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  • Stellantis recalls 1.5M Ram trucks to fix software bug that can disable stability control

    Stellantis recalls 1.5M Ram trucks to fix software bug that can disable stability control

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    DETROIT (AP) — Stellantis is recalling nearly 1.5 million Ram pickup trucks worldwide to fix a software problem that can disable the electronic stability control system.

    The recall covers certain trucks from the 2019 and 2021 through 2024 model years, mostly in North America.

    Stellantis said in a statement Saturday that the trucks may have anti-lock brake software that could inadvertently shut down the stability control, which manages the throttle and brakes to avoid skidding.

    If that happens, the company said the brakes would still work. Stellantis said it’s not aware of any crashes or injuries from the problem.

    U.S. safety standards require electronic stability control to work during nearly all phases of driving, the company says.

    Dealers will update software to fix the problem at no cost to owners, who will be notified by letters starting Oct. 3.

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  • Coal miner killed on the job in West Virginia. The death marks fourth in the state this year

    Coal miner killed on the job in West Virginia. The death marks fourth in the state this year

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    CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A coal miner was killed on the job in West Virginia on Friday night, Gov. Jim Justice said.

    The Republican governor said Gary Chapman, 33, of South Williamson, Kentucky, died after being injured at the Mountaineer II Mine near Sharples, West Virginia.

    Justice expressed his condolences in a statement, saying Chapman and his family were in his prayers.

    “When we lose a miner, it’s not just a loss for the community, but a loss for the entire State of West Virginia,” Justice said in a statement. “Mr. Chapman’s loss is a powerful reminder that we should always have a deep gratitude for every one of our coal miners. They are the ones who keep our nation running.”

    At least eight U.S. coal miners have died on the job in 2024, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. Four of them died in West Virginia.

    The incident is under investigation by the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety, and Training and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

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  • A mural honoring scientists hung in Pfizer’s NYC lobby for 60 years. Now it’s up for grabs

    A mural honoring scientists hung in Pfizer’s NYC lobby for 60 years. Now it’s up for grabs

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    NEW YORK (AP) — A mural honoring ancient and modern figures in medicine that has hung in the lobby of Pfizer’s original New York City headquarters for more than 60 years could soon end up in pieces if conservationists can’t find a new home for it in the next few weeks.

    “Medical Research Through the Ages,” a massive metal and tile mosaic depicting scientists and lab equipment, has been visible through the high glass-windowed lobby of the pharmaceutical giant’s midtown Manhattan office since the 1960s.

    But the building is being gutted and converted into residential apartments, and the new owners have given the mural a move-out date of as soon as Sept. 10.

    Art conservationists and the late artist’s daughters are now scrambling to find a patron who is able to cover the tens of thousands of dollars they estimate it will take to move and remount it, as well as an institution that can display it.

    “I would ideally like to see it as part of an educational future, whether it’s on a hospital campus as part of a school or a college. Or part of a larger public art program for the citizens of New York City,” said art historian and urban planner Andrew Cronson, one of the people trying to find a new home for the piece.

    The 40-foot-wide and 18-foot-high (12 meters by 5.5 meters) mural by Greek American artist Nikos Bel-Jon was the main showpiece of Pfizer’s world headquarters when the building opened a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal in 1961, at a time when flashy buildings and grand corporate art projects were a symbol of business success. He died in 1966, leaving behind dozens of large brushed-metal works commissioned by companies and private institutions, many of which have now been lost or destroyed.

    In recent years, Pfizer sold the building — and last year moved its headquarters to a shared office space in a newer property. The company said in an emailed statement that it decided the money needed to deconstruct, relocate and reinstall the mural elsewhere would be better spent on “patient-related priorities.”

    The developer now turning the building into apartments, Metro Loft, doesn’t want to keep the artwork either, though it has been working with those trying to save the piece with help like letting art appraisers in. The company declined to comment further, but Jack Berman, its director of operations, confirmed in an email that it needs to get the mural out.

    Bel-Jon’s youngest daughter, Rhea Bel-Jon Calkins, said they’ve gotten some interest from universities who could take the piece, and a Greek cultural organization that could help fundraise for the move. But the removal alone could cost between $20,00 and $50,000, according to estimates cited by Cronson.

    If they can’t immediately find a taker, the mural won’t end up in landfill, Bel-Jon Calkins said. But it would have to be broken up into pieces — nine metal sections and eight mosaic sections — and moved into storage, likely with some of her relatives.

    Time is ticking away. Workers gutting the building have been carrying out ripped-up carpeting, drab office chairs and piles of scrap wood and loading them into garbage trucks.

    For the past few decades, the artwork’s metal — brushed tin and aluminum panels in the shape of laboratory beakers, funnels and flasks, surrounded by symbols, alchemists and scientists — has been a dull gray and white. But Bel-Jon Calkins remembers its original, multicolored lighting scheme.

    “As you moved, the color moved with you and changed. So there was a constant dynamic to the mural that no one really has ever been able to achieve,” she said.

    Richard McCoy, director of the Indiana nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, which cares for local buildings and landscapes, said the piece might lack commercial value, describing Bel-Jon as “extraordinary, but not super well-known.”

    “But then you realize 20 or 30 years from then how great it was,” he said, adding that it might merit preservation for its historical value.

    Bel-Jon Calkins tracks her father’s 42 large-scale metal murals in a spreadsheet and on the artist’s website. She said only about a dozen are confirmed to exist.

    A 12-foot (3.6-meter) metal mosaic depicting saints and commissioned by a Greek Orthodox church in San Francisco was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. General Motors commissioned a hubcap-shaped metal mural that was larger than a car for a trade show, but she confirmed it was later melted down into scrap.

    “It’s the corporations that have lost them,” she said in a phone conversation from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “They valued them enough to commission them but not enough to preserve them.”

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  • How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events

    How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events

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    Mass shootings have effects on communities that are felt long after the day’s tragedy. School shootings in particular can have physical, emotional and behavioral effects on kids — even if the shooting occurred on the other side of the country.

    Exposure to school shootings, even if indirectly, is shown to disrupt people’s sense of safety and stability, said Sonali Rajan, professor at Columbia University, who studies firearm-related harms on children.

    Talking about it can help.

    Parents aren’t alone in this task. Many health experts, including psychologists and grief counselors, remind people there are resources to support students’ mental and emotional health as they grieve and process.

    Here’s how they say families should address traumatic experiences with their kids.

    Don’t avoid the conversation

    It takes time to process emotions, regardless of age, so adults should start by taking care of themselves. That said, experts encourage parents to have conversations with their children and not avoid the topic, if kids indicate a willingness to talk about it.

    “If they are not hearing about it from you as their parent, they will hear about it from their friends at school,” says Emilie Ney, director of professional development at the National Association of School Psychologists.

    It’s OK for caregivers to say they don’t have all the answers and not force the conversation, according to guidance from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Being available and patient is key.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    This isn’t just a job for parents and guardians. All adults should remember to be available for the kids in their life. After all, not all children have trusted adults they can speak with, said Crystal Garrant, chief program officer at Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group that works to prevent suicides and mass shootings.

    For instance, she said, adults who work in before-school or after-school programs should ask the kids in their care open-ended questions, do community-building activities or provide kids with other opportunities to share openly. They may not have the opportunity to do so otherwise.

    Tailor the talk to the child’s age

    How much children are able to understand a situation will depend on their age and development, Ney said.

    “There is no specific age target for these conversations,” said Garrant, who has a 9-year-old daughter. “But make sure that younger children understand the word that you’re using. When we say safety, what does it mean to feel safe? How does it feel in your body? What does it sound like when you’re not safe?”

    Some children may have emotional and behavioral responses to traumatic events, such as anxiety, nightmares or difficulty concentrating.

