NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Biden administration is preparing to announce plans for a new five-year schedule to lease federal offshore tracts for wind energy production, with up to a dozen lease sales anticipated beginning this year and continuing through 2028.

The plan was to be announced Wednesday in New Orleans by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Three of the anticipated sales would be for Gulf of Mexico tracts to be offered this year, in 2025 and in 2027. Central Atlantic area leases would be sold in 2024 and 2026.

Other anticipated sale areas include the Gulf of Maine (2024 and 2028); Oregon waters (2024); an area of the Atlantic known as New York Bight (2027); and California, Hawaii, and an as-yet unspecified U.S. territory (2028).

The sales will be coordinated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“As we look toward the future, this new leasing schedule will support the types of renewable energy projects needed to lower consumer costs, combat climate change, create jobs to support families, and ensure economic opportunities are accessible to all communities,” Haaland said in a news release ahead of remarks to a conference in New Orleans.

SHANGHAI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has begun a critical trip to China armed with a strengthened diplomatic hand following Senate approval of a foreign aid package that will provide billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform -– all areas of contention between Washington and Beijing.

Blinken arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday just hours after the Senate vote on the long-stalled legislation and shortly before President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law to demonstrate U.S. resolve in defending its allies and partners. Passage of the bill will add further complications to an already complex relationship that has been strained by disagreements over numerous global and regional disputes.

Still, the fact that Blinken is making the trip — shortly after a conversation between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — is a sign the two sides are at least willing to discuss their differences.

Of primary interest to China, the bill sets aside $8 billion to counter Chinese threats in Taiwan and the broader Indo-Pacific and gives China’s ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. China has railed against U.S. assistance to Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, and immediately condemned the move as a dangerous provocation. It also strongly opposes efforts to force TikTok’s sale.

The bill also allots $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel and humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, and $61 billion for Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s invasion. The Biden administration has been disappointed in China’s response to the war in Gaza and has complained loudly that Chinese support for Russia’s military-industrial sector has allowed Moscow to subvert Western sanctions and ramp up attacks on Ukraine.

Even before Blinken landed in Shanghai — where he will have meetings on Thursday before traveling to Beijing — China’s Taiwan Affairs Office slammed the assistance to Taipei, saying it “seriously violates” U.S. commitments to China, “sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces” and pushes the self-governing island republic into a “dangerous situation.”

China and the United States are the major players in the Indo-Pacific and Washington has become increasingly alarmed by Beijing’s growing aggressiveness in recent years toward Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries with which it has significant territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea.

The U.S. has strongly condemned Chinese military exercises threatening Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province and has vowed to reunify with the mainland by force if necessary. Successive U.S. administrations have steadily boosted military support and sales for Taiwan, much to Chinese anger.

A senior State Department official said last week that Blinken would “underscore, both in private and public, America’s abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. We think that is vitally important for the region and the world.”

In the South China Sea, the U.S. and others have become increasingly concerned by provocative Chinese actions in and around disputed areas.

In particular, the U.S. has voiced objections to what it says are Chinese attempts to thwart legitimate maritime activities by others in the sea, notably the Philippines and Vietnam. That was a major topic of concern this month when Biden held a three-way summit with the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines.

On Ukraine, which U.S. officials say will be a primary topic of conversation during Blinken’s visit, the Biden administration said that Chinese support has allowed Russia to largely reconstitute its defense industrial base, affecting not only the war in Ukraine but posing a threat to broader European security.

“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said last week.

China says it has the right to trade with Russia and accuses the U.S. of fanning the flames by arming and funding Ukraine. “It is extremely hypocritical and irresponsible for the U.S. to introduce a large-scale aid bill for Ukraine while making groundless accusations against normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday.

On the Middle East, U.S. officials, from Biden on down, have repeatedly appealed to China to use any leverage it may have with Iran to prevent Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza from spiraling into a wider regional conflict.

While China appears to have been generally receptive to such calls — particularly because it depends heavily on oil imports from Iran and other Mideast nations — tensions have steadily increased since the beginning of the Gaza war in October and more recent direct strikes and counterstrikes between Israel and Iran.

Blinken has pushed for China to take a more active stance in pressing Iran not to escalate tensions in the Middle East. He has spoken to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, several times urging China to tell Iran to restrain the proxy groups it has supported in the region, including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.

The senior State Department official said Blinken would reiterate the U.S. interest in China using “whatever channels or influence it has to try to convey the need for restraint to all parties, including Iran.”

The U.S. and China are also at deep odds over human rights in China’s western Xinjiang region, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as the fate of several American citizens that the State Department says have been “wrongfully detained” by Chinese authorities, and the supply of precursors to make the synthetic opioid fentanyl that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

China has repeatedly rejected the American criticism of its rights record as improper interference in its internal affairs. Yet, Blinken will again raise these issues, according to the State Department official.

