and the Legislature passed it. But Summers said some 55,000 Mississippians with felony convictions remain disenfranchised.

“It shouldn’t matter if you have a relationship with your legislator that you can get your voting rights restored,” Summers said.

More than 50 bills have been filed this year to restore voting rights for specific people. Legislators could consider those until the end of the four-month session, which is set for early May.

___

This story has been corrected to say that Kenneth Almons was released from prison at age 23 after serving about six years.

MIAMI (AP) — The Biden administration sent about 50 Haitians back to their country on Thursday, authorities said, marking the first deportation flight in several months to the Caribbean nation struggling with surging gang violence.

The Homeland Security Department said in a statement that it “will continue to enforce U.S. laws and policy throughout the Florida Straits and and the Caribbean region, as well as at the southwest border. U.S. policy is to return noncitizens who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States.”

Authorities didn't offer details of the flight beyond how many deported Haitians were aboard.

Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data, said a plane left Alexandria, Louisiana, a hub for deportation operations, and arrived in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, after a stop in Miami.

Marjorie Dorsaninvil, a U.S. citizen, said her Haitian fiancé, Gerson Joseph, called in tears from the Miami airport Thursday morning to say he was being deported on a flight to Cap-Haitien with other Haitians and some from other countries, including the Bahamas.

He promised to call when he arrived but hadn't done so by early evening.

Joseph lived in the U.S more than 20 years and has a 7-year-old U.S. citizen daughter with another woman. He had a deportation order dating from 2005 after losing an asylum bid that his attorney, Philip Issa, said was a result of poor legal representation at the time. Though Joseph wasn’t deported previously, his lawyer was seeking to have that order overturned.

Joseph was convicted of theft and burglary, and ordered to pay restitution of 0, Issa said. He has been detained since last year.

Dorsaninvil said her fiancé has “nobody” in Haiti. "It is devastating for me. We were planning a wedding and now he is gone,” she said.

More than 33,000 people fled Haiti’s capital in a span of less than two weeks as gangs pillaged homes and attacked state institutions, according to a report last month from the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. The majority of those displaced traveled to Haiti’s southern region, which is generally peaceful compared with Port-au-Prince, which has an estimated population of 3 million and is largely paralyzed by gang violence.

Haiti’s National Police is understaffed and overwhelmed by gangs with powerful arsenals. Many hospitals ceased operations amid a shortage of medical supplies.

The U.S. operated one deportation flight a month to Haiti from December 2022 through last January, according to Witness at the Border. It said deportation flights were frequent after a camp of 16,000 largely Haitian migrants assembled on the riverbanks of Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021 but became rare as fewer Haitians crossed the border illegally from Mexico.

Haitians were arrested crossing the border from Mexico 286 times during the first three months of the year, less than 0.1% of the more than 400,000 arrests among all nationalities. More than 150,000 have entered the U.S. legally since January 2023 under presidential powers to grant entry for humanitarian reasons, and many others came legally using an online appointment system at land crossings with Mexico called CBP One.

Homeland Security said Thursday that it was “monitoring the situation” in Haiti." The U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 65 Haitians who were stopped at sea off the Bahamas coast last month.

Haitian Bridge Alliance, a migrant advocacy group, urged a halt in deportation flights to Haiti, saying Thursday that the U.S. was “knowingly condemning the most vulnerable, who came to us in their time of need, to imminent danger.”

With Republicans seizing on the issue in an election year, the Biden administration has emphasized enforcement, most notably through a failed attempt at legislation, after record-high border arrests in December. Arrests for illegal crossings dropped by half in January and have held pretty steady since then after Mexico stepped up enforcement south of the U.S. border. Biden says he is considering executive action to halt asylum at the border during times when illegal crossings reach certain thresholds.

___

Spagat reported from Berkeley, California.

NEW YORK (AP) — Shaina Taub was in the audience at “Suffs,” her buzzy and timely new musical about women’s suffrage, when she spied something that delighted her.

It was intermission, and Taub, both creator and star, had been watching her understudy perform at a matinee preview last week. Suddenly, she saw audience members searching the Wikipedia pages of key figures portrayed in the show: women like Ida B. Wells, Inez Milholland and Alice Paul, who not only spearheaded the suffrage fight but also wrote the Equal Rights Amendment ( still not law, but that’s a whole other story).

“I was like, that’s my goal, exactly that!” Taub, who plays Paul, said from her dressing room later. “Do everything I can to make you fall in love with these women, root for them, care about them. So that was a really satisfying moment to witness.”

Satisfying but sobering, too. Fact is, few audience members know much about the American suffrage movement. So the all-female creative team behind “Suffs,” which had a high-profile off-Broadway run and opens Thursday on Broadway with extensive revisions, knows they’re starting from zero.

It’s an opportunity, says Taub, who studied social movements — but not suffrage — at New York University. But it’s also a huge challenge: How do you educate but also entertain?

One member of the “Suffs” team has an especially poignant connection to the material. That would be producer Hillary Clinton.

She was, of course, the first woman to win the U.S. presidential nomination of a major party, and the first to win the popular vote. But Clinton says she never studied the suffrage movement in school, even at Wellesley. Only later in life did she fill in the gap, including a visit as first lady to Seneca Falls, home to the first American women’s rights convention some 70 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.

“I became very interested in women’s history through my own work, and writing and reading,” Clinton told The Associated Press. And so, seeing “Suffs” off-Broadway, “I was thrilled because it just helps to fill a big gap in our awareness of the long, many-decades struggle for suffrage.”

It was Taub who wrote Clinton, asking her to come on board. “I thought about it for a nanosecond,” Clinton says, “and decided absolutely, I wanted to help lift up this production.” A known theater lover, Clinton describes traveling often to New York as a college student and angling for discounts, often seeing only the second act, when she could get in for free. “For years, I’d only seen the second act of ‘Hair,’” she quips.

Clinton then reached out to Malala Yousafzai, whom Taub had also written about becoming a producer. As secretary of state, Clinton had gotten to know the Pakistani education activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman at age 15. Clinton wanted Yousafzai to know she was involved and hoped the Nobel Peace Prize winner would be, too.

“I’m thrilled," Clinton says of Yousafzai’s involvement, “because yes, this is an American story, but the pushback against women’s rights going on at this moment in history is global.”

Yousafzai had also seen the show, directed by Leigh Silverman, and loved it. She, too, has been a longtime fan of musicals, though she notes her acting career both began and ended with a school skit in Pakistan, playing a not-very-nice male boss. Her own education about suffrage was limited to “one or two pages in a history book that talked about the suffrage movement in the U.K.,” where she’d moved for medical treatment.

“I still had no idea about the U.S. side of the story,” Yousafzai told the AP. It was a struggle among conflicting personalities, and a clash over priorities between older and younger activists but also between white suffragists and those of color — something the show addresses with the searing “Wait My Turn,” sung by Nikki M. James as Wells, the Black activist and journalist.

