COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has challenged Donald Trump to a head-to-head debate for when both address a Libertarian convention later this month, a move that comes as the presumptive GOP nominee has ramped up both criticism of Kennedy’s independent bid and demands that President Joe Biden meet him on a debate stage.

Arguing that he is “drawing a lot of voters from your former supporters,” Kennedy said to Trump in an open letter posted Tuesday to X that the Libertarian convention provides “perfect neutral territory for you and me to have a debate where you can defend your record for your wavering supporters.”

Trump has been bullish in calling on Biden to debate him ahead of the November general election but has shied away from other rivals’ previous debate entreaties. Trump skipped the 2024 GOP primary debates, saying it was unnecessary because voters know him and his record.

Kennedy, who last year challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination before launching an independent bid, has argued that his relatively strong showing in a few national polls gives his candidacy heft. Polls during the 2016 presidential campaign regularly put libertarian Gary Johnson’s support in the high single or low double digits, but he ultimately received only about 3% of the vote nationwide.

In the open letter to Trump, Kennedy said their debate could “show the American public that at least two of the major candidates aren’t afraid to debate each other.” Kennedy wrote that convention organizers “are game for us to use our time there to bring the American people the debate they deserve!”

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and the Libertarian Party did not immediately return messages seeking comment on Kennedy’s debate challenge.

Kennedy and Trump are scheduled to appear on separate days before attendees at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, D.C. later this month. Both candidates have been courting support from libertarian-leaning voters, although Kennedy — who is working to appear on all 50 ballots, a state-by-state petition process — has ruled out officially running as a Libertarian candidate.

In recent weeks, Trump’s campaign has ramped up its attacks against Kennedy, who has appealed to disaffected Democrats and Republicans looking for an alternative to the pending rematch of the 2020 election.

Last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden.” MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s candidacy, has also issued its own critical posts and created an anti-Kennedy website.

Leaving court one day last week after his hush money trial, Trump told reporters asking about Kennedy’s campaign that he didn’t feel threatened by it, pointing to polling.

“He might hurt me, I don’t know. But he has very low numbers, certainly not numbers that he can debate with, and he’s got to get his numbers up a lot higher before he’s credible,” Trump said. “The numbers that he’s taking away, they say will be against Biden. I don’t know, it could be a little bit against me, but I don’t see him as a factor.”

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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Michelle L. Price and Ruth Brown in New York and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democrats plan to spend $7 million on television ads in five state Senate races they believe are key to regaining control of the chamber.

The State Senate Democratic Committee said Wednesday that the buy will target races in Milwaukee’s northern suburbs, the rural areas north of Madison, the Fox Cities, Green Bay and La Crosse.

Republicans currently hold a 22-10 supermajority in the 33-seat Senate, but Democrats hope new district boundaries Gov. Tony Evers signed in February will help them chip away at the GOP advantage.

Sixteen Senate seats are up in November, including eight currently held by Republicans and four open seats. Four Democrats are not up for re-election this cycle; that means Democrats need to win 13 seats in November to gain the majority. In a sign of how the new maps have energized the party, Democrats have put up a candidate in every Senate race on the ballot for the first time in more than 20 years.

Democrats plan to run ads in the 8th Senate District, which includes Milwaukee’s conservative leaning northern suburbs. The new maps pulled Republican Sen. Duey Stroebel out of his old district and put him in the 8th, where he’ll face Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin.

Ads are also on tap in the redrawn 14th District, which covers parts of Columbia, Marquette, Green Lake and Waupaca counties. Democrats Sarah Keyeski is running against GOP incumbent Joan Ballweg there.

The committee also will target the 18th District, which now runs from Appleton south to Oshkosh along Lake Winnebago’s western shore. The seat is open, with Democrats Kristin Alfheim and Joseph Carmen and Republicans Anthony Phillips and Blong Yang are all running.

