SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nearly $200 million in grant money will go to California cities and counties to move homeless people from encampments into housing, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday while also pledging increased oversight of efforts by local governments to reduce homelessness.

The Democratic governor said he will move 22 state personnel from a housing enforcement unit to help cities and counties deliver on projects to reduce homelessness — and to crack down if they do not. He also said local governments will have to plan to build new housing for homeless residents or face potential legal action from the attorney general’s office.

“I’m not interested in funding failure any longer,” he said at a virtual news conference. “Encampments, what’s happening on the streets, has to be a top priority. People have to see and feel the progress and the change. And if they’re not, or counties are turning their back … I’m not interested in continuing the status quo.”

A scathing state audit released last week found that despite allocating $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the past five years, California has done little to track whether all that spending actually improved the situation. Newsom said the cities and counties that receive the money have to produce more data.

An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, a number that has grown despite massive investment by the state. Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco who was elected governor in 2018, has made homelessness and housing twin priorities of his administration, including a novel plan to purchase and convert motels into housing for homeless people.

Under his watch, California has cracked down on local governments that refuse to plan for and build more housing as required by state law. Details were thin Thursday, but Newsom said a housing accountability unit within the California Department of Housing and Community Development will now tackle homelessness spending.

Newsom has repeatedly hammered a message of accountability, telling local officials to think bigger about ways to attack the crisis. In 2022, he paused $1 billion of state spending for local governments, saying their plans to reduce homelessness were “simply unacceptable.”

On Thursday, his office announced about $192 million in state grants to 17 cities and counties for targeted encampment clean-up efforts expected to provide services and housing for nearly 3,600 people. It’s the latest round of an estimated $750 million set aside to resolve encampments.

The city of Fresno, for example, will receive nearly $11 million to house 200 people, provide services for hundreds more and add up to 100 permanent housing beds. Wealthy Marin County, on the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, will receive $18 million, including $8 million to move 60 people, largely Latino farm workers and their families, to temporary RV housing.

Several mayors and other local leaders at the news conference said the data doesn’t always capture the very real successes they’ve had in coaxing people out of tents and into stable housing.

Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said state support has allowed the city to expand its mental health services, shelter outreach programs and housing units.

“At one time, we had over 650 people living on our embankments, and if it were not for these funds, we would not have had the success that we’ve had,” he said.

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — The man who blew the lid off decades of abuse allegations at New Hampshire’s youth detention center continued testifying at his civil trial Thursday, describing being treated for gonorrhea after being raped at age 15.

But the real turning point, he said, was the first of many assaults by a man he had grown to love as father figure.

In the seven years since David Meehan went to police, the state has set up a $100 million fund for former residents of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester and brought criminal charges against 11 former state workers, including four accused of abusing Meehan.

But facing more than 1,100 lawsuits from former residents, the state also argues it should not be held liable for the actions of what it calls “rogue” employees.

That unusual dynamic began playing out as Meehan’s lawsuit –- the first to be filed — went to trial last week. On the witness stand for a second day Thursday, Meehan acknowledged lying on intake paperwork about having sexual experience before arriving at the facility in 1995 at age 14.

“Do you ever really just need to feel tough in any way that you can?” he asked jurors. “It was just another form of protection for my own survival.”

In reality, his first sexual experience came when a youth center staffer violently raped him under the guise of performing a strip search, he said. He later was quarantined in the infirmary for gonorrhea, he said.

“You lost your virginity to Frank Davis?” asked attorney Rus Rilee, referring to a former staffer who has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges.

“I’m not going to accept that in my life anymore, so no,” Meehan said. “I was raped as a little boy by somebody who should not have been in a position to have been allowed to do that.”

Over the following months, Meehan said his assigned youth counselor, Jeffrey Buskey, began grooming him, giving him soda and snacks and arranging for him to play basketball with a local high school team.

“At that point, I have a father figure. I have a man in my life I felt a relationship with,” said Meehan, wiping away tears after his lawyer asked him if Buskey, who also has pleaded not guilty, treated him like a son.

“How I imagined I could be treated, yeah,” he said. “Better than my own dad.”

But that changed in the fall of 1997, when Buskey forced him to call his girlfriend and break up with her and then forced him to perform a sexual act, Meehan said.

