CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — As Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming opens for the busy summer season, wildlife advocates are leading a call for a boycott of the conservative ranching state over laws that give people wide leeway to kill gray wolves with little oversight.

The social media accounts of Wyoming’s tourism agency are being flooded with comments urging people to steer clear of the Cowboy State amid accusations that a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut and showed off the injured animal at a Sublette County bar before killing it.

While critics contend that Wyoming has enabled such animal cruelty, a leader of the state’s stock growers association said it’s an isolated incident and unrelated to the state’s wolf management laws. The laws that have been in place for more than a decade are designed to prevent the predators from proliferating out of the mountainous Yellowstone region and into other areas where ranchers run cattle and sheep.

“This was an abusive action. None of us condone it. It never should never have been done,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and a Sublette County rancher who has lost sheep to wolves. “It’s gotten a lot of media attention but it’s not exemplary of how we manage wolves to deal with livestock issues or anything.”

Wolves are federally protected as an endangered or threatened species in most of the U.S. but not the Northern Rockies. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow wolves to be hunted and trapped, after their numbers rebounded following their reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho almost 30 years ago. Before their reintroduction, wolves had been annihilated in the lower 48 states through government-sponsored poisoning, trapping and bounty hunting into the mid-1900s.

Today, Wyoming has the least restrictive policies for killing wolves. There are limits on hunting and trapping in the northwestern corner of the state and killing them is prohibited in Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park, where they are a major attraction for millions of tourists. But outside the Yellowstone region, in the 85% of the state known as the “predator zone,” they can be freely killed.

The wolf allegedly was run down, shown off and killed within the predator zone.

Wolves roam hundreds of miles and often kill cattle and sheep. Gray wolves attacked livestock hundreds of times in 2022 across 10 states including Wyoming, according to an Associated Press review of depredation data from state and federal agencies, the most recent data available. Other times livestock succumb to other predators, disease or exposure or simply go missing.

Losses to wolves can be devastating to individual ranchers, yet wolves’ industry-wide impact is negligible: The number of cattle killed or injured in documented cases equals 0.002% of herds in the affected states, according to a comparison of depredation data with state livestock inventories.

The predator zone resulted from negotiations between U.S. and Wyoming officials who traded away federal compensation for livestock killed by wolves in exchange for allowing free killing of wolves in that area.

Saharai Salazar is among out-of-staters changing their travel plans based on what allegedly happened Feb. 29 near Daniel, a western Wyoming town of about 150 people.

The Santa Rosa, California, dog trainer posted on the state’s tourism Instagram account that she would not get married in Wyoming next year as planned. The post was among hundreds of similar comments, many with a #boycottwyoming hashtag on social media in recent weeks.

“We have to change the legislation, rewrite the laws so we can offer more protection, so they can’t be interpreted in ways that will allow for such atrocities,” Salazar said in an interview.

Wyoming’s rules have long invited controversy but are unlikely to harm the overall population because most of the animals in the state live in the Yellowstone region, said wolf expert and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf biologist Ed Bangs.

Bangs said the incident of the wolf brought into the bar was a “sideshow” to the species’ successful recovery. The predator zone is made up largely of open landscapes that generally don’t support wolves, he said.

Wyoming’s rules, including the predator zone, have withstood multiple court challenges that have put wolves on and off the endangered species list since they were first delisted in 2008. Wolves haven’t been on the list in the region since a 2017 court order and their current Wyoming population of more than 300 is similar to their number in 2010.

Though state law doesn’t specify how wolves in the predator zone can be killed and doesn’t specifically prohibit running them over, the Humane Society and others argue the state’s animal cruelty law applies in this case.

Widely circulating photos show the man posing with the wolf with its mouth bound. Video clips show the same animal lying on a floor, alive but barely moving.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office said it has been investigating the anonymous reports of the man’s actions but has struggled to get witnesses to come forward.

“We’ve had the tip line open for two weeks hoping for witnesses or something helpful,” sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Travis Bingham said. “I know there’s some hesitation for people to come forward.”

The only punishment for the man so far is having to pay a $250 ticket for illegal possession of wildlife.

