Student journalists on the Columbia University campus knew what was coming long before police with riot shields arrived to begin arresting the pro-Palestinian protesters.

They had watched the situation spiral as the protesters stood their ground, refusing to abandon Hamilton Hall and using a pulley system to bring supplies into the building they had occupied.

The reporters, working for university and online U.S. and international publications, suspected negotiations with administrators were going nowhere when the protesters began donning COVID-era masks to hide their identifies. Some began sleeping on the floor in journalism classrooms or offices out of fear of missing something.

But when a journalism professor began writing the phone number to call if they were arrested in permanent marker on their arms, that was the moment it became clear: They were capturing history.

The police operation Tuesday night that cleared out Hamilton Hall capped two weeks of drama over the protests at Columbia, which student journalists at the Ivy League school lived through as they were covering it.

Other media were being kept off campus, so these reporters were the only ones who could capture what was happening.

“I just woke up and I was like, I’m going to go and take some pictures,” said Seyma Bayram, a Columbia journalism fellow focused on creating a longform investigative podcast unrelated to the protests.

The encampments were a visual feast. There were musical performances, students reading and helping each other write papers for their classes. She wanted to document it all.

By Monday, students were facing suspension if they didn’t leave. Crowds marched around the encampment chanting. Students were giving written notices from the administration, warning them to go. They ripped them up, dumped them in trash bins. Rumors were flying.

That night, Bayram was unwilling to go home, sleeping on her office floor.

“How,” she wondered, “are they going to remove the students. They’re not leaving.”

By Tuesday, she was exhausted. The student reporters charged their cameras and other gear, and waited.

Many protesters were starting to leave, recalled Shayeza Walid, a graduate journalism student at Columbia, who covered the arrests for the news website Al-Monitor.

The sun was setting as they held hands and chanted, knowing they faced academic repercussions by remaining. Many had given up covering their faces by now, Walid said.

To her the chants sounded like a hymn and she saw the protesters, some clad in Palestinian keffiyehs, crying. She doubts she will ever forget it.

“It felt so both inspirational and devastating because these were the kids who were willing to get arrested,” she recalled.

And then police started assembling outside, setting up barricades. Even on campus, Bayram could tell by the photos posted on social media that police action was imminent. And then the police were there.

“I don’t know, it was just like all of a sudden there were just like police, … riot gear everywhere,” Bayram said.

The student journalists were walking backward, filming as they went, Bayram said.

She was pushed off campus. Police buses and officers were everywhere. Around her, people were being arrested.

“Those of us who are pushed out, like student reporters and faculty, I think we were just all horrified that no press was present outside of, or inside of, Hamilton Hall,” Bayram said.

Walid recalled that the reporters paired up for safety. Her partner, an international student, had never seen so many police in one place. “And frankly, I hadn’t either,” Walid said.

She said the police also seemed shocked when they came into campus and saw how few students were left. “It was very evidently disproportionate from where we were standing,” she said.

Before the arrests, protesters inside the campus used a megaphone to lead those protesting outside in chants, recalled Cecilia Blotto, a graduate journalism student, who has been publishing photos and video to Uptown Radio, a project of the university’s journalism program.

“Columbia, you are a liar,” she recalled them chanting, along with “Disclose, divest! We will not stop, we will not rest.”

Then Blotto saw a police buses pull up, officers exiting with shields and zip ties. Then they played a recording saying that if the protesters didn’t disperse they would be arrested.

“People were like being dragged out on the street, with like four cops holding a leg and an arm each. I saw some really, like, striking images of people, like, yelling shame at the cops, while they were dragging out students,” Blotto said. She tried to film it all.

Emily Byrski, a graduate student who had a phone number written on her arm in case she was arrested, said the students weren’t totally unprepared. There had been a training session.

Still, she said, there had been so many false alerts.

“It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Like, there were two or three nights here where we were told, there was a rumor going around that the NYPD was coming, please come to campus,” she recalled.