    Younger children need simple information and reassurances their schools and homes are safe, guidance from the National Association of School Psychologists notes. Older children have a deeper capacity for understanding and could benefit from hearing about what agency they might have to keep themselves safe.

    Validate big feelings about school shootings

    Recognizing, acknowledging and validating children’s emotions are key, said Beverly Warnock, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children based in Cincinnati.

    “You need to get those feelings out and be honest,” she said. “Don’t try to squash the feelings or not talk about it. It’s something that will be with you for the rest of your life.”

    The process of navigating emotions after a shooting can be confusing and frustrating for people, Ney said.

    “The stages of grief are not necessarily sequential. People may go in and out of the various different phases, and it may be that it doesn’t really hit someone until a week later,” Ney said.

    Psychologists hope to reassure people their feelings are normal and they don’t have to pretend they are unaffected.

    “Even if you didn’t know anyone involved, even if they were very far away from you, it is okay to grieve,” Ney said. “It shows that you care about others.”

    After acknowledging the emotional response, Warnock said, there is comfort in knowing life goes on.

    “You will find a coping skill, and you will be able to enjoy life again,” she said. “You may not feel that way now, but it does happen. It’s just going to take some time.”

    If you need more help

    If you or someone you know are experiencing distress because of a mass shooting, you can call the 24/7 National Disaster Distress Helpline. The number is 1-800-985-5990, and Spanish speakers can press “2” for bilingual support. To connect directly to a crisis counselor in American Sign Language, call 1-800-985-5990 from your videophone.

    ___

    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.

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  • Autoworkers learn sign language hoping connection with deaf colleagues improves work and lives

    Autoworkers learn sign language hoping connection with deaf colleagues improves work and lives

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    LONDON (AP) — One doesn’t need to know sign language to understand what Michael Connolly feels about his colleagues’ efforts to break down the barriers posed by his deafness.

    When asked what he thought of his teammates’ decision to learn British Sign Language, the 45-year-old autoworker at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, England, grinned and flashed a universal symbol: Two thumbs up.

    Connolly loves having the chance to banter with his workmates, to talk about everyday things — the kids, vacation plans, a TV program. And now he can, because the entire 25-member bumper-paint team at Sunderland started learning BSL at the beginning of the year.

    “I’m glad they have all learned sign language for us because I can talk and I lipread the hearing person, but I have my limits,” Connolly signed in an interview with The Associated Press. “If you reverse the situation and the hearing person can sign and speak, they have no limits.’’

    The initiative grew out of a broader effort to improve efficiency at the Sunderland plant, which makes Qashqai and Juke sport utility vehicles. While Nissan took steps to overhaul training and increase the use of visual aids during briefings, the bumper-paint team decided to go a step further and learn sign language, said supervisor John Johnson.

    Connolly is one of four hearing-impaired people assigned to the team, which works in less bustling area of the plant where it is safer for workers who can’t hear the sound of an approaching vehicle.

    Johnson said the thought of mastering the combination of gestures, facial expressions and body language that comprise BSL was daunting. But it helped him understand what life was like for Connolly and the other deaf workers as they tried to learn their jobs and fit into a team without having the ability to share the personal tidbits that build friendships.

    “So as a team, we thought how can we knock that barrier down? And obviously sign language was the solution, or at least the start of an opportunity,’’ Johnson said.

    The team’s decision is very unusual, said Teri Devine, the associate director for inclusion and employment at The Royal National Institute for Deaf People. While many employers make an effort to reach out and engage with deaf workers, few go as far as learning sign language, she said.

    Research shows that many deaf people, particularly BSL users, feel isolated at work, Devine said.

    Having more hearing people who understand sign language is important because even the most proficient lip readers will only pick up 30% to 40% of a conversation, she added.

    “It’s absolutely crucial that deaf people are included in everyday conversations, and it’s very easy to include them in those conversations,’’ Devine said. “The fact that (workers at) Nissan have gone and learned some BSL to support their colleague is actually fantastic. I take my hat off to them.’’

    There are mountains of research showing that kindness in the workplace improves productivity as well as being good for the people with their noses to the grindstone, said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.

    You can see that at work on the bumper-paint team, where workers had limited ability to communicate before they learned sign language, Cooper said. But now they’ve created the opportunity for dialogue.

    “You can find out: What did you do this weekend? What about the football results,” he said. “In other words, you’re cementing the relationship — the team building. And that’s important. It goes far beyond, you know, ‘you haven’t painted that bit of the bumper.’”

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  • LL Flooring, formerly Lumber Liquidators, is going out of business and closing all of its stores

    LL Flooring, formerly Lumber Liquidators, is going out of business and closing all of its stores

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    NEW YORK (AP) — LL Flooring, the hardwood flooring retailer formerly known as Lumber Liquidators, is going out of business.

    Less than a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Virginia-based company says it is now “winding down operations” after failing to find a buyer in recent negotiations with prospective bidders. That means all of its remaining stores will soon close their doors.

    LL Flooring expected to begin to begin the process this week, with closing sales at hundreds of stores slated to start Friday. The retailer says store closures should be completed over the next 12 weeks, with timing varying by location.

    “This is not the outcome that any of us had hoped for,” LL Flooring CEO Charles Tyson wrote in a letter to customers. “As we begin to wind down operations and close our stores, we are committed to doing so as smoothly as possible to minimize the impact on you, our associates and the communities we serve.”

    LL Flooring touted more than 400 stores earlier this year. By the time of its Chapter 11 petition, the company said it would be continuing forward with closer to 300 locations, with closing sales already beginning at 94 stores. But now, the closings will effect all remaining stores.

    Scores of workers are set to lose their jobs as a result. The company had about 1,970 employees as of its August 11 bankruptcy petition, according to court documents, 99% of whom were working full time in the U.S. across retail, corporate and distribution roles.

    LL Flooring’s history dates back more than 30 years. The brick-and-mortar retailer, founded by Tom Sullivan, got its start in 1993 as a modest operation in Massachusetts, later expanding operations nationwide.

    Known for decades as Lumber Liquidators, the company officially changed its name to LL Flooring at the start of 2022 — in a move following years of turmoil. The retailer faced expansive litigation after a 2015 segment of “60 Minutes” reported that laminate flooring it was selling had illegal and dangerous levels of formaldehyde. Lumber Liquidators later said it would stop selling the product, which was manufactured in China, and agreed to pay $36 million to settle two class-action lawsuits in 2017.

    LL Flooring saw difficulty turning a profit over more recent years, with the company reporting loss after loss. Net sales fell 18.5% in 2023, according to a recent earnings report, amid declines in foot traffic and weak demand. In its Chapter 11 filing, LL Flooring disclosed that total debts amounted to more than $416 million as of July 31, compared to assets of just over $501 million.

    Ahead of filing for bankruptcy, LL Flooring also saw a proxy battle earlier in the summer — centered around attempts to keep Sullivan off the board. In June, company leadership wrote a letter urging shareholders to vote for other nominees, accusing Sullivan of “pushing a personal agenda.” But LL Flooring later confirmed that the founder and his proposed nominees were elected at its annual shareholder meeting in July.

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  • Freshman classes provide glimpse of affirmative action ruling’s impact on colleges

    Freshman classes provide glimpse of affirmative action ruling’s impact on colleges

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    Some selective colleges are reporting drops in the number of Black students in their incoming classes, the first admitted since a Supreme Court ruling struck down affirmative action in higher education. At other colleges, including Princeton University and Yale University, the share of Black students changed little.

    Several schools also have seen swings in their numbers of Asian, Hispanic and Native American students, but trends are still murky. Experts and colleges say it will take years to measure the full impact of last year’s ruling that barred consideration of race in admissions.

