WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are invoking the war in Iran and the prospect of retaliatory terrorist attacks as they tee up votes Thursday on a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

The House already approved a DHS spending bill in January, but it faltered in the Senate as Democrats insisted on changes to immigration enforcement operations following the shooting death of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. As a result, funding for the department lapsed on Feb. 14.

Republicans are calling on Democrats to reconsider their vote in the wake of the conflict in Iran. Both the House and the Senate are expected to hold votes on the matter.

“The military action in Iran makes it all more urgent and crucial to have a fully funded, fully staffed DHS across all its departments,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

It did not appear the GOP’s strategy had changed the position of Democratic lawmakers, though. They said they are prepared to fund most of the agencies at the department, just not Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.

“It’s the same lousy, rotten bill that does not put any guardrails or constraints on ICE or CBP after federal agents shot American citizens in the street,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

Workers are beginning to miss part of their paychecks

Following the longest federal shutdown in the country’s history last year, Congress has completed work on 11 of this year’s 12 appropriations bills. Only the bill for Homeland Security remains outstanding.

Republicans said the timing couldn’t be worse for a Homeland Security shutdown. While a large majority of the department’s employees are considered essential and continue to work, many will not receive a full paycheck this week.

Republicans said the prospect of an increase in unscheduled absences by the Transportation Security Administration’s agents and screeners could lead to longer wait times at the nation’s airports. Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has canceled various assessments to determine vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. And training for first responders conducted through the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been canceled.

“Can we not understand America is under siege, now likely to be attacked because radical Islam is under siege, and they’re going to hit back and we’re sitting here looking at each other and not funding DHS,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said during a hearing Tuesday featuring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Democrats are seeking several changes at the department include prohibiting ICE enforcement operations at sensitive locations like schools and churches, allowing independent investigations into alleged wrongdoing, requiring warrants to be signed by judges before federal agents can forcibly enter private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent, and requiring agents to wear identification and remove their masks.

Republicans note that the bill does include a bipartisan provision directing more resources for deescalation training and $20 million to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body-worn cameras.

Little to show from negotiations

The White House and congressional Democrats don’t appear to have made significant progress in recent weeks resolving their differences after trading several offers.

“Look, we’re still far apart but we’re negotiating and exchanging paper back and forth,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, the Republican chairwoman of a panel that oversees homeland security funding, said she’s been talking to Democrats about a possible pathway forward, but prospects are unclear.

She and other Republicans are citing last weekend’s mass shooting in Austin as an example of the dangerous threat environment that’s facing Americans following the attack on Iran.

“I think that it is incredibly irresponsible to not fund the agency that is supposed to keep us safe here at home,” Britt said.

Democrats said they are ready to fully fund all the agencies within the department except for ICE and CBP.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, authored a proposal to do that, but it was blocked from consideration. She said Republican leadership was using Trump’s “aimless, costly and illegal war with Iran to force through more funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection without any of the substantial changes that the vast majority of Americans believe those agencies need.”

“It is a cynical effort and it is one that will fail,” DeLauro said.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is preparing to vote Thursday on a war powers resolution to halt President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, a sign of unease in Congress over the rapidly widening conflict that is reordering U.S. priorities at home and abroad.

It’s the second vote in as many days, after the Senate defeated a similar measure along party lines. Lawmakers are confronting the sudden reality of representing the American people in wartime and all that entails — with lives lost, dollars spent and alliances tested by a president’s unilateral decision to go to war with Iran.

The tally in the House is expected to be tight, but the outcome will provide an early snapshot of the political support, or opposition, to the U.S.-Israel military operation and Trump’s rationale for bypassing Congress, which alone has the power to declare war.

“Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Meeks said in his nearly three decades in Congress, the hardest votes he has taken have been deciding whether to send U.S. troops to war.

The roll calls are a clarifying moment for the president and the parties just days into the overseas conflict that has quickly carried echoes of the long U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many veterans of those wars have since run for office and now serve in Congress.

Republicans largely back Trump, and most Democrats oppose the war

Trump’s Republican Party, which narrowly controls the House and Senate, largely sees the conflict with Iran not as the start of a new war, but the end of a regime that for decades has long menaced the West. The operation has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which some view as an opportunity for regime change, though others warn of a chaotic power vacuum.

Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” the country posed.

Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the war powers resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”

For Democrats, Trump’s war with Iran, influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war of choice that is testing the balance of powers in the U.S. Constitution.

“The framers weren’t fooling around,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., arguing that the Constitution is clear that only Congress can decide matters of war.

He said whether lawmakers support or oppose the Trump administration’s military action, they should have the debate. “It’s up to us, we’ve got to vote on it.”

While views in Congress are largely falling along party lines, there are crossover coalitions. Both the House and Senate resolutions were bipartisan, and are drawing bipartisan support and opposition. The House is also voting on a separate resolution affirming that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism.

The war powers resolution, if signed into law, would immediately halt Trump’s ability to conduct the war unless Congress approved the military action. The president would likely veto the measure.

As an alternative, a small group of Democrats has proposed a separate war powers resolution that would allow the president to continue the war for 30 days before he must seek congressional approval. It is not expected to come yet for a vote.

Trump officials provide shifting rationale for war

After launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials spent hours behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week trying to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.

Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait, and Trump has said more Americans could die. Thousands of Americans abroad have scrambled for flights, many lighting up the phone lines at congressional offices as they sought help trying to flee the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war could extend eight weeks, twice as long as the president first estimated. Trump has left open the possibility of sending U.S. troops into what has largely been a bombing campaign by air. Hundreds of people in the region have died.

The administration said the goal is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles that it believes are shielding its nuclear program. It has also said Israel was ready to act against Iran, and American bases would face retaliation if the U.S. did not strike first. On Wednesday, the U.S. said it torpedoed an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka.

“This administration can’t even give us a straight answer of as to why we launched this preemptive war,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky who is often an outlier in his party.

Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who had teamed up to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, also forced the war powers resolution to the floor, pushing past objections from House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Johnson has warned that it would be “dangerous” to limit the president’s authority while the U.S. military is already in conflict.

Senators sit in their desks for solemn vote

In the Senate, Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts during Trump’s second term. This one, however, was different.

Underscoring the gravity of the moment Wednesday, Democratic senators filled the chamber and sat at their desks as the voting got underway.

“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”

Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said “Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program.”

The legislation failed on a 47-53 tally mostly along party lines, with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania against.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran launched a new wave of attacks against Israel, American bases and countries around the region Thursday, while warning the U.S. would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship. Tehran’s expanding retaliatory strikes and increasing shows of defiance came even as Israel and the U.S. hammered Iran for a sixth day.

The war has escalated each day, affecting an additional 14 countries across the Middle East and beyond. On Thursday, Azerbaijan accused Iran of attacking it with drones — though Tehran denied that. A day earlier, the U.S. said it sank an Iranian frigate in the waters off Sri Lanka.

All the while, the U.S. and Israel have battered Iran with nationwide strikes, targeting their military capabilities leadership and nuclear program. Israeli and American leaders have also suggested that toppling the government was a goal — and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed when they launched the war Saturday. But the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, and the conflict increasingly appeared to be open-ended.

Iran’s attacks have targeted their Arab neighbors, disrupted oil supplies and snarled global air travel.

The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six U.S. troops have been killed.

Iran remains defiant

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. Navy of committing an “an atrocity at sea” for sinking the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean earlier in the week, killing at least 87 people.

“Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set,” he said on social media.

An Iranian cleric later called on state television for the shedding of both Israeli and “Trump’s blood.”

The statement from Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli represented a rare call for violence by an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam. There are dozens in Iran.

The war keeps expanding

Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks and air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while Gulf countries also reported coming under fire.

In Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a drone was shot down near the Al Dhafra Air Base, which hosts U.S. forces, and shrapnel fell to the ground, authorities said. Six people were wounded.

Qatar evacuated residents near the U.S. Embassy in Doha as a temporary precaution and later reported a missile attack on the city. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone in its province bordering Jordan.

Israel appeared to be preparing to step up its attacks on Lebanon, where it is targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. The Israeli military also said a wave of strikes on Iran hit long-range ballistic missile launch sites and other targets.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev accused Iran of carrying out “a groundless act of terror and aggression” after a drone crashed Thursday near the airport in Nakhchivan, a region bordering Iran that is separated from the rest of the country by Armenia. Another drone fell near a school and two civilians were injured, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said.

Aliyev said the military had been instructed “to prepare and implement retaliatory measures.”

Iran’s general staff of the armed forces denied it had launched drones toward Azerbaijan. The denial comes as Iran has repeatedly denied targeting oil infrastructure and other civilian targets during the war, despite its drone and missile fire hitting those sites.

A tanker apparently came under attack off the coast of Kuwait early Thursday, expanding the area where commercial shipping was in danger, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center run by the British military. It said there was an explosion but did not offer a cause.

Since the war began Saturday, ships have been attacked in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. That has caused oil prices to soar — though they briefly came down Wednesday, before resuming their climb Thursday.

Israel issues evacuation warning for Beirut suburbs

Israel issued an evacuation notice calling for all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately,” apparently signaling plans for heavy bombardment of the area.

Since the resurgence of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah militant group, which struck Israel in the opening days of the war, Israel has hit sites in Beirut’s suburbs and issued a blanket warning for residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate. But it had not issued such a warning for areas near the country’s capital.

Among the 80 targets in Lebanon the Israel military said it hit over the past 24 hours were “several command centers” used by Hezbollah in Beirut. It showed video footage of a building being hit, but provided no further details.

Iranian warship was hit on its way home from multinational exercises

The Iranian ship sunk by the U.S. Navy was returning from an exercise hosted by the Indian navy that the U.S. also joined.

Sri Lankan authorities said 32 crew members were rescued, while its navy recovered at least 87 bodies.

Araghchi said it had been carrying “almost 130” crew.

Sri Lanka’s media minister and government spokesman, Nalinda Jayatissa, told parliament Thursday that another Iranian ship had arrived in its waters. Jayatissa did not provide further details about the ship.

Rising reported from Bangkok, Becatoros from Athens, Greece, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, Lebanon, Elaine Kurtenbach in Bangkok, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Miami contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump ’s White House ballroom project is way too big and should be scaled back, an architect and member of the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation said Wednesday — one of a number of changes he has suggested for a project he says could permanently alter the nation’s most recognizable historic home.

David Scott Parker, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects whose firm specializes in residential design and historic preservation, shared his views with The Associated Press as a key federal agency, the National Capital Planning Commission, prepared to meet Thursday to vote on whether to approve the 90,000-square-foot project. A separate federal panel, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, approved the project at its February meeting.

“Everything here feels inflated,” said Parker, who has been an architect for more than 35 years. “The net effect of this is to adversely impact what is the most important historic — the most identifiable historic — house in the entire United States. This is permanent, what it will do to the White House.”

Trump announced last summer he would be add a ballroom to the White House, citing the need for space other than a tent on the lawn to entertain important guests. He demolished the East Wing in October with little warning and underground construction to prepare the site has been underway since then. White House officials have said above-ground construction would not start before April, at the earliest.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private, nonprofit group, asked a federal judge to temporarily halt construction until the White House submitted the construction plans to both federal panels and to Congress for approval, and allowed the public to comment. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected the request last week, and the Trust has said it plans to file an amended lawsuit.

Parker’s architectural analysis was based on renderings and other information the White House submitted to the fine arts commission last month.

The ballroom itself takes up about 22,000 square feet of the total space, and Parker said that is far larger than needed for the 1,000 guests Trump has said it would accommodate. The industry standard for a ballroom allots 15 square feet per person, Parker said. By that measure, Trump’s ballroom could be 47% smaller — or no bigger than 15,000 square feet, he said.

The proposal includes a 4,000-square-foot, south-facing porch and staircase. Parker said these are unnecessary since they don’t provide guests with direct access to the interior of the building. He said the porch doesn’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The White House said Wednesday that the ballroom will comply with the federal law requiring accommodations for people with disabilities, but did not provide further comment on Parker’s critique.

The proposed portico is significantly larger than the portico on the south side of the White House and the south side of the Treasury Department building nearby.

Concerns about the project’s size have followed it from the start. At nearly twice the size of the main White House itself, which is 55,000 square feet, critics have argued the addition would overwhelm the mansion and throw off the symmetry of the complex.

Parker said his other main concern is that the addition would stick out just enough so that it impedes the line of sight along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol as it was purposely designed hundreds of years ago by Pierre L’Enfant, who was hired by George Washington to lay out the U.S. capital.