Byrski had knee surgery earlier in the year, so was unable to run as police descended. She limped along with her buddy.

“So we’re sort of seeing this all happen from inside and trying to document it as the NYPD is grabbing people, like shoving them to the ground. It was pretty horrifying to see, like, right a foot away from me,” Byrski said.

She said she has seen professors cry over the last week. She is pondering it all, uncertain what to make of it.

“I’m just sort of in shock,” Byrski said. “I think we all kind of were in shock.”

By Clark Mindock

(Reuters) – A Washington state appeals court on Wednesday overturned a $185 million verdict against Bayer’s Monsanto unit over chemical contamination at a Seattle-area school, marking the second big legal win for the company in as many weeks.

Monsanto spinoff Pharmacia, which sold now-banned chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, was found liable in 2021. Three teachers claimed they suffered brain damage from PCBs that leaked from light fixtures at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington.

On Wednesday, the state Court of Appeals agreed with Bayer that the lower court improperly applied the laws of Missouri, where Monsanto is based, which allowed the claims to be filed decades after the company stopped producing PCBs in 1977.

The U.S. government outlawed the chemicals in 1979 after discovering links to cancer.

Bayer argued Washington law limits liability if exposure occurs outside a product’s useful lifespan, which generally means 12 years.

The case will go back to the lower court to determine whether a new trial is warranted. Plaintiffs’ attorney Richard Friedman said in a statement they will retry the case if necessary but hope the state Supreme Court “simply reinstates the verdict” on appeal.

Bayer faces about 200 similar claims from the school, where people allege PCBs caused cancer, thyroid conditions and other health problems.

Juries in some of those cases have awarded more than $1.7 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. But another Washington judge nearly halved an $857 million verdict against the company last week in a small group of those claims.

The company has denied responsibility for the alleged harms and says the school failed to heed repeated warnings to replace the lights. It is appealing the verdicts.

Monsanto said Wednesday’s ruling, which also found the lower court wrongfully allowed punitive damages on some claims and erroneously allowed certain expert testimony, is “significant,” and many or all of the other trials from the school may have had the same errors. The company said it will evaluate how to proceed in those cases and others yet to be tried.

PCBs were once widely used to insulate electrical equipment and found in other common products like caulking and paint.

(Reporting by Clark Mindock, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Voting rights advocates said Wednesday they will go to the Supreme Court in hopes of preserving a new majority Black congressional district in Louisiana for the fall elections, the latest step in a complicated legal fight that could determine the fate of political careers and the balance of power in the next Congress.

A divided panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected a map approved in January by an unusual alliance of Republicans, who dominate the Legislature, and Democrats who want a second mostly Black — and mostly Democratic — congressional district.

Republican state Attorney General Liz Murrill said she would appeal Tuesday’s ruling. And a coalition of individuals and civil rights groups filed a formal notice Wednesday saying they would go to the Supreme Court.

Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that by the end of the week advocates will ask the Supreme Court to keep the new maps in place for 2024, pending further legal action. He cited the need to have district maps in place soon. State election officials have said they need to know what maps to use by May 15 for the fall elections.

The same judicial panel that rejected the new map — often referred to by its legislative bill number, SB8 — set a Monday status conference to discuss what the state must do next. Evans said there are numerous options, including the appointment of a special master to draw a map or giving the Legislature another chance. But Evans said time is growing short.

“At this point with the election six months away, the Supreme Court’s going to have to step in and say SB8 can move forward or it can’t,” Evans said.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the process.

“The constant inconsistency of the Federal Courts is remarkable and disappointing,” Landry said Wednesday in Baton Rouge. “The people of Louisiana deserve better from our Federal Courts. Either the Legislature is in control of drawing a map or Federal Courts are, but they both can’t be!”

Landry, a former attorney general, had defended a 2022 map with only one mostly Black district among six. But, ruling in a Baton Rouge-filed lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick blocked use of the 2022 map. She said it likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act with boundary lines that divided Black voters among five mostly white districts. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later gave lawmakers a deadline for coming up with a new map.

Landry, who became governor in January, urged the Legislature to draw a new map rather than leave it to the federal courts. With Landry’s backing, SB8 was approved.

But a group of 12 self-identified non-African American voters filed a lawsuit in western Louisiana against the new district, which slashes across the state to link Black populations in four disparate metropolitan areas from the northwest to the southeast. They said it was drawn with race as the predominant motivation.

Two members of a three-judge panel appointed to hear that constitutional challenge sided with the plaintiffs, setting up the pending Supreme Court challenge. A third judge dissented, saying evidence showed political considerations — including protection of the districts of House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican Leader Steve Scalise — had been a major motivation.

The new map sacrificed the district of Republican incumbent Garret Graves, who supported a GOP opponent of Landry in last year’s governor’s race. State Sen. Cleo Fields, a Black Democratic former congressman, has said he will run for the seat.

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Associated Press reporter Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this story.

NEW YORK (AP) — Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Tuesday night, arresting more than 100 people as they cleared an occupied school building and tent encampment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he received a piece of intelligence that shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.

“Outside agitators” working to “radicalize our children” were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor said. And one of them, Adams said repeatedly in media appearances Wednesday morning, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism.”

But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn’t on Columbia’s campus this week, isn’t among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.

Nahla Al-Arian, 63, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Adams had misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor and prominent Palestinian activist.

He was arrested in 2003 on charges of supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s and 1990s, but a jury declined to convict him of any charges. The complicated case remained in legal limbo for years, even after he took a plea deal on a lesser charge that his family said he accepted to get out of jail and end their suffering. He was deported to Turkey in 2015, ending a case seen by some as an example of excessive government overreach.

A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian said she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience.

“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Nahla Al-Arian said. “They are the ones who influenced me. They are the ones who gave me hope that at last the Palestinian people can get some justice.”

Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the specter of “outside agitators,” dating back to the Civil Rights movement. Police officials in New York made similar claims during the demonstrations that erupted across the city after the death of George Floyd in 2020, at times labeling peaceful marches led by neighborhood activists as the work of violent outside extremists.

Nahla Al-Arian said she has lost dozens of relatives to Israeli airstrikes in recent months and wanted to see the encampment up close, so she stopped by briefly on April 25 while visiting New York City on an unrelated trip with her two daughters. She said she sat briefly on the lawn but did not speak directly with any protesters, whom she described as “busy and beautiful.”

“I sat and I felt happy to see those students fighting for justice for the oppressed people in Palestine,” she recalled. “Then I was tired, so I left.”

It was a photo of her kneeling alone beside a tent, taken by her daughter and shared on X by her husband, that quickly stoked allegations of a terrorism link to the protest.

The claim was parroted by right-wing social media accounts, including Libs of TikTok. One post that racked up over 1 million views on X erroneously said the woman might have been among protesters as police entered the campus. The post cited City Hall sources and has since been deleted.

But the claim spread widely, fueling a narrative — vehemently disputed by student organizers — that Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement has been co-opted by external forces.

In an appearance Wednesday on “CBS Mornings,” Adams, a Democrat, said that the NYPD’s intelligence division had identified people among the protesters “who were professionals, well-trained. One of them was married to someone that was arrested for terrorism.” Pressed for details, he declined to name the woman, but suggested reporters could figure it out by looking at social media.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Adams also said his suspicions about external influences on the students had been confirmed after police identified a woman in the protest “organization” whose “husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level.” At a news conference later in the day, Adams suggested that Columbia students had been taught by outsiders how to barricade themselves to repel police attempts to remove them, saying, “These are all skills that are taught and learned.”

Police declined to provide details about what groups may have been involved or to say how many of the 109 people arrested at Columbia Tuesday night were not connected to the university. Even before the students entered Hamilton Hall, police officials claimed, without providing evidence, that an outside group was helping to fund and organize the encampment.