Ads are slated for the 30th District as well. That district covers the western shore of the bay of Green Bay, from the city of Green Bay north to Marinette. The seat is open. Democrat Jamie Wall and Republican Jim Rafter are running for it.

The last district in the committee’s ad buy is the 32nd in western Wisconsin, where Republican Stacey Klein is looking to unseat Democratic incumbent Brad Pfaff.

Andrew Whitley, the State Senate Democratic Committee’s executive director, said the committee picked those districts because President Joe Biden and Gov. Tony Evers won them in 2020 and 2022, respectively, suggesting Democratic legislative candidates stand a good chance of success in them. The ads will be tailored to the issues in each district and will begin airing after Wisconsin’s Aug. 13 primary, he said.

A spokesperson for Senate Republican Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu didn’t immediately respond to an email.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Voting rights advocates filed an emergency motion Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to keep a new Louisiana congressional map in place for this year’s elections that gives the state a second majority Black district.

A divided panel of federal judges in western Louisiana ruled April 30 that the new map, passed by lawmakers in January, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Wednesday’s Supreme Court filing seeks to block that ruling, keeping the new districts in place while appeals continue.

Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney Gen. Liz Murrill, both Republicans, back the new map. Murrill said she also planned to ask the high court to keep it in place.

Voting patterns show a new mostly Black district would give Democrats the chance to capture another House seat. The new map converted District 6, represented by Republican Rep. Garret Graves. Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congressman who is Black, had said he would run for the seat.

Supporters of the new district, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, say the lower court decision effectively means Louisiana has no congressional map in place for the fall election, and no realistic chance for the Legislature to adopt one in time.

Wednesday’s filing is the latest development in a seesaw battle covering two federal district courts and an appeals court.

The state has five white Republican U.S. House members and one Black member who is a Democrat. All were elected most recently under a map the Legislature drew up in 2022.

US. District Judge Shelly Dick, of Baton Rouge, blocked subsequent use of the 2022 map, saying it likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by dividing many of the state’s Black residents — about a third of the population — among five districts. A federal appeals court gave lawmakers a deadline earlier this year to act.

The Legislature responded with the latest map creating a new district crossing the state diagonally and linking Black populations from Shreveport in the northwest, Alexandria in the center and Lafayette and Baton Rouge in the south.

A group of self-identified non-African American voters filed suit against that map, saying it was unconstitutionally drawn up with race as the main factor.

Backers of the map said political considerations — including maintaining districts of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — were a primary driver of the map in the Republican-dominated Legislature. But the judges voted 2-1 to side with the challengers of the new map.

The panel on Tuesday said it would impose a plan of its own but also said the Legislature should try to draw one up by June 3. Wednesday’s filing argues that there is no legal or logistical way for the Legislature to get a new map passed in time, noting that state election officials have said they need a map in place by May 15.

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Associated Press reporter Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) — Internet casino gambling is legal in only a handful of states, but the industry is convinced it is the future of betting, even as some worry about cannibalizing physical casinos.

Speaking Wednesday at the SBC Summit North America, a major gambling industry conference, industry executives acknowledged the difficulty they’ve had in expanding the legalization of online casino games.

Yet they remain certain that, like many other industries, the future of gambling is online.

“Once you get to millennials, people are comfortable basically running their entire life off their cell phone,” said Elizabeth Suever, a vice president with Bally’s Corporation. “This is where gaming is going.”

It’s just not getting there all that quickly.

Only seven U.S. states currently offer legal online casino games: Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia. Nevada offers internet poker but not online casino games.

In contrast, 38 states plus Washington D.C. offer legal sports betting, the overwhelming majority of which is done online, mostly through cell phones.

When the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way in 2018 for any U.S. state to offer legal sports betting, such bets “took off like a rocket,” said Shawn Fluharty, a West Virginia legislator and president of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States.

“Many people thought i-gaming would follow suit,” he said. “That has not taken place.”

“It’s been a rough road,” agreed Brandt Iden, a vice president with Fanatics Betting & Gaming. “I-gaming is paramount; this is the direction the industry needs to go to be successful, and this is where consumers want it to go.”

