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      Ohio Legislature Passes Bill Ensuring Biden’s Spot on the Ballot

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      The bill, which Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, is expected to sign this weekend, appeared to end the possibility that President Biden would not be on the state’s ballot in November.The Ohio General Assembly has passed a legislative fix that ensures President Biden will be on the state’s ballot in November, averting a crisis that had been brewing for weeks over what is typically a minor procedural issue.The secretary of state in Ohio, a Republican, had said that he planned to exclude Mr. Biden from the ballot because the president would not be officially nominated by his party until after a state deadline for certifying presidential nominees. That had threatened the possibility that the president would not be on the ballot in all 50 states.The General Assembly resolved the issue by passing a bill that pushes back the deadline to accommodate the date of the Democratic nominating convention. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill over the weekend, pending a legal review, according to a spokesman.The solution has been used before. Ohio passed temporary extensions to its certification deadline for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012 and for President Donald J. Trump in 2020. Other states that had similar deadline issues, including Alabama, have also passed legislative fixes with overwhelming bipartisan support, in 2024 and in other election cycles.But the solution proposed in the Ohio Legislature was entangled in a separate partisan clash over foreign donations. The General Assembly adjourned last week without a fix in place, after the Ohio Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, advanced a bill that would have resolved the issue but included a partisan measure banning foreign money in state ballot initiatives. Democrats opposed that measure, and the speaker of the Ohio House did not take it up before the chamber adjourned.Mr. DeWine then called a special legislative session to fix the problem, saying that legislators had failed “to take action on this urgent matter.” The General Assembly ultimately adopted two bills, one that fixed the ballot issue and another that banned donations in support of state ballot initiatives from foreign nationals, including immigrants with green cards.With the legislative solution appearing dead in the water last week, the Biden campaign considered suing the state to ensure that the president was on the ballot. Instead, the Democratic National Committee scheduled a virtual roll-call vote to officially nominate Mr. Biden ahead of the party’s convention in August. That vote is still set to go forward, even as the issue appears to be resolved.Hannah Muldavin, a spokeswoman for the committee, denounced what she called “partisan games” by Republican lawmakers that had delayed a solution.“Since the beginning of this process, Ohio Republicans have been playing partisan games and trying to chip away at our democracy, while Democrats have been defending Ohioans’ right to vote,” Ms. Muldavin said in a statement.Matt Huffman, the leader of the Ohio Senate, praised the foreign-influence ban, adding in a statement that Ohio “needed to ensure that President Biden is on the ballot in November, and it needed to be done legislatively.” More

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      Texas State House 21st District Primary Runoff Results 2024: Phelan vs. Covey

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Camille Baker, Neil Berg, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Additional reporting by Patrick Hays; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White.
      Editing by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More

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      Ocasio-Cortez Backs N.Y. Bill Limiting Donations to Israeli Settlements

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      Under the bill, New York nonprofits that provide financial support to Israel’s military or settlements could be sued for at least $1 million and lose their tax-exempt status.A long-shot effort by left-leaning New York state lawmakers to curtail financial support for Israeli settlements has drawn a big-name backer — but she doesn’t have a vote in Albany.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who rarely wades into state politics, publicly backed a bill on Monday that could strip New York nonprofits of their tax-exempt status if their funds are used to support Israel’s military and settlement activity. Her involvement underscores the extent to which the war in Gaza and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians more broadly have animated the left flank of the Democratic Party as a pivotal election approaches.“It is more important now than ever to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for endorsing and, in fact, supporting some of this settler violence that prevents a lasting peace,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said at a news conference. “This bill will make sure that the ongoing atrocities that we see happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the ongoing enabling of armed militias to terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank, do not benefit from New York State charitable tax exemptions.”Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and State Senator Jabari Brisport introduced the bill, called the “Not on Our Dime” act, months before the Oct. 7 attack, saying it was an effort to prevent tax-exempt donations from subsidizing violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. It was widely criticized by Albany lawmakers and declared a “nonstarter.” Now its sponsors say they plan to revise the bill to prohibit “aiding and abetting” the resettling of the Gaza Strip or providing “unauthorized support” for Israeli military activity that violates international law.“There’s a newfound consciousness in our country with regards to the urgency of Palestinian human rights, and we have to propose and advocate for legislation that reflects public sentiment,” Mr. Mamdani said in a recent interview, referring to some of Israel’s violence toward people in Gaza and the West Bank as “war crimes.”The lawmakers announced the relaunch of the bill at an event at Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx district office on Monday morning, surrounded by left-leaning elected officials from the City Council and State Legislature. Asked why she had chosen to endorse a state-level bill, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that it was “politically perilous” to do so and that she had wanted to support her colleagues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Giuliani Is Served Arizona Indictment Notice After His 80th Birthday Party

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      After trying to reach him for weeks, officials served him the notice as he left his 80th birthday party. He is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.Rudolph W. Giuliani was served with a notice of his indictment in the Arizona election interference case on Friday night, becoming the last of the 18 defendants to receive the notice after nearly a month of unsuccessful attempts by the authorities.The indictment against Mr. Giuliani, Donald J. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and others includes conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges related to their attempts to change the results of the 2020 election in the state in favor of Mr. Trump, according to prosecutors. Among the other defendants are Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, along with all of the fake electors who acted on Mr. Trump’s behalf to keep him in power despite his defeat there.Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Kris Mayes, Arizona’s attorney general who brought the indictment, said that Mr. Giuliani was served on Friday night at around 11 p.m. in Palm Beach County, Fla., as he left his 80th birthday party. “The agents by no means disrupted his event. They waited to serve him outside as he left,” Mr. Taylor said.Mr. Giuliani’s spokesman, Ted Goodman, confirmed in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Giuliani was served “after the party, after guests had left and as he was walking to the car.”“He was unfazed and enjoyed an incredible evening with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, who love and respect him for his contributions to society,” Mr. Goodman said. “We look forward to full vindication soon.”Mr. Giuliani is expected to appear in court on Tuesday unless the court grants a delay, Mr. Taylor said. A trial in the Arizona election interference case has been tentatively set to start in mid-October.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DeSantis Signs Law Deleting Climate Change From Florida Policy

