The sudden change of plans cast fresh doubts on the proceedings, the historic first impeachment of a Cabinet secretary in roughly 150 years. House Republicans impeached Mayorkas over the Biden administration’s handling of security and immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senators were expected to swiftly dismiss the House-passed charges against Mayorkas. Democrats, who hold majority control of the chamber, argue the charges do not rise to the constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Johnson was planning to have the House impeachment managers transmit the articles against Mayorkas on Wednesday evening. Under procedural rules, that would require senators to convene the next day as jurors for a trial to decide whether to convict or acquit the secretary of charges.

Thursday’s trial was expected to be over quickly after some procedural votes to table or dismiss the charges.

But Republicans intent on holding Mayorkas accountable for border security are pushing for a full trial. Republican senators spoke during a private GOP lunch Tuesday about using a delay to build the case.

“To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week,” said Johnson’s spokesman, Taylor Haulsee. “There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial.”

WASHINGTON — More than 200 chemical plants nationwide will be required to reduce toxic emissions that are likely to cause cancer under a new rule issued Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule advances President Joe Biden’s commitment to environmental justice by delivering critical health protections for communities burdened by industrial pollution from ethylene oxide, chloroprene and other dangerous chemicals, officials said.

Areas that will benefit from the new rule include majority-Black neighborhoods outside New Orleans that EPA Administrator Michael Regan visited as part of his 2021 Journey to Justice tour. The rule will significantly reduce emissions of chloroprene and other harmful pollutants at the Denka Performance Elastomer facility in LaPlace, Louisiana, the largest source of chloroprene emissions in the country, Regan said.

“Every community in this country deserves to breathe clean air. That’s why I took the Journey to Justice tour to communities like St. John the Baptist Parish, where residents have borne the brunt of toxic air for far too long,” Regan said. “We promised to listen to folks that are suffering from pollution and act to protect them. Today we deliver on that promise with strong final standards to slash pollution, reduce cancer risk and ensure cleaner air for nearby communities.”

When combined with a rule issued last month cracking down on ethylene oxide emissions from commercial sterilizers used to clean medical equipment, the new rule will reduce ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions by nearly 80%, officials said.

The rule will apply to 218 facilities spread across the United States — more than half in Texas or Louisiana. Plants also are located in two dozen other states, including Ohio and other Midwest states, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and throughout the South, the EPA said. The action updates several regulations on chemical plant emissions that have not been tightened in nearly two decades.

Democratic Rep. Troy Carter, whose Louisiana district includes the Denka plant, called the new rule “a monumental step” to safeguard public health and the environment.

“Communities deserve to be safe. I’ve said this all along,” Carter told reporters at a briefing Monday. “It must begin with proper regulation. It must begin with listening to the people who are impacted in the neighborhoods, who undoubtedly have suffered the cost of being in close proximity of chemical plants — but not just chemical plants, chemical plants that don’t follow the rules.”

Carter said it was “critically important that measures like this are demonstrated to keep the confidence of the American people.”

The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, said it was reviewing the rule but criticized EPA’s use of what it called “a deeply flawed” method to determine the toxicity of ethylene oxide.

“We also remain concerned with the recent onslaught of chemical regulations being put forth by this administration,” the group said in a statement. Without a different approach, “the availability of critical chemistries will dwindle” in the U.S., harming the country’s supply chain, the ACC said.

The new rule will slash more than 6,200 tons (5,624 metric tonnes) of toxic air pollutants annually and implement fenceline monitoring, the EPA said, addressing health risks in surrounding communities and promoting environmental justice in Louisiana and other states.

The Justice Department sued Denka last year, saying it had been releasing unsafe concentrations of chloroprene near homes and schools. Federal regulators had determined in 2016 that chloroprene emissions from the Denka plant were contributing to the highest cancer risk of any place in the United States.

Denka, a Japanese company that bought the former DuPont rubber-making plant in 2015, said it “vehemently opposes” the EPA’s latest action.

“EPA’s rulemaking is yet another attempt to drive a policy agenda that is unsupported by the law or the science,” Denka said in a statement, adding that the agency has alleged its facility “represents a danger to its community, despite the facility’s compliance with its federal and state air permitting requirements.”

The Denka plant, which makes synthetic rubber, has been at the center of protests over pollution in majority-Black communities and EPA efforts to curb chloroprene emissions, particularly in the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, an 85-mile (137-kilometer) industrial region known informally as Cancer Alley. Denka said it already has invested more than $35 million to reduce chloroprene emissions.

The EPA, under pressure from local activists, agreed to open a civil rights investigation of the plant to determine if state officials were putting Black residents at increased cancer risk. The agency initially found evidence of discrimination, but in June it dropped its investigation without releasing any official findings and without any commitments from the state to change its practices.

Regan said the rule issued Tuesday was separate from the civil rights investigation. He called the rule “very ambitious,” adding that officials took care to ensure “that we protect all of these communities, not just those in Cancer Alley, but communities in Texas and Puerto Rico and other areas that are threatened by these hazardous air toxic pollutants.”

While it focuses on toxic emissions, “by its very nature, this rule is providing protection to environmental justice communities — Black and brown communities, low-income communities — that have suffered for far too long,” Regan said.

Patrice Simms, vice president of the environmental law firm Earthjustice, called the rule “a victory in our pursuit for environmental justice.”

Fenceline monitoring for six toxic air pollutants — ethylene oxide, chloroprene, vinyl chloride, benzene, 1,3-butadiene and ethylene dichloride — will be crucial to ensure accountability and transparency, Simms and other advocates said. The new rule marks just the second time that EPA has mandated fenceline monitoring in air toxics standards under the Clean Air Act.

“For years, we’ve watched our families and neighbors suffer from disease, like cancer, due to underregulated emissions,” said Robert Taylor, founder of Concerned Citizens of St. John, a local advocacy group.

After the EPA closed its civil rights complaint, “we felt little hope that any government could protect us from industry,” Taylor said. The new rule is “renewing our hope,” he said.

Associated Press writer Michael Phillis in St. Louis contributed to this story.

NEW YORK — A New York appeals court judge Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay his hush money criminal trial, taking just 12 minutes to swat aside an argument that it should be postponed while the former president fights a gag order.

Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling was the second time in as many days that the state’s mid-level appeals court refused to postpone the trial, set to begin next week, further narrowing any plausible path to the delay that Trump’s legal team has repeatedly sought.

Trump’s lawyers wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the hush-money case.

They argue the gag order is an unconstitutional curb on the presumptive Republican nominee’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges.

“The First Amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said at an emergency hearing Tuesday in the state’s mid-level appeals court.

Bove argued that Trump shouldn’t be muzzled while critics, including his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and porn actor Stormy Daniels, routinely assail him. Both are key prosecution witnesses.

Bove also argued that the order unconstitutional restricts Trump’s critiques of the case — and, with them, his ability to speak to the voting public and its right to hear from him.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, countered that there is a “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial.”

“What we are talking about here is the defendant’s uncontested history of making inflammatory, denigrating” comments about people involved in the case, Wu said. “This is not political debate. These are insults.”

Wu said prosecutors already have had trouble getting some witnesses to testify “because they know what their names in the press may lead to.” Wu didn’t identify the witnesses but noted they included people who would testify about record-keeping practices.

The gag order still affords Trump “free rein to talk about a host of issues,” noting that he can comment on Judge Juan M. Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg and “raise political arguments as he sees fit.” Trump has repeatedly lambasted Bragg, a Democrat, and the judge.

Barring further court action, jury selection will begin on April 15.

Merchan issued the gag order last month at prosecutors’ urging, then expanded it last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made what the court system said were false claims about her.

Tuesday was the second of back-to-back days for Trump’s lawyers in the appeals court. Associate Justice Lizbeth González on Monday rejected their request to delay the trial while Trump seeks to move his case out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.

Trump’s lawyers framed their gag order appeal as a lawsuit against Merchan. In New York, judges can be sued to challenge some decisions under a state law known as Article 78.

Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his recent New York civil fraud trial in an unsuccessful last-minute bid to delay that case last fall and again when that judge imposed a gag order barring trial participants from commenting publicly on court staffers. That order came after Trump smeared the judge’s principal law clerk in a social media post.

A sole appeals judge lifted the civil trial gag order, but an appellate panel restored it two weeks later.

Trump’s hush-money criminal case involves allegations that he falsified his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump has made numerous attempts to get the trial postponed.

Last week, as Merchan swatted away various requests to delay the trial, Trump renewed his request for the judge to step aside from the case. The judge rejected a similar request last August.

Trump’s lawyers allege the judge is biased against him and has a conflict of interest because of his daughter Loren’s work as president of Authentic Campaigns, a firm with clients that have included President Joe Biden and other Democrats. Trump’s attorneys complained the expanded gag order was shielding the Merchans “from legitimate public criticism.”

Merchan had long resisted imposing a gag order. At Trump’s arraignment in April 2023, he admonished Trump not to make statements that could incite violence or jeopardize safety, but stopped short of muzzling him. At a subsequent hearing, Merchan noted Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate and said he was “bending over backwards” to ensure Trump has every opportunity “to speak in furtherance of his candidacy.”

Trump reacted on social media that the gag order was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional” and said Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals.

Trump suggested without evidence that Merchan’s decision-making was influenced by his daughter’s professional interests and made a claim, later repudiated by court officials, that Loren Merchan had posted a social media photo showing Trump behind bars.

After the outburst, Merchan expanded the gag order April 1 to prohibit Trump from making statements about the judge’s family or Bragg’s family.

“They can talk about me but I can’t talk about them???” Trump reacted on his Truth Social platform.

In recent years, millions of people across the United States have moved from Democratic cities to Republican suburbs, complicating the politics of swing states in a pivotal election year, according to a Stateline analysis.

Republican suburban counties in four swing states — Georgia in the South and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Midwest — gained the most new arrivals; heavily Democratic cities lost the most. In Western swing states Arizona and Nevada, meanwhile, the biggest people magnets have been slightly Democratic cities that are expected to be hotly contested.

Those shifts reflect a nationwide trend: In Republican counties, as defined by the 2020 presidential vote, 3.7 million more people have moved in than have left since 2020, while Democratic counties had a net loss of 3.7 million, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates and county presidential election data kept by the University of Michigan.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates released in March included people who moved within the country between mid-2020 and mid-2023, a time of pandemic dislocations, lockdowns in big cities, and the rise of remote work that fed a search for affordable housing in less crowded and more scenic settings. Those settings, as it turns out, also tend to be more conservative. The census numbers do not include births or immigration.

Whether the newcomers will vote Democratic this year, or whether they were disenchanted with Democratic policies in their former homes and will vote Republican, remains to be seen. The changes might affect local and congressional races the most, but even a few movers crossing state lines could sway presidential vote totals in swing states.

“We are looking at an election to be determined by a shift of such small numbers of people in each of these states that a few thousand votes in any one state can impact the electoral vote there,” said David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in Minnesota who has edited and helped write several books on presidential swing states.

The counties gaining the most movers in Georgia (Forsyth County), Michigan (Ottawa County), Pennsylvania (Cumberland County) and Wisconsin (Waukesha County) were solidly for then-incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020. But in the three Midwest counties, Joe Biden had the best showing for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Politics in a changing county

In some of the growing counties, there has been tension as new residents bring their own expectations.

“People keep moving here because they like it, then they try to make it like the place they left,” said David Avant, who runs a business networking website in Forsyth County, Georgia. His county gained about 17,000 new arrivals between mid-2020 and mid-2023, according to the Stateline analysis.

Politics might not yet be changing in some of the red counties surveyed. In Michigan, Doug Zylstra became the first Democrat elected in almost 50 years to the 11-member Ottawa County Board of Commissioners in 2018 and was reelected in 2022, but the commission took a more conservative turn in 2023 when a new majority took office.

“The people of Ottawa County chose to replace the previous Republican-majority board, which promoted Democratic ideology and practices,” said Sylvia Rhodea, one of the new Republicans on the commission.

In a January 2023 meeting, Rhodea criticized the previous board’s diversity, equity and inclusion program as “based on the premise that county resident characteristics of being 90% white and largely conservative were problematic for businesses” and as one that “seeks to replace the American value of equality with the Marxist value of equity.”

“There is not a racial divide in Ottawa County, there is an ideological divide. The welcoming of people will continue, but the ideology that tries to divide us has to end,” Rhodea said in the meeting.

The Rev. James Ellis III, who is Black and who moved to Ottawa County in April 2023, lives in the area that elected the county’s sole Democrat. He said the “racial divide” remark “feels inaccurate to me, not to mention unhelpful.” And while he said he has no party affiliation, he thinks “people on every side have a hard time listening to each other.”

Ellis grew up in Maryland and has lived in cities including Washington, D.C., and British Columbia, Canada. He attended a local seminary in Ottawa County.

“Ottawa County is not a utopia. It is an area full of wonderful citizens, lakeshore living, lots of churches and winter sports, and yet simultaneously it has power dynamics and inequities like any place that need addressing,” said Ellis, of Maplewood Reformed Church. The county’s population is about 83% white with small but growing Asian, Black and Hispanic populations.

‘They vote for the same thing’

In Wisconsin, affluent and suburban Waukesha County has gained about 5,200 movers, while urban Milwaukee County has lost 37,000. Still, that’s not likely to change the politics of either county soon, said Steve Styza, a Republican who won an open seat on the Waukesha County Board of Supervisors in Tuesday’s election.

“Democrats are definitely trying to make as big of a push as they can to turn the most conservative counties in our state blue or purple and try to gain some kind of foothold because it is strategically important,” Styza said before the election. “If I was on the other team, I’d be trying to do the same thing.”

Waukesha County voted almost 60% for Trump in 2020, though the roughly 38.8% vote for Biden was the highest share for a Democrat since 1964. The county’s 2022 vote for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was slightly higher at 39.4%. Milwaukee County voted 69% for Biden in 2020 and 71% for Evers in 2022.

Like Avant in Georgia, Styza said that Democratic newcomers sometimes pose a threat to the suburban lifestyle that drew them there in the first place.

“They say, ‘Well, I gotta get out of there because of what’s going on,’ and then they vote for the same thing in a different place and then wonder why things turn out poorly,” Styza said.

In the Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada, the politics are similar, but the largest cities are still growing fast. Arizona’s Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, voted Democratic in 2020 for the first time since 1948, when Harry Truman carried the county.

In Nevada, Clark County, the home of Las Vegas, has voted Democratic for president since 1992, but the Republican vote has been growing since 2008, reaching 44% for Trump in 2020. Some of the new Republican strength could be transplants from California’s conservative inland region east of Los Angeles, said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“In contrast, Reno, which has been voting more Democratic in recent cycles, is attracting more liberal Californians from Sacramento and the Bay Area,” Damore said. “Statewide, the vote share that the Democrats lost in Las Vegas, they gained in Reno.”

Some conservative scholars argue that residential moves from blue to red areas show a political preference or at least an attraction to the results of conservative policies.

“Every day, Americans appear to have a clear preference about the sort of state government they want. Far from flocking to states that have imposed mandates and lockdowns, they have freely chosen to move to states that focus on securing the mandates of liberty,” Jeffrey Anderson, president of the conservative nonprofit American Main Street Initiative, wrote in an analysis of state-by-state moving statistics published in City Journal in January.

Other demographers see the movement of people as a search for housing and jobs that doesn’t take politics into account.

“Domestic migration [moving] across state and metro areas is not strongly affected by politics but by labor market and housing conditions,” said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution. He added that movers from blue to red states “could make their destination states less red — Arizona and Nevada are good examples.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake.

The case examined whether the state is still subject to a law that predates Arizona’s statehood. The 1864 law provides no exceptions for rape or incest, but allows abortions if a mother’s life is in danger. The state’s high court ruling reviewed a 2022 decision by the state Court of Appeals that said doctors couldn’t be charged for performing the procedure in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

An older court decision blocked enforcing the 1864 law shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, then state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge in Tucson to lift the block on enforcing the 1864 law. Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, had urged the state’s high court to side with the Court of Appeals and hold the 1864 law in abeyance. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending a nationwide right to abortion, most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions and most Democrat-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access.

Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. Two states ban the procedure once cardiac activity can be detected, which is about six weeks into pregnancy and often before women realize they’re pregnant.

Nearly every ban has been challenged with a lawsuit. Courts have blocked enforcing some restrictions, including bans throughout pregnancy in Utah and Wyoming.

A proposal pending before the Arizona Legislature that would repeal the 1864 law hasn’t received a committee hearing this year. “Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” Mayes said Tuesday.

The justices said the state can start enforcing the law in 14 days. Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who signed the state’s current law restricting abortion after 15 weeks, posted on X saying Tuesday’s ruling was not the outcome he would have wanted.

“I signed the 15-week law as governor because it is thoughtful policy, and an approach to this very sensitive issue that Arizonans can actually agree on,” he said. President Joe Biden called the 1864 Arizona law cruel.

“Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest,” he said in a statement. “Vice President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose. We will continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

SACRAMENTO — California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over a five-year period but didn’t consistently track the outcomes or effectiveness of its programs, according to state audit released Tuesday.

The report attempts to assess how effective the state and local cities have been spending billions of dollars to address the ongoing homelessness crisis in California.

An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, which amounts to roughly 30% of all of the homeless people in the U.S. Despite the roughly $24 billion spent on homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, the problem didn’t improve in many cities.

Among other things, the report found that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is responsible for coordinating agencies and allocating resources for homelessness programs, stopped tracking spending on programs and their outcomes in 2021 despite the continuous funding from the state. It also failed to develop a collect and evaluate outcome data of these programs due to the lack of a consistent method.

With makeshift tents lining streets and disrupting businesses in communities across the state, homelessness has become one of the most frustrating issues in California.

The report notes that some data regarding the number of program participants and bed inventory in the state system might not be accurate or reliable.

The council, which lawmakers created to help the state deal with its homelessness problem, also has only reported on homelessness spending once since its creation in 2017, according to the report.

Without reliable and recent data on its spending, “the state will continue to lack complete and timely information about the ongoing costs and associated outcomes of its homelessness programs,” the audit contends.

California funds more than 30 programs to tackle homelessness. The audit assesses five initiatives and finds only two of them — the efforts to turn hotel and motel rooms into housing and housing-related support program — are “likely cost-effective.” The remaining programs, which received collectively $9.4 billion since 2020, did not have enough data to be fully assessed, the report says.

However, a recent Bay Area News Group review of the hotel initiative, dubbed Homekey, found some of the program’s sites struggled with habitability and drug problems amid limited state oversight, and that hundreds of people ended up back on the street after spending time at local facilities throughout the five-county region.

The state auditor also reviewed homelessness spending in two major cities, San Jose and San Diego, and found both failed to effectively track revenues and spending due to the lack of spending plans.

Staff writer Ethan Varian contributed to this report. 

WASHINGTON — Hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is escalating her criticism of House Speaker Mike Johnson, blistering his leadership in a lengthy letter to colleagues and renewing threats of a snap vote that could remove him from office.

As lawmakers returned to work Tuesday from a two-week spring recess, the fresh onslaught from the Georgia congresswoman dragged the still-new speaker back into the Republican chaos that has defined GOP House control and threatens to grind work to a halt. Johnson may very well be unable to execute the basics of his job.

“Today, I sent a letter to my colleagues explaining exactly why I filed a motion to vacate against Speaker Johnson,” Greene said on social media about the procedural tool that could force the quick vote.

Greene in stark terms warned Johnson not to reach across the aisle to Democrats for votes he would need to pass pending legislation that hard-right Republicans oppose, particularly aid to Ukraine. That aid package as well as other agenda items are in grave doubt.

“I will not tolerate this type of Republican ‘leadership,’” wrote Greene, a top ally of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, in the five-page letter first reported by The New York Times.

The standoff threatens to mire the House in another standstill, saddling the Republican majority with a do-nothing label after months of turmoil that has sent some seasoned lawmakers heading for the exits.

It comes during what is typically a springtime legislative push in Congress to notch a few priorities before lawmakers turn their attention toward the November election campaigns.

For Johnson, who took the helm just six months ago after the House ousted Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s post, it is political payback for his efforts to keep government running by compromising with Democrats on must-past legislation to fund federal operations and prevent a shutdown.

Partnership with Democrats is about the only way Johnson can pass any bills in the face of a thin majority and staunch resistance from his right flank. He can lose barely more than a single Republican from his ranks on most votes.

Greene, who filed the motion to vacate the speaker before lawmakers left for spring break in March, has stopped short of saying she would call it up for the vote and her next steps are uncertain.

Other Republicans, even some of the eight who voted to oust McCarthy, the California Republican who has since retired from Congress, have cooled on Greene’s effort, trying to prevent another spectacle. McCarthy’s ouster left the House essentially shuttered for almost a month last fall as Republicans argued over a new leader.

And Democrats led by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York have signaled they may lend their votes to Johnson, a courtesy they did not extend to McCarthy, which could save the Louisiana Republican’s job in a bipartisan effort to keep the House open and functioning.

But Greene, during a rousing town hall late Monday in her home district in Georgia and in the scathing letter delivered Tuesday as lawmakers returned to work, left clear the threat that hangs over Johnson if he seeks any partnership with Democrats.

In the letter, she outlined the promises she said Johnson made to Republicans during the fight to become speaker, and listed ways she said he had broken them — for example, by passing the spending bills needed to fund the government with existing policies many Republicans oppose, or by failing to include legislation with Republican proposals for securing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This has been a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority,” she wrote.

PHOENIX (AP) — As ranchera music filled the Phoenix recording studio at Radio Campesina, a station personality spoke in Spanish into the microphone.

“Friends of Campesina, in these elections, truth and unity are more important than ever,” said morning show host Tony Arias. “Don’t let yourself be trapped by disinformation.”

The audio was recorded as a promo for Radio Campesina’s new campaign aiming to empower Latino voters ahead of the 2024 elections. That effort includes discussing election-related misinformation narratives and fact-checking conspiracy theories on air.

“We are at the front lines of fighting misinformation in our communities,” said María Barquín, program director of Chavez Radio Group, the nonprofit that runs Radio Campesina, a network of Spanish-language stations in Arizona, California and Nevada. “There’s a lot at stake in 2024 for our communities. And so we need to amp up these efforts now more than ever.”

Latinos have grown at the second-fastest rate, behind Asian Americans, of any major racial and ethnic group in the U.S. since the last presidential election, according to a Pew Research Center analysis, and are projected to account for 14.7%, or 36.2 million, of all eligible voters in November, a new high. They are a growing share of the electorate in several presidential and congressional battleground states, including Arizona, California and Nevada, and are being heavily courted by Republicans and Democrats.

Democratic President Joe Biden has credited Latino voters as a key reason he defeated Republican Donald Trump in 2020 and is urging them to help him do it again in November. Given the high stakes of a presidential election year, experts expect a surge of misinformation, especially through audio and video, targeting Spanish-speaking voters.

“Latinos have immense voting power and can make a decisive difference in elections, yet they are an under-messaged, under-prioritized audience,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, a national nonprofit encouraging Latino civic participation. “Our vote has an impact. These bad actors know this, and one way to influence the Latino vote is to misinform.”

In addition to radio, much of the news and information Latinos consume is audio-based through podcasts or on social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. Content moderation efforts in Spanish are limited on these platforms, which are seeing a rising number of right-wing influencers peddling election falsehoods and QAnon conspiracy theories.

The types of misinformation overlap with falsehoods readily found in other conservative media and many corners of the internet — conspiracy theories about mail voting, dead people casting ballots, rigged voting machines and threats at polling sites.

Other narratives are more closely tailored to Latino communities, including false information about immigration, inflation and abortion rights, often exploiting the traumas and fears of specific communities. For example, Spanish speakers who have immigrated from countries with recent histories of authoritarianism, socialism, high inflation and election fraud may be more vulnerable to misinformation about those topics.

Misinformation on the airwaves also is particularly difficult to track and combat compared with more traditional, text-based misinformation, said Daiquiri Ryan Mercado, strategic legal adviser and policy counsel for the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which runs the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition. While misinformation researchers can more easily code programs to categorize and track text-based misinformation, audio often requires manual listening. Radio stations that air only in certain areas at certain times also can be difficult to track.

“When we have such limited representation, Spanish speakers feel like they can connect to these people, and they become trusted messengers,” Mercado said. “But some people may take advantage of that trust.”

Mercado and others said that’s why trusted messengers, such as Radio Campesina, are so important. The station was founded by Mexican American labor and civil rights leader César Chavez and has built a loyal listening base over decades. At any given moment, as many as 750,000 people are listening to the Chavez Radio Network on the air and online, Barquín said.

“They will come and listen to us because of the music, but our main focus is to empower and educate through information,” she said. “The music is just a tactic to bring them in.”

Radio Campesina’s on-air talent and musical guests often discuss misinformation on air, answering listeners’ questions about voting, teaching them about spotting misinformation and doing tutorials on election processes such as how to submit mail-in ballots. The station also has hosted rodeos and music events to register new voters and talk about misinformation.

They allow listeners to call or text questions on WhatsApp, a social media platform especially popular with immigrant communities but where much of the misinformation they see festers. In March, the station partnered with Mi Familia Vota, a Latino advocacy group, for an on-air show and voter phone bank event to answer voter questions.

“We know that there are many people who are unmotivated because sometimes we come from countries where, when it comes to elections, we don’t trust the vote,” said Carolina Rodriguez-Greer, Arizona director of Mi Familia Vota, before she shared information on the show about how voters can track their ballots.

The organization began working with Spanish media outlets to dispel misinformation after seeing candidates such as former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake spread election lies in 2022, Rodriguez-Greer said. Lake is now running for the U.S. Senate with Trump’s endorsement.

“One way to combat this misinformation is to fill the airways with good information,” said Angelica Razo, national deputy director of campaigns and programs for Mi Familia Vota.

In Tempe, Brian Garcia tunes into Radio Campesina on drives to work. When he was growing up, the station played as his dad cooked dinner and his family gathered around the table. It was a staple for his family, he said, and he’s excited about its efforts to tackle election misinformation.

“There aren’t many organizations or folks that go onto Spanish language media to combat misinformation and disinformation,” he said. “And I think serving as a resource and a trusted source within the Latino community that has already built those relationships, that trust will go a long way.”

A variety of other community and media groups also are prioritizing the seemingly never-ending fight against misinformation.

Maritza Félix often fact-checked misinformation for her mother, whom she calls the “Queen of WhatsApp.” This led to Félix doing the same for family and friends in a WhatsApp group that grew into the Spanish news nonprofit Conecta Arizona.

It now runs a radio show and newsletter that debunks false claims about election processes, health, immigration and border politics. Conecta Arizona also combats misinformation about the upcoming Mexican presidential election that Félix said has been seeping over the border.

Jeronimo Cortina, associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, tracks broad misinformation narratives aimed at Spanish-speaking communities across the country but also localized content targeting the state’s rapidly growing Latino electorate. That includes misinformation about candidates’ clean energy policies taking away jobs in Texas’ oil and gas industries and about migrants flooding over the border.

“You won’t see the same content targeting Latinos in Texas compared to Latinos in Iowa,” he said.

This has led to a wider universe of groups tackling misinformation aimed at Latinos. NALEO Educational Fund’s Defiende La Verdad campaign monitors misinformation and and trains community leaders to spot it. In Florida, the We Are Más podcast combats Spanish-language misinformation nationally and locally, said its founder Evelyn Pérez-Verdía. Jolt Action, a Texas Latino advocacy group, registers new voters and helps them make sense of misinformation.

The Spanish-language fact-checking group Factchequeado is building partnerships with dozens of media outlets across the country to provide training and free Spanish fact-checking content.

“Disinformation is at the same time a global phenomenon and a hyperlocal phenomenon,” said Factchequeado co-founder Laura Zommer. “So we have to address it with local and national groups uniting together.”

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NEW YORK — A New York appeals court judge on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s bid to delay his April 15 hush money criminal trial while he mounts a last-minute fight to move the case out of Manhattan, foiling the former president’s latest attempt to put off the historic trial.

Justice Lizbeth González of the state’s mid-level appeals court ruled after an emergency hearing Monday where Trump’s lawyers asked that she postpone the trial indefinitely while they seek a change of venue.

They contended the presumptive Republican nominee faces “real potential prejudice” in heavily Democratic Manhattan and said the jury pool has been polluted by news coverage of Trump’s other recent cases, including his $454 million civil fraud judgment and the $83.3 million he’s been ordered to pay for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. He is appealing both verdicts.

RELATED: Special counsel urges Supreme Court to reject Trump immunity claim

“Jury selection cannot proceed in a fair manner,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued, citing the defense’s polling and a review of media coverage.

Trump’s hush money trial is the first of his four criminal indictments slated to go to trial and would be the first criminal trial ever of a former president.

In a separate appellate matter, Trump’s lawyers are challenging a gag order barring him from making comments about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case. The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, recently expanded the gag order after Trump lashed out at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant, on social media. The appeals court will hear that matter Tuesday.

Trump, who lived in Manhattan for decades and rose to fame as a real estate developer shaping its iconic skyline, has suggested the trial should be moved to Staten Island, the only New York City borough he won in 2016 and 2020.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, noted that Merchan, had already rejected Trump’s requests to move or delay the trial as untimely.

“The question in this case is not whether a random poll of New Yorkers from whatever neighborhood are able to be impartial, it’s about whether a trial court is able to select a jury of 12 impartial jurors,” Wu said.

RELATED: Former Trump officials are among the most vocal opponents of returning him to the White House

He blamed Trump for stoking pretrial publicity with “countless media appearances talking about the facts of this case, the witnesses, and so on.”

As the appeals court fight was playing out, Merchan released his plan Monday for conducting jury selection, including what jurors will and won’t be asked about their views on Trump.

In a letter to both sides, Merchan declared that choosing jurors isn’t about whether they like or don’t like anyone in the case but whether prospective jurors can assure they will “set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”

Paperwork relating to Trump’s appeals was placed under seal and not publicly available.

Trump had pledged to appeal after Merchan ruled last month that the trial would begin April 15. His lawyers had pleaded to delay the trial at least until summer to give them more time to review late-arriving evidence from a prior federal investigation into the matter. Merchan, who had already moved the trial from its original March 25 start date, said no further delays were warranted.

Trump’s lawyers filed their appeals Monday on two separate court dockets. One was styled as a lawsuit against Merchan, a legal mechanism allowing them to challenge his rulings.

In New York, judges can be sued over some judicial decisions under a state law known as Article 78. Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his civil fraud case in an unsuccessful last-minute bid to delay that case last fall.

In the hush-money criminal case, he is accused of falsifying his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

As Trump’s lawyers stressed Monday that he was facing an unprecedented level of damaging publicity in Manhattan, they also referenced a decision issued by the state’s appellate court more than 25 years ago.

In that case, the court agreed to move the trial of four New York City police officers charged with killing Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean student, in the Bronx. Citing the “public clamor” in the city, the court agreed to move the trial to Albany, where the officers were ultimately acquitted.

Trump’s move to the appeals court Monday is the latest escalation in his battles with Merchan.

Last week, Trump renewed his request for the judge to step aside from the case, citing Merchan’s daughter’s work as the head of a firm whose clients have included his rival President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats.

The former president alleges the judge is biased against him and has a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work. The judge rejected a similar request last August.

If the hush-money trial were to be moved out of Manhattan, it’s unlikely Merchan would go with it. In past cases, like the Diallo matter, a new judge was picked from the county where the trial ended up being held.

Trump has also made numerous other attempts to get the trial postponed, echoing a strategy he’s deployed in his other criminal cases. “We want delays,” Trump proclaimed to TV cameras outside a February pretrial hearing in his hush money case.

Merchan last week rejected his request to delay the trial until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases.

Trump also filed an eve-of-trial lawsuit against the judge in his New York civil fraud case, accusing the jurist of repeatedly abusing his authority. Among other issues, Trump’s lawyers in that case complained that Judge Arthur Engoron had refused their request to delay the trial. Their suit was filed about three weeks before the trial was slated to begin.

A state appeals court rejected Trump’s claims, and the trial started as scheduled Oct. 2.

Engoron, who decided that case without a jury, ruled that Trump, his company and key executives defrauded bankers and insurers by overstating his wealth in documents used to get loans and coverage. Trump denied any wrongdoing and is appealing the finding and staggering penalty.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A crusading Brazilian Supreme Court justice has included Elon Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news, and has opened a separate investigation into the U.S. business executive for alleged obstruction.

In his decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that Musk on Saturday began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court’s actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court’s orders to block certain accounts.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who took over Twitter in late 2022, accused de Moraes of suppressing free speech and violating Brazil’s constitution, and noted on X that users could seek to bypass any shutdown of the social media platform by using VPNs, or virtual private networks.

Musk will be investigated for alleged intentional criminal instrumentalization of X as part of an investigation into a network of people known as digital militias who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, according to the text of the decision. The new investigation will look into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement.

“The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian justice, incitement of crime, the public threat of disobedience of court orders and future lack of cooperation from the platform are facts that disrespect the sovereignty of Brazil,” de Moraes wrote Sunday.

X’s press office did not reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press, and Musk hadn’t publicly commented as of Monday morning, apart from brief posts on X.

Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution. In the digital militias investigation, lawmakers from former President Jair Bolsonaro’s circle have been imprisoned and his supporters’ homes raided. Bolsonaro himself became a target of the investigation in 2021.

The justice in March 2022 ordered the shutdown of messaging app Telegram nationwide on the grounds that the platform repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities, including a police request to block profiles and provide information linked to blogger Allan dos Santos, an ally of Bolsonaro’s accused of spreading falsehoods. Dos Santos’ account is one of those blocked on X in Brazil. Less than 48 hours after issuing his order in 2022, de Moraes said Telegram had complied and permitted it to resume oeprations.

De Moraes’ defenders have said his decisions, although extraordinary, are legally sound and necessary to purge social media of fake news as well as extinguish threats to Brazilian democracy — notoriously underscored by the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in Brazil’s capital that resembled the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.

“Judicial decisions can be subject to appeal, but never to deliberate non-compliance,” Luís Roberto Barroso, the Supreme Court’s chief justice, said in a statement Monday.

On Saturday, Musk — a self-declared free speech absolutist — said on X that the platform would lift all restrictions on blocked accounts and predicted that the move was likely to dry up revenue in Brazil and force the company to shutter its local office.

“But principles matter more than profit,” he wrote.

Brazil is an important market for social media companies. About 40 million Brazilians, or about 18% of the population, access X at least once per month, according to the market research group Emarketer.

Musk later instructed users in Brazil to download a VPN to retain access if X was shut down and wrote that X would publish all of de Moraes’ demands, claiming they violate Brazilian law.

“These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth!” he later wrote.

Brazil’s constitution was drafted after the 1964-1985 military dictatorship and contains a long list of aspirational goals and prohibitions against specific crimes such as racism and, more recently, homophobia. But freedom of speech is not absolute.

Musk had not published de Moraes’ demands as of Monday morning and prominent blocked accounts remained so, indicating X had yet to act based on Musk’s previous pledges.

Moraes’ decision warned against doing so, saying each blocked account that X eventually reactivates will entail a fine of 100,000 reais ($20,000) per day, and that those responsible will be held legally to account for disobeying a court order.

“Including Elon Musk in the digital militias investigation is one thing. Blocking X is another. With this, Moraes is making a nod, saying that he didn’t remain inert amid provocations from Elon Musk,” Carlos Affonso, director of Rio de Janeiro-based think tank Institute for Technology and Society, said by phone from Washington. “It is a warning shot so that lines aren’t crossed.”

Affonso, a professor of civil rights at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, on Monday was attending a symposium at Georgetown Law School about Brazil’s business climate and legislation, and that the implications of Moraes’ decision for Musk and X were “the talk of the town.” Affonso also wondered what the brewing spat might mean for Musk’s Starlink satellites that provide internet service to remote Brazilian regions like the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands.

“Our freedom today is largely in his hands,” Bolsonaro said about Musk in a live broadcast on social media Sunday night. “The action he’s taking, what he’s been saying and he hasn’t been intimidated and has said that he’s going to put forward this idea of fighting for freedom for our country. That’s good.”

The lower house lawmaker who is in charge of handling a bill that aims to establish rules for social media platforms said on X that the episode underscored the urgency of bringing the proposal to a vote. It was approved by the Senate in 2020. Brazil’s attorney general on Saturday night had already voiced his support for regulation.

“We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities. Social peace is non-negotiable,” Jorge Messias wrote on X.

And President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s minister of institutional relations, Alexandre Padilha, wrote Monday on X that the administration will support the Supreme Court and its probes, and work with Congress and civil society to build a regulatory framework.

Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo. AP videojournalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed.