DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The United States will begin plans to withdraw troops from Niger, U.S. officials said Saturday, in what experts say is a blow to Washington and its allies in the region in terms of staging security operations in the Sahel. The planned departure comes as U.S. officials said they were trying to find a new military agreement.

The prime minister of Niger, appointed by the ruling military junta, Ali Lamine Zeine, and U.S. deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, agreed on Friday that the two nations would begin to plan the withdrawal of American troops, the U.S. State Department told The Associated Press in an email Saturday.

U.S. officials gave no timeline about their withdrawal. An American delegation to coordinate the details of the withdrawal process will be dispatched soon.

Niger plays a central role in the U.S. military’s operations in Africa’s Sahel region, an area on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Washington is concerned about the spread of jihadi violence, where local groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups. Niger is home to a major U.S. air base, in the city of Agadez, about 920 kilometers (550 miles) from the capital, Niamey, using it for manned and unmanned surveillance flights and other operations. The U.S. has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in training Niger’s military since it began operations there in 2013.

But relations have frayed between Niger and Western countries since mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president in July. Niger’s junta has since told French forces to leave and turned instead to Russia for security. Earlier this month, Russian military trainers arrived to reinforce the country’s air defenses and with Russian equipment to train Nigeriens to use.

There was an attempt on the behalf of the U.S. to revise the military agreement with Niger that would allow them to stay, U.S. officials told the AP. But the agreement between Zeine and Campbell shows that the effort has failed.

The loss of access to air bases in Niger is a major setback for the U.S. and its allies in the region because of its strategic location for security operations in the Sahel, said Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy for the Sahel region.

“In the short term, they will be hard to replace,” said Pham, adding that remaining European Union military presence would likely pull out of Niger following the news of a U.S. departure.

The rupture of relations between the two nations would impact the development and humanitarian aid funds destined for Niger, a country at the bottom of many indicators of well-being, Pham said.

Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s military rulers with their communications, told the AP that American troops could potentially return after negotiations and that the ruling Niger junta, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, wants to maintain a good working relationship with the U.S.

The U.S should find a new mode of engagement that departs from the failed counterterrorism cooperation model of the past decade, and continues to press other states in the Sahel region on accountability and human rights abuses, said Hannah Rae Armstrong, a senior consultant on Sahel peace and security.

The two officials said that Niger and the U.S would continue to work together on areas of shared interest.

___ Sam Mednick in Jerusalem, and Matthew Lee in Washington, contributed to this report.

NEW HOPE, Pa. (AP) — Mark Houck makes a potent appeal to conservative Republicans in this corner of eastern Pennsylvania when he describes his arrest and subsequent acquittal on federal charges that he pushed a Planned Parenthood volunteer outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic.

The account has become a staple of Houck’s first-time bid for the U.S. House in suburban Philadelphia, a central battleground of the 2024 election, from the presidency on down.

“I’m telling you this because this is how I became a target of the federal government — the weaponization of the government,” he said at a meeting last week of the New Hope Solebury Republican Club.

Houck’s campaign to unseat fourth-term Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Tuesday’s primary could offer hints about swing-district Republican sentiment in one of the most volatile White House races in years.

With few truly competitive House seats in play, the 1st Congressional District that Fitzpatrick represents is one of 16 districts nationwide that Democrat Joe Biden carried in the 2020 presidential election where voters also sent Republicans to Washington. By comparison, five seats won that year by Donald Trump, then the incumbent and now his party’s presumptive 2024 nominee, are now held occupied by a Democrat.

The Republicans’ House majority is so slim that Democrats need to flip just four seats in November to retake control. That makes the “Biden 16” a significant group of competitive seats and they could go a long way in determining whether the next president has a friendly or hostile House next year.

Fifteen of those seats are in states that Biden won in 2020. The exception is Nebraska’s 2nd District, represented by GOP Rep. Don Bacon. There are five seats in California, four in New York, two in Arizona and one apiece in New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Several of the “Biden 16” are like Fitzgerald, winning year after year by tightrope-walking between challengers in primaries and general elections. Nine of them won a first term in in 2022, when Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four years.

In the fall, many will face the same Democrat they beat last time, sometimes narrowly.

The Fitzpatrick-Houck winner will face Democrat Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot who is uncontested in her primary. Fitzpatrick, a former FBI supervisory agent who beat Ehasz by 10 percentage points in 2022, is outraising Houck and Ehasz by millions of dollars, combined.

Before November, several others among the “Biden 16” must beat back primary challenges from the conservative wing of the GOP.

In Nebraska, Bacon is facing perhaps his strongest primary test yet. If he wins, he will take on the same Democratic opponent, state Sen. Tony Vargas, whom he defeated two years ago by fewer than 3 percentage points.

