WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will go before voters Tuesday in Pennsylvania’s presidential primaries, a prelude to the November general election, when the commonwealth is expected to once again play a critical role in the race for the White House. Further down the ballot, voters will also select nominees in competitive primaries for Congress, the state legislature and three statewide offices.

Biden clinched the Democratic nomination and Trump clinched the Republican nomination on March 12, and neither faces serious opposition on the primary ballot. Nonetheless, both presumptive nominees have campaigned in Pennsylvania in recent days with their focus more on the November election and each other than on Tuesday’s vote.

Biden just completed a three-day campaign swing that began Tuesday in his hometown of Scranton and concluded Thursday in Philadelphia in an event with members of the Kennedy family. Days earlier, Trump held a rally in Lehigh County, his third visit to the state this year.

Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, was one of three critical swing states along with Michigan and Wisconsin that went narrowly for Trump in 2016 after almost 30 years of voting for Democratic presidential candidates. Biden won back all three states four years later with a margin in Pennsylvania of about 80,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million votes cast, and the states remain key electoral prizes this November.

Democrats in the Keystone State also will decide competitive contests for state attorney general, treasurer and auditor general. For attorney general, five candidates are running for the nomination for the position once held by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. They are Philadelphia attorney Keir Bradford-Grey, former auditor general and state Rep. Eugene DePasquale, former prosecutor and Bucks County solicitor Joe Khan, Philadelphia state Rep. Jared Solomon and Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer.

The Republican primary for attorney general pits York County District Attorney Dave Sunday against state Rep. Craig Williams.

In the race to control the closely divided Congress, first-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Summer Lee faces a primary challenge in the 12th District from Bhavini Patel, a member of the Edgewood Borough Council in Allegheny County. The two have sparred over their positions on the Israel-Hamas war. Lee has accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza and was an early proponent of a cease-fire. She was also supportive of a campaign to vote “uncommitted” in Democratic presidential primaries to send a message to Biden over the war.

In the 10th Congressional District, six Democrats are competing for the nomination to face Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, who played an active role in the effort to keep Trump in office after his loss to Biden in the 2020 election. A federal court recently ordered Perry to hand over hundreds of his texts and emails to FBI agents investigating the effort. His cellphone was seized in 2022 as part of the probe.

In the 1st Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick faces a primary challenge from Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist. In the 7th District, three Republicans are vying to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Susan Wild in the fall.

Pennsylvania is also home to a competitive U.S. Senate contest, but Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick are both running unopposed in Tuesday’s primary.

Here’s a look at what to expect on Tuesday:

The Pennsylvania presidential and state primaries will be held on Tuesday. Polls close at 8 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries, as well as 48 additional races down the ballot. Biden and Dean Phillips will appear on the Democratic presidential ballot, while Trump and Nikki Haley will appear on the Republican ballot. Voters in both primaries are also given the option to write in a candidate. The AP will also provide coverage for contested primaries for attorney general, auditor, treasurer, U.S. House, state Senate and state House.

Pennsylvania has a closed primary system, which means that only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary.

Pennsylvania’s 159 pledged Democratic delegates are allocated according to the national party’s standard rules. Thirty-five at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are 19 PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” The state’s 17 congressional districts have a combined 105 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates, and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.

Pennsylvania has 67 Republican delegates. The winner of the statewide vote will receive all 16 at-large delegates. The state’s 17 congressional districts each have an additional three delegates, for a total of 51 district-level delegates, but they are not awarded to candidates based on the primary vote. Instead, people running to be a convention delegate appear on the ballot and are elected directly by voters. They are elected as unbound delegates, meaning they are not obligated to vote for any particular candidate at the convention. The AP will not report vote totals for delegate candidates.

In the presidential race, Biden and Trump are the favorites in their primaries as neither candidate faces a credible challenge. The first indications that they are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners.

For other statewide primaries, the key jurisdictions to watch are the vote-rich counties of Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Lancaster and Chester.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

In Pennsylvania, races with a vote margin of 0.5 percentage points or less are subject to an automatic recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of April 15, there were more than 8.7 million registered voters in Pennsylvania, about 45% Democrats and 40% Republicans.

In the 2022 midterm primaries, turnout was about 15% of registered voters in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. About 42% of votes in the Democratic primary that year were cast before Election Day, compared with about 11% in the Republican primary.

As of Thursday, a total of 413,952 ballots had been cast before Election Day, about 73% from Democrats and about 26% from Republicans.

In the 2022 midterm primaries, the AP first reported results at 8:04 p.m. ET, or four minutes after polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 2:45 a.m. ET with about 91% of total votes counted.

As of Tuesday, there will be 83 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 118 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and 196 until the November general election.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon could get weapons moving to Ukraine within days if Congress passes a long-delayed aid bill. That’s because it has a network of storage sites in the U.S. and Europe that already hold the ammunition and air defense components that Kyiv desperately needs.

Moving fast is critical, CIA Director Bill Burns said Thursday, warning that without additional aid from the U.S., Ukraine could lose the war to Russia by the end of this year.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said, “We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful.”

If about $61 billion in funding for the war-torn country gets the green light, “we have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly,” Ryder told reporters Thursday. “We can move within days.”

The Pentagon has had supplies ready to go for months but hasn’t moved them because it is out of money. It has already spent all of the funding Congress had previously provided to support Ukraine, sending more than $44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

By December, the Pentagon was $10 billion in the hole, because it is going to cost more now to replace the systems it sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.

As a result, the Pentagon’s frequent aid packages for Ukraine dried up because there’s been no guarantee Congress would pass the additional funding needed to replenish the weapons the U.S. has been sending to Ukraine. The legislation would include more than $20 billion to restock the Pentagon’s shelves and ensure that the military services have what they need to fight and protect America.

The lag in weapons deliveries has forced Ukrainian troops to spend months rationing their dwindling supply of munitions.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is pushing the Ukraine funding bill toward a weekend vote despite threats from within his party that doing so could cost him his job. If Congress passes the bill, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has said he will sign it “immediately,” which then triggers the Pentagon to begin pulling stockpiled weapons to deliver to Ukraine.

A look at how the U.S. can quickly move weapons to Ukraine:

When an aid package for Ukraine is announced, the weapons are either provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the military to immediately pull from its stockpiles, or through security assistance, which funds longer-term contracts with the defense industry to obtain the systems.

The presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, as it’s known, has allowed the military to send billions of dollars worth of ammunition, air defense missile launchers, tanks, vehicles and other equipment to Ukraine.

“In the past, we’ve seen weapons transferred via presidential drawdown authority arrive within a matter of days,” said Brad Bowman, director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies center on military and political power.

Those stocks are pulled from bases or storage facilities in the U.S. or from European sites where the U.S. has already surged weapons to cut down on the amount of time it will take to deliver them once the funding is approved.

As the war in Ukraine has dragged on, the U.S. began to send increasingly larger, more lethal and more expensive systems to the warfront. They included entire air defense systems, armored vehicles, sophisticated missiles — even Abrams tanks.

Those systems cost more to replace, so the military — in particular, the Army — went deeper into debt. Compounding that, the military in some cases opted to replace older systems sent to Ukraine with pricier, higher-tech ones at home.

As a result, Army leaders recently told Congress that without passage of the foreign aid bill, they will begin to run out of money and have to move funds from other accounts.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, said the branch wouldn’t have enough money to bring home troops serving in Europe or to train units in the U.S.

The military has massive weapons storage facilities in the U.S. for millions of rounds of munitions of all sizes that would be ready to use in case of war.

For example, the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma sprawls across 45,000 acres (70 square miles) connected by rail and has a mission to surge as many as 435 shipping containers — each able to carry 15 tons (30,000 pounds) worth of munitions — if ordered by the president.

The facility is also a major storage site for one of the most used munitions on Ukraine’s battlefield, 155 mm howitzer rounds.

The demand by Ukraine for that particular shell has put pressure on U.S. stockpiles and pushed the military to see where else it could get them. As a result, tens of thousands of 155 mm rounds have been shipped back from South Korea to McAlester to be retrofitted for Ukraine.

According to a U.S. military official, the U.S. would be able to send certain munitions “almost immediately” to Ukraine because storehouses exist in Europe.

Among the weapons that could go very quickly are the 155 mm rounds and other artillery, along with some air defense munitions. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preparations not yet made public.