“This musical has really helped me see activism from a different lens,” says Yousafzai. “I was able to take a deep breath and realize that yes, we’re all humans and it requires resilience and determination, conversation, open-mindedness … and along the way you need to show you're listening to the right perspectives and including everyone in your activism.”

When asked for feedback by the “Suffs" team, Yousafzai says she replied that she loved the show just as it was. (She paid a visit to the cast last month, and toured backstage.) Clinton, who has attended rehearsals, quips: “I sent notes, because I was told that’s what producers do.”

Clinton adds: “I love the changes. It takes a lot of work to get the storytelling right — to decide what should be sung versus spoken, how to make sure it’s not just telling a piece of history, but is entertaining.”

Indeed, the off-Broadway version was criticized by some as feeling too much like a history lesson. The new version feels faster and lighter, with a greater emphasis on humor — even in a show that details hunger strikes and forced feedings.

One moment where the humor shines through: a new song titled “Great American Bitch” that begins with a suffragist noting a man had called her, well, a bitch. The song reclaims the word with joy and laughter. Taub says this moment — and another where an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson (played by Grace McLean, in a cast that's all female or nonbinary) is burned — has been a hit with audiences.

“As much as the show has changed,” she says, “the spine of it is the same. A lot of what I got rid of was just like clearing brush.”

Most of the original cast has returned. Jenn Colella plays Carrie Chapman Catt, an old-guard suffragist who clashed with the younger Paul over tactics and timing. James returns as Wells, while Milholland, played by Phillipa Soo off-Broadway, is now played by Hannah Cruz.

Given its parallels to a certain Lin-Manuel Miranda blockbuster about the Founding Fathers, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the show has been dubbed “Hermilton” by some.

“I have to say,” Clinton says of Taub, “I think she’s doing for this part of American history what Lin did for our founders — making it alive, approachable, understandable. I’m hoping ‘Suffs’ has the same impact ‘Hamilton’ had.”

That may seem a tall order, but producers have been buoyed by audience reaction. “They’re laughing even more than we thought they would at the parts we think are funny, and cheering at other parts,” Clinton says. A particular cheer comes at the end, when Paul proposes the ERA. “A cast member said, ‘Who’d have ever thought the Equal Rights Amendment would get cheers in a Broadway theater?’” Clinton recalls.

One clear advantage the show surely has: timeliness. During the off-Broadway run, news emerged the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe vs. Wade, fueling a palpable sense of urgency in the audience. The Broadway run begins as abortion rights are again in the news — and a key issue in the presidential election only months away.

Taub takes the long view. She’s been working on the show for a decade, and says something's always happening to make it timely.

“I think,” she muses, “it just shows the time is always right to learn about women’s history.”

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A U.S. congressional committee released confidential Brazilian court orders to suspend accounts on the social media platform X, offering a glimpse into decisions that have spurred complaints of alleged censorship from the company and its billionaire owner Elon Musk.

The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee late Wednesday published a staff report disclosing dozens of decisions by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordering X to suspend or remove around 150 user profiles from its platform in recent years.

The 541-page report is the product of committee subpoenas directed at X. In his orders, de Moraes had prohibited X from making them public.

“To comply with its obligations under U.S. law, X Corp. has responded to the Committee,” the company said in a statement on X on April 15.

The disclosure comes amid a battle Musk has waged against de Moraes.

Musk, a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, had vowed to publish de Moraes’ orders, which he equated to censorship. His crusade has been cheered on by supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who allege they are being targeted by political persecution, and have found common cause with their ideological allies in the U.S.

De Moraes has overseen a five-year probe of so-called “digital militias,” who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats to Supreme Court justices. The investigation expanded to include those inciting demonstrations across the country, seeking to overturn Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss. Those protests culminated in the Jan. 8 uprising in Brazil’s capital, with Bolsonaro supporters storming government buildings, including the Supreme Court, in an attempt to oust President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from office.

De Moraes’ critics claim he has abused his powers and shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally ban social media accounts, including those of democratically elected legislators. But most legal experts see his brash tactics as legally sound and furthermore justified by extraordinary circumstances of democracy imperiled. They note his decisions have been either upheld by his fellow justices or gone unchallenged.

The secret orders disclosed by the congressional committee had been issued both by Brazil’s Supreme Court and its top electoral court, over which de Moraes currently presides.

The press office of the Supreme Court declined to comment on the potential ramifications of their release when contacted by The Associated Press.

“Musk is indeed a very innovative businessman; he innovated with electric cars, he innovated with rockets and now he invented a new form of non-compliance of a court order, through an intermediary,” said Carlos Affonso, director of the nonprofit Institute of Technology and Society. “He said he would reveal the documents and he found someone to do this for him.”

Affonso, also a professor of civil rights at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said that the orders are legal but do merit debate, given users were not informed why their accounts were suspended and whether the action was taken by the platform or at the behest of a court. The orders to X included in the report rarely provide justification, either.

The Supreme Court's press office said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the orders do not contain justifications, but said the company and people with suspended accounts can gain access by requesting the decisions from the court.

While Musk has repeatedly decried de Moraes’ orders as suppressing “free speech” principles and amounting to “aggressive censorship,” the company under his ownership has bowed to government requests from around the world.

Last year, for instance, X blocked posts critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, in February, it blocked accounts and posts in India at the behest of the country’s government.

“The Indian government has issued executive orders requiring X to act on specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment,” X's global affairs account posted on Feb. 21. “In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts.”

Brazil is a key market for X and other social media platforms. About 40 million Brazilians, or about 18% of the population, access X at least once per month, according to market research group eMarketer.

X has followed suspension orders under threat of hefty fines. De Moraes typically required compliance within two hours, and established a daily fine of 100,000-reais (,000) for noncompliance.

It isn’t clear whether the 150 suspended accounts represent the entirety of those de Moraes ordered suspended. Until the committee report, it wasn’t known whether the total was a handful, a few dozen or more. Some of the suspended accounts in the report have since been reactivated.

On April 6, Musk took to X to challenge de Moraes, questioning why he was “demanding so much censorship in Brazil”. The following day, the tech mogul said he would cease to comply with court orders to block accounts — and that de Moraes should either resign or be impeached. Predicting that X could be shut down in Brazil, he instructed Brazilians to use a VPN to retain their access.

De Moraes swiftly included Musk in the ongoing investigation of digital militias, and launched a separate investigation into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement. On April 13, X's legal representative in Brazil wrote to de Moraes that it will comply with all court orders, according to the letter, seen by the AP.

Affonso said the committee’s release of de Moraes’ orders were aimed less at Brazil than at the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. The report cites Brazil “as a stark warning to Americans about the threats posed by government censorship here at home.”

