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Youngkin vetoes Virginia bills mandating minimum wage increase, establishing marijuana retail sales

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed two top Democratic legislative priorities on Thursday: bills that would have allowed the recreational retail sales of marijuana to begin next year and measures mandating a minimum wage increase.

The development did not come as a surprise. While Youngkin had not explicitly threatened to veto either set of bills, he told reporters he didn’t think the minimum wage bill was needed and had repeatedly said he was uninterested in setting up retail marijuana sales.

In 2021, Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize marijuana, adopting a policy change that allowed adults age 21 and up to possess and cultivate the drug. But the state didn’t set up retail sales at the time and still hasn’t, due to shifts in partisan power and policy differences since then.

Advocates say the disconnect is allowing the illicit market to flourish, while opponents have safety health and safety concerns with further expanding access to the drug. In a statement, Youngkin said he shared those worries.

“States following this path have seen adverse effects on children’s and adolescent’s health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime, significant deterioration in mental health, decreased road safety, and significant costs associated with retail marijuana that far exceed tax revenue. It also does not eliminate the illegal black-market sale of cannabis, nor guarantee product safety,” he said in a veto statement attached to the bills.

Currently in Virginia, home cultivation and adult sharing of the drug are legal. And patients who receive a written certification from a health care provider can purchase medical cannabis from a dispensary.

Under the bills, the state would have started taking applications on Sept. 1 for cultivating, testing, processing and selling the drug in preparation for the market to open May 1, 2025, with products taxed at a rate of up to 11.625%.

The legislation was supported by a range of industry interests and opposed by religious and socially conservative groups.

Virginia first took on legalization at a time when Democrats were in full control of state government. Elections later that year changed that, with Youngkin winning and Republicans taking control of the House of Delegates for two years, though Democrats are now back in full control of the statehouse.

While there has been some Republican legislative support since the 2021 session for setting up legal recreational sales, bills to do so have failed in 2022 and 2023.

As for the wage legislation, which would have increased the current $12-per-hour minimum wage to $13.50 on Jan. 1, 2025, and then to $15 on Jan. 1, 2026, Youngkin said the bills would “imperil market freedom and economic competitiveness.”

The bills would “implement drastic wage mandates, raise costs on families and small businesses, jeopardize jobs, and fail to recognize regional economic differences across Virginia,” he said in a news release.

Virginia Democrats began an effort to increase the minimum wage in 2020. They passed legislation that year — which took effect with a delay due to the coronavirus pandemic — establishing incremental increases up to $12, with further bumps requiring another Assembly vote.

They and other advocates have argued the legislation would help working families afford basic necessities and keep up with inflation.

Youngkin took action on a total of 107 bills Thursday, according to his office. He signed 100, including measures that his office said would “strengthen law enforcement’s ability to prosecute child predators and expand Department of Corrections inmate access to quality health services.”

Besides the marijuana and wage bills, he vetoed three others. One would have removed an exemption for farmworkers from the state’s minimum wage law.

Another would have required that approximately 315 individuals incarcerated or on community supervision with a felony marijuana conviction receive a sentencing review, according to Youngkin’s office.

“Ninety-seven inmates convicted of a violent felony offense, such as first and second-degree murder, kidnapping, and robbery, would be eligible for a reduced sentence under this proposal,” he said in his veto statement.

Thursday’s final veto came for a bill that dealt with the type of evidence that can be considered in certain workers’ compensation claims. The governor said current law provides a “balanced approach” while the proposal would “create a disproportionate imbalance in favor of one party.”

The part-time General Assembly adjourned its regular session earlier this month and will meet again in Richmond for a one-day session April 17 to consider Youngkin’s proposed amendments to legislation. They could also attempt to override one or more vetoes, a move that requires a 2/3 vote of both chambers, which are only narrowly controlled by Democrats.

The marijuana legislation advanced mostly along party lines, and the minimum wage bills passed strictly on party lines, meaning any override attempt would be almost certain to fail.

Youngkin announced the vetoes a day after the public collapse of one of his top legislative priorities: a deal to bring the NHL’s Washington Capitals and NBA’s Washington Wizards to Alexandria. The teams’ majority owner announced they would instead be staying in D.C.


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Outpaced by Biden, Trump hopes to rake in $33 million during Florida fundraiser

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is seeking to outraise President Joe Biden next week, aiming to take in $33 million to top a new single-event fundraising record set by Biden on Thursday with $25 million, said a person familiar with the Trump event who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Trump is inviting wealthy donors to Palm Beach, Fla., home to his Mar-a-Lago estate, for an April 6 fundraiser hosted by New York hedge fund billionaire John Paulson and listing as co-chairs other high-dollar donors such as Las Vegas-based businessman Robert Bigelow, casino mogul Steve Wynn and New York grocery billionaire John Catsimatidis. Guests are being asked to contribute $814,600 per person as a “chairman” contributor or $250,000 per person. Perks of attendance include a personalized copy of Trump’s coffee table book with photographs from his administration.

Assuming that Trump succeeds in raking in the jaw-dropping sum, the glitzy event offers Trump an opportunity to shift the narrative following months of negative headlines that have focused on his dwindling political cash hauls and his use of tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay legal fees from a myriad of court cases he faces.

Throughout his career in business and politics, Trump has a well-established reputation for inflating, or understating, his cash position — depending on need. His political committees, too, have relied on accounting gimmicks, including the recent clawback of an over $50 million donation — used to seed a pro-Trump super PAC, it was later refunded to help pay his mounting legal bills.

The haul would showcase Trump’s newfound ability to rake in massive checks now that he is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Effectively controlling the RNC, Trump and his political operation can take advantage of the far higher contribution limits that apply to party committees. While candidates alone can accept a maximum donation of $3,300, under a new joint fundraising agreement between his campaign and the RNC, a single donor could stroke a check for just over $800,000.

But even though the event is slated to give his campaign a massive infusion of cash, it doesn’t alter the fact that Trump still faces considerable financial headwinds.

His main campaign account and the Save America PAC, which has paid many of his legal bills, reported raising a combined $15.9 million in February and ended the month with more than $37 million on hand, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission last week. Democrats, meanwhile, had $155 million on hand.

And while Trump can now collect massive sums in conjunction with the RNC, the fine print of a fundraising invitation for the event shows that Save America — the committee that has been paying his legal bills — will be given a cut of the money before the RNC.

———

Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report from Miami.


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Massachusetts joins with NCAA, sports teams to tackle gambling among young people

BOSTON (AP) — Top Massachusetts officials joined with NCAA President and former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday to announce a new initiative aimed at tackling the public health harms associated with sports gambling among young people.

Baker said those harms extend not just to young people making bets, but to student athletes coming under enormous pressure from bettors hoping to cash in on their individual performances.

Baker said he spoke to hundreds of college athletes before officially stepping into the role of president about a year ago, and he said they talked about the tremendous pressure they feel from classmates and bettors about their individual performance.

“The message I kept getting from them is there’s so much of this going on, it’s very hard for us to just stay away from it,” he said.

Baker said student athletes pointed to classmates who wanted to talk to them about “how’s so-and-so doing? Is he or she going to be able to play this weekend? What do you think your chances are?”

“It was the exact same conversations I was having with my classmates and schoolmates in the ’70s. But back then it was just chatter in the cafeteria or the dining hall,” added Baker, who played basketball at Harvard University. “Now it’s currency.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said that since the state made sports betting legal in 2022, a bill signed by Baker, Massachusetts has essentially become a participant in the market.

The creates a burden on the state to make sports betting as safe as possible, she said.

“Think about it. We’re putting an addictive product — gambling — on a very addictive device, your smartphone,” she said. “We’ve gone from sports gambling being illegal nearly everywhere to being legal in dozens of states throughout the country in just a matter of a few years.”

In Massachusetts, it is illegal for anyone under 21 to wager on sports or in casinos.

Because young people are going to be influenced more by the teams they support than by state government officials, Campbell said it is critical to create a public/private partnership like the new initiative she unveiled Thursday, the Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition.

Campbell said members of the coalition include the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins, the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution and the NCAA. The goal is to craft a sports betting education, training, and safety curriculum for young people 12 to 20, she said.

NCAA data found 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity, while the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found about half of middle school students are estimated to have engaged some form of gambling, Campbell said.

Baker said the NCAA is pushing states with legal sports gambling to bar “prop bets” — short for proposition bets — which allow gamblers to wager on the statistics a player will accumulate during a game rather than the final score.

Baker also said the NCAA’s survey of students found that they were betting at essentially the same rate whether it was legal for them or not. It also found that one out of three student athletes has been harassed by bettors and one of 10 students has a gambling problem.

“It’s basically a 50-state issue even if it’s only legal in 38. And if you think kids under the age of 21 aren’t doing this, you’re kidding yourselves,” he said at the news conference at Boston’s TD Garden.

He said the ugliness and brutality of some of the messages on social media platforms of some of the athletes in the NCAA tournaments is disturbing.

Last year, NCAA officials considered a threat by a bettor serious enough to a team that they gave them 24/7 police protections until they left the tournament, he said.

“For student athletes in particular, this is an enormously challenging issue, and for a lot of the ones that are really in the bright lights, as many here will be tonight, this is just one more thing I think all of us would like to see taken off the table,” he said.


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Judge rejects officers’ bid to erase charges in the case of a man paralyzed after police van ride

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Four former Connecticut police officers accused of mocking and mistreating a man after he was paralyzed in the back of a police van in 2022 were denied bids Thursday to enter a program that could have erased criminal charges against them and let them avoid trial.

A judge rejected the former officers’ applications for accelerated rehabilitation, citing the seriousness of Richard “Randy” Cox’s injuries. The program, generally for first-time offenders accused of low-level crimes, requires successfully completing probation.

“The resulting injuries to the victim are of such a serious nature that the court feels that precludes participation in the program,” Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon said.

The four former New Haven officers, Oscar Diaz, Betsy Segui, Ronald Pressley and Luis Rivera, are charged with misdemeanors of negligent cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment. All four declined to comment after the hearing. Their lawyers said they disagreed with the judge’s decision. A fifth officer, Jocelyn Lavandier, faces the same charges and also applied for the probation program, but was not at the hearing as her case was postponed until May.

Cox, now 38, was paralyzed from the chest down June 19, 2022, when a police van he was riding in braked hard to avoid a collision, sending him head-first into a metal partition. His hands were cuffed behind his back and the van had no seat belts. Cox had been arrested on charges of threatening a woman with a gun, which were later dismissed.

“I can’t move. I’m going to die like this. Please, please, please help me,” Cox said minutes after the crash, according to police video.

Diaz, the officer driving the van, stopped and checked on Cox, according to police reports, then called for emergency medical staff and told them to meet him at the police station.

Once at the station, officers mocked Cox and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries, according to surveillance and body-worn camera footage. Officers dragged Cox from the van by his feet and placed him in a holding cell prior to his eventual transfer to a hospital. His family says officers may have exacerbated Cox’s injuries by moving him around.

Cox and New Haven State’s Attorney John Doyle Jr. opposed the officers’ applications to the probation program. Cox remains upset that the officers were not charged with felonies, said his lawyer, Jack O’Donnell.

“He’s been left with a permanent injury and he finds it audacious of the officers to try to avoid even a permanent record,” O’Donnell told the judge. “His life is no longer going to be enjoyable, and the fact that these officers can come forward and indicate that this is not a crime of too serious a nature is something that offends him deeply.”

Lawyers for the officers argued Thursday that Cox’s injuries happened before he got to the police station and they cited a medical opinion that the officers’ actions did not exacerbate the injuries. The attorneys also said Cox appeared to be intoxicated and the officers were not aware of the extent of his injuries at the time.

Four of the five officers were fired last year. The fifth, Pressley, retired. A state board in January overturned Diaz’s firing, but the city is appealing that decision. After Thursday’s ruling, their criminal cases will now move toward trial.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and Police Chief Karl Jacobson said in a statement that the officers must be held criminally accountable.

“The treatment of Mr. Cox while in the custody of the New Haven Police Department was completely unacceptable,” they said. “No one is above the law and we believe the ruling by Judge Harmon was the right one. It allows these officers to go through the criminal process and to receive a fair and impartial trial by a jury of their peers for the criminal charges they face related to this incident.”

Cox’s supporters, including his family and the NAACP, have criticized prosecutors for not bringing felony charges.

Supporters have compared his case to what happened to Freddie Gray, a Black man who died in 2015 in Baltimore after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a city police van. Cox is Black. All five officers accused of mistreating him are Black or Hispanic.

New Haven settled a lawsuit by Cox for $45 million.

Cox did not attend Thursday’s hearing. O’Donnell said travel is complicated and painful for him.

After Cox was injured, city police announced reforms, including making sure all prisoners wear seat belts. The state Legislature last year approved a new law spurred by the Cox case that would require seat belts for all prisoners being transported in Connecticut.


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Facebook News tab will soon be unavailable as Meta scales back news and political content

Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.

Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.

Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.

The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.

“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”

Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.

But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the U.S. presidential election and other races get underway.

“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”

Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.

“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.

News makes up less than 3% of what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by over 80% last year.

However, according to a 2023 Pew Research study, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform outpaces the rest: Facebook.

Three in 10 U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, also owned by Meta.

Instagram users recently expressed dissatisfaction with the app’s choice to stop “proactively” recommending political content posted on accounts that users don’t follow. While the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware Meta made the change.


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GOP-backed bill proposing harsher sentences to combat crime sent to Kentucky’s governor

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kentucky wrapped up work Thursday on a sweeping criminal justice bill that would deliver harsher sentences to combat crime. Opponents making a last stand before final passage warned the measure would carry a hefty price tag with no assurances that a tougher approach will lower crime.

The House voted 75-23 after another long debate to send the measure to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. The massive legislation is a priority for many in the GOP supermajority legislature.

The governor has signaled he likes aspects of the sprawling bill but dislikes other sections, including provisions to create the crime of unlawful camping, which critics say would criminalize homelessness.

“It’s hard to comment on a bill that tries to do this many things,” Beshear said recently. “I think it properly should have been split into different bills.”

House Bill 5 — one of the most contentious of the legislative session — would make a multitude of changes to the state’s criminal code, enhancing many current penalties and creating new offenses.

Supporters portrayed the bill as a necessary policy shift that would do more to hold criminals accountable and to make communities safer.

“If you get convicted of a violent crime, you’re going to the big house and you’re going for a long time,” Republican Rep. Jason Nemes said in defending the bill against blistering criticism from Democrats.

One prominent feature would create a “three-strikes” penalty that would lock up felons for the rest of their lives after committing a third violent offense.

Opponents said the measure failed to delve into the root causes of crime and warned of potential skyrocketing costs by putting more people behind bars for longer sentences.

“To increase the penalties may make us on paper look like we feel safer. I do not know that it will make us actually be more safe,” said Democratic Rep. Tina Bojanowski.

To bolster public safety, she suggested such alternatives as temporarily taking guns away from people experiencing mental health crises, better protecting domestic violence victims and improving access to housing — things not addressed by the legislation. Other critics said more effective ways to combat crime would be to raise the minimum wage and spend more on rehabilitative services.

The bill’s supporters focused mostly on urban crime in pushing for tougher policies. A law enforcement report released last year showed that overall serious crime rates fell across Kentucky in 2022, with declines in reports of homicides, robberies and drug offenses.

Opponents said the prospect of more criminal offenders serving longer sentences will saddle the Bluegrass State with significantly higher corrections costs and put more strain on overcrowded jails.

The fiscal note attached to the bill said the overall financial impact was “indeterminable” but would likely lead to a “significant increase in expenditures primarily due to increased incarceration costs.”

The measure would add to the list of violent crimes that require offenders to serve most of their sentences before becoming eligible for release.

Another key section aims to combat the prevalence of fentanyl by creating harsher penalties when its distribution results in fatal overdoses. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid seen as a key factor in the state’s high death toll from drug overdoses.

The section stirring some of the most heated debate would create an “unlawful camping” offense applied to the homeless. It means people could be arrested for sleeping or setting up camp in public spaces — whether on streets, sidewalks, under bridges or in front of businesses or public buildings. A first offense would be treated as a violation, with subsequent offenses designated as a misdemeanor. People could sleep in vehicles in public for up to 12 hours without being charged with unlawful camping.

Several thousand people experience homelessness in Kentucky on a given night, advocates say.

The bill would create a standalone carjacking law with enhanced penalties. Another provision would offer workers and business owners criminal immunity in cases where they use a “reasonable amount of force” to prevent theft or protect themselves and their stores.

The bill’s lead sponsor is Republican Rep. Jared Bauman and the measure drew dozens of cosponsors.


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Patchwork international regulations govern cargo ships like the one that toppled Baltimore bridge

The patchwork system of safety regulations pertaining to massive cargo ships like the one that toppled a major bridge in Baltimore this week can allow freight transporters to skirt oversight, critics say, making maritime shipping what one expert called “the weakest link in the transportation system.”

The thousands of container ships that carry more than 80% of all goods moved around the world are governed by rules established by the International Maritime Organization in London that are enforced by the various countries where ships are based and ports across the world. And many ships fly the flags of so-called countries of convenience that offer cheap registration fees and tax breaks but may not have robust oversight.

“There’s no strong infrastructure for safety in maritime,” said Jim Hall, who led the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001. “And there’s a lack of adequate oversight of what we have because the Coast Guard is essentially underfunded and doesn’t have the adequate manpower to do the many jobs it is given to do.”

Former U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, who chaired the House Transportation Committee and tried to improve regulations for decades before leaving office last year, said the system encourages ship owners to seek out “the least-regulated place in the world and the cheapest labor that you can exploit and make money.”

“The only protections we have are harbor inspections when ships come to the U.S. Otherwise, it’s a pretty much unregulated, Wild West industry,” DeFazio said.

But regulators and ship owners defend the safety of the industry because regardless of where a ship is based, it’s still supposed to meet the same standards that countries and ports enforce through periodic inspections. Records show that the the ship that struck the bridge in Baltimore — the Dali — was last inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard in New York on Sept. 13. According to data from the shipping information website Equasis, the “standard examination” didn’t identify any deficiencies. That was one of at least 27 inspections the ship underwent at ports around the world since it was built in 2015.

Given the huge amount of freight delivered around the world by some 90,000 ships of all sizes, relatively few accidents are reported, according to the International Chamber of Shipping coalition of ship owners. Insurer Allianz Global said only 38 vessels were lost in 2022, which is down significantly from the 1990s, when more than 200 ships were routinely lost each year.

“The maritime mode of transportation merchant shipping is an incredibly, incredibly safe mode of transportation, not just here in the United States, but worldwide,” U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Gautier said during a White House briefing Wednesday.

The Dali was flagged in Singapore, which has one of the best safety records of any country where ships are based. It’s not listed as one of the 42 countries identified as “flags of convenience” by the International Transport Workers Federation. Authorities in Singapore have said they will conduct their own investigation into the bridge collapse and help U.S. authorities get information they need from the ship’s management company, Synergy Marine Group.

Aside from a problem where the pressure gauges for the Dali’s fuel heaters were found to be illegible last June during an inspection in Chile and a 2016 collision in Belgium when it struck a berth used for mooring vessels in the port of Antwerp, the ship doesn’t appear to have had many issues, according to Equasis.

But another ship that was owned by the Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean, was banned from Australian ports for six months in 2021 after authorities there discovered it had been underpaying its workers and keeping them on board for months after their contracts expired. The 13 workers on the Western Callao were owed tens of thousands of dollars. Even though Grace Ocean owned both ships, a different company managed the Western Callao at the time.

University of Rhode Island Professor Douglas Hales said the Port of Baltimore has a strong set of regulations that appear to have been followed in this incident. That includes when the Dali’s crew issued a mayday call after the ship lost power just before striking one of the bridge’s columns. That warning allowed authorities to stop vehicles from driving onto the bridge.

“There doesn’t appear to be anything that the port administration could have done to prevent this,” Hales said. “This appears to be a failure of the navigation system after the vessel left the port. And so far, there hasn’t been anyone that said that there was an incident before the vessel left the port that people just ignored.”

The National Transportation Safety Board will determine if that’s the case as part of its investigation into the cause of the bridge collapse, but it will be more than a year before the agency issues its final report.

Eight construction workers who were filling potholes went into the water when the bridge collapsed, and two were quickly rescued. Searchers found the bodies of two workers on Wednesday, and the other four are presumed dead.

Roland Rexha, the secretary treasurer of the oldest maritime union in the country, the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, said it takes a major disaster like the fiery train derailment in eastern Ohio last year or the panel flying off of a Boeing 737 Max plane midflight in January before the public realizes there is a problem in the transportation industries.

He said that with maritime shipping being the oldest transportation industry, with its international regulations that rely on many different countries for enforcement, it may have the most problems.

“When I talk about those other transportation industries, the maritime industry is the worst offender of safety violations, of labor violations than any other industry,” Rexha said.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.


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US judge strikes down Biden highway climate rule for states

By David Shepardson and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge in Texas struck down a climate rule adopted by the Biden administration requiring states to measure and set declining targets for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles using the national highway system.

Texas had sued the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in December, arguing the agency lacked legal authority to enact the rule. A separate lawsuit was filed by 21 other states.

In a decision issued late on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, said he agreed with Texas in its case that “the rule was unauthorized.”

The DOT did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Thursday.

This final rule issued in December by the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires states to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and to establish declining carbon dioxide targets and report on progress toward achieving those targets.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in December the “new performance measure will provide states with a clear and consistent framework to track carbon pollution and the flexibility to set their own climate targets.”

The FHWA noted it did not mandate how low targets must be and instead gave state transportation departments flexibility to set targets that were appropriate as long as the targets aimed to reduce emissions over time.

The agency said it would assess whether states make significant progress toward achieving their targets but noted the rule did not impose penalties for those who missed their targets.

The FHWA said the rule was “essential” to the Biden administration target of net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, but the final regulation did not require states to set declining targets to align with the 2050 goal.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sharply criticized the effort, saying the state would work to stop “unlawful climate mandates.”

A separate group of 21 states sued in December in Kentucky also challenging the regulation. That lawsuit is still pending.

In 2018, the Trump administration repealed a rule issued under then-President Barack Obama requiring states to track greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on the nation’s highways.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jamie Freed)


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Sen. Bob Menendez decides not to delay May trial with appeal of judge’s ruling

NEW YORK (AP) — New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez will not appeal a judge’s ruling on Constitutional grounds that would have delayed his May trial, his lawyers said Thursday.

The Democrat’s lawyers notified the Manhattan federal judge who will preside over the May 6 trial in a letter that the senator’s decision was “principally motivated by his desire to proceed to trial and establish his innocence without further delay.”

He has pleaded not guilty to corruption charges filed after investigators discovered gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home.

Prosecutors say the gold and cash resulted from bribes that he and his wife received in exchange for favors Menendez carried out for three New Jersey businessmen.

Earlier this month, Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled that multiple warrants used to conduct 2022 searches of the Democrat’s email accounts and his home were properly sought and carried out.

The warrants had been contested by Menendez under provisions of the Constitution that would have allowed an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prior to a trial if the senator chose to go that route.

The senator’s lawyers had claimed the warrants were “riddled with material misrepresentation and omissions that deceived the authorizing magistrate judge.”

Stein said any omissions in the warrants were not intentional or material for searches of his home in June 2022 that resulted in the discovery of over $100,000 worth of gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash. Prosecutors said much of the gold and cash was hidden in closets, clothing and a safe.

Menendez, 70, said the cash found in the house was personal savings he had put away for emergencies. After his fall arrest, Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but said he would not resign from Congress.

Besides Menendez, his wife, Nadine, and two businessmen also have pleaded not guilty to charges. A third businessman facing charges has pled guilty in a cooperation deal with prosecutors that calls for him to testify at trial.

According to an indictment, Menendez and his wife accepted gold bars and cash from a real estate developer in return for the senator using his clout to get that businessman a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Menendez also was charged with helping another New Jersey business associate get a lucrative deal with the government of Egypt.


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House Republicans invite President Biden to testify at public hearing as impeachment inquiry stalls

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify before Congress in what appears to be a last-ditch effort to deliver on their stalled monthslong impeachment inquiry into the Biden family businesses.

Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Democratic president, inviting him to sit for a public hearing to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses. So far, the GOP-led inquiry has not produced hard evidence of wrongdoing while Biden was in public office.

“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the Committee, as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from Members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

While it is highly unlikely that Biden would agree to appear before lawmakers in such a setting, Comer pointed to previous examples of presidents’ testifying before Congress.

“As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974,” Comer continued.

The invitation comes as the monthslong inquiry into Biden is all but winding down as Republicans face the stark reality that it lacks the political appetite from within the conference to go forward with an actual impeachment. Nonetheless, leaders of the effort, including Comer are facing growing political pressure to deliver something after months of work investigating the Biden family and its web of international business transactions.

The White House has repeatedly called the inquiry baseless, telling Republicans to “move on” and focus on “real issues” Americans want addressed.

“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesman Ian Sams said in a social media post last week. “Call it a day, pal.”

The committee has asserted for the past year that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.

But despite dedicating countless resources, and interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden, Republicans have yet to produce any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.

Democrats have remained unified against the inquiry, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on Oversight, calling for his GOP counterpart to end the investigation absent any credible evidence.

“The GOP impeachment inquiry has been a circus,” Oversight Democrats wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. “Time to fold up the tent.”

Seeking testimony from the president could ultimately be the inquiry’s final act. Late last year, Republicans leading the investigation had privately discussed holding a vote on articles of impeachment in the new year, but growing criticism from within their party forced a shift in strategy. Now, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a move that will be largely symbolic and unlikely to be taken up by the department.

___ AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.


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