Students at Columbia have been open about the fact that they count outside community members among their movement. But organizers maintain their actions have been led by students, some of whom said they had closely studied tactics used by those who took over several university buildings in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War and racism.

In a statement, the group behind the encampment, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, defended its right “to include people from outside the Ivy League or the ivory tower in this global movement.”

“‘Outside agitator’ is a far right smear used to discredit coalition building and anti racism,” the statement continued.

Laila Al-Arian, a journalist who joined her mother at the encampment on April 25, said the mayor’s comments dredged up painful memories of her father’s years-long legal battle, which included lengthy time spent in solitary confinement. Adams, she said, “was appealing to people’s most base racist instincts” to treat Muslims as dangerous outsiders.

“My mother wanted to see this beautiful act of solidarity up close,” she added. “For people to use my father to smear these students, who may not have even been alive when all of this was happening, is shameful in so many ways.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges for leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security secrets, will face a military justice proceeding later this month, officials said Wednesday.

Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, faces two charges in the military justice system, including obstructing justice and failing to obey a lawful order, Air Force officials said. Prosecutors will present evidence during the military proceeding on May 14 at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. The case could then move to a court-martial, if it’s determined that there’s sufficient evidence of the charges.

The military proceeding comes nearly two months after Teixeira pleaded guilty in federal court to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. That was close to a year after he was arrested in the most consequential national security leak in years.

In court, he admitted illegally collecting some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and sharing them with other users on Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games.

Teixeira, who was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks.

A spokesperson for Teixeira’s family said they had no comment Wednesday and his attorneys in his criminal case didn’t immediately respond to an email.

The stunning security breach raised alarm over America’s ability to protect its most closely guarded secrets and forced the Biden administration to scramble to try to contain diplomatic and military fallout. The leaks embarrassed the Pentagon, which tightened controls to safeguard classified information and disciplined members found to have intentionally failed to take required action about Teixeira’s suspicious behavior.

Authorities said he first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. Prosecutors also said he tried to cover his tracks before his arrest, and authorities found a smashed tablet, laptop and Xbox gaming console in a dumpster at his house.

The leak exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including information about troop movements in Ukraine and the provision of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops. Teixeira also admitted posting information about a U.S. adversary’s plans to harm U.S. forces serving overseas.

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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

The latest mass killing in the U.S. happened Monday, April 29, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where four officers were fatally shot in the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since 2016.

The officers were killed when a task force made up of officers from different agencies arrived in the residential neighborhood in the city of 900,000 to try to capture a 39-year-old man on warrants for possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and fleeing to elude in a different county. The man was also killed.

Four other officers were wounded in the shootout, and an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, a 40-caliber handgun and ammunition were found at the scene. Investigators could not immediately determine whether the man acted alone.

It was the country’s 15th mass killing this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

At least 68 people have died this year in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

Last year ended with 217 deaths from 42 mass killings in the U.S., making 2023 one of the deadliest years on record in the country.

As of Wednesday, May 1, 589 mass killings have occurred since 2006, in which 3,057 people have died and 2,058 people have been injured, according to the database.

Here is a look at other U.S. mass killings this year:

YUKON, OKLAHOMA: April 22

A 10-year-old boy awoke to find his parents and three brothers dead in their home near Oklahoma City, all fatally shot by his father, police said. Authorities believe the 42-year-old man killed his wife and three sons — ages 18, 14 and 12 — then turned the gun on himself. Police said they did not immediately know why the fourth child was spared or have a motive for the shootings.

ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS: March 27

A frenzied stabbing and beating rampage left four people dead in a matter of minutes and at least seven people injured. Authorities said a 22-year-old man was charged. Police didn’t immediately know his motive. Rockford’s mayor said the victims were 63, 23, 49 and 15.

IRELAND, WEST VIRGINIA: March 11

The bodies of four people, ages 3 months to 90 years, were found inside the remains of a burning home. A fifth person with an apparent gunshot wound was discovered dead behind a chicken coop nearby, authorities said. A 45-year-old male suspect was also found dead by suicide in a vehicle about 110 miles (177 kilometers) away, parked outside a home of his relatives. Authorities did not immediately share details about a motive.

