Some Republicans in Congress are pushing to require a citizenship question on the questionnaire for the once-a-decade census and exclude people who aren’t citizens from the count that helps determines political power in the United States.

The GOP-led House on Wednesday was expected to vote on the Equal Representation Act which would eliminate noncitizens from the tally gathered during a census and used to decide how many House seats and Electoral College votes each state gets. The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, the White House opposes it and there are legal questions because the Constitution says all people should be counted during the apportionment process.

But the proposal has set off alarms among redistricting experts, civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers as a reprise of efforts by the Trump administration to place limits that would dramatically alter the dynamics of the census, which plays a foundational role in the distribution of political power and federal funding.

Still, opponents say the idea, once on the ideological fringe, has never gotten so far in the legislative process.

In March, senators rejected similar Republican-sponsored language in an appropriations bill. That push was seen as an effort to bolster the Republican agenda on immigration before the November elections, with Donald Trump as the party’s presumptive nominee against Democratic President Joe Biden.

“It’s taking it closer to reality than it has ever been,” said Steve Jost, a former Census Bureau official in the Obama and Clinton administrations. “This is part of a cohesive strategy in the GOP … of getting every single possible advantage when the country is so closely divided.”

The 14th Amendment requires that congressional seats be distributed among the states “according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” Besides helping allocate congressional seats and Electoral College votes, census figures guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal money.

Similar efforts failed before the last census in 2020 when the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the census form. Following that defeat, the government under Trump tried to discern the citizenship status of every U.S. resident through administrative records and sought to exclude people who were in the U.S. illegally from the count used for apportioning congressional seats.

Biden, in one of his first acts as president in January 2021, signed two orders revoking those Trump directives.

During a House Rules Ccommittee hearing Monday, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Utah, said including noncitizens in the nation’s head count “skews representation away from American citizens” and is tied to Biden’s “border crisis” because it helps places with large numbers of people who aren’t citizens.

“Localities sympathetic to the president’s agenda are poised to directly benefit,” Burgess said.

According to critics, the citizenship question was inspired by the late Republican redistricting expert Tom Hofeller. He had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Republican supporters of the legislation contend counting people who are in the U.S. illegally helps Democrats.

Knowing how many people who aren’t citizens in the U.S. is “the best way to obtain accurate information,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said at the hearing.

If Trump becomes president, his administration could take steps to add a citizenship question without making the procedural mistakes cited by the Supreme Court in its 2019 ruling, said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert.

“This is really a replay of the fight that Trump started,” Wice said. “They have more time, should he win in November, to avoid the mistakes and go through a much more deliberative census planning process.”

The Biden administration says the GOP bill would increase the cost of conducting the census, make it more difficult to obtain accurate information and violate the 14th Amendment.

Results from a Census Bureau simulation last year indicated a significant number of noncitizens were missed in the 2020 census. Some civil rights groups said that was evidence the Trump administration’s citizenship-question push contributed to an undercount for some racial and ethnic minorities.

“If you want to change the Constitution, you have to amend it,” said Rep. Jaime Raskin, D-Md. “You can’t just squint really hard to see what you want to see.”

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Follow Mike Schneider on X, formerly known as Twitter: @MikeSchneiderAP.

HOUSTON (AP) — Nine of the 10 wrongful death lawsuits filed after deadly crowd surge at the 2021 Astroworld festival have been settled, including one that was set to go to trial this week, an attorney said Wednesday.

Jury selection had been set to begin Tuesday in the wrongful death lawsuit filed the family of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old Houston resident who was one of 10 people killed during the crowd crush at the Nov. 5, 2021, concert by rap superstar Travis Scott.

But Neal Manne, an attorney for Live Nation, the festival’s promoter and one of those being sued, said during a court hearing Wednesday that only one wrongful death lawsuit remained pending and the other nine have been settled, including the one filed by Dubiski’s family.

Terms of the settlements were confidential and attorneys declined to comment after the court hearing because of a gag order in the case.

The lawsuit that remains pending was filed by the family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest person killed during the concert.Attorneys in the litigation were set to meet next week to discuss when the lawsuit filed by Blount’s family could be set for trial.

More than 4,000 plaintiffs filed hundreds of lawsuits after the concert. Dubiski’s case had been chosen by attorneys in the litigation to be the first to go to trial. More than 20 defendants, including Scott, Apple — which livestreamed Scott’s concert — and Live Nation had been set to go on trial Tuesday.

After a police investigation, a grand jury last year declined to indict Scott, along with five others connected to the festival.

HOUSTON (AP) — The mayor of Houston has accepted the retirement of the city’s police chief as the department investigates why thousands of cases including sexual assault crimes were dropped, a city spokesperson said Wednesday.

Mayor John Whitmire accepted the retirement of Police Chief Troy Finner, who is stepping away following reports Tuesday that he was aware of a code used to drop the cases, years before acknowledging its existence.

Whitmire appointed assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite as acting chief and will discuss the chief’s retirement during a City Council meeting Wednesday, according to spokesperson Mary Benton.

Finner’s retirement comes as police investigate the dropping of more 4,000 sexual assault cases that are among more than 264,000 incident reports never submitted for investigation due to staffing issues during the past eight years.

Finner, who joined the Houston police department in 1990 and became chief in 2021, announced the investigation in March after revealing that officers were assigning an internal code to the unsubmitted cases that cited a lack of personnel available.

Finner apologized at that point, saying he had ordered officers to stop in November 2021 after finding out for the first time that officers had been using the code to justify dropping cases. Despite this, he said, he learned on Feb. 7 of this year that it was still being used to dismiss a significant number of adult sexual assault cases.

On Tuesday, several Houston TV stations reported that Finner was included and responded to an email in 2018 referring to the suspended cases.

Finner posted a statement on X saying he did not remember that email until he was shown a copy of it on Tuesday. “I have always been truthful and have never set out to mislead anyone about anything,” Finner wrote.

“Even though the phrase ‘suspended lack of personnel’ was included in the 2018 email, there was nothing that alerted me to its existence as a code or how it was applied within the department,” Finner wrote.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump.

Trump and some other defendants in the case had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the Georgia Court of Appeals.

That intermediate appeals court agreed on Wednesday to take up the case. Once it rules, the losing side could ask the Georgia Supreme Court to consider an appeal.

Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, Steve Sadow, said in an email that the former president looks forward to presenting arguments to the appeals court as to why the case should be dismissed and why Willis “should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution.”

A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment on the Court of Appeals decision to take up the matter.

The appeals court’s decision to consider the case seems likely to cause a delay in a case and further reduce the possibility that it will get to trial before the November general election, when Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee for president.

In his order, McAfee said he planned to continue to address other pretrial motions “regardless of whether the petition is granted … and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.” But Trump and the others could ask the Court of Appeals to stay the case while the appeal is pending.

McAfee wrote in his order in March that the prosecution was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.” He said Willis could remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.

The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February. The serious charges in one of four criminal cases against the Republican former president were largely overshadowed by the love lives of the prosecutors.

Trump and 18 others were indicted in August, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia.

All of the defendants were charged with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute. Four people charged in the case have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

Trump and other defendants had argued in their appeal application that McAfee was wrong not to remove both Willis and Wade, writing that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”

The allegations against Willis first surfaced in a motion filed in early January by Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for former Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide Michael Roman. The motion alleged that Willis and Wade were involved in an inappropriate romantic relationship and that Willis paid Wade large sums for his work and then benefitted when he paid for lavish vacations.

Willis and Wade acknowledged the relationship but said they didn’t begin dating until the spring of 2022, after Wade was hired in November 2021, and their romance ended last summer. They also testified that they split travel costs roughly evenly, with Willis often paying expenses or reimbursing Wade in cash.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A jury has been seated for the trial of a former University of Arizona graduate student accused of fatally shooting a professor in 2022 after he was banned from campus because of harassment complaints.

Murad Dervish faces seven felony charges including first-degree murder in the death of Thomas Meixner, who was shot several times inside a building on Oct. 5, 2022.

Meixner, 52, had headed the university’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences and was an expert on desert water issues. Dervish, 48, had been a graduate student in the hydrology program before he was expelled.

Campus police said the shooting occurred inside the Harshbarger Building, which houses the hydrology department.

According to a criminal complaint, a flyer with a photograph of Dervish had been circulated to university staff in February 2022 with instructions to call 911 if he ever entered the building.

The complaint also said Dervish was barred from being on school property, and he had been the subject of several reports of harassment and threats to staff members working at Harshbarger.

Lawyers for the Meixner’s family said Dervish had threatened the professor in the past and entered the building without being stopped or followed.

University President Robert Robbins said campus police tried to get Dervish charged two separate times before the shooting and took the complaints to Pima County prosecutors. But they were told there wasn’t enough evidence.

Dervish fled the shooting scene. But he was arrested after his car was stopped on a highway more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) northwest of Tucson. A loaded 9 mm handgun was found in the vehicle, and the ammunition was consistent with the shell casings found at the scene, according to the criminal complaint.

Meixner’s family filed a $9 million notice of claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — in March 2023, saying there were numerous ways the university failed to protect him and the rest of the community.

The school and the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s three public universities, reached a $2.5 million settlement with Meixner’s family last January.

Dervish’s trial is expected to last two weeks.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The nation’s largest public utility is moving ahead with a plan for a new natural gas plant in Tennessee despite warnings that its environmental review of the project doesn’t comply with federal law. The Tennessee Valley Authority announced in April that it would replace the aging coal-burning Kingston Fossil Plant with gas amid growing calls for the agency’s new board of directors to invest in renewables.

The board, with six of nine members appointed by President Biden, is expected to meet on Thursday in Nashville, a day after a planned protest by a coalition of environmental groups demanding Tennessee Valley stop investing in fossil fuels.

Decommissioning the Kingston plant, site of a massive 2008 coal ash spill, is part of Tennessee Valley’s overall plan to reduce its reliance on coal. In analyzing alternatives to replace the plant, the corporation considered either a new 1,500 megawatt gas plant or 1,500 megawatts of solar combined with 2,200 megawatts of battery storage. Tennessee Valley concluded that a 2027 deadline for retiring the current plant does not give it enough time to develop the renewables alternative.

The Environmental Protection Agency asked Tennessee Valley in a March 25 letter to redo several aspects of its analysis, citing “numerous” concerns with the plan to install new gas turbines. Among other things, the EPA accused the utility of defining the Kingston project so narrowly that only its predetermined choice of a new gas plant would meet the parameters, making the corporation’s evaluation process a “foreordained formality.” EPA said the utility did not adequately explain the need for the 2027 closure or look at possible alternatives.

The EPA said that Tennessee Valley’s environmental review does not adhere to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies like Tennessee Valley to assess the environmental impact of proposed actions before making a decision.

Tennessee Valley, which is an independent federal agency, declined to follow EPA’s suggestion for a do-over. It decided in April to forge ahead with gas — continuing to follow a plan of action that the EPA says fails to take into account recent changes in the energy sector, including falling prices for renewables, billions of federal dollars for clean energy projects, and ever stricter environmental regulations. The corporation remains off track to meet the Biden administration’s goal of eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035.

Tennessee Valley said in a statement that “we met with EPA following the letter and addressed their concerns.” EPA, meanwhile, maintained in an email to The Associated Press that its request that Tennessee Valley revise its environmental impact statement still stands.

Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said even with Tennessee Valley’s 2027 deadline, “They could build twice the amount of solar that they say they need and twice the amount of battery storage they say they need.”

Other utilities are taking advantage of price drops, technical improvements and government incentives to build out solar, including in Texas and Florida.

By 2030, Florida Power and Light expects solar to account for close to 40% of its generation, Wamsted said.

“This is a big utility with, you know, the same daily responsibilities as TVA,” he said. “And they are building out solar as fast as they can.”

Tennessee Valley provides power to 10 million people across seven Southern states. Florida Power and Light serves over 12 million people in that state.

Even if solar doesn’t produce power 24 hours per day, the amount of energy it does produce is knowable and can be planned for, Wamsted said. It can also be paired with batteries that store excess energy during the day to release back to the grid at night. That is already happening on a large scale in California where batteries are providing more than 20% of the power in the system on many evenings, he said.

In Wamsted’s view, many utilities resist the transition to renewables primarily because they are unfamiliar.

He points to an area called the Southwest Power Pool that runs from Oklahoma to Canada and now sees days where 60% or 70% of the system is wind-powered. In the late 2000s, he spoke to grid operators there who were afraid to go above 5% or 10% because they had never done it before, he said.

Tennessee Valley’s Kingston project is not its first clash with the EPA over gas. The environmental regulator made many of the same criticisms a year ago when the corporation decided to build a new 1,450-megawatt natural gas plant at its coal-burning Cumberland Fossil Plant. The Sierra Club and other groups are suing over that decision as well as an earlier one to install gas turbines at a retired coal plant in New Johnsonville. Both lawsuits claim that Tennessee Valley’s environmental reviews are perfunctory, in violation of the law — similar to the EPA’s criticism of the Kingston plant.

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, a frequent Tennessee Valley critic, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the corporation should listen to the EPA.

“The National Environmental Policy Act isn’t optional — it’s the bedrock of our environmental protection and community engagement laws,” he said.

Although Tennessee Valley has not embraced renewables, the utility still says a majority of its energy is carbon-free because 42% comes from nuclear and another 9% is from hydropower. Purchased wind and solar make up another 4% of its energy portfolio. The corporation currently produces 1 megawatt of its own solar and has 20 megawatts of battery storage. It estimates that the new gas plant will produce 1.68 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, noting that that is a steep decline from Kingston’s current emissions.

Nationally, coal provided about 16% of U.S. electricity last year, down from about 45% in 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has said it intends to build 10,000 megawatts of solar by 2035. Wamsted contends that is too far in the future.

“It should be, ‘We’re going to build as much solar as we possibly can now,’ because it’s now that we really need to worry about,” he said. “We don’t need to worry about 10 years from now or 15 years from now.”

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of senior U.S. senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to require officials involved in the AUKUS defense project with Britain and Australia to engage with them and Japan on how Japan could be included in the project.

A bill, introduced by Republicans Mitt Romney, Bill Hagerty and Jim Risch, and Democrat Tim Kaine, would require the U.S. to coordinate a path forward for Japan’s cooperation on advanced technology projects under the so-called Pillar 2 of AUKUS.

AUKUS was formed in 2021 to counteract China’s growing power. Its first pillar involves cooperation between the three partners to provide Australia with nuclear powered submarines, but they have raised the possibility of other countries joining a second pillar to develop other high-tech weaponry.

The partners announced in April they were considering working with Japan on specific Pillar 2 projects and would hold talks this year.

In a statement from his office shared with Reuters announcing the Coordinating AUKUS Engagement with Japan Act, Romney said the U.S. must link arms with allies to push back against China’s increased “aggression.”

“The legislation would require … (AUKUS) coordinators at both the U.S. Departments of State and Defense to engage with the Japanese government, and consult with counterparts in the U.K and Australia, to discuss what including Japan in certain advanced technology cooperation activities under the AUKUS framework would look like,” the statement said.

It quoted Kaine as saying AUKUS was “critical to keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open” and the bill would help “outline a path for Japan’s inclusion in AUKUS and expand defense industrial cooperation among U.S. allies.”

Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the legislation would require the Biden administration to engage Japan on its interest in joining AUKUS, assess what unique technological contributions Tokyo could make and whether its export-control system was sufficiently aligned to that of the existing partners.

“Importantly, it also ensures the executive branch consult with its counterparts in the United Kingdom and Australia before expanding AUKUS,” he said.

AUKUS already faces hurdles from strict U.S. restrictions on sharing technology and there has been some hesitation about involving Japan, with officials and experts highlighting its cyber and information security vulnerabilities.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump notched another win on Wednesday in his campaign to slow the criminal cases against him when a Georgia appeals court agreed to hear his bid to disqualify the district attorney prosecuting him for trying to overturn his election loss in the state.

The ruling prolongs the legal battle over a former romance between Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, and a one-time top deputy, a relationship defense lawyers have used to try to derail the case.

It came a day after a federal judge in Florida appointed to the bench by Trump indefinitely postponed the start of his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.

The Republican presidential candidate and eight of his 14 co-defendants charged in the Georgia case have urged the appeals court to overturn a state judge’s March ruling that allowed Willis to continue supervising the prosecution.

The court’s decision to hear the appeal before trial could cause further delays in the case, one of four criminal prosecutions facing Trump as he seeks to unseat Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty and accused prosecutors of a politically motivated effort to damage his campaign.

“The case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer on the Georgia case, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Trump and the eight co-defendants moved to disqualify Willis after revealing that she had had a romance with Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer she hired to help lead the investigation. Wade booked several vacations with Willis while he was being paid by her office, an arrangement the defense argued posed a conflict of interest.

Trump’s lawyer has also argued that Willis improperly suggested the defendants and their lawyers had racial motivations. Both Willis and Wade are Black.

Willis and Wade have acknowledged having a relationship, but said it began after Wade was hired to work on the case and ended before charges were filed. Willis’ office has denied allegations of misconduct and said the relationship had no impact on the case.

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ruled the relationship did not pose a conflict of interest but said it created an appearance of wrongdoing. McAfee said Willis’ office could remain on the case if Wade stepped aside, which he agreed to do.

McAfee later gave permission for Trump and his co-defendants to appeal his ruling before trial.

Trump and the 14 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to racketeering and other charges stemming from what prosecutors allege was a scheme to overturn Trump’s narrow defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election. Four others who had been co-defendants in the case have pleaded guilty in deals with the prosecutors.

A trial date has not yet been set.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Shumaker, Susan Heavey and Jonathan Oatis)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University early Wednesday and arrested demonstrators, hours after dozens marched to the home of the school’s president as city officials prepared to appear before Congress on the protest’s handling.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith were called to testify Wednesday afternoon at the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, but the hearing was canceled after the arrests.

After the crackdown, Bowser told reporters that she and police made the decision to clear the camp based on shifting information about increased threats to public safety. “Our response to demonstrations is always rooted in public safety and responsibility,” she said.

Smith said there were signs “the protest was becoming more volatile and less stable.” Among them were indications that protestors had “gathered improvised weapons” and were “casing” university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them, said Jeffery Carroll, the police department’s executive assistant chief.

Tensions have ratcheted up in standoffs with protesters of the Israel-Hamas war on campuses across the United States and increasingly in Europe. Some colleges cracked down immediately. Others have tolerated the demonstrations. Some have begun to lose patience and call in police over concerns about disruptions to campus life and safety.

D.C. police said officers moved to disperse demonstrators at George Washington because “there has been a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest.” They said 33 arrests were made, including for assault on a police officer and unlawful entry. They confirmed they used pepper spray outside the encampment against protesters who were trying to break police lines and enter.

George Washington had warned of possible suspensions for continuing the camp on University Yard. Protesters carrying signs reading “Free Palestine” and “Hands off Rafah” also marched to school President Ellen Granberg’s home Tuesday night.

The school said in a statement: “While the university is committed to protecting students’ rights to free expression, the encampment had evolved into an unlawful activity, with participants in direct violation of multiple university policies and city regulations.”

Since April 18, just over 2,600 people have been arrested on 50 campuses, figures based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies after this latest anti-war movement was launched by a protest at Columbia University in New York.

A pro-Palestinian tent encampment was cleared by officers in riot gear at the University of Chicago on Tuesday after administrators who had initially adopted a permissive approach said the protesters had crossed a line, increasing safety concerns. Hundreds of protesters had gathered for at least eight days until administrators warned them Friday to leave or face removal.

Chicago officers later picked up a barricade erected to keep protesters out of the main gathering space on the campus and moved it toward the demonstrators, some of whom chanted, “Up, up with liberation. Down, down with occupation!” Police and protesters pushed back and forth along the barricade as the officers moved to reestablish control.

“The university remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves, but we cannot enable an environment where the expression of some dominates and disrupts the healthy functioning of the community for the rest,” University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos wrote.

Other schools are letting protesters hold rallies and organize their encampments as they see fit.

The president of Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Connecticut, has commended the on-campus demonstration, which includes a pro-Palestinian tent encampment, as an act of political expression. The camp there has grown from about 20 tents a week ago to more than 100.

“The protesters’ cause is important — bringing attention to the killing of innocent people,” university President Michael Roth wrote to the campus community Thursday. “And we continue to make space for them to do so, as long as that space is not disruptive to campus operations.”

The Rhode Island School of Design’s president, Crystal Williams, spent more than five hours with protesters discussing their demands after students started occupying a building Monday.

On Tuesday the school announced it was relocating classes from the building, which was covered with posters reading “Free Palestine” and “Let Gaza Live.”

Some colleges have tried tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to clear the way for commencements.

And police moved in Tuesday night to break up an encampment at the University of Massachusetts. Video from the scene in Amherst showed an hours-long operation as dozens of police officers in riot gear systematically tearing down tents and taking protesters into custody. The operation continued into early Wednesday.

UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said he ordered the sweep after discussions over a wide range of demands failed to yield an agreement to dismantle the encampment and engage in “constructive discussions.”