Another department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to preview Blinken’s private talks with Chinese officials, said China had made efforts to rein in the export of materials that traffickers use to make fentanyl but that more needs to be done.

The two sides agreed last year to set up a working group to look into ways to combat the surge of production of fentanyl precursors in China and their export abroad. U.S. officials say they believe they had made some limited progress on cracking down on the illicit industry but many producers had found ways to get around new restrictions.

“We need to see continued and sustained progress,” the official said, adding that “more regular law enforcement” against Chinese precursor producers “would send a strong signal of China’s commitment to address this issue.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s long, painful battle with Republicans in Congress to secure urgently needed assistance for Ukraine will end Wednesday when he signs into law a $95 billion war aid measure that also includes support for Israel, Taiwan and other allies.

But significant damage has been done to the administration’s effort to help Ukraine repel Russia’s brutal invasion during the funding impasse that dates back to August, when Biden made his first emergency spending request for Ukraine aid. Even with a burst of new weapons and ammunition, it is unlikely Ukraine will immediately recover after months of setbacks.

Biden is expected to quickly approve the transfer of an initial aid package of about $1 billion in military assistance — the first tranche from about $61 billion allocated for Ukraine, according to U.S. officials. It is expected to include air defense capabilities, artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other weapons to shore up Ukrainian forces who have seen morale sink as Russian President Vladimir Putin has racked up win after win.

In a statement after the Senate passed the package Tuesday night, Biden said he would sign it as soon as he receives it on Wednesday.

“This critical legislation will make our nation and world more secure as we support our friends who are defending themselves against terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like Putin,” Biden said.

But longer term, it remains uncertain if Ukraine — after months of losses in Eastern Ukraine and sustaining massive damage to its infrastructure — can make enough progress to sustain American political support before burning through the latest influx of money.

“It’s not going in the Ukrainians’ favor in the Donbas, certainly not elsewhere in the country,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, referring to the eastern industrial heartland where Ukraine has suffered setbacks. “Mr. Putin thinks he can play for time. So we’ve got to try to make up some of that time.”

Russia now appears focused on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. Russian forces have exploited air defense shortages in the city,pummeling the region’s energy infrastructure, and looking to shape conditions for a potential summer offensive to seize the city.

House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a vote on the supplemental aid package for months as members of his party’s far right wing, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, threatened to move to oust him if he allowed a vote to send more assistance to Ukraine. Those threats persist.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested his fellow Republicans’ holding up the funding could have a lasting impact on Ukraine’s hopes of winning the war.

“Make no mistake: Delay in providing Ukraine the weapons to defend itself has strained the prospects of defeating Russian aggression,” McConnell said Tuesday. “Dithering and hesitation have compounded the challenges we face.”

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 presidential GOP nominee, has complained that European allies have not done enough for Ukraine. While he stopped short of endorsing the supplemental funding package, his tone has shifted in recent days, acknowledging that Ukraine’s survival is important to the United States.

Indeed, many European leaders have long been nervous that a second Trump presidency would mean decreased U.S. support for Ukraine and for the NATO military alliance. The European anxiety was heightened in February when Trump in a campaign speech warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that don’t meet defense spending goals if he returns to the White House.

It was a key moment in the debate over Ukraine spending. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg quickly called out Trump for putting “American and European soldiers at increased risk.” Biden days later called Trump’s comments “dangerous” and “un-American” and accused Trump of playing into Putin’s hands.

But in reality, the White House maneuvering to win additional funding for Ukraine started months earlier.

Biden, the day after returning from a whirlwind trip to Tel Aviv following Hamas militants’ stunning Oct. 7 attack on Israel, used a rare prime time address to make his pitch for the supplemental funding.

At the time, the House was in chaos because the Republican majority had been unable to select a speaker to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who had been ousted more than two weeks earlier. McCarthy’s reckoning with the GOP’s far right came after he agreed earlier in the year to allow federal spending levels that many in his right flank disagreed with and wanted undone.

Far-right Republicans have also adamantly opposed sending more money for Ukraine, with the war appearing to have no end in sight. Biden in August requested more than $20 billion to keep aid flowing into Ukraine, but the money was stripped out of a must-pass spending bill even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to make a personal plea for continued U.S. backing.

By late October, Republicans finally settled on Johnson, a low-profile Louisiana Republican whose thinking on Ukraine was opaque, to serve as the next speaker. Biden during his congratulatory call with Johnson urged him to quickly pass Ukraine aid and began a months-long, largely behind-the-scenes effort to bring the matter to a vote.