A host of sites across Germany, Poland and other European allies also are helping Ukraine maintain and train on systems sent to the front. For example, Germany set up a maintenance hub for Kyiv’s Leopard 2 tank fleet in Poland, near the Ukrainian border.

The nearby maintenance hubs hasten the turnaround time to get needed repairs done on the Western systems.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

By Yoshifumi Takemoto

TOKYO (Reuters) – A senior figure in Japan’s ruling party will travel to New York next week and is seeking a meeting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Taro Aso, a former prime minister who currently serves as vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party, will visit New York from April 22-25, sources with knowledge of his travel plans told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He is seeking a meeting with Trump, who is in New York standing trial in a hush money case, NHK reported citing sources. One source familiar with his travel plans told Reuters Aso may want to see Trump but declined to elaborate.

Aso, who was deputy prime minister during Trump’s 2017-2021 term as president, attempted to meet Trump in January during a trip to the U.S. but was not able to see him, Reuters previously reported.

Japan has been trying to connect with people close to Trump ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election that could see him return to office and resurrect protectionist trade measures and other contentious policies that threatened to strain relations between the allies.

Late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his victory in the 2016 presidential election. The pair went on to form a close bond, forged over hours on the golf course, that helped defuse some of these contentious issues.

(Reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Frances Kerry)

The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration.

The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes.

The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but that provision was put on hold. The delay is widely seen as a political maneuver during an election year in which Republicans have rallied around bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

Instead, Biden is officially undoing sexual assault rules put in place by his predecessor and current election-year opponent, former President Donald Trump. The final policy drew praise from victims’ advocates, while Republicans said it erodes the rights of accused students.

The new rule makes “crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.

“No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are, who they love,” Cardona told reporters. “Sadly, this happens all too often.”

Biden’s regulation is meant to clarify schools’ obligations under Title IX, the 1972 women’s rights law that outlaws discrimination based on sex in education. It applies to colleges and elementary and high schools that receive federal money. The update is to take effect in August.

Among the biggest changes is new recognition that Title IX protects LGBTQ+ students — a source of deep conflict with Republicans.

The 1972 law doesn’t directly address the issue, but the new rules clarify that Title IX also forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ+ students who face discrimination will be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX, and those failed by their schools can seek recourse from the federal government.

Many Republicans say Congress never intended such protections under Title IX. A federal judge previously blocked Biden administration guidance to the same effect after 20 Republican-led states challenged the policy.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said the new regulation threatens decades of advancement for women and girls.

“This final rule dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats’ contemptuous culture war that aims to radically redefine sex and gender,” Foxx said in a statement.

The revision was proposed nearly two years ago but has been slowed by a comment period that drew 240,000 responses, a record for the Education Department.

Many of the changes are meant to ensure that schools and colleges respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. In general, the rules widen the type of misconduct that institutions are required to address, and it grants more protections to students who bring accusations.

Chief among the changes is a wider definition of sexual harassment. Schools now must address any unwelcome sex-based conduct that is so “severe or pervasive” that it limits a student’s equal access to an education.

Under the DeVos rules, conduct had to be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive,” a higher bar that pushed some types of misconduct outside the purview of Title IX.

Colleges will no longer be required to hold live hearings to allow students to cross-examine one another through representatives — a signature provision from the DeVos rules.

Live hearings are allowed under the Biden rules, but they’re optional and carry new limits. Students must be able to participate from hearings remotely, for example, and schools must bar questions that are “unclear or harassing.”

As an alternative to live hearings, college officials can interview students separately, allowing each student to suggest questions and get a recording of the responses.

Those hearings were a major point of contention with victims’ advocates, who said it forced sexual assault survivors to face their attackers and discouraged people from reporting assaults. Supporters said it gave accused students a fair process to question their accusers, arguing that universities had become too quick to rule against accused students.

Victims’ advocates applauded the changes and urged colleges to implement them quickly.

“After years of pressure from students and survivors of sexual violence, the Biden Administration’s Title IX update will make schools safer and more accessible for young people, many of whom experienced irreparable harm while they fought for protection and support,” said Emma Grasso Levine, a senior manager at the group Know Your IX.