“I am angry sitting here trying to talk about it and trying to control these emotions,” he said. “But that’s when it starts, OK? That’s when it starts.”

Within days, other staffers also began abusing him, said Meehan, whose lawsuit alleges he was raped hundreds of times over three years. He said Buskey told him he was “his,” but if others wanted something, he should go along.

“It went from being somebody I trusted, that I thought was not just there to help me, but somebody I thought cared for me, to hurt,” he said.

The youth center, which once housed upward of 100 children but now typically serves fewer than a dozen, is named for former Gov. John H. Sununu, father of current Gov. Chris Sununu. In recent years, lawmakers have approved closing the facility and replacing it with a much smaller building in a new location.

The trial ended early for the day after Meehan broke down describing an incident in which he said Buskey forced a girl to perform a sex act to “teach” Meehan what to do.

“This is the only the beginning, and I’m doing everything I can right now to try to hold myself together because I know where this is going. I don’t want to keep having to say it out loud,” said Meehan, adding that he often struggles to feel safe.

“I’m forced to try to hold myself together somehow and show as a man everything these people did to this little boy,” he said. “I’m constantly paying for what they did.”

A hack that caused a small Texas town’s water system to overflow in January has been linked to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group, the latest case of a U.S. public utility becoming a target of foreign cyberattacks.

The attack was one of three on small towns in the rural Texas Panhandle. Local officials said the public was not put in any danger and the attempts were reported to federal authorities.

“There were 37,000 attempts in four days to log into our firewall,” said Mike Cypert, city manager of Hale Center, which is home to about 2,000 residents. The attempted hack failed as the city “unplugged” the system and operated it manually, he added.

In Muleshoe, about 60 miles to the west and with a population of about 5,000, hackers caused the water system to overflow before it was shut down and taken over manually by officials, city manager Ramon Sanchez told CNN. He did not immediately respond to phone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

“The incident was quickly addressed and resolved,” Sanchez said in a statement, according to KAMC-TV. “The city’s water disinfectant system was not affected, and the public water system nor the public was in any danger.”

At least one of the attacks was linked this week by Mandiant, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group that it said could be working with or part of a Russian military hacking unit.

The group, calling itself CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn, claimed responsibility for January attacks on water facilities in the United States and Poland that got little attention at the time.

Cybersecurity researchers say CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn was among groups suspected of Russian government ties that engaged last year in low-complexity attacks against Ukraine and its allies, including denial-of-service data barrages that temporarily knock websites offline.

Sometimes such groups claim responsibility for attacks that were actually carried out by Kremlin military intelligence hackers, Microsoft reported in December.

Cypert, the Hale Center city manager, said he has turned information over to FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI declined to comment, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a branch of DHS, referred questions to the cities that were targeted.

In Lockney, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Hale Center and home to around 1,500 people, cyberattackers were thwarted before they could access that town’s water system, city manager Buster Poling said.

“It didn’t cause any problems except being a nuisance,” Poling said.

Last year CISA put out an advisory following November hacks on U.S. water facilities attributed to Iranian state groups who said they were targeting facilities using Israeli equipment.

Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger said in December that attacks by Iranian hackers — as well as a separate spate of ransomware attacks on the health care industry — should be seen as a call to action by utilities and industry to tighten cybersecurity.

In March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan and Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, sent a letter to the nation’s governors asking them to take steps to protect the water supply, including assessing cybersecurity and planning for a cyberattack.

“Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices,” Regan and Sullivan wrote.

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AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York police removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia University on Thursday and arrested more than 100 demonstrators, including the daughter of a prominent Minnesota congresswoman.

Several students involved in the protest said they also were suspended from Columbia and Barnard College, including Isra Hirsi, who is the daughter of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Omar had questioned Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, at a hearing Wednesday in Congress about the school’s targeting of pro-Palestinian protesters.

Police said 108 people, including Hirsi, were charged with trespassing at the private Ivy League institution. Two people were also charged with obstructing government administration.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said the city was asked in writing by university officials to remove the encampment.

“Students have a right to free speech, but do not have a right to violate university policies and disrupt learning on campus,” Adams said.

The students had been protesting on campus since early Wednesday, opposing Israeli military action in Gaza and demanding the school divest from companies they claim “profit from Israeli apartheid.”