Bacon has been a vocal supporter of sending more military aid to Ukraine, something opposed by his primary opponent, second-time congressional candidate Dan Frei.

Frei, who contends the GOP base is fed up with Bacon, accuses the incumbent of flouting campaign promises by voting to increase spending and for bills that do nothing to stem the flow of immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

Nearly all of the 16 races are considered toss-ups.

Republicans intend to hammer home a message about lax border security and high inflation under Biden. Democrats are warning that Republicans will pursue a national abortion ban as Democrats invoke an issue that has consistently worked in their favor at the ballot box since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.

North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said the “Biden 16” have formed strong identities in their districts and are emphasizing local issues.

Hudson said Biden’s unpopularity and presidential turnout models are increasingly giving an edge to Republicans, with the GOP attracting more working-class voters who more likely to vote in presidential elections and help flip these districts to Trump.

“The presidential turnout dynamics actually favor Republicans,” Hudson said in an interview. “And then if you look, state by state, where our battlegrounds are, the presidential turnout is going to help us.”

Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads the House Democrats’ campaign arm, said Democrats will highlight what they say is the chaos at the highest levels of government when Republicans are charge of the House and Trump is in the White House. They will say Trump is a threat to democracy and Republicans are extremists and hypocrites who voted against major spending bills under Biden and then tried to take credit for the projects that landed in their districts.

Voters “want folks who are there to govern,” DelBene said in an interview. “They’re not looking for extremism. And so all we have to do is make sure that voters are aware of what they’re doing. … Holding them accountable for their actual votes, even though their rhetoric sometimes tries to be more moderate.”

In Pennsylvania, Houck’s bid to unseat Fitzpatrick, who is backed by some labor unions and business groups, has a visceral feel that some Republicans say resonates with them.

At the Solebury Republicans’ meeting on the grounds of a luxury hotel and wedding venue, Houck unwound the story of his arrest, describing federal agents with guns drawn as they descended on his Bucks County home in 2022.

They arrested him, in connection with the incident outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia. Houck defended his actions, saying he acted to protect his 12-year-old son from abusive comments made by the clinic volunteer. The trial ended in an acquittal in 2023, and Houck, who runs a Catholic ministry group, said he began fielding requests to run for office.

Houck’s story struck a chord with Rose Cipriano, who came to hear him speak. Her husband picked up a Houck yard sign and Cipriano, who had previously supported Fitzpatrick, said Houck has changed her mind in the approaching primary.

“I’m looking for fresh ideas, and I’m willing to take a chance and vote for him on Tuesday,” Cipriano said “I’ve known his story since it happened, and I support him.”

Houck’s campaign echoes Trump’s own defense against the criminal cases against him. It centers on the slogan “Faith Family Freedom” while Houck talks about defunding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the federal departments of Agriculture, Education and Justice, calling them all unconstitutional.

Houck has raised more campaign cash than any previous Fitzpatrick primary challenger. But he is well behind Fitzpatrick’s fundraising and name recognition in a county where his brother previously held the congressional seat.

Fitzpatrick has the support of the county party and the backing of police and fire unions, whose large campaign signs endorsing him crop up every two years.

Bob Brooks, president of the Pennsylvania Professional Firefighters Association, said Fitzpatrick represents blue-collar workers like his union members.

“And, if there was more blue-collar legislators, I think they would find more support from firefighters,” Brooks said in an interview. “We support those who support us, and Brian has supported us on many levels.”

Republicans at the Solebury meeting encouraged Houck to stay involved in party politics.

Houck said he will back Fitzpatrick in the general election if Fitzpatrick wins the primary but won’t campaign for him, put off by what he said was Fitzpatrick failure to check on Houck’s family after his arrest. Fitzpatrick didn’t respond to interview requests.

Cipriano said she is disappointed in Fitzpatrick but said the stakes are too high for the party to be divided in November. She pledged to support Fitzpatrick should he win the primary.

“I am behind the Republican Party 100%,” she said. “So whoever’s running, from the top down, gets my support.”

___

Follow Marc Levy at @timelywriter and Mike Catalini at @mikecatalini

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden can breathe a bit easier, at least for the moment, now that Israel and Iran appear to have stepped back from the brink of tipping the Middle East into all-out war.

Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran and Syria caused limited damage. The restrained action came after Biden urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to temper its response to Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel last week and avoid an escalation of violence in the region. Iran’s barrage of drones and missiles inflicted little damage and followed a suspected Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus this month that killed two generals.

Iran’s public response to the Israeli strikes Friday also was muted, raising hopes that Israel-Iran tensions — long carried out in the shadows with cyberattacks, assassinations and sabotage — will stay at a simmer.

The situation remains a delicate one for Biden as he gears up his reelection effort i n the face of headwinds in the Middle East, Russia and the Indo-Pacific. All are testing the proposition he made to voters during his 2020 campaign that a Biden White House would bring a measure of calm and renewed respect for the United States on the world stage.

