ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers vowed they were going to rein in tax breaks for businesses this year.

Their efforts came to nothing.

Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday vetoed a two-year pause in a sales tax exemption the state gives for building and equipping computer data centers, after an intensive lobbying effort to preserve the tax break.

Kemp’s veto shows how hard it is to root out established tax breaks, said lawmakers and national experts.

“Any time you create a carve-out in your tax code, you then create a self-interested lobby around it,” said Greg LeRoy, the executive director of Good Jobs First, a liberal-leaning group long skeptical of economic development incentives.

The Republican governor wrote that he was vetoing House Bill 1192 because businesses had already made plans for data centers using the exemption and that the “abrupt” July 1 freeze would undermine “the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”

The dispute in Georgia mirrors fights in other states including Virginia, where the rising number of data centers is sparking a backlash, and in Arkansas, where lawmakers are moving to impose new restrictions on data centers that mine cryptocurrency.

In Georgia, some people are pushing the city of Atlanta to ban data centers near transit stations and the Beltline walking trail, as well as to stop offering local property tax abatements atop the state sales tax break. Although local jurisdictions benefit from property taxes on investments that can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, data centers typically support few jobs.

Freezing the data-center tax exemption was the only bill that advanced following a a monthslong review of all the tax breaks that Georgia offers to various industries Lawmakers earlier gutted and then discarded an effort to cap the $1.35 billion Georgia spends on income tax credits subsidizing movie and television production.

So many data centers are opening or expanding in the state that it is causing a notable drain on the power grid, leading Georgia Power Co. to say it quickly needs to build or contract for new electrical generation capacity. The International Energy Agency says electrical consumption from data centers worldwide could double by 2026, calling for a focus on efficiency.

Georgia Power says new users will more than pay for the additional generating capacity that public service commissioners approved last month, putting downward pressure on bills for other users. But others are wary of those claims because of a climb in electrical bills in recent years.

Environmental groups are among those seeking to curb the tax exemption because Georgia Power’s new plants would be fueled by natural gas, increasing fossil fuel emissions. Environmental groups also worry about how much water data centers use to cool their computers.

“Giving data centers a tax break without investigating their impact on our environment and billpayers is shortsighted,” Jennette Gayer, director of Environment Georgia, said in a statement.

The bill would have created a committee to study the impact of data centers on the electrical grid.

A 2022 review of the sales tax exemption by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government projects the state will forgo $307 million more from 2024 through 2030 than it will collect from sales taxes on data center construction and operations. For example, the state is projected to forgo $44 million in revenue this year but only get $13 million back from other sales taxes.

The failure also raises questions about Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ long-term goal of further cutting Georgia’s state income tax rate for all residents and businesses. He wants to shore up other tax revenue to offset those cuts.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, a Rome Republican who has spearheaded efforts to scrutinize tax breaks, said lawmakers could revisit the data center tax break next year. He said that he has in part focused on keeping new exemptions from becoming law.

“It’s disappointing that we moved that slow, but it will be a continuing process as we look at these,” Hufstetler said. “I think it’s extra difficult to get them out.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young Black lawyers and law students are taking on a new role ahead of the general election: Meeting with Black voters in battleground states to increase turnout and serve as watchdogs against voter disenfranchisement.

The Young Black Lawyers’ Organizing Coalition has recruited lawyers and law students from historically Black colleges and universities and is sending them to Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas to meet with Black voters, aiming to better understand the barriers that the historically disadvantaged voting bloc faces when registering to vote and accessing the ballot.

The recruits are leading educational focus groups with an ambitious goal: restoring fatigued Black voters’ faith in American democracy.

“I think what makes us unique is that we’re new messengers,” said Abdul Dosunmu, a civil rights lawyer who founded YBLOC. “We have never thought about the Black lawyer as someone who is uniquely empowered to be messengers for civic empowerment.”

Dosunmu, who shared news of the coalition’s launch exclusively with The Associated Press, said recruits will combat apathy among Black voters by listening, rather than telling them why their participation is crucial. The focus groups will inform “a blueprint for how to make democracy work for our communities,” he said.