Terms like “censorship” and “free speech” have turned into political rallying cries for U.S. conservatives since at least the 2016 presidential election, frustrated at seeing right-leaning commentators and high-profile Republican officials booted off Facebook and Twitter in its pre-Musk version for violating rules.

“The reason why the far-right needs him (Musk) is because they need a platform, they need a place to promote themselves. And Elon Musk needs far-right politicians because they will keep his platform protected from regulations,” said David Nemer, a Brazil native and University of Virginia professor who studies social media.

In the U.S., free speech is a constitutional right that’s much more permissive than in other countries, including Brazil. Still, the report's release seemed to invigorate Bolsonaro and his far-right supporters.

Late Wednesday, soon after the court orders were released, Bolsonaro capped off a speech at a public event by calling for a round of applause for Musk.

His audience eagerly complied.

___

AP writer Barbara Ortutay contributed from San Francisco

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The Sheetz convenience store chain has been hit with a lawsuit by federal officials who allege the company discriminated against minority job applicants.

Sheetz Inc., which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check, according to U.S. officials.

President Joe Biden stopped by a Sheetz for snacks this week while campaigning in Pennsylvania.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Baltimore against Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheetz and two subsidary companies, alleging the chain's longstanding hiring practices have a disproportionate impact on minority applicants and thus run afoul of federal civil rights law.

Sheetz said Thursday that it “does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

“Diversity and inclusion are essential parts of who we are. We take these allegations seriously. We have attempted to work with the EEOC for nearly eight years to find common ground and resolve this dispute,” company spokesperson Nick Ruffner said in a statement.

The privately held, family-run company has more than 23,000 employees and operates convenience stores and gas stations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Wednesday, the day Biden stopped at a Sheetz market on a western Pennsylvania campaign swing, buying snacks, posing for photos and chatting up patrons and employees.

Federal officials said they do not allege Sheetz was motivated by racial animus, but take issue with the way the chain uses criminal background checks to screen job seekers. The company was sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.

“Federal law mandates that employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue,” EEOC attorney Debra M. Lawrence said in a statement.

“Even when such necessity is proven, the practice remains unlawful if there is an alternative practice available that is comparably effective in achieving the employer’s goals but causes less discriminatory effect,” Lawrence said.

It wasn't immediately clear how many job applicants have been affected, but the agency said Sheetz's unlawful hiring practices date to at least 2015.

The EEOC, an independent agency that enforces federal laws against workplace discrimination, is seeking to force Sheetz to offer jobs to applicants who were unlawfully denied employment and to provide back pay, retroactive seniority and other benefits.

The EEOC began its probe of the convenience store chain after two job applicants filed complaints alleging employment discrimination.

The agency found that Black job applicants were deemed to have failed the company's criminal history screening and were denied employment at a rate of 14.5%, while multiracial job seekers were turned away 13.5% of the time and Native Americans were denied at a rate of 13%.

By contrast, fewer than 8% of white applicants were refused employment because of a failed criminal background check, the EEOC's lawsuit said.

The EEOC notified Sheetz in 2022 that it was likely violating civil rights law, but the agency said its efforts to mediate a settlement failed, prompting this week's lawsuit.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A human rights organization representing ethnic Armenians submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court on Thursday, arguing that Azerbaijan is committing an ongoing genocide against them.

Azerbaijan’s government didn't immediately comment on the accusations. The neighboring countries have been at odds for decades over the territory of Karabakh, and are already facing off in a separate legal case stemming from that conflict.

Lawyers for the California-based Center for Truth and Justice, or CFTJ, say there is sufficient evidence to open a formal investigation into Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other top leaders for genocide. They have submitted a so-called Article 15 communication urging the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan to look into alleged atrocities.

Khan’s office will now consider the evidence submitted and determine if the court will open an investigation, a decision expected to take months.

“My goal here is to get the highest bodies that protect human rights to take some action, not just mere words,” Lala Abgaryan, whose sister Gayane was killed by Azerbaijani soldiers in 2022, told The Associated Press.

Her sister’s body was badly mutilated and images of the abuse were spread online. Abgaryan says the pictures were so heinous that she suffered psychological damage after looking at them.

Long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted in 2020 into a war over Karabakh that left more than 6,600 people dead. The region is within Azerbaijan but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Last year, following a lightning military campaign, Azerbaijan retook the disputed territory. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000, more than 100,000 of the region’s ethnic Armenians fled, although Azerbaijan said they were welcome to stay and promised their human rights would be ensured.

Prior to Azerbaijan’s offensive, Armenia and former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo accused Azerbaijan of committing genocide by creating conditions aimed at destroying Karabakh Armenians as a group.

A group of around 30 people gathered in the rain in front of The Hague-based court Thursday to hand over more than 100 pages of documents.

The rights organization said it has submitted a dossier of evidence containing the testimony of more than 500 victims and witnesses.

“These atrocities are captured on social media, by Azerbaijani soldiers themselves, where you hear them laughing, making comments, and taking the dead bodies that they’ve just slaughtered and beheaded,” CFTJ leader Gassia Apkaria told the AP.

Legal experts say that genocide may be out of reach for the court. Armenia is a member of the ICC, but Azerbaijan isn't, leaving prosecutors with jurisdiction only over crimes committed on Armenian territory. Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Forcing nearly the entire population to relocate to Armenia, however, could fall within the court’s remit. Deportation is considered a crime against humanity. While Azerbaijan did not deport the people who fled last year, they left under duress.

“There is no way this was an exodus by chance,” says Mel O’Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and genocide expert.

The court has moved forward with an investigation under similar circumstances into possible crimes committed by Myanmar against the Rohingya minority group. While Myanmar isn't a member state, neighboring Bangladesh is and around 750,000 people have fled across the border after being forced from their homes.

The CFTJ’s request came amid two weeks of proceedings between Armenia and Azerbaijan at another global court in The Hague. The United Nations' top court, the International Court of Justice, is hearing arguments related to a pair of cases stemming from the conflict. Each country has accused the other of violating a racial discrimination treaty.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Thousands of Black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring bash at Georgia's largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of extra police officers and barricades closing off neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to nearby parking.

Tybee Island east of Savannah has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically Black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly groused about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in yards.

Those complaints boiled over into fear and outrage a year ago when weekend crowds of up to 48,000 people daily overwhelmed the 3-mile (4.8 kilometer) island. That left a small police force scrambling to handle a flood of emergency calls reporting gunfire, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fist fights.

Mayor Brian West, elected last fall by Tybee Island's 3,100 residents, said roadblocks and added police aren't just for limiting crowds. He hopes the crackdown will drive Orange Crush away for good.

“This has to stop. We can’t have this crowd anymore," West said. “My goal is to end it.”