Shafik issued a statement saying the school had warned protesters on Wednesday that they would be suspended if the encampment was not removed. School officials made the decision Thursday to call in police and clear out the demonstrators, she said.

“The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies,” she wrote.

Shafik also said the university tried through several channels “to engage with their concerns and offered to continue discussions if they agreed to disperse.”

The school said it was still identifying students involved in the protest Thursday and added more suspensions would be forthcoming.

Police moved in early Thursday afternoon, using zip ties to arrest protesters and escort them to waiting buses before removing the tents.

Police Commissioner Edward Caban said the arrests were peaceful and the protesters were cooperative.

Pro-Palestinian protesters reorganized on campus a short time later, chanting, “Shame”

“We demand full amnesty for all students disciplined for their involvement in the encampment or the movement for Palestinian liberation,” the protest coalition said in a statement.

Email and voice messages were left with Omar’s office on Thursday afternoon seeking comment.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two-term Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner is not running for reelection this year in his GOP-leaning eastern Kansas district so that he can spend more time with his four young children, he announced Thursday.

LaTurner is among nearly two dozen Republicans in the U.S. House who are not running again or seeking another office.

“The unrepeatable season of life we are in, where our kids are still young and at home, is something I want to be more present for,” LaTurner said.

LaTurner’s announcement leaves Republicans with no declared candidates in a district he likely would have had little trouble winning again. While the district includes Democratic strongholds in the state capital of Topeka and northern Kansas City, they’re offset by rural areas that heavily favored former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

LaTurner, 36, has put on hold what seemed a promising long-term political career, saying also that he wouldn’t seek any office in 2026. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is term-limited and Republicans had mentioned LaTurner as a possible candidate for the job that year.

He worked for U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins when he won a state Senate seat in 2012 at age 24, and he became Kansas’ youngest-ever state treasurer at 29 when then-GOP Gov. Sam Brownback appointed him to fill a vacancy.

LaTurner’s statement mentioned “the current dysfunction on Capitol Hill,” with the narrow Republican majority in the House and a threat from the hard-right to topple Speaker Mike Johnson, but he also said he’s optimistic about the nation’s future. Instead, he said, serving in Congress has taken a toll on him, his wife, Suzanne, and their children.

“I am hopeful that in another season of life, with new experiences and perspectives, I can contribute in some small way and advocate for the issues I care most about,” his statement Thursday said.

While Republicans have represented the 2nd District in 27 of the past 30 years, Democrats have waged aggressive campaigns since Jenkins decided not to seek reelection in 2018. One Democrat, former teacher Eli Woody IV, has filed to run in November.

In the 2020 primary, LaTurner handily defeated Republican Steve Watkins and won the November election by almost 15 percentage points. In 2022, LaTurner won his general election race by a slightly wider margin.

In June 2022, the congressman beefed up security at his home and Topeka office out of concern for his family’s safety after a man left a threatening voicemail after hours that said, “I will kill you.”

The man, Chase Neill, is now serving a sentence of nearly four years in prison after being convicted in federal court of one count of threating a U.S. official. LaTurner testified at the trial, and Neill, representing himself, cross-examined him personally.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate advanced legislation Thursday that would reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance tool as lawmakers and the Biden administration rushed to tamp down fresh concerns about the program violating Americans’ civil liberties.

The bipartisan legislation would reform and extend a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act known as Section 702, which U.S. officials say is vital to preventing terrorism, catching spies and disrupting cyberattacks. A bill renewing the program passed the House last week after a dramatic showdown on the floor over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data.

But the same concerns that nearly derailed the bill in the House are flaring again in the Senate, with both progressives and conservative lawmakers agitating for further changes. It’s a dynamic that could ultimately jeopardize the bill’s passage in the upper chamber, though supporters remain optimistic that the program will be reauthorized without much deal.

The Biden administration has spent the week on Capitol Hill providing classified briefings to senators on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security. Officials warn that some of the changes being proposed to the tool could handicap the FBI’s efforts to thwart threats to the U.S.

Opponents remain unfazed and have demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill.

“The administration is making the case that if there’s any changes, it’s going to jeopardize the program,” Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont said Thursday. “That’s asking a lot of the Senate to basically abdicate its responsibility.”