“It’s hard to fathom that … one addition could have so many adverse impacts, symbolically, architecturally and historically,” Parker said. “This literally violates the Founding Fathers’ intentions.”

Parker is listed among more than 100 people registered to speak at Thursday’s commission meeting, which is scheduled to be conducted online, according to the agency’s website. Thousands of people submitted comments in advance and many were opposed to Trump’s project.

It remained unclear Wednesday whether ballots cast during extended polling place hours in Texas’ primary will be counted in two counties that saw mass confusion over voting locations.

Such votes have been set aside in Dallas County after the Texas Supreme Court stepped in Tuesday night, staying a lower court’s ruling. As of Wednesday afternoon, county election officials were still waiting for direction on whether the ballots should be included in vote totals.

The same issue affected Williamson County, north of Austin, which had hours extended at two polling places and has since had the last-minute ballots set aside.

But for Democrats in deeply blue Dallas County, the state’s second most populous, they say their hopes are dwindling. Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said the Supreme Court’s action was expected because it’s hard to get poll hours extended under Texas law.

“In a lot of ways, nobody was surprised by the writ from the Supreme Court last night,” Burke said. She added it’s likely the late ballots won’t be counted.

It is unclear exactly how many ballots were cast during the extended hours. According to data on the Dallas County Elections Department’s website, 2,316 in-person “provisional” ballots were rejected or pending, a number that includes any ballots flagged for a variety of issues as well as those the high court ordered to be segregated. A total of nearly 280,000 people voted in the county’s election, based on unofficial figures from the department.

Of greater concern, Burke said, was the chaos unleashed by the precinct-only voting system that Dallas County was forced to use because of a change by local Republicans, who refused to use a system that allowed voters to cast a ballot anywhere in the county, as they had done since 2019. Voters instead could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct. Under state law, Democrats had to use the same method.

Confused and frustrated, some voters were turned away from polling places on Tuesday and directed to other locations.

“There is a case to be made, and we can document it, there were people who were disenfranchised,” Burke said.

She said she will attempt to push the legislature to repeal the 2006 law that requires both parties to hold a joint primary to prevent this sort of chaos: “If one party wants to wreck their primary, they should be able to do that but they should not be able to wreck someone else’s.”

In Dallas County, a judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, citing “voter confusion so severe” that it caused the website of the county election office to crash. The judge was acting on a petition filed by the local Democratic Party in a heavily left-leaning county. The extension applied only to Democratic voting precincts.

There was initial concern that it could affect the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate because Dallas is the home base of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, but she later conceded to James Talarico, a state lawmaker.

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who advanced to a runoff Tuesday against Sen. John Cornyn for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, challenged the lower court’s ruling. Shortly after, the state Supreme Court stayed both decisions in Dallas and Williamson counties. Its brief orders said ballots cast by voters in both counties who were not in line by the 7 p.m. scheduled close of polls should be separated.

Emily French, the policy director for Common Cause Texas, a voting advocacy group, said it is standard for ballots that are cast during extended poll hours to be set aside. In El Paso, for example, voting was extended for an hour on Tuesday after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day. French said she expects them to ultimately be tallied if no one is contesting the extension.

Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, said the organization is continuing “to monitor this situation and will be weighing all options to ensure every Texan is able to have their vote counted.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A protester and three U.S. Capitol Police officers were treated for injuries in a Senate office building on Wednesday after the protester resisted arrest for disruptive behavior and grabbed onto a doorway as the officers and a Republican senator tried to drag him out of the room.

The protester, Brian C. McGinnis of North Carolina, was arrested and faces three counts of assaulting a police officer and three counts of resisting arrest and unlawful demonstration, the Capitol Police said in a statement.

“This afternoon, an unruly man who started to illegally protest during a hearing put everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer’s attempts to remove him from the room,” Capitol Police said in a statement.

Multiple videos show that McGinnis stood up and started shouting during the Senate Armed Services hearing and that police officers immediately grabbed him and tried to remove him from the room. McGinnis was protesting the U.S. military campaign in Iran, shouting, “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel!”

The officers pulled McGinnis toward the exit as he violently resisted them and grabbed onto a doorway while they were trying to pull him out. Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Republican member of the Armed Services panel who is a former Navy SEAL, ran over to assist and pull the protester’s arm off the door as other protesters yelled that McGinnis’ hand was stuck.