Critics say local officials are overreacting and appear to be singling out Black visitors to a Southern beach that only white people could use until 1963. They note Tybee Island attracts vast crowds for the Fourth of July and other summer weekends when visitors are largely white, as are 92% of the island's residents.

“Our weekends are packed with people all season, but when Orange Crush comes they shut down the parking, bring extra police and act like they have to take charge,” said Julia Pearce, one of the island's few Black residents and leader of a group called the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization. She added: “They believe Black folks to be criminals.”

During the week, workers placed metal barricades to block off parking meters and residential streets along the main road parallel to the beach. Two large parking lots near a popular pier are being closed. And Tybee Island’s roughly two dozen police officers will be augmented by about 100 sheriff’s deputies, Georgia state troopers and other officers.

Security plans were influenced by tactics used last month to reduce crowds and violence at spring break in Miami Beach, which was observed by Tybee Island's police chief.

Officials insist they're acting to avoid a repeat of last year's Orange Crush party, which they say became a public safety crisis with crowds at least double their typical size.

“To me, it has nothing to do with race,” said West, who believes city officials previously haven’t taken a stronger stand against Orange Crush because they feared being called racist. “We can’t let that be a reason to let our citizens be unsafe and so we’re not.”

Tybee Island police reported 26 total arrests during Orange Crush last year. Charges included one armed robbery with a firearm, four counts of fighting in public and five DUIs. Two officers reported being pelted with bottles, and two women told police they were beaten and robbed of a purse.

On a gridlocked highway about a mile off the island, someone fired a gun into a car and injured one person. Officials blamed the shooting on road rage.

Orange Crush's supporters and detractors alike say it's not college students causing the worst problems.

Joshua Miller, a 22-year-old Savannah State University senior who plans to attend this weekend, said he wouldn't be surprised if the crackdown was at least partly motivated by race.

“I don’t know what they have in store,” Miller said. ”I’m not going down there with any ill intent. I’m just going out there to have fun.”

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was one of the Black students from Savannah State who helped launch Orange Crush in 1988. The university dropped involvement in the 1990s, and Johnson said that over time the celebration “got off the rails.” But he also told reporters he’s concerned about “over-representation of police” at the beach party.

At Nickie's 1971 Bar & Grill near the beach, general manager Sean Ensign said many neighboring shops and eateries will close for Orange Crush though his will stay open, selling to-go food orders like last year. But with nearby parking spaces closed, Ensign said his profits might take a hit, “possibly a few thousand dollars.”

It's not the first time Tybee Island has targeted the Black beach party. In 2017, the city council banned alcohol and amplified music on the beach only during Orange Crush weekend. A discrimination complaint to the U.S. Justice Department resulted in city officials signing a non-binding agreement to impose uniform rules for large events.

West says Orange Crush is different because it's promoted on social media by people who haven't obtained permits. A new state law lets local governments recoup public safety expenses from organizers of unpermitted events.

In February, Britain Wigfall was denied an permit for space on the island for food trucks during Orange Crush. The mayor said Wigfall has continued to promote events on the island.

Wigfall, 30, said he's promoting a concert this weekend in Savannah, but nothing on Tybee Island involving Orange Crush.

“I don't control it," Wigfall said. "Nobody controls the date that people go down there."

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa faces an unusual national election this year, its seventh vote since transitioning from white minority rule to a democracy 30 years ago. Polls and analysts warn that for the first time, the ruling African National Congress party that has comfortably held power since Nelson Mandela became the country's first Black president in 1994 might receive less than 50% of votes.

One big reason is Jacob Zuma, the former president and ANC leader who stepped down in disgrace in 2018 amid a swirl of corruption allegations but has emerged in recent months with a new political party. It intends to be a major election player as the former president seeks revenge against former longtime allies.

Here is what you need to know about the 82-year-old Zuma's return to the political ring and how it might play a significant election role.

Zuma has long been one of South Africa's most recognizable politicians. He was a senior leader in the ANC during the liberation struggle against apartheid. A former ANC intelligence chief, he has repeatedly threatened to reveal some of the party’s secrets. While Zuma was not one of Mandela’s preferred choices to succeed him, Mandela trusted Zuma to play an influential role in ending deadly political violence that engulfed KwaZulu-Natal province before the historic 1994 elections. The province has remained a vocal base of support for Zuma ever since, and members of Zuma's Zulu ethnic group make up its majority. Zuma became deputy leader of the ANC in 1997 and was appointed South Africa's deputy president in 1999.

Zuma's path to power included legal challenges. In 2006, he was found not guilty of raping the daughter of a comrade at Zuma's home in Johannesburg. A year earlier, he was fired as South Africa’s deputy president after his financial advisor was convicted for corruption for soliciting bribes for Zuma during an infamous arms deal. Alleging a political witch hunt, Zuma launched an aggressive political campaign that saw him elected ANC president in 2007. His campaign appealed to widespread discontent with then-President Thabo Mbeki, who was often described as autocratic and aloof. The corruption charges against Zuma were later dropped, amid controversy, and he was elected South Africa's president in 2009.

Zuma's presidency was often under fire. His close friends and allies, the Gupta family, were accused of influencing appointments to key cabinet positions in exchange for lucrative business deals. The allegations of corruption in government and state-owned companies eventually led the ANC force Zuma to resign in 2018. A judicial commission of inquiry uncovered wide-ranging evidence, and Zuma in 2021 was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in jail for refusing to testify. Zuma remains aggrieved with the ANC and his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa. But few South Africans expected the break to go so far.

Zuma shocked the country in December by denouncing the ANC and campaigning against a party that had been at the heart of his political career. His new political party, UMkhonto WeSizwe, was named after the ANC's military wing, which was disbanded at the end of the struggle against white minority rule. The ANC has launched a legal case seeking to stop the new party from using a name and logo that are similar to those of the military wing. The charismatic Zuma continues to crisscross the country, delivering lively speeches, and an image of his face will represent the party on ballots.

The ANC already had been facing pressure from other opposition parties. But Zuma's new party threatens to draw support from within the often divided ANC. South Africa's electoral body has cleared him to run for a parliament seat, despite his past conviction. Polls suggest the new party may emerge as one of the country's biggest opposition parties and could play a significant role if the weakening ANC must form coalitions to run the country. Addressing his supporters at a recent rally, Zuma declared that “I need to return so that I can fix things.”

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The future of diversity, equity and inclusion staff jobs in North Carolina's public university system could be at stake after a five-person committee swiftly voted to repeal a key policy Wednesday.

The Committee on University Governance, within the University of North Carolina Board of Governors that oversees 17 schools, voted in less than four minutes to reverse and replace a policy related to DEI. The full board of 24 members is to vote on the matter again next month, and if approved, the repeal would take effect immediately.