The legislation in its current form has the backing of not only the Biden administration but also the leaders of the national security committees in Congress, who have urged detractors to accept the mild reforms to the program. Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the changes being proposed by the various groups are “unnecessary” and would “destroy the purpose” of the program.

“If certain amendments like that were to pass, the bill would go back to the House and I just don’t know what posture the House is going to be in to be able to take up legislation because we’ve got so much going on,” Rubio said.

Though the spy program is technically set to expire Friday, the Biden administration has said it expects its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications.

Still, officials say that court approval shouldn’t be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse.

Overall skepticism of the government’s spy powers has grown dramatically in recent years, particularly on the right. Republicans clashed for months over what a legislative overhaul of the FISA surveillance program should look like, creating divisions that spilled onto the House floor last week as 19 Republicans broke with their party to prevent the bill from coming up for a vote.

In the end, House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to appease some critics of the reauthorization bill by shortening the extension of the program from five years to two years.

First authorized in 2008, the spy tool has been renewed several times since then as U.S. officials see it as crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage. It has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations.

But the administration’s efforts to secure reauthorization of the program have repeatedly encountered fierce, and bipartisan, pushback, with Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden who have long championed civil liberties aligning with Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump, who in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday stated incorrectly that Section 702 had been used to spy on his presidential campaign.

A specific area of concern for lawmakers is the FBI’s use of the vast intelligence repository to search for information about Americans and others in the U.S. Though the surveillance program only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners.

In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including about a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — The judge in Donald Trump’s hush money trial ordered the media on Thursday not to report on where potential jurors have worked and to be careful about revealing information about those who will sit in judgment of the former president.

Judge Juan Merchan acted after one juror was dismissed when she expressed concerns about being “outed” for her role in the case after details about her became publicly known.

The actions pointed to the difficulties involved in trying to maintain anonymity for jurors in a case that has sparked wide interest and heated opinions, while lawyers need to sift through as much information as possible in a public courtroom to determine who to choose.

Despite the setback, 12 jurors were seated by the end of Thursday for the historic trial over a $130,000 hush money payment shortly before the 2016 election to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her from making public her claims of a sexual meeting with Trump years earlier. Trump has denied the encounter.

The dismissed juror told Merchan she had friends, colleagues and family members contacting her to ask whether she was on the case. “I don’t believe at this point I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision-making in the courtroom,” she said.

Merchan directed reporters not to report it when potential jurors told the court their specific workplaces, past or present. That put journalists in the difficult position of not reporting something they heard in open court, and some media organizations were considering whether to protest having that onus placed on them.

Even if that specific information wasn’t released, there was some concern that enough information about potential jurors would get out that people might be able to identify them anyway.

As an example of what is getting out there, Politico on Thursday identified one potential juror as “a woman who lives in Manhattan and works as an asset manager.” She grew up in England and Hong Kong and lives with a self-employed boyfriend.

Another potential juror was identified as “an attorney for a large media company who lives in Gramercy Park.”

On Fox News Channel Wednesday night, host Jesse Watters did a segment with a jury consultant, revealing details about people who had been seated on the jury and questioning whether some were “stealth liberals” who would be out to convict Trump.

“This nurse scares me if I’m Trump,” he said. “She’s from the Upper East Side, master’s degree, not married, no kids, lives with her fiance and gets her news from The New York Times and CNN.”

Besides his order about employment history, Merchan said he was asking the media to “simply apply common sense and refrain from writing about anything that has to do, for example, with physical descriptions.”

He said “there was really no need” for the media to mention one widely-reported tidbit that a juror speaks with an Irish accent.

Anonymous juries have long existed, particularly in terrorism and mob-related cases or when there is a history of jury tampering. They have been ordered more frequently in the last two decades with the rising influence of social media and the anonymous hate speech that is sometimes associated with it. Usually courtroom artists are told they aren’t permitted to draw the face of any juror in their sketches; New York courts do not permit video coverage of trials.

During the Trump defamation trial in Manhattan federal court earlier this year, jurors had heightened protection of their identities by a security-conscious judge who routinely did not allow anyone in his courtroom to have a cellphone, even if it was shut off. Jurors were driven to and from the courthouse by the U.S. Marshals Service and were sequestered from the public during trial breaks.

When asked general questions about themselves during jury selection in that case, prospective jurors often gave vague answers that would have made it nearly impossible to determine much about them.

