WASHINGTON (AP) — In her primary victory Tuesday in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, first-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Summer Lee not only far outperformed her lone challenger across the District, but she was also on track to far surpass her own win in the primary two years ago.

The Associated Press called the race for Lee at 9:21 p.m. ET, when she led Edgewood Borough Councilmember Bhavini Patel, 59% to 41%, with more than half of the vote reporting.

Lee was ahead in both vote-rich Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, and in Westmoreland County, where she was trounced in the 2022 primary. At the time the race was called, Lee was also ahead in both counties among votes cast by mail as well as those cast on Election Day. Two years ago in Allegheny, Lee lost decisively among votes cast by mail but managed to carry the county overall on the strength of her performance among Election Day votes.

The 12th District votes reliably Democratic in general elections, but the ongoing protests over the Israel-Hamas war have placed the primary contest in a national spotlight. Lee has accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza and was an early proponent of a cease-fire. She was also supportive of a campaign to vote “uncommitted” in Democratic presidential primaries to send a message to President Joe Biden over the war.

Lee narrowly defeated attorney Steve Irwin in the 2022 Democratic primary, 41.9% to 41.0%. She led Irwin in Allegheny County by less than 5,000 votes, a margin of about 4.5 percentage points. Irwin dominated in Westmoreland County, with 56% of the vote compared to 24% for Lee. But Westmoreland makes up only about 10% of the vote in the 12th District.

Lee’s victory Tuesday as well as her 2022 primary victory were both powered by her strong performance in Pittsburgh, where she was far ahead of Patel, 62% to 38%, at the time the AP called the winner. Two years ago, Lee bested Irwin in Pittsburgh, 54% to 31%.

Lee will face Republican James Hayes in November. She defeated her Republican opponent in 2022, 56% to 44%. Voters in the 12th District gave Democrat Hillary Clinton 57% of the vote in the 2016 presidential election and President Joe Biden 59% of the vote in 2020.

A look at what’s in the $95 billion package passed by the Senate on Tuesday that will provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel, replenish U.S. weapons systems and give humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

President Joe Biden has promised to sign the package Wednesday.

The broad spending breakdown:

— About $61 billion for Ukraine and replenishing U.S. weapons stockpiles. The overall amount provided to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons would be $13.8 billion. Ukraine would receive more than $9 billion of economic assistance in the form of “forgivable loans.”

— About $26 billion for supporting Israel and providing humanitarian relief for people in Gaza. About $4 billion of that would be dedicated to replenishing Israel’s missile defense systems. More than $9 billion of the total would go toward humanitarian assistance in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.

— About $8 billion for helping U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region and countering China. More than $3.3 billion would go toward submarine infrastructure and development, with an additional $1.9 billion to replenish U.S. weapons provided to Taiwan and other regional allies.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A Texas grand jury indicted more than 140 migrants on misdemeanor rioting charges Tuesday over an alleged mass attempt to breach the U.S.-Mexico border, a day after a judge threw out the cases.

No injuries were reported during the alleged breach on April 12 in El Paso, which authorities say began when someone in the group cut through a razor wire barrier. Mass arrests also followed a separate episode in the Texas border city in March.

On Monday, a county judge had thrown out the charges against those who were arrested this month, ruling there was insufficient probable cause. A public defender representing the migrants had argued there was not enough evidence and accused authorities of trying to make headlines.

“The citizens of El Paso, through the grand jury, essentially overruled the judge’s ruling and found probable cause to believe that the riots did occur,” El Paso County District Attorney Bill Hicks told reporters Tuesday.

Kelli Childress-Diaz, the El Paso Public Defender who is representing the 141 defendants, said she wasn’t surprised.

“I imagine they had that already prepared before the hearing even started yesterday,” she said.

The arrests have drawn more attention to Texas’ expanding operations along the border, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has rolled out a series of aggressive measures in the name of curbing illegal crossings. Following the arrests in March, Abbott responded by saying he sent 700 additional National Guard members to El Paso.

Hicks, whom Abbott appointed to the job in 2022, said that although it is not common for a grand jury to indict misdemeanor cases, he felt it was “fair” to pose the cases before them. In all, Hicks estimated they had arrested over 350 people on rioting charges since March.

If convicted, those charged could each face up to 180 days in county jail and a fine of up to $2,000. Those in jail still face federal charges, and Hicks said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could still pick them up from jail to process them on an illegal entry offense.

“It turns my stomach that these people are nothing more than than, you know, political coins in a bet that some of our government officials have hedged,” Childress-Diaz told The Associated Press.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The USPS announced on Tuesday it will follow through with its plan to reroute Reno-area mail processing to Sacramento, a move that drew bipartisan ire from Nevada lawmakers while raising questions about the rate at which mail ballots can be processed in a populous part of a crucial swing state.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has cast the permanent measure as a cost saving move, but federal, state and local lawmakers have complained about a lack of transparency in the process that could slow mail throughout the region.

Under the plan, all mail from the Reno area will pass through Sacramento before reaching its destination — even from one side of the city to the other.

Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the state’s top election official, previously said moving operations could slow the processing of mail ballots, and “has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Nevada voters and would unquestionably impact the results of Nevada’s elections.”

In the Tuesday statement, the USPS said “the business case” supported moving the processes to California, because most of the mail processed in Reno is destined elsewhere. The Reno facility will stay open as an area that prepares mail before it’s sent out. USPS will invest $13.4 million in the facility, mostly for renovations, per the agency.

“This plan for the Reno facility will help USPS achieve the core goals of our Delivering for America plan: financial sustainability for our organization and improved service reliability for our customers,” spokesperson Rod Spurgeon said in an emailed statement.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, who opposes the restructuring, previously told reporters that USPS officials indicated their tentative plan was to begin the rerouting in January, after the 2024 election. But in a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press, Spurgeon said there is no set date for implementation.

Lawmakers have expressed concerns that mail service can be caught in traffic delays even in the best of weather by the hour-long round trip drive over the Sierra Nevada, which lies between Reno and Sacramento. The area is also known for harsh blizzards throughout much of the year, including one in March that dumped up to 10 feet of snow and provided ammo for critics of the move.

Northern Nevada’s congressional delegation — which includes Rosen, Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei — sent a letter to USPS opposing the move and have long spoken out against it.

Other opposition came from Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and the Washoe County Commission, which includes Reno.

In a statement following the announcement, Rosen said she was “outraged that out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats think they know what’s best for our state.”

“Let me be absolutely clear: this fight is not over,” she said in the statement. “As a member of the committee with jurisdiction over the Postal Service, I will continue to fight against this ill-advised decision and explore all available options to prevent it from being implemented.”

Lombardo said his administration, along with Nevada’s congressional delegation, will “continue to fight against mismanagement in Washington for timely and efficient mail services for Nevadans.”

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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Follow Stern on X, formerly Twitter: @gabestern326.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video app for income.

The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and was passed 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who said in a statement immediately after passage that he will sign it Wednesday.

A decision made by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped expedite its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stakes in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned it was too short of a window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, and a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. The bill would also bar the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trendsetting phenomenon.

TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday night.

The passage of the legislation is a culmination of long-held bipartisan fears in Washington over Chinese threats and the ownership of TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data, or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.

“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell said. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”

Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily get information on Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that traffic in personal information. The foreign aid package includes a provision that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally identifiable sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. But it has encountered some pushback, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is written too broadly and could sweep in journalists and others who publish personal information.

Many opponents of the TikTok measure argue the best way to protect U.S. consumers is through implementing a comprehensive federal data privacy law that targets all companies regardless of their origin. They also note the U.S. has not provided public evidence that shows TikTok sharing U.S. user information with Chinese authorities, or that Chinese officials have ever tinkered with its algorithm.

“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, a deputy director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the divestiture deadline neither justifies the urgency of the threat to the public nor addresses the legislation’s fundamental constitutional flaws.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who voted for the legislation, said he has concerns about TikTok, but he’s also worried the bill could have negative effects on free speech, doesn’t do enough to protect consumer privacy and could potentially be abused by a future administration to violate First Amendment rights.

“I plan to watchdog how this legislation is implemented,” Wyden said in a statement.

China has previously said it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, and has signaled its opposition this time around. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a security threat, is also preparing a lawsuit to block the legislation.

“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees on Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press.

“This is the beginning, not the end of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.

The company has seen some success with court challenges in the past, but it has never sought to prevent federal legislation from going into effect.

In November, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that would ban TikTok use across the state after the company and five content creators who use the platform sued. Three years before that, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump to ban TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.

The Trump administration then brokered a deal that had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok. But the sale never went through.

Trump, who is running for president again this year, now says he opposes the potential ban.

Since then, TikTok has been in negotiations about its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security concerns.

On Sunday, Erich Andersen, a top attorney for ByteDance who led talks with the U.S. government for years, told his team that he was stepping down from his role.

“As I started to reflect some months ago on the stresses of the last few years and the new generation of challenges that lie ahead, I decided that the time was right to pass the baton to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in an internal memo that was obtained by the AP. He said the decision to step down was entirely his and was decided months ago in a discussion with the company’s senior leaders.

Meanwhile, TikTok content creators who rely on the app have been trying to make their voices heard. Earlier Tuesday, some creators congregated in front the Capitol building to speak out against the bill and carry signs that read “I’m 1 of the 170 million Americans on TikTok,” among other things.

Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has more than 140,000 followers on the platform and had encouraged people to show up, said she spent Monday night picking up creators from airports in the D.C. area. Some came from as far as Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.

Cianci says she believes TikTok is the safest platform for users right now because of Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle.

“If our data is not safe on TikTok,” she said. “I would ask why the president is on TikTok.”

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A 29-year-old suspect in a break-in at the home of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass last weekend was charged Tuesday with burglary and vandalism, and authorities said they believe he was “targeting” the mayor but did not know why.

Ephraim Matthew Hunter, a Los Angeles resident, was charged with a felony count of first-degree residential burglary and a felony count of vandalism, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said. Hunter shattered a rear glass door early Sunday morning to gain entry to the Getty House, the mayor’s official residence near downtown, and was cut by glass and left blood stains throughout the home, Gascón said.

The mayor, her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild were in the home at the time.

“We believe that he was targeting the mayor,” Gascón said, without providing specific details how investigators reached that conclusion. “We are going on the assumption that he knew that it was her residence.”

“We are glad that there were no injuries, and the mayor is OK,” Gascón added.

Hunter is being held on $100,000 bail.

Bass told reporters Monday, “I am fine. My family is fine.”

The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Hunter, said in a statement that “our office will ensure that Mr. Hunter receives a fair and robust defense and a full investigation into the circumstances which led to the accusations against him.”

Bass’ office and the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to questions about security protocols at the residence.

Interim Police Chief Dominic Choi told reporters Tuesday that Hunter, who reached the second floor of the home, broke in during a time when there were no security officers on the property. Hunter arrived at the home in a brief gap during a shift change, which has been remedied to create an overlap of shifts, Choi said.

The Los Angeles Times, citing public records, said Hunter was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon following a 2015 attack on a man in Massachusetts and served seven years in state prison.

The newspaper said Josephine Duah, who identified herself as Hunter’s mother, said she spoke with her son Monday from jail, and he told her he allegedly entered the property because he believed he was being pursued by someone who wanted to harm him and did not know who owned the residence. She said her son planned to enter a drug treatment clinic on Monday but never made it.

Bass served as a Democratic member of Congress from 2011 until her election as the city’s 43rd mayor in 2022. The former state Assembly leader is the first woman and second Black person to hold the post, after former Mayor Tom Bradley, who held the position from 1973 to 1993.

The arrest recalled the October 2022 break-in at former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home, in which her husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer. A jury last year found David DePape guilty of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official.

The attack raised questions about the security provided for members of Congress and their families. The U.S. Capitol Police had a camera at the residence. But it was not being monitored at the time of the attack because Nancy Pelosi was not home.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Children fatally shot in their classrooms. Law enforcement gunned down while doing their jobs. Victims of domestic violence. And people killed on American streets.

Photos of their faces line the wall as part of a new exhibit inside the federal agency in Washington that’s responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws. It’s meant to serve as a powerful reminder to law enforcement of the human toll of gun violence they are working to prevent.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday told relatives of those killed and survivors that America’s gun violence problem can sometimes feel so enormous that it seems like nothing can be done. But, he added, “that could not be farther from the truth.”

“In the effort to keep our country safe from gun violence, the Justice Department will never give in and never give up,” Garland said during a dedication ceremony Tuesday inside the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We know what is at stake.”

Garland’s remarks came after he met privately with some relatives of those whose photos are included in the exhibit. They were in Washington for a summit at ATF that brought together people impacted by gun violence, law enforcement and others to discuss ways to prevent the bloodshed. Among participants were survivors like Mia Tretta, who was shot at Saugus High School in California in 2019 and has become an intern at ATF.

The more than 100 faces on the wall include Dylan Hockley, one of 20 first graders killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School; Tiffany Enriquez, a police officer killed in Hawaii in 2020; and Ethel Lance, a victim of the 2015 Charleston church shooting in South Carolina. They will remain there until next year, when photos of a new group of gun violence victims will replace their faces.

Clementina Chéry said seeing her son Louis’ photo on the wall brought back painful reminders of “what the world lost” when the 15-year-old was caught in a crossfire and killed while walking in Boston in 1993. But she said in an interview after the ceremony that she’s heartened by law enforcement’s willingness to listen to the experiences of those who have been directly affected.

“We were all saying the same thing: Something has to be done, something can be done. And it is up to us. And we want to be in partnership with law enforcement,” she said.

President Joe Biden has made his administration’s efforts to curb gun violence a key part of his reelection campaign, seeking to show the Democrat is tough on crime. Even though violent crime — which rose following the coronavirus pandemic — has fallen in the U.S., Donald Trump and other Republicans have tried to attack the president by painting crime in Democratic-led cities as out of control.

ATF Director Steve Dettelbach told the crowd that while there has been progress in curbing gun violence, now is the time to “double down and triple down on action to protect life and safety.”

“We also honor the memories not just by thinking of individuals like this, these people, but by taking action,” Dettelbach said. “Action to prevent more faces from being added to this tragic wall.”

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago woman has been convicted of killing and dismembering her landlord and putting some of the victim’s remains inside a freezer in the boarding house where she lived.

A Cook County jury convicted Sandra Kolalou, 37, late Monday of all the charges she faced, including first-degree murder, dismembering a body, concealing a homicidal death, and aggravated identity theft, news outlets reported. Her sentencing is scheduled for June 20.

Prosecutors said Frances Walker, 69, had served Kolalou with an eviction notice from a boarding house she owned before Kolalou killed and dismembered her in October 2022.

Kolalou, whose attorneys plan to appeal the verdict, was arrested and charged after Walker’s severed head, arms and legs were discovered inside a kitchen freezer at the home on Chicago’s northwest side.

She was arrested after police said she pulled a knife on a tow truck driver who drove her to a beach on Chicago’s lakefront. Prosecutors said Kolalou dumped a heavy bag into a garbage can there and then pulled a knife on the driver after he refused to take her to another location.

Members of Walker’s family told reporters Monday that the verdict provides them with some closure.

“I believe justice was done, and I’m glad society will be a little bit safer without this person out there,” said Walker’s younger brother, Arnold Walker.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations called Tuesday for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.

Credible investigators must have access to the sites, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, and added that more journalists need to be able to work safely in Gaza to report on the facts.

Earlier Tuesday, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Shifa medical center in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as well as the reported discovery of mass graves in and around the facilities after the Israelis left.

He called for independent and transparent investigations into the deaths, saying that “given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators.”

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” Türk said. “And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are ‘hors de combat’ (incapable of engaging in combat) is a war crime.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday called the reports of mass graves at the hospitals “incredibly troubling” and said U.S. officials have asked the Israeli government for information.

The Israeli military said its forces exhumed bodies that Palestinians had buried earlier as part of its search for the remains of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. The military said bodies were examined in a respectful manner and those not belonging to Israeli hostages were returned to their place.

The Israeli military says it killed or detained hundreds of militants who had taken shelter inside the two hospital complexes, claims that could not be independently verified.

The Palestinian civil defense in the Gaza Strip said Monday that it had uncovered 283 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in Khan Younis that was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the group said.

The civil defense said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital.

Palestinian health officials say the hospital raids have destroyed Gaza’s health sector as it tries to cope with the mounting toll from over six months of war.

The issue of who could or should conduct an investigation remains in question.

For the United Nations to conduct an investigation, one of its major bodies would have to authorize it, Dujarric said.

“I think it’s not for anyone to prejudge the results or who would do it,” he said. “I think it needs to be an investigation where there is access and there is credibility.”

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said after visiting Israel and the West Bank in December that a probe by the court into possible crimes by Hamas militants and Israeli forces “is a priority for my office.”

The discovery of the graves “is another reason why we need a cease-fire, why we need to see an end to this conflict, why we need to see greater access for humanitarians, for humanitarian goods, greater protection for hospitals” and for the release of Israeli hostages, Dujarric said Monday.

In the Hamas attack that launched the war, militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

In response, Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza, aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities, created a humanitarian crisis and led around 80% of the territory’s population to flee to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

SEATTLE (AP) — A former Washington state police officer wanted after killing two people, including his ex-wife, was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a chase in Oregon, authorities said Tuesday. His 1-year-old baby, who was with him, was taken safely into custody by Oregon State Police troopers.

The troopers began chasing the ex-Yakima officer, Elias Huizar, when they saw him driving southbound on Interstate 5 near Eugene, Oregon, at about 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Oregon State Police Capt. Kyle Kennedy said at a media briefing Tuesday evening that Huizar fled after a trooper tried to pull over his vehicle.

Troopers pursued Huizar’s vehicle at high speeds and at one point exchanged gunfire with him, according to Kennedy. The pursuit, over about 25 miles (40 kilometers), ended when Huizar’s vehicle hit a commercial vehicle that was stopped on the interstate because of an unrelated crash.

Huizar’s vehicle spun and became immobile in the median, and when troopers tried to make contact with him, he shot himself and died at the scene, Kennedy said. The 1-year-old was uninjured and removed from the vehicle, Kennedy said.

He additionally said he didn’t believe anyone was hurt during the exchange of gunfire with police.

“All day our thoughts have been how to rescue this young boy and we’re thankful for the outcome that occurred,” Kennedy said.

Huizar went on the run Monday afternoon after killing two people, including his ex-wife, Amber Rodriguez, 31, whom he shot eight times outside a West Richland elementary school in front of their 9-year-old son and other witnesses, police said. Rodriguez had recently obtained a protection order against Huizar.

Rodriguez worked at the school, while Huizar had recently worked as a substitute teacher in the Richland School District, the district confirmed in a Facebook post Tuesday.

Police did not identify the other victim, whose body was found later Monday at Huizar’s house, except to say she was Huizar’s girlfriend.

According to court records, Huizar, 39, had at least until early this year been living with a 17-year-old girl whom he met when she was 11 and he was a middle school resource officer in Yakima. He impregnated her when she was 15; their baby recently turned 1, Rodriguez wrote in seeking a protection order against Huizar.

The Yakima Police Department said in a Facebook post Tuesday that Huizar left the department in 2021 “after receiving discipline.” It did not provide any other information.

In February, the 17-year-old girl reported to police that Huizar sexually assaulted a 16-year-old friend, who had passed out at their house. Huizar was charged with rape of both the teen and her friend. He was out on bail pending trial, authorities said.

Rodriguez wrote in her petition for a protection order that her divorce from Huizar became final last year and that she had not been aware that he was having a relationship with the same teen he had met as a resource officer until he was charged with rape.

She said she feared for the safety of her children and that she would be seeking a modification of their parenting plan. She filed for the modification last Friday, court records show. The protection order was issued in February and was to remain in effect for a year; under it, Huizar was barred from possessing firearms.

The Richland School District said it terminated Huizar’s employment following his arrest in February. It said it had received recommendations from the Yakima School District before hiring him in 2022, and that he had passed background checks.

“We are extremely disheartened that information about Mr. Huizar’s past was not disclosed to us through the various processes we have in place to vet RSD candidates for employment,” the district said. “It is the expectation for individuals who apply for employment with RSD to be forthcoming and truthful in their applications.”

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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska. AP reporter Lisa Baumann contributed from Bellingham, Washington.