A week ago, the George Washington encampment was host to a somewhat chaotic visit from several Republican members of the House oversight panel who criticized the protests and condemned Bowser’s refusal at that point to send in police.

Bowser on Monday confirmed the city and police department declined the university’s request to intervene. “We did not have any violence to interrupt on the GW campus,” she said then.

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Associated Press journalists around the U.S. and world contributed, including Charles Rex Arbogast, Pat Eaton-Robb, Steve LeBlanc, Jeff Amy, Christopher Weber, Mike Corder, Barbara Surk, Rick Callahan, Sarah Brumfield and Pietro de Cristofaro.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is racing into yet another battleground state Wednesday, continuing to push a contrast with Donald Trump on economic policy as his own reelection campaign readies a new $14 million advertising blitz aimed in part at Black, Latino and Asian American voters.

Biden is traveling to Racine, Wisconsin, where he’ll highlight a decision by Microsoft to build a $3.3 billion data center that is expected to create roughly 2,000 jobs. It’s also the spot where Trump, to much fanfare, lauded a plan by Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn plan to build a $10 billion manufacturing facility that was supposed to eventually employ 10,000 people. Except it was never completed.

Conscious of that history, Microsoft’s president Brad Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press that Microsoft had a “steadfast commitment to under-promising and over-delivering” and praised the Biden administration and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for economic policies that set the stage for the developments announced Wednesday.

Trump’s campaign didn’t address Foxconn, but the Republican former president often says the economy was in a much better position when he was in office and will be again should he win in 2024.

Meanwhile, Biden’s reelection team is sharpening its outreach to minority voters on the airwaves, with the fresh, seven-figure digital and television ad campaign launching Wednesday that follows the $30 million effort that began after his State of the Union address in early March. One of the ads that is a part of the fresh campaign will also be released Wednesday and focuses on Trump’s failed yet determined push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

After his speech, Biden is making a campaign stop to speak with Black voters about the stakes of the November election.

The Biden campaign wants to capitalize on the fundraising advantage it’s enjoyed over Trump, amassing significant resources on the ground in key battleground states to force Republicans to play catch-up much later in the year.

“Equally important as our own historic investments is the complete lack of investment on the other side,” Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director, told reporters. “Trump’s paid media strategy can only be described as anemic and inefficient.”

A significant portion of the $14 million campaign starting Wednesday will go into Black and Hispanic media, as well as Asian American print and radio, according to the campaign. Campaign officials also said Biden will continue to do targeted interviews with media that serve primarily minority audiences, while the campaign plans to launch in May more coalition groups that focus on specific blocs of voters. So far, the Biden campaign has started groups to engage women, Latinos and educators.

By the end of May, Biden’s reelection effort will have more than 200 offices and roughly 500 staff members in place, according to Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground director. Those figures include offices in areas that traditionally haven’t seen investments by Democrats in pockets of Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina.

“We’re showing up in the community every day and attempting to earn every vote,” said Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign’s principal deputy campaign manager. “Donald Trump and his team are doing none of that.”

Though Biden’s remarks in Racine are part of a formal White House event, Fulks said the stop will “highlight the stark contrast between the progress he’s made for Wisconsin’s families and Donald Trump’s failures.”

Microsoft’s Smith said the first phase of the new data center complex will bring an influx of 2,300 mostly construction jobs by the end of the year.

While Microsoft has been ramping up artificial intelligence-driven data center construction around the world, “this one is more important than many because there is more land and ultimately access to power available,” said Smith, who as a child lived in the area where the center is being built.

Once in operation, however, even the most powerful data centers typically employ a relatively small group of full-time employees to oversee them. Microsoft will have about 500, pulling from highly skilled workers in the corridor between Milwaukee and Chicago, Smith said.

However, he argued that the bigger impact for the region would be in the technology itself and broader investments in preparing the Upper Midwest for its impacts.

“This is about the competitiveness of manufacturing in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Ohio,” Smith said.

Racine County is a critical location. All but five of the past 33 winning presidential candidates carried it. Trump is one of the five. He won Racine County but lost the election. Biden was the first Democrat since 1976 to win Wisconsin without carrying Racine County.

Polls, including one from the Marquette University Law School last month, show the race to be about even in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point. Biden won by just under 21,000 votes in 2020.

Republicans point to both state and national polls showing that their voters are more enthused than Democrats. In Wisconsin’s presidential primary a month ago, 18,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted.

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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Wisconsin and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.