After the ruling in that case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the anonymous jury not to disclose the identities of any of the people they served with, and advised jurors not to disclose their service. So far, none have come forward publicly.

New York criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby said New York state law requires trial attorneys be provided the names of jurors, even when they are otherwise anonymous. However, he said, the right can be overridden by the need to protect jurors’ safety.

As for the media, he said the judge can’t control what is reported but he can severely restrict what reporters see and hear if necessary.

“There are actions the judge could take. Courts have extraordinary powers to protect jurors from tampering and intimidation. It is really where a court’s power is at its peak,” Kuby said.

He said the ability of lawyers at Trump’s trial to research the social media history of jurors was important.

“Both sides have interest in preventing sleeper jurors who have their own agenda from serving on the jury,” he said.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who is president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers, said the difficulty at the Trump trial is weeding out people with extreme viewpoints.

“Everyone in the entire country knows who Donald Trump is,” Rahmani said. “Some think he’s a criminal traitor and insurrectionist. Others think he’s a hero. You don’t have a lot of people in the middle.”

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Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.

DENVER (AP) — Artificial intelligence is helping decide which Americans get the job interview, the apartment, even medical care, but the first major proposals to reign in bias in AI decision making are facing headwinds from every direction.

Lawmakers working on these bills, in states including Colorado, Connecticut and Texas, came together Thursday to argue the case for their proposals as civil rights-oriented groups and the industry play tug-of-war with core components of the legislation.

“Every bill we run is going to end the world as we know it. That’s a common thread you hear when you run policies,” Colorado’s Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez said Thursday. “We’re here with a policy that’s not been done anywhere to the extent that we’ve done it, and it’s a glass ceiling we’re breaking trying to do good policy.”

Organizations including labor unions and consumer advocacy groups are pulling for more transparency from companies and greater legal recourse for citizens to sue over AI discrimination. The industry is offering tentative support but digging in its heels over those accountability measures.

The group of bipartisan lawmakers caught in the middle — including those from Alaska, Georgia and Virginia — has been working on AI legislation together in the face of federal inaction. On Thursday, they highlighted their work across states and stakeholders, emphasizing the need for AI legislation and reinforcing the importance for collaboration and compromise to avoid regulatory inconsistencies across state lines. They also argued the bills are a first step that can be built on going forward.

“It’s a new frontier and in a way, a bit of a wild, wild West,” Alaska’s Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes said at the news conference. “But it is a good reminder that legislation that passed, it’s not in stone, it can be tweaked over time.”

While over 400 AI-related bills are being debated this year in statehouses nationwide, most target one industry or just a piece of the technology — such as deepfakes used in elections or to make pornographic images.

The biggest bills this team of lawmakers has put forward offer a broad framework for oversight, particularly around one of the technology’s most perverse dilemmas: AI discrimination. Examples include an AI that failed to accurately assess Black medical patients and another that downgraded women’s resumes as it filtered job applications.

Still, up to 83% of employers use algorithms to help in hiring, according to estimates from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

If nothing is done, there will almost always be bias in these AI systems, explained Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Brown University computer and data science professor who’s teaching a class on mitigating bias in the design of these algorithms.

“You have to do something explicit to not be biased in the first place,” he said.

These proposals, mainly in Colorado and Connecticut, are complex, but the core thrust is that companies would be required to perform “impact assessments” for AI systems that play a large role in making decisions for those in the U.S. Those reports would include descriptions of how AI figures into a decision, the data collected and an analysis of the risks of discrimination, along with an explanation of the company’s safeguards.

Requiring greater access to information on the AI systems means more accountability and safety for the public. But companies worry it also raises the risk of lawsuits and the revelation of trade secrets.

David Edmonson, of TechNet, a bipartisan network of technology CEOs and senior executives that lobbies on AI bills, said in a statement that the organization works with lawmakers to “ensure any legislation addresses AI’s risk while allowing innovation to flourish.”

Under bills in Colorado and Connecticut, companies that use AI wouldn’t have to routinely submit impact assessments to the government. Instead, they would be required to disclose to the attorney general if they found discrimination — a government or independent organization wouldn’t be testing these AI systems for bias.

Labor unions and academics worry that over reliance on companies self-reporting imperils the public or government’s ability to catch AI discrimination before it’s done harm.