    The end of affirmative action isn’t the only factor affecting the makeup of freshman classes. Some colleges are changing standardized test requirements, heightening their importance. And the federal government’s botched rollout of a new financial aid form complicated decisions of students nationwide on where and whether to attend college.

    “It’s really hard to pull out what one policy shift is affecting all of these enrollment shifts,” said Katharine Meyer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. “The unsatisfying answer is that it’s hard to know which one is having the bigger impact.”

    On Thursday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported drops in enrollment among Black, Hispanic and Native American students in its incoming class. Its approach to admissions has been closely watched because it was one of two colleges, along with Harvard University, that were at the center of the Supreme Court case.

    The population of Black students dropped nearly 3 percentage points, to 7.8%, compared with the UNC class before it. Hispanic student enrollment fell from 10.8% to 10.1%, while the incoming Native American population slid half a percentage point to 1.1%, according to the university. The incoming Asian student population rose 1 percentage point to 25.8%. The share of white students, at 63.8%, barely changed.

    It is “too soon to see trends” from the affirmative action decision, said Rachelle Feldman, UNC’s vice provost for enrollment. She cited the delays in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid application process as another possible influence on the makeup of the incoming class.

    “We are committed to following the new law. We are also committed to making sure students in all 100 counties from every population in our growing state feel encouraged to apply, have confidence in our affordability and know this is a place they feel welcome and can succeed,” Feldman said.

    Some colleges reported sharp declines in the percentages of Black students in their incoming class, including drops from 15% to 5% at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from 11% to 3% at Amherst College. At Tufts University, the drop in the share of Black students was more moderate, from 7.3% to 4.7%. At Yale, the University of Virginia and Princeton, the change year-over-year was less than a percentage point.

    Many colleges did not share the demographics of applicants, making it impossible to know whether fewer students of color applied, or were admitted but chose not to attend.

    Changes in other demographic groups also did not follow a clear pattern. At MIT, for example, the percentage of Asian students increased from 40% to 47% and Hispanic and Latino students from 16% to 11%, while the percentage of white students was relatively unchanged. But at Yale, the percentage of Asian students declined from 30% to 24%. White students at Yale went from 42% of the class to 46%, and Hispanic and Latino students saw an increase of 1 percentage point.

    Colleges have been pursuing other strategies to preserve the diversity they say is essential to campus life.

    JT Duck, dean of admissions at Tufts, emphasized the school would work on expanding outreach and partnerships with community organizations to reach underrepresented, low-income and first-generation students. He cautioned against reading too much into year-to-year changes in enrollment.

    “The results show that we have more work to do to ensure that talented students from all backgrounds, including those most historically underrepresented at selective universities, have access to a Tufts education. And we are committed to doing that work, while adhering to the new legal constraints,” he said in an email. “We’ve already done a lot of work toward these ends and look forward to doing even more.”

    At UNC, Feldman said it is a priority to offer substantial financial aid to low-income families, along with retaining students through investments in undergraduate advising and other initiatives. She said there are no plans for dramatic changes in light of the new enrollment data.

    The university wants to make sure “anyone from any background knows they can earn their way here,” she said at a news conference.

    Sharp declines in the number of students of color can impact how prospective students view schools, leading some to choose other colleges where they might feel a stronger sense of community, said Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    “If we’re below a certain threshold, people who see themselves as having a more difficult time developing a sense of belonging will choose elsewhere,” he said. That’s especially true at selective colleges, where admitted students may be choosing between multiple top-tier schools.

    So far, the drops in underrepresented minority students are smaller in scope than when states like Michigan and California passed bans on affirmative action decades earlier, Meyer said. But since those bans, colleges have developed more best practices for effective, non-race-based ways of recruiting and enrolling a diverse class, Meyer said.

    ___

    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.

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  • Stakeholder in Trump’s Truth Social parent company wins court ruling over share transfer

    Stakeholder in Trump’s Truth Social parent company wins court ruling over share transfer

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    DOVER, Del. (AP) — A federal judge in Delaware has ruled in favor of a firm seeking assurance that it will be able to sell its minority stake in the parent company of former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform.

    The judge on Friday granted summary judgment to Florida-based United Atlantic Ventures LLC in a lawsuit filed against Minnesota-based Odyssey Transfer and Trust Co., a business that handles securities transfers among registered shareholders.

    UAV is owned by Andrew Litinsky and Wesley Moss, former contestants on Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice” who also helped facilitate a merger that took Trump Media public in March.

    Since then, UAV and Trump Media have been battling in courts in both Delaware and Florida over UAV’s stake in the company. Attorneys for Trump Media assured a state judge in Delaware earlier this year that UAV was entitled to an 8.6% stake and would suffer no merger-related dilution. They now contend, however, that UAV is not entitled to its shares because of pre-merger mismanagement by Litinsky and Moss.

    Friday’s ruling involves UAV’s concerns that it will not receive its Trump Media shares, currently valued at about $350 million, from Odyssey when a post-merger lockup period expires Sept. 19. According to court filings, Odyssey told UAV earlier this year that it would be taking direction from TMTG and its lawyers.

    Image

    After Odyssey filed a lawsuit, the parties appeared to have reached a resolution, with Odyssey saying it would remove transfer restrictions on the share after the lockup period expires “without preference to any TMTG shareholder.” After seeking approval from Trump Media, however, Odyssey tried to change that language to “on the same basis as other similarly situated TMTG shareholders.”

    Trump holds about 115 million TMTG shares, or roughly 60% of the company’s outstanding shares.

    U.S. District Judge Gregory Williams questioned Odyssey’s conduct, noting that it claimed the language change was “immaterial,” while allowing it to scuttle settlement negotiations.

    “Even outside settlement negotiations, Odyssey’s conduct has been elusive,” Williams wrote.

    Williams ordered that when Odyssey is notified by TMTG of the expiration of the lockup provisions, it must promptly notify UAV, remove transfer restrictions on all shares and not interfere with the delivery of the shares.

    TMTG’s share price hit a high of $79.38 on its first day of trading but is now hovering around $17, closing Friday at $17.10.

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  • Swirling federal investigations test New York City mayor’s ability to govern

    Swirling federal investigations test New York City mayor’s ability to govern

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    NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing mounting questions over his ability to govern after federal investigators seized phones from multiple officials in his administration, compounding scrutiny of a Democrat who was already ensnared in an apparently separate criminal probe.

    Federal agents on Wednesday took devices from Adams’ police commissioner, his schools chancellor, two deputy mayors and several other advisers.

    None of the officials involved have been charged with a crime, but the wave of searches added to a cloud of suspicion around Adams, a former city police captain who has fashioned himself as a champion of law and order.

    They’ve also raised questions internally about the administration’s ability to stay focused on serving the nation’s largest city.

    In a private call Friday with senior staff, the city’s Emergency Management Commissioner, Zach Iscol, offered a blunt assessment of the impact of the investigations on public safety.

    “This is not good,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press. “There’s a lot going on in the city and the thing that I’m most concerned about is city leadership being distracted.“

    The agency, which is responsible for the city’s emergency procedures, falls under the portfolio of Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks, whose home was visited by law enforcement Wednesday. Iscol said on the call that he had not spoken to City Hall leadership as of Friday morning.

    The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment and it was not immediately clear whether federal authorities were seeking information linked to one investigation or several.

    In addition to Banks, federal agents on Wednesday seized devices from Police Commissioner Edward Caban; First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright; Banks’ brother, David Banks, the city’s schools chancellor; and Timothy Pearson, a top mayoral adviser and former high-ranking New York Police Department official.

    The seizures came nearly a year after federal agents seized Adams’ phones and iPad as he was leaving an event in Manhattan. Investigators also searched the homes of a top Adams campaign fundraiser and a member of his administration’s international affairs office.