Last month, Deutsche Bank issued a research note saying it is likely a matter of “when, not if” internet gambling in Atlantic City overtakes revenue from physical casinos.

Panelists agreed the industry needs to do a better job of educating state lawmakers about internet casino games, drawing explicit comparisons with the illegal, unregulated offshore web sites that attract customers from across the country. Legal sites are strictly regulated and offer customer protections, including responsible gambling options like self-imposed time-outs and deposit and activity limits, they said.

Cesar Fernandez, a senior director with FanDuel, said online casino games should prove increasingly attractive as federal post-pandemic aid dries up and states look for new revenue without raising taxes on their residents.

“Since 2018, FanDuel has paid $3.2 billion in taxes,” he said. “That’s a lot of teacher salaries, a lot of police officers and firefighters.”

The industry cites several challenges to wider approval of internet casino gambling, including fears of increasing gambling addiction by “putting a slot machine in people’s pocket,” Iden said, adding casino companies need to do a better job of publicizing player protections the online companies offer.

Then there is the ongoing debate in the industry over whether internet gambling cannibalizes physical casinos. Many in the industry have long said the two types of gambling complement each other.

But recently, some casino executives have said they believe online gambling is hurting the revenues of brick-and-mortar casinos.

Adam Glass, an executive with Rush Street Interactive, an online gambling company, said his firm has relationships with physical casinos as well, and works hard to be “additive” to them.

He said online gambling can also be a job creator, not only designing and operating the games themselves, but also in ancillary industries like marketing and media.

The conference was scheduled to further debate whether internet gambling cannibalizes physical casinos later in the day on Wednesday.

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This story has been updated to correct that Shawn Fluharty is a legislator in West Virginia, not Michigan.

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Follow Wayne Parry on X, formerly Twitter, at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

GLENWOOD, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa facility for people with intellectual disabilities is set to permanently close after federal investigators said patients’ rights were violated there.

The 28 residents at the state-run Glenwood Resource Center will be moved out by the end of June and 235 staff members have been notified that they will be laid off, according to reporting by the Des Moines Register. The facility had 152 patients and about 650 staff members when Gov. Kim Reynolds announced in 2022 that it would close.

Scathing reports by the U.S. Department of Justice have condemned Iowa’s treatment of people with intellectual and development disabilities. The DOJ alleged that Iowa likely violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide services that integrate patients into their communities.

A report in December 2020 found that the Glenwood Resource Center likely violated the constitutional rights of residents by subjecting them to human experiments, including sexual arousal research, some of which were deemed dangerous by federal investigators.

Most of the residents have moved from the 380-acre campus about 115 miles (185 kilometers) southwest of Des Moines to community-based settings, such as residential facilities for those with intellectual disabilities or to host homes; nursing facilities or hospice care, said Alex Murphy, a spokesperson for Iowa’s health agency.

Officials told the Register that some were transferred to Iowa’s other facility, the Woodward Resource Center, which has also in the past been cited as deficient.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania election officials said Wednesday that the number of mail-in ballots rejected for technicalities, like a missing date, saw a significant drop in last month’s primary election after state officials tried anew to help voters avoid mistakes that might get their ballots thrown out.

The success of the mail-in vote could be critical to determining the outcome of November’s presidential election in Pennsylvania when the state is again expected to play a decisive role in the contest between Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Al Schmidt, said counties reported a 13.5% decrease in mail-in ballots that were rejected for reasons the state had tried to address with a redesigned ballot envelope and instructions for voting by mail. That drop was calculated in comparison to the 2023 primary election.

Those reasons included voters writing an incorrect date on the outer “declaration” envelope; forgetting to write a date or put their signature on the outer declaration envelope; or failing to insert their ballot into an inner “secrecy” envelope.

Schmidt credited the redesign with the reduced error rate, and said he didn’t think the drop was a coincidence or the result of a different or better-educated electorate.