HONOLULU, HAWAII: March 10

Authorities said a woman and three children ages 10, 12 and 17 were fatally stabbed in a Manoa home. The woman’s husband was also found dead. Police said a preliminary investigation shows the husband fatally stabbed his wife and children. Authorities did not immediately share a motive. Police said the five deaths mark the state’s worst mass killing since 1999. They said there was no history of domestic calls to the residence.

KING CITY, CALIFORNIA: March 3

Police said three men with dark masks got out of a silver Kia and opened fire at an outdoor party in central California, killing four people — three men and a woman — and wounding seven others. The shooting happened on a street with modest homes facing a commercial district. About 14,000 people live in King City, which sits in farm country on the inland side of coastal mountains and is known as a gateway to Pinnacles National Park.

FERGUSON, MISSOURI: Feb. 19

Authorities said a 39-year-old woman intentionally set a fire at home to kill herself and her four children, ages 2, 5, 9 and 9. Investigators believe the mother set fire to a mattress, and a note was left stating her intentions to kill herself and her children, police said. Responding firefighters found the home engulfed in flames Neighbors had tried to save the family, but the fire was too intense.

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA: Feb. 16

Officials said four men were killed in a drive-by shooting in a neighborhood. Dozens of shots were fired outside a Birmingham home, police said. A group had been standing outside of a house as people got their cars washed when someone drove by and opened fire. No arrests were immediately reported.

HUNTINGTON PARK, CALIFORNIA: Feb. 11

Shootings over several hours left four people dead: a man in Bell, a man in a Los Angeles shopping center parking lot, a 14-year-old boy in Cudahy, and a homeless man in Huntington Park, authorities said. At least one other juvenile was wounded. Two suspected gang members were arrested in connection with the shootings, authorities said.

EAST LANSDOWNE, PENNSYLVANIA: Feb. 7

Six sets of human remains were recovered from the ashes of a fire that destroyed a home about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Philadelphia, according to the county district attorney’s office. Authorities suspect the family members who died — including three children — were killed by a 43-year-old male relative who also died after shooting and wounding two police officers, the office added. A motive was not immediately identified.

EL MIRAGE, CALIFORNIA: Jan. 23

Authorities found the bodies of six men in the Mojave Desert outside the sparsely populated community of El Mirage after someone called 911 and said he had been shot, according to sheriff’s officials. The men were likely shot to death in a dispute over marijuana, local authorities said. The bodies were found about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles in an area known for illegal cannabis operations. Five men were arrested and charged with murder.

JOLIET, ILLINOIS: Jan. 21

Authorities said a 23-year-old man shot eight people — including seven of his relatives — and injuring a ninth person in a Chicago suburb. He fatally shot himself later during a confrontation with law enforcement in Texas. Authorities believe he was trying to reach Mexico. Police said the victims included his mother, siblings, aunt, uncle and two men he might not have known. They were found in two homes, outside an apartment building and on a residential street.

TINLEY PARK, ILLINOIS: Jan. 21

A 63-year-old man in suburban Chicago killed his wife and three adult daughters a domestic-related shooting, police said. The man allegedly shot the four family members — ages 53, 24 and two 25-year-old twins — after an argument at their home. He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

RICHMOND, TEXAS: Jan. 13

A 46-year-old man fatally shot his estranged wife and three other relatives, including his 8-year-old niece, at a home in suburban Houston before killing himself, authorities said. The man opened fire at the home just before 7 a.m. that Saturday after returning his young child from a visit. Authorities said that after arriving at the home, he told his estranged wife that he wanted to reunite, but she refused. In addition to killing his niece and estranged wife, he also killed her brother and sister, ages 43 and 46.

