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 or the war in Gaza. 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 consider alternative options.”

That deadline passed without news of an agreement. Videos show some protestors taking down their tents while others doubled down in speeches. 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, protestors at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, started using furniture, tents, chains and zip ties to block the building’s entrances Monday evening. The defiance was less expected in the conservative region of California, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

“We are not afraid of you!” the protestors 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.

A conservative quest to limit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives is gaining momentum in state capitals and college governing boards, with officials in about one-third of the states now taking some sort of action against it.

Tennessee became the latest when the Republican governor this week signed legislation that would prohibit banks and other financial institutions from considering a customer’s participation — or lack thereof — in “diversity, equity and inclusion training” or “social justice programming.”

That came shortly after the Democratic governor in Kansas allowed legislation to become law without her signature that will prohibit statements about diversity, equity or inclusion from being used in decisions about student admissions, financial aid or employment at higher education institutions.

Last week, Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature also gave final approval to a budget bill that would ban all DEI offices and initiatives in higher education that aren’t necessary to comply with accreditation or federal law. The measure expands upon a directive last year from the Iowa Board of Regents to eliminate DEI staff positions.

Republican lawmakers in about two dozen states have filed bills seeking to restrict DEI initiatives this year. They are countered by Democrats who have sponsored supportive DEI measures in about 20 states. Altogether, lawmakers have proposed about 150 bills this year that would either restrict or promote DEI efforts, according to an Associated Press analysis using the legislation-tracking software Plural.

Higher education institutions and many businesses have long devoted resources to improving diversity and inclusivity.

More recently, conservative groups began raising concerns that DEI initiatives are promoting an agenda that elevates racial or gender identity over individual merit. Since 2022, about half a dozen conservative or libertarian organizations have offered model measures to state lawmakers to eliminate DEI offices or prohibit the use of DEI criteria in training programs or employment, academic and financial decisions.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an architect of the movement, said in a recent article that the ultimate goal is to “abolish DEI in all American institutions.”

The acronym DEI “has now been weaponized,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. “And it’s taking us, unfortunately, back to a time that failed to acknowledge the inequities that persist today based on discriminatory practices.”

The Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California has launched a “National DEI Defense Fund.” Among other things, it provides free professional development courses where publicly funded DEI training has been banned.

Republican-led Florida and Texas last year became the first states to adopt broad-based laws banning DEI efforts in higher education. Universities in Texas have since eliminated more than 100 DEI-related jobs and Florida universities also have been shedding positions.

Earlier this year, Republican governors in Alabama and Utah signed laws restricting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts not only in higher education but also in K-12 schools and throughout state government.

GOP governors in Idaho and Wyoming also signed legislation this year restricting the use of state funds for DEI efforts at higher education institutions. Other bills signed into law in Idaho and GOP-led Indiana prohibit the use of DEI statements in employment and admissions decisions at public colleges and universities.

A similar bill barring mandatory DEI statements in higher education passed Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature but got vetoed by the Democratic governor.

Facing political pressure, some universities have revised their practices regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.

University of Wisconsin regents agreed in December to shift at least 43 diversity positions to focus on “student success” and eliminate statements supporting diversity on student applications. The actions were part of a deal with lawmakers to release funding for pay raises and campus construction projects.

Large public university systems in Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina are among those that have scrapped the use of diversity statements in employment decisions.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order in December barring state agencies and universities from supporting DEI programs that “grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin.”

The University of Oklahoma said its DEI office closed April 1 and the remaining employees are being reassigned to new roles.

Some Democratic-led states have forged ahead with legislation to expand their emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in government and education.

Washington’s Democratic governor signed a law this year that requires diversity, equity and inclusion concepts to be incorporated into updated state learning standards for public K-12 schools.

Legislation given final approval this month by Maryland’s Democratic-led General Assembly requires the state’s retirement system to employ a director of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Various budget proposals also would allot money to specific state DEI efforts. As one example: Oregon’s Democratic governor signed legislation last week that provides $50,000 to the Columbia River Gorge Commission for a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.

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Associated Press writer Sean Murphy contributed from Oklahoma City.

For a third straight week, Democrats at the Arizona Legislature are attempting Wednesday to repeal the state’s near-total ban on abortions, again spotlighting an issue that has put Republicans on the defensive in a battleground state for the presidential election.

Republicans have used procedural votes to block earlier repeal efforts, each time drawing condemnation from Democratic President Joe Biden, who has made his support for abortion access central to his campaign for reelection.

Arizona Republicans have been under intense pressure from some conservatives in their base, who firmly support the abortion ban, even as it’s become a liability with swing voters who will decide crucial races including the presidency, the U.S. Senate and the GOP’s control of the Legislature.

The vote comes a day after Biden said former President Donald Trump, his presumptive Republican rival, created a “healthcare crisis for women all over this country,” and imperiled their access to health care.

The Arizona Supreme Court concluded the state can enforce a long-dormant law that permits abortions only to save the pregnant patient’s life. The ruling suggested doctors could be prosecuted under the law first approved in 1864, which carries a sentence of two to five years in prison for anyone who assists in an abortion.

A week ago, one Republican in the Arizona House joined 29 Democrats to bring the repeal measure to a vote, but the effort failed twice on 30-30 votes. Democrats are hoping one more Republican will cross party lines on Wednesday so that the repeal bill can be brought up for a vote. There appears to be enough support for repeal in Arizona Senate, but a final vote is unlikely May 1.

The law had been blocked since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge that the 1864 ban could be enforced. Still, the law hasn’t actually been enforced while the case was making its way through the courts. Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, urged the state’s high court against reviving the law.

Mayes has said the earliest the law could be enforced is June 8, though the anti-abortion group defending the ban, Alliance Defending Freedom, maintains county prosecutors can begin enforcing it once the Supreme Court’s decision becomes final, which is expected to occur this week.

If the proposed repeal wins final approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature and is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, a 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become the prevailing abortion law.

Planned Parenthood officials vowed to continue providing abortions for the short time they are still legal and said they will reinforce networks that help patients travel out of state to places like New Mexico and California to access abortion.

This past summer, abortion rights advocates began a push to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional right to abortion.

The proposed constitutional amendment would guarantee abortion rights until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. It also would allow later abortions to save the parent’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.

Republican lawmakers, in turn, are considering putting one or more competing abortion proposals on the November ballot.

A leaked planning document outlined the approaches being considered by House Republicans, such as codifying existing abortion regulations, proposing a 14-week ban that would be “disguised as a 15-week law” because it would allow abortions until the beginning of the 15th week, and a measure that would prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant.

House Republicans have not yet publicly released any such proposed ballot measures.

NEW YORK (AP) — Student protests over the war in Gaza have created a new and unpredictable challenge for President Joe Biden as he resists calls to cut off U.S. support for Israel while trying to hold together the coalition of voters he’ll need for reelection.

The protests at Columbia University in New York and other campuses have captured global media attention and resurfaced questions about Biden’s lagging support from young voters. His handling of the Middle East conflict is also being closely watched by both Jewish and Arab American voters in key swing states.

At best for Biden, the protests are a passing distraction while the White House presses forward with negotiations over a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas while pushing Israel to limit casualties with more than 34,000 Palestinians dead. At worst, they build momentum toward the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, potentially triggering scenes of violence that could recall the unrest of protests against the Vietnam War during the party’s convention there in 1968.

“If it ends with Columbia, that’s one thing,” said Angus Johnston, a historian focused on campus activism. “If this sends the national student movement to a new place, that’s a very different situation.”

Already, Biden’s aides have had to work to minimize disruptions from antiwar protesters, holding smaller campaign events and tightly controlling access. Demonstrators forced his motorcade to change routes to the Capitol on his way to deliver the State of the Union, and they’ve thrown a red substance intended to symbolize blood near his home in Delaware.

The president could face more confrontations with students this spring. Morehouse College said Tuesday that Biden would appear at the iconic historically Black campus in May.

More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators camped out at Columbia were arrested Thursday, with dozens more people arrested at other campuses. Many now face charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct. The protesters have demanded that their universities condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and divest from companies that do business with Israel.

Some people have reported antisemitic chants and messages at and around the Columbia campus, and similar concerns have been reported at other universities. Some Jewish students say they’ve felt unsafe on campus. The White House, in a message Sunday to mark the Passover holiday, denounced what it called an “alarming surge” of antisemitism, saying it “has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”

Four Jewish Democratic members of Congress toured Columbia’s locked-down campus on Monday with members of the school’s Jewish Law Students Association. They condemned that things had escalated to where Jewish students felt unsafe and the university canceled in-person classes Monday. Columbia said it would use hybrid remote and in-person learning through the end of the spring term.

Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina called on the Education Department and Justice Department to work with the White House “to ensure that all universities take steps necessary to keep Jewish students and faculty safe.”

“This discrimination is simply unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue,” she said.

Biden on Monday sought the same middle ground that he’s staked out for months as he backs Israel’s military operations with weapons shipments while also pushing Israel to limit civilian casualties and get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where the United Nations has said there is a looming famine.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” the president said at an Earth Day event. He then added, “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a high-profile progressive who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, spoke before Biden at the same event. She said it was “important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country” and praised “the leadership of those peaceful student-led protests.”

Former President Donald Trump, Biden’s presumptive Republican opponent in November, pointed to the headlines and images coming out of Columbia to redirect focus from his criminal hush money trial in New York, telling reporters in the courthouse Tuesday that Biden bears the blame for the unrest.

“If this were me, you’d be after me. You’d be after me so much,” he said. “But they’re trying to give him a pass. But what’s going on is a disgrace to our country, and it’s all Biden’s fault and everybody knows it.”

In a sign of the political potency of the situation at Columbia, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson planned to visit the school Wednesday and meet with Jewish students.

Joel Rubin, a former State Department official and Democratic strategist who has worked in Jewish politics for years, rejected critics blaming Biden “for everything that’s gone wrong” but said the president would have to “make the argument for why the policy is the right one and let the chips fall where they may.”

“If it were purely politics and polling, it would be a very hard one,” Rubin said. “But I think Biden is making these decisions based on national security.”

Biden graduated from Syracuse’s law school in 1968, bypassing the campus convulsions over the Vietnam War. He distanced himself from that protest movement two decades later during his first run for president.

“I was married, I was in law school, I wore sports coats,” Biden said in 1987. “You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am. I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that’s not me.″

Biden has been endorsed this year by many leading youth activist organizations and also built his campaign around key social issues — such as defending abortion rights, combating climate change and canceling student debt for millions — that they believe can energize voters under 30 who are more likely to be concerned about the president’s approach to Gaza.

He was in Florida on Tuesday to capitalize on the momentum against nationwide abortion restrictions and criticize a state law soon to go into effect that will ban abortions after six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant. A day earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris held an event promoting abortion rights in swing state Wisconsin.

Safia Southey, a 25-year-old law student at Columbia who is Jewish, has been participating in the protest and sleeping at the encampment on the university’s quad since Thursday. She believes outrage over the war will deflate Biden’s chances against Trump because staunch supporters of Israel are more likely to support the presumptive Republican nominee.

“I think Biden has tried to be very strategic and it’s backfired in a lot of ways,” she said.

However, Southey said she’ll vote for Biden “pretty much no matter what” in a matchup with Trump.

“The students who are upset, especially at these kind of universities, are smart enough to not stay home,” she said. “I think that they’re going to go out and vote, and they’re going to go for the most strategic option, even if they’re not happy for Biden. I think that they would do anything to make sure that Trump’s not in office.”

Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher was skeptical that campus demonstrations over Gaza would prove to be politically influential.

“What percentage of Americans are really in those narrow spaces, and how representative are they of a broader American audience, or even a broader youth audience?” he asked.

Johnston, the historian on student activism, said the current protests don’t approach the size or intensity of demonstrations in the 1960s, when school officials were held hostage and campuses were vandalized.

But over the years, he said, “there’s a lot of times where student protests have shaped the national debate.”

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Weissert and Megerian reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will consider Wednesday when doctors can provide abortions during medical emergencies in states with bans enacted after the high court’s sweeping decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The case comes from Idaho, which is one of 14 states that now ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy with limited exceptions. It marks the first time the Supreme Court has considered a state ban since Roe was reversed.

The Biden administration argues that even in states where abortion is banned, federal health care law says hospitals must be allowed to terminate pregnancies in rare emergencies where a patient’s life or health is at serious risk.

Idaho contends its ban has exceptions for life-saving abortions but allowing it in more medical emergencies would turn hospitals into “abortion enclaves.” The state argues the administration is misusing a health care law that is meant to ensure patients aren’t turned away based on their ability to pay.

The Supreme Court has allowed the Idaho law to go into effect, even during emergencies, as the case played out.

Doctors have said Idaho’s abortion ban has already affected emergency care. More women whose conditions are typically treated with abortions must now be flown out of state for care, since doctors must wait until they are close to death to provide abortions within the bounds of state law.

Meanwhile, complaints of pregnant women being turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Anti-abortion groups blame doctors for mishandling maternal emergency cases. Idaho argues the Biden administration overstates health care woes to undermine state abortion laws.

The justices also heard another abortion case this term seeking to restrict access to abortion medication. It remains pending, though the justices overall seemed skeptical of the push.

The Justice Department originally brought the case against Idaho, arguing the state’s abortion law conflicts with the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA. It requires hospitals that accept Medicare to provide emergency care to any patient regardless of their ability to pay. Nearly all hospitals accept Medicare.

A federal judge initially sided with the administration and ruled that abortions were legal in medical emergencies. After the state appealed, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go fully into effect in January.

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

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Telecommuting, a pandemic-era novelty that has become a permanent alternative for many people, has some Connecticut and New Jersey employees of New York-based companies questioning why they still have to pay personal income tax to the Empire State.

Their home states are wondering as well.

Fed up with losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue each year, New Jersey is now offering a state tax credit to residents who work from home and successfully appeal their New York tax assessment. Connecticut is considering a similar measure.

The Garden State’s bounty — a rebate worth roughly half a person’s refund of income taxes they paid to New York for the 2020-2023 period — has been claimed so far by one winning litigant since the state made the offer in July, according to the state’s Division of Taxation. That taxpayer received a $7,797.02 refund for their efforts. Officials hope that person’s windfall will encourage others to follow suit.

Another New Jersey resident who is taking up the state’s offer is Open Weaver Banks, a tax attorney who prefers working from home to braving an “awful” commute into the Big Apple. She’s also filed one of a growing number of similar challenges.

“The process of doing the refund and the appeal isn’t all that intimidating to me,” said Banks, a tax partner at Hodgson Russ LLP. “I’m on New Jersey’s team here. I would like to see more residents doing this. I think they have a really fair point.”

New York requires out-of-state commuters who work for New York-based companies to pay New York income taxes, even if they’ve stopped physically going in to the office most days a week, unless they can satisfy very strict requirements for what constitutes a bona fide home office.

A home office near a specialized track to test new cars, for example, might qualify if it couldn’t be replicated in New York. But a worker with specialized scientific equipment set up in their home that could be duplicated over the border would still have to pay, according to a memorandum from the New York State Department of Taxation.

When the nature of work was upended in 2020, New York should have “softened” these requirements, Banks said. “And they didn’t. They are just standing by and fighting the claims.”

Both neighboring states have implemented “retaliatory” tax rules that affect New Yorkers who work remotely for Connecticut or New Jersey-based companies, but these workforces are far smaller and their overall tax payments don’t make up the difference.

Out-of-state taxpayers paid New York nearly $8.8 billion in 2021 in taxes, roughly 15% of the state’s total income tax revenues, according to the Citizens Budget Commission in New York. Of that, $4.3 billion came from New Jersey taxpayers and $1.5 billion from Connecticut taxpayers.

It’s unclear how much of that was earned at home. But out-of-state employees of New York-based companies who work remotely are increasingly appealing their tax bills, Amanda Hiller, the acting commissioner and general counsel for the New York Department of Taxation and Finance, told state legislators recently.

Hiller acknowledged that New York’s decades-old policy, known as a “convenience of the employer rule,” has created a financial burden for New Jersey and Connecticut, which provide tax credits to their residents for the income taxes they’ve paid New York so they are not double-taxed.

New Jersey’s Division of Taxation said the state’s long-term goal is to have New York’s rule overturned entirely, something that will likely require a taxpayer’s legal challenge to succeed before the U.S. Supreme Court. That could be a tall order: New Hampshire tried to sue Massachusetts for temporarily collecting income tax from roughly 80,000 of its residents who worked from home during the pandemic, and the Supreme Court rejected the complaint without comment.

Officials in New Jersey estimate it could reap as much as $1.2 billion annually if residents working from home for New York companies are taxed at home. Connecticut could recoup about $200 million, its officials say.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed an initiative similar to New Jersey’s that needs final legislative approval. It’s unclear, however, whether it can pass before the session ends May 8.

“We think it’s an unconstitutional overreach by the state of New York,” Jeffrey Beckham, secretary of Connecticut’s state budget office, said recently. “We think our residents should paying tax to us and they’d be paying at a lower rate.”

Indeed, the top marginal state income tax rate, as of Jan. 1, for individuals in New York is 10.90%. Connecticut’s top rate is 6.99% and New Jersey’s is 10.75%, according to the Tax Foundation.

“An awful lot of people are hurt by these laws,” said Edward Zelinsky, a Connecticut resident, tax law expert and professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York City. “While New York and other states like to pretend that these are wealthy people, the people who are most hurt by this rule are often people of modest income, middle income, people who can’t afford lawyers.”

Zelinksy has been trying, so far without success, to challenge New York’s tax rule for about 20 years, including a pending case over the income he earned working from home while his school was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.

A small number of states, including Arkansas, Delaware, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, have tax rules similar to New York’s. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have a reciprocal income tax agreement.

Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff, who is in the unique position of being the former New Jersey state treasurer and a former New York commissioner of taxation and finance, believes eventually the right litigant will “get it before the right court to challenge it.”

But former New Jersey state Sen. Steven Oroho, an accountant who commuted for nearly two decades into New York City and who pushed as a legislator to address the inequity, said he’s skeptical of New Jersey’s commitment to the effort, which puts the financial onus of a potentially lengthy and expensive legal challenge on the individual taxpayer.

“New York is very, very aggressive and unfortunately, in my view,” said Oroho, “New Jersey has been extremely passive.”

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Associated Press Writer Mike Catalini in Trenton, N.J. contributed to this story.

No, TikTok will not suddenly disappear from your phone. Nor will you go to jail if you continue using it after it is banned.

After years of attempts to ban the Chinese-owned app, including by former President Donald Trump, a measure to outlaw the popular video-sharing app has won congressional approval and is on its way to President Biden for his signature. The measure gives Beijing-based parent company ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress. If it doesn’t, TikTok will be banned.

So what does this mean for you, a TikTok user, or perhaps the parent of a TikTok user? Here are some key questions and answers.

The original proposal gave ByteDance just six months to divest from its U.S. subsidiary, negotiations lengthened it to nine. Then, if the sale is already in progress, the company will get another three months to complete it.

So it would be at least a year before a ban goes into effect — but with likely court challenges, this could stretch even longer, perhaps years. TikTok has seen some success with court challenges in the past, but it has never sought to prevent federal legislation from going into effect.

TikTok, which is used by more than 170 million Americans, most likely won’t disappear from your phone even if an eventual ban does take effect. But it would disappear from Apple and Google’s app stores, which means users won’t be able to download it. This would also mean that TikTok wouldn’t be able to send updates, security patches and bug fixes, and over time the app would likely become unusable — not to mention a security risk.

Teenagers are known for circumventing parental controls and bans when it comes to social media, so dodging the U.S. government’s ban is certainly not outside the realm of possibilities. For instance, users could try to mask their location using a VPN, or virtual private network, use alternative app stores or even install a foreign SIM card into their phone.

But some tech savvy is required, and it’s not clear what will and won’t work. More likely, users will migrate to another platform — such as Instagram, which has a TikTok-like feature called Reels, or YouTube, which has incorporated vertical short videos in its feed to try to compete with TikTok. Often, such videos are taken directly from TikTok itself. And popular creators are likely to be found on other platforms as well, so you’ll probably be able to see the same stuff.

“The TikTok bill relies heavily on the control that Apple and Google maintain over their smartphone platforms because the bill’s primary mechanism is to direct Apple and Google to stop allowing the TikTok app on their respective app stores,” said Dean Ball, a research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Such a mechanism might be much less effective in the world envisioned by many advocates of antitrust and aggressive regulation against the large tech firms.”