“It’s always challenging to determine causality, but I think what we have here is clear and reliable data indicating that there was a decrease in ballots being rejected because of the issues the Department of State sought to address with the redesign of the secrecy envelope and the declaration envelope,” Schmidt said in an interview.

Last month’s primary election was the first use of the redesigned envelope and instructions. The Department of State compared rejection rates to 2023’s primary because the two elections were the only elections where counties had identical rules for which mail-in ballots should be counted and which should be rejected.

Pennsylvania vastly expanded voting by mail in 2019, and lawsuits quickly followed over whether counties should be throwing out ballots with missing or incorrect dates, questionable signatures or missing secrecy envelopes.

Federal courts are still considering litigation over whether it is unconstitutional for counties to throw out a mail-in ballot because of a missing or wrong date.

Meanwhile, Trump’s baseless claims that voting by mail is riddled with fraud have fueled a partisan stalemate in the Legislature over fixing glitches and gray areas in Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law.

That includes legislation long sought by counties seeking help to more quickly process huge influxes of mail-in ballots during presidential elections and to avoid a repeat of 2020’s drawn-out vote count.

Trump and his allies tried to exploit the days it took after polls closed in Pennsylvania to tabulate more than 2.5 million mail-in ballots to spread baseless conspiracy theories and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

The bill faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Senate, where top Republicans insist that Pennsylvania must toughen in-person voter identification requirements as a companion to any election legislation — a demand Republicans have made since 2021.

Democrats have opposed such a change, saying there is scant record of in-person voting fraud and that it will only prevent some registered voters from voting.

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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that the country was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S., Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.

The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The focus of U.S. concern was the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting like Rafa where more than 1 million civilians are sheltering after evacuating other parts of Gaza amid Israel’s war on Hamas, which came after the militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Austin confirmed the weapons delay, telling the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee that the U.S. paused “one shipment of high payload munitions.”

“We’re going to continue to do what’s necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself,” Austin said. “But that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.”

The U.S. has historically provided enormous amounts of military aid to Israel. That has only accelerated in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 in Israel and led to about 250 being taken captive by militants. The pausing of the aid shipment is the most striking manifestation of the growing daylight between Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has called on Israel to do far more to protect the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza.

It also comes as the Biden administration is due to deliver a first-of-its-kind formal verdict this week on whether the airstrikes on Gaza and restrictions on delivery of aid have violated international and U.S. laws designed to spare civilians from the worst horrors of war. A decision against Israel would further add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military.

Biden signed off on the pause in an order conveyed last week to the Pentagon, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment on the matter. The White House National Security Council sought to keep the decision out of the public eye for several days until it had a better understanding of the scope of Israel’s intensified military operations in Rafah and until Biden could deliver a long-planned speech on Tuesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Biden’s administration in April began reviewing future transfers of military assistance as Netanyahu’s government appeared to move closer toward an invasion of Rafah, despite months of opposition from the White House. The official said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

U.S. officials had declined for days to comment on the halted transfer, word of which came as Biden on Tuesday described U.S. support for Israel as “ironclad, even when we disagree.”

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to square the arms holdup with Biden’s rhetoric in support of Israel, saying only, “Two things could be true.”

Austin told lawmakers Wednesday, “It’s about having the right kinds of weapons for the task at hand.”

“A small diameter bomb, which is a precision weapon, that’s very useful in a dense, built-up environment,” he said, “but maybe not so much a 2,000-pound bomb that could create a lot of collateral damage.” He said the U.S. wants to see Israel do “more precise” operations.

Israeli troops on Tuesday seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing in what the White House described as a limited operation that stopped short of the full-on Israeli invasion of the city that Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds, most recently in a Monday call with Netanyahu.

Israel has ordered the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from the city. Israeli forces have also carried out what it describes as “targeted strikes” on the eastern part of Rafah and captured the Rafah crossing, a critical conduit for the flow of humanitarian aid along the Gaza-Egypt border.

