NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction on Thursday, saying the trial judge should not have allowed other women to testify about alleged assaults the movie mogul wasn’t charged with. Here is some of the reaction to the decision:

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“This is what it’s like to be a woman in America, living with male entitlement to our bodies.” — Ashley Judd, whose on-the-record statement accusing Weinstein of sexually harassing her as a young actor helped launch the case.

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“Judges throughout this nation are going to scale back what they allow to come into evidence because it’s a constitutional right to tell your side of the story without having so much baggage from your whole life being put on display to a jury .. Harvey will, under this new ruling, be able to take the stand, will be able to tell his side of the story and be very consistent with what he said all along, which is, ‘Yes, there was the sexual encounter … But I never forced her to do anything.’ ” — Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala.

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“Because the brave women in this case broke their silence, millions and millions and millions of others found the strength to come forward and do the same. That will always be the victory. This doesn’t change that. And the people who abuse their power and privilege to violate and harm others will always be the villain. This doesn’t change that.” — Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement at large.

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“A jury was told in California that he was convicted in another state for rape … Turns out he shouldn’t have been convicted, and it wasn’t a fair conviction. … It interfered with his presumption of innocence in a significant way in California.” — Weinstein lawyer Jennifer Bonjean, who is appealing his Los Angeles rape conviction.

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“Today’s decision does not erase the truth of what happened. It doesn’t alter the reality that Weinstein is a serial sexual abuser who exploited his power for decades.” — Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, which runs the Time’s Up Legal Fund, providing legal help and resources for people facing sexual harassment and violence.

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“Today’s decision reinforces what we already know through our survey of over 13,000 entertainment workers. We have seen a lack of progress in addressing the power imbalances that allow abuse to occur and that sexual assault continues to be a pervasive problem.” — Anita Hill, chair and president of The Hollywood Commission.

The death of a Missouri doctor who was found 11 months ago in a northwest Arkansas lake has been ruled a suicide, Arkansas authorities said Thursday.

Dr. John Forsyth died of a gunshot wound to the head, the Benton County, Arkansas, sheriff’s department said in a statement. An autopsy by the chief medical examiner at the Arkansas State Crime Lab concluded that it was a suicide.

The sheriff’s office said that its detectives located several surveillance videos of Forsyth riding a bicycle to the lake and the bicycle was located near where Forsyth’s body was found.

Forsyth, 49, didn’t show up for his May 21, 2023, shift at Mercy Hospital in Cassville, Missouri, where he had parked his RV. That prompted a search, and there was no sign of him until a kayaker noticed his body in Arkansas on May 30, at a spot on Beaver Lake about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from his last known location.

— EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org —

The mystery surrounding his death gave his case national attention. Social media have speculated that his death may have been connected to the cryptocurrency company that he co-founded with his brother.

“Detectives have not been able to find any information or evidence that would lead us to dispute the medical examiner’s findings,” the sheriff’s statement said. “If objective and relevant physical evidence becomes available, those leads will be investigated on a case-by-case basis.”

By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O’Brien

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A stalemate at Columbia University over removing a student encampment to protest Israel’s war in Gaza has spawned a wave of similar demonstrations on college campuses across the U.S., but authorities have shut down many before they can take root.

In the latest campus clash, police officers immediately responded on Thursday morning as student protesters at New Jersey’s Princeton University began setting up an encampment, video footage on social media showed.

“You all are in violation of university policy. These tents must come down now,” an officer is heard saying in a video posted on X, as protesters chant “Free, free Palestine.”

The swift response by police in Princeton came hours after Boston police forcibly removed a pro-Palestinian encampment set up by Emerson College students early on Thursday, arresting more than 100 people, media accounts and police said.

The tents, on a walkway next to the college in downtown Boston, were removed shortly after 1 a.m., police said. Videos posted online show helmeted police officers squaring off with people with interlocking arms.

At Northwestern University, students began erecting tents on the campus just north of Chicago as they called for the school to protect pro-Palestine speakers and end relationships with Israeli institutions, organizers said.

“We refuse to allow business to continue as usual in the face of Northwestern’s complicity,” the NU Educators for Justice in Palestine, Student Liberation Union and Jewish Voice for Peace said in a joint statement.  

Tents were also being erected on Thursday morning at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where a group of protesters chanted “It is our right to rebel, divest now or go to hell,” video footage posted on social media showed.

FRIDAY DEADLINE

Columbia officials have given protesters until 4 a.m. on Friday to reach an agreement with the university on dismantling dozens of tents set up on the New York City campus in a protest that started a week ago.

An initial deadline of midnight Tuesday came and went without an agreement, but administrators extended it for 48 hours, citing progress in the talks.

The university already tried to shut the protest down by force. On April 18, Columbia President Minouche Shafik took the unusual move of inviting New York City police to enter the campus, drawing the ire of many students and faculty.

More than 100 people were arrested and the tents were removed from the main lawn. But within a few days, the encampment was back in place, and the university’s options appeared to narrow.

The protesters have vowed to keep the protest going until the university agrees to disclose and divest any financial holdings that might support the war in Gaza, and grant amnesty to students suspended from school during the demonstrations.

Student protesters have demanded that the U.S. government rein in Israeli strikes on civilians in Gaza, which have killed more than 34,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

In Austin, authorities showed no hesitation in shutting down a protest on the main campus of the University of Texas on Wednesday.

State highway patrol troopers in riot gear and police on horseback broke up a protest at the school’s flagship campus in Austin. The Texas Department of Public Safety posted on X that 34 people had been arrested.

Also on Wednesday, the University of Southern California declared its campus closed and asked the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to clear a demonstration.

Police arrested students who peacefully surrendered one by one, hours after campus police who took down an encampment were overwhelmed by protesters and requested the LAPD’s help.

The LAPD posted on X that 93 people were arrested for trespassing and one for assault with a deadly weapon. No injuries were reported.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – Thursday’s ruling overturning Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape conviction gives the one-time film mogul a chance at a new trial and calls into question what evidence prosecutors can use in future sex crime cases.

Here is a look at what happened to the case, which helped define the #MeToo movement, and what might happen next.

WHY WAS WEINSTEIN’S CONVICTION OVERTURNED?

Weinstein, 72, was found guilty of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another after both testified in court.

But a 4-3 majority of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, found that the trial judge should not have permitted three other women to testify that Weinstein had assaulted them as well because their allegations were not part of the criminal charges against him.

Such testimony about “prior bad acts” is usually barred by New York’s so-called Molineux rule, named for a landmark 1901 court case. The majority of the court found that the testimony by the three women ran afoul of the rule and made the trial unfair.

WHY WERE THE OTHER WOMEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN THE FIRST PLACE?

The Molineux rule is not absolute. It holds that prosecutors cannot use such testimony to prove that the defendant has a “propensity” to commit crime, but they may use it as evidence of motive or intent.

In Weinstein’s case, prosecutors persuaded the trial judge that the producer’s alleged prior sexual assaults showed that he knew his accusers did not consent to his advances, but that he intended to force them into sex anyway.

Prosecutors believed the evidence would help disprove Weinstein’s assertion that the encounters were consensual.

The Court of Appeals, however, found that the testimony was simply evidence that he had a propensity to commit rape and sexual assault, not of his motive or intent.

WHAT DOES THE RULING MEAN FOR WEINSTEIN’S CALIFORNIA CASE?

Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison following a separate 2022 rape conviction in California, which he is expected to appeal, and the New York ruling has no direct effect on that case.

In fact, California law specifically allows testimony about prior bad acts in sex crime cases as evidence that a defendant has a propensity to commit sex crimes. Such evidence was used in Weinstein’s California trial, and the state’s law will make it harder for his lawyers to challenge on appeal than in New York.

WHAT DOES THE RULING MEAN FOR FUTURE CASES IN NEW YORK?

According to the majority of the court, very little. Judge Jenny Rivera wrote in the majority opinion that the decision was based on well-established New York law, and said it was similar to another 1996 Court of Appeals decision, People v. Vargas, vacating a rape conviction because witnesses were allowed to testify about earlier alleged rapes by the defendant.

Dissenting judges in Thursday’s decision said the ruling would make it more difficult to prosecute sex crimes committed by people who know their victims and may have ongoing relationships with them, as in Weinstein’s case.

Judge Anthony Cannataro, who was among the dissenters, called it “an unfortunate step backwards from recent advances in our understanding of how sex crimes are perpetrated.”

Another dissenting judge, Madeline Singas, said the decision would effectively end the use of prior bad acts witnesses in such cases and make it difficult to prove intent.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will pull the majority of its troops from Chad and Niger as it works to restore key agreements governing what role there might be there for the American military and its counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Both African countries have been integral to the U.S. military’s efforts to counter violent extremist organizations across the Sahel region, but Niger’s ruling junta ended an agreement last month that allows U.S. troops to operate in the West African country. In recent days, neighboring Chad also has questioned whether an existing agreement covered the U.S. troops operating there.

The U.S. will relocate most of the approximately 100 forces it has deployed in Chad for now, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday at a press briefing.

“As talks continue with Chadian officials, U.S. AFRICOM is currently planning to reposition some U.S. military forces from Chad, some portions of which were already scheduled to depart. This is a temporary step as part of the ongoing review of our security cooperation, which will resume after Chad’s May 6th presidential election,” Ryder said.

In Niger, the majority of the 1,000 U.S. personnel assigned there also are expected to depart, Ryder said.

U.S. and Nigerien officials were expected to meet Thursday in Niger’s capital, Niamey, “to initiate discussions on an orderly and responsible withdrawal of U.S. forces,” the State Department said in a statement late Wednesday. Follow-up meetings between senior Pentagon and Niger officials are expected next week “to coordinate the withdrawal process in a transparent manner and with mutual respect,” Ryder said.

Called status-of-forces agreements, these deals allow the U.S. to conduct critical counterterrorism operations within both countries’ borders and have supported military partner training. The reversals have prompted concern that U.S. influence in Africa is losing ground to overtures from Russia and China.

Relations have frayed between Niger and Western countries since mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president in July. Niger’s junta has since told French forces to leave and turned instead to Russia for security.

Earlier this month, Russian military trainers arrived to reinforce the country’s air defenses and they brought Russian equipment, which they would train Nigeriens to use.

Niger plays a central role in the U.S. military’s operations in Africa’s Sahel region, a vast region south of the Sahara Desert. Washington is concerned about the spread of jihadi violence where local groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups.

Niger is home to a major U.S. air base in the city of Agadez, about 920 kilometers (550 miles) from the capital, which is used for manned and unmanned surveillance flights and other operations. The U.S. also has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in training Niger’s military since beginning operations there in 2013.

Officials from the State Department, U.S. Africa Command and the Pentagon will work with Chad’s government to make the case for U.S. forces to continue operations, Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady said Wednesday.

Grady told The Associated Press in an interview that if both countries ultimately decide the U.S. cannot remain, the military will have to look for alternatives to run counterterrorism missions across the Sahel.

“If we are asked to leave, and after negotiations that’s the way it plays out, then we are going to have to recalculate and figure out a new way to do it,” Grady said.

The news of the departure of U.S. forces in Chad was first reported by The New York Times.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Abortion continues to be a key part of Democrats’ election playbook in North Carolina, which for 2024 will include what abortion-rights advocates call an unprecedented investment in get-out-the-vote efforts.

Planned Parenthood affiliated groups in North Carolina announced on Thursday a $10 million campaign in the state that largely focuses on persuading people concerned about narrowing abortion access to vote in November.

The spend, according to representatives for Planned Parenthood Votes and Planned Parenthood Action PAC North Carolina, attempts to end both a GOP supermajority at the General Assembly that enacted new abortion limits last year and to defeat Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who wants the law to become more restrictive.

The $10 million marks the largest campaign investment ever made by Planned Parenthood entities in North Carolina, Planned Parenthood Votes spokesperson Emily Thompson said.

“Our goal is clear: To protect abortion access in North Carolina, we must ensure voters know abortion is on the ballot this year,” Thompson said at a news conference near the state Legislative Building.

The money will pay for digital advertising, phone-banking, mailers and media programming on college campuses. It will also support Planned Parenthood’s canvassing goal of knocking on 1 million doors in the state before the election, Thompson said.

Most campaigning efforts will be focused in New Hanover, Wake, Mecklenburg and Buncombe counties as part of its larger statewide strategy, Thompson said. The four counties were chosen in part because of Planned Parenthood’s health services in those regions and ongoing organizing.

The GOP-controlled state legislature passed a 2023 law over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto that tightened the state’s ban on most abortions from after 20 weeks of pregnancy to 12 weeks, with additional exceptions.

“These legislators have had no regard for us, our rights or our freedoms,” said Emma Horst-Martz, a Planned Parenthood organizer. “They’ve shown us what’s in store if they are the ones to decide our futures.”

Several speakers Thursday mentioned specifically Robinson’s past comments on abortion. Horst-Martz called him the “worst offender in attacks on abortion.”

Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein — who is also running for governor and is a strong abortion-rights supporter — and his allies have said that comments from Robinson show he wants a complete abortion ban.

Robinson’s campaign has said that he supports an abortion ban after roughly six weeks of pregnancy — which is before many women know they are pregnant — with some exceptions. Robinson spokesperson Michael Lonergan said Thursday that abortion supporters were “recycling their same old playbook” that was destined to fail and labeled Democrats’ abortion agenda as “extreme and out of step with our state’s values.”

Along with a focus on defeating Robinson in November, Thompson said the groups will also aim toward 16 state legislative races to break the Republican supermajority in both legislative chambers.

A few weeks before the 2022 election, Planned Parenthood’s affiliates announced a $5 million investment to influence more than a dozen legislative races to attempt to preserve Cooper’s veto power.

In the November 2022 elections, Republicans initially fell one House seat of holding veto-proof majorities in both General Assembly chambers. But they reached the threshold in April 2023 when then-Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham switched to the Republicans. That led to changes in response to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.

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Associated Press writer Gary Robertson in Raleigh contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Months before they pitched their tents on Columbia University’s main lawn, inspiring a wave of protest encampments at college campuses nationwide, a small group of pro-Palestinian student activists met privately to sketch out the logistical details of a round-the-clock occupation.

In hours of planning sessions, they discussed communications strategies and their willingness to risk arrest, along with the more prosaic questions of bathroom access and trash removal. Then, after scouring online retailers and Craigslist for the most affordable options, they ordered the tents.

“There’s been a lot of work, a lot of meetings that went into it, and when we finally pulled it off, we had no idea how it would go,” said Columbia graduate student Elea Sun. “I don’t think anyone imagined it would take off like it did.”

Those involved with the Columbia protest, also known as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” describe their organizing efforts as both meticulously planned and heavily improvised. They say the university’s heavy-handed attempts to quell the movement have only lent it more momentum.

Basil Rodriguez, a Columbia student affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine, a group the university suspended in November, said organizers had been in touch with students at other schools about how to erect their own encampments. About 200 people joined one call with students on other campuses.

To attract the most news media attention, the organizers timed the Columbia encampment to coincide with university president Minouche Shafik’s testimony last Wednesday to a congressional panel investigating concerns about antisemitism at elite colleges.

The following day, officers with the New York police department flooded the campus, dismantled the tents, arrested more than 100 activists, and threw out their food and water. Shafik said she had taken the “extraordinary step” of requesting police intervention because the encampment had disrupted campus life and created a “harassing and intimidating environment” for many students.

That decision fueled currents of rage that quickly washed across the country, prompting students at other college campuses to set up their own protest encampments.

“We’re standing here today because we’re inspired by the students at Columbia, who we consider to be the heart of the student movement,” Malak Afaneh, a law student and spokesperson for the 100-student-strong encampment at the University of California, Berkeley, said Tuesday.

Just hours after last week’s arrests, some Columbia students jumped a fence to an adjacent lawn, wrapping themselves in blankets until a new provision of tents eventually arrived. In the week since police cleared the first encampment, the second iteration has grown not only larger, but more organized.

“The university thought they could call the police and make the protesters go away. Now we have twice as many protesters,” said Joseph Howley, an associate professor at Columbia and supporter of the encampment. “The students have experienced a ratcheting up of repression that has prompted them to escalate with their own tactics now.”

The mood was lively and upbeat on Wednesday, as some students passed out matzo left over from a Passover seder and knafeh, a flaky Middle Eastern pastry dropped off by a supportive Palestinian family from New Jersey.

Others attended a teach-in delivered by a Columbia alumnus involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, pulled books off the shelf of a “People’s Library,” and helped themselves to art supplies from a craft table. Those who’d spent the night in one of roughly 80 tents said they used the bathrooms at nearby university buildings. (An earlier experiment with a “camp toilet” had been quickly abandoned.)

At the nearby law library, a group of negotiators representing the protesters has been meeting intermittently with university administrators since Friday to discuss their demands, which include cutting financial ties with Israel and the companies involved in the war in Gaza, as well as amnesty for students and staff facing discipline for participating in the protests.

Those talks broke down on Tuesday night, according to the lead negotiator, Mahmoud Khalil, after he said the university threatened to send in police and the National Guard if the encampment wasn’t gone by midnight. Hundreds of students and faculty quickly packed onto the lawn in the largest numbers since the start of the demonstration.

Overnight, the university backtracked, giving demonstrators a 48-hour extension if the group agreed to block nonstudents from the encampment and remove a certain number of tents. A spokesperson later denied that the university had suggested calling the National Guard.

While there have been confrontations and allegations of antisemitic activity outside the university’s gates, police described students inside the encampment as peaceful and compliant.

Organizers said they’d dismantled a few tents for fire safety reasons, but were still admitting outsiders to the encampment as long as they abided by community guidelines, including: no photographs, littering or engaging with counter-protesters. They said they had no plans to leave until their demands were met.

Opponents of the encampment say it has destabilized campus life, forcing the university to barricade many of its entrances to nonstudents while putting Jewish students in harm’s way.

Omer Lubaton Granot, a graduate student from Israel who is studying for a master’s degree in public administration at Columbia, said the university should have taken “more assertive action” in clearing the encampment. He accused protesters of embracing an aggressive anti-Zionist stance that made him feel unsafe.

“They’re canceling my identity and they’re threatening me as an Israeli and as a Jew,” he said.

Officials including President Joe Biden and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have also condemned what they described as antisemitism associated with the protests. On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson held a news conference at Columbia to denounce the encampment, drawing jeers from many students.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, noted this week that many of the students were sleeping in the same brand of tents, which he said could indicate that “outside agitators” were responsible for arranging the encampment, a baseless claim that had earlier spread among some right-leaning news media outlets and New York police officials.

Layla Saliba, a Palestinian American student at Barnard, Columbia’s sister college that shares some facilities with the university, dismissed the idea. She said the students leading the protest were mostly “nerds” who enjoyed lengthy meetings and consensus building.

“To imply this is AstroTurfed or paid off, when it has actually been students laying the groundwork for this from the very beginning, is ridiculous,” she said.

As for the similarity of the tents, she said the brand had been ordered in bulk by student organizers. As the encampment has expanded, students have brought their own camping gear, she said, pointing to the varied sleeping arrangements on the bustling lawn.

“There’s apparently a lot of people here at Columbia who like to camp,” she added. “I’ll admit I was a bit surprised by that.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The decision by New York’s highest court to overturn the rape conviction of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has reopened a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 and helped launch the #MeToo movement.

Here’s what you need to know about why Weinstein’s rape conviction was thrown out and what happens next:

New York’s Court of Appeals found the trial judge in the rape case prejudiced Weinstein with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that Weinstein wasn’t charged with.

In its 4-3 decision, the court’s majority said it was an “abuse of judicial discretion” for Judge James Burke to allow testimony from these other women about “loathsome alleged bad acts and despicable behavior.”

“Without question, this is appalling, shameful, repulsive conduct that could only diminish defendant’s character before the jury,” they said.

Weinstein’s attorney Arthur Aidala had argued that Burke also swayed the trial by giving prosecutors permission to confront Weinstein, if he chose to testify, about his past history.

He said Weinstein wanted to testify but opted not to because he would have had to answer questions about more than two-dozen alleged acts of misbehavior dating back four decades, including fighting with his movie producer brother, flipping over a table in anger, snapping at waiters and yelling at his assistants.

Weinstein, 72, will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Weinstein has been serving time in New York, most recently at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has indicated it plans to retry Weinstein, which means his accusers could be forced to retell their stories on the witness stand.

“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” the prosecutors’ statement said.

Weinstein was convicted in New York on charges of criminal sex acts involving forced oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.

Weinstein maintains his innocence and contends any sexual activity was consensual.

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s ban on “noncompete” agreements commonly signed by workers is likely vulnerable to legal challenges, experts said, as some courts have grown increasingly skeptical of federal agencies’ power to adopt broad rules.

The commission in unveiling the rule on Tuesday said agreements not to join employers’ competitors or launch rival businesses suppress workers’ wages and stunt their mobility and job opportunities. About 30 million people, or 20% of U.S. workers, have signed noncompetes, the agency said.

Business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tax services firm Ryan LLC, and a Pennsylvania tree trimming company have already filed three lawsuits claiming that the FTC, which enforces antitrust laws, lacks the power to determine which business practices amount to unfair competition and should be banned.

The Chamber late Wednesday moved to block the rule from taking effect pending the outcome of its lawsuit.

Those challenges are likely to delay implementation of the rule, which is set to take effect in August. In the end they may doom the measure, as the FTC has staked out a novel and unprecedented position regarding its rulemaking powers, several lawyers and other experts said.

The FTC rule may also be invalid because it addresses a “major question” with broad implications for the U.S. economy, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said agencies can only undertake with explicit authorization from Congress, lawyers said.

The FTC lacks that authority, and Congress itself has declined to pass proposed bans on noncompetes, said Jeremy Merkelson, a partner at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine in Washington, D.C. who represents employers.

“I think the Supreme Court has all it needs to rule that the FTC’s big swing was not greenlit by the legislative branch,” Merkelson said.

The commission will also have to contend with a battery of conservative judges who have shown a willingness to block major government policies and rein in the power of federal agencies, including the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.

The Tyler, Texas court where the Chamber filed its lawsuit has been “a pretty effective firewall against questionable Biden administration rulemaking,” said Gregory Hoff, director of labor and employment policy at the business-backed HR Policy Association.

The court’s lone judge, J. Campbell Barker, is an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump. Ryan’s lawsuit has been assigned to another Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas. And any appeals in those cases will be heard by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where 12 of the 17 judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

The FTC in a statement responding to the lawsuits on Wednesday said federal law is “crystal clear” that the agency has broad rulemaking powers to address anticompetitive conduct.

The commission also defended that authority in the 570-page rule itself, relying heavily on U.S. appeals courts decisions from 1973 and 1985 that upheld agency rules requiring fuel distributors to determine the “octane rating” of gasoline and mail order companies to ship products within advertised time frames.

But those rules were not as sweeping as the noncompete ban that touches every sector of the economy, and the 5th Circuit is not bound to follow prior rulings from other appeals courts, said Damian Cavaleri, a New York-based lawyer who has represented employers and workers.

“It’s likely the 5th Circuit will create a split and it will go up to the Supreme Court, and I wouldn’t expect (the court’s conservative majority) to shy away from addressing the issue,” he said.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by David Bario, Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Organizers behind the “uncommitted” political movement against President Joe Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s war against Hamas will travel to the University of Michigan’s campus on Thursday to join students protesting the war.

Student protests in the U.S. over the war in Gaza have intensified and expanded over the past week after police first arrested students at Columbia, with so-called Gaza solidarity encampments established at colleges, including Yale, and New York University. Police have been called in to several campuses to arrest hundreds of student demonstrators.

Uncommitted organizers will travel to the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, they told Reuters, bringing together a political movement that’s disrupted Biden events and amassed hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries and a student movement that’s drawn students and faculty of various backgrounds.

Biden won Michigan by less than a 3% margin in 2020.

Democrats have become increasingly uneasy over the U.S. support for Israel as the death toll and destruction climb in Gaza. A growing revolt inside the Democratic base signifies the challenge Biden faces in bringing together the coalition he needs to defeat Republican frontrunner and former President Donald Trump.

“President Biden is choosing to put his hands over his ears and ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who have already come out against the war at the ballot box,” said Abbas Alawieh, a prominent “Uncommitted” organizer, who is going to Ann Arbor with Layla Elabed, another Michigan organizer.

“Signing into law more money for Israel is sending a clear message to uncommitted voters, young voters that he doesn’t care to engage seriously with our demands to end this war,” he said, referring to the $26 billion in new aid Biden recently approved.

Alawieh said the uncommitted movement has not been coordinating with student groups so far. “We have an electoral focus, but we certainly see the demands of student protesters, who are calling for peace,” he said.

On campuses where protests have broken out, students have issued calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.

Biden told reporters on Monday that he condemned both “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt has said the president “shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”

Trump called the campus protest situation “a mess” as he walked into his criminal trial in New York.

The uncommitted movement amassed sizable vote totals in Michigan, Minnesota and Hawaii primaries and had won 25 delegates as of the beginning of April. They are preparing to target the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where Biden is expected to be nominated.

Polls show Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck ahead of their Nov. 5 election rematch nationally. Biden’s 2020 victory was due to narrow wins in key swing states like Michigan.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Aurora Ellis)