    In February, federal authorities searched two properties belonging to his director of Asian affairs as part of a separate investigation overseen by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

    Then earlier this summer, Adams, his campaign and City Hall all received subpoenas from federal prosecutors requesting information about the mayor’s overseas travel and potential connections to the Turkish government.

    The most recent round of searches appear to be unrelated to the Turkey inquiry and the investigation by Brooklyn federal prosecutors, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose information about the investigations.

    “There is a stench of corruption around the mayor,” said Douglas Muzzio, a retired political science professor at Baruch College with deep knowledge of New York politics. “You’ve got to believe that at some point, the feeling that the government is not working is going to start pervading the public consciousness.”

    Federal investigators appear to have been interested in Adams’ inner circle as far back as this winter. John Scola, an attorney representing four city employees who have accused Pearson of sexual harassment, said three of his clients received visits in February from FBI agents, who wanted to know about Pearson and his work with City Hall.

    Pearson previously worked alongside Phil Banks before he was assigned to lead a new mayoral unit tasked with overseeing city agencies.

    Those who worked with Pearson said he had an unusual suite of responsibilities that gave him wide latitude over police promotions, pandemic recovery efforts and certain homeless shelters for migrants. He is currently facing a separate city investigation for his role in a brawl at one of those shelters.

    Throughout the various FBI activities, Adams has forcefully maintained that he has followed the law and that he would continue to focus on his duties as mayor.

    Asked repeatedly at news conferences about the investigations, Adams has said his mantra is to “stay focused, no distractions and grind.”

    Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the mayor, said nothing would hamper the administration’s ability to govern.

    “For the better part of a year, the mayor has been absolutely clear that, as a former member of law enforcement, he will always follow the law, and in the same time he has stayed focused on delivering for the people of the city,” Levy said in a statement Friday, pointing to recent drops in crime and increases in job numbers and other city initiatives.

    Since the Wednesday morning searches, the mayor has personally visited a tunnel emergency, held a public event about the first day of school, and met with residents concerned about e-bikes. On Friday, he held his regularly scheduled senior staff call at 8 a.m., then met with the mayor of Lisbon, Levy said.

    In a statement, Schools Chancellor David Banks said: “I remain focused on ensuring they have safe, academically rigorous, and a joyful school year. I am confirming that I am cooperating with a federal inquiry. At this time, I cannot comment any further on that matter.”

    Benjamin Brafman, an attorney for Philip Banks, confirmed that a search was conducted, but otherwise declined to comment. The NYPD’s media relations office also confirmed a federal investigation involving members of the department, but declined to make Caban available for comment. A phone message left for Pearson’s attorney was not returned.

    But news of the latest investigations has provided Adams’ foes with fresh and potent lines of attack ahead of what is expected to be a heavily contested primary election season for the Democratic mayor.

    Brad Lander, a Democrat who serves as the city’s comptroller and is one of a handful of challengers to Adams in next year’s primary, said the fact that investigations are swirling around much of the mayor’s top staff could create “a level of both distraction and anxiety about trustworthiness and consequences for all New Yorkers.”

    “New Yorkers want to know their leaders are focused on their problems and not their own problems, and the staff of agencies also need focused leadership helping them confront the challenges New Yorkers have,” Lander said.

    Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller who is expected to run against Adams next year, said the investigations are becoming a serious impediment to the day-to-day process of governing.

    “We New Yorkers are not stupid,” he said. “We know that this government is paralyzed by the investigation. I think the mayor needs to step up and tell New Yorkers, in a real way, everything he knows about what’s going on.”

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  • Hawaii can ban guns on beaches, an appeals court says

    Hawaii can ban guns on beaches, an appeals court says

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    HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii can enforce a law banning firearms on its world-famous beaches, a U.S. appeals court panel ruled Friday.

    Three Maui residents sued to block a 2023 state law prohibiting carrying a firearm on the sand and in other places deemed sensitive, including banks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. They argued that Hawaii went too far with its wide-ranging ban.

    A U.S. district court judge in Honolulu granted a preliminary injunction against the rule last year and Hawaii appealed. On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals published an opinion reversing the lower court ruling on beaches, parks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. The panel affirmed the ruling for banks and certain parking lots.

    “The record supports the conclusion that modern-day beaches in Hawaii, particularly in urban or resort areas, often resemble modern-day parks,” more so than beaches at the founding of the nation, the unanimous ruling said.

    Hawaii, which has long had some of the nation’s toughest firearm restrictions and lowest rates of gun violence, has been wrestling with how to square its gun laws with a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the right to bear arms. The high court found that people have a constitutional right to carry weapons in public and that measures to restrict that right must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

    “I’m disappointed that the 9th Circuit did not look at our … challenge to rural parks and beaches,” which can be dangerous and require people to protect themselves, said Alan Beck, an attorney representing the Maui residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. He plans to ask for a review by a fuller panel of judges, he said.

    The Hawaii attorney general’s office issued a statement noting that the 9th Circuit also upheld a rule prohibiting the carrying of firearms on private property owned by another without their consent.

    “This is a significant decision recognizing that the state’s public safety measures are consistent with our nation’s historical tradition,” Hawaii Solicitor General Kalikoʻonālani Fernandes said in the statement.

    The ruling also applies to a similar challenge to a California ban on carrying guns in certain public places, upholding an injunction on enforcing restrictions on firearms at hospitals, similar medical facilities, public transit, gatherings that require a permit, places of worship, financial institutions, parking areas and similar areas connected to those places.

    As in Hawaii, the ruling allows California to enforce bans in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and in parks. It also allows California bans for other places including casinos, stadiums and amusement parks.

    The California attorney general’s office said it was reviewing the decision.

    Residents carrying guns in public is still fairly new to Hawaii. Before the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanded gun rights nationwide, Hawaii’s county police chiefs made it virtually impossible to carry a gun by rarely issuing permits to do so — either for open carry or concealed carry. Gun owners were only allowed to keep firearms in their homes or to bring them — unloaded and locked up — to shooting ranges, hunting areas and places such as repair shops.

    That ruling prompted the state to retool its gun laws, with Democratic Gov. Josh Green signing legislation to allow more people to carry concealed firearms.

    It also prompted Hawaii and California to pass laws restricting guns in places that are deemed sensitive.

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  • Democratic primary for governor highlights Tuesday’s elections in Delaware

    Democratic primary for governor highlights Tuesday’s elections in Delaware

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    DOVER, Del. (AP) — A Democratic gubernatorial contest pitting Delaware’s lieutenant governor against the chief executive of the state’s largest county is the marquee race in Tuesday’s primary elections.

    Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who has held public office since winning a state House seat in 2002, is hoping to overcome a campaign finance scandal and succeed Democrat John Carney as governor.

    Hall-Long has been endorsed by Carney and Delaware’s Democrat Party establishment. But the two-term lieutenant governor is facing a tough primary challenge from New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer. Former state environmental secretary Collin O’Mara also is seeking the Democratic nomination, but he has been overshadowed by the other two candidates.

    Meyer has raised substantially more money than Hall-Long this year, and his current campaign balance is about seven times higher than hers.

    Hall-Long reported raising about $582,000 this year, including roughly $52,200 in the three-week reporting period that ended Tuesday. She reported spending $1.18 million, including $182,000 in the three-week period.

    Meyer has raised about $1 million this year, including about $200,000 in the past three weeks. He has spent about $2.1 million, including roughly $1.2 million in the three-week sprint toward Tuesday’s primary.

    On the Republican side, House Minority Leader Michael Ramone is favored to win a three-way GOP primary for governor.