Privately, concern has mounted inside the White House about what’s unfolding in Rafah, but publicly administration officials have stressed that they did not think the operations had defied Biden’s warnings against a widescale operation in the city.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Israel described the operation along the Gaza-Egypt border in eastern Rafah as “an operation of limited scale and duration” aimed at cutting off Hamas arms smuggling, but also said the U.S. would monitor the fighting.

Just last month, Congress passed a $95 billion national security bill that included funding for Ukraine, Israel and other allies. The package included more than $14 billion in military aid for Israel, though the stalled transfer was not related to that measure.

The State Department is separately considering whether to approve the continued transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which place precision guidance systems onto bombs, to Israel, but the review didn’t pertain to imminent shipments.

The U.S. dropped the 2,000-pound bomb sparingly in its long war against the Islamic State militant group. Israel, by contrast, has used the bomb frequently in the seven-month Gaza war. Experts say the use of the weapon, in part, has helped drive the enormous Palestinian casualty count that the Hamas-run health ministry puts at more than 34,000 dead, though it doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

The U.S.-Israel relationship has been close through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But there have been other moments of deep tension since Israel’s founding in which U.S. leaders have threatened to hold up aid in attempt to sway Israeli leadership.

President Dwight Eisenhower pressured Israel with the threat of sanctions into withdrawing from the Sinai in 1957 in the midst of the Suez Crisis. Ronald Reagan delayed the delivery of F16 fighter jets to Israel at a time of escalating violence in the Middle East. President George H.W. Bush held up $10 billion in loan guarantees to force the cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories.

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AP writers Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

(Reuters) – A bipartisan group of 26 senators on Wednesday urged the U.S. Postal Service to pause planned further changes to its processing and delivery network, warning they could slow mail deliveries.

The letter, seen by Reuters and led by Senator Gary Peters, who chairs the committee overseeing the USPS, urged a halt until the impacts are studied by the Postal Regulatory Commission. There has been mounting anger in Congress about changes USPS has said are necessary to cut its projected financial losses. 

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Shariq Khan

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. gasoline and diesel demand are at their weakest seasonal level since the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, data from the Energy Information Administration showed on Wednesday, pulling refiners’ margins for making the products to multi-month lows.

The 4-week average demand for gasoline stood at 8.63 million barrels per day (bpd) in the week ended May 3, the lowest reading for the start of May since 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic decimated demand for transportation fuels.

Four-week average demand for distillate fuels, which includes diesel and heating oil, stood at 3.60 million bpd, also the weakest seasonal level since the pandemic, according to the EIA.

Some analysts have said the weakening demand for these products could be an indicator of stagnating economic activity, while others say it highlights a growing share of renewable fuels replacing conventional fossil fuels.

“The gasoline situation was going to be looked at by everybody and it definitely disappointed,” Mizuho analyst Robert Yawger said. “If that’s indicative of the performance of the economy, that’s bad all around.”

The drop in demand is weighing on refining margins, threatening to upend two years of bumper profits.

The U.S. 3-2-1 spread, a key measure of overall refining margins, traded below $26.50 a barrel on Wednesday for the first time since February. That spread has not traded this low at the start of May since 2021.

Similarly, the spread between U.S. gasoline futures and U.S. crude oil also narrowed to its weakest since February on Friday. The diesel crack spread traded at a one year low of around $23 a barrel earlier this month.

Softer demand comes as U.S. gasoline stocks and distillate stocks rose last week, surprising analysts who on average predicted lower stocks in a Reuters poll.

Gasoline stocks rose by 915,000 barrels to 228 million barrels last week, the highest seasonal level since 2021. Distillate fuel oil stocks rose by 560,000 barrels to 116.4 million barrels in the week ended May 3, also the highest seasonal level in three years.

(Reporting by Shariq Khan and Scott DiSavino in New York; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Liz Hampton and Chris Reese)

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.