ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A Republican attempt to expedite an ethics investigation of a Democratic Minnesota state senator who’s facing a felony burglary charge failed on a tie vote Wednesday.

Sen. Nicole Mitchell, of Woodbury, was absent as the Senate reconvened for the first time since her arrest early Monday at her estranged stepmother’s home in the northwestern Minnesota city of Detroit Lakes. Mitchell was charged Tuesday with one count of first-degree burglary and allowed to go free after a day in jail.

Mitchell’s arrest has already complicated the remainder of the 2024 legislative session because Senate Democrats hold just a one-seat majority, making her vote critical for passing disputed legislation. Republican leaders have called on her to resign. But Democratic Majority Leader Erin Murphy, of St. Paul, told reporters that Mitchell will be allowed to vote remotely.

According to the criminal complaint, Mitchell told police she broke into her stepmother’s home because her stepmother refused to give her items of sentimental value from her late father, including his ashes. Her attorney said the dispute arose out of a “fractured relationship” between the two that has been aggravated by age-related issues. In a Facebook post, Mitchell denied stealing.

Senate Republicans filed an ethics complaint against Mitchell before the Senate convened Wednesday, then forced a vote on a motion to immediately launch the investigation and consideration of her expulsion. Under normal Senate rules, it could take 30 days just to start the process, which would delay any action until after the legislative session.

“Senators must be held to the highest standard of ethical conduct,” GOP Sen. Eric Lucero, of St. Michael, told his colleagues. “Public trust has been violated. We must have a swift examination of this serious felony charge to ensure the integrity of this institution and the state of Minnesota is upheld.”

But Democratic Sen. Nick Frentz, of North Mankato, told them Mitchell is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence. He said other lawmakers charged with crimes in recent years were allowed to go through the legal process.

Mitchell’s desk was empty for the debate, which ended in a 33-33 vote.

Murphy said a timeline for considering the GOP ethics complaint has yet to be decided.

But the process is designed to be difficult. The Senate ethics panel is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, and any vote to expel a senator would require a two-thirds majority.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden showed off his putting during a campaign stop at a public golf course in Michigan last month, the moment was captured on TikTok.

Forced inside by a rainstorm, he competed with 13-year-old Hurley “HJ” Coleman IV to make putts on a practice mat. The Coleman family posted video of the proceedings on the app — complete with Biden holing out a putt and the teen knocking his own shot home in response, over the caption, “I had to sink the rebuttal.”

The network television cameras that normally follow the president were stuck outside.

Biden signed legislation Wednesday that could ban TikTok in the U.S. while his campaign has embraced the platform and tried to work with influencers. Already struggling to maintain his previous support from younger voters, the president is now facing criticism from some avid users of the app, which researchers have found is a primary news source for a third of Americans under the age of 30.

“There’s a core hypocrisy to the Biden administration supporting the TikTok ban while at the same time using TikTok for his campaign purposes,” said Kahlil Greene, who has more than 650,000 followers and is known on TikTok as the “Gen Z Historian.”

“I think it illustrates that he and his people know the power and necessity of TikTok.”

The Biden campaign defends its approach and rejects the idea that White House policy is contradicting its political efforts.

“We would be silly to write off any place where people are getting information about the president,” said Rob Flaherty, who ran the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy and now is deputy manager of Biden’s reelection campaign.

Flaherty said Biden’s team forged relationships with TikTok influencers the 2020 election and that the platform has only gotten more influential since then, “growing as an internet search engine and driving narratives about the president.”

The Biden campaign says that an increasingly fragmented modern media environment requires it to meet voters where they are and that TikTok is one of many such places where would-be supporters see its content, in addition to platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

It has produced its own TikTok content, but also relied on everyday users who interact with the president. That includes a post from a family that ate fries and other fixings from the Cook Out fast food chain when Biden recently visited Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as Coleman’s putting video.

Opponents of TikTok say its ownership by Chinese company ByteDance gives Beijing a dangerous amount of influence over what narratives Americans see as well as potential access to U.S. user data. Chinese national-security laws allow the ruling Communist Party wide latitude over private business, though the U.S. has not made public evidence that the Chinese government has manipulated the app or forced ByteDance to do its bidding.

The law Biden signed Wednesday would force ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. company within a year or face a national ban. ByteDance has argued the law violates the First Amendment and promised to sue.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, now publicly opposes a TikTok ban after issuing an executive order while in office trying to ban the app if ByteDance didn’t sell it.

The White House doesn’t have an official TikTok account and Biden banned the app on most government devices in December 2022. Yet the Biden campaign also officially joined TikTok on the night of this year’s Super Bowl, as the president shunned a traditional gameday TV interview to instead spread a political message with the platform.

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki convened a virtual briefing in 2022 for more than two dozen of the app’s influencers to discuss the U.S. approach to Ukraine, a gathering later parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

There have been scores of other such events, including an influencer party at the White House last Christmas and a State of the Union watch party in March. During Biden’s recent, $26 million campaign fundraiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, there was an influencer happy hour and an after-party where attendees interacted with Biden.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that the legislation Biden signed “is not a ban. This is about our national security.”

She said the White House isn’t saying “that we do not want Americans to use TikTok” and that divestment from Chinese interests in coming months should be possible given that “there are already investors who are willing” to buy the platform,

TikTok has 170 million U.S. users and a study released last November by the Pew Research Center found that about a third of U.S. adults under 30 regularly got news from TikTok, compared to 14% of all adults.

Adults under 30 are more likely than U.S. adults overall to oppose a ban on the use of TikTok in the United States, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in January. Nearly half of 18- to 29-year-olds are opposed, compared to 35% of U.S. adults.

About 2 in 10 U.S. adults said then they use TikTok at least once a day, including 44% of 18- to 29-year-olds. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 7% say they use TikTok “almost constantly” and an additional 28% are using it “several times a day.”

Priorities USA, a leading Democratic super PAC, is spending around $1 million this cycle to help fund more than 100 TikTok influencers who produce pro-Biden content ahead of November, and views those efforts as an extension of traditional organizing and communications initiatives.

Even if TikTok is eventually banned, most of its influencers are on other platforms that could continue to take their content, especially YouTube and Instagram, said Danielle Butterfield, Priorities USA’s executive director.

“TikTok users are online generally and that’s a lot of different places,” said Butterfield, who was also director of digital content for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Biden, meanwhile, has seen his standing with young people decline. About one-third of adults under 30 approve of how he’s handling his job as president, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in March — a sharp drop from the roughly two-thirds approved when he first entered office.

Greene studied history at Yale, served as the school’s first Black student body president and graduated in 2022. He attended past White House events as an influencer, including a Juneteenth celebration and a West Wing event for the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping health care and green energy package, where he met both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

About a year ago, however, Greene says he began posting about Biden’s championing a sweeping 1994 crime law that activists have long said contributed to the mass incarceration of racial minorities. He also criticized Biden’s current administration for what he called “a lack of specific policy made for Black Americans.”

Since then, while Greene continues to receive more general emails from the Biden administration, he said says he’s no longer invited to more personal events while some “creators who fell in line, who are less critical” are still going.

Flaherty, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said the campaign has paid influencers in specific instances, like when their content has been used in ads, and that some content creators who work with the campaign have raised concerns about legislation forcing divestment. But he doesn’t see it having a major Election Day impact.

“I think young voters aren’t going to vote on TikTok,” Flaherty said. “They are going to vote on issues, which are discussed on TikTok but they’re also discussed other places.”

Greene, however, said young voters’ frustration with the Biden administration in other areas — particularly its handling of Israel-Hamas war — have combined with the TikTok divestment legislation to spell political problems for Biden.

“There’s no ability for me to overstate how that exacerbates the outcry,” he said, “and the dissatisfaction that people already have.”

___

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

SEATTLE (AP) — A Tesla that may have been operating on the company’s Autopilot driving system hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle, raising questions about whether a recent recall went far enough to ensure Tesla drivers using Autopilot pay attention to the road.

After the crash Friday in a suburban area about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of the city, the driver of a 2022 Tesla Model S told a Washington State Patrol trooper that he was using Autopilot and looked at his cellphone while the Tesla was moving.

“The next thing he knew there was a bang and the vehicle lurched forward as it accelerated and collided with the motorcycle in front of him,” the trooper wrote in a probable-cause document.

The 56-year-old driver was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide “based on the admitted inattention to driving, while on Autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward, putting trust in the machine to drive for him,” the affidavit said.

The Tesla driver told the trooper that he was driving home from having lunch when the crash occurred at about 3:45 p.m.

The motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen, 28, of Stanwood, Washington, was under the car and pronounced dead at the scene, authorities reported.

Authorities said they have not yet independently verified whether Autopilot was in use at the time of the crash. “We have not gotten that far yet. It’s very early stages of the investigation,” Washington State Patrol Capt. Deion Glover said Wednesday.

The death comes about four months after U.S. auto safety regulators pressured Tesla into recalling more than 2 million vehicles to fix a defective system that’s supposed to make sure drivers pay attention when using Autopilot.

A message was left Wednesday seeking comment from Tesla, which collects online data from its vehicles.

Under the December recall, part of a two-year investigation into Teslas on Autopilot hitting emergency vehicles parked on roadways, Tesla reluctantly agreed to update Autopilot software to increase warnings and alerts to drivers.

Autopilot can keep a car centered in its lane and a distance from vehicles in front of it, but Tesla says on its website that the cars can’t drive themselves, despite the name.

The company’s monitoring system sends alerts to drivers if it fails to detect torque from hands on the steering wheel, a system that experts have described as inadequate. They say the systems should have infrared cameras that make sure drivers have their eyes on the road.

It’s not known whether the Tesla involved in the Washington motorcyclist’s death got the software update specified in the recall, but documents filed by Tesla with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say most newer Teslas have software that would automatically include the update.

Kelly Funkhouser, associate director of vehicle technology for Consumer Reports, said it’s her understanding that the software update automatically went to most Teslas.

Many Teslas have cameras in the cabin that can watch drivers using Autopilot, but Funkhouser said Consumer Reports found in testing that the cameras can be covered up by drivers without consequences.

The government should be investigating the crash to see if the recall fixes are doing what they were intended to do, said Philip Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies vehicle-automation safety.

If Autopilot was in use, “NHTSA should be looking at this as a data point as to whether Tesla has effectively removed unreasonable risk from the use of Autopilot,” Koopman said. “The problem is this affects other road users, which is why regulatory intervention is appropriate.”

A message was left seeking comment from NHTSA. Since 2016, the agency has sent investigators to at least 35 crashes in which Teslas suspected of operating on a partially automated driving system hit parked emergency vehicles, motorcyclists or tractor trailers that crossed in the vehicles’ paths, causing a total of 17 deaths.

The agency also is investigating crashes involving automated driving systems from other automakers. Most recently it sent teams to two fatal crashes involving Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicles.

____

Krisher reported from Detroit.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The big U.S. aid package for Ukraine and other allies that President Joe Biden signed Wednesday also allows the administration to seize Russian state assets located in the U.S. and use them for the benefit of Kyiv.

That could mean another $5 billion in assistance for Ukraine, coming from Russian Central Bank holdings that have already been frozen in the United States. The seizures would be carried out under provisions of the REPO Act, short for the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act, that were incorporated into the aid bill.

But it’s not likely the U.S. will seize the assets without agreement from other members of the Group of Seven nations and the European Union.

The U.S. and its allies immediately froze $300 billion in Russian foreign holdings at the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. That money has been sitting untapped — most of it in European Union nations — as the war grinds on. But roughly $5 billion of it is located in the U.S.

The frozen assets are immobilized and can’t be accessed by Moscow — but they still belong to Russia. While governments can generally freeze property without difficulty, turning that property into forfeited assets that can be sold for the benefit of Ukraine requires an extra layer of judicial procedure, including a legal basis and adjudication in a court.

For more than a year, officials from multiple countries have debated the legality of confiscating the money and sending it to Ukraine.

The new U.S. law requires the president and Treasury Department to start locating Russian assets in the U.S. within 90 days and to report back to Congress within 180 days. A month after that period, the president will be allowed to “seize, confiscate, transfer, or vest” any Russian state sovereign assets, including any interest, within U.S. jurisdictions.

But the U.S. wants to keep consulting with global allies and act together, which is likely to slow down the process.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday the issue would be an important topic when leaders of the G7 countries meet in Italy in June, adding that “the ideal is that we all move together.”

Biden is given leeway to determine how the money can be spent for the benefit of Ukraine — but he must confer with other G7 members before acting.

The legislation states that “any effort by the United States to confiscate and repurpose Russian sovereign assets” should be done alongside international allies, including the G7, the 27-member European Union and other nations as part of a coordinated effort.

Policymakers, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have said the U.S. is not likely to act without the support of G7 allies.

Yellen said after the passage of the bill that “Congress took an important step in that effort with the passage of the REPO Act, and I will continue intensive discussions with our G7 partners in the weeks ahead on a collective path forward,” Yellen said.

The European Union already has begun to set aside windfall profits generated from frozen Russian central bank assets. The bloc estimates the interest on that money could provide around 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) each year.

“The Russians will not be very happy. The amount of money, 3 billion per year, is not extraordinary, but it is not negligible,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in March.

Still, some European leaders have expressed hesitation about moving forward with a plan to formally seize Russia’s assets in Europe.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said at a Council on Foreign Relations event earlier this month that confiscating Russian assets “is something that needs to be looked at very carefully” and could “start breaking the international legal order.”

Critics of the REPO Act say the weaponization of global finance against Russia could harm the U.S. dollar’s standing as the world’s dominant currency.

To confiscate Russia’s assets could prompt nations like China — the biggest holder of U.S. Treasuries — to determine it is not safe to keep their reserves in U.S. dollars.

The conservative Heritage Foundation has criticized Russian asset seizure for, among other things, undermining the dollar-denominated global finance system, saying “it would expose an already fragile economy to unintended consequences and risks for which the United States is unprepared.”

Russian authorities have warned that the new law will undermine the global financial system.

NEW YORK (AP) — For millions of American workers, the federal government took two actions this week that could bestow potentially far-reaching benefits.

In one move, the Federal Trade Commission voted to ban noncompete agreements, which bar millions of workers from leaving their employers for a specific period of time. The FTC’s move, which is already being challenged in court, would mean that such employees could apply for jobs they weren’t previously eligible to seek.

In a second move, the Biden administration finalized a rule that will make millions more salaried workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule significantly raises the salary level that workers could earn and still qualify for overtime.

The new rules don’t take effect immediately. And they won’t benefit everyone. So what exactly would these rules mean for America’s workers?

Noncompete agreements, which employers have deployed with greater frequency in recent years, limit an employee’s ability to jump ship for a rival company or start a competing business for a stated period of time. The idea is to prevent employees from taking a company’s trade secrets, job leads or sales relationships to a direct competitor, who could immediately capitalize on them.

Many industries use noncompete agreements, often among their salespeople, said Paul Lopez, managing partner at Tripp Scott, a Florida law firm that has handled more than 100 cases involving noncompete clauses.

“They’re the ones out there generating leads and sales,” Lopez said. “The last thing you as a business will want is for that person to go over to your competition and do the same thing.”

A moving company that relied on its relationships with real estate agents to generate business, Lopez said, was surprised to learn that an employee was doing business on the side, including with a competitor, using client relationships he had made through his employer. That violated his noncompete agreement, so he was fired.

People may assume that noncompete agreements apply only to high-level executives in the technology or finance industries. But many lower-level workers are subject to the restrictions as well. The rules vary by state.

In Florida, one medical sales worker was barred by his employer from joining a competitor for 10 years — and once he left his job, was unemployed for more than five years, said Stefanie Camfield, assistant general counsel with Engage PEO, a Florida company that handles human resources for small and medium-sized businesses.

“He was able to find another sales position in a completely different industry,” Camfield said. “But the learning curve was there, so he wasn’t making the same amount of money.”

In another case, a company in the optical industry that had hired a sales associate was informed by his former employer that it intended to enforce a noncompete agreement. So the optical company terminated the employee, Camfield said.

“They thought they had a qualified sales associate hired and ready to get to work, and all of a sudden now they’re back to square one.”

Some view noncompete agreements as harmful and unfair to workers by limiting their mobility. Career opportunities are often more attractive outside an employee’s current workplace. And with restrictions on the type of work they can do for a competitor, it can be hard to shift into a more suitable or lucrative position.

Many hiring managers, after all, most value job candidates who already have a certain level of experience in the same industry.

“A noncompete would unilaterally ban someone from getting exactly the kind of job that it’s reasonable to want,” said Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, a professor of organizational behavior at Babson College in Massachusetts. “To cut people off from that is overly paternalistic. It’s using a really blunt instrument to limit people’s mobility, when in reality there are other legal mechanisms to prevent trade secrets being disclosed.”

People are sometimes surprised to learn hat they’re bound by such an agreement. They might not even find out until after they’ve left for a new job, and their former employer intervenes and causes them to be fired.

“When you join a company, you’re so focused on the opportunity in front of you, you might not be thinking about what’s that next jump,” Tosti-Kharas said.

Experts suggest that employees consult their human resources department about any noncompete agreements that might exist. If a workplace doesn’t have an HR department, an employee should ask a lawyer for the company.

There are still laws on the books that protect companies’ trade secrets. The FTC decision doesn’t change that.

And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already filed a lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission, calling its decision a dangerous precedent for government micromanagement of business. Lawsuits could delay any implementation of the FTC’s new rule, potentially for years.

Starting July 1, employers of all sizes will be required pay overtime — time and a half salary after 40 hours a week — to salaried workers who make less than $43,888 a year in certain executive, administrative and professional roles. That cap will then rise to $58,656 by the start of 2025. Previously, the cap was $35,568.

The Labor Department estimates that 4 million salaried workers who weren’t previously eligible will qualify. Some occupations, though, including teachers, doctors and lawyers are not eligible for overtime pay and thus are not affected by the change. And some states, like California and New York, already have salary thresholds that exceed the federal level.

Predictably, groups that represent companies have lined up against the new rule. Conversely, worker groups are applauding it as a necessary and long-overdue change.

The National Retail Federation argued that the new rules “curtail retailers’ ability to offer the most flexible, generous and tailored benefits packages to lower-level exempt employees across the industry.”

It also asserted that the new rules don’t give employers adequate time to make the changes needed. And it complained that the inclusion of automatic increases “exceeds the Department’s legal authority and oversteps longstanding Fair Labor Standards Act and Administrative Procedure Act principles.”

On the social media site X, the AFL-CIO labor organization said the rules will “restore and extend overtime protections for hard-working Americans.”

Almost certainly so. A 2016 effort by the Obama administration was scuttled in court just days before it was set to take effect. Because the new overtime rules won’t take effect until July 1, groups have time to study the ruling before mounting a challenge.

“I would expect there will be some legal challenges,” said Ted Hollis, a partner at the law firm Quarles & Brady. “When the Obama administration published its proposed rule in 2016, that was almost immediately challenged in court.”

Companies of all sizes will have to reclassify workers who will now qualify for overtime pay — and make sure they track hours and pay them properly.

Another option is to raise employees’ salaries so they would remain exempt from overtime. But employers should keep in mind that two more increases are coming under the new timetable.

They’ll also have to determine how they will budget for the extra pay for overtime. Small businesses will have the toughest time.

“Some are going to have to cut workers,” Hollis said. “Others will have to cut hours from existing workers.

“Some are going to have to raise prices, and some probably won’t be able to figure out a way to make it economically work and wind up having to shut down, unfortunately.”

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal investigation has concluded that a young Black man died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a rural Missouri home, not at the hands of the white homeowner who had a history of racist social media postings, an FBI official told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Derontae Martin, 19, was at a prom party on April 25, 2021, when he died in an attic closet. The death was initially ruled a suicide. Relatives of Martin and others questioned that finding, and a jury at a coroner’s inquest later ruled that Martin died by “violence,” prompting the FBI investigation.

Chris Crocker, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s St. Louis division, said an extensive investigation concluded “that this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, not a homicide or a hate crime.” Relatives were informed of the finding in December, Crocker said.

Messages were left with Martin’s mother, Ericka Lotts, and his grandmother, Kimberly Lotts. The Rev. Darryl Gray, a St. Louis racial injustice activist who has counseled the family, said relatives are still struggling with Martin’s death.

Martin was originally from the St. Louis area, but his family moved to Park Hills, a town of 8,500 residents about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis, when he was a child. Though that area of Missouri is about 95% white, Martin was popular and happy, Ericka Lotts has said.

Martin was a star defensive tackle and earned a scholarship to a small out-of-state college. He graduated from high school in 2020 but needed to bring up his entrance exam score before he could go to college. Ericka Lotts had relocated back to the St. Louis area, and Martin was living with her.

On the night of April 24, 2021, Martin was back in the Park Hills area. He attended the prom party of a young woman, a friend of a friend, at a home near Fredericktown, 27 miles (43 kilometers) south of Park Hills.

The home was owned by a man who in Facebook postings mocked foreign accents and defended the Confederate flag. He posted a meme showing a hand flipping the finger. It read: “Here’s my apology for being white.” Because the man is not charged with a crime, The Associated Press is not naming him.

Deputies and EMTs were called to the home at 3:01 a.m. on April 25, 2021. They found Martin in the attic, dead. Madison County Sheriff Katie McCutcheon said an initial autopsy indicated Martin died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The Missouri State Highway Patrol was asked to investigate, and it concurred.

About 100 racial injustice activists staged a protest march in Fredericktown shortly after Martin’s death. Gray said at the time that counter-protesters tossed two nooses at protesters and yelled racial slurs. That area of Missouri was home to Frank Ancona, a Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader shot to death by his wife in 2017.

A coroner’s inquest jury was convened in July 2021. The AP obtained audio of the testimony through an open records request. Zachary Graham testified that he saw Martin in the attic closet, holding a gun to his own head.

“Did you see him shoot himself?” Graham was asked. “Yes,” he replied.

Others said Martin had been acting paranoid and aloof. Martin had methamphetamine in his system — enough to cause paranoia and irrational thinking — according to a toxicology report cited by Dr. Russell Deidiker, who performed the autopsy.

But Phillip Lawler testified that the homeowner told him weeks after the shooting that he killed Martin. “He just told me he didn’t like Black people and used the N-word,” Lawler testified.

The homeowner, at the inquest, denied ever saying anything like that. He testified that he was at the party and on the main floor of the home with others when the shot was heard, sending people scattering. Some of the young people, in testimony, backed up his account.

Crocker, in a phone interview with AP, said evidence showed that Martin had meth levels in his body “consistent with levels that often lead to extreme paranoia and sometimes even death.” He told others at the party he was worried that a gang member was after him, the investigation found. Someone gave him a gun for protection.

Martin shot himself “in the presence of a friend of his who was trying to talk him out of doing it,” Crocker said.

Relatives have previously questioned how Martin, who was right-handed, could shoot himself with a full cast on his broken right arm. But Crocker said the wound was to Martin’s left temple. Photo evidence showed that the wound also was from close contact, another indication it was self-inflicted, he said.

FBI officials met with Martin’s family in December to inform them of the findings. “We made sure to give them a whole understanding of the steps we took to reach this conclusion,” Crocker said.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division provided two attorneys to help with the investigation, Crocker said. An FBI agent who specializes in hate crimes was assigned to the investigation.

“We really took extraordinary steps in this case to make sure we reached the right conclusion,” Crocker said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden on Wednesday praised her husband’s advocacy for U.S. service members before she sounded a red horn to start the Wounded Warrior Project’s annual Soldier Ride from the White House lawn.

“My husband often says that we have many obligations as a nation but only one sacred obligation: to support you and your families when we send you into harm’s way and when you return,” the first lady said about President Joe Biden, a Democrat who is seeking reelection to a second term.

“As president and as a military dad, he never loses sight of that conviction. And that’s why he’s working tirelessly to make sure that you and your families have what you need to thrive,” she said.

Jill Biden spoke about steps the president has taken to expand veteran access to quality home health care, provide benefits and care for veterans harmed by toxins and prevent homelessness and suicide among veterans. She also talked about help for spouses of active-duty and retired servicemembers.

The Bidens’ late son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard who spent a year in Iraq. The first lady’s dad was a Navy signalman in World War II.

Biden unexpectedly joined the first lady after signing a $95 billion war aid bill and referred to the group of riders as the “spine of America.” The president started to take an apparent dig at former President Donald Trump, Biden’s likely Republican opponent in November, before he stopped himself.

The Wounded Warrior Project was founded in 2003 to help veterans and the families and caregivers of service members who suffered a physical or mental injury or illness while serving in the military on or after Sept. 11, 2001. Soldier Ride began in 2004 to help raise awareness for injured veterans. The tradition of starting the ride from the White House began in 2008.

The first lady hosted the event as part of Joining Forces, her White House initiative to support active-duty service members, veterans, their families and their caregivers.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — One of the two pilots aboard an airplane carrying fuel reported there was a fire on the airplane shortly before it crashed and burned outside Fairbanks, killing both people on board, a federal aviation official said Wednesday.

The pilot had made radio contact about the in-fight emergency shortly after taking off, said Clint Johnson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska regional office. They were attempting to return to Fairbanks International Airport when they lost contact, he said.

The plane crashed about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Fairbanks, hitting a steep hill and sliding down an embankment to the bank of the Tanana River. Alaska State Troopers say no survivors were found.

The plane departed Fairbanks just before 10 a.m., loaded with 3,200 gallons (12,100 litres) of heating oil for Kobuk, an Inupiat village of less than 200 people located about 300 miles (480 kilometers) northwest of Fairbanks.

Johnson said there was also about 1,200 gallons of aviation fuel aboard the C54D-DC Skymaster plane, a World War II-era airplane that had been converted to a freighter.

It is difficult and expensive to get fuel to rural Alaska villages, which are remote and difficult to reach because of the state’s limited road system. The Northwest Arctic Borough said heating fuel in Kobuk was $15.45 a gallon in 2022.

The Alaska Energy Authority said barges usually deliver fuel to coastal communities. But in villages where barges can’t run or it’s not economically feasible, air tankers will deliver fuel — but that is even limited by sea or river ice, water levels or ice road availability.

The C54D-DC is a military version of the Douglas DC-4, which was a World War II-era airplane. The website www.airlines.net said standard passenger seating for a DC-4 was 44 during its heyday, but most have been converted to freighters.

The NTSB has three investigators on the scene.

The plane was registered to Alaska Air Fuel of Wasilla. Phone messages left for the company have not been returned.

The pilots’ names have not been released.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the necessity of providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid as it fends off Russia’s invasion is rooted in their earliest and most formative political memories.

McConnell, 82, tells the story of his father’s letters from Eastern Europe in 1945, at the end of World War II, when the foot soldier observed that the Russians were “going to be a big problem” before the communist takeover to come. Johnson, 30 years younger, came of age as the Cold War was ending.

As both men pushed their party this week to support a $95 billion aid package that sends support to Ukraine, as well as Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian missions, they labeled themselves “Reagan Republicans” an described the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin in terms of U.S. strength and leadership. But the all-out effort to get the legislation through Congress left both of them grappling with an entirely new Republican Party shaped by former President Donald Trump.

While McConnell, R-Ky., and Johnson, R-La., took different approaches to handling Trump, the presumptive White House nominee in 2024, the struggle highlighted the fundamental battle within the GOP: Will conservatives continue their march toward Trump’s “America First” doctrine on foreign affairs or will they find the value in standing with America’s allies? And is the GOP still the party of Ronald Reagan?

“I think we’re having an internal debate about that,” McConnell said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m a Reagan guy and I think today — at least on this episode — we turned the tables on the isolationists.”

Still, he acknowledged, “that doesn’t mean they’re going to go away forever.”

McConnell, in the twilight of his 18-year tenure as Republican leader, lauded a momentary victory Tuesday as a healthy showing of 31 Republicans voted for the foreign aid; that was nine more than had supported it in February. He said that was a trend in the right direction.

McConnell, who has been in the Senate since 1985, said passing the legislation was “one of the most important things I’ve ever dealt with where I had an impact.”

But it wasn’t without cost.

He said last month he would step away from his job as leader next year after internal clashes over the money for Ukraine and the direction of the party.

For Johnson, just six months into his job as speaker, the political crosscurrents are even more difficult. He is clinging to his leadership post as right-wing Republicans threaten to oust him for putting the aid to Ukraine to a vote. While McConnell has embraced American leadership abroad his entire career, Johnson only recently gave complete support to the package.

Johnson has been careful not to portray passage as a triumph when a majority of his own House Republicans opposed the bill. He skipped a celebratory news conference afterward, describing it as “not a perfect piece of legislation” in brief remarks.

But he also borrowed terms popularized by Reagan, saying aggression from Russia, China and Iran “threatens the free world and it demands American leadership.”

“If we turn our backs right now, the consequences could be devastating,” he said.

Hard-line conservatives, including some who are threatening a snap vote on his leadership, are irate, saying the aid was vastly out of line with what Republican voters want. They condemned both Johnson and McConnell for supporting it.

“House Republican leadership sold out Americans and passed a bill that sends $95 billion to other countries,” said Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who opposed the bill. He said the legislation “undermines America’s interests abroad and paves our nation’s path to bankruptcy.”

Johnson has been lauded by much of Washington for doing what he called “the right thing” at a perilous moment for himself and the world.

“He is fundamentally an honorable person,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who brokered the negotiations and spent hours on the phone and in meetings with Johnson, McConnell and the White House.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Johnson and McConnell “both showed great resolve and backbone and true leadership at a time it was desperately needed.”

When McConnell began negotiations over President Joe Biden’s initial aid request last year, he quickly set the terms for a deal. He and Schumer agreed to pair any aid for Ukraine with help for Israel, Schumer said, and McConnell demanded policy changes at the U.S. border with Mexico.

On McConnell’s mind, he said, was that Trump was “unenthusiastic” about providing more aid to Kyiv. Yet McConnell, whose office displays a portrait of every Republican president since Reagan with the exception of Trump, had a virtually nonexistent relationship with the man he often refers to not by name, but simply as “the former president.”

Still, Trump would prove to hold powerful sway. When a deal on border security neared completion after months of work, Trump eviscerated the proposal as insufficient and a “gift” to Biden’s reelection. Conservatives, including Johnson, rejected it out of hand.

With the border deal dead, McConnell pushed ahead with Schumer on the foreign aid, with the border policies stripped out, solidifying their unusual alliance. The Senate leaders met weekly throughout the negotiation.

“We disagreed on a whole lot, but we really stuck together,” Schumer said.

“We just persisted. We could not give up on this.”

Meanwhile, a small group of GOP senators began working on an idea they thought could give Johnson some political wiggle room. Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma took an idea that Trump had raised — structuring the aid to Ukraine as a loan — and tried to make it reality.

Through a series of phone calls with Trump, several House members, as well as the speaker, they worked to structure roughly $9 billion in economic aid for Ukraine as forgivable loans — just as it was in the final package.

“Our approach this time was to make sure that the politics were set, meaning that President Trump is on board,” Mullin said.

The conversations culminated in Johnson making a quick jaunt to Florida, where he stood side by side with Trump at his Florida club just days before moving ahead with the Ukraine legislation in the House.

It was all enough, with Democratic help, to get the bill across the finish line. The legislation, which Biden signed into law on Wednesday, included some revisions from the Senate bill, including the loan structure and a provision to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine. Nine GOP senators who had opposed the first version of the bill swung to “yes” largely because of the changes Johnson had made.

The result was a strong showing for the foreign aid in the Senate, even though the decision could prove costly for Johnson.

What comes next on Ukraine is anyone’s guess.

While the $61 billion for Ukraine in the package is expected to help the country withstand Moscow’s offensive this year, more assistance will surely be needed. Republicans, exhausted after a grueling fight, largely shrugged off questions about the future.

“This one wasn’t easy,” Mullin said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden picked up the endorsement of North America’s Building Trades Unions at a Wednesday event where the president and his allies set out to dismantle Republican Donald Trump’s reputation as a successful real estate developer.

“Donald Trump is incapable of running anything,” said Sean McGarvey, the organization’s president. “God help us if he gets anywhere near the White House in the future.”

The event, held in a Washington hotel ballroom with a boisterous crowd of union members, was another salvo in the battle for votes from blue collar workers. Trump has tried to chip away at Democrats’ traditional advantage with organized labor, while Biden has been adding to his roster of endorsements and trying to fend off his predecessor’s comeback bid.

Biden said unions would help him make Trump a “loser again,” and he mocked Trump’s inability to pass infrastructure legislation when he was president, saying “he never built a damn thing.”

The Democratic president repeatedly torched his likely Republican opponent as a callous businessman who turned firing people into entertainment as part of his long-running reality show “The Apprentice.”

“He looks down on us. I’m not joking. Think about it,” Biden said. “Think about the guys you grew up with that you’d like to get in the corner and just give him a straight left. I’m not suggesting you hit the president. But we all know those guys growing up.”

Biden recently campaigned in his childhood hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he’s increasingly used economic arguments to portray Trump as out of touch with workers’ concerns.

In this election, Biden said, “it’s either Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values.”

The endorsement adds to Biden’s considerable union support. The United Auto Workers backed him in January, and the United Steelworkers Union followed suit in March.

A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Trump has also sought support from organized labor, including meeting with the Teamsters earlier this year.

“Usually a Republican wouldn’t get that endorsement,” Trump said. “But in my case it’s different because I’ve employed thousands of Teamsters and I thought we should come over and pay our respects.”

Trump’s popularity with white working class voters has been a challenge for Democrats who puzzle over his appeal.

McGarvey promised “an unprecedented field program in key battleground states” to help defeat Trump this year.