According to a Pew Research Center report, in 2023, just 21% of Black adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time. That’s up from a low of 9% during the Trump administration. For white adults, the numbers were reversed: 26% of white adults expressed such trust in 2020, dropping to 13% during the Biden administration.

The first stop on the four-state focus group tour was Michigan in February. This month, YBLOC plans to stop in Texas and then North Carolina. Venues for the focus groups have included barbershops, churches and union halls.

Alyssa Whitaker, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law, said she got involved because she is dissatisfied with the relationship Black communities have with their democracy.

“Attorneys, we know the law,” Whitaker said. “We’ve been studying this stuff and we’re deep in the weeds. So, having that type of knowledge and expertise, I do believe there is some level of a responsibility to get involved.”

In Detroit, Grand Rapids and Pontiac, Michigan, the recruits heard about a wide variety of challenges and grievances. Black voters said they don’t feel heard or validated and are exasperated over the lack of options on the ballot.

Despite their fatigue, the voters said they remain invested in the political process.

“It was great to see that, even if people were a bit more pessimistic in their views, people were very engaged and very knowledgeable about what they were voting for,” said another recruit, Awa Nyambi, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law.

It’s a shame that ever since Black people were guaranteed the right to vote, they’ve had to pick “the lesser of two evils” on their ballots, said Tameka Ramsey, interim executive director of the Michigan Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

“But that’s so old,” said Ramsey, whose group was inspired by the February event and has begun holding its own listening sessions.

These young lawyers are proving the importance of actually listening to varying opinions in the Black community, said Felicia Davis, founder of the HBCU Green Fund, a non-profit organization aimed at driving social justice and supporting sustainable infrastructure for historically Black colleges and universities.

YBLOC is “teaching and reawakening the elements of organizing 101,” she said.

The experience also is informing how the lawyers navigate their careers, said Tyra Beck, a second-year student at The New York University School of Law.

“It’s personal to me because I’m currently in a constitutional law class,” Beck said.

Kahaari Kenyatta, a first-year student also at The New York University School of Law, said the experience has reminded him why he got into law.

“You care about this democracy and civil engagement,” Kenyatta said. “I’m excited to work with YBLOC again, whatever that looks like.”

___

The Associated Press’ coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas man is petitioning a court to authorize an obscure legal action to find out who allegedly helped his former partner obtain an out-of-state abortion, setting up the latest test of the reach of statewide abortion bans.

As some states work to expand abortion access and others impose more limits following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe V. Wade, antiabortion activists have begun testing the boundaries of statewide bans in court. Abortion advocates call these legal actions a scare tactic, and stress that crossing state lines to obtain an abortion remains legal.

Both sides agree the Texas case could test the meaning of “leave it to the states,” a phrase echoed by former President Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

Documents pertaining to this Texas petition have been sealed by the court for the woman’s safety, but according to The Washington Post, which first reported the legal action, the man’s attorney is Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general and architect of Texas’ strict abortion ban. Representing the woman is the Center for Reproductive Rights and attorneys at Arnold and Porter.

Her attorneys say the man has made a “Rule 202” request — a filing that usually precedes a lawsuit when illegal activity is suspected. If approved, the court could allow the man to seek documents related to the alleged procedure and order the woman and others accused of helping her to sit for depositions.

The Texas abortion ban provides for enforcement either through a private civil action or under the state’s criminal statutes, which were updated to prohibit nearly all abortions, punishable by up to life in prison for anyone held responsible for helping a woman obtain one.

This is the first legal action they’ve seen to assert that women can’t leave Texas to get an abortion somewhere else, said Marc Hearron, a senior counsel at the center.

“Being involved in or helping someone get a legal abortion outside of Texas is legal,” said Hearron. “There is nothing wrong with it.”

Mitchell did not immediately respond to multiple calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

“The limit on the ability to travel is a step beyond what I think we have seen anywhere,” said Michelle Simpson Tuegel, an attorney who specializes in women’s rights cases. “I pray we are not living in times where our high courts are going to say that our home states can trap us when we are pregnant.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion two years ago, a looming question has been how states with bans might try to stop their residents from obtaining abortions in states where they’re legal.

At least 14 states controlled by Democrats have passed laws seeking to protect providers and others who help people obtain abortions in their states. Some also protect people who prescribe abortion pills via telemedicine to people in states with bans.

Idaho adopted a ban on what it calls “abortion trafficking,” aimed at preventing transporting minors out of state for an abortion without parental permission, but enforcement has been paused by a federal judge. Tennessee lawmakers passed a similar measure last month, but Republican Gov. Bill Lee has not yet signed it.

After Alabama’s attorney general said his office would “look at” groups that help women get abortions, the U.S. Department of Justice, an abortion fund and former providers asked a court to block such investigations. On Monday, a federal judge said most of their lawsuit can move ahead.

And four counties in Texas have adopted local measures, enforceable through lawsuits by private citizens, against using specific roads to help people obtain an abortion.

Anti-abortion forces have begun turning to the courts to test how vastly these restrictions can be enforced and who can be held accountable.

In a separate case in Galveston, Mitchell is also representing a Texas man who is suing three of his ex-wife’s friends, accusing them of wrongful death and seeking $1 million in damages for helping her get the pills she needed to self-induce an abortion.

Abortion advocates say Mitchell’s lawsuits are meant as scare tactics, and stress that crossing states lines for abortions remains legal.

John Seago, president of antiabortion group Texas Right to Life, said these lawsuits will help clarify how the laws will be enforced and who can be held accountable as states are left to resolve questions about abortion.

“At the very least we have to support each state to fully enforce their laws,” Seago said, arguing that other states can’t have the power to “sabotage” Texas’ laws.

———

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A group of Tennesseans who say they were intimidated into not voting in a primary election or were threatened with prosecution after they did vote has filed a legal challenge to two state laws meant to prevent crossover voting.

A law passed last year requires polling places to post warning signs stating that it’s a crime for someone to vote in a political party’s primary if they are not a bona fide member of that party. It has drawn public attention to a rarely-invoked 1972 law that requires primary voters to be “bona fide” party members or to “declare allegiance” to the party they are voting for.

Tennessee voters do not register by party, and neither law defines what it means to be a bona fide party member. The laws also don’t define how a voter should declare allegiance to a party. One of the plaintiffs is Victor Ashe, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and longtime Tennessee Republican politician Victor Ashe, who claims the laws are so vague that he could be prosecuted for voting in a Republican primary.

An earlier challenge to the laws brought by Ashe and real estate developer Phil Lawson was dismissed one day before Tennessee’s March 5 presidential primary. U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson ruled that the plaintiffs’ claims of injury were too speculative.

They refiled the lawsuit in district court last week, adding new plaintiffs and new claims of actual injury.

Lawson said that although he is one of the largest donors to the Tennessee Democratic Party, he has also donated to Republican candidates and has voted for candidates from both parties in the past. Lawson said he refrained from voting in the Republican primary in March for fear of prosecution.

The new plaintiffs include Gabe Hart, a Madison County resident who says he was told by the local district attorney that he could be prosecuted after he wrote and spoke in local media about voting in a Republican Party primary although he had identified as a Democrat for many years.

Plaintiff James Palmer, a Roane County resident, chose not to vote in the recent presidential primary rather than risk prosecution, according to the lawsuit. Palmer had planned to vote in the Republican primary but was afraid of prosecution because he has supported Democratic candidates in the past.

The plaintiffs claim the Tennessee voting laws violate their First Amendment rights to participate in the political process. They also contend the laws violate the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution because they are so vague that voters cannot know whether they will be prosecuted, according to the lawsuit.

In fact, prosecutors in different judicial districts have offered very different interpretations of the laws and how they should be enforced, the suit claims.

Plaintiffs seek a declaration that the voting laws are unconstitutional and a court order preventing their enforcement.

The new lawsuit added a number of Tennessee district attorneys as defendants after Richardson found the defendants in the earlier lawsuit, including Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins, lacked the power to prosecute violations of the challenged laws.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General’s office did not immediately return a message on Wednesday requesting comment.

Tennessee voters often decide which primary to participate in based on campaign developments. The partisan balance in Tennessee means many local elections are decided in the primary, with large cities leaning heavily Democratic and most other areas leaning heavily Republican. It is not uncommon for people to vote for one party in local elections and a different party in federal or statewide elections.

Republicans, who control the Tennessee legislature, have discussed requiring voters to register by party in order to control who votes in the primaries, but the idea has never had enough support to pass.

BOSTON (AP) — A highly anticipated trial began in Massachusetts last week involving a woman accused of striking her Boston police officer boyfriend with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowbank.

John O’Keefe died in the Boston suburb of Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.

The case has garnered national attention because the defense alleges that state and local law enforcement officials framed Karen Read and allowed the real killer to go free.

A look at the facts and legal arguments:

For the past few days, Read’s defense team has focused heavily on connections between police and the family that owned the home in the Boston suburb of Canton where O’Keefe’s body was found. They are trying to argue that these relationships biased the investigation and blinded state and local law enforcement officials to the possibility that someone else killed the 46-year-old O’Keefe.

Defense attorneys first went after Katie McLaughlin, a firefighter who responded to the scene and who had been friends with family member Caitlin Albert. The house was owned at the time by Albert’s father, Boston Police Officer Brian Albert.

McLaughlin confirmed on Friday that she and Caitlin Albert went to high school together, were friends on social media and were photographed together at a local beach about a decade ago. But she insisted they were only acquaintances and that she didn’t know it was Albert’s home when she responded to the call. She also said she hadn’t talked to Albert for a few years.

Read’s defense attorney Alan Jackson repeatedly tried to show that the pair were closer than McLaughlin wanted to admit, pointing out other beach photos in which the two appeared together.

By Monday, he and other defense attorneys were doubling down on that connection.

Before the jury arrived, the attorneys told Judge Beverly Cannone that they had received many more photos over the weekend of McLaughlin and Caitlin Albert together, including at a baby shower. They also learned the two had been on the track team together in high school. Cannone said she would address the issue later.

Defense attorneys also questioned Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher, the first witness up Monday, asking him why he didn’t search the family home for any physical evidence. They noted that pieces of a broken cocktail glass had been found outside the house, and indicated that similar pieces might have been found inside the house with a search.

Did police not conduct a search “because that house belonged to a Boston police officer?” Jackson asked Gallagher.

Gallagher responded that a search would have required probable cause, which he said police didn’t have.

Jackson then asked Gallagher if the reason that Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz recused himself from the investigation “was because of the relationship between the Albert family and the Canton police department?”

Gallagher said no, that it was because a brother of Brian Albert works in the Canton police’s investigative unit.

On Tuesday, the defense focused on the relationship that Canton Police Lt. Michael Lank had with Brian Albert’s brother Christopher Albert, a high school classmate.

Lank said he had been drinking off duty one night in 2002 when Christopher Albert approached him for help, saying he had been in a scuffle earlier, and that “some threats had been made to him and his family.”

Defense attorneys suggested Lank helped Albert because of their long friendship but he denied it.

“It was me coming to the aid of a citizen who was terrified and scared for him and his family on that night who happened to be Chris Albert,” he told the court.

Read and O’Keefe had been to two bars the night of the officer’s death, and were then headed to a party in nearby Canton, police said. Read said she did not feel well and decided not to attend, they said. Once at the home, O’Keefe got out of Read’s vehicle, and while she made a three-point turn, she struck him and then drove away, according to prosecutors.

Read later became frantic when she couldn’t reach O’Keefe, returned to the party, and along with two friends found his body covered in snow, the prosecutors said.

So far, they are leaning into Read’s comments at the scene, including testimony from several first responders who recalled Read telling them loudly and repeatedly that she “hit him,” though she never said it was with her SUV. They also have put witnesses on the stand who have testified that the couple had a strained relationship.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As it targets Hamas’ underground tunnels in Gaza, Israel has relied on powerful 2,000-pound bombs provided by the United States. But now those deliveries are on hold.

The U.S. is pausing a shipment of 1,800 of the bombs, as well as 1,700 500-pound bombs, U.S. officials said. The decision comes as Israel is planning an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in an attempt to root out the final elements of Hamas.

With more than 1 million refugees sheltering in Rafah, U.S. officials are concerned the bombs could inflict massive casualties. Human rights groups have long said that Israel’s use of powerful bombs has caused the indiscriminate killings of civilians.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate panel Wednesday that smaller, more precise weapons are needed for a densely populated area like Rafah.

Still, he made clear the decision wasn’t final.

“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.”

A look at the 2,000-pound bomb and why there’s so much concern about its use in Rafah.

While the U.S. has dropped 2,000-pound bombs off its aircraft since World War II, current versions date back to the Vietnam War. It’s an air-dropped munition, one that can carry a higher payload because it doesn’t have an engine. It’s one of the larger munitions in the U.S. inventory, said Ryan Brobst, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power.

The 2,000-pound bomb has multiple variants — some are designed to penetrate deep, underground targets while others detonate above ground and cause widespread damage. Depending on the variant, and whether the munition is dropped in an open or urban area, its blast radius can be as far as a quarter mile away or a much more confined area.

The bombs are “dumb” or unguided bombs but can be turned into more precise weapons with the addition of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, or JDAM kits which add a tail fin and navigation.

That added kit enables troops to guide the munition to a target, rather than simply dropping it from a fighter jet onto the ground. The kits make the weapons more precise, but in a densely populated urban environment, a JDAM kit is not going to make much of a difference — a precise hit will still have the reach to kill unintended bystanders.

U.S. fighter jets, bombers and drones can all fire the JDAMs, and the U.S. began providing the munitions to Ukraine in 2022, a slightly modified version that could be launched from Ukrainian aircraft. After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the U.S. provided 2,000-pound munitions to Israel to assist in its defense.

And unlike other types of munitions in the U.S. inventory, the military has an ample supply of them, so providing them doesn’t involve the same type of stockpile pressures the U.S. has with other more limited munitions like the 155mm artillery rounds.

The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the 2,000-pound bombs have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

Brobst said the 2,000-pound bombs are still needed to assist Israel in striking Hamas’ tunnel network in Rafah.

Wes Bryant, a weapons expert and retired American Air Force master sergeant who served on an independent task force for the State and Defense Departments on Israel’s use of weapons in Gaza, said that the pause would be a “huge hit” to the Israeli arsenal.

The 2,000- and 500-pound bombs are some of the main munitions used by Israel in its seven-month war campaign, Bryant said.

“They have been burning right through them,” said Bryant. He said the munitions are made by major American weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Northrop, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and General Atomics.

A report compiled by the independent task force for the State and Defense Departments last month said U.S. sources informed one of its members that 300,000 munitions had been dropped on or fired in Gaza during the first six months of the war.

It cited “credible” media investigations that in the first month of the Israeli campaign alone, there were at least 500 craters in Gaza consistent with the use of 2,000-pound bombs.

The potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah, where more than 1 million people have sheltered because they have nowhere else to go, has drawn significant administration concern.

At the hearing, Austin questioned whether the 2,000-pound bomb was the right tool for the Rafah operation.

“It’s about having the right kinds of weapons for the task at hand. And a small diameter bomb, which is a precision weapon, that’s very useful in a dense, built-up environment,” said Austin, “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.

Israel reacted strongly to the U.S. decision. Its U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the pause “a very disappointing decision, even frustrating,” in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 TV news. He suggested that the move stemmed from political pressure on Biden from Congress, campus protests and the upcoming election.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a murder charge in the death of a man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.

Daniel Rodimer, 45, appeared in court for a brief arraignment. His attorneys, Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff, told a state court judge they intend to file documents challenging Rodimer’s indictment in the Halloween party death of Christopher Tapp of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Outside court, Chesnoff told reporters that Rodimer “vigorously denies any responsibility for the allegations.”

Rodimer lives in Texas. He lost Republican bids for Congress in Nevada in 2020 and in Texas in 2021. He surrendered to Las Vegas police for his arrest March 6 and remains free on a $200,000 bail.

A grand jury was told that Tapp was fatally injured when he hit his head on a table after Rodimer attacked him during a dispute about drug use in the presence of Rodimer’s stepdaughter at the party at the Resorts World Las Vegas resort. Tapp died several days later.

Tapp, 47, was the recipient in 2022 of an $11.7 million settlement in a lawsuit stemming from his a wrongful conviction in Idaho in a 1996 killing. He had spent more than 20 years in prison.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A northern Idaho prosecutor won’t bring hate crime charges against an 18-year-old accused of shouting a racist slur at members of the Utah women’s basketball team during the NCAA Tournament.

The deputy attorney for the city of Coeur d’Alene made the announcement on Monday, writing in a charging decision document that though the use of the slur was “detestable” and “incredibly offensive,” there wasn’t evidence suggesting that the man was threatening physical harm to the women or to their property. That means the conduct is protected by the First Amendment and can’t be charged under Idaho’s malicious harassment law, Ryan Hunter wrote.

The members of the University of Utah basketball team were staying at a Coeur d’Alene hotel in March as they competed at the NCAA Tournament in nearby Spokane, Washington. Team members were walking from a hotel to a restaurant when they said a truck drove up and the driver yelled a racist slur at the group. After the team left the restaurant, the same driver returned and was “reinforced by others,” revving their engines and yelling again at the players, said Tony Stewart, an official with the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, during a news conference shortly after the event.

The encounters were so disturbing that they left the group concerned about their safety, Utah coach Lynne Roberts said a few days later.

Far-right extremists have maintained a presence in the region for years. In 2018, at least nine hate groups operated in the region of Spokane and northern Idaho, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We had several instances of some kind of racial hate crimes toward our program and (it was) incredibly upsetting for all of us,” Roberts said. “In our world, in athletics and in university settings, it’s shocking. There’s so much diversity on a college campus and so you’re just not exposed to that very often.”

University of Utah officials declined to comment about the prosecutor’s decision on Wednesday.

In the document detailing the decision, Hunter said police interviewed nearly two dozen witnesses and pored over hours of surveillance video. Several credible witnesses described a racist slur being hurled at the group as they walked to dinner, but their descriptions of the vehicle and the person who shouted the slur varied, and police weren’t able to hear any audio of the yelling on the surveillance tapes.

There also wasn’t any evidence to connect the encounter before the team arrived at the restaurant with what happened as they left, Hunter, wrote. Still, police were able to identify the occupants of a silver passenger vehicle involved in the second encounter, and one of them — an 18-year-old high school student — reportedly confessed to shouting a slur and an obscene statement at the group, Hunter said.

Prosecutors considered whether to bring three possible charges against the man — malicious harassment, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace — but decided they didn’t have enough evidence to support any of the three charges.

That’s because Idaho’s hate crime law only makes racial harassment a crime if it is done with the intent to either threaten or cause physical harm to a person or to their property. The man who shouted the slur told police he did it because he thought it would be funny, Hunter wrote.

“Setting aside the rank absurdity of that claim and the abjectly disgusting thought process required to believe it would be humorous to say something that abhorrent,” it undermines the premise that the man had the specific intent to intimidate and harass, Hunter wrote.

The hateful speech also didn’t meet the requirements of Idaho’s disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace laws, which are mainly about when and where noise or unruly behavior occurs. The slurs were shouted on a busy thoroughfare during the early evening hours, and so the noise level wasn’t unusual for that time and place.

Hunter wrote that his office shares in the outrage sparked by the man’s “abhorrently racist and misogynistic statement, and we join in unequivocally condemning that statement and the use of a racial slur in this case, or in any circumstance. However that cannot, under current law, form the basis for criminal prosecution in this case.”

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – A former correctional counselor at a federal prison in Massachusetts was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison for corruptly accepting tens of thousands of dollars from a wealthy inmate identified by a source as Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston rejected a request by William Tidwell, 50, for a more lenient sentence, calling the corruption he engaged in while at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts “intolerable.”

Prosecutors said that corruption involved accepting over $90,000 in payments through an arrangement with an “ultra-high net worth” inmate under Tidwell’s care in exchange for giving him favorable treatment.

“The conduct for which you stand convicted cuts to the very heart of our justice system,” Young said. “It’s corruption of the most dangerous sort.”

Young ordered Tidwell to forfeit the $90,000 and pay a $10,000 fine. In court, the New Hampshire resident apologized for his actions, saying he owned his mistake.

No one in court identified the wealthy inmate by name. But a person familiar with the matter has previously confirmed he was Rajaratnam, who was convicted and sentenced in 2011 to 11 years in prison for insider trading and was released early in 2019.

Prosecutors have said Rajaratnam, the founder of the New York-based Galleon Group, made as much as $63.8 million in illicit profit from 2003 to 2009 trading on stocks including eBay, Goldman Sachs and Google.

No charges have been filed against Rajaratnam in relation to Tidwell’s case. Rajaratnam’s lawyer, Samidh Guha, has said he would “cooperate appropriately with the government if and when they reach out to us.” Guha declined comment on Wednesday.

Tidwell pleaded guilty in September to charges that he received payments in violation of his official duties, made false statements to a bank and committed identity theft.

Prosecutors said Tidwell, beginning in 2018, received a stream of financial benefits from the inmate and one of his close friends.

Those benefits included $25,000 to help pay off loans for a family member and more than $65,000 in fees and other benefits to help manage certain properties, including one in which Tidwell lived, according to charging documents.

After the inmate’s release from prison, Tidwell in 2020 received a $50,000 loan from the ex-inmate’s friend to buy a house. Prosecutors said he lied on a bank loan application about the source of that money.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The ghost of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign is ringing up significant support in state primaries despite her withdrawal from the race in March shortly before Donald Trump had clinched the Republican nomination.

The backing for Haley — most recently in Indiana, where she grabbed more than 21% of the votes on Tuesday — signals persistent discontent among party voters with the former president. He is racking up primary victories even as he has been spending much of his time recently in a New York courtroom facing state criminal charges involving hush money payments to a porn actor.

Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who qualified for the Indiana ballot before she ended her campaign two months ago, has not endorsed Trump.

A Haley campaign adviser did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the results.

Indiana Democrats did not have the option to vote “ uncommitted ” in their party primary. Unease about President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war has sparked a protest vote movement in some states, raising similar questions about the strength of his support in November.

Haley’s support was largest in Indiana’s urban and suburban counties. She won 35% of the vote in Indianapolis’s Marion County and more than one-third of the vote in suburban Hamilton County. As in other states, she did best in the most Democratic areas of the state.

The exception was Lake County, home to Gary, just south of Chicago. Haley won only 14% of the vote in Lake County.

Biden’s campaign attributed Haley’s Indiana showing to Trump’s trouble in suburbs and cited similar primary numbers in swing states such as Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The president has made an open appeal to Haley supporters to back him in November.

The Trump campaign claimed without evidence that Haley’s support came from Democrats, adding that he would carry Indiana in November, as in 2016 and 2020.

Two weeks ago in Pennsylvania, Haley received nearly 17% of the primary vote. She earned similar support in Arizona just weeks after her exit.

Trump, who won every Indiana county, brushed off Haley’s support in an interview Tuesday with WGAL-TV of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

“All of those people are going to come to me,” he said.

In late January, Trump said prematurely that Haley did not have enough signatures to make Indiana’s primary ballot. While Haley did get the minimum 500 signatures needed in each congressional district to make the ballot, the margin was razor thin in the 7th District, which includes Indianapolis.

Haley’s campaign was largely absent from the state even while she was in the race.

Indiana, with its 11 electoral votes, is far from the swing state that Pennsylvania is. Trump won Indiana by 16 percentage points in 2020.

Nonetheless, Haley’s support from 1 in 5 Republican voters raises questions about how they will vote in the fall. Before she dropped out, she took nearly 27% of votes in Michigan. She received 13% of the Georgia GOP vote shortly after her exit.

Haley, who ended her campaign after losses to Trump across almost all Super Tuesday states in early March, recently announced she was joining the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. In her farewell speech a day after Trump’s big night, Haley declined to directly endorse him. She put the onus on Trump to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who had supported her.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she said. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”

Trump had been withering in his criticism of Haley, calling her “Birdbrain” in speeches to his supporters and questioning her decision to stay in the race.

Just before Super Tuesday, Haley said she no longer felt bound by a pledge that required all GOP contenders to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.

She has said little publicly but has continued to utilize her email outreach, via her Stand for America PAC, sending out updates on her Hudson appointment, as well as the return of her husband, Michael, from a South Carolina Army National Guard deployment that saw him stationed in African during a large portion of her primary campaign.

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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.