    Meanwhile, Carney, who is prohibited by law from seeking a third term as governor, has taken a step down on the political ladder and is eyeing the Democratic nomination for mayor of Wilmington, Delaware’s largest city. His opponent is former Wilmington city treasurer Velda Jones-Potter, who was also appointed to a two-year stint as state treasurer after then-treasurer Jack Markell defeated Carney in a 2008 primary and was elected governor.

    As of Friday, more than 24,000 Delawareans, including more than 17,500 Democrats, had already cast their votes in the primary, either by absentee ballot or in-person early voting at designated sites in each county.

    Other races of note on Tuesday include three-way Democratic primaries to succeed Hall-Long as lieutenant governor and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester as Delaware’s lone representative in the U.S. House. Rochester is seeking the U.S. Senate seat currently held by fellow Democrat Tom Carper, who endorsed her in announcing his retirement last year.

    Elsewhere, former state auditor Kathleen McGuiness is in a three-way Democratic primary for a state House seat held by retiring former speaker Pete Schwartzkopf. Schwartzkopf, a longtime McGuiness ally, has endorsed her to succeed him in representing the Rehoboth Beach area.

    McGuiness was convicted in 2022 on misdemeanor charges of conflict of interest, official misconduct and noncompliance with state procurement rules. A jury acquitted her on felony charges of theft and witness intimidation.

    After the trial, the judge threw out the procurement conviction. Delaware’s Supreme Court later vacated the official misconduct conviction but upheld the conflict-of-interest verdict, which involved the hiring of McGuiness’ daughter as a part-time employee in the auditor’s office.

    The trial marked the first time in Delaware history that a sitting statewide elected official was convicted on criminal charges, but the misdemeanor conviction does not prohibit McGuiness from holding public office.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    McGuiness was prosecuted by Attorney General Kathleen Jennings, a fellow Democrat. In contrast, Jennings has refused to prosecute Hall-Long for campaign finance violations that led several top staffers to abandon her campaign and prompted election officials to commission a forensic audit.

    The audit found that during seven years as campaign treasurer for his wife, Dana Long wrote 112 checks to himself or cash, and one to his wife. The checks totaled just under $300,000 and should have been reported as campaign expenditures. Instead, 109 were not disclosed in finance reports, and the other four, payable to Dana Long, were reported as being written to someone else.

    The audit also found that Hall-Long and her husband had received payments totaling $33,000 more than what she purportedly loaned her campaign over several years, while not disclosing those loans on campaign finance reports.

    Hall-Long has disputed the audit’s findings and described the reporting violations as simple bookkeeping mistakes.

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  • Family of West Virginia governor, running for Senate, has deal to avoid Greenbrier hotel foreclosure

    Family of West Virginia governor, running for Senate, has deal to avoid Greenbrier hotel foreclosure

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    CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has reached an agreement with a credit collection company to avoid the foreclosure of their historic hotel as he runs for U.S. Senate, the resort announced Thursday.

    The Republican governor’s family had been set to appear in court Friday to ask a judge to halt the auction of The Greenbrier resort’s hotel, which had been scheduled for Tuesday. That hearing has been canceled.

    “It’s taken care of, and we move forward, and The Greenbrier is as whole as it can possibly be,” Justice said at a news briefing. “The Greenbrier is going to be in our family forevermore.”

    The 710-room hotel has hosted U.S. presidents, royalty and congressional retreats. The resort held a PGA Tour golf tournament from 2010 until 2019 and has welcomed NFL teams for training camp and practices. A once-secret 112,000-square-foot (10,080-square-meter) underground bunker built for Congress at the Greenbrier in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War now hosts tours.

    The hotel came under threat of auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a longstanding loan taken out by the governor to a credit collection company, McCormick 101 — a subsidiary of Beltway Capital — which declared it to be in default. In a statement, the Justice family said it had reached an agreement with Beltway Capital to “receive a specific amount to be paid in full by October 24, 2024.”

    The family said it had already secured the money, although the Justices did not specify the amount.

    “Beltway reserves its rights if the Justice family fails to perform,” the statement reads.

    A message left with Beltway Capital wasn’t immediately returned Thursday.

    Justice defended his family’s business practices at Thursday’s briefing and repeated past claims that JPMorgan Chase’s sale of The Greenbrier loan was a politically motivated effort to hurt his U.S. Senate campaign.

    “We had a 14-year working relationship with JPMorgan, and then shortly after the primary where I was the winner — hands down, you’re going to the U.S. Senate, no matter what anybody says under the sun — it makes, it made, total no sense other than political, it made no sense at all,” he said.

    Justice said that his family had made payments on the JPMorgan loan as recently as June and that it was notified the loan had been sold in July without prior warning. JPMorgan Chase did not respond to an email seeking comment.

    If the hotel had been sold, Justice said, “there would have been carnage and devastation like you can’t imagine to the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to jobs that could have been lost.

    The auction, which had been set to occur at a courthouse Tuesday in the small city of Lewisburg, involved 60.5 acres, including the hotel and parking lot.

    Justice family attorneys filed a motion this week for a preliminary injunction to try to halt the auction of The Greenbrier. They claimed that a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor was defective because JPMorgan didn’t obtain consent from the Greenbrier Hotel Corp.’s directors or owners, and that auctioning the property violates the company’s obligation to act in “good faith and deal fairly” with the corporation.

    They also argued, in part, that the auction would harm the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.

    About 400 employees at The Greenbrier hotel received notice this week from an attorney for the health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they would lose coverage Tuesday, the scheduled date of the auction, unless the Justice family paid $2.4 million in missing contributions.

    Peter Bostic, a union official with the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board, said that the Justice family hasn’t contributed to employees’ health fund in four months, and that an additional $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.

    The letter also said some contributions were taken out of employees’ paychecks but never transferred to the fund, concerning union officials.

    Justice dismissed concerns about the claims Thursday, telling reporters that “insurance payments were made and were being made on a regular basis.”

    “There is no way that the great union employees at The Greenbrier are going to go without insurance,” he said. “There is no possible way.”

    Justice is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes Magazine in 2021, has been accused in court cases of being late in paying millions for family business debts and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.

    He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017, after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009.

    Justice’s family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” That property was scheduled to be auctioned off this year in an attempt by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in business loans defaulted by the governor’s family, but a court battle delayed that process.

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  • Floridians balk at DeSantis administration plan to build golf courses at state parks

    Floridians balk at DeSantis administration plan to build golf courses at state parks

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    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The golf course is not a threatened species in the Sunshine State — but the Florida scrub-jay is.

    And advocates are warning that life for the small blue and gray birds and many other imperiled species could get much harder if Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration follows through on a proposal to build golf courses, pickleball courts and 350-room hotels at state parks from Miami to the Panhandle.

    State parks “are the last strongholds for a lot of wildlife in rapidly urbanizing communities in Florida,” said Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida.

    “They have an outsized importance — not just to wildlife but also as places where Floridians and visitors can continue to see what Florida was like,” she said. “It’s the best of Florida.”

    DeSantis has enjoyed rock solid support from the Republicans who dominate state politics. It has been rare for DeSantis to get pushback on anything from GOP lawmakers, and he has a reputation for seeking vengeance when they do.

    But it appears a political line in the sand is being drawn after DeSantis’ administration announced plans this week to carve out golf courses and pickleball courts in Florida’s beloved state parks.

    Unlike the issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, race and guns that have divided voters, state parks apparently hold a place in the hearts of Floridians regardless of party. The state park system has received national recognition for years, and people are resistant to change the protected lands they enjoy.

    The proposal announced by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to build new sports facilities, hotels and glamping sites at nine state parks across Florida has drawn a wave of opposition, not just from nature lovers and birdwatchers but also from members of DeSantis’ Cabinet, a Republican member of Congress and conservative state lawmakers. That includes outgoing Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.