“It’s already hard when you have these huge companies with billions of dollars,” said Kjersten Forseth, who represents the Colorado’s AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions that opposes Colorado’s bill. “Essentially you are giving them an extra boot to push down on a worker or consumer.”

The California Chamber of Commerce opposes that state’s bill, concerned that impact assessments could be made public in litigation.

Another contentious component of the bills is who can file a lawsuit under the legislation, which the bills generally limit to state attorney generals and other public attorneys — not citizens.

After a provision in California’s bill that allowed citizens to sue was stripped out, Workday, a finance and HR software company, endorsed the proposal. Workday argues that civil actions from citizens would leave the decisions up to judges, many of whom are not tech experts, and could result in an inconsistent approach to regulation.

Sorelle Friedler, a professor who focuses on AI bias at Haverford College, pushes back.

“That’s generally how American society asserts our rights, is by suing,” said Friedler.

Connecticut’s Democratic state Sen. James Maroney said there’s been pushback in articles that claim he and Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Texas, have been “pedaling industry-written bills” despite all of the money being spent by the industry to lobby against the legislation.

Maroney pointed out one industry group, Consumer Technology Association, has taken out ads and built a website, urging lawmakers to defeat the legislation.

“I believe that we are on the right path. We’ve worked together with people from industry, from academia, from civil society,” he said.

“Everyone wants to feel safe, and we’re creating regulations that will allow for safe and trustworthy AI,” he added.

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Associated Press reporters Trân Nguyễn contributed from Sacramento, California, Becky Bohrer contributed from Juneau, Alaska, Susan Haigh contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.

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Bedayn 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.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — An attorney has been added to the special prosecution team that is pursuing an involuntary manslaughter charge against actor Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the Western movie “Rust,” court officials confirmed Thursday.

The district attorney for Santa Fe has appointed Erlinda Johnson as special prosecutor to the case, which is scheduled for trial in July. She was sworn in Tuesday.

Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to an involuntary manslaughter charge in the shooting of Halyna Hutchins during an October 2021 rehearsal at a movie-set ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe.

Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins during rehearsal when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.

Johnson’s experience as a criminal defense and personal injury attorney include representing former New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran, who resigned in 2015 amid revelations she used campaign funds to fuel a gambling addiction. Duran received a 30-day jail sentence after pleading guilty to embezzlement and money laundering charges.

Johnson previously worked as a federal prosecutor on drug enforcement and organized crime investigations after serving as assistant district attorney in the Albuquerque area.

Prosecutors are turning their full attention to Baldwin after a judge on Monday sentenced movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to the maximum of 18 months at a state penitentiary on an involuntary manslaughter conviction Hutchins’s death.

Prosecutors said Gutierrez-Reed unwittingly brought live ammunition onto the set of “Rust,” where it was expressly prohibited, and failed to follow basic gun safety protocols. She was convicted by a jury in March.

Defense attorneys for Baldwin are urging the judge to dismiss the indictment against him, accusing prosecutors of “unfairly stacking the deck” in grand jury proceedings and diverting attention away from exculpatory evidence and witnesses.

Special prosecutors deny those accusations and accuse Baldwin of “shameless” attempts to escape culpability, highlighting contradictions in his statements to law enforcement, to workplace safety regulators and in a televised interview.

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The man accused of starting a fire outside independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Vermont office earlier this month will remain detained pending further legal proceedings, a federal judge ordered Thursday.

Shant Michael Soghomonian was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of maliciously damaging or attempting to damage and destroy by fire a building used in interstate commerce, according to the indictment filed with the court. Soghomonian, 35, has not yet been arraigned.

Surveillance video shows the man throwing a liquid April 5 at the bottom of a door opening into Sanders’ third-floor office in Burlington and setting it on fire with a lighter, according to an affidavit filed by a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The motive remains unclear, and Sanders was not in the office at the time.

Seven employees working in the office were able to get out unharmed. The building’s interior suffered damage from the fire and water sprinklers.

Soghomonian, who was previously from Northridge, California, had been staying at a South Burlington hotel for nearly two months and was spotted outside Sanders’ office the day before and the day of the fire, according to the special agent’s report.

Prosecutors argued that Soghomonian is a danger to the community and a flight risk and should remain detained. A phone message was left with his public defender and was not immediately returned.