If the policy is fully repealed, the UNC system could join other major universities in dismantling their diversity offices. Among the most notable, the University of Florida in Gainesville announced in a memo last month that it was scrapping its office and shifting its funding for faculty recruitment instead.

In Texas, universities saw major cuts in their diversity and inclusion staff in 2024 in compliance with a state ban signed into law last year. The state higher education board in Kansas was also to address a ban on diversity initiatives in hiring staff and accepting students Wednesday.

At least 20 states have seen Republican bill proposals seeking to limit diversity and inclusion programs in several public institutions such as universities.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is defined by the American Psychological Association as a framework to guide “fair treatment and full participation of all people,” especially those belonging to minority groups. It has become a recurring point of contention for conservatives who argue DEI programs are discriminatory.

The proposed policy change, first reported by The News & Observer of Raleigh, would impact a diversity, equity and inclusion regulation adopted in 2019. It defines the roles of various DEI positions — such as a system office diversity and inclusion liaison and diversity officers across the university system — and the establishment of a diversity and inclusion council made up of members representing each university, according to the policy.

Under the policy, the officers’ responsibilities include assisting the chancellor with diversity policy and programming, in addition to facilitating training for students and staff.

But Andrew Tripp, senior vice president for the UNC System Office’s legal affairs team, said the change would reaffirm “the university's commitment to non-discrimination and institutional neutrality.”

The policy that could replace the existing regulation does not include the outlined responsibilities of DEI officers and liaisons, suggesting they may be eliminated. Other inclusion efforts such as tracking the university's diversity metrics and giving reports to university boards will continue, the replacement policy said.

UNC-Chapel Hill — the system's flagship campus and whose website says has an office for diversity and inclusion with a 12-person staff — will review the policy change and work with the university system if implemented, spokesperson Kevin Best said in an emailed statement.

“As the Board of Governors noted, equality of opportunity in education and employment is a long-standing commitment of the University of North Carolina as a core value in service to our vibrant and growing state,” Best said. “As part of that mission, UNC-Chapel Hill will continue to welcome people from all walks of life with a variety of experiences and perspectives who come here to learn, work and live.”

Immediately after the vote to repeal the diversity policy with no questions or discussion, the governance committee went into closed session, according to the agenda. Closed sessions are not subject to public record, according to state statutes.

Efforts to dissolve university diversity efforts are a “disservice” to students and create “controversy and volatility," former UNC System President Tom Ross said in a joint statement with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper after the vote. Instead, Ross, who served as president from 2011 to 2016, said universities should celebrate diversity.

"Republican legislative and university leaders who attack diversity at our public universities are failing in their duty to protect students while threatening our ability to recruit top scientists, researchers and innovators who power our economy,” Cooper said.

However, conservative-leaning advocacy group Carolina Partnership for Reform said in a statement the new policy would “go a long way toward rooting out DEI bureaucracies."

The full UNC Board of Governors is scheduled to meet May 22-23 in Raleigh. Members of the board are elected to four-year terms by the state Senate and House of Representatives, which Republicans have controlled since 2011.

Republican House Speaker Tim Moore said fellow Republicans have expressed interest in taking up anti-DEI legislation in the session opening next Wednesday. He recently told reporters the legislature may allow the university boards to review their diversity policies first before introducing any bills.

“It's still at the conversation stage,” Moore said.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Republican attorneys general attacked the Biden administration’s stated goal of pursuing environmental justice, calling it a form of “racial engineering.‘’

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and 22 other GOP officials asked the EPA Tuesday to stop using civil rights laws to investigate actions and policies that result in harm to Black people or other minority groups — even unintentionally — more than white residents.

“The EPA should be focusing on enforcing the environmental laws passed by Congress, not so called ‘environmental justice,’ which is a euphemism for Biden’s extreme agenda,‘’ Moody said. Their petition demands that the EPA change decades-old rules, though the civil rights law could still be used where discrimination was intentional.

The petition is unlikely to convince the Biden administration to back away from an issue EPA Administrator Michael Regan has taken pains to highlight. Regan, for example, went on a “Journey to Justice” tour to places like the industrial stretch of Louisiana typically called Cancer Alley to show how majority-Black communities living near polluters were being hurt. To address such harms, the EPA has turned in part to a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 called Title VI to open investigations and pressure states to make changes.

The petition in an election year is the latest in Republicans' expanding fight against federal policies aimed at addressing historic racial discrimination and they believe courts are on their side. They cited the recent Supreme Court decision that eliminated affirmative action in college admissions, arguing it shows the court is wary of race-conscious federal policies.

“Because the EPA's regulations prohibit any action that results in racial disparities, a funding recipient must set demographic targets for their projects to maintain compliance," the attorneys general wrote. “This kind of allocation based on group membership is a constitutional nonstarter.”

The Florida attorney general's office, which took the lead on the petition, said the states would sue if the EPA does not amend its rules.

EPA declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation around the issue.

Title VI aims to prevent discrimination in programs that receive federal funds. The agency can investigate allegations of discrimination, publish their findings and pressure states and local governments to agree to change policies. The federal government can yank funding if they find a Title VI violation.

Debbie Chizewer, managing attorney in the Midwest office at the environmental group Earthjustice, said Title VI is part of the country's historic fight against discrimination and is still a critical tool. Elected officials across the county permitted numerous polluting factories, chemical plants and refineries near minority communities that now are burdened with the effects, including poorer health, lower property values and economic blight.

“I think it is a perversion of our civil rights laws to say otherwise, to say that you can't account for these past harms by creating policies that protect communities that are disproportionately harmed,” she said.

Previously, Title VI has been a relatively weak environmental weapon, rarely resulting in significant changes to environmental policy. Under the Biden administration, however, environmental and civil rights groups were hopeful it could be used to do more.

Those groups asked the EPA to investigate Louisiana's regulation of air pollution, arguing that it disproportionately hurt majority-Black communities near heavy industry. They highlighted the Denka Performance Elastomer plant that makes synthetic rubber and emits harmful chloroprene. It's located a half-mile from an elementary school. The agency agreed to investigate and released initial findings saying there was evidence of discrimination.

But before the state agreed to any changes, the EPA dropped its investigation. The end came soon after Louisiana sued the agency, arguing that focusing on policies that may harm one group more than another but weren't intentionally discriminatory went too far.

That lawsuit has so far seen success. In January, a federal judge in Louisiana put a temporary halt on the EPA's power to investigate discrimination that had a so-called “disparate impact.” A final decision in the case hasn't come yet.

Environmental groups have worried that the EPA's move in Louisiana amounts to a pullback on the Biden administration's commitment to fighting environmental discrimination.

EPA officials are wary of unfavorable court rulings and a conservative Supreme Court that has already curtailed its regulatory power. The Supreme Court restricted the EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.

Regan said earlier this month that he believes strongly in using Title VI to fight environmental discrimination, but it's complicated.