Foreign policy matters are not typically the top issue for American voters. This November is expected to be no different, with the economy and border security carrying greater resonance.

But public polling suggests that overseas concerns could have more relevance with voters than in any U.S. election since 2006, when voter dissatisfaction over the Iraq War was a major factor in the Republican Party losing 30 House and six Senate seats.

“We see this issue rising in saliency, and at the same time we’re seeing voter appraisals of President Biden’s handling of foreign affairs being quite negative,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “That combination is not a great one for Biden.”

Biden has staked enormous political capital on his response to the Israel-Hamas war as well as his administration’s backing of Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion.

The apparent de-escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran also comes as Congress moves closer to approving $95 billion in wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, a measure that Biden has pushed for as Ukrainian forces run desperately short on arms.

After months of delay in the face of the threat of ouster by his party’s right flank, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pushed the package forward and final House passage was expected this weekend. That prospect — and a surge of weaponry to the front lines — is giving the White House renewed hope that Ukraine can right the ship after months of setbacks in the war.

Biden also has made bolstering relations in the Indo-Pacific a central focus of his foreign policy agenda, looking to win allies and build ties as China becomes a more formidable economic and military competitor.

But Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have an argument to make that Biden’s policies have contributed to U.S. dealing with myriad global quandaries, said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Republicans have criticized Biden’s unsuccessful efforts earlier in his term to revive a nuclear deal with Iran brokered by the Obama administration and abandoned by Trump, saying that would embolden Tehran. The agreement had provided Iran with billions in sanctions relief in exchange for the country agreeing to roll back its nuclear program.

GOP critics have sought to connect Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and they blame the Obama administration for not offering a strong enough response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

“You can make an intellectual case, a policy case of how we got from Point A to B to C to D and ended up in a world on fire,” said Goldberg, a national security official in the Trump administration. “People may not care about how we got here, but they do care that we are here.”

Polling suggests Americans’ concerns about foreign policy issues are growing, and there are mixed signs of whether Biden’s pitch as a steady foreign policy hand is resonating with voters.

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults named foreign policy topics in an open-ended question that asked people to share up to five issues for the government to work on in 2024, according to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published in January. That’s about twice as many as mentioned the topic in an AP- NORC poll conducted in the previous year.

Further, about 47% of Americans said they believe Biden has hurt relations with other countries, according to an AP-NORC poll published this month. Similarly, 47% said the same about Trump.

Biden was flying high in the first six months of his presidency, with the American electorate largely approving of his performance and giving him high marks for his handling of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic. But the president saw his approval ratings tank in the aftermath of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 and they never fully recovered.

Now, Biden finds himself dealing with uncertainty of two wars. Both could shadow him right up to Election Day.

With the Israel-Hamas war, Republicans pillory him as being not being adequately supportive of Israel, and the left wing of his party harshly criticize the president, who has shown displeasure with Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war, for not doing more to force the Israelis to safeguard Palestinian lives.

After Israel’s carefully calibrated strikes on Iran, Middle East tensions have entered a “gray area” that all parties must navigate carefully, said Aaron David Miller, an adviser on Middle East issues in Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Does what has occurred over the last 10 days strengthen each sides’ risk-readiness or has it made them drop back from the brink and revert into risk aversion?” Miller said. “Israel and Iran got away with striking each other’s territory without a major escalation. What conclusions do they draw from that? Is the conclusion that we might be able to do this again? Or is it we really dodged a bullet here and we have to be exceedingly careful.”

Israel and Hamas appear far away from an agreement on a temporary cease-fire that would facilitate the release of remaining hostages in Hamas-controlled Gaza and help get aid into the territory. It’s an agreement that Biden sees as essential to finding an endgame to the war.

CIA Director William Burns expressed disappointment this past week that Hamas has not yet accepted a proposal that Egyptian and Qatari negotiators had presented this month. He blamed the group for “standing in the way of innocent civilians in Gaza getting humanitarian relief that they so desperately need.”

At the same time, the Biden administration has tried to demonstrate it is holding Israel accountable, imposing new penalties Friday on two entities accused of fundraising for extremist Israel settlers that were already under sanctions, as well as the founder of an organization whose members regularly assault Palestinians.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan and other administration officials met on Thursday with Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi. U.S. officials, according to the White House, reiterated Biden’s concerns about Israel’s plans to carry out an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken shelter.

Ross Baker, professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University, said Biden may have temporarily benefited from Israeli-Iranian tensions driving attention away from the deprivation in Gaza.

“Sometimes salvation can come in unexpected ways,” Baker said. “But the way ahead has no shortage of complications.”