Capitol Police said in the statement that McGinnis “got his own arm stuck in a door to resist our officers and force his way back into the hearing room,” and said he was treated for his injuries.

Sheehy said in a statement on social media that he was trying to de-escalate the situation.

“This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one,” Sheehy said, “I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence.”

A video posted on an X account under the name Brian McGinnis appears to show the same man standing outside the Capitol on Wednesday morning before the hearing. The account’s description says he is a “Green Party Candidate for US Senate.”

He says in the video that he was “here in D.C. trying to speak out against the Senate” to ask them about sending the country into war.

“Anyone who feels disillusioned and betrayed by our government, you are not alone,” he says in the video.

“Following a letter from a Congressman inquiring about reporting on anonymous allegations, CBP opened an internal inquiry to determine the full story,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “This is standard procedure and does NOT indicate any confirmation of wrongdoing.”

Customs and Border Protection is part of Homeland Security.

The investigation comes after The New York Times and then CBS News reported on remarks Bovino allegedly made during a Jan. 12 phone call held to coordinate a Saturday meeting to discuss the deployment of immigration agents in the Minneapolis area.

During the call, the reports said, Bovino allegedly complained that Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel N. Rosen was unreachable for part of the weekend because of the Sabbath, which in Judaism is observed from sunset Friday to nightfall Saturday.

Bovino allegedly used the term “chosen people” in a disparaging way and asked, in a sarcastic tone, whether Rosen understood that some Orthodox Jewish people don’t take the Sabbath off work, the reports said.

“Do Orthodox criminals also take off on Saturday?” he asked, according to CBS.

The Times reported Rosen delegated the call to a deputy and that he himself was not part of the conversation.

The Times first reported on the investigation. It said an investigator with Customs and Border Protection’s office of professional responsibility wrote in an email that he had opened an “official inquiry into the allegation” that Bovino made “unprofessional comments.”

Bovino was the public face of the Trump administration’s city-by-city immigration sweeps until late January. The Border Patrol chief led agents in Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans before he headed to Minnesota in December for what Homeland Security called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.

The administration removed Bovino from his leading role after federal officers in Minneapolis fatally shot 37-year-old mother Renee Good and 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on different days, leading to nationwide demonstrations and criticisms of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policies.

On Monday, a Minnesota prosecutor said her office would investigate Bovino and other federal officers for misconduct. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she would look into an instance in which Bovino threw a smoke canister at protesters on Jan. 21. Homeland Security said in a statement that states cannot prosecute federal officers.

This story has been corrected to show Department of Homeland Security emailed a statement on Wednesday, not Tuesday.

DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s Democratic governor, facing a pressure campaign from President Donald Trump, is signaling his openness to granting clemency to a former county clerk who was convicted in a scheme that attempted to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

A social post by Gov. Jared Polis brought swift rebuke Wednesday from the state’s attorney general, secretary of state and the association representing local election officials, who said such an action by the governor would send the wrong message to anyone seeking to interfere with elections ahead of this year’s midterms.

In his post on Tuesday, the governor compared the case of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence, to that of a former state lawmaker who was recently sentenced to probation and community service after being convicted of one of the same crimes. Polis was echoing a concern he raised in January that the sentence for Peters, who didn’t have a criminal history, was “harsh.”

“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law. This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities,” Polis wrote on the social platform X.

Peters’ lawyers welcomed the governor’s comments and hoped they would lead to her sentence being reduced to the nearly 17 months she has already served. They want her to be released from prison while they continue to try to get her convictions overturned in the state appeals court.

“Action takes real courage,” said one of her lawyers, John Case.

He said he could not discuss whether he had any conversations with the governor or his office about clemency because he said the process is confidential.

Governor’s post creates backlash from other Colorado officials

Peters has become a hero to many who support Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, especially those who have been pushing unfounded conspiracy theories.

Trump threatened “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases Peters, and his administration has cut off funding to the state.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who is running for state attorney general, said Polis’ comments were “shocking and worrisome” and that he was wrong to make a comparison between the case of Peters and former state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis. Lewis and Peters were each convicted of attempting to influence a public servant, but also convicted of additional, different crimes.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office helped prosecute Peters, said Peters has not demonstrated any remorse for her actions.

