RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s Supreme Court upheld a state ban on ghost guns Thursday, overturning a lower court’s ruling that sided with a gun manufacturer’s argument that the 2021 law regulating firearm components with no serial numbers was too broad and unconstitutionally vague.

Separately the court handed a setback to anti-abortion activists in a fight over a voter initiative that no longer was headed to the November ballot anyway, a decision that abortion rights’ advocates say nonetheless helps establish important legal guidelines regarding overall reproductive health care.

The gun law had previously been struck down by Lyon County District Judge John Schlegelmilch, who ruled in favor of a legal challenge by Nevada-based gun manufacturer Polymer80 Inc. that said the statute was too vague.

Among other things, Polymer80 argued, terms such as “blank,” “casting,” and “machined body” were not defined, while “unfinished frame or receiver” failed to specify what a “finished” frame or receiver is.

In upholding the statute, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous decision that the language that lawmakers approved and then-Gov. Steve Sisolak signed was “readily” understandable through ordinary usage and common understanding.

“The statutes here only regulate conduct involving an object that is intended to ultimately become a firearm,” Chief Justice Lydia Stiglich wrote in the ruling. “They prohibit acts involving such not-yet-complete firearms that have not been imprinted with a serial number. ”

She noted in the ruling that Polymer80’s “own legal counsel had written letters to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that included the words ‘blank,’ ‘casting,’ and ‘machined’ in reference to its own products, showing that these terms are commonly understood.”

The fact that the terms were “generic and broad” does not make them vague, Stiglich added.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat who filed the appeal on the state’s behalf in December 2021, said the ruling “is a win for public safety and creates sensible, practical measures to protect Nevadans from violent crime.”

“The ban on ‘ghost guns’ is one of the most impactful pieces of legislation that we have seen come through Carson City,” he said in a statement.

Polymer80’s legal counsel did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

In the other decision Thursday, the high court rejected a Carson City judge’s ruling that the initiative’s description was misleading and violated requirements that it address a single subject by including abortion rights under the umbrella of reproductive health care.

“The medical procedures considered in the initiative petition concern reproduction. To assert that they could not all be addressed together because they are separate procedures is improper,” the Supreme Court said. “Each medical procedure relates to human reproduction and they are germane to each other and the initiative’s single subject of establishing a right to reproductive freedom.”

Abortion rights advocates hailed the decision even though they have already shifted their focus to a different and narrower initiative, which seeks to amend the state constitution and which they are are confident will make the November ballot after a judge ruled that it had met legal muster.

“Today’s ruling is an unequivocal recognition of what we’ve always know to be true: The right to reproductive freedom includes all aspects of a person’s reproductive health care,” Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, said in a statement.

A lawyer representing a group that was fighting the voter initiative, the Coalition for Parents and Children, said expressed disappointment.

“The Court has transformed the single-subject rule into the single-category rule, which will open the floodgates to broad and deceptive initiative proposals like the one at issue in this case,” Jason Guinasso said via email. “My clients will now focus on educating the voters on why this proposal is bad law and policy for Nevadans.”

Harmon said her group has gathered more than 160,000 signatures for the new ballot initiative — well above the 102,000 required by June 26 — and intends to submit them for validation that month. The measure would enshrine in the constitution current protections under a 1990 law that guarantee access to abortion through 24 weeks of pregnancy, or later to protect the health of the pregnant person.

Voters would need to approve it in both 2024 and 2026 to change the constitution.

MIAMI (AP) — The Biden administration sent about 50 Haitians back to their country on Thursday, authorities said, marking the first deportation flight in several months to the Caribbean nation struggling with surging gang violence.

The Homeland Security Department said in a statement that it “will continue to enforce U.S. laws and policy throughout the Florida Straits and and the Caribbean region, as well as at the southwest border. U.S. policy is to return noncitizens who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States.”

Authorities didn’t offer details of the flight beyond how many deported Haitians were aboard.

Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data, said a plane left Alexandria, Louisiana, a hub for deportation operations, and arrived in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, after a stop in Miami.

Marjorie Dorsaninvil, a U.S. citizen, said her Haitian fiancé, Gerson Joseph, called in tears from the Miami airport Thursday morning to say he was being deported on a flight to Cap-Haitien with other Haitians and some from other countries, including the Bahamas.

He promised to call when he arrived but hadn’t done so by early evening.

Joseph lived in the U.S more than 20 years and has a 7-year-old U.S. citizen daughter with another woman. He had a deportation order dating from 2005 after losing an asylum bid that his attorney, Philip Issa, said was a result of poor legal representation at the time. Though Joseph wasn’t deported previously, his lawyer was seeking to have that order overturned.

Joseph was convicted of theft and burglary, and ordered to pay restitution of $270, Issa said. He has been detained since last year.

Dorsaninvil said her fiancé has “nobody” in Haiti. “It is devastating for me. We were planning a wedding and now he is gone,” she said.

More than 33,000 people fled Haiti’s capital in a span of less than two weeks as gangs pillaged homes and attacked state institutions, according to a report last month from the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. The majority of those displaced traveled to Haiti’s southern region, which is generally peaceful compared with Port-au-Prince, which has an estimated population of 3 million and is largely paralyzed by gang violence.

Haiti’s National Police is understaffed and overwhelmed by gangs with powerful arsenals. Many hospitals ceased operations amid a shortage of medical supplies.

The U.S. operated one deportation flight a month to Haiti from December 2022 through last January, according to Witness at the Border. It said deportation flights were frequent after a camp of 16,000 largely Haitian migrants assembled on the riverbanks of Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021 but became rare as fewer Haitians crossed the border illegally from Mexico.

Haitians were arrested crossing the border from Mexico 286 times during the first three months of the year, less than 0.1% of the more than 400,000 arrests among all nationalities. More than 150,000 have entered the U.S. legally since January 2023 under presidential powers to grant entry for humanitarian reasons, and many others came legally using an online appointment system at land crossings with Mexico called CBP One.

Homeland Security said Thursday that it was “monitoring the situation” in Haiti.” The U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 65 Haitians who were stopped at sea off the Bahamas coast last month.

Haitian Bridge Alliance, a migrant advocacy group, urged a halt in deportation flights to Haiti, saying Thursday that the U.S. was “knowingly condemning the most vulnerable, who came to us in their time of need, to imminent danger.”

With Republicans seizing on the issue in an election year, the Biden administration has emphasized enforcement, most notably through a failed attempt at legislation, after record-high border arrests in December. Arrests for illegal crossings dropped by half in January and have held pretty steady since then after Mexico stepped up enforcement south of the U.S. border. Biden says he is considering executive action to halt asylum at the border during times when illegal crossings reach certain thresholds.

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Spagat reported from Berkeley, California.

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawaii attorney general’s office must pay attorney fees for using last year’s Maui wildfire tragedy to file a petition in “bad faith” that blamed a state court judge for a lack of water for firefighting, Hawaii’s Supreme Court ruled.

It seems the state “tried to leverage the most horrific event in state history to advance its interests,” the ruling issued Thursday said.

The day after the historic town of Lahaina burned in a deadly August fire, the state attorney general’s office, representing the Board of Land and Natural Resources, filed a petition alleging east Maui stream flow protections established by Judge Jeffrey Crabtree caused the water shortage.

“Naturally we paid attention,” said the unanimous opinion authored by Justice Todd Eddins. “The Department of the Attorney General initiated an original proceeding during an unthinkable human event. The petition advanced an idea that legal events impacted the nation’s most devastating wildfire.”

The Sierra Club of Hawaii complained the state exploited the tragedy to help a private company monopolize water, noting that east Maui reservoirs were of no use to west Maui, where a wildfire killed at least 101 people.

Maui County said they had more than enough water to fight the fires, the ruling noted.

A deputy attorney general refused to “walk back” the accusations, the ruling noted.

The state’s “refusal to withdraw the meritless assertions, the flimsiness of its request for extraordinary relief, and its use of the Maui tragedy, support a finding of frivolousness and bad faith,” the ruling said.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that it “disagrees with the court’s characterization and with its conclusions.” It later added it will comply with the order.

Sierra Club attorney David Kimo Frankel said he estimates disproving the state’s claims cost about $40,000.