REEDLEY, CALIFORNIA: Jan. 6

A 17-year-old boy was charged with killing four members of a neighboring family in central California. He lived next door to the victims — ages 81, 61, 44 and 43 — in Reedley, a small town near Fresno. Three bodies were found in the backyard of their home, including one buried in a shallow grave, police said. One body was found in the detached garage of the teenager’s home, police said.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill long sought by counties seeking help to manage huge influxes of mail-in ballots during elections in the presidential battleground state and to avoid a repeat of 2020’s drawn-out vote count.

The bill comes barely six months before Pennsylvania could play a decisive role in selecting the next president in November’s election between Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

The bill passed on party lines, 102-99, as Democrats backed it and Republicans opposed it, warning that it would open the door to fraud. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, supports the bill, and on Wednesday issued a statement urging the Senate to pass it. But it faces long odds in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Under the bill, county election workers could begin processing ballots up to seven days before Election Day.

Counties have sought that kind of a provision for years, even before 2020’s presidential election, to give them more time to process mail-in ballots and avoid a drawn-out post-election count.

Nearly every state allows time before Election Day for workers to process mail-in ballots. Currently, Pennsylvania doesn’t let counties begin processing mail-in ballots before Election Day.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania backed the bill, saying that having more time to process mail-in ballots before polls close — called “precanvassing” — will help them manage the workload and ensure quicker results.

“This simple change would significantly improve election administration without compromising ballot security,” Lisa Schaefer, the association’s executive director, said in a statement.

Schaefer asked the Senate to quickly advance the bill to Shapiro so that it can be implemented for November’s general election.

But Senate GOP Majority Leader Joe Pittman insisted Wednesday that Pennsylvania must toughen voter identification requirements as a companion to any legislation on election administration — a demand Republicans have made since 2021.

Democrats have opposed such a change, saying there is scant record of in-person voting fraud and that it will only prevent some registered voters from voting.

A surge in mail-in ballots in 2020’s presidential election shined a spotlight on Pennsylvania’s requirement after it took four days of counting for news agencies to project Biden as the winner of Pennsylvania, giving him the electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

However, Trump and his allies tried to exploit the days it took after polls closed to tabulate the millions of mail-in ballots to spread baseless conspiracy theories and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

Republicans revived those claims during Wednesday’s nearly hourlong floor debate.

“Under this legislation, they’ll take votes from anyone, anytime, anywhere, legal or not,” Rep. Martina White, a Republican from Philadelphia, said during floor debate.

One Republican lawmaker referred back to baseless claims that partisans in Philadelphia, a Democratic bastion, shut down vote-counting to falsify enough mail-in ballots for Biden after polls closed to overcome Trump’s advantage among those voting in-person at polling places.

“This vote will take us back in the days where cities close with one leader for president and opened again with another,” said Rep. Eric Nelson, a Republican from Westmoreland.

House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, a Democrat from Montgomery, said it is shameless to suggest that the legislation is partisan and that lawmakers should pass it to help guarantee a timely and accurate election result while avoiding a repeat of 2020.

“This is simply about giving people a timely result in an election so we don’t have what we had in 2020,” Bradford said during floor debate. “The mindless conspiracies. The election denialism. I’ve heard so much over the last 20 minutes of debate that remind me so much of the horrible months that followed the November 2020 election.”

In 2020, 2.65 million ballots were cast by mail in Pennsylvania, the nation’s fifth-most populous state, or almost 40% of the total.

Republicans have been hostile toward mail-in voting since Trump in early 2020 began baselessly smearing it as rife with fraud.

At least partly as a result, the majority of mail-in ballots — usually about 70% — are cast by registered Democrats in Pennsylvania and the majority of in-person voting on Election Day is done by registered Republicans.

In the days and weeks after 2020’s election, Trump and his allies filed lawsuits to try to throw out mail-in ballots and keep Trump in power by overturning Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.

Republicans have repeatedly gone to court since then to try to invalidate Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law.

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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Twenty-six Republican attorneys general filed lawsuits Wednesday challenging a new Biden administration rule requiring firearms dealers across the United States to run background checks on buyers at gun shows and other places outside brick-and-mortar stores.

