Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has secured a place on the ballot in the battleground state of Michigan, state officials confirmed Thursday, elevating his potential to affect the November election.

Kennedy’s independent bid has spooked allies of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, who fear his famous last name and dedicated support among a slice of disaffected voters will be enough to tip the election.

Biden planned to accept endorsements from at least 15 members of the Kennedy political family during a campaign stop Thursday in Philadelphia.

A spokesperson for the Michigan secretary of state’s office said the Natural Law Party, a minor party with a line on the state’s ballot, nominated Kennedy at a convention.

Kennedy faces an expensive and time-consuming process to get on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia without the backing of a political party.

Michigan is the second state after Utah to affirm that his name will be presented to voters. His campaign or an allied super PAC say they’ve collected enough signatures in several other states, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, but they haven’t yet been validated by elections officials.

Third-party and independent candidates face long odds in a U.S. political system largely built around two major parties. Kennedy has acknowledged the hurdles he faces and urged Americans to “take a risk” and vote for him, saying the biggest obstacle to his campaign is the belief that he can’t win.

Kennedy is a leading activist in the movement that rejects the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and effective, and he’s built a fervent base of support among voters disenchanted with American institutions.

Stung by losses in two of the last six elections that many Democrats blame on third-party candidates, the Democratic National Committee has pledged a full court press to challenge Kennedy, including legal challenges to his ballot access and ads linking Kennedy to Trump supporters.

The anti-vaccine group Kennedy led for years, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against several news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A coalition backed by retailers like Walmart and Target announced Thursday it has collected enough signatures to put a ballot measure before California voters this November to enhance criminal penalties for shoplifting and drug dealing.

Californians for Safer Communities, a bipartisan group made up of law enforcement, elected officials and businesses, said it has collected more than 900,000 signatures in support of the measure to roll back parts of Proposition 47. The progressive ballot measure approved by 60% of state voters in 2014 reduced certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors to help address overcrowding in jails.

In recent years, Proposition 47 has become the focus of critics who say California is too lax on crime. Videos of large-scale thefts, in which groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight, have often gone viral. The California Retailers Association said it’s challenging to quantify the issue in California because many stores don’t share their data.

Crime data shows the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California. Across the state, shoplifting rates rose during the same time period but were still lower than the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while commercial burglaries and robberies have become more prevalent in urban counties, the study says.

The ballot measure would create harsher penalties for repeat shoplifters and fentanyl dealers. Shoplifters would be charged with a felony, regardless of the amount stolen, if they have at least two prior theft convictions. It also would create a new drug court treatment program for those with multiple drug possession convictions, among other things. More than 800 people died from fentanyl overdoses in San Francisco last year, a record for the city.

California’s approach to crime is poised to be a major political issue in November’s election. Beyond the ballot measure, Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed faces a tough reelection bid against competitors who say she’s allowed the city to spiral out of control. Meanwhile, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price faces a recall election, and Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón faces a challenger who has criticized his progressive approach to crime and punishment.

Top Democratic state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have repeatedly shut down calls to repeal Proposition 47. Newsom argued California already has tools to sufficiently go after criminals and urged lawmakers to bolster existing laws and go after motor vehicle thefts and resellers of stolen merchandise. Lawmakers have introduced a slew of bills aiming to tackle retail theft and online resellers.

The ballot measure campaign, which has raised at least $5.4 million as of early April, is mostly funded by large retailers. It has received $2.5 million from Walmart, $1 million from Home Depot and $500,000 from Target. The measure also has support from district attorneys and more than 30 local elected officials — including Breed and San Jose’s Democratic mayor.

Lana Negrete, vice mayor of Santa Monica and a business owner, said she’s considering closing down her family’s two music stores in the area after nine smash-and-grabs in the last four years. Negrete, a Democrat, said she voted for Proposition 47 and supported its progressive approach, but the measure has allowed for some criminals to skirt punishments while businesses are hurting.

“Nobody’s being held accountable,” Negrete said. “We’ve been robbed by the same person more than once, and that person, under the current structure and criminal justice system now, is walking the streets free.”

Her 52-year-old family business has lost more than $300,000 in merchandise loss and building repairs in the last few years, Negrete said. Some have advised Negrete start hiring armed security.

“We teach music lessons to children, I don’t need to have a guard in front of my store,” she said. “That’s not how it was when we started this business, and it’s sad to see it go that way.”