“It is not just on this issue, we face headwinds in the courts on a lot of issues,” Regan said. He added that the EPA is trying to ensure every action it takes can withstand a court challenge.

But the agency has other options to hold polluters accountable, he said. Recently, for example, the EPA finalized new, tougher, emissions limits for more than 200 chemical plants, including the Denka facility under scrutiny in Louisiana.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

A Republican lawmaker has signaled plans to mount another effort to limit diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Kentucky's public universities after GOP supermajorities failed to resolve differences on the issue during the recently ended legislative session.

Kentucky lawmakers will convene again in January, and state Sen. Mike Wilson said he hopes lawmakers use the coming months to craft another version of DEI legislation for the 30-day session in 2025.

“It’ll be something that we’ll work on in the interim and hopefully come to some sort of agreement with the House," Wilson said Tuesday during a news conference featuring Senate Republican leaders.

Debates around DEI efforts on college campuses have played out in statehouses across the country this year. Republicans in at least 20 states have sought to limit such initiatives, claiming they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses.

In Kentucky, the issue generated contentious debates when the Senate and House passed different versions of anti-DEI bills. Opponents warned that proposed restrictions on campuses could roll back gains in minority enrollments and stifle campus discussions about past discrimination.

State Sen. Gerald Neal, the top-ranking Senate Democrat, said Tuesday that anti-DEI efforts were “a shameless attempt to reverse the progress that our commonwealth has made.”

Wilson, who is the Senate majority whip, sponsored the bill passed by chamber Republicans in February. It would have prohibited “discriminatory concepts” in non-classroom settings, such as training sessions and orientations, and would have barred schools from providing preferential treatment based on a person’s political ideology. It also would have prohibited requiring people to state specific ideologies or beliefs when seeking admission, employment or promotions.

About a month later, the House stripped away the Senate’s language and inserted a replacement that took a tougher stance by also defunding DEI offices and officer positions. Wilson's original bill didn't call for dismantling those offices.

Senate Republicans had concerns about portions of the House version, Wilson said Tuesday without offering specifics. Both versions died when the legislative session ended Monday night.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear denounced anti-DEI efforts last month while commemorating the 60th anniversary of a landmark civil-rights rally in Frankfort, the state’s capital city.

“DEI is not a four-letter word,” Beshear said. “DEI is a three-letter acronym for very important values that are found in our Bible. Diversity, equity and inclusion is about loving each other. It’s about living out the Golden Rule. ... Diversity will always make us stronger. It is an asset and never a liability.”

With supermajorities in both chambers, Republicans can easily override the governor's vetoes.

Neal, who is Black, said Tuesday that supporters of the anti-DEI bills want to “suppress that part of history that makes them feel uncomfortable” instead of acknowledging and learning from the past.

During the Senate debate in February, Wilson said his bill would counter what he called a broader trend in higher education toward denying campus jobs or promotions to faculty refusing to espouse “liberal ideologies fashionable in our public universities.” He said such practices extended to students and staff.

“Diversity of thought should be welcomed in our universities and higher education,” Wilson said. “But we’ve seen a trend across the United States of forcing faculty, in order to remain employed, to formally endorse a set of beliefs that may be contrary to their own, all in violation of the First Amendment.”

Looking ahead to renewed work on the issue, Wilson said Tuesday that there were portions of the House bill that GOP senators "thought we could live with,” without offering details.

Republican Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer predicted Tuesday that GOP senators will reach out to House Republicans to try to strike an agreement on DEI legislation that he hopes lawmakers could take up early in next year's session. Thayer is retiring from the Senate at the end of 2024.

“They will be back here in eight months, essentially, and they’ve got that amount of time to try to knock out a compromise on the DEI issue,” Thayer said.

Two 11-year-old boys navigate school, friendship, family and change in Minhal Baig’s lyrical drama “We Grown Now.” It’s an evocative memory piece, wistful and honest, and a different kind of portrait of a very infamous place: Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing development.

And, pointedly, it’s a film that might not have existed without Participant, the activist film and television studio that just this month announced it was shutting down operations.

Baig sets her film in the fall of 1992, a moment in which the promise of the 1940s urban renewal project had curdled beyond repair. It was there, on Oct. 13 of that year, that 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed by a sniper while walking to elementary school with his mother. A few days later, the horror film “Candyman” opened across the country with its Black boogeyman and white heroine, inspiring pointed critiques for its regressive racial stereotypes.

No longer the place of “Good Times,” Cabrini-Green had become a metonym for the failures of the system. A few years later, authorities would begin demolishing buildings there, the last of which came down in 2011. It’s now home to luxury apartments.

But childhood is childhood for Malik (Blake Cameron Jones) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez). And the biggest thing on their mind at the beginning is transporting a found mattress down the stairs of the high rise, through the streets and sidewalks to their playground area where it will provide the perfect landing cushion for their favorite activity: Jumping.

Malik lives with his sister, mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett, in a lovely performance) and grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson). The adults are stable, calm and positive influences on the lives of the kids, keeping them safe in their little enclave. Still, realities of their small world inside Cabrini-Green do occasionally creep in (or, rather, sometimes burst in at 2 a.m., when authorities decide to raid and trash their apartment looking for drugs that aren’t there). Dolores tries to protest and stick up for their rights but is painfully aware of her powerlessness over the ever-escalating hostilities towards them.

The death of a classmate sends everyone into a spiral. Voices from the outside suddenly emerge, from Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley and others vowing to clean up Cabrini-Green. There is a pointed disconnect with what Malik and Eric’s day-to-day is actually like, playing, jumping, teasing little sisters and sometimes escaping the dull nature documentary at their school to have a real adventure. Some of these moments land, especially the banter between the boys, but some are a little clunkier. These are the ones that lean more into whimsical ideas of play and inspiration (like when they decide to visit the Art Institute on their own and have a Ferris Bueller moment with the Seurat painting) than an authentic portrait of childhood. But also, why not show the kids being self-motivated to talk about art?

And it’s one of their last adventures before reality comes back to fracture their bond, when Malik’s mother makes the decision to leave Cabrini-Green for a job opportunity in Peoria. Their goodbyes may just have you reaching for a tissue — a testament to the two young actors.

Baig is a product of Chicago, though not Cabrini-Green. There are perhaps questions about who should tell whose story, but she has come to it with a palpable empathy and interest, which is all you can ask for, really. Why would we want to make rules about filmmakers stepping outside the narrow confines of their personal experience to tell different stories?

That care shines through in every frame (evocatively shot by Pat Scola), for the kids growing up in these circumstances, for the adults trying to shelter them, and for the magic they’re able to find despite everything. It is a delicate look at what life might have felt like beyond the fear-mongering headlines, with an elegant score from Jay Wadley. “We Grown Now” is slightly dreamy and stylized, too, but instead of a liability, it makes this very small story feel grand, poetic and cinematic — just like it would for an 11-year-old.