The lawsuits filed in federal court in Arkansas, Florida and Texas are seeking to block enforcement of the rule announced last month, which aims to close a loophole that has allowed tens of thousands of guns to be sold every year by unlicensed dealers who do not perform background checks to ensure the potential buyer is not legally prohibited from having a firearm.

The lawsuit argues the new rule violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that Democratic President Joe Biden doesn’t have the authority to implement it.

“Congress has never passed into law the ATF’s dramatic new expansion of firearms dealer license requirements, and President Biden cannot unilaterally impose them,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement. “This lawsuit is just the latest instance of my colleagues in other states and me having to remind the President that he must follow the law.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Department of Justice declined to comment on the lawsuit. Biden administration officials have said they are confident the rule, which drew more than 380,000 public comments, would withstand lawsuits.

As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, the lawsuit and potential court battle to follow could animate both sides — GOP voters who want fewer restrictions on guns and Democrats who want more restrictions on types of firearms and access to them.

Biden has made curtailing gun violence a major part of his administration and reelection campaign as the nation struggles with ever-increasing mass shootings and other killings. He created the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris, and has urged Congress to ban so-called assault weapons — a political term to describe a group of high-powered guns or semi-automatic long rifles, like an AR-15, that can fire 30 rounds fast without reloading. Such a ban was something Democrats shied from even just a few years ago.

Gun control advocates have long pushed for closing the so-called gun show loophole and have praised the new rule on background checks.

“If we don’t update our national system by closing these loopholes, there is no telling how many more Americans we will lose to gun violence,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun control group Brady. “Brady will do everything in our power to defend this rule because we know it brings us closer to a future free from gun violence.”

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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who credits an alligator named Wally for helping relieve his depression for nearly a decade says he is searching for the reptile after it went missing during a vacation to the coast of Georgia.

Joie Henney has thousands of social media users following his pages devoted to Wally, the cold-blooded companion that he calls his emotional support alligator. He has posted photos and videos online of people petting the 5 1/2-foot (1.7 meter) alligator like a dog or hugging it like a teddy bear. Wally’s popularity soared to new heights last year when the gator was denied entry to a Philadelphia Phillies game.

Now Henney said he is distraught after Wally vanished while accompanying him on an April vacation in Brunswick, Georgia, a port city 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Savannah. He said he suspects someone stole Wally from the fenced, outdoor enclosure where Wally spent the night on April 21.

In social media posts, Henney said pranksters left Wally outside the home of someone who called authorities, resulting in his alligator being trapped and released into the wild.

“We need all the help we can get to bring my baby back,” Henney said in a tearful video posted on TikTok. “Please, we need your help.”

Henney said he didn’t have time to talk when The Associated Press reached him by phone Wednesday morning. He did not immediately return follow-up messages.

The man from Jonestown, Pennsylvania, has previously said he obtained Wally in 2015 after the alligator was rescued in Florida at the age of 14 months. Henney told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2019 that Wally helped alleviate depression following the deaths of several close friends. He said a doctor treating his depression had endorsed Wally’s status as his emotional support animal.

“He has never tried to bite no one,” Henney told the newspaper.

No one has filed police reports about the missing alligator in Brunswick and surrounding Glynn County, according to spokespersons for the city and county police departments.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources confirmed that someone in the Brunswick area reported a nuisance alligator on April 21 — the day Henney said Wally went missing — and that a licensed trapper was dispatched to capture it. The agency said in a statement that the gator was “released in a remote location,” but stressed that it doesn’t know if the reptile was Wally.

It’s illegal in Georgia for people to keep alligators without a special license or permit, and the state Department of Natural Resources says it doesn’t grant permits for pet gators. Pennsylvania has no state law against owning alligators, though it is illegal for owners to release them into the wild, according to its Fish and Boat Commission.

David Mixon, a wildlife biologist and coastal supervisor for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, has handled plenty of alligators reported in people’s yards and swimming pools. He has also shown gators kept in captivity in presentations to school groups and Boy Scout troops.

He said even alligators that seem docile can be dangerous, and he always makes sure to hold their mouths closed with a hand or, preferably, a band.

“They’re unpredictable, and they’re often reactive to stimulus,” Mixon said. “There’s lots of videos and pictures where people handle gators, and they do it without getting hurt. But the more time you spend around them, the more likely you are to be injured.”

State wildlife officials in neighboring Florida, home to an estimated 1.3 million alligators, have recorded more than 450 cases of unprovoked alligators biting humans since 1948. That includes more than 90 gator bites since 2014, six of them fatal.

In areas where people can legally own alligators, it is possible for them to be considered emotional support animals, said Lori Kogan, a psychologist and Colorado State University professor who studies interactions between humans and animals.

Unlike service animals that help people with disabilities such as blindness or post-traumatic stress, emotional support animals have no special training, Kogan said. They also don’t have any official registry, though health professionals often write letters of endorsement for owners with a diagnosed mental health condition.

“People can get very attached to a variety of animals,” Kogan said. “Can you get attached to a reptile? Can it bring you comfort? I would say yes. Me personally? No.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s Senate is debating a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors with just days left in a 2024 session where they have largely avoided social hot-button issues.

The bill, passed by the state House in January during the General Assembly’s opening days, would bar health professionals from performing gender-transition surgeries, prescribing puberty blockers and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18.

School principals or vice principals would have to notify parents or guardians if a child wanted to use a name other than their legal one, or a nickname or pronouns that did not match their sex assigned at birth.

Sen. Richard Cash started debate on the bill on Wednesday by asking the Senate to approve it. “We are talking about a serious subject. Nobody is taking this lightly,” the Republican from Powdersville said.

The bill’s passage seemed likely.

The Senate has 30 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent. Democrats last week did not force an on-the-record vote when the proposal would have needed two-thirds approval to move to the top of the list of bills to be taken up. After about an hour of debate, the Senate adjourned to likely take up the issue again Thursday.

The bill also would prevent people from using Medicaid to cover the costs of gender-affirming care.

Doctors and parents testified before committees in both the House and Senate that people younger than 18 do not receive gender-transition surgeries in South Carolina and hormone treatments begin only after extensive consultation with health professionals.

They said the treatments can be lifesaving, allowing young transgender people to live more fulfilling lives. Research has shown that transgender youth and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal behavior when forced to live as the sex they were assigned at birth.

That testimony was most important to Brent Cox, who was waiting to talk to a lawmaker in the Statehouse lobby Wednesday in a “Protect Trans Youth” T-shirt. He said his heart breaks for the way children are treated when they may be dealing with transgender or LGBTQ+ issues but this issue was especially galling because lawmakers were going against doctors.

“I think people who are unqualified when it comes to medical decisions need to consult with their physicians, just like people rely on and would listen to their doctor if they had a cancer diagnosis,” Cox said.

Supporters of the bill have cited their own unpublished evidence that puberty blockers increase self-harm and can be irreversible.

“This decision is of far greater consequences, for instance, than getting a tattoo, choosing a career or even a spouse,” Cash said.

The proposal is part of a broader push to roll back transgender rights from Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the U.S.

But it hasn’t been successful everywhere.

On Monday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes South Carolina, ruled that West Virginia’s and North Carolina’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory. The case is likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kansas also failed to become the 25th state to restrict or ban such care for minors when its Legislature was unable to override a governor’s veto the same day.

South Carolina’s General Assembly has taken a slower, more deliberate approach to social issues during a session dominated by debates that led to a law allowing the open carrying of guns and a broad bill to encourage more energy generation by loosening regulations on power plant approvals.

The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 31 bills in South Carolina it said target the LGBTQ+ community. The ban on gender-affirming care is the only one likely to pass and is less strict than the bans in other states.

Other conservative proposals like new regulations giving the state Board of Education oversight on school library books or banning vaccine mandates for private businesses appear unlikely to pass before the regular session ends May 9.