The suspect has not commented publicly and did not answer calls to his business. Calls to the bar went unanswered.

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Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A real estate company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to pay $250 million to settle lawsuits nationwide claiming that longstanding practices by real estate brokerages forced U.S. homeowners to pay artificially inflated broker commissions when they sold their homes.

HomeServices of America said Friday that the proposed settlement would shield its 51 brands, nearly 70,000 real estate agents and over 300 franchisees from similar litigation.

The real estate company had been a major holdout after several other big brokerage operators, including Keller Williams Realty, Re/Max, Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, agreed to settle. Last month, the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million.

“While we have always been confident in the legality and ethics of our business practices, the decision to settle was driven by a desire to eliminate the uncertainty brought by the protracted appellate and litigation process,” the company said in a statement.

HomeServices said its proposed settlement payout represents a current after-tax accounting charge of about $140 million, though it will have four years to pay the full amount. The real estate company also noted that its parent company is not part of the settlement.

Buffett said in February in his annual letter to shareholders that Berkshire had $167.6 billion cash on hand at the end of last year. That makes Berkshire, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, an attractive target for litigation, but the company largely lets its subsidiaries run themselves and doesn’t directly intervene in litigation involving its many companies, which include Geico insurance, BNSF railroad and See’s Candy.

Including HomeServices’ proposed payout, the real estate industry has now agreed to pay more than $943 million to make the lawsuits go away.

“This is another significant settlement for American home sellers who have been saddled with paying billions in unnecessary commission costs,” Benjamin Brown, managing partner at one of the law firms that represented plaintiffs in a case filed in Illinois, said in a statement.

The lawsuits’ central claim is that the country’s biggest real estate brokerages and the NAR violated antitrust laws by engaging in business practices that required home sellers to pay the fees for the broker representing the buyer.

Attorneys representing home sellers in multiple states argued that homeowners who listed a property for sale on real estate industry databases were required to include a compensation offer for an agent representing a buyer. And that not including such “cooperative compensation” offers might lead a buyer’s agent to steer their client away from any seller’s listing that didn’t include such an offer.

In October, a federal jury in Missouri ordered that HomeServices, the National Association of Realtors and several other large real estate brokerages pay nearly $1.8 billion in damages. The defendants were facing potentially having to pay more than $5 billion, if treble damages were awarded.

The verdict in that case, which was filed in 2019 on behalf of 500,000 home sellers in Missouri and elsewhere, led to multiple similar lawsuits being filed against the real estate brokerage industry.

The major brokerages that have reached proposed settlements in these cases have also agreed to change their business practices to ensure homebuyers and sellers can more easily understand how brokers and agents are compensated for their services, and that brokers and agents who represent homebuyers must disclose right away any offer of compensation by the broker representing a seller.

HomeServices said it also agreed to make “substantially similar new or amended business practice changes that have been included in the other corporate defendant settlement agreements,” said Chris Kelly, a HomeServices spokesperson.

NAR also agreed to make several policy changes, including prohibiting brokers who list a home for sale on any of the databases affiliated with the NAR from including offers of compensation for a buyer’s representative. The new rules, which are set to go into effect in July, represent a major change to the way real estate agents have operated going back to the 1990s.

While many housing market watchers say it’s too soon to tell how the policy changes will affect home sales, they could lead to home sellers paying lower commissions for their broker’s services. Buyers, in turn, may have to shoulder more upfront costs when they hire an agent to represent them.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A Baltimore publishing company has filed a class action claim arguing the owner and manager of the massive container ship that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month should have to pay damages to businesses adversely impacted by the collapse.

The claim, filed on behalf of American Publishing LLC, largely echoes an earlier filing by attorneys for Baltimore’s mayor and city council that called for the ship’s owner and manager to be held fully liable for the deadly disaster.

Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. owns the Dali, the vessel that veered off course and slammed into the bridge. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., also based in Singapore, is the ship’s manager.

The companies filed a petition soon after the March 26 collapse asking a court to cap their liability under a pre-Civil War provision of an 1851 maritime law — a routine but important procedure for such cases. A federal court in Maryland will decide who’s responsible and how much they owe in what could become one of the most expensive maritime disasters in history.