“We Grown Now,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on Friday and expanding April 26, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “thematic material and language.” Running time 93 minutes. Three stars out of four.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — State universities in Kansas are banned from requiring prospective students, potential hires and staffers seeking promotion to disclose their views on diversity initiatives under a policy change approved Wednesday by the state's higher education board in response to pressure from the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The Kansas Board of Regents revised policy language that currently emphasizes “multiculturism and diversity” on campus by adding language barring universities from requiring statements “pledging allegiance to, support for or opposition to” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in applications for admission, hiring or promotion — without setting any penalties for violations. Board members voiced no opposition during a meeting livestreamed from Fort Hays State University in western Kansas.

Regents Chairman Jon Rolph called the change “our good faith effort in trying to listen to the Legislature” and said discussions about it began last summer.

“It’s not something central to our practices around wanting student success and trying to fulfill our promises to people when we invite them onto our campuses,” said Rolph, CEO of a Wichita-based company operating more than 150 restaurants.

The board's action came with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly facing similar pressure to sign the same policy into law. Lawmakers approved a bill with the same restrictions that also would allow a fine of up to ,000 for a violation.

Separately, the next state budget approved by lawmakers includes provisions that withhold nearly million from the state universities unless they publicly confirm that they don't have such requirements. Kelly has until Friday to act on the bill and until April 25 to act on the budget provisions.

“I don’t think we ever would have had a state law if this was their policy at the outset,” Republican state Sen. J.R. Claeys, the author of the budget provisions, said ahead of Wednesday's board discussion.

Republicans in at least 20 states have sought to limit DEI initiatives, arguing that they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal political orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted new anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses.

North Carolina's governing board for 17 universities, including the University of North Carolina's flagship Chapel Hill campus, could put the jobs of DEI staff on a path toward elimination through a similar policy change next month.

Claeys, who is also an adviser to GOP Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, another DEI critic, said a new regents policy is a positive step because it ensures that all of the universities are following the same guidelines.

But, he added, “I wouldn’t expect them to enact any enforcement on themselves.”

Others say that such policies reflect “a gross misrepresentation” of the purpose behind DEI statements from applicants. The American Psychological Association defines diversity, equity and inclusion as a framework to guide “fair treatment and full participation of all people,” especially those in minority groups.

“The intended purpose is to provide an opportunity for prospective employees to reflect on their experiences and how those experiences complement the mission and values of an institution to support a diverse campus community,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Educations, in an email statement.

It's unclear how widespread required DEI-related statements on applications are. GOP lawmakers have said they are responding to complaints and applications they’d seen online, but Rolph said Wednesday that the practice was mostly abandoned over the past year.

Granberry Russell said she was unaware of any university expecting students, job applicants or employees to actually “pledge allegiance to diversity.”

A legislative audit released in February said that just 1.6% of spending by Kansas’ six state universities — million — went to DEI initiatives but noted that each university defined DEI differently. Besides initiatives traditionally seen as DEI, such as training and recruiting, resources included food pantries for poor students and services for military veterans and disabled students.

Kelly told reporters after a Tuesday event that she has not had time to review the anti-DEI bill. While the bill specifically mentions diversity, equity and inclusion, it also says universities cannot require a statement about “any political ideology or movement.”

Last year, Kelly used her power under the state constitution to veto individual budget provisions to scuttle anti-DEI provisions in the current budget, and GOP lawmakers did not have the two-thirds majorities necessary in both chambers to override her actions.

But Kelly also signed legislation last year that bars Kansas officials from using environmental, social and governance factors in investing public funds or deciding who receives government contracts.

“Sometimes those bills, you know, they really don’t do much, and the universities can continue to function the way they need to function,” Kelly said Tuesday. “So, I need to figure out or look at how impactful that will be.”

Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are more likely than the overall adult population to believe in human-caused climate change, according to a new poll. It also suggests that partisanship may not have as much of an impact on this group's environmental views, compared to Americans overall.

A recent poll from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 84% of AAPI adults agree climate change exists. In comparison, 74% of U.S. adults hold the same sentiment. And three-quarters of AAPI adults who accept climate change is real attribute it entirely or mostly to human activity. Among the general U.S. adult population surveyed in an AP-NORC poll in September, only 61% say humans are causing it.

The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views can usually not be highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns and endangering animal species. Many scientific organizations have made public statements on the issue.

In terms of partisanship, the percentage of AAPI Democrats, 84%, who acknowledge climate change falls exactly in line with the share of Democrats overall in the September poll. The share of AAPI Republicans who believe there is a climate crisis is lower, but they somewhat outnumber Republicans in general, 68% versus 49%.

Adrian Wong, 26, of Whippany, New Jersey, is registered as unaffiliated but leans Republican. A biology major in college, the Chinese American says the science behind climate change is indisputable.

“I’ve probably done more or looked more into it than the average person has,” Wong said. “It’s to me clear that it’s changing due to human activity, not natural shifts.”

There has been growing conflict within the Republican Party between those who insist climate change is a progressive-generated hoax and those — mostly younger generations — who say the issue cannot be ignored. GOP lawmakers, in general, refuse to consider measures like mandated lowering of carbon emissions. However, some consider that an untenable position long-term. American Conservation Coalition, the largest conservative environmental group in the nation, has said Republicans running for office cannot risk alienating people who care about climate change.

Wong is not surprised that AAPI conservatives like himself recognize that the climate is changing. He thinks they are more highly educated and more likely to be exposed to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if they were more likely to have studied more and actually more likely to have studied in science and STEM-related fields rather than, say like, finance or something,” Wong said.

While climate change is an afterthought to her parents, Analisa Harangozo, 35, of Alameda, California, worries a great deal about it. She has noticed a rise in “crazy heatwaves and droughts and just like crazy weather in general” in the San Francisco Bay Area. She and her husband are teaching their sons — ages 7 and 4 — to take small steps to reduce their carbon footprint like composting, growing food and eating less meat. They're also trying to minimize their accumulation of household items.

“I always second-guess myself, ‘Do I really need this?’" Harangozo said. “Stuff will eventually end up in the landfill. So, we're really mindful with the products we buy, and whether or not they can be recycled or they're made from materials that are natural, like wood or what-not.”

A registered independent with Democratic leanings, Harangozo is open to proposals from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state lawmakers to slash greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy.

"I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what an attainable goal is," she said. “But, whatever it takes to actually make a difference, I'm all for it. I fully support.”

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at the University of California, Riverside, and founder of AAPI Data, said the richness and detail of the data shows environmental groups need to consider reaching out to AAPI populations. They make up a relatively small share of the U.S. population — around 7%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2021 census data — but their numbers are growing quickly.

