Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday urged California cities to clear homeless encampments, escalating once again his efforts to address an intractable issue of his time in office: the makeshift tent camps that line underpasses, parks and local streets up and down the state.

Newsom’s administration drafted a local law that counties, cities and towns can directly adopt or modify to achieve the Democratic governor’s goals. He’s also releasing $3.3 billion in voter-approved funds to expand housing and treatment options for homeless residents.

“The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses,” Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, made tackling homelessness a priority of his administration when he took office in 2019 and since then, Democratic leaders in the state have moved toward cracking down on encampments. The state accounts for nearly a third of the homeless population in the United States. More than 187,000 Californians are in need of housing.

With tents lining streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns across the state, homelessness has become one of the most pressing public health and safety issues in California and one sure to dog Newsom if he runs for national office.

His declaration comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for officials to ban homeless people from camping outside. It was a ruling welcomed by many Democratic leaders, including Newsom, despite pushback from homeless people and their advocates that the decision by the conservative court was cruel.

The key provisions of the model ordinance announced Monday include prohibitions on “persistent camping” in one location, a ban on encampments that block sidewalks and a requirement that local officials provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter prior to clearing an encampment. Providing a ready-made local law could bring uniformity to how cities and counties deal with encampments though Newsom is urging local officials to modify his proposal as needed.

Major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have already started clearing out encampments, saying they are not fair to children, seniors and disabled people who need access to parks and sidewalks.

San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, pledged to clean up city sidewalks while in San José, Mayor Matt Mahan has proposed arrests if a person refuses shelter three times.

In 2024, voters approved a measure that imposes strict requirements on counties to spend on housing and drug treatment programs to tackle the homelessness crisis. It was a signature proposal for Newsom, who campaigned for the measure’s passage.

Under the measure, counties are required to spend about two-thirds of the money from a voter-approved tax enacted in 2004 on millionaires for mental health services on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.

The governor has also pushed for laws that make it easier to force people with behavioral health issues into treatment. And he has repeatedly threatened to withhold state money from cities and counties that do not step up to address homelessness.

But despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California does not have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to a 2024 state audit.

The audit found California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the previous five years but did not consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation.

The Mississippi attorney general on Tuesday requested an execution date for the state’s longest-serving death row inmate.

Richard Gerald Jordan, now 78, was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County.

The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Jordan’s latest appeal Tuesday, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers hours later asking the court to set a date for the lethal injection.

“Jordan’s state and federal remedies have been exhausted,” Special Assistant Attorney General Allison Kay Hartman wrote on behalf of Fitch.

However, Krissy Nobile, Jordan’s attorney and director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, told The Associated Press that she thinks state justices erred in not applying a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dealt with independent mental health experts in death penalty cases.

“We are exploring all federal and state options for Mr. Jordan and will be moving for rehearing in the Mississippi Supreme Court,” Nobile said.

Mississippi Supreme Court records show that in January 1976, Jordan traveled from Louisiana to Gulfport, Mississippi, where he called Gulf National Bank and asked to speak to a loan officer. After he was told Charles Marter could speak with him, Jordan ended the call, looked up Marter’s home address in a telephone book, went to the house and got in by pretending to work for the electric company.

Records show Jordan kidnapped Edwina Marter, took her to a forest and shot her to death, then later called her husband, falsely said she was safe and demanded $25,000.

Jordan has filed multiple appeals of his death sentence. The one denied Tuesday was filed in December 2022. It argued Jordan was denied due process because he should have had a psychiatric examiner appointed solely for his defense rather than a court-appointed psychiatric examiner who provided findings to both the prosecution and his defense.

Mississippi justices said Jordan’s attorneys had raised the issue in his previous appeals, and that a federal judge ruled having one court-appointed expert did not violate Jordan’s constitutional rights.

Jordan is one of the death row inmates who challenged the state’s plan to use a sedative called midazolam as one of the three drugs to carry out executions. The other drugs were vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes muscles, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has not issued a final decision in the execution drugs case, according to court records. But Wingate ruled in December 2022 that he would not block the state from executing Thomas Edwin Loden, one of the inmates who was suing the state over the drugs. Loden was put to death a week later, and that was the most recent execution in Mississippi.

A proposed amendment to New York’s constitution to bar discrimination over “gender identity” and “pregnancy outcomes” will appear on the ballot this November, the state’s high court ruled Thursday.

The decision from the Court of Appeals affirms a lower court ruling from June, dismissing an appeal “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved,” effectively declining to take up the case.

Democrats are hoping the ballot question will drive turnout in their favor this fall as the party frames the “equal rights” amendment as a way to protect abortion rights.