In their claim filed Thursday, attorneys for American Publishing accused the companies of negligence, arguing they should have realized the Dali was unfit for its voyage and staffed the ship with a competent crew, among other issues.

“Since the disastrous allision, commercial activities in and around Baltimore have virtually come to a standstill,” they wrote. “It could take several years for the area to recover fully.”

American Publishing saw its revenues plummet this month as local businesses halted advertising deals and other publishing requests following the collapse, the claim says.

A spokesperson for Synergy and Grace Ocean said Friday that it would be inappropriate to comment on the pending litigation at this time.

The ship was headed to Sri Lanka when it lost power shortly after leaving Baltimore and struck one of the bridge’s support columns, collapsing the span and sending six members of a roadwork crew plunging to their deaths.

FBI agents boarded the stalled ship last week amid a criminal investigation. A separate federal probe by the National Transportation Safety Board will include an inquiry into whether the ship experienced power issues before starting its voyage, officials have said. That investigation will focus generally on the Dali’s electrical system.

In their petition, Grace Ocean and Synergy sought to cap their liability at roughly $43.6 million. The petition estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.

Baltimore leaders and business owners argue the ship’s owner and manager should be held responsible for their role in the disaster, which halted most maritime traffic through the Port of Baltimore and disrupted an important east coast trucking route.

Lawyers representing victims of the collapse and their families also have pledged to hold the companies accountable.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A proposed ban in Kansas on gender-affirming care for minors also would bar state employees from promoting it — or even children’s social transitioning.

Teachers and social workers who support LGBTQ+ rights worry about they will be disciplined or fired for helping kids who are exploring their gender identities.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the proposed ban, and top Republicans anticipated Friday that the GOP-controlled Legislature will attempt to override her action before lawmakers adjourn for the year Tuesday. Their bill appeared to have the two-thirds majorities needed in both chambers to override a veto when it passed last month, but that could depend on all Republicans being present and none of them switching.

Supporters of the bill said the provision now being singled out for criticism is designed to ensure that the banned care — puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgery — isn’t still promoted with tax dollars or other state resources.

But compared to the restrictions or bans on gender-affirming care in two dozen other states, the Kansas proposal appears more sweeping because of its broad language against the promotion of social transitioning that applies to state employees “whose official duties include the care of children,” LGBTQ+ rights advocates said.

“That is not something that we have seen before,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal. “It really allows us to look behind the curtain at what is the true motivation behind this bill, which has nothing to do with protecting the health and safety of youth and everything to do with attacking transgender people and erasing transgender identity.”

About 300,000 youths ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender in the U.S., according to estimates by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ research center at UCLA Law. It estimates that in Kansas, about 2,100 youths in that age group identify as transgender.

Other provisions of the proposed ban would prevent gender-affirming care from occurring on state property and prohibit groups receiving state funds from advocating medications or surgery to treat a child whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth.

Brittany Jones, an attorney and policy director for the conservative Kansas Family Voice, said courts have consistently ruled that a state “has the right to direct what is being done with its funds.”

“This does not block any child from socially transitioning, but it cannot be at the behest of a government entity,” she said in an email.

In statehouses across the U.S., Republicans have promoted restrictions on gender-affirming care by portraying it as experimental and the potential source of long-term medical problems.

Backers of the Kansas proposal have repeatedly pointed to the National Health Service of England’s recent decision to stop prescribing puberty blockers as a routine treatment for minors seeking gender transitions.

“Obviously, we believe in our heart of hearts that they shouldn’t be steering students toward that sort of thing, that they should be looking at all alternative counseling and things of that nature,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican.

Such bans are opposed by major American medical groups, which have firmly endorsed gender-affirming care for minors. At least 200 Kansas medical and mental health professionals signed a letter to lawmakers opposing the proposed ban.

Young transgender Kansas residents have repeatedly said their transitions improved their lives dramatically. Parents of transgender kids have described gender-affirming care as vital to combatting severe depression and suicidal tendencies.

But as troubling as they and others find the loss of access for kids to gender-affirming care, they have focused in recent weeks on the provision against promoting social transitioning as especially scary to them.

