WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is expected to announce Friday that it will provide about $6 billion in long-term military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said, adding that it will include much sought after munitions for Patriot air defense systems.

The officials said the aid package will be funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term contracts with the defense industry and means that it could take many months or years for the weapons to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

The new funding — the largest tranche of USAI aid sent to date – will include a wide array of munitions for air defense, such as the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAM) and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), as well as the Patriot munitions, Switchblade and Puma drones, counter drone systems and artillery.

The announcement is expected to come as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convenes a virtual meeting on Friday of defense officials from Europe and around the world to discuss international aid for Ukraine. The gathering — created by Austin and known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — has been meeting about monthly for the past two years, and is the primary forum for weapons contributions to Kyiv for the war.

It follows the White House decision earlier this week to approve the delivery of $1 billion in weapons and equipment to Ukraine. Those weapons include a variety of ammunition, including air defense munitions and large amounts of artillery rounds that are much in demand by Ukrainian forces, as well as armored vehicles and other weapons.

That aid, however, will get to Ukraine quickly because it is being pulled off Pentagon shelves, including in warehouses in Europe.

The large back-to-back packages are the result of the new infusion of about $61 billion in funding for Ukraine that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday. And they provide weapons Kyiv desperately needs to stall gains being made by Russian forces in the war.

Bitterly divided members of Congress deadlocked over the funding for months, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson to cobble together a bipartisan coalition to pass the bill. The $95 billion foreign aid package, which also included billions for Israel and Taiwan, passed the House on Saturday, and the Senate approved it Tuesday.

Senior U.S. officials have described dire battlefield conditions in Ukraine, as troops run low on munitions and Russian forces make gains.

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the U.S. has sent more than $44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts to Ukraine.

Among the weapons provided to Ukraine were Abrams M1A1 battle tanks. But Ukraine has now sidelined them in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s GOP-controlled General Assembly on Thursday adjourned for the year, concluding months of tense political infighting that doomed Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s universal school voucher push. But a bill allowing some teachers to carry firearms in public schools and one adding a nearly $2 billion tax cut and refund for businesses received last-minute approval.

For months, Lee declared enacting universal school vouchers his top priority for the legislative session. At the same time, he warned that lawmakers must pass the major tax cut and refund for businesses to prevent a potential lawsuit as critics alleged the state violated the U.S. Constitution.

The ambitious pitches were made to a legislative body still harboring deep resentments from the past year, where inaction on gun control and safety measures had left deep divides between the Senate and House. Meanwhile, the explosive attention from the expulsions of two young Black Democratic lawmakers resulted in retaliatory restrictions on how long certain House members could speak during legislative debates and limitations on seating inside the public galleries.

“This was a session of good, bad and ugly,” said Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari. “Unfortunately some really really bad bills ended up passing.”

While Lee was unable to find consensus on his voucher pitch — an initiative that he vowed to renew next year — he was able to secure a last-minute deal on the eye-popping $1.9 billion tax cut and refund for businesses. The amount is almost 4% of the state’s $52.8 billion budget, which largely does not contain tax breaks for most Tennesseans.

“We accomplished things that will benefit the people of this state,” Lee told reporters after lawmakers adjourned. “And I’m proud of the work of the men and women that have come together and worked together to compromise and figure out the way forward to make life better for the people that live in this state.”

At issue are concerns that the state’s 90-year-old franchise tax violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which bans states from passing laws that burden interstate commerce. The statute hasn’t been formally challenged, but late last year, a handful of companies sent a letter to lawmakers demanding the Legislature fix the law or risk a legal battle.

“Bottom line, Tennessee pays its bills,” said Republican Sen. Rusty Crowe. “The state of Tennessee wrongly took this money and we’re going to pay these companies back.”

House and Senate leaders disagreed for months over details on how to resolve the legal questions surrounding the franchise tax. On the last day of the session, both sides conceded to offer businesses to apply for retroactive refunds for the past three years in exchange for temporarily disclosing the names of businesses that sought a refund and the ranges of refund amounts — a first in Tennessee history.

Yet the names of the businesses will only be posted by the Department of Revenue publicly for 30 days in June 2025. Companies will have to apply for the refund this year.

“These transparency stipulations are a joke,” said Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro, arguing that more could be done to disclose exact amounts even as Republicans countered that the agreed disclosure was unprecedented.

Funding for three years of refunds is expected to cost taxpayers $1.5 billion. It will cost another $400 million annually for the ongoing franchise tax break.

The final week of Tennessee’s nearly four-month long legislative session also saw emotionally-charged debates over the arming of public school teachers and staff, with hundreds of protesters flocking to the Capitol to chant, “Blood on your hands” at the Republicans who passed the bill.

The legislation specifically bars parents and other teachers from knowing who is armed on school grounds.

On Thursday. Lee promised he would sign the bill into law. Once he does, it’ll be the biggest expansion of gun access in the state after last year’s deadly shooting at a private elementary school in Nashville.

“There are folks across the state who disagree on the way forward, but we all agree that we should keep our kids safe,” Lee said, stressing that whether to arm public school staffers will be decided at the local level and not a statewide mandate.

With a Republican supermajority, Democratic members were unable to put up much of a fight against a long list of bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community, ranging from requiring public school employees to out transgender students to their parents and allowing LGBTQ+ foster children to be placed with families that hold anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, Tennessee has enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws than any other state since 2015, identifying more than 20 bills that advanced out of the Legislature over the past few months.

Republicans and Gov. Lee also signed off on repealing police traffic stop reforms made in Memphis after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by officers in January 2023, despite pleas from Nichols’ parents to give them a chance to find compromise.

Around the same time, lawmakers removed the trustees of Tennessee’s only publicly funded historically Black university after Republicans argued it was needed due to mismanagement identified in audits. Democrats and others have countered that the increased scrutiny largely resulted from the attention over addressing Tennessee State University being chronically underfunded by an estimated $2.1 billion over the last three decades.

As fallout increased around the removals, House lawmakers spiked legislation that would have banned local governments from paying to either study or dispense money for reparations for slavery. A rare rejection of what had been a GOP-backed bill.

On abortion, lawmakers approved criminalizing adults who help minors get abortions without parental consent. That bill is currently awaiting Lee’s expected signature after he had already signed legislation requiring public school students watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine has sidelined U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 battle tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023 after an aggressive monthslong campaign by Kyiv arguing that the tanks, which cost about $10 million apiece, were vital to its ability to breach Russian lines.

But the battlefield has changed substantially since then, notably by the ubiquitous use of Russian surveillance drones and hunter-killer drones. Those weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect the tanks when they are quickly detected and hunted by Russian drones or rounds.

Five of the 31 tanks have already been lost to Russian attacks.

The proliferation of drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means “there isn’t open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection,” a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide an update on U.S. weapons support for Ukraine before Friday’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.

For now, the tanks have been moved from the front lines, and the U.S. will work with the Ukrainians to reset tactics, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady and a third defense official who confirmed the move on the condition of anonymity.

“When you think about the way the fight has evolved, massed armor in an environment where unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous can be at risk,” Grady told the AP in an interview this week, adding that tanks are still important.

“Now, there is a way to do it,” he said. “We’ll work with our Ukrainian partners, and other partners on the ground, to help them think through how they might use that, in that kind of changed environment now, where everything is seen immediately.”

News of the sidelined tanks comes as the U.S. marks the two-year anniversary of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of about 50 countries that meets monthly to assess Ukraine’s battlefield needs and identify where to find needed ammunition, weapons or maintenance to keep Ukraine’s troops equipped.

Recent aid packages, including the $1 billion military assistance package signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, also reflect a wider reset for Ukrainian forces in the evolving fight.