The ruling comes the day after state Attorney General Anne Lopez released a report into the fires saying a broad communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without emergency alerts.

SOUTH MILWAUKEE (AP) — More human remains, including a torso, that are believed to belong to a missing woman have washed up on a beach along Lake Michigan, authorities said Thursday.

The torso and an arm believed to belong to 19-year-old Sade Robinson were found Thursday morning along a remote stretch of tree-lined beach in South Milwaukee about a quarter of a mile (402 meters) from an apartment complex, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said.

The remains were found by someone walking on the beach, the office said in a news release.

Maxwell Anderson, 33, of Milwaukee has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and arson in the case. A phone message seeking comment was left Thursday afternoon for one of his attorneys, Anthony Cotton.

Anderson, of Milwaukee, was arrested April 4, two days after a leg believed to belong to Robinson was found by a passer-by down a bluff at Warnimont Park along Lake Michigan in Cudahy. The leg had been severed just below the hip.

Robinson had been reported missing April 2 by a friend. An employee of the building where Robinson lived told police that Robinson was excited about a date she had planned for April 1, according to the complaint.

Surveillance video from a restaurant showed Robinson and Anderson sitting together at the bar on the evening of April 1. Her burned car was found the next morning.

Anderson is being held on a $5 million bond. A preliminary examination is scheduled for Monday.

Anderson’s father, Steven Anderson, released a statement Thursday that offered condolences to Robinson’s loved ones, saying, in part, that his family was “shocked and devastated by her senseless death.” The statement came out before the latest discovery of remains was made public.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.

The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties.”

The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.

His voice breaking at times, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination.”

“We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”

This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice” and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”

In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are “unresolved questions” on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exerting power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians.

Wood stressed that the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, is the only path for security for both sides and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.

“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza, but to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations,” he said.

Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, reiterated the commitment to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine “is a permanent strategic threat.”

“Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to make sure that the Palestinian people are exiled away from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.

He demanded of the council and diplomats crowded in the chamber: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected to the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will cause only destruction for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.”

Six months after the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the killing of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”

Israel’s military offensive in response has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced Thursday.

After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and particularly President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”

He called the Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and the U.S. wants to see take over Gaza where Hamas still has sway — “a terror supporting entity.”

The Israeli U.N. ambassador referred to the requirements for U.N. membership – accepting the obligations in the U.N. Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.

“How can you say seriously that the Palestinians are peace loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the Oct. 7 massacre. They call Hamas their brothers.”

Despite the Palestinian failure to meet the criteria for U.N. membership, Erdan said most council members supported it.

“It’s very sad because your vote will only embolden Palestinian rejectionism every more and make peace almost impossible,” he said.

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.”

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.

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – Maine lawmakers on Thursday sent a draft of gun safety measures to the governor to sign into law, fulfilling a promise to take swift action designed to prevent mass shootings such as a rampage last year that killed 18 people in the city of Lewiston.

Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat who sponsored some of the legislation, was expected to sign the bills.

Among the measures approved this week by legislators before ending their session was a bill establishing a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, an expansion of background checks to include private gun sales, and the prohibition of bump stocks -devices that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire more rapidly.

But legislators failed to pass a “red flag” law that advocates had vigorously supported. Such a measure would have made it easier for police and courts to remove guns from people considered mentally unwell or dangerous.

“After the devastating mass shooting in Lewiston last year, Mainers called for real progress on gun violence prevention and our legislators delivered,” said Kathleen McFadden, with the Maine chapter of gun safety group Moms Demand Action.

Earlier this year, an independent commission found law enforcement authorities had probable cause to place U.S. Army reservist Robert Card into protective custody and seize his guns under the state’s existing “yellow flag” gun law a month before he shot 18 people to death in Lewiston in October.

The Oct. 25 shooting spree, unleashed by Card at a bar and a bowling alley, also wounded 13 in the most lethal episode of gun violence in Maine’s history.

Card, assigned to an Army Reserve unit in the nearby city of Saco, was found dead two days later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a recycling plant where he once worked.

In the days that followed, it surfaced that his family had contacted the sheriff’s office five months earlier to report their concerns about his deteriorating mental health and that he had access to at least 10 guns.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Editing by Chris Reese)

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.