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      The law also stops programs designed to encourage renewable energy and conservation in a state that is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.The new law, which passed the Florida Legislature in March and takes effect on July 1, will also prohibit the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and will repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.The legislation also deletes requirements that state agencies use climate-friendly products and purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.The legislation, along with two other bills Mr. DeSantis signed on Wednesday, “will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” the governor wrote on the social media platform X. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”Florida is one of the states most vulnerable to the costly and deadly impacts of climate change, which is largely driven by the burning of oil, gas and coal. Multiple scientific studies have shown that the increase of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has contributed to sea level rise and more flooding in the state’s coastal cities.Last year was the hottest in Florida since 1895, and the waters off its coast heated to 90 degrees during the summer, bleaching corals and scorching marine life. Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Aug. 30 near Keaton Beach and caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damages. The year before, Hurricane Ian was blamed for more than 140 deaths and $109.5 billion in damages in Florida, becoming the costliest hurricane in state history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Missouri and South Dakota Join States Pursuing Abortion Rights Referendums

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      Both states are reliably Republican and have abortion bans that are among the strictest in the nation.Two more states with near-total abortion bans are poised to have citizen-sponsored measures on the ballot this year that would allow voters to reverse those bans by establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions.On Friday, a coalition of abortion rights groups in Missouri turned in 380,159 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot, nearly double the 172,000 signatures required by law. The Missouri organizers’ announcement followed a petition drive in South Dakota that announced on Wednesday that it, too, had turned in many more signatures than required for a ballot amendment there.Both groups are hoping to build on the momentum of other states where abortion rights supporters have prevailed in seven out of seven ballot measures in the two years since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion for nearly five decades.Groups in about 10 other states have secured spots on the ballot for abortion rights measures or are collecting signatures to do so. Those include Arizona and Nevada, swing states where Democrats are hoping that voters who are newly energized around abortion rights will help President Biden win re-election.South Dakota and Missouri are reliably Republican states. But their bans are among the strictest in the nation, outlawing abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman.Missouri, where post-Roe polls show that a majority of voters want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, appears to offer abortion rights groups the bigger chance of success. But both measures face significant hurdles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Louisiana Will Get a New City After a Yearslong Court Battle

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      The State Supreme Court cleared the way for a part of Baton Rouge to become the city of St. George. Critics say the white, wealthier enclave separating from the capital could have devastating consequences.The original plan was to start a school district. That didn’t work. So a group of residents in a sprawling unincorporated suburb of Baton Rouge, La., expanded their idea: Create a city of their own, called St. George.In 2015, they collected signatures to bring their proposal up for a vote, but didn’t get enough. In 2019, they tried again. This time, they made it to a ballot and won the election, only to be stalled by a lengthy court battle.But the Louisiana Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for the formation of St. George, a city of nearly 100,000 people that joins the ranks of the state’s largest cities, falling between Lafayette and Lake Charles in population. It is the first city to be incorporated in Louisiana in nearly two decades.A majority of justices found that lower courts had erred in blocking the city’s creation over concerns of its financial viability.“This is the culmination of citizens exercising their constitutional rights,” Andrew Murrell, a leader of the effort to create the city, said in a statement, adding, “Now we begin the process of delivering on our promises of a better city.”The city will consist of an area of East Baton Rouge Parish, which is run by a blended government that oversees both Baton Rouge and the broader parish. It also carves out a largely white and more affluent section of the parish, southeast of Baton Rouge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Late-Stage Budget Talks, Hochul Wins Concessions From N.Y. Lawmakers

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul used the $237 billion budget to wedge in contentious issues like extending Mayor Eric Adams’s control over New York City schools.In the days approaching April 1, the corridors and backrooms of the New York State Capitol tend to be filled with tension and chaos, as the governor, lawmakers and staff scramble to meet the deadline to pass a state budget that is as much a policy blueprint as it is a spending plan.This year was different.Budget talks dragged out almost three weeks past the April 1 deadline, leading some to wonder whether Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat in her first full term, had lost control of the process.But by the time the budget was officially passed by the Legislature on Saturday, it was clear that Ms. Hochul had achieved her goal: a final $237 billion budget that included a checklist of her priorities. They included new resources to fight retail crime, a statewide artificial intelligence consortium, and a landmark housing deal aimed at bolstering residential construction — all without raising taxes on the wealthy.The governor’s long-game approach seemed to reflect lessons she has learned in reaching the three budget agreements since she took office in 2021: that a governor can lead while honoring the spirit of collaboration and that a good deal is better than a fast one.After Ms. Hochul announced on Monday that leaders had reached agreement on a budget framework, she continued to negotiate over the next few days, most notably persuading state lawmakers to use the budget to extend mayoral control of New York City schools for two more years.The final budget contains $2.4 billion to support migrant services in New York City, an increase of half a billion dollars over last year’s funding that should cover case management, medical expenses and legal resources. It also includes a substantial new tax break for developers, expanded tenant protections and new enforcement powers for localities to crack down on unlicensed cannabis shops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More