“Asian American and Pacific Islander voters are environmental voters," Ramakrishnan said. "Many of us still have an image in our minds of a particular kind of person maybe of a particular race, gender or age group. What we see here is across the board Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders care about the environment.”

Asian American and Pacific Islanders may also have more of a stake in climate change because of connections to relatives abroad. China, considered one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases alongside the U.S., vowed last year to reduce emissions. More Chinese companies are considering selling wind and solar power equipment in other countries. Around this time last year, Japan was preparing for another sweltering summer and risks of floods and landslides. That country has also pledged to curb emissions.

Heavy rains swept across Pakistan last month, causing landslides and leaving over 36 people dead and dozens of others injured. In 2022, unprecedented rainfall and flooding in that country killed more than 1,700. In India, farmers are grappling with frequent cyclones and extreme heat. In southern India, the city of Bengaluru is seeing water levels running desperately low after an unusually hot February and March.

“There's a fairly high level concern of what climate change means to low-income countries,” Ramakrishnan said. “That sensitivity is either because people still have friends or family back in their home country or at least have some concern about what climate change does to other countries.”

___

The poll of 1,005 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from March 4-11, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. __ This story has been corrected to show Adrian Wong is 26, not 22.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The family of a Minnesota man who was killed by a state trooper during a traffic stop filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Wednesday, alleging that the fatal shooting was unjustified and unlawful.

The lawsuit names Troopers Ryan Londregan, who shot Ricky Cobb II, and Brett Seide, who made the initial stop. Londregan, a white officer, was already facing murder charges for killing Cobb, a Black man, in what has become a politically charged case in the city where the murder of George Floyd by police nearly four years ago sparked global protests demanding racial justice.

“Ricky Cobb was a productive citizen of this community, and we will not let you vilify him,” family attorney Bakari Sellers said at a news conference. “We will not let you punish him in his death. We want him to be allowed to rest in peace. And today is another step in the journey of bringing those officers who caused his death to justice.”

Londregan's lawyer, Chris Madel, disputed the allegations, which parallel the charges in the separate criminal case.

“We will fight the civil lawsuit with the same vigor that we’ve fought the criminal matter,” Madel said.

Family attorney F. Clayton Tyler told reporters they named only the two troopers in the lawsuit because the state would be immune under federal law. But they don't rule out filing a separate action later in state court naming the State Patrol, after they gather more evidence, or updating the allegations in the federal lawsuit.

The sequence of events alleged in the lawsuit mirrors the criminal complaint. Seide and one other trooper pulled the 33-year-old Cobb over on Interstate 94 last July 31 because the lights were out on his car. Seide checked the Spring Lake Park man's record and found he was wanted for violating a protection order in neighboring Ramsey County. Officials there asked the troopers to arrest Cobb.

Londregan arrived to assist. They asked Cobb to get out. Seide told Cobb he was under arrest while Londregan reached inside and began opening the passenger door. The criminal complaint said Cobb then shifted into drive and took his foot off the brake. Cobb’s car began to slowly move forward. Londregan reached for his gun, and Cobb stopped the car.

The trooper pointed his gun at Cobb and yelled at him to get out. Cobb took his foot off the brake again. In less than a second, Londregan fired his handgun twice at Cobb, striking him both times in the chest, the complaint alleges. The car kept moving until striking a concrete median about a quarter-mile (400 meters) away. Cobb died at the scene.

The lawsuit argues that it was unreasonable for Londregan to shoot, that neither trooper had a reasonable suspicion that Cobb posed any threat to them, and that both he and Seide acted contrary to State Patrol policy and their training. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a former chief public defender for the county, who was elected as its top prosecutor in 2022 on a platform of police accountability in the wake of Floyd's murder, has faced unprecedented pushback from politicians and law enforcement for charging Londregan. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who has met with the Cobb family, has expressed concern but has not acted on demands that he take the case away from the county attorney and turn it over to state Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association on Tuesday released a letter to the governor renewing those calls, accompanied by sworn statements from two of Londregan's State Patrol trainers who said they believe that he acted lawfully to save his partners, in accordance with the agency's use-of-force policies. The letter, from the association's executive director, Brian Peterson, noted that one use-of-force expert who looked at the case for Moriarty's office also concluded that Londregan was justified in his actions.

Republicans in the state's congressional delegation on Tuesday called on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to investigate the decision to charge the trooper, alleging “a deliberate attempt to use the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to target members of the law enforcement community.”

Sellers said one reason they family held its news conference at the county courthouse was to show support for Moriarty.

“We believe that she should keep this case,” Sellers said. “We appreciate her transparency. We appreciate the fact that she’s been open and honest with this family."

Cobb's twin brother, Rashad Cobb, called for unity and love, not hate, and for putting politics aside.

“We as a family put God first, and we see the ugliness come out of the people that we expect to protect and serve,” Cobb said. “And we only ask for something that’s our right. We’re not talking about white and Black here. There’s no color when you’re talking about wrong and right.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers who are transferred from one job to another against their will to pursue job discrimination claims under federal civil rights law, even when they are not demoted or docked pay.

Workers only have to show that the transfer resulted in some, but not necessarily significant, harm to prove their claims, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The justices unanimously revived a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police sergeant after she was forcibly transferred, but retained her rank and pay.

Sgt. Jaytonya Muldrow had worked for nine years in a plainclothes position in the department's intelligence division before a new commander reassigned her to a uniformed position in which she supervised patrol officers. The new commander wanted a male officer in the intelligence job and sometimes called Muldrow “Mrs.” instead of “sergeant,” Kagan wrote.

Muldrow sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Lower courts had dismissed Muldrow's claim, concluding that she had not suffered a significant job disadvantage.

“Today, we disapprove that approach,” Kagan wrote. “Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test.”

Kagan noted that many cases will come out differently under the lower bar the Supreme Court adopted Wednesday. She pointed to cases in which people lost discrimination suits, including those of an engineer whose new job site was a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, a shipping worker reassigned to exclusively nighttime work and a school principal who was forced into a new administrative role that was not based in a school.

Although the outcome was unanimous, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas each wrote separate opinions noting some level of disagreement with the majority's rationale in ruling for Muldrow.

Madeline Meth, a lawyer for Muldrow, said her client will be thrilled with the outcome. Meth, who teaches at Boston University's law school, said the decision is a big win for workers because the court made "clear that employers can’t decide the who, what, when, where and why of a job based on race and gender.”

The decision revives Muldrow's lawsuit, which now returns to lower courts. Muldrow contends that, because of sex discrimination, she was moved to a less prestigious job, which was primarily administrative and often required weekend work, and she lost her take-home city car.

“If those allegations are proved,” Kagan wrote, “she was left worse off several times over.”

The case is Muldrow v. St.Louis, 22-193.

___

Associated Press writer Alexandra Olson contributed to this article from New York.