“Clemency should be based on remorse, rehabilitation, and extenuating circumstances — not on political influence, favor, or retribution,” Weiser, a Democrat who is running to succeed the term-limited Polis, said in an emailed statement.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who is hoping to replace Polis as governor, also said Peters shouldn’t be pardoned or have her sentence commuted.

“Donald Trump may be seeking revenge on Colorado, but surrendering to his political pressure will not make our state stronger or safer,” the Democrat said.

Clemency could signal that it’s OK to ‘undermine our elections’

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said there are few similarities between Peters’ and Lewis’ cases.

“It seems he’s tying himself in knots trying to find a way to commute her sentence,” he said of the governor.

He also said he worried that an early release would send the wrong message before this year’s midterm elections.

“The signal is it’s OK to work to undermine our elections because, whether it’s President Trump or Jared Polis, you’ll get a get-out-of-jail free card,” Crane said.

In response, a Polis spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, said the governor has been skeptical of Peters’ sentence and was comparing it with the one given to the former state lawmaker who was sentenced Friday.

In contrast to some other Democratic governors, Polis, who prides himself on being a political iconoclast, has taken a sometimes accommodating stance toward Trump. As Trump entered office, Polis praised the idea of the Department of Government Efficiency, then run by billionaire Elon Musk, and the nomination of vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

He also has criticized Trump’s stance on tariffs and immigration, among other issues.

Two cases with significant differences

Peters and Lewis were both convicted of attempting to influence a public servant, a crime that involves using deception or a threat to try to get a public official to act in a certain way.

Lewis was convicted of one count of that and three counts of forgery. Prosecutors said she forged letters of support in the middle of a legislative ethics investigation over whether she had mistreated her staff. Her attorney, Craig Truman, declined to comment on her case.

Peters was convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to copy images of her county’s election computer system before and after state officials updated it in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website. She said she had a duty to preserve the information as clerk.

Peters was found guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.

Peters’ lawyers said the judge violated her First Amendment rights by punishing her with a stiff sentence for making allegations about election fraud. The judge called her a “charlatan” and said she posed a danger to the community for spreading lies about voting and undermining the democratic process.

Appeals court judges seemed sympathetic to the free speech argument during oral arguments in January.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — For the second time, Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that voters can cast ballots on a Democratic-led congressional redistricting plan that could help the party win four more U.S. House seats, as the justices review legal challenges to the effort.

The court ruled that a statewide referendum can be held on April 21 on whether to authorize mid-decade redistricting, upending a temporary restraining order put in place by a Tazewell County judge last month. It comes after the top court made a similar ruling last month in a related case.

The court still has not ruled on whether the mid-decade redistricting amendment and referendum are legal, indicating that the scheduled April vote could be all for nothing if the top court upholds a lower court ruling blocking the effort. Early voting on the referendum is supposed to begin Friday.

“It is the process, not the outcome, of this effort that we may ultimately have to address,” the ruling said. “Issuing an injunction to keep Virginians from the polls is not the proper way to make this decision.”

Since late February, officials in Tazewell County have refrained from preparing for the referendum in light of the restraining order. On Wednesday, Tazewell Director of Elections Brian Earls said he would work hard to ensure early voting would start in his county come Friday.

“I believe we will be ready,” he said in an email. “If not, it will not be for lack of effort.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which filed the initial request for a restraining order, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.

Virginia House Republican Minority Leader Terry Kilgore expressed confidence Wednesday in winning the case and at the ballot box.

“If we can throw this constitutional amendment out, what other constitutional amendments can we throw out over the next few years?” he told reporters following the ruling. “That’s not the way Virginia should be.”

President Donald Trump launched an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last year by pushing Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts to help his party win more seats. The goal was for the GOP to hold on to a narrow House majority in the face of political headwinds that typically favor the party out of power in midterms.

Instead, it created a burst of redistricting efforts nationwide. So far, Republicans believe they can win nine more House seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats think they can win six more seats in California and Utah, and are hoping to fully or partially make up the remaining three-seat margin in Virginia.

In February, Virginia Democrats released a new congressional map that aims to give their party four more seats. Since then, the Democratic-led legislature passed the proposed map and Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the document into law.

Still, the map only goes into effect if it’s backed by voters and the amendment process is approved by the top court.

Virginia Democratic House Speaker Don Scott said Wednesday that the top court’s decision gives voters an opportunity to decide whether the map gets used.

“The Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision ensures that this referendum will move forward and that Virginians will have the opportunity to make their voices heard,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers in Virginia have sought to portray their redistricting push as a response to Trump’s overreach. Republicans have sounded aghast at the proposed district map, describing it as a way for liberals in northern Virginia to commandeer the rest of the state.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration is expanding its crackdown on state Medicaid programs to New York, launching a fraud probe in the state a week after it said it was freezing nearly $260 million in Medicaid funding in Minnesota over similar accusations.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced Tuesday that the Trump administration identified concerning trends in New York’s Medicaid program and demanded that state officials provide details about their handling of fraud, waste and abuse within 30 days or risk deferred payments.

“Heart surgeons are trained to look at the numbers,” Oz, a former celebrity heart surgeon, said in a video on Tuesday. “Right now, the numbers coming out of New York’s Medicaid program don’t add up.”

The new investigation is part of an administration-wide initiative to address fraud around the country, which federal officials say is needed to rein in runaway spending and protect taxpayers. With many midterm voters concerned about affordability, Trump has ramped up those efforts, announcing that Vice President JD Vance would help balance the nation’s budget by spearheading a national “war on fraud.”

Targeted Democratic state officials have decried the Republican administration’s moves as politically motivated and potentially disastrous for the millions of people who rely on the health care safety net for low-income Americans.

New York’s Democratic governor says the move is politically targeted

In a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, Oz wrote that the state’s spending levels combined with “serious concerns” about its oversight of certain Medicaid services demand “immediate investigation, corrective action and enhanced transparency.”

The letter flagged specific areas of concern, including a high proportion of New York’s Medicaid beneficiaries receiving personal care services related to daily living activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation.

New York’s soaring Medicaid costs have long vexed the state’s governors and were a top priority of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who grappled for years with the program’s spiraling price tag as residents age and receive additional benefits. The state’s program, which cost $115.6 billion in the 2025 fiscal year, provides health care for about 1 in 3 New Yorkers and spends more per person for care than Medicaid programs in any other state.

Hochul has also tried to rein in costs through an overhaul of how a home health care program is administered.

Asked Wednesday by reporters about Oz’s letter, Hochul said the Trump administration is targeting a Democrat-led state for political reasons but added, “I will have to stand up and show them the truth and show them the facts, that they’re wrong. When there is fraud I will help them fight it.”

Hochul’s office said the fraud investigation was an attempt by the Trump administration to rip health care away from everyday New Yorkers. CMS said in an emailed statement that ensuring states comply with federal rules is “a core part of the agency’s federal oversight role.”

New York investigation follows CMS action in other blue states

The New York investigation comes less than a week after CMS halted Medicaid payments to Minnesota over fraud concerns. Oz said the money would be delivered only after Minnesota implements “a comprehensive corrective action plan.”

The administration had previously cited allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Minneapolis-area Somali residents as a reason for a massive federal enforcement surge there. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, called the new funding freeze “targeted retribution.”

Minnesota on Monday sued the Trump administration over the deferred payments. The state is also appealing CMS withholding $2 billion in annual Medicaid funds announced in early January.

Earlier this year, Oz announced that CMS had sent letters to Democratic governors in Maine and California demanding more information or corrective action on alleged fraud in government health programs in those states.

In the days after receiving Oz’s letter last month, Maine Gov. Janet Mills said she wouldn’t be intimidated by the administration and called the request “a political attack.” The 30-day timeline he gave her to respond or risk losing Medicaid payments is set to expire this week. A spokesperson for Mills didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Maine is facing a political attack from a president who uses allegations of fraud as a pretense to send ICE and other weaponized federal agents into states led by Democrats with devastating consequences.

The Trump administration has sought to withhold funding from Democratic-led states at least two other times in recent months citing fraud concerns. It happened with child care subsidies and other social services programs in Minnesota, New York and three other states and with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 22 states that have declined to hand over data that the federal government says is needed to catch fraud.

In both those cases, judges have ruled that the money must continue to flow for now.

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia contributed to this report.