County and state officials must now verify the signatures before the measure is officially placed on the ballot. The ballot measure campaign needs at least 546,651 signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House congressional leaders were toiling Thursday on a delicate, bipartisan push toward weekend votes to approve a $95 billion package of foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as several other national security policies at a critical moment at home and abroad.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson this week set in motion a plan to advance the package, which has been held up since October by GOP lawmakers resistant to approving more funding for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. As the Republican speaker faced an outright rebellion from his right flank and growing threats for his ouster, it became clear that House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries would have to lend help to Johnson every step of the way.

“This is a very important message we are going to send to the world this week, and I’m anxious to get it done,” Johnson said earlier Wednesday announcing his strategy.

The growing momentum for a bipartisanship dynamic, a rarity in the deeply divided Congress, brought rare scenes of Republicans and Democrats working together to assert U.S. standing on the global stage and help American allies. But it also sent Johnson’s House Republican majority into fresh rounds of chaos.

Johnson’s Republican leadership team, seizing on the opportunity to outflank hardline conservatives with Democratic support, raised the idea of quickly changing the procedural rules to make it harder to oust the speaker from office.

The idea being floated would be to tuck a rules change into the emerging national security package that would raise the threshold on the so-called “motion to vacate” vote that right now can be called by any single lawmaker to remove the speaker.

Ultra-conservatives reacted with fury, angrily confronting Johnson on the House floor in a tense scene.

“If he wants to change the motion to vacate, he needs to come before Republican conference that elected him and tell us of his intentions,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a top ally of Donald Trump, who is leading the campaign to oust him.

Greene said if Johnson goes through with his plan, “he’s going to prove exactly what I’ve been saying is correct: He is the Democrat speaker.”

Following the exchange with Johnson on the House floor, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who instigated the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker last year but has so far refrained from joining Greene’s effort, said it was pushing him towards also wanting Johnson out as speaker.

“It’s my red line now,” added Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican. “I told him there’s nothing that will get you to a motion to vacate faster than changing the threshold.”

At the same time, one floor above the turmoil in the House chamber a rare image of bipartisan statesmanship was on display as the procedural Rules committee began debate launching the steps needed to push the foreign aid package forward toward weekend voting.

The Republican chairmen of the powerful Appropriations and Foreign Affairs committees alongside their top Democratic counterparts spoke in evocative language, some drawing on World War II history, to make the case for ensuring the U.S. stand with its allies against aggressors.

Chairman Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee cast this as a “pivotal” time in world history, comparing the current images of people fleeing the conflict in Europe to the situation in 1939 as Hitler’s Germany rose to power.

“Time is not on our side,” he told the panel.

The top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, followed through on McCaul’s urgency: “The camera of history is rolling.”

Johnson is trying to advance a complex plan to hold individual votes this weekend on the funds for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Asia-Pacific, then stitch the package back together.

The package would also include legislation that allows 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 potentially ban the video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year.

While Johnson is trying to remain close to Trump, and positioning the national security package as a way to assert U.S. strength in the world in the mold of Ronald Reagan-era Republicans, that puts the speaker politically at odds with the anti-interventionists powering the former president’s bid to return to the White House.

“Why isn’t Europe giving more money to help Ukraine?” Trump wrote on social media, but his post did not explicitly oppose the foreign aid package before Congress.

President Joe Biden is emphatically pushing Congress to pass the legislation to buttress what has been a cornerstone of his foreign policy — halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe.

“With the boost from supplemental assistance, Ukrainians are entirely capable of holding their own through 2024, and puncturing Putin’s arrogant view that time is on his side,” CIA Director Bill Burns told an audience at the Bush Center in Dallas Thursday.

Earlier, behind closed doors, Democratic leaders huddled with their caucus to discuss the foreign aid package and the extent to which they would help advance it through the procedural maneuvers in the Rules committee to bring it to the floor.

Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark told reporters after the meeting that Democrats were “open to helping.”

“This is a moment in history where we need to ensure that at long last we are bringing this critical aid to Ukraine to the floor,” she said.

The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus was urging Republicans to block the package from advancing to a final vote. The group demanded that sweeping immigration enforcement be added to the bill and derided it as the “’America Last’ foreign wars supplemental package.”

Rarely, if ever, does the minority party help the majority through the procedural hoops, particularly at the House Rules committee or during the various floor votes before final passage. It would be a level of bipartisanship unseen in this Congress, even as Republican leaders watched their own priority bills defeated on procedural votes by their own members.

But given the high stakes of the moment for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, and the inability of Johnson to marshal enough Republican support, the speaker will have no other choice if he intends to see the national security package to passage.

Yet Democrats were also trying to apply maximum leverage as Johnson’s job comes under threat.

Privately, Clark advised rank and file lawmakers not to divulge their positions on whether they would vote to help defeat a motion to vacate Johnson as speaker, though a handful of Democrats have already publicly said they would likely do so.

“Do not box yourself in with a public statement,” Clark told them according to a person familiar with the remarks.

Lawmakers have said the world is watching and waiting on its next steps, but there’s still a long slog ahead. If the House is able to clear the package this weekend, it still must go to the Senate for another round of voting.

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the deaths of four University of Idaho students in late 2022, was out for a drive the night they were killed, his attorneys said in a new court filing that lays out more details of the alibi defense he intends to use at his trial.

Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were stabbed to death at a rental home near the university campus in Moscow, Idaho, early on Nov. 13, 2022.

Kohberger, who was then a criminal justice student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, has been charged with four counts of murder. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

Authorities have said that cellphone data or surveillance video shows that Kohberger visited the victims’ neighborhood at least a dozen times before the killings; that he traveled in the region that night, returning to Pullman along a roundabout route; and that his DNA was found at the crime scene.

His phone, however, was not communicating with his cellphone provider during about a two-hour period when the attacks occurred — consistent with him having turned it off to avoid being placed at the murder scene, police said.

Anne Taylor, Kohberger’s public defender, wrote in a court filing late Wednesday that Kohberger was an avid runner and hiker who frequently went out for drives late at night.

Under Idaho law, defendants may be required to notify prosecutors in advance of any alibi defense. In a filing last August, Taylor wrote that Kohberger’s alibi was that he was out driving alone that night, as he often did. Wednesday’s document offered more details, including at least one of his destinations — Wawawai Park, along the Snake River southwest of Pullman — in the opposite direction from Moscow.

“Mr. Kohberger was out driving in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022; as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars,” Taylor wrote. “He drove throughout the area south of Pullman, Washington, west of Moscow, Idaho including Wawawai Park.”

The filing also detailed that the defense intends to offer the testimony of an expert in cellphone and cell tower data to support the notion that Kohberger did not travel east along the main road connecting Pullman and Moscow that night, Taylor wrote.

Police arrested Kohberger, 29, more than six weeks after the killings, locating him at his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania, where he had gone during winter break.

No date has been set for the trial.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The leader of Iraq will travel to Michigan on Thursday following a sit-down with President Joe Biden to meet with the state’s large Iraqi community and update them on escalating tensions in the Middle East following Iran’s weekend aerial assault on Israel.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s trip to both Washington and Michigan to discuss U.S.-Iraq relations had been planned well before Saturday’s drone and missile launches from Iran-backed groups. The visit has been thrust into the spotlight as tensions in the region escalate following the strike, which included drone and missile launches that overflew Iraqi airspace and others that were launched from Iraq by Iran-backed groups.

Michigan holds one of the largest populations of Iraqis in the nation and many local Democrats have pushed back against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The state holds the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country.

The Iraqi prime minister is expected to land in the Detroit area Thursday evening and be met by local leaders, including Wayne County Executive Warren Evans and Assad I. Turfe, a deputy Wayne County executive. He will then travel to a mosque in Dearborn Heights to meet with Iraqi community members and officials to give an update on his meeting with Biden talking about the economic relations between Iraq and the U.S., according to Mohammed Al-mawla, a community member involved in the planning.

There are just over 90,000 residents in Michigan of Iraqi descent, the largest of any state, according to the most recent U.S. Census. In Wayne County, home to the cities of Detroit and Dearborn, 7.8% of residents identified of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry, alone or in any combination, the highest percentage of any U.S. county.

The concentration of those residents in the outskirts of Detroit has led to multiple visits to the area from officials engaged in Middle Eastern relations.

Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Biden, traveled to metro Detroit in March to meet with Lebanese Americans and discuss efforts to prevent the conflict from expanding along Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah operates. Multiple White House officials also traveled to Dearborn in February to meet with Arab American leaders to discuss the conflict.

Fears over the war expanding grew over the weekend following the strikes and the developments have raised further questions about the viability of the two-decade American military presence in Iraq. However, a U.S. Patriot battery in Irbil, Iraq, which is designed to protect against missiles, did shoot down at least one Iranian ballistic missile, according to American officials — one of dozens of missiles and drones destroyed by U.S. forces alongside Israeli efforts to defeat the attack.

___

Hamada reported from Houston.

A convenience store chain where President Joe Biden stopped for snacks this week while campaigning in Pennsylvania has been hit with a lawsuit by federal officials who allege the company discriminated against minority job applicants.

Sheetz Inc. which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check, according to U.S. officials.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Baltimore against Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheetz and two subsidary companies, alleging the chain’s longstanding hiring practices have a disproportionate impact on minority applicants and thus run afoul of federal civil rights law.

Sheetz said Thursday it “does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

“Diversity and inclusion are essential parts of who we are. We take these allegations seriously. We have attempted to work with the EEOC for nearly eight years to find common ground and resolve this dispute,” company spokesperson Nick Ruffner said in a statement.

The privately held, family-run company has more than 23,000 employees and operates convenience stores and gas stations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Wednesday, the day Biden stopped at a Sheetz market on a western Pennsylvania campaign swing, buying snacks, posing for photos and chatting up patrons and employees.

Federal officials said they do not allege Sheetz was motivated by racial animus, but take issue with the way the chain uses criminal background checks to screen job seekers. The company was sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.

“Federal law mandates that employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue,” EEOC attorney Debra M. Lawrence said in a statement.

“Even when such necessity is proven, the practice remains unlawful if there is an alternative practice available that is comparably effective in achieving the employer’s goals but causes less discriminatory effect,” Lawrence said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many job applicants have been affected, but the agency said Sheetz’s unlawful hiring practices date to at least 2015.

The EEOC, an independent agency that enforces federal laws against workplace discrimination, is seeking to force Sheetz to offer jobs to applicants who were unlawfully denied employment and to provide back pay, retroactive seniority and other benefits.

The EEOC began its probe of the convenience store chain after two job applicants filed complaints alleging employment discrimination.

The agency found that Black job applicants were deemed to have failed the company’s criminal history screening and were denied employment at a rate of 14.5%, while multiracial job seekers were turned away 13.5% of the time and Native Americans were denied at a rate of 13%.

By contrast, fewer than 8% of white applicants were refused employment because of a failed criminal background check, the EEOC’s lawsuit said.

The EEOC notified Sheetz in 2022 that it was likely violating civil rights law, but the agency said its efforts to mediate a settlement failed, prompting this week’s lawsuit.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a new rule for public land management that’s meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.

Officials pushed past strong opposition from private industry and Republican governors to adopt the proposal.

The rule from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — which oversees more than 380,000 square miles (990,000 square kilometers) of land, primarily in the U.S. West — will allow public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.

The rule also promotes the designation of more “areas of critical environmental concern” — a special status that can restrict development. It’s given to land with historic or cultural significance or that’s important for wildlife conservation.

The land bureau has a history of industry-friendly policies and for more than a century has sold grazing permits and oil and gas leases. In addition to its surface land holdings, the bureau regulates publicly-owned underground mineral reserves — such as coal for power plants and lithium for renewable energy — across more than 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers).

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the changes would “restore balance” to how the U.S. government manages its public lands. The new rule continues the administration’s efforts to use science to restore habitats and guide “strategic and responsible development,” Haaland said in a statement.

But Republican lawmakers and industry representatives blasted the move as a backdoor way to exclude mining, energy development and agriculture from government acreage that’s often cheap to lease. They assert the administration is violating the “multiple use” mandate for Interior Department lands, by catapulting the “non-use” of federal lands — meaning restoration leases — to a position of prominence.

“By putting its thumb on the scales to strongly favor conservation over other uses, this rule will obstruct responsible domestic mining projects,” said National Mining Association President Rich Nolan.

The rule’s adoption comes amid a flurry of new regulations from the Biden administration as the Democrat seeks reelection to a second term in November.

Government agencies in recent weeks tightened vehicle emissions standards to cut greenhouse gas emissions, finalized limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water and increased royalty rates for oil companies that drill on public lands.

About 10% of all land in the U.S. falls under the Bureau of Land Management’s jurisdiction, putting the agency at the center of arguments over how much development should be allowed on public property.

Environmentalists largely embraced the changes adopted Thursday, characterizing them as long overdue.

Trout Unlimited President Chris Wood said conservation already was part of the land bureau’s mission under the 1976 Federal Lands Policy Management Act. The new rule, he said, was “a re-statement of the obvious.”

“We are pleased to see the agency recognizing what the law already states — conservation is a vital use of our public lands,” he said.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a staunch Biden critic, on Thursday said he will introduce legislation to repeal the public lands rule. The Republican lawmaker alleged it would block access to areas that people in Wyoming depend on for mineral production, grazing and recreation.

“President Biden is allowing federal bureaucrats to destroy our way of life,” he said.

But Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of New Mexico said protecting public lands has wide support among the American people.

Oil, gas and mining companies “have had the upper hand on our public lands for too long,” Grijalva said.

Restoration leases will not be issued if they would conflict with activity already underway on a parcel of land, officials said. They also said private industry could benefit from the program, since companies could buy leases and restore that acreage to offset damage they might do to other government-owned properties.

Those leases were referred to as “conservation leases” in the agency’s original proposal last year. That was changed to “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases” in the final rule, but their purpose appears largely the same.

While the bureau previously issued leases for conservation purposes in limited cases, it has never had a dedicated program for it.

Bureau Director Tracy Stone-Manning has said the changes address the rising challenges of climate change and development. She told The Associated Press when the changes were announced last year that making conservation an “equal” to other uses would not interfere with grazing, drilling and other activities.

Former President Donald Trump tried to ramp up fossil fuel development on bureau lands, before President Joe Biden suspended new oil and gas leasing when he entered office. Biden later revived the deals to win West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s support for the 2022 climate law.

DETROIT (AP) — Thousands of workers at a big Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will vote next month on whether they want to be represented by the United Auto Workers union.

The National Labor Relations Board said Thursday that the vote will take place from May 13 to May 17 at the facilities in Vance and Woodstock, Alabama. Votes will be counted by the agency on May 17.

The NRLB said that the company and the union agreed to the election dates.

The vote will be the second in the union’s drive to organize 150,000 workers at more than a dozen nonunion auto manufacturing plants largely in Southern states. About 4,300 workers at Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are voting on union representation this week, with the vote tally to be announced on Friday.

The organizing effort comes after the UAW won big pay raises after striking Detroit’s three automakers last fall.

The Mercedes facilities had about 6,100 employees as of the end of 2023. More than 5,000 are calling for the union vote, UAW has said.

In response to the workers’ petition, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International stated that it “fully respects our Team Members’ choice (on) whether to unionize.” The company added that it plans to ensure all workers have a chance to cast their own secret-ballot vote and have access to “the information necessary to make an informed choice” during the election process.

The UAW has accused Mercedes management of anti-union tactics in recent weeks, filing federal labor charges against the company.

Earlier this week the governors of six Southern states, including Alabama and Tennessee, put out a statement saying that workers will put their jobs in jeopardy if they vote for a union.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Authorities evacuated an area of Ohio’s capital, Columbus, for several hours on Thursday out of fear that a fire in truck’s trailer could have caused lithium ion batteries to explode.

Police began evacuating a several-block area west of downtown shortly after 7 a.m. and closed off several highway exits near the Scioto River. Officers went door-to-door to alert residents about the evacuation, and a shelter was set up at a community center.

Although firefighters were still battling the blaze as of late morning, the evacuation order was lifted about three hours after it was issued and no injuries were reported.

The evacuation was ordered out of concern that the batteries could burn very rapidly and explode.

The fire was discovered at around 6 a.m., but the back of the smoking trailer wasn’t opened until around 9 a.m. because authorities were determining the best way to extinguish the blaze.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) -The Biden administration on Thursday finalized new measures to protect the health of U.S. public lands, including by leasing acreage for conservation in much the same way as it offers land for development like drilling, mining and grazing.

The regulations from the Interior Department will help guard nearly a tenth of America’s land base from the impact of climate change and enable industries to offset their environmental footprints, the agency said.

The move is consistent with the administration’s goal to put climate change at the center of agency decisions and with Biden’s pledge to conserve 30% of America’s land and water.

The rule was welcomed by conservation groups, but an oil and gas industry group said it was illegal and pledged to sue.

The Bureau of Land Management’s so-called Public Lands Rule clarifies that conservation is on par with other uses of public lands and directs the Interior Department division to consider land health when making decisions.

It also creates a new system whereby acreage can be leased to restore degraded landscapes or mitigate impacts from development on other public lands. The leases would not conflict with existing uses, the agency said.

“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come.”

Conservation groups said the BLM for too long had focused on development rather than preserving land health.

“This rule gives the BLM the tools it needs to right these wrongs and start improving the health of our public lands,” Center for Western Priorities spokesperson Kate Groetzinger said in a statement. “It also provides tools for extractive industries to be part of the solution, rather than exacerbate the problem.”

The Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas companies that operate on federal lands, said the rule would upend the balance on public lands between industries like energy, mining, grazing and recreation.

“This is a classic example of overreach by the Biden Administration, which has no problem ignoring basic law, and would be detrimental to rural communities all across the West that rely on responsible economic development on non-park, non-wilderness public lands,” Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said in a statement. “We have no choice but to litigate.”

(Reporting by Nichola GroomEditing by Alexandra Hudson)