    “Our vision (for state parks) did not contemplate the addition of golf courses and hotels, which in my view are not in-line with the peaceful and quiet enjoyment of nature,” Passidomo posted on X. “From what I know at this time, the proposal should not move forward in its current form.”

    A spokesperson for DeSantis defended the plans — which are not final — and touted the administration’s investments in protecting and conserving the state’s natural resources.

    “Teddy Roosevelt believed that public parks were for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and we agree with him,” press secretary Jeremy Redfern said. “But it’s high time we made public lands more accessible to the public.”

    The Department of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

    All of the parks slated for development are located near heavily visited tourist destinations, including Miami, Tampa, Panama City and St. Augustine.

    Florida’s state park system is a bastion of wildness in a state where vast stretches of sugar sand beaches and mangrove forests have long given way to condos, motels and strip mall souvenir shops.

    Advocates say places like Topsail Hill Preserve State Park near Destin are literal beacons on a hill — the preserve is known for its 25-foot high sand dunes that tower over a stretch of the Panhandle known for its spring break destinations and military installations.

    Eric Draper, a former head of the Florida Park Service, said Topsail is one of the last undeveloped stretches of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

    In that part of the state, Draper said, “you can stand on the beach, you look right, you look left, and you just see a lot of condos and developments and houses. But this is one place that you can stand and look for three miles and not see any development.”

    Under the new plans, Topsail would get up to four new pickleball courts, a disc golf course and a new hotel with a capacity of up to 350 rooms — a scale of development that Draper said is more in line with a conference center than a quiet beach retreat.

    Another proposal is for a golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County on the state’s southeast coast north of West Palm Beach. Building the golf courses would entail removing a boardwalk and observation tower as well as relocating the residences and offices of park staff, as well as existing cabins for visitors.

    A change.org petition targeting the would-be golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson had netted more than 60,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.

    It is not the first time a Republican administration has raised the idea of leveraging more revenue from state parks by providing golf, lodging and other attractions. But past ideas were quickly dropped after public opposition.

    In 2015, then-Gov. Rick Scott’s administration floated plans to allow cattle farmers to graze their herds and loggers to harvest timber from park lands.

    Legendary former professional golfer Jack Nicklaus has long lobbied state officials to underwrite his push to build golf courses in state parks, efforts that fizzled following public pushback.

    Wraithmell, the head of Audubon Florida, said she hopes state officials will listen to the Floridians who plan to pack public meetings next week to weigh in on the proposals.

    “Absolutely there is demand for more people to enjoy state parks,” she said. “The solution is not to try to cram as many people into a park as we can …. The solution is to create more state parks.”

    ___

    This story was first published on Aug. 22, 2024. It was updated on Aug. 23, 2024, to correct that there are nine state parks included in the proposal, not eight.

    ___ Associated Press reporter Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed to this story.

    ___

    Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Donald Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race

    Donald Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race

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    CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared Wednesday before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago in an interview that quickly turned hostile.

    The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage.

    “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said while addressing the group’s annual convention.

    Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the U.S. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting legislation to strengthen voting rights and to reform policing.

    AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports Donald Trump has falsely suggested Kamala Harris misled voters about her race.

    Trump has leveled a wide range of criticism at Harris since she replaced President Joe Biden atop the likely Democratic ticket last week. Throughout his political career, the former president has repeatedly questioned the backgrounds of opponents who are racial minorities.

    Michael Tyler, the communications director for Harris’ campaign, said in a statement that “the hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power.”

    “Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency — while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in,” Tyler said. “Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked during her briefing with reporters on Wednesday about Trump’s remarks and responded with disbelief, initially murmuring, “Wow.”

    Jean-Pierre, who is Black, called what Trump said “repulsive” and said, “It’s insulting and no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify.”

    Trump has repeatedly attacked his opponents and critics on the basis of race. He rose to prominence in Republican politics by propagating false theories that President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was not born in the United States. “Birtherism,” as it became known, was just the start of Trump’s history of questioning the credentials and qualifications of Black politicians.

    He has denied allegations of racism. And after Biden picked Harris as his running mate four years ago, a Trump campaign spokesperson then pointed to a previous Trump political donation to Harris as proof that he wasn’t racist.

    “The president, as a private businessman, donated to candidates across all aisles,” the spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, told reporters. “And I’ll note that Kamala Harris is a Black woman and he donated to her campaign, so I hope we can squash this racism argument now,” Pierson said.

    During this year’s Republican primary, he once referred to former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, as “Nimbra.”

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Later Wednesday, Trump did not repeat his criticism of Harris’ race at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, although he called her “phony” and said she has been trying to change her image. He also repeatedly mispronounced her first name.

    “If she becomes your president, our country is finished,” Trump charged.

    Before he took the stage, Trump’s team displayed what appeared to be years-old news headlines describing Harris as the “first Indian-American senator” on the big screen in the arena.

    Trump’s appearance Wednesday at the annual gathering of Black journalists immediately became heated, with the former president sparring with interviewer Rachel Scott of ABC News and accusing her of giving him a “very rude introduction” with a tough first question about his past criticism of Black people and Black journalists, his attack on Black prosecutors who have pursued cases against him and the dinner he had at his Florida club with a white supremacist.

    “I think it’s disgraceful,” Trump said. “I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country.”

    Trump continued his attacks on Scott’s network, ABC News, which he has been arguing should not host the next presidential debate, despite his earlier agreement with the Biden campaign. He also several times described her tone and questions as “nasty,” a word he used in the past when describing women, including Hillary Clinton and Meghan the Duchess of Sussex.

    The Republican also repeated his false claim that immigrants in the country illegally are “taking Black jobs.” When pushed by Scott on what constituted a “Black job,” Trump responded by saying “a Black job is anybody that has a job,” drawing groans from the room.

    At one point, he said, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”

    The audience responded with a mix of boos and some applause.

    Scott asked Trump about his pledge to pardon people convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and specifically whether he would pardon those who assaulted police officers.

    Trump said, “Oh, absolutely I would,” and said, “If they’re innocent, I would pardon them.”

    Scott pointed out they have been convicted and therefore are not innocent.

    “Well, they were convicted by a very, very tough system,” he said.

    At one point, when he was defending his supporters who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, he said, “Nothing is perfect in life.”

    He compared the 2021 insurrection to the protests in Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 following the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and to more recent protests at the Capitol last week by demonstrators opposed to the war in Gaza. Trump falsely claimed that no one was arrested in those other demonstrations and that only his supporters were targeted.

    As Trump made the comparison, a man in the back of the room shouted out, “Sir, have you no shame?”

    The former president’s invitation to address the organization sparked an intense internal debate among NABJ that spilled online. Organizations for journalists of color typically invite presidential candidates to speak at their summer gatherings in election years.

    As he campaigns for the White House a third time, Trump has sought to appear outside his traditional strongholds of support and his campaign has touted his efforts to try to win over Black Americans, who have been Democrats’ most committed voting bloc.

    His campaign has emphasized his messages on the economy and immigration as part of his appeal, but some of his outreach has played on racial stereotypes, including the suggestion that African Americans would empathize with the criminal charges he has faced and his promotion of branded sneakers.

    Trump and NABJ also have a tense history over his treatment of Black women journalists. In 2018, NABJ condemned Trump for repeatedly using words such as “stupid,” “loser” and “nasty” to describe Black women journalists.

    The vice president is not scheduled to appear at the convention, but NABJ said in a statement posted on X that it was in conversation with her campaign to have her appear either virtually or in person for a conversation in September.

    Harris addressed Trump’s comments briefly Wednesday night while speaking at a gathering of Sigma Gamma Rho, a historically Black sorority, in Houston.

    “It was the same old show,” she said. “The divisiveness and the disrespect.”

    Harris added: “And let me just say, the American people deserve better.”

    ___

    Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Aaron Morrison and Steve Peoples in New York, Gary Fields in Chicago and Will Weissert and Farnoush Amiri in Washington, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Chris Megerian in Houston contributed to this report.

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  • An appeals court upholds a ruling that an online archive’s book sharing violated copyright law

    An appeals court upholds a ruling that an online archive’s book sharing violated copyright law

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    NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court has upheld an earlier finding that the online Internet Archive violated copyright law by scanning and sharing digital books without the publishers’ permission.

    Four major publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House — had sued the Archive in 2020, alleging that it had illegally offered free copies of more than 100 books, including fiction by Toni Morrison and J.D. Salinger. The Archive had countered that it was protected by fair use law.

    In 2023, a judge for the U.S. District Court in Manhattan decided in the publishers’ favor and granted them a permanent injunction. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concurred, asking the question: Was the Internet Archive’s lending program, a “National Emergency Library” launched early in the pandemic, an example of fair use?

    “Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no,” the appeals court ruled.

    In a statement Wednesday, the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, Maria Pallante, called the decision a victory for the publishing community.

    “Today’s appellate decision upholds the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest,” Pallante said.

    The Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, called the ruling a disappointment.

    “We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books,” he said in a statement.

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  • With charges and sanctions, US takes aim at Russian disinformation ahead of November election

    With charges and sanctions, US takes aim at Russian disinformation ahead of November election

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees in its most sweeping effort yet to push back against what it says are Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.

    The measures, which in addition to indictments also included sanctions and visa restrictions, represented a U.S. government effort just weeks before the November election to disrupt a persistent threat from Russia that American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters.

    Washington has said that Moscow, which intelligence officials have said has a preference for Republican Donald Trump, remains the primary threat to elections even as the FBI continues to investigate a hack by Iran this year that targeted the presidential campaigns of both political parties.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    “The Justice Department’s message is clear: We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic systems of government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

    One criminal case disclosed by the Justice Department accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company with nearly $10 million to publish English-language videos on social media platforms including TikTok and YouTube with messages in favor of the Russia government’s interests and agenda, including about the war in Ukraine.

    The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.

    The two defendants, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are at large. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.

    The Justice Department says the company did not disclose that it was funded by RT and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal.

    Though the indictment does not name the company, it describes it as a Tennessee-based content creation firm with six commentators and with a website identifying itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

    That description exactly matches Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos made by well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.

    Johnson and Pool both responded with posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, calling themselves “victims.” Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “scumbag,” Pool wrote that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived.”

    In his post, Johnson wrote that he had been asked a year ago to provide content to a “media startup.” He said his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”

    Tenet Media’s shows in recent months have featured high-profile conservative guests, including RNC co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.

    In the other action, officials announced the seizure of 32 internet domains that were used by the Kremlin to spread Russian propaganda and weaken international support for Ukraine. The websites were designed to look like authentic news sites but were actually fake, with bogus social media personas manufactured to appear as if they belonged to American users.

    The Justice Department did not identify which candidate in particular the propaganda campaign was meant to boost. But internal strategy notes from participants in the effort released Wednesday by the Justice Department make clear that Trump was the intended beneficiary, even though the names of the candidates were blacked out.

    The proposal for one propaganda project, for instance, states that one of its objectives was to secure a victory for a candidate who is currently out of power and to increase the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. has been doing too much to support Ukraine. President Joe Biden has strongly supported Ukraine during the invasion by Russia.

    Intelligence agencies have previously charged that Russia, which during the 2016 election launched a massive campaign of foreign influence and interference on Trump’s behalf, was using disinformation to try to meddle in this year’s election. The new steps show the depth of those concerns.

    “Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions,” the State Department said. “But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections.”

    The State Department announced it was taking action against several employees of Russian state-owned media outlets, designating them as “foreign missions,” and offering a cash reward for information provided to the U.S. government about foreign election interference.

    It also said it was adding media company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik to its list of foreign missions. That will require them to register with the U.S. government and disclose their properties and personnel in the U.S.

    In a speech last month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Russia remained the biggest threat to election integrity, accusing Putin and his proxies of “targeting specific voter demographics and swing-state voters to in an effort to manipulate presidential and congressional election outcomes.” Russia, she said was “intent on co-opting unwitting Americans on social media to push narratives advancing Russian interests.”

    She struck a similar note Thursday, saying at an Aspen Institute event that the foreign influence threat is more diverse and aggressive than in past years.

    “More diverse and aggressive because they involve more actors from more countries than we have ever seen before, operating in a more polarized world than we have ever seen before, all fueled by more technology and accelerated by technology, like AI, and that is what we have exposed in the law enforcement actions we took today,” she said.

    Much of the concern around Russia centers on cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to influence the November vote.

    The tactics include using state media like RT to advance anti-U.S. messages and content, as well as networks of fake websites and social media accounts that amplify the claims and inject them into Americans’ online conversations. Typically, these networks seize on polarizing political topics such as immigration, crime or the war in Gaza.

    In many cases, Americans may have no idea that the content they see online either originated or was amplified by the Kremlin.

    Groups linked to the Kremlin are increasingly hiring marketing and communications firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, the officials said during the briefing with reporters.

    Two such firms were the subject of new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.

    The ultimate goal, however, is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials said. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and AI-generated social media profiles are just two methods.

    Messages left with the Russian Embassy were not immediately returned.

    _____

    Associated Press writers Dan Merica and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

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  • Maryland will participate in the IRS’s online tax filing program

    Maryland will participate in the IRS’s online tax filing program

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    ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland is participating in the IRS’s Direct File program, a new free service that will allow eligible taxpayers to prepare and file their tax return online, state and federal officials announced Wednesday.

    Comptroller Brooke Lierman said the eligibility qualifications for the program have not yet been finalized for next year, but it’s estimated about 700,000 state residents could qualify.

    The IRS experimented with the free electronic tax filing return system this year. In May, the it announced it would make the system permanent and asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to help taxpayers file their returns through the program in 2025.

    The IRS tried the Direct File project for the 2024 tax season on a limited basis in 12 states for people with very simple W-2s, an employee’s wage and tax statement.

    The comptroller’s office is partnering with the nonprofit Code for America to build a platform that will securely transfer information from a federal tax return to a state tax return. The office says that will enable Maryland residents with relatively simple tax returns to save time on paperwork and get their refunds faster.

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  • Another New Jersey offshore wind project runs into turbulence as Leading Light seeks pause

    Another New Jersey offshore wind project runs into turbulence as Leading Light seeks pause

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    Another offshore wind project in New Jersey is encountering turbulence.

    Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through late December on its plan to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island.

    In a filing with the utilities board made in July but not posted on the board’s web site until Tuesday, the company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier.

    It asked the board to pause the project through Dec. 20 while a new source of blades is sought.

    Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project’s partners — said it is seeking to hit the pause button “in light of industry-wide shifts in market conditions.”

    It seeks more time for discussions with the board and supply chain partners, he said.

    “As one of the largest American-led offshore wind projects in the country, we remain committed to delivering this critically important energy project, as well as its significant economic and environmental benefits, to the Garden State,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.

    The statement added that the company, during a pause, would continue moving its project ahead with such developmental activities as an “ongoing survey program and preparation of its construction and operations plan.”

    The request was hailed by opponents of offshore wind, who are particularly vocal in New Jersey.

    “Yet another offshore wind developer is finding out for themselves that building massive power installations in the ocean is a fool’s errand, especially off the coast of New Jersey,” said Protect Our Coast NJ. “We hope Leading Light follows the example of Orsted and leaves New Jersey before any further degradation of the marine and coastal environment can take place.”

    Nearly a year ago, Danish wind energy giant Orsted scrapped two offshore wind farms planned off New Jersey’s coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible to build.

    Atlantic Shores, another project with preliminary approval in New Jersey, is seeking to rebid the financial terms of its project.

    And opponents of offshore wind have seized on the disintegration of a wind turbine blade off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts in July that sent crumbled pieces of it washing ashore on the popular island vacation destination.

    Leading Light was one of two projects chosen in January by the state utilities board. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.

    A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June “that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering.”

    “As a result of these actions, Invenergy is currently without a viable turbine supplier,” it wrote in its filing.

    The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles (65 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.

    New Jersey has become the epicenter of resident and political opposition to offshore wind, with numerous community groups and elected officials — most of them Republicans — saying the industry is harmful to the environment and inherently unprofitable.

    Supporters, many of them Democrats, say that offshore wind is crucial to move the planet away from the burning of fossil fuels and the changing climate that results from it.

    New Jersey has set ambitious goals to become the East Coast hub of the offshore wind industry. It built a manufacturing facility for wind turbine components in the southern part of the state to help achieve that aim.

    ___

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

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  • Yellen says ending Biden tax incentives would be ‘historic mistake’ for states like North Carolina

    Yellen says ending Biden tax incentives would be ‘historic mistake’ for states like North Carolina

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned voters in the battleground state of North Carolina that they could lose jobs if Republicans weaken a signature Biden administration law that encourages investments in manufacturing and clean energy.

    Yellen said that Republican-dominated states like North Carolina are greatly benefiting from tax incentives under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and that eliminating them would be a “historic mistake,” in a Thursday speech a community college in Raleigh.

    North Carolina has emerged as a key battleground this election cycle between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, where Trump ultimately won North Carolina in the 2020 presidential election.

    Yellen said Treasury data shows that 90,000 North Carolina households claimed more than $100 million in residential clean energy credits and $60 million in energy efficiency credits.

    “Rolling them back could raise costs for working families at a moment when it’s imperative that we continue to take action to lower prices,” Yellen said. “It could jeopardize the significant investments in manufacturing we’re seeing here and across the country, along with the jobs that come with them, many of which don’t require a college degree. And it could give a leg-up to China and other countries that are also investing to compete in these critical industries.”

    “As we see clearly here in North Carolina, this would be a historic mistake,” she said.

    Some Republicans have called on their leaders to reconsider repealing IRA energy tax incentives.

    A group of 18 House Republicans in August called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to reconsider efforts to eliminate them.

    “Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the letter reads. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

    But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on social media site X that the lawmakers who signed the letter want to “preserve so-called ‘green’ handouts to Democrats’ corporate cronies.”

    “The GOP must ignore K-Street lobbyists and refuse to fund the climate corporate cronies destroying our country,” he said.

    The Republican case against the Inflation Reduction Act hinges on the argument that the spending is wasteful and benefits China.

    IRS data released in August states that 3.4 million American families have claimed $8.4 billion in residential clean energy and home energy efficiency tax credits in 2023 — mostly towards solar panels and battery storage.

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  • GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election

    GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election

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    Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over the 2024 election through a series of court disputes that could even run past Nov. 5 if results are close.

    Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

    After Donald Trump made ” election integrity ” a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls.

    Democrats are countering with what they are calling “voter protection,” rushing to court to fight back against the GOP cases and building their own team with over 100 staffers, several hundred lawyers and what they say are thousands of volunteers.

    Despite the flurry of litigation, the cases have tended to be fairly small-bore, with few likely impacts for most voters.

    “When you have all this money to spend on litigation, you end up litigating less and less important stuff,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.

    The stakes would increase dramatically should Trump lose and try to overturn the results. That’s what he attempted in 2020, but the court system rejected him across the board. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits trying to reverse President Joe Biden’s win.

    Whether they could be successful this year depends on the results, experts said. A gap of about 10,000 votes — roughly the number that separated Biden and Trump in Arizona and Georgia in 2020 — is almost impossible to reverse through litigation. A closer one of a few hundred votes, like the 547-vote margin that separated George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida in 2000, is much more likely to hinge on court rulings about which ballots are legitimate.

    “If he loses, he’s going to claim that he won. That goes without saying,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said of Trump. “If it looks like what we had last time … I expect we’ll see the same kind of thing.”

    Trump has done nothing to discourage that expectation, saying he would accept the results of the election only if it’s “free and fair,” raising the possibility it would not be, something he continues to falsely contend was the case in 2020. He also continues to insist that he could only lose due to fraud.

    “The only way they can beat us is to cheat,” Trump said at a Las Vegas rally in June.

    To be clear, there was no widespread fraud in 2020 or any election since then. Reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump disputed his loss reaffirmed that Biden won. And Trump’s attorney general said there was no evidence that fraud tipped the election.

    Trump installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which then named attorney Christina Bobb as the head of its election integrity division. Bobb is a former reporter for the conservative One America News Network who has been indicted by Arizona’s attorney general for being part of an effort to promote a slate of Trump electors in the state, even though Biden won it.

    Echoing Trump, the RNC said it’s trying to counter Democratic mischief.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    “President Trump’s election integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process and securing the election,” RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk said in a statement. “While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November.”

    This time around, Democrats say they’re prepared for whatever Republicans might do.

    “For four years, Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have been scheming to sow distrust in our elections and undermine our democracy so they can cry foul when they lose,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “But also for four years, Democrats have been preparing for this moment, and we are ready for anything.”

    The highest-profile litigation so far has been in Georgia, over new rules from a Republican-appointed majority on the State Board of Elections, which has echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories. The rules could allow members of local election boards to try to refuse to certify results, a gambit Trump supporters have tried, unsuccessfully, to reverse losses in 2020 and 2022.

    A Trump-aligned group sued to have courts declare that election board members have that power while Democrats sued to overturn the new rules. GOP Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has questioned the wisdom of the board changing procedures so close to the election. Legal experts say the state board’s rules conflict with longstanding state law that certification is not optional.

    Whether local boards delay or refuse to certify the results from the upcoming election has been a growing concern, especially after a handful of local officials took that step during this year’s primaries. But experts say the fears of a certification crisis are overblown, in large part because most state laws are clear that state or local boards must certify the official results brought to them by election offices. The courtroom remains the most important venue for candidates who want to challenge results.

    “Trying to deny certification is a really poorly thought out theory,” Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, said on a Thursday call with reporters. “It has never worked.”

    The litigation to date has often been about relatively esoteric matters, but some cases could have implications after November if Trump loses. The RNC has filed lawsuits in Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina alleging the states need to remove inactive or ineligible voters from their rolls. Late last month, Republicans sued North Carolina over a favorite issue — the risk of noncitizens voting, which is rare. They contend the state wasn’t doing enough to safeguard against it.

    So far none of the claims have succeeded. But if Trump loses in those states by a narrow margin, that sort of pre-election litigation could pave the way for him to claim in court that the vote was invalid.

    The other area that could have ramifications in November and beyond is whether mail ballots arriving after Election Day can be counted. Nineteen states allow that as long as the ballots are sent before polls close. The RNC sued to overturn this provision in Nevada and Mississippi, but both cases were dismissed by judges.

    The RNC appealed those cases, and the first is scheduled to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this month. It’s the sort of issue that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Some Trump allies in 2020 hoped the court would declare him the winner, but the late-arriving mail ballot litigation at the time showed the limits of that tactic.

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state had to count mail ballots that arrived up to four days after Election Day. Republicans then appealed that ruling to the nation’s highest court, and late-arriving mail was counted separately in November 2020 while everyone waited for the Supreme Court to weigh in.

    In the end, the Supreme Court didn’t take up the case. Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, so the 10,000 late-arriving mail ballots wouldn’t have even made a difference.

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