The U.S. is expected to announce Friday that it also will provide about $6 billion in long-term military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said, adding that it will include much sought after munitions for Patriot air defense systems. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

The $1 billion package emphasized counter-drone capabilities, including .50-caliber rounds specifically modified to counter drone systems; additional air defenses and ammunition; and a host of alternative, and cheaper, vehicles, including Humvees, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.

The U.S. also confirmed for the first time that it is providing long-range ballistic missiles known as ATACMs, which allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian-occupied areas without having to advance and be further exposed to either drone detection or fortified Russian defenses.

While drones are a significant threat, the Ukrainians also have not adopted tactics that could have made the tanks more effective, one of the U.S. defense officials said.

After announcing it would provide Ukraine the Abrams tanks in January 2023, the U.S. began training Ukrainians at Grafenwoehr Army base in Germany that spring on how to maintain and operate them. They also taught the Ukrainians how to use them in combined arms warfare — where the tanks operate as part of a system of advancing armored forces, coordinating movements with overhead offensive fires, infantry troops and air assets.

As the spring progressed and Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive stalled, shifting from tank training in Germany to getting Abrams on the battlefield was seen as an imperative to breach fortified Russian lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on his Telegram channel in September that the Abrams had arrived in Ukraine.

Since then, however, Ukraine has only employed them in a limited fashion and has not made combined arms warfare part of its operations, the defense official said.

During its recent withdrawal from Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that was the focus of intense fighting for months, several tanks were lost to Russian attacks, the official said.

A long delay by Congress in passing new funding for Ukraine meant its forces had to ration ammunition, and in some cases they were only able to shoot back once for every five or more times they were targeted by Russian forces.

In Avdiivka, Ukrainian forces were badly outgunned and fighting back against Russian glide bombs and hunter-killer drones with whatever ammunition they had left.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging new federal rules entitling workers to time off and other accommodations for abortions, calling the rules an illegal interpretation of a 2022 federal law.

The lawsuit led by Tennessee and Arkansas comes since finalized federal regulations were published on Monday to provide guidance for employers and workers on how to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The language means workers can ask for time off to obtain an abortion and recover from the procedure.

The rules, which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted on a 3-2 vote along party lines, will go into effect June 18. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Arkansas argues the regulations go beyond the scope of the 2022 law that passed with bipartisan support.

“This is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to force through administrative fiat what it cannot get passed through Congress,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement. “Under this radical interpretation of the PWFA, business owners will face federal lawsuits if they don’t accommodate employees’ abortions, even if those abortions are illegal under state law.”

An EEOC spokesperson referred questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Better Balance, one of the most vocal advocates for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, called the lawsuit a baseless attack on the law’s protections.

“This lawsuit represents a bad faith effort to politicize what is a vital protection for the health and economic security of millions of families, and a continuation of the alarming attacks on women’s health and reproductive choice,” Dina Bakst, the group’s co-president, said in a statement. “We are committed to fighting to defend workers’ rights under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.”

The EEOC has said the new law does not obligate employers or employer-sponsored health plans to cover abortion-related costs, and that the type of accommodation that most likely will be sought under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regarding an abortion is time off to attend a medical appointment or for recovery, which does not have to be paid.

The other states joining the lawsuit are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A North Dakota ballot initiative group can gather signatures to put a proposal legalizing recreational marijuana to a statewide vote in the fall, the state’s top election official said Thursday, in the latest legalization effort in the conservative state.

The New Economic Frontier needs to submit 15,582 valid signatures to Secretary of State Michael Howe by July 8 to make the November general election ballot. Otherwise, the group has one year to gather enough signatures to make the next statewide election.

The 20-page statutory measure would legalize recreational marijuana for people 21 and older to use at their homes and, if permitted, on others’ private property. The measure also outlines numerous production and processing regulations, prohibited uses — such as in public or in vehicles — and home cultivation of plants.

Leading the initiative is Steve Bakken, a Burleigh County commissioner and former Bismarck mayor who said he has never smoked marijuana and never will. He said law enforcement resources “should be directed someplace a little more effectual,” such as combating fentanyl and other illicit drugs. He said the group also wants to head off the potential of a poorly crafted initiative.

“If we don’t do something now, we’re going to wind up getting something that is untenable to work with,” Bakken said, adding that he expects the group can gather enough signatures by the July deadline.

Criminal defense attorney Mark Friese, a former Bismarck police officer, also is among the measure’s backers. He said North Dakota is poised to become an island as neighboring states and Canada have legalized marijuana or have similar efforts. Law enforcement resources also are “a big part,” Friese said.

“We spend too many resources, we spend too much money, we criminalize behavior that’s more benign than alcohol consumption, and we have a mental health and true drug crisis going on in our communities, and we’re diverting law enforcement resources away from methamphetamine and fentanyl to make marijuana arrests,” Friese said. “It’s just illogical.”

The measure would set maximum purchase and possession amounts of 1 ounce of dried leaves or flowers, 4 grams of a cannabinoid concentrate, 1,500 mg of total THC in the form of a cannabis product and 300 mg of an edible product. The measure would allow cannabis solutions, capsules, transdermal patches, concentrates, topical and edible products.

Marijuana use by people under 21 is a low-level misdemeanor in the state. Recreational use by anyone older is not a crime. Possession penalties vary from an infraction to differing misdemeanors depending on the amount of marijuana. Delivery of any amount of marijuana is a felony, which can be elevated depending on certain factors, such as if the offense was within 300 feet (91 meters) of a school.

In 2023, 4,451 people statewide were charged with ingestion or possession of marijuana, according to North Dakota Courts data requested by The Associated Press.

North Dakota voters rejected previous legalization measures in 2018 and 2022. In 2021, the Republican-led state House of Representatives passed bills to legalize and tax recreational marijuana, which the GOP-majority Senate defeated.

Republican Sen. Janne Myrdal said she is “firmly against” legalizing recreational marijuana, saying, “I just don’t believe in illicit drugs being legalized.

“It’s kind of like, what else are we going to start legalizing?” Myrdal said. “Other nations have gone and legalized all kinds of wrongdoings and things that are negative for young people, negative for the human body at large, and I just think we’re going in the wrong direction of saying, ‘Oh, well, people are going to do it anyway, so let’s just legalize it.’ That’s a faulty argument to me.”

North Dakota voters approved of medical marijuana in 2016. The state-administered program has nearly 10,000 active patient cards.

In 2019, the state’s Pardon Advisory Board approved a new process to ease pardons for low-level marijuana offenses, through which Republican Gov. Doug Burgum has granted 100 pardons, according to his office.

Twenty-four states have legalized marijuana for adults, most recently in Ohio by initiative in November, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Other legalization efforts are underway in other states. Florida voters will decide a ballot initiative in November. Signature-gathering efforts for similar measures are active in states such as Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, according to NORML.

A body found in a northwest Iowa field has been identified as that of a missing truck driver, discovered not far from where his abandoned rig was found on an isolated highway just before Thanksgiving.

But details of his death remain a mystery.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety said Thursday the state medical examiner’s office had conducted a forensic autopsy, and authorities identified the body as that of David Schultz, 53, with dental records. The department said authorities do not suspect foul play in his death. Preliminary autopsy results showed no signs of trauma or serious injury, the agency said. Further results are pending.

The department said someone in his field discovered a body Wednesday, near where Schultz’s semi was found parked in the middle of the road on Nov. 21.

Schultz’s wife, Sarah, told reporters on Thursday that the person discovered was wearing boots that matched her husband’s, and his keys were found in the pants pocket.

The discovery, she said, brought a mixture of relief and sorrow.

“I’m glad we know where he is now,” Sarah Schultz said. “There’s still a lot of questions. Things don’t make sense.”

Schultz, of Wall Lake, Iowa, left home late on the night of Nov. 20 to pick up a load of pigs from a hog confinement near Eagle Grove, Iowa. He was expected to deliver the pigs the next morning to a livestock dealer in Sac City, Iowa, a small farming town about 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Des Moines. When he didn’t show up, no one could get him on the phone.

Sarah Schultz reported him missing, and the truck was found later that afternoon, less than 10 miles (6.2 km) northeast of his destination. The pigs were still in the trailer. Schultz’s wallet and phone were inside his rig. His jacket was on the roadside.

Jake Rowley, the regional team leader of United Cajun Navy, a nonprofit search-and-rescue organization that helped with the search, said local law enforcement agencies searched the area where the body was found immediately after Schultz went missing, including with drones. More than 250 volunteers searched an additional 100,000 acres.

An unanswered question, Rowley said, was whether the the body “was there the entire time,” or if it was recently moved to the spot where it was found.

Sarah Schultz described her husband as a devoted family man who stressed to his kids the importance of being respectful and working hard.

“He was such a good father,” Sarah Schultz said. “It’s not fair.”

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A former Arkansas mortuary worker pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that she sold 24 boxes of stolen body parts from medical school cadavers to a Pennsylvania man for nearly $11,000.

She was among several charged recently in what prosecutors have called a nationwide scheme to steal and sell human body parts from an Arkansas mortuary and Harvard Medical School.

Candace Chapman Scott, 37, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of interstate transportation of stolen property. She had pleaded not guilty when she was indicted last year in the case.

An indictment unsealed last year accused Scott of setting up the transactions with Jeremy Pauley, a Pennsylvania man she met through a Facebook group about “oddities.”

In September, Pauley pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the theft and sale of the body parts from the Arkansas mortuary and Harvard.

Scott was employed at Arkansas Central Mortuary Services, where part of her job was to transport, cremate and embalm remains. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock has said that’s where the medical school sent remains of cadavers that had been donated for medical students to examine.

An attorney for Scott declined to comment Thursday afternoon.

Under a plea agreement with Scott, federal prosecutors dropped 10 other wire and mail charges sought against her. She faces up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine on the transporting stolen property charge. She also faces up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine on the mail fraud charge.

A sentencing date has not been scheduled.

SEATTLE (AP) — The federal government plans to restore grizzly bears to an area of northwest and north-central Washington, where they were largely wiped out.

Plans announced this week by the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service call for releasing three to seven bears a year for five to 10 years to achieve an initial population of 25. The aim is to eventually restore the population in the region to 200 bears within 60 to 100 years.

Grizzlies are considered threatened in the Lower 48 and currently occupy four of six established recovery areas in parts of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and northeast Washington. The bears for the restoration project would come from areas with healthy populations.

There has been no confirmed evidence of a grizzly within the North Cascades Ecosystem in the U.S. since 1996, according to the agencies. The greater North Cascades Ecosystem extends into Canada but the plan focuses on the U.S. side.

“We are going to once again see grizzly bears on the landscape, restoring an important thread in the fabric of the North Cascades,” said Don Striker, superintendent of North Cascades National Park Service Complex.

It’s not clear when the restoration effort will begin, the Seattle Times reported.

Fragmented habitat due to rivers, highways and human influences make it unlikely that grizzlies would repopulate the region naturally.

According to the park service, killing by trappers, miners and bounty hunters during the 1800s removed most of the population in the North Cascades by 1860. The remaining population was further challenged by factors including difficulty finding mates and slow reproductive rates, the agency said.

The federal agencies plan to designate the bears as a “nonessential experimental population” to provide “greater management flexibility should conflict situations arise.” That means some rules under the Endangered Species Act could be relaxed and allow people to harm or kill bears in self-defense or for agencies to relocate bears involved in conflict. Landowners could call on the federal government to remove bears if they posed a threat to livestock.

The U.S. portion of the North Cascades ecosystem is similar in size to the state of Vermont and includes habitat for dens and animal and plant life that would provide food for bears. Much of the region is federally managed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump on Thursday claimed the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “nothing” compared to ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest instance in which he has downplayed a racist incident that was one of the most criticized moments of his presidency.

Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the day’s end of his criminal hush money trial, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for student protesters who have set up encampments as they call for a cease-fire in the war Israel launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Biden has recently, as he often does, publicly brought up the Charlottesville rally that sparked his decision to run against Trump in 2020, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”

“We’re having protests all over. He was talking about Charlottesville,” Trump said. “Charlottesville was a little peanut. And it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.”

Trump has tried to pin reported instances of antisemitism around the campus protests to Biden. But in invoking Charlottesville, Trump again raised his history of courting extremists and his repeated refusal to disavow groups like the Proud Boys, some of whom would go on participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Biden administration quickly condemned the comments.

“Minimizing the antisemitic and white supremacist poison displayed in Charlottesville is repugnant and divisive,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.

Hundreds of white nationalists descended on the city on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, 2017. Clashes between white nationalists and anti-racism protesters broke out both days, prompting authorities to declare the gathering on Aug. 12 an “unlawful assembly” and to order crowds to disperse. It was after that announcement that a man rammed his car into a peaceful group of counter-protesters. One woman died; 35 others were injured.

Days after the deadly rally, Trump told reporters that “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

It was, as Biden has said, when he knew he would run for president again. He talks about the moment often, including at a campaign event last week.

“When those folks came walking out of those fields — down in Charlottesville, Virginia — carrying Nazi banners, singing the same garbage that they sang in Hitler’s streets in Germany in the ’30s, carrying torches, accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan, and a young woman was killed, I decided that I had to run. I had to run,” he said. “Our democracy is at stake, and it really is.”

The protests that have swept across college campuses in recent days come as tensions rise in the U.S. over the nation’s role in the Israel-Hamas war, particularly as deaths mount in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive.

The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion. And other Jewish students have participated in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

More than 100 people have been arrested in the protests. Biden has tried to navigate it politically, saying students have a right to free speech while condemning antisemitic protests.

___

AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Montana law that appeared to require people to cancel any previous voter registrations before signing up to vote in the state, or risk facing felony charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said Wednesday that he agreed with the plaintiffs who argued the law was vague and overbroad and could cause people to decide not to register to vote for fear of being charged with a crime. The penalties include fines of up to $5,000 and up to 18 months in prison.

“The Court’s ruling protects Montanans and their constitutional rights by ensuring that a simple act — registering to vote — does not turn Montana citizens into felons,” said Amanda Curtis, president of the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which is one of the plaintiffs.

The lawmaker who sponsored the bill during the 2023 legislative session said it was meant to make it clear that people can’t double vote. That is already illegal under federal and state law.

The problem with the law, attorney Raph Graybill said Thursday, was that it didn’t create a clear process for someone to cancel their previous registrations.

“The basic principle is if you’re going to create a crime, the rules have to be clear enough that people can avoid becoming criminals, and this law does not meet that requirement,” said Graybill, who represents the public employees and the Montana Public Interest Research Group. Both plaintiffs said the law would hinder their efforts to register new voters.

The lawsuit was filed last September against Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Commissioner of Political Practices Chris Gallus. The Attorney General’s Office is defending the state. Knudsen’s press secretary, Chase Scheuer, said the agency was reviewing the order to determine its next steps.

The current voter registration form requires people to list their previous registration, but the new law wasn’t clear if providing that information satisfied a person’s responsibility to de-register, said Graybill, the running mate of Ryan Busse, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in the June primary.

Montana election clerks can notify clerks in other counties if a voter’s registration changes, but Montana is not part of a national database that would allow it to inform other states about new voter registrations, election officials have said.

The state opposed the motion for the temporary injunction, saying it was not enforcing the law.

Graybill said the plaintiffs’ response was, “the fact that you’re not enforcing an unconstitutional law doesn’t make it constitutional.”

Enforcement of the law is blocked until the case is heard in court, Morris wrote.