“I was taught to uplift students and make them know that I will support them 100 percent, no matter who they are,” Riley Long, a transgender special education teacher, said during a news conference in the Kansas City area. “This bill makes it seem like it is only OK to listen to my cisgender students, and that my transgender students are automatically incorrect.”

Under the bill, social transitioning includes “the changing of an individual’s preferred pronouns or manner of dress.” The measure doesn’t spell out what constitutes promoting it.

The Kansas State Department of Education says public school teachers and administrators aren’t legally considered state employees. However, educators who support transgender rights aren’t confident that they wouldn’t fall under the ban — or that opponents of transgender rights wouldn’t attack their jobs regardless.

Isaac Johnson, who is completing a social work degree and just finished an internship in Topeka’s public schools, said problems could arise from interactions like one he had with a girl who told him, “I don’t really feel like a girl. I only feel like a boy.”

“All I said back in response is, ‘Well, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a girl?’ ” Johnson, who is transgender, told reporters during a Statehouse news conference Thursday. “My fear is that, per the law, because I didn’t come out explicitly and say, ‘No, you’re a girl. You’ll always be a girl,’ that will be seen as promoting social transition.”

Transgender Kansas residents and parents of transgender kids also believe they have even more cause to be nervous after Republican lawmakers last year overrode Kelly’s veto of a measure that ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender people’s gender identities. The law’s most visible consequence has been to keep transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities — something that wasn’t the focus of last year’s debate.

Aaron Roberts, the pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in the Kansas City area, said support from social workers was crucial to his transgender daughter before she joined his family out of foster care. She is now a college student.

“All the support that she got from those wonderful social workers who went above and beyond to help her navigate her gender identity — this bill wipes them out,” he said. “Gone.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CEOs of leading U.S. technology companies are joining a new artificial intelligence safety board to advise the federal government on how to protect the nation’s critical services from “AI-related disruptions.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the new board Friday which includes key corporate leaders in AI development such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

AI holds potential for improving government services but “we recognize the tremendously debilitating impact its errant use can have,” Mayorkas told reporters Friday.

Also on the 22-member board are the CEOs of Adobe, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division. Not included were social media companies such as Meta Platforms and X.

Corporate executives dominate, but it also includes civil rights advocates, AI scientist Fei-Fei Li who leads Stanford University’s AI institute as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, two public officials who are “already ahead of the curve” in thinking about harnessing AI’s capabilities and mitigating risks, Mayorkas said.

He said the board will help the Department of Homeland Security stay ahead of evolving threats.

NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. (AP) — A long-running sandstorm at the Jersey Shore could soon come to an end as New Jersey will carry out an emergency beach replenishment project at one of the state’s most badly eroded beaches.

North Wildwood and the state have been fighting in court for years over measures the town has taken on its own to try to hold off the encroaching seas while waiting — in vain — for the same sort of replenishment projects that virtually the entire rest of the Jersey Shore has received.

It could still be another two years before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection begin pumping sand onto North Wildwood’s critically eroded shores. In January, parts of the dunes reached only to the ankles of Mayor Patrick Rosenello.

But the mayor released a joint statement from the city and Gov. Phil Murphy late Thursday night saying both sides have agreed to an emergency project to pump sand ashore in the interim, to give North Wildwood protection from storm surges and flooding.

“The erosion in North Wildwood is shocking,” Murphy said Friday. “We could not let that stand. This is something that has been out there as an unresolved matter far too long.”

Rosenello — a Republican who put up signs last summer at the entrance to North Wildwood beaches with Murphy’s photo on them, telling residents the Democratic governor was the one to blame for there being so little sand on the beach — on Friday credited Murphy’s leadership in resolving the impasse. He also cited advocacy from elected officials from both parties, including former Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Michael Testa in helping to broker a deal.

“This is a great thing for North Wildwood and a good thing for the entire Jersey Shore,” Rosenello said.

The work will be carried out by the state Department of Transportation, but cost estimates were not available Friday. Rosenello said he expects the city will be required to contribute toward the cost.

The agreement could end more than a decade of legal and political wrangling over erosion in North Wildwood, a popular vacation spot for Philadelphians.

New Jersey has fined the town $12 million for unauthorized beach repairs that it says could worsen erosion, while the city is suing to recoup the $30 million it has spent trucking sand to the site for over a decade in the absence of a replenishment program.

Rosenello said he hopes the agreement could lead to both sides dismissing their voluminous legal actions against each other. But he added that more work needs to be done before that can happen. Murphy would not comment on the possibility of ending the litigation.

North Wildwood has asked the state for emergency permission to build a steel bulkhead along the most heavily eroded section of its beachfront — something previously done in two other spots.

But the state Department of Environmental Protection has tended to oppose bulkheads as a long-term solution, noting that the hard structures often encourage sand scouring against them that can accelerate and worsen erosion.

The agency prefers the sort of beach replenishment projects carried out for decades by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where massive amounts of sand are pumped from offshore onto eroded beaches, widening them and creating sand dunes to protect the property behind them.

Virtually the entire 127-mile (204-kilometer) New Jersey coastline has received such projects. But in North Wildwood, legal approvals and property easements from private landowners have thus far prevented one from happening.

That is the type of project that will get underway in the next few weeks, albeit a temporary one. It could be completed by July 4, Rosenello said.

“Hopefully by the July 4 holiday, North Wildwood will have big, healthy beaches, and lots of happy beachgoers,” he said.

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

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A New Hampshire man accused of participating in a plot in which a caller issued bomb threats last year to Harvard University and demanded a large amount of bitcoin was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation.

The threats caused the evacuation of Harvard’s Science Center Plaza and surrounding academic buildings, and the controlled detonation of what was later determined to be a hoax device on April 13, 2023, according to prosecutors.

William Giordani, 55, was arrested last year on charges including making an extortionate bomb threat. That charge was dropped, and he pleaded guilty to one count of concealing a federal felony, effectively knowing about a felony and not reporting it, according to his lawyer.

Giordani had faced a sentence of up to three years and a fine of up to $250,000. Prosecutors instead recommended a sentence of up to three years’ probation.

Prosecutors said at the time that they agreed to accept Giordani’s guilty plea in part because they believed he had been pulled into the plot after he responded to a Craigslist ad. They also said they believed his response to the ad was driven in part by a drug habit and that he has made efforts to remain in a recovery program.

The case stems from an episode last April when Harvard University’s police department received a warning from a caller electronically disguising their voice saying bombs had been placed on campus.

The caller demanded an unspecified amount in Bitcoin to prevent the remote detonation of the bombs, prosecutors said. Only one hoax device was discovered.

Investigators said Giordani responded to the Craigslist ad looking for someone to purchase fireworks in New Hampshire and pick up some other items in Massachusetts — including wire, a metal locking safe and a bag — and deliver the items to his son at Harvard.

After Giordani collected the items, the individual said his son was unable to meet him and he should leave the bag with the items on a bench in a science plaza area at the school. Police later destroyed those items.

Investigators said that at some point Giordani began to harbor suspicions that the items could be used to construct a bomb, pointing to deleted text messages where he acknowledged it could be bomb material. In another text to his girlfriend, Giordani said, “I got scammed,” police said.

Giordani also took steps to hide from police after they made attempts to reach him in order not to reveal his role in delivering the bag, investigators said.

There were no injuries.

CHICAGO (AP) — The singer R. Kelly was correctly sentenced to 20 years in prison on child sex convictions in Chicago, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

Jurors in 2022 convicted the Grammy Award-winning R&B singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, on three charges of producing child porn and three charges of enticement of minors for sex.

In his appeal, Kelly argued that Illinois’ former and shorter statute of limitations on child sex prosecutions should have applied to his Chicago case rather than current law permitting charges while an accuser is still alive.

He also argued that charges involving one accuser should have been tried separately from the charges tied to three other accusers due to video evidence that became a focal point of the Chicago trial.

State prosecutors have said the video showed Kelly abusing a girl. The accuser identified only as Jane testified for the first time that she was 14 when the video was taken.

The three-judge panel from the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Friday’s ruling noted that jurors acquitted Kelly on 7 of the 13 counts against him “even after viewing those abhorrent tapes.”

The appeals court also rejected Kelly’s argument that he should not have been prosecuted since the allegations occurred while Illinois law required prosecution of child sex crime charges within ten years. The panel labeled it an attempt by Kelly to elude the charges entirely after “employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet.”

In a written statement, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said they plan to seek U.S. Supreme Court review of the decision and “pursue all of his appellate remedies until we free R. Kelly.”

“We are disappointed in the ruling, but our fight is far from over,” she said.

Prosecutors in Kelly’s hometown of Chicago had sought an even tougher sentence, asking for 25 years. They also wanted a judge to not let that time begin until after Kelly completed a 30-year sentence imposed in 2022 in New York for federal racketeering and sex trafficking convictions.

Judge Harry Leinenweber rejected that ask, ordering that Kelly serve the 20 years from the Chicago case simultaneously with the New York sentence.

Kelly has separately appealed the New York sentence.

In arguments last month before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, attorney Jennifer Bonjean asked the panel to find that prosecutors improperly used a racketeering statute written to shut down organized crime to go after the singer.

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Democratic Gov. Janet Mills on Friday signed into law a suite of gun safety legislation approved by lawmakers after the deadliest mass shooting in state history, expanding background checks for private sales of weapons, bolstering the state’s “yellow flag” law, criminalizing the transfer of guns to prohibited people and expanding mental health crisis care.

The governor told lawmakers during her State of the State address that doing nothing was not an option after an Army reservist with an assault rifle killed 18 people and injured 13 others in Lewiston on Oct. 25.

The bills drew opposition from Republicans who accused Democrats, who control both legislative chambers, of using the tragedy to advance proposals, some of which had been previously defeated. Mills said Friday the proposal would improve public safety while respecting the state’s long traditions of gun ownership and outdoor heritage.

“This law represents important, meaningful progress, without trampling on anybody’s rights, and it will better protect public safety by implementing reasonable reforms and by significantly expanding mental health resources,” Mills said.

The new law signed by the governor doesn’t require universal background checks but it does require background checks for people who advertise a gun for sale on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or elsewhere. Sellers would be required to conduct a background check utilizing commercially licensed businesses like L.L. Bean or Cabela’s.

The legislation includes changes to the state’s yellow flag law that allows police to assess an individual, take the person into protective custody for a mental health evaluation and hold a hearing before a judge to remove guns from someone in a psychiatric crisis.

The new law allows police to go directly to a judge for a warrant, streamlining the process. It eliminates a hurdle when a deputy was stymied by the Lewiston gunman’s refusal to answer the door for a required face-to-face meeting that’s necessary under current law. Law enforcement members have said in testimony about the shootings that the state’s existing yellow flag law was cumbersome and hard to apply.

Supporters of expanded gun control laws, who have advocated for the passage of the new standards for months, described the approval of the rules as a victory. Twenty-two states now have a background check law, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Advocates also said they’re hopeful other new gun measures approved by lawmakers in Maine will soon become law.

“Today is a victory for the gun violence prevention movement and a demonstration of what Mainers can accomplish to keep our communities safe when we work together,” said Vicki Farsaci, a volunteer with the Maine chapter of Moms Demand Action.

The bill signed by the governor also strengthens legal standards for prosecution and penalties to deter other people from selling weapons to prohibited buyers, making it a felony crime. The governor’s office said in a statement that the new approach “will mean that transfers of firearms to family members or trusted friends, as is common in Maine, will remain unchanged, but it will incentivize checks against the (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) for private, unadvertised sales to unknown individuals through the threat of increased risk of prosecution and prison time.”

Mills’ approvals of the gun proposals came a day after a special commission she convened interviewed fellow reservists of Card who raised warnings about Card’s increasingly erratic behavior. Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the aftermath of the mass shooting after an extensive search.

One of the fellow reservists interviewed on Thursday, Sean Hodgson, told superiors in September: “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.”

Mills also proposed the creation of a new violence and injury prevention program requiring the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to serve as a clearinghouse for data from law enforcement, hospitals, schools and other sources to inform public policy decisions.

Her proposal for a network of crisis centers, meanwhile, would build upon the first such facility already in operation in Portland and a second one that’s being created in central Maine.