Pregnant employees have the right to a wide range of accommodations under new federal regulations for enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that supporters say could change workplace culture for millions of people.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency in charge of enforcing the law, adopted an expansive view of conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth in its proposed regulations, including a controversial decision to include abortion, fertility treatment and birth control as medical issues requiring job protections.

The rules, which were adopted on a 3-2 vote along partisan lines, were published Monday and offer extensive guidelines for addressing more routine difficulties of pregnancy, such as morning sickness, back pain and needing to avoid heavy lifting. Labor advocates say the law will be especially transformative for pregnant women in low-wage jobs, who are often denied simple requests like more bathroom breaks.

Here’s what to know about the law and the EEOC regulations.

Congress passed the law with bipartisan support in December 2022 following a decade-long campaign by women’s rights and labor advocates, who argued that the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act did little to guarantee women would receive the accommodations they might need at work.

The law stated only that pregnant workers should be treated the same as other employees, not that they deserved special consideration. To get their requests met, many pregnant workers therefore needed to demonstrate they had physical limitations covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act, often creating insurmountable hurdles.

The new law treats pregnancy and related conditions as themselves deserving of “reasonable accommodations” and places the burden on employers to prove “undue hardships” for denying any requests.

The law applies to employers of at least 15 workers. The EEOC estimates it will cover roughly 1.5 million pregnant workers in any given year. The EEOC regulations published April 15 are set to go into effect in June.

The EEOC’s 400-page document encompasses a wide array of conditions and relevant advice for employers.

It states that workers are entitled to unpaid time off for situations such as prenatal appointments, fertility treatments, abortion, miscarriage, postpartum depression and mastitis, an infection that arises from breastfeeding. This includes workers who are not covered by federal family leave laws and those who have not been on the job long enough to accrue time off.

Workers can ask for flexible working arrangements to deal with morning sickness, such as a later start time, clearance to work from home or permission to carry snacks in workplaces where eating is typically prohibited. If they can’t sit or stand for extended periods due to sciatica, which is common in late pregnancy, they can request a schedule adjustment so their commutes happen during less crowded hours.

The regulations also allow workers to be exempted from tasks such as climbing ladders or heavy lifting. If those duties are essential to their jobs, they can still request a temporary dispensation, according to the EEOC.

Employers don’t have to accommodate workers exactly as requested but they must offer reasonable alternatives. They cannot deny a request without clearing a high bar to prove doing so would cause “undue hardships” for the organization’s finances or operations. They cannot force workers to take unpaid leave if a reasonable accommodation is available.

The EEOC emphasizes that it “should not be complicated or difficult” for pregnant workers to request accommodations. Workers don’t have to make requests in writing, use specific words, cite any laws, or in most cases, provide documentation such as doctors’ notes. Employers must respond quickly and have a conversation about how to reasonably accommodate a worker’s needs.

Still, legal experts advise both workers and employers to document the process. A Better Balance, the non-profit that spearheaded the 10-year campaign for the law’s passage, advises workers to familiarize themselves with their legal rights and be as specific as possible about their limitations and the changes they they need.

Workers who believe a request was denied illegally can file a complaint with the EEOC. They have 180 days to do so, though the deadline can be extended in some states.

The EEOC included abortion among the conditions covered under the law. The rules state, however, that employers are not obligated to cover expenses related to the procedure or to offer health insurance that does.

The EEOC regulations argue that including abortion is consistent with the agency’s longstanding interpretation of other laws under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

But the decision drew condemnation from Republican lawmakers who had championed the law’s passage. The five-member EEOC’s two Republican members voted against the regulations.

In a statement explaining her dissent, Commissioner Andrea Lucas said the agency broadened the scope of the law “to reach virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system” in ways that “cannot reasonably be reconciled with the text” of the law.

Melissa Losch, a labor and employment attorney at the New Orleans-based firm McGlinchey Stafford, said she expects the regulations to give rise to further litigation. Losch cited the example of a worker living in a state with a restrictive abortion law requesting time off to undergo the procedure in another state. The EEOC rules provide “no good answer” about whether granting such a request would conflict with restrictive state abortion laws, she added.

On February 27, a federal judge blocked enforcement of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for Texas state employees, a ruling that came in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton argued the law was unconstitutional because it was part of a spending bill that passed in the House without a majority of members present, and the judge ruled in his favor.

Gedmark, of A Better Balance, said she was optimistic the Biden administration would prevail in its expected appeal of the ruling. In the meantime, federal and private sectors workers in Texas are covered by the law.

But in her dissenting statement, Lucas warned that if the Texas case or any future lawsuits succeed in overturning the law, the EEOC’s divisive rules have “all but extinguished” the chances of a bipartisan effort to reenact it.

Employers have been obligated to abide by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act since it took effect on June 27, 2023, though the EEOC regulations provided guidance on how to do so.

The law swiftly made a difference to many low-wage workers, according to Gedmark.

A Better Balance, which operates a helpline, has “heard an overwhelmingly positive experience from workers,” she said. Last summer, the organization worked with some women whose employers stopped resisting requests for accommodations as soon as the law took effect, Gedmark said.

Some workers reported their employers were still operating under the old legal framework, handing them pages of disability paperwork to fill out in response to requests.

The EEOC said it received almost 200 complaints alleging violations of the law by the time the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, 2023.

Gedmark said the success of the law will depend on enforcement and raising awareness.

“If workers don’t know about the law and don’t know about their rights, then it really undermines the purpose of the law,” she said.

____

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live.

The justices on Monday will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from taking over public parks and sidewalks.

Advocacy groups say the decisions provide essential legal protections, especially with an increasing number of people forced to sleep outdoors as the cost of housing soars.

The case before the Supreme Court comes from Grants Pass, a small city nestled in the mountains of southern Oregon, where rents are rising and there is just one overnight shelter for adults. As a growing number of tents clustered its parks, the city banned camping and set $295 fines for people sleeping there.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely blocked the camping ban under its finding that it is unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outside when there is not adequate shelter space. Grants Pass appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the ruling left it few good options.

“It really has made it impossible for cities to address growing encampments, and they’re unsafe, unhealthy and problematic for everyone, especially those who are experiencing homelessness,” said lawyer Theane Evangelis, who is representing Grants Pass.

The city is also challenging a 2018 decision, known as Martin v. Boise, that first barred camping bans when shelter space is lacking. It was issued by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit and applies to the nine Western states in its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court declined to take up a different challenge to the ruling in 2019, before the solidification of its current conservative majority.

If the decision is overturned, advocates say it would make it easier for cities deal with homelessness by arresting and fining people rather than helping them get shelter and housing.

“In Grants Pass and across America, homelessness has grown because more and more hardworking people struggle to pay rent, not because we lack ways to punish people sleeping outside,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director for the National Homeless Law Center. Local laws prohibiting sleeping in public spaces have increased at least 50% since 2006, he said.

The case comes after homelessness in the United States grew by 12%, to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people, according to federal data. Four in 10 people experiencing homelessness sleep outside, a federal report found.

More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. People of color, LGBTQ+ people and seniors are disproportionately affected, advocates said.

Two of four states with the country’s largest homeless populations, Washington and California, are in the West. Officials in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco say they do not want to punish people simply because they are forced to sleep outside, but that cities need the power to keep growing encampments in check.

“I never want to criminalize homelessness, but I want to be able to encourage people to accept services and shelter,” said Thien Ho, the district attorney in Sacramento, California, where homelessness has risen sharply in recent years.

San Francisco says it has been blocked from enforcing camping regulations because the city does not have enough shelter space for its full homeless population, something it estimates would cost $1.5 billion to provide.

“These encampments frequently block sidewalks, prevent employees from cleaning public thoroughfares, and create health and safety risks for both the unhoused and the public at large,” lawyers for the city wrote. City workers have also encountered knives, drug dealing and belligerent people at encampments, they said.

Several cities and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged the high court to keep some legal protections in place while reining in “overreach” by lower courts. The Martin v. Boise ruling allows cities to regulate and “sweep” encampments, but not enforce total bans in communities without enough beds in shelters.

The Justice Department also backed the idea that people shouldn’t be punished for sleeping outside when they have no where else to go, but said the Grants Pass ruling should be tossed out because 9th Circuit went awry by not defining what it means to be “involuntarily homeless.”

Evangelis, the lawyer for Grants Pass, argues that the Biden administration’s position would not solve the problem for the Oregon city. “It would be impossible for cities to really address the homelessness crisis,” she said.

Public encampments are not good places for people to live, said Ed Johnson, who represents people living outside in Grants Pass as director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center. But enforcement of camping bans often makes homelessness worse by requiring people to spend money on fines rather than housing or creating an arrest record that makes it harder to get an apartment. Public officials should focus instead on addressing shortages of affordable housing so people have places to live, he said.

“It’s frustrating when people who have all the power throw up their hands and say, ‘there’s nothing we can do,’” he sad. “People have to go somewhere.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.

By Deborah Bloom

GRANTS PASS, Oregon (Reuters) – On a sunny afternoon in a grassy park by the river, Amber Rockwell loaded a black, steel cart with a tent, suitcases, bags, camping stove and a plastic tin of licorice and tightened it all down with ratchet straps as she prepared to move to the next park over.

Every week, she and the hundreds of other people living outdoors in Grants Pass, Oregon, must pack up and change locations to avoid being fined, arrested or stripped of their belongings by police.

“There’s no place for us,” Rockwell says, sitting on the grass, taking a break from packing. “We’re made to feel like we shouldn’t even exist.”

This rural town of 39,000 on the Rogue River in southern Oregon’s wine country is at the center of a fight in the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether governments can legally ban people from sleeping in public. Oral arguments are Monday, and the court’s eventual ruling could have nationwide implications for how cities are allowed to regulate homeless encampments.

“If we go down this line, this road of criminalizing people and banishing them, we’re going to wake up two or three years down the road, and we’re gonna have twice as many homeless people as we have now,” said Ed Johnson, a legal aide attorney who helped file the 2018 lawsuit against Grants Pass that the Supreme Court is reviewing.

Johnson, of the Oregon Law Center, says giving people a criminal record for homelessness makes it harder to find jobs and housing to escape homelessness.

In briefings to the court, Johnson and his colleagues representing people living on the streets in Grants Pass said Grants Pass city councilors’ comments in 2013 as they drafted a camping ban made it clear they were trying to expel homeless people from town.

Grants Pass is fighting a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said town laws prohibiting camping on sidewalks, streets, parks or other public places when shelter is unavailable violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual” punishment.” 

Johnson and his colleagues say this ruling does not stop Grants Pass from restricting such conduct as littering or public urination.

Federal injunctions issued in 2020 and 2022 banned Grants Pass from enforcing its anti-camping ordinances while the case goes through the courts. In the meantime, police are using a state law requiring a 72-hour notice before the city can remove a campsite from public space. 

Grants Pass has no public, low-barrier homeless shelters. An estimated 600 residents were unhoused in 2019, according to a point-in-time count.

In its arguments to the Supreme Court, Grants Pass wrote: “There is nothing cruel or unusual about a civil fine for violating commonplace restrictions on public camping.”

Grants Pass has been joined by Idaho’s attorney general, Montana’s Department of Justice, law enforcement groups in Washington state, California Governor Gavin Newsom and others in asking the conservative-majority Supreme Court to clarify or overturn the 9th Circuit ruling, which they say has confused jurisdictions about what they can do to address unsafe and unsanitary encampments.

Groups such as the National Homelessness Law Center have urged the court to confirm the 9th Circuit, saying cities should focus on building housing to address homelessness.

Aaron Hisel, an attorney for Grants Pass, said the premise of the 9th Circuit ruling is “that unless you’re providing them shelter, you can’t punish them or start the process by writing a ticket for them being in the parks.”

“But we’ve never really seriously suggested that unless and until the government provides you a reasonably convenient place to go to the bathroom, that you then have the right to go to the bathroom on public property,” Hisel said.

Under the state law in force now, those who do not move along in Grants Pass face $295 fines. Sometimes, their belongings are confiscated or thrown away. Rockwell, 42, says she is often not able to relocate quickly enough, and that she currently owes thousands in fines she cannot pay.

“I don’t have no money, I don’t have an income right now,” she said. “It’s like milking a turnip.”

She said police threw away her belongings in the summer of last year, after she had dropped them off at another park to go back for a second run. Among her possessions, she says, was an urn storing the ashes of her stillborn son, whom she lost in 2020.

Grants Pass Chief of Police Warren Hensman said that if officers take property from a park and do not know the owner, it will be stored for 90 days, “so a person has ample time to claim their belongings.”

Hensman said his officers would not have discarded an urn if they had noticed it.

“However, if it was mixed with soiled clothes, hazardous materials, drug paraphernalia etc., it could have been missed,” he said.

Some in Grants Pass say they are frustrated by the spread of homeless encampments. Joanie Jensen, a lifetime resident of Grants Pass, said she no longer feels comfortable enjoying the parks like she once did.

“My grandson is on the baseball team, and before each practice and game, they have to sweep the whole outfield and the field to make sure that there’s no needles out there or feces out there,” Jensen said.

Mark Lyon has been homeless in Grants Pass, off and on, for the past 20 years. He said he has witnessed the community becoming more hostile towards him and others on the streets.

“I can understand where they’re coming from,” Lyon, 65, said. “If I was a homeowner, I wouldn’t want me here, which is sad. But I deserve to be some place.”

(Reporting by Deborah Bloom in Grants Pass; Editing by Donna Bryson and Josie Kao)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is working through a rare Saturday session to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, Democrats and Republicans joining together behind the legislation after a grueling monthslong fight over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.

Before the voting, the House began a somber but serious debate with an unusual sense of purpose as Republican committee chairs and top Democrats on the panels united to urge swift passage that would ensure the United States supports its allies and remains a leader on the world stage.

“The eyes of the world are upon us, and history will judge what we do here and now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The weekend scene presented a striking display of congressional action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine as it fights Russia’s invasion. Speaker Mike Johnson, putting his job on the line, is relying on Democratic support to ensure the military and humanitarian package is approved, and help flows to the U.S. allies.

There will be a series of votes on three aid bills, for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, as well as a fourth that contains several other foreign policy proposals, including a clampdown on the popular social media platform TikTok.

If the votes are successful, the package will go to the Senate, where passage in the coming days is nearly assured. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

“Sometimes when you are living history, as we are today, you don’t understand the significance of the actions of the votes that we make on this House floor, of the effect that it will have down the road,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is a historic moment.”

Passage through the House would clear away the biggest hurdle to Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low. The GOP-controlled House, skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine, struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico order, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker’s office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes as a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to Asia.

“The only thing that has kept terrorists and tyrants at bay is the perception of a strong America, that we would stand strong,” Johnson said this week. “And we will. I think that Congress is going to show that. This is a very important message that we are going to send the world.”

Still, Congress has seen a stream of world leaders visit in recent months, from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all but pleading with lawmakers to approve the aid. Globally, the delay left many questioning America’s commitment to its allies.

At stake has also been one of Biden’s top foreign policy priorities — halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe. After engaging in quiet talks with Johnson, the president quickly endorsed Johnson’s plan this week, paving the way for Democrats to give their rare support to clear the procedural hurdles needed for a final vote.

“We have a responsibility, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans to defend democracy wherever it is at risk,” the House Democratic leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, said during the debate.

Voting on the package is likely to create unusual alliances in the House. While aid for Ukraine will likely win a majority in both parties, a significant number of progressive Democrats are expected to vote against the bill aiding Israel as they demand an end to the bombardment of Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians.

At the same time, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has loomed large over the fight, weighing in from afar via social media statements and direct phone calls with lawmakers as he tilts the GOP to a more isolationist stance with his “America First” brand of politics. Ukraine’s defense once enjoyed robust, bipartisan support in Congress, but as the war enters its third year, a bulk of Republicans oppose further aid.

At one point, Trump’s opposition essentially doomed the bipartisan Senate proposal on border security. This past week, Trump also issued a social media post that questioned why European nations were not giving more money to Ukraine, though he spared Johnson from criticism and said Ukraine’s survival was important.

Still, the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus has derided the legislation as the “America Last” foreign wars package and urged lawmakers to defy Republican leadership and oppose it because the bills do not include border security measures.

Johnson’s hold on the speaker’s gavel has also grown more tenuous in recent days as three Republicans, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, supported a “motion to vacate” that can lead to a vote on removing the speaker. Egged on by far-right personalities, she is also being joined by a growing number of lawmakers including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is urging Johnson to voluntarily step aside, and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

The speaker’s office has been working furiously to drum up support for the bill, as well as for Johnson, R-La. It arranged a series of press calls in the lead-up to the final votes on the package, first with Jewish leaders, then with Christian groups, to show support for the speaker and the legislation he is bringing to the floor.

The package includes several Republican priorities that Democrats endorse, or at least are willing to accept. Those include proposals that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl; and legislation to require the China-based owner of the popular video app TikTok to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the United States.

Still, the all-out push to get the bills through Congress is a reflection not only of politics, but realities on the ground in Ukraine. Top lawmakers on national security committees, who are privy to classified briefings, have grown gravely concerned about the situation in recent weeks. Russia has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barely missing its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.

The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden “will swiftly sign the bill.”

“In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.”

U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

“If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm’s way,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So in this particular case, there’s real-life implications.”

The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.

Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications.

Still, officials had said that court approval shouldn’t be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse.

House before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Justice Department.

“This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Garland said in a statement Saturday.

But despite the Biden administration’s urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers who were agitating for further changes had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week.

The lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage.

The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage.

One of the major changes detractors had proposed centered around restricting the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Though the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to get a warrant before accessing American communications.

“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.

In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

But members on both the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the Justice Department warned requiring a warrant would severely handicap officials from quickly responding to imminent national security threats.

“I think that is a risk that we cannot afford to take with the vast array of challenges our nation faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Republicans in Wyoming will decide Saturday which presidential candidate will get their state’s votes at the GOP national convention this summer, but they will have only one choice.

Former President Donald Trump will be the lone name listed on a presidential preference poll at the state Republican convention in Cheyenne.

The poll will decide how all 29 of Wyoming’s delegates to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee pledge their first-round votes.

Trump clinched the Republican nomination in March. If any other candidates are vying for the party’s nomination at the July convention, the Wyoming delegates will be free to vote for anyone they wish in any subsequent rounds of convention voting.

Twenty-three of Wyoming’s national delegates — one from each county in the state — already have been selected at Republican county conventions that began in February. The remaining six will be chosen at the state convention.

Republicans are dominant in Wyoming politics and gave Trump the highest percentage of votes of any state in 2020.

Wyoming Democrats have a similar process for allocating delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. They held a preference poll at county caucuses on April 13 that will determine how the state’s 17 national delegates will be pledged in the first-round convention vote.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel demonstrated its military dominance over adversary Iran in its apparent precision strikes that hit near military and nuclear targets deep in the heart of the country, meeting little significant challenge from Iran’s defenses and providing the world with new insights into both militaries’ capabilities.

The international community, Israel and Iran all signaled hopes that Friday’s airstrikes would end what has been a dangerous 19-day run of strikes and counterstrikes, a highly public test between two deep rivals that had previously stopped short of most direct confrontation.

The move into open fighting began April 1 with the suspected Israeli killing of Iranian generals at an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria. That prompted Iran’s retaliatory barrage last weekend of more than 300 missiles and drones that the U.S., Israel and regional and international partners helped bat down without significant damage in Israel. And then came Friday’s apparent Israeli strike.

As all sides took stock, regional security experts predicted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and the country’s allies would emerge encouraged by the Israeli military’s superior performance. In response to international appeals, however, both Israel and Iran had appeared to be holding back their full military force throughout the more than two weeks of hostilities, aiming to send messages rather than escalate to a full-scale war.

Crucially, experts also cautioned that Iran had not brought into the main battle its greatest military advantage over Israel — Hezbollah and other Iran-allied armed groups in the region. Hezbollah in particular is capable of straining Israel’s ability to defend itself, especially in any multifront conflict.

Overall, “the big-picture lesson to take away is that unless Iran does absolutely everything at its disposal all at once, it is just the David, and not the Goliath, in this equation,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow and longtime regional researcher at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Aside from those Iranian proxy forces, “the Israelis have every single advantage on every single military level,” Lister said.

In Friday’s attack, Iranian state television said the country’s air defense batteries fired in several provinces following reports of drones. Iranian army commander Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi said crews targeted several flying objects.

Lister said it appeared to have been a single mission by a small number of Israeli aircraft. After crossing Syrian airspace, it appears they fired only two or three Blue Sparrow air-to-surface missiles into Iran, most likely from a standoff position in the airspace of Iran’s neighbor Iraq, he said.

Iran said its air defenses fired at a major air base near Isfahan. Isfahan also is home to sites associated with Iran’s nuclear program, including its underground Natanz enrichment site, which has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli sabotage attacks.

Israel has not taken responsibility for either the April 1 or Friday strikes.

The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a Washington-based center that promotes Israeli-U.S. security ties, quickly pointed out that Friday’s small strike underscored that Israel could do much more damage “should it decide to launch a larger strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Iran’s barrage last weekend, by contrast, appears to have used up most of its 150 long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel, more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command.

Especially given the distance involved and how easy it is for the U.S. and others to track missile deployments by overhead space sensors and regional radar, “it is hard for Iran to generate a bolt from the blue against Israel,” McKenzie said.

Israelis, for their part, have “shown that Israel can now hit Iran from its soil with missiles, maybe even drones,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute.

Iran’s performance Friday, meanwhile, may have raised doubts about its ability to defend against such an attack, Vatanka said. Iran is about 80 times the size of Israel and thus has much more territory to defend, he noted.

Plus, Israel demonstrated that it can rally support from powerful regional and international countries, both Arab and Western, to defend against Iran.

The U.S. led in helping Israel knock down Iran’s missile and drone attack on April 13. Jordan and Gulf countries are believed to have lent varying degrees of assistance, including in sharing information about incoming strikes.

The two weeks of hostilities also provided the biggest showcase yet of the growing ability of Israel to work with Arab nations, its previous enemies, under the framework of U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East.

The U.S. under the Trump administration moved responsibility for its military coordination with Israel into Central Command, which already hosted U.S. military coordination with Arab countries. The Biden administration has worked to deepen the relationship.

But while the exchange of Israeli-Iran strikes revealed more about Iran’s military abilities, Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied armed groups in Iraq and Syria largely appeared to stay on the sidelines.

Hezbollah is one of the most powerful militaries in the region, with tens of thousands of experienced fighters and a massive weapons arsenal.

After an intense war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 that killed more than a thousand Lebanese civilians and dozens of Israeli civilians, both sides have held back from escalating to another full-scale conflict. But Israeli and Hezbollah militaries still routinely fire across each other’s borders during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Hezbollah “is Iran’s only remaining potential advantage in this whole broader equation,” Lister said.

Six months of fighting in Gaza have “completely stretched” Israel’s military, he said. “If Hezbollah went all out and launched the vast majority of its rocket and missile arsenal at Israel, all at once, the Israelis would seriously struggle to deal with that.”

And in terms of ground forces, if Hezbollah suddenly opened a second front, the Israel Defense Forces “would be incapable at this point” of fighting full-on with both Hezbollah and Hamas, he said.