Republicans also have begun to strategize around the proposed amendment, moving to animate voters against the protections it might offer to transgender people.

A Republican state lawmaker had sued to block the ballot question, arguing that Democrats in the Legislature made a technical error when passing the amendment.

The state’s Constitution currently bans discrimination based on race, color, creed or religion. The proposed amendment would add ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive health care and autonomy.

It would not explicitly protect abortion rights in New York, where access to the procedure is already considered very safe. Instead, the proposed amendment would stop a person from being discriminated against for having an abortion.

The ballot question has been a crucial part of Democrats’ election strategy in New York. The party has tried to center key House races in New York on abortion access, warning voters that Republicans would try to curtail access to the procedure and betting that Democrats would cast ballots to protect abortion rights after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Republicans in turn have moved to use the proposed amendment to energize their base, with some officials arguing it would allow minors to access gender-affirming health care without parental notification. Supporters of the ballot question have said it would not impact a parent’s involvement in such medical decisions.

In a statement, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox said the court was wrong to reject the legal challenge and said the proposed amendment “is a radical departure from common sense.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case makes it all but certain that the Republican will not face trial in Washington ahead of the November election.

The Supreme Court did not dismiss — as Trump had wanted — the indictment alleging he illegally schemed to cling to power after he lost to President Joe Biden. But the ruling still amounts to a major victory for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, whose legal strategy has focused on delaying the proceedings until after the election.

The timing of the trial matters because if Trump defeats Biden, he could appoint an attorney general who would seek the dismissal of this case and the other federal prosecutions he faces. Or Trump could potentially order a pardon for himself.

Trump posted in all capital letters on his social media network shortly after the decision was released: “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”

In remarks Monday evening, Biden said the court had done a “terrible disservice” to the American people, who he says deserved to know the outcome of the case before they head to the polls.

“The American people will have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior,” Biden said. “The American people must decide whether Trump’s assault on our democracy on Jan. 6 makes him unfit for public office.”

The court’s conservative majority said former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and are presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.

The ruling means that special counsel Jack Smith cannot proceed with significant allegations in the indictment — or must at least defend their use in future proceedings before the trial judge.

The justices, for instance, wiped out Smith’s use of allegations that Trump tried to use the investigative power of the Justice Department to undo the election results, holding that his communications with agency officials is plainly protected from prosecution.

The justices sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who must now “carefully analyze” whether other allegations involve official conduct for which the president would be immune from prosecution.

Among the issues for further analysis is Trump’s relentless badgering of then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. The justices said it was “ultimately the Government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity” in Trump’s interactions with Pence.

The order also directed additional analysis on the various posts on X, then known as Twitter, that Trump made — as well as a speech he delivered to supporters — in the run-up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Determining whether that communication represents official versus unofficial acts, the justices said, “may depend on the content and context of each” and thus needs more scrutiny.

Momentum is building in a case regarding homeless encampments that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next month and could have major implications for cities as homelessness nationwide has reached record highs.

Dozens of briefs have been filed in recent days, including from the Department of Justice, members of Congress and state attorneys general. They joined the growing number of western state and local officials who have submitted briefs urging the justices to overturn a controversial lower court decision they say has prevented them from addressing homeless encampments.

In 2018, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — whose jurisdiction includes nine Western states — ruled it was unconstitutional to punish people who are “involuntarily homeless” for sleeping outside if there are not enough shelter beds. Its Martin v. Boise decision found that doing so would violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Social justice advocates have long supported the decision based on the belief that homelessness shouldn’t be criminalized, although rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have yet to file briefs in the case. Many officials in the West, on the other hand, say the decision has prevented them from managing a surge in encampments on sidewalks, in parks and other public places.

The U.S. experienced a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness last year to its highest reported level, a federal report found, as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans. About 653,000 people were homeless in the January 2023 count, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007.

More than half the people experiencing homelessness in the country were in four states: California and Washington, which are both under the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, along with New York and Florida. About 28% of the nation’s homeless are estimated to be in California alone, according to the federal report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

With Donald Trump listening intently in the courtroom, federal appeals court judges in Washington expressed deep skepticism Tuesday that the former president was immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The panel of three judges, two of whom were appointed by President Joe Biden, also questioned whether they had jurisdiction to consider the appeal at this point in the case, raising the prospect that Trump’s appeal could be dispensed with on more procedural grounds.

During lengthy arguments, the judges repeatedly pressed Trump’s lawyer to defend claims that Trump was shielded from criminal charges for acts that he says fell within his official duties as president. That argument was rejected last month by the lower-court judge overseeing the case against Trump, and the appeals judges suggested through their questions that they, too, were dubious that the Founding Fathers envisioned absolute immunity for presidents after they leave office.

“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” said Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The outcome could carry enormous ramifications both for the landmark criminal case against Trump and for the broader, and legally untested, question of whether an ex-president can be prosecuted for actions taken in the White House. It will also likely set the stage for further appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, which last month declined a request to weigh in but could still get involved later.

A swift decision is crucial for special counsel Jack Smith and his team, who are eager to get the case — now paused pending the appeal — to trial before the November election. But Trump’s lawyers, in addition to seeking to get the case dismissed, are hoping to benefit from a protracted appeals process that could delay the trial well past its scheduled March 4 start date, including until potentially after the election.

Underscoring the importance to both sides, Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner, attended Tuesday’s arguments even though the Iowa caucuses are just one week away and despite the fact that there’s no requirement that defendants appear in person for such proceedings. Making his first court appearance in Washington since his arraignment in August, Trump sat at the defense table, watching closely and occasionally taking notes and speaking with his lawyers.

His appearance and his comments afterward underscored his broader effort to portray himself as the victim of a justice system he claims is politicized. Though there’s no evidence Biden has had any influence on the case, Trump’s argument could resonate with Republican voters in Iowa as they prepare to launch the presidential nomination process.

After the hearing, Trump spoke to reporters at The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, which used to be the Trump International Hotel, calling Tuesday “a very momentous day.” He insisted he did nothing wrong and claimed he was being prosecuted for political reasons.

“A president has to have immunity,” he said.

Former presidents enjoy broad immunity from lawsuits for actions taken as part of their official White House duties. But because no former president before Trump has ever been indicted, courts have never before addressed whether that protection extends to criminal prosecution.

Trump’s lawyers insist that it does, arguing that courts have no authority to scrutinize a president’s official acts and that the prosecution of their client represents a dramatic departure from more than two centuries of American history that would open the door to future politically motivated cases.

With less than a month to go before voting begins, Donald Trump ‘s Republican rivals are once again rallying to his defense, this time after Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled to remove him from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.

Just as they had following Trump’s successive indictments as he racked up 91 criminal charges, the GOP front-runner’s opponents cast the landmark decision — the first time in history the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate and one the former president has vowed to appeal — as inappropriate, a “stunt” and an “attack on democracy.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis charged the court’s ruling was a plot to ensure Trump wins the nomination because Democrats view him as the weakest Republican candidate.

“Look, it’s unfair. They’re abusing power, 100%,” he told an audience in Urbandale, Iowa, on Wednesday morning. “But the question is: Is that going to work? And I think they have a playbook that unfortunately will work and it’ll give Biden or the Democrat or whoever, the ability to skate through this thing. That’s their plan.”

The court’s ruling once again highlighted a defining dynamic of the GOP primary: While the trail of lawsuits and criminal charges following Trump had been expected to seriously damage his candidacy, they have instead had the opposite effect among Republicans. Primary voters — including many who had been open to backing rival candidates — have rallied around the former president, who has cast himself as the victim of a politically motivated effort by Democratic President Joe Biden and his administration to damage his chief political rival.

“I think that it confirms Americans’ deepest suspicions that many of our institutions can be weaponized against them. So it serves as a proof point for the former president,” said Republican strategist Devin O’Malley, who served as communications chief to former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign.

O’Malley noted all of the justices on the Colorado court were appointed by Democratic governors. “On its face this is just so plainly partisan that it only helps him,” he said.

Indeed, even former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a fierce Trump critic who has blasted the other candidates for being overly deferential to the former president, slammed the ruling as ill-advised.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a code of ethics earlier today following months of financial scandals tied to Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

The nonbinding code of conduct, undersigned by all nine justices, “represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct,” according to the Court.

The code outlines five canons that justices should abide by. According to the document released, justices should (1) “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary,” (2) “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities,” (3) “perform the duties of office fairly, impartially and diligently,” they (4) “may engage in extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the obligations of the judicial office” and (5) should “refrain from political activity.”

Given the milieu of the Court, the multiple sections guiding financial and fiduciary activities are of particular note. Since the start of the year, public polling has shown falling approval of the Supreme Court amidst repeated controversies surrounding transparency and ethics, including multiple ProPublica reports detailing undisclosed gifts from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow to Thomas and his family, which have spurred calls for change and reform at the nation’s highest court.

However, immediately apparent is the lack of an enforcement mechanism in this new code of conduct. As Take Back the Court’s President Sarah Lipton-Lubet pointed out in a statement, there are “53 uses of the