Despite the focus on safeguards for victims, the new rules preserve certain protections for accused students.

All students must have equal access to present evidence and witnesses under the new policy, and all students must have equal access to evidence. All students will be allowed to bring an advisor to campus hearings, and colleges must have an appeals process.

In general, accused students won’t be able to be disciplined until after they’re found responsible for misconduct, although the regulation allows for “emergency” removals if it’s deemed a matter of campus safety.

The latest overhaul continues a back-and-forth political battle as presidential administrations repeatedly rewrite the rules around campus sexual misconduct.

The DeVos rules were themselves an overhaul of an Obama-era policy that was intended to force colleges to take accusations of campus sexual assault more seriously. Now, after years of nearly constant changes, some colleges have been pushing for a political middle ground to end the whiplash.

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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.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration said Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.

The decision — part of an ongoing, yearslong fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state — finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.

The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated Biden’s pledge to combat climate change. Friday’s decision also cements an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.

A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, jumped out ahead of Friday’s announcement about drilling limitations in the National Petroleum-Reserve Alaska even before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and predicted lawsuits.

“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska, because when you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it — this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

The decision by the Interior Department doesn’t change the terms of existing leases in the reserve or affect currently authorized operations, including Willow.

In an olive branch to environmentalists, the Biden administration also Friday recommended the rejection of a state corporation’s application related to a proposed 210-mile (338-kilometer) road in the northwest part of the state to allow mining of critical mineral deposits, including including copper, cobalt, zinc, silver and gold. There are no mining proposals or current mines in the area, however, and the proposed funding model for the Ambler Road project is speculative, the Interior Department said in a statement.

Sullivan accused the administration of undermining U.S. national security interests with both decisions. Alaska political leaders have long accused the Biden administration of harming the state with decisions limiting the development of oil and gas, minerals and timber.

President “Joe Biden is fine with our adversaries producing energy and dominating the world’s critical minerals while shutting down our own in America, as long as the far-left radicals he feels are key to his reelection are satisfied,” Sullivan said Thursday at a Capitol news conference with 10 other GOP senators. “What a dangerous world this president has created.”

Biden defended his decision regarding the petroleum reserve.

Alaska’s “majestic and rugged lands and waters are among the most remarkable and healthy landscapes in the world,” are critical to Alaska Native communities and “demand our protection,” he said in a statement.

Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a group whose members include leaders from across much of Alaska’s North Slope region, has been critical of the administration’s approach. The group’s board of directors previously passed a resolution opposing the administration’s plans for the reserve.

The petroleum reserve — about 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — is home to caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. It was set aside around a century ago as an emergency oil source for the U.S. Navy, but since the 1970s has been overseen by the U.S. Interior Department. There has been ongoing, longstanding debate over where development should occur.

Most existing leases in the petroleum reserve are clustered in an area that’s considered to have high development potential, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the Interior Department. The development potential in other parts of the reserve is lower, the agency said.

The rules announced Friday would place restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in areas designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values and call for the agency to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or bolster protections in those areas. The agency cited as a rationale the rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic due to climate change, including melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors.

Environmentalists were pleased.

“This huge, wild place will be able to remain wild,” Ellen Montgomery of Environment America Research & Policy Center said.

Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the administration had taken an important step to protect the climate with the latest decision. Earthjustice is involved in litigation currently before a federal appeals court that seeks to overturn Willow’s approval.

A decision in that case is pending.

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Daly reported from Washington.

By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) – The Biden administration on Friday took steps to limit both oil and gas drilling and mining in Alaska, angering state officials who said the restrictions will cost jobs and make the U.S. reliant on foreign resources.

The measures are aligned with President Joe Biden’s efforts to rein in oil and gas activities on public lands and conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters to combat climate change.

The Interior Department finalized a regulation to block oil and gas development on 40% of Alaska’s National Petroleum Preserve to protect habitats for polar bears, caribou and other wildlife and the way of life of indigenous communities.

The agency also said it would reject a proposal by a state agency to construct a 211-mile (340-km) road intended to enable mine development in the Ambler Mining District in north central Alaska.

The agency cited risks to caribou and fish populations that dozens of native communities rely on for subsistence.

“I am proud that my Administration is taking action to conserve more than 13 million acres in the Western Arctic and to honor the culture, history, and enduring wisdom of Alaska Natives who have lived on and stewarded these lands since time immemorial,” Biden said in a statement.

The NPR-A, as it is known, is a 23-million-acre (93-million hectare) area on the state’s North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States. The new rule would prohibit oil and gas leasing on 10.6 million acres (4.3 million hectares) while limiting development on more than 2 million additional acres.

The rule would not affect existing oil and gas operations, including ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion Willow project, which the Biden administration approved last year.

Currently, oil and gas leases cover about 2.5 million acres (1 hectare).

The Ambler Access Project, proposed by the Alaska Industrial and Development Export Authority (AIDEA), would enable mine development in an area with copper, zinc and lead deposits and create jobs, AIDEA has said.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management released its environmental analysis of the project on Friday, recommending “no action” as its preferred alternative. The project now faces a final decision by the Interior Department.

Republican senators from Alaska and several other states held a press conference on Thursday to slam the administration’s widely anticipated decisions.

“When you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it — this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “We’re still going to need the germanium, the gallium, the copper. We’re still going to need the oil. But we’re just not going to get it from Alaska.”

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Leslie Adler)

SEATTLE (AP) — Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.

This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

Here’s a look at 4/20’s history:

The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35.

But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California’s Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.

During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own.

The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses.

A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flier urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it.

“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’”

While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.

With weed, naturally.

Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.

College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago.

Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders went to the University of Colorado.

Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners. That’s where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email.

4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other’s wares.

The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions.

But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

The Biden administration, however, has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The president has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia.

The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law.

According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000.

Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle’s Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime.

“It’s surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’”

McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement’s progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.

“We can celebrate the victories that we’ve had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We’ve got to keep earning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”

For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time.

“We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. … The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.

“I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

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Associated Press writer Claire Rush contributed from Portland, Oregon.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — As the nation prepares for trillions of red-eyed bugs known as periodical cicadas to emerge, it’s worth noting that they’re not just annoying, noisy pests — if prepared properly, they can also be tasty to eat.

Blocks away from such French Quarter fine-dining stalwarts as Antoine’s and Brennan’s, the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans has long served up an array of alternative, insect-based treats at its “Bug Appetit” cafe overlooking the Mississippi River. “Cinnamon Bug Crunch,” chili-fried waxworms, and crispy, cajun-spiced crickets are among the menu items.

Periodical cicadas stay buried for years, until they surface and take over a landscape. Depending on the variety, the emergence happens every 13 or 17 years. This year two groups are expected to emerge soon, averaging around 1 million per acre over hundreds of millions of acres across parts of 16 states in the Midwest and South.

They emerge when the ground warms to 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), which is happening earlier than it used to because of climate change, entomologists said. The bugs are brown at first but darken as they mature.

Recently, Zack Lemann, the Insectarium’s curator of animal collections, has been working up cicada dishes that may become part of the menu. He donned a chef’s smock this week to show a couple of them off, including a green salad with apple, almonds, blueberry vinaigrette — and roasted cicadas. Fried cicada nymphs were dressed on top with a warm mixture of creole mustard and soy sauce.

“I do dragonflies in a similar manner,” Lemann said as he used tweezers to plop nymphs into a container of flour before cooking them in hot oil.

Depending on the type and the way they are prepared, cooked cicadas taste similar to toasted seeds or nuts. The Insectarium isn’t the first to promote the idea of eating them. Over the years, they have appeared on a smattering of menus and in cookbooks, including titles like “Cicada-Licious” from the University of Maryland in 2004.

“Every culture has things that they love to eat and, maybe, things that are taboo or things that people just sort of, wrinkle their nose and frown their brow at,” Lemann said. “And there’s no reason to do that with insects when you look at the nutritional value, their quality on the plate, how they taste, the environmental benefits of harvesting insects instead of dealing with livestock.”

Lemann has been working to make sure the Bug Appetit cafe has legal clearance to serve wild-caught cicadas while he works on lining up sources for the bugs. He expects this spring’s unusual emergence of two huge broods of cicadas to heighten interest in insects in general, and in the Insectarium — even though the affected area doesn’t include southeast Louisiana.

“I can’t imagine, given the fact that periodical cicadas are national news, that we won’t have guests both local and from outside New Orleans, asking us about that,” said Lemann. “Which is another reason I hope to have enough to serve it at least a few times to people.”

CHICAGO (AP) — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests.

So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants, without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Across Chicago, Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city’s newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.

“Our voices are not valued nor heard,” says Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth.

Chicago is one of several big American cities grappling with a surge of migrants. The Republican governor of Texas has been sending them by the busload to highlight his grievances with the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

To manage the influx, Chicago has already spent more than $300 million of city, state and federal funds to provide housing, health care, education and more to over 38,000 mostly South American migrants desperate for help. The speed with which these funds were marshaled has stirred widespread resentment among Black Chicagoans. But community leaders are trying to ease racial tensions and channel the public’s frustrations into agitating for the greater good.

The outcry over migrants in Chicago and other large Democrat-led cities is having wider implications in an election year: The Biden administration is now advocating a more restrictive approach to immigration in its negotiations with Republicans in Congress.

Since the Wadsworth building reopened as a shelter, Young has felt “extreme anxiety” because of the noise, loitering and around-the-clock police presence that came with it. More than anything, she and other neighbors say it is a reminder of problems that have been left unsolved for years, including high rates of crime, unemployment and homelessness.

“I definitely don’t want to seem insensitive to them and them wanting a better life. However, if you can all of a sudden come up with all these millions of dollars to address their housing, why didn’t you address the homeless issue here,” said Charlotte Jackson, the owner of a bakery and restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood.

“For so long we accepted that this is how things had to be in our communities,” said Chris Jackson, who co-founded the bakery with his wife. “This migrant crisis has made many people go: ‘Wait a minute, no it doesn’t.’”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment for this story.

The city received more than $200 million from the state and federal government to help care for migrants after Johnson appealed to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden. The president will be in Chicago in August to make his reelection pitch at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Some Black Chicagoans are protesting the placement of shelters in their neighborhoods, but others aim to turn the adversity into an opportunity.

“Chicago is a microcosm to the rest of the nation,” said the Rev. Janette C. Wilson, national executive director of the civil rights group PUSH for Excellence. Black communities have faced discrimination and underinvestment for decades and are justifiably frustrated, Wilson said. The attention the migrants are receiving is deserved, she added, but it’s also a chance for cities to reflect on their responsibility to all underserved communities.

“There is a moral imperative to take care of everybody,” Wilson said.

After nearly two years of acrimony, the city has begun to curb some accommodations for migrants – which has caused its own backlash. The city last month started evicting migrants who overstayed a 60-day limit at shelters, prompting condemnation from immigrant rights groups and from residents worried about public safety.

Marlita Ingram, a school guidance counselor who lives in the South Shore neighborhood, said she is concerned about the resources being shared “equitably” between migrants and longtime residents. But she also believes “it doesn’t have to be a competition” and sympathizes with the nearly 6,000 migrant children now enrolled in Chicago’s public schools.

As the potential for racial strife rises, some activists are pointing to history as a cautionary tale.

Hundreds of thousands of Black southerners moved to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of greater freedoms and economic opportunities. White Chicagoans at the time accused them of receiving disproportionate resources from the city, and in 1919 tensions boiled over.

In a surge of racist attacks in cities across the U.S. that came to be known as “Red Summer,” white residents burned large swaths of Chicago’s Black neighborhoods and killed 38 Black people, including by lynching.

“Those white folks were, like, ‘Hell no, they’re coming here, they’re taking our jobs,’” said Richard Wallace, founder of Equity and Transformation, a majority-Black community group that co-hosted in a forum in March to improve dialogue between Black and Latino residents.

He hears echoes of that past bigotry — intentional or not — when Black Chicagoans complain about the help being given to migrants. “How did we become like the white folks who were resisting our people coming to the city of the Chicago?” he said.

Labor and immigrant rights organizers have worked for years to tamp down divisions between working class communities. But the migrant crisis has created tensions between the city’s large Mexican American community and recently arrived migrants, many of whom hail from Venezuela.

“If left unchecked, we all panic, we’re all scared, we’re going to retreat to our corners,” said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity, a majority-Hispanic labor rights group. “The truth is that this city wouldn’t work without Black and Latino people.”

Black Americans’ views on immigration and diversity are expansive. The Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to adopt a more inclusive immigration policy.

About half of Black Americans say the United States’ diverse population makes the country strong, including 30% who say it makes the U.S. “much stronger,” according to a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many leaders in Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago are trying to strike a balance between acknowledging the tensions without exacerbating them.

“Our church is divided on the migrant crisis,” said the Rev. Chauncey Brown, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Maywood, Illinois, a majority-Black suburb of Chicago where some migrants are living in shelters.

There has been a noticeable uptick of non-English speakers in the pews, many of whom have said they are migrants in need of food and other services, Brown said. Some church members cautioned him against speaking out in support of migrants or allotting more church resources to them. But he said the Bible’s teachings are clear on this issue.

“When a stranger enters your land, you are to care for them as if they are one of your own,” he said.

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Matt Brown is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on social media.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California pet owners struggling to find a rental that accepts their furry, four-legged family members could have an easier time leasing new housing under proposed state legislation that would ban blanket no-pets policies and prohibit landlords from charging additional fees for common companions like cats and dogs.

Backers of the bill, which recently cleared a key committee, say the lack of pet-friendly units is pushing renters to forgo housing or relinquish beloved pets to overcrowded shelters. They say the legislation also would allow more tenants with unapproved pets to come out of the shadows.

Sacramento renter Andrea Amavisca said she and her boyfriend searched for more than a month for a place that would accept their 2-year-old cattle dog mix. Options were few and prospective landlords would not return her calls after learning the couple had a dog.

They finally found a two-bedroom apartment after meeting with the landlord and putting down an extra $500 for the security deposit.

“It’s really awful that there are these restrictions you have to take into consideration when making a personal life choice,” she said.

But landlords are pushing back, saying they’re worried over the cost of repairs, liability over potential dog bites and nuisance issues that might drive away other tenants. They also want state lawmakers to allow higher security deposits — which legislators limited to one month’s rent last year — to scrub out possible urine and feces stains in carpets or repair damage to wood floors.

“There are bad people and there are bad dogs, and our job is to screen that and make sure that we’re providing a safe environment for everyone,” said Russell Lowery, executive director of the California Rental Housing Association.

The proposal authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat and chair of the renters’ caucus, would not require all landlords to accept common household pets, such as cats and dogs.

But landlords would have to provide reasonable justifications, such as public health, for denying a pet. A landlord could not inquire of pets until after approving an applicant, and applicants would have to notify the landlord that they have a pet or plan to get one at least three days prior to signing a lease. Should the landlord deny the pet, the applicant would then decide whether to seek housing elsewhere.

The landlord also could not require additional rent or security deposit for a pet. The bill, if approved, would apply to new leases starting on or after Jan. 1.

Ivan Blackshear already rents to tenants with cats at his triplex in Chico, a small city north of Sacramento. But he says the question of pets and deposits should be left to the property owner and any agreement they reach with their tenants. It should not, he said, be mandated by politicians trying to curry favor with voters.

“Chasing mom and pop landlords like myself — small investors like myself — out of California is not going to solve the high price of rent; it actually is going to make it worse,” said Blackshear, who once had to replace the wood flooring in a rental due to a tenant with a cat.

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat who represents parts of Los Angeles, said he and his fiancée, an attorney, were shut out of renting several places just because of Darius, their well-behaved Great Dane.

“Darius is the sweetest dog,” said Bryan, who is vice chair of the legislative renters’ caucus. “And so it was shocking, and it showed that this simple barrier of having a companion animal could lead directly to housing insecurity and homelessness, if not addressed.”

Animal welfare groups are among those supporting the bill.

Ann Dunn, director of Oakland Animal Services, says the number of people giving up their pets has soared since the city of Oakland’s eviction moratorium ended last summer. In 2022, the shelter averaged nearly 240 dogs relinquished each month; now it is 350 a month.

“We’re seeing a huge spike in people who are saying they are newly homeless,” she said. “Or they’re choosing between being housed or being able to keep their pets.”

The bill is headed to the Assembly for a floor vote. If it passes, it would then go to the Senate for consideration.

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Har reported from San Francisco.