In private conversations with Johnson, Biden and White House officials leaned into the stakes for Europe if Ukraine were to fall to Russia. Five days after Johnson was formally elected speaker, national security adviser Jake Sullivan outlined to him the administration’s strategy on Ukraine and assured him that accountability measures were in place in Ukraine to track where the aid was going — an effort to address a common complaint from conservatives.

On explicit orders from Biden himself, White House officials also avoided directly attacking Johnson over the stalled aid — a directive the president repeatedly instilled in his senior staff.

For his part, Johnson came off to White House officials as direct and an honest actor throughout the negotiations, according to a senior administration official. Biden had success finding common ground with Republicans earlier in his term to win the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure deal, legislation to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry, and an expansion of federal health care services for veterans exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits. And he knew there was plenty of Republican support for further Ukraine funding.

At frustrating moments during the negotiations, Biden urged his aides to “just keep talking, keep working,” according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

So they did. In a daily meeting convened by White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, the president’s top aides — seated around a big oval table in Zients’ office — would brainstorm possible ways to better make the case about Ukraine’s dire situation in the absence of aid.

Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, and legislative affairs director Shuwanza Goff were in regular contact with Johnson. Goff and Johnson’s senior staff also spoke frequently as a deal came into focus.

The White House also sought to accommodate Johnson and his various asks. For instance, administration officials at the speaker’s request briefed Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C. — two conservatives who were persistent antagonists of Johnson.

All the while, senior Biden officials frequently updated McConnell as well as key Republican committee leaders, including Reps. Michael McCaul and Mike Turner.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Biden’s instincts to resist pressuring Johnson proved correct.

“Joe Biden has a very good sense of when to heavily intervene and when to try to shape things,” Schumer said.

In public, the administration deployed a strategy of downgrading intelligence that demonstrated Russia’s efforts to tighten its ties with U.S. adversaries China, North Korea and Iran to fortify Moscow’s defense industrial complex and get around U.S. and European sanctions.

For example, U.S. officials this month laid out intelligence findings that showed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry. Earlier, the White House publicized intelligence that Russia has acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea and has acquired attack drones from Iran.

The $61 billion can help triage Ukrainian forces, but Kyiv will need much more for a fight that could last years, military experts say.

Realistic goals for the months ahead for Ukraine — and its allies — include avoiding the loss of major cities, slowing Russia’s momentum and getting additional weaponry to Kyiv that could help them go on the offensive in 2025, said Bradley Bowman, a defense strategy and policy analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

“In our microwave culture, we tend to want immediate results,” Bowman said. “And sometimes things are just hard and you can’t get immediate results. I think Ukrainian success is not guaranteed, but Russian success is if we stop supporting Ukraine.”

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

By Chris Taylor

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If you think getting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert or the World Series is tough, try booking a hotel room in an American college town for Graduation Day.

Toni Milbourne faced this before her daughter’s graduation from West Virginia University in May. Hotel room rates in Morgantown doubled before the local event. In a nearby town, prices more than tripled to $350 a night.

“It absolutely feels like price gouging,” said Milbourne, managing editor for a West Virginia newspaper. “People need to be aware that companies are taking advantage of people in times that should be a celebration.”

Parents of college kids frequently suck it up, and not just around Graduation Day.

Whether for Family Weekends or Homecomings, smaller communities often get swarmed by visitors far beyond their ability to handle them. Meanwhile, pricing algorithms for airlines and hotels do what they were designed to do – crank up prices when demand soars.

“A lot of smaller college towns might have 20,000 or 30,000 people, and maybe 2,000 hotel rooms,” said Professor Chris Anderson, who researches pricing, at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration.

“With crazy high-demand dates, like a college graduation, all of a sudden you have 40,000 parents and guests arriving for multiple days of festivities. Now you have a real imbalance of supply and demand.”

As a result, parents must pay super-high prices for hotels and flights, if they are available at all.

To avoid this quandary, Shama Diegnan, a digital marketer from South Orange, New Jersey, sprung into action for Parents Weekend at a Midwestern college even before her younger son had accepted the school’s offer.

“It never occurred to me that these hotels may cost more than in a major metropolitan city,” said Diegnan. She was stunned that one local hotel charged over $1,000 a night, up from its usual room rate of about $100.

How can parents avoid Graduation Day nightmares? Here are a few tips.

PREPARE EARLY

Many hotels typically take reservations a year in advance. If your child is slated to graduate next year, start booking now. As for Parents Weekends in the fall, you should have already booked. If those dates are still not set, check the university parents’ Facebook group for updates.

Note that for such high-demand dates, hotels may be stricter than usual, and may require prepayment for nonrefundable bookings or set a minimum number of nights, Anderson said.

CHECK OUT ALTERNATIVES

Hotels have a fixed number of rooms, but homeowners on Airbnb or VRBO may offer extra rooms, apartments or houses on high-demand dates.

For Parents Weekend, Diegnan booked a $300-a-night Airbnb 10 minutes from campus, instead of a local hotel room at $500 or more.

One caveat from Anderson: Some parts of the country, like New York City, are stricter about short-term rentals, limiting homeowners’ ability to absorb huge influxes of visitors.

LOOK FOR SECONDARY MARKETS

Parents wishing to cancel nonrefundable hotel rooms are in a tight spot. That is why options like www.gohoken.com have sprung up.

“They specialize in having hotel rooms for high-demand dates, and allowing people to offload prepaid rooms that they don’t need anymore,” Anderson said. “It’s like a StubHub secondary market, but for hotel rooms.”

Milbourne gave up on local hotels and plans to bunk at the home of family members instead.

“I don’t think hotels should be able to jack up prices in moments like this,” she said. “Not only is my daughter graduating, but she spent four years on active duty in the Army. This is a big deal for us.”

(Editing by Lauren Young and Richard Chang)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Transportation Department is finalizing on Tuesday new rules that require upfront disclosure of airline fees and mandate refunds for delayed baggage or inoperative services like onboard Wi-Fi.

The rules, which were nearly three years in the works, will require airlines and ticket agents to tell consumers upfront about baggage or change and cancellation fees. The department said consumers are expected to save $543 million annually in excess airline fees.

The new rules require airlines and ticket agents to disclose extra service fees alongside the full fare, the first time fare and schedule information is displayed online.

The government will also require airlines to refund baggage fees if bags are not delivered within 12 hours of domestic flights arriving or 15 to 30 hours of their international flight arrivals, as well as for services that do not work or are not provided. Airlines must promptly and automatically issue refunds if flights are canceled.

“Airlines should compete with one another to secure passengers’ business—not to see who can charge the most in surprise fees,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Airlines for America, a trade group representing major carriers, said airlines “offer transparency and vast choice to consumers from first search to touchdown. U.S. airlines are committed to providing the highest quality of service, which includes clarity regarding prices, fees and ticket terms.”

In May, President Joe Biden said USDOT was writing new rules to require airlines to compensate passengers with cash for significant flight delays or cancellations when the carriers are responsible. But almost a year later, USDOT has still not issued a formal proposal.

Airlines will be required to explain fee policies before ticket purchases and share fee pricing and policies with other companies that display fares.

Under the new rules, airlines will be required to tell consumers seats are guaranteed and passengers need not pay seat selection fees. Carriers are prohibited from advertising promotional discounts that do not include mandatory carrier-imposed fees.

Last month, a U.S. Senate Committee said it was stepping up its investigation into billions of dollars in yearly airline fees, noting between 2018 and 2022, total revenue across major U.S. airlines from baggage fees increased from $4.9 billion to $6.8 billion.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Miral Fahmy)

BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday blasted the latest package of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan on Wednesday, saying that such funding was pushing the self-governing island republic into a “dangerous situation.”

The U.S. Senate late Tuesday passed $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars. China claims the entire island of Taiwan as its own territory and has threatened to take it by force if necessary.

The mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office said the aid “seriously violates” U.S. commitments to China and “sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces.”

Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian added that Taiwan’s ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which won a third four-year presidential term in January, is willing to “become a pawn for external forces to use Taiwan to contain China, bringing Taiwan into a dangerous situation.”

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te told a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation that the aid package would “strengthen the deterrence against authoritarianism in the West Pacific ally chain” and “help ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and also boost confidence in the region.”

The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer. But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question U.S. involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The package covers a wide range of parts and services aimed at maintaining and and upgrading Taiwan’s military hardware. Separately, Taiwan has signed billions in contracts with the U.S. for latest-generation F-16V fighter jets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks and the HIMARS rocket system, which the U.S. has also supplied to Ukraine.

Taiwan has also been expanding its own defense industry, building submarines and trainer jets. Next month, it plans to commission its third and fourth domestically designed and built stealth corvettes to counter the Chinese navy as ptensions art of a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, in which a smaller force counters its larger opponent by using cutting edge or nonconventional tactics and weaponry.

China launches daily incursions into waters and airspace around Taiwan by navy ships and warplanes. It has also sought to pick away Taiwan’s few remaining formal diplomatic partners.

However, only two People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes and seven navy vessels were found operating in areas around Taiwan between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, possibly as a result of heavy rainstorms and low visibility overnight along the island’s west coast facing China.

At times of heightened tensions, China has launched dozens of such missions over a 24 hour period, many of them crossing the center line in the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides or entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

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A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the U.S. had approved $8 billion in aid for Taiwan. In fact, the $8 billion figure is the amount to be spent on a range of priorities related to countering China in the Indo-Pacific, including aid to Taiwan.

NEW YORK (AP) — Standoffs between pro-Palestinian student protesters and universities grew increasingly tense on both coasts Wednesday as hundreds encamped at Columbia University faced a deadline from the administration to clear out while dozens remained barricaded inside two buildings on a Northern California college campus.

Both are part of intensifying demonstrations over Israel’s war with Hamas by university students across the country demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies that are enabling its months long conflict. Dozens have been arrested on charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct.

Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik in a statement Tuesday set a midnight deadline to reach an agreement with students to clear the encampment, or “we will have to consider alternative options.”

That deadline passed without news of an agreement. Videos show some protesters taking down their tents while others doubled down in speeches. Rumors spread online that the deadline had been pushed to the morning, but the university declined to comment on whether that was true. The heightened tension arrived the night before U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s trip to Columbia to visit with Jewish students and address antisemitism on college campuses.

Across the country, protesters at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) north of San Francisco, started using furniture, tents, chains and zip ties to block the building’s entrances Monday evening.

“We are not afraid of you!” the protesters chanted before officers in riot gear pushed into them at the building’s entrance, video shows. Student Peyton McKinzie said she was walking on campus Monday when she saw police grabbing one woman by the hair, and another student having their head bandaged for an injury.

“I think a lot of students are in shock about it,” she told The Associated Press.

Three students have been arrested, according to a statement from Cal Poly Humboldt, which shutdown the campus until Wednesday. An unknown number of students had occupied a second campus building Tuesday.

The upwelling of demonstrations has left universities struggling to balance campus safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated the protests, which largely demanded that schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel.

Now, universities are doling out more heavy-handed discipline, citing safety concerns as some Jewish students say criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism.

Protests had been bubbling for months but kicked into a higher gear after more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s upper Manhattan campus were arrested Thursday.

By late Monday at New York University, police said 133 protesters were taken into custody and all had been released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges.

In Connecticut, police arrested 60 protesters — including 47 students — at Yale, after they refused to leave an encampment on a plaza at the center of campus.

Yale President Peter Salovey said protesters had declined an offer to end the demonstration and meet with trustees. After several warnings, school officials determined “the situation was no longer safe,” so police cleared the encampment and made arrests.

In the Midwest on Tuesday, a demonstration at the center of the University of Michigan campus had grown to nearly 40 tents, and nine anti-war protesters at the University of Minnesota were arrested after police took down an encampment in front of the library. Hundreds rallied to the Minnesota campus in the afternoon to demand their release.

Harvard University in Massachusetts has tried to stay a step ahead of protests by locking most gates into its famed Harvard Yard and limiting access to those with school identification. The school has also posted signs that warn against setting up tents or tables on campus without permission.

Literature Ph.D. student Christian Deleon said he understood why the Harvard administration may be trying to avoid protests but said there still has to be a place for students to express what they think.

“We should all be able to use these kinds of spaces to protest, to make our voices heard,” he said.

Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said college leaders face extremely tough decisions because they have a responsibility to ensure people can express their views, even when others find them offensive, while protecting students from threats and intimidation.

The New York Civil Liberties Union cautioned universities against being too quick to call in law enforcement in a statement Tuesday.

“Officials should not conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism or use hate incidents as a pretext to silence political views they oppose,” said Donna Lieberman, the group’s executive director.

Leo Auerbach, a student at the University of Michigan, said the differing stances on the war hadn’t led to his feeling unsafe on campus but he has been fearful of the “hateful rhetoric and antisemitic sentiment being echoed.”

“If we’re trying to create an inclusive community on campus, there needs to be constructive dialogue between groups,” Auerbach said. “And right now, there’s no dialogue that is occurring.”

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, physics senior Hannah Didehbani said protesters were inspired by those at Columbia.

“Right now there are several professors on campus who are getting direct research funding from Israel’s ministry of defense,” she said. “We’ve been calling for MIT to cut those research ties.”

Protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, which had an encampment of about 30 tents Tuesday, were also inspired by Columbia’s demonstrators, “who we consider to be the heart of the student movement,” said law student Malak Afaneh.

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

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Perry reported from Meredith, New Hampshire. Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Triangle, Virginia; Larry Lage in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Steve LeBlanc in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Haven Daley in San Francisco; Jesse Bedayn in Denver; and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Students at a growing number of U.S. colleges are gathering in protest encampments with a unified demand of their schools: Stop doing business with Israel — or any companies that empower its ongoing war in Gaza.

The demand has its roots in a decades-old campaign against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. The movement has taken on new strength as the Israel-Hamas war surpasses the six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza have sparked international calls for a cease-fire.

Inspired by ongoing protests and the arrests last week of more than 100 students at Columbia University, students from Massachusetts to California are now gathering by the hundreds on campuses, setting up tent camps and pledging to stay put until their demands are met.

“We want to be visible,” said Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who noted that students at the university have been pushing for divestment from Israel since 2002. “The university should do something about what we’re asking for, about the genocide that’s happening in Gaza. They should stop investing in this genocide.”

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are empowering Israel’s military efforts in Gaza — and in some cases from Israel itself.

The demands vary from campus to campus. Among them:

__ Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel.

__ Stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that aid the country’s military efforts.

__ Stop investing college endowments with money managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors.

__ Be more transparent about what money is received from Israel and what it’s used for.

Student governments at some colleges in recent weeks have passed resolutions calling for an end to investments and academic partnerships with Israel. Such bills were passed by student bodies at Columbia, Harvard Law, Rutgers and American University.

Officials at several universities say they want to have a conversation with students and honor their right to protest. But they also are echoing the concerns of many Jewish students that some of the demonstrators’ words and actions amount to antisemitism — and they say such behavior won’t be tolerated.

Sylvia Burwell, president of American University, rejected a resolution from the undergraduate senate to end investments and partnerships with Israel.

“Such actions threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community,” Burwell said in a statement.

Burwell cited the university’s “longstanding position” against the decades-old Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Protesters in the movement have drawn parallels between Israel’s policy in Gaza — a tiny strip of land tucked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to about 2.3 million Palestinians — to apartheid in South Africa. Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized control of the strip in 2007.

Opponents of BDS say its message veers into antisemitism. In the past decade alone, more than 30 states have enacted laws or directives blocking agencies from hiring companies that support the movement. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it a “pernicious threat” in 2019, saying it fueled bias against Jews on U.S. campuses.

Asked this week whether he condemned “the antisemitic protests,” President Joe Biden said he did. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden said after an Earth Day event Monday.

At Yale, where dozens of student protesters were arrested Monday, President Peter Salovey noted in a message to campus that, after hearing from students, the university’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility had recommended against divesting from military weapons manufacturers.

President Minouche Shafik at Columbia said there should be “serious conversations” about how the university can help in the Middle East. But “we cannot have one group dictate terms,” she said in a statement Monday.

MIT said in a statement that the protesters have “the full attention of leadership, who have been meeting and talking with students, faculty, and staff on an ongoing basis.”

On many campuses, students pushing for divestment say they don’t know the extent of their colleges’ connections to Israel. Universities with large endowments spread their money across a vast array of investments, and it can be difficult or impossible to identify where it all lands.

The U.S. Education Department requires colleges to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources, but there have been problems with underreporting, and colleges sometimes dodge reporting requirements by steering money through separate foundations that work on their behalf.

According to an Education Department database, about 100 U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel totaling $375 million over the past two decades. The data tells little about where the money comes from, however, or how it was used.

Some students at MIT have published the names of several researchers who accept money from Israel’s defense ministry for projects that the students say could help with drone navigation and missile protection. All told, pro-Palestinian students say, MIT has accepted more than $11 million from the defense ministry over the past decade.

MIT officials didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

“MIT is directly complicit with all of this,” said sophomore Quinn Perian, a leader of a Jewish student group that is calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. He said there’s growing momentum to hold colleges accountable for any role they play in supporting Israel’s military.

“We’re all drawing from the same fire,” he said. “They’re forcing us, as students, to be complicit in this genocide.”

Motivated by the Columbia protests, students at the University of Michigan were camping out on a campus plaza Tuesday demanding an end to financial investments with Israel. They say the school sends more than $6 billion to investment managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors. They also cited investments in companies that produce drones or warplanes used in Israel, and in surveillance products used at checkpoints into Gaza.

University of Michigan officials said that they have no direct investments with Israeli companies, and that indirect investments made through funds amount to a fraction of 1% of the university’s $18 billion endowment. The school rejected calls for divestment, citing a nearly 20-year-old policy “that shields the university’s investments from political pressures.”

Students at Harvard and Yale are demanding greater transparency, along with their calls for divestment.

Transparency was one of the key demands at Emerson College, where 80 students and other supporters occupied a busy courtyard on the downtown Boston campus Tuesday.

Twelve tents sporting slogans including “Free Gaza” or “No U.S. $ For Israel” lined the entrance to the courtyard, with sleeping bags and pillows peeking out through the zippered doors.

Students sat cross-legged on the brick paving stones typing away on final papers and reading for exams. The semester ends in a couple of weeks.

“I would love to go home and have a shower,” said Owen Buxton, a film major, “but I will not leave until we reach our demands or I am dragged out by police.”

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. 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.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Don Blankenship hasn’t had much success running for office.

He ran for the Senate as a Republican in 2018 and sought the White House in 2020 as a third party candidate. He lost badly both times but is on the ballot again in 2024, this time as a Democrat seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Joe Manchin.

Blankenship has plenty of baggage heading into the May 14 Democratic primary. Beyond his history of political losses, he’s perhaps best known in this coal-producing state as the former chief executive of Massey Energy who spent a year in federal prison for conspiring to violate mine safety laws before an explosion at his West Virginia coal mine killed 29 men in 2010.

With their threadbare Senate majority on the line in this year’s elections, Democrats are already pessimistic about their chances in West Virginia, where Manchin was the rare member of their party to find success in a state that Republican former President Donald Trump carried by nearly 39 percentage points in 2020. But a Blankenship victory in the primary could prove especially problematic for the party, leaving Democrats with an unpopular candidate with a complicated past in business and politics.

The party and its union allies are working to avoid that scenario.

Earlier this week, Manchin endorsed Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott, who was an aide to legendary Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd and is unapologetically pro-union. State Democratic Party Chair Mike Pushkin argues Blankenship isn’t a Democrat and is fond of referring to him as “federal prisoner 12393-088,” a reference to his identification number while incarcerated. And Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers union — which endorsed Manchin in 2012 and 2018 — said seeing Blankenship file for the Senate as a Democrat “may be the most fraudulent and cynical move” he’s ever seen.

“And that’s saying a lot,” Roberts quipped. “If he’s a Democrat, then I’m Batman.”

In an interview, Blankenship argued that it’s the Democratic Party that’s inauthentic and that he’s the candidate most aligned with West Virginians.

“Basically I hope to deliver the message that when West Virginians vote for a typical Democrat, they’re voting for the policies that they don’t believe in,” he said. “That’s actually the reason they abandoned the party to begin with.”

In the Democratic primary, Elliott and Blankenship will face Marine Corps veteran and grassroots organizer Zach Shrewsbury. Jim Justice, the current governor and a wealthy coal operator, and Rep. Alex Mooney, a pro-Trump Republican, are competing for the GOP nomination.

In order to win, Blankenship must overcome the toxic atmosphere created by his highly publicized trial. Prosecutors portrayed Blankenship as a micromanager who put profits above safety and made their case using phone calls Blankenship secretly recorded in his Massey office. On those calls, Blankenship said a scathing internal safety memo should be kept confidential and would be a terrible document to show up in legal discovery if a mine fatality occurred.

Investigations found that worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited coal dust and methane gas. Broken and clogged water sprayers allowed what should have been a flare-up to become an inferno. An outspoken critic of then-President Barack Obama, Blankenship, along with his defense team, was ordered by a federal judge during his 2015 trial not to tell jurors he was being persecuted by Democrats.

Manchin was governor when the Massey Energy mine Blankenship ran blew up. By the time the ex-CEO was sentenced to a year in prison, Manchin was a U.S. senator.

“No sentence is severe enough,” he said on the day Blankenship was sentenced.

Blankenship still maintains that natural gas caused the tragedy and blamed Obama’s Mine Health Safety Administration for ventilation changes prior to the explosion. Prosecutors noted that regulators wouldn’t allow the mine’s old ventilation standard because of a 2006 fire that killed two people at another Massey mine in West Virginia.

Once one of Appalachia’s wealthiest men, Blankenship has spent thousands on lawsuits alleging he has been the victim of defamation and character assassination, all of which have been rejected by courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court. Before seeking office, Blankenship spent millions backing GOP candidates, including nearly $3.5 million in 2004 to help defeat a Democratic incumbent and elect the first Republican to the state Supreme Court in more than 80 years. His unabashed bankrolling of West Virginia Republicans inspired a John Grisham novel, “The Appeal.”

So far, West Virginia voters have given no indication they take him seriously as a candidate.

“The Republicans rejected him, so I’m pretty sure the Democrat Party will handily reject him as well,” said Shrewsbury, whose grandfather was a coal miner.

Shrewsbury said he has no respect for Blankenship, adding that “he’s not someone who should be in this race.” Shrewsbury and Elliott stress the importance of investing in green energy technology and criticized laws like “Right to Work” passed by the state’s GOP supermajority to weaken union power.

“We need to fight for the worker, not the company store,” Shrewsbury said.

Manchin also has a tenuous relationship with Justice, the GOP race’s likely frontrunner. Justice, who owns the swanky Greenbrier Hotel and dozens of other businesses, was recruited by Manchin to run as a Democrat for governor before switching parties at a 2017 rally for Trump.

Justice’s mining companies have been scrutinized for alleged safety violations and unpaid taxes, and he’s also been sued by retirees of his coal companies over prescription drug coverage interruptions.

Elliott said Justice isn’t what West Virginia needs.

“He’s protecting coal, that’s what he’s going to say,” Elliott said. “Ask the coal miners who work for him how much he’s protecting the coal miners.”

He said struggling people living in dying coal counties want realistic solutions.

“Look, there’s room to protect the coal jobs that we have, but also admit that the world is changing and that we have to be investing in ourselves, and not just expecting some outside industry — be it an extractive industry or anything else — to save us.”

Mindi Stewart, whose husband Stanley “Goose” Stewart was working at Upper Big Branch and survived on the day of the disaster, said she and her husband don’t like seeing Blankenship being given any platform.

Goose was 300 feet (about 91 meters) inside the mine when it blew up. He tried to revive some of his fallen co-workers, then covered their bodies with blankets, their faces obscured by soot.

Stewart said they were shocked when Blankenship decided to run as a Democrat. But she said they’re starting to see it differently.

“We know he’s going to run every chance he gets and we know why he is running,” she said. “We know, and I think he knows, he’ll never get elected. Being found guilty has eaten him alive from the moment it happened.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court hears arguments Thursday over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

It’s a historic day for the court, with the justices having an opportunity to decide once and for all whether former presidents can be prosecuted for official acts they take while in the White House.

But between a decades-old court case about Richard Nixon, and an obscure constitutional provision about presidential impeachments, there are likely to be some unfamiliar concepts and terms thrown about.

Here are some tips to help follow everything:

The court marshal will bang the gavel at 10 a.m. EDT and Chief Justice John Roberts will announce soon after the start of arguments in Donald J. Trump vs. United States of America, as the case is called.

The session easily could last two hours or more.

There are no cameras in the courtroom, but since the pandemic, the court has livestreamed its argument sessions. Listen live on apnews.com/live/trump-supreme-court-arguments-updates or the court’s website at www.supremecourt.gov. C-SPAN also will carry the arguments at www.c-span.org.

Expect to hear talk about the impeachment process and the relationship, if any, to criminal prosecution.

Central to Trump’s immunity argument is the claim that only a former president who was impeached and convicted by the Senate can be criminally prosecuted. Trump was impeached over his efforts to undo the election in the run-up to the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But he was acquitted, not convicted, by the Senate in 2021.

Trump’s lawyers cite as backup for their argument a provision of the Constitution known as the Impeachment Judgment Clause that says an officeholder convicted by the Senate shall nevertheless be “liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment” in court.

Prosecutors say the Trump team is misreading the clause and that conviction in the Senate is not a prerequisite for a courtroom prosecution.

There’s going to be plentiful discussion about Nixon but not necessarily for the reasons one might think.

Trump’s team has repeatedly drawn attention to a 1982 case, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, in which the Supreme Court held that a former president cannot be sued in civil cases for their actions while in office. The case concerned the firing of an Air Force analyst, A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who testified before Congress about cost overruns in the production of a transport plane.

Fitzgerald’s lawsuit against Nixon, president at the time of the 1970 termination, was unsuccessful, with Justice Lewis Powell writing for the court that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for acts that fall within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.

Importantly, that decision did not shield presidents from criminal liability, though Trump’s team says the same analysis should apply.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is also likely to bring up a separate Supreme Court decision involving Nixon that they say bolsters their case — a 1974 opinion that forced the president to turn over incriminating White House tapes for use in the prosecutions of his top aides.

Prosecutors have also noted that Nixon accepted rather than declined a subsequent pardon from President Gerald Ford — a recognition by the men, they say, “that a former President was subject to prosecution.”

The justices are known to love presenting hypothetical scenarios to lawyers as a way of testing the outer limits of their arguments. Expect that practice to be on full display Thursday as the court assesses whether former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity.

Already, Trump’s lawyers have warned that if the prosecution is permitted to go forward, it would open the floodgates to criminal charges against other presidents, such as for authorizing a drone strike that kills a U.S. citizen or for giving false information to Congress that leads the country into war.

In a memorable moment during arguments in January before a federal appeals court, a judge asked a Trump lawyer whether a president who ordered a Navy SEAL to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted.

Look for Smith’s team to try to draw a sharp distinction between acts that it says are quintessential exercises of presidential power — such as ordering a drone strike during war — to the acts that Trump is accused of in this case, such as participating in a scheme to organize fake electors in battleground states. Those acts, prosecutors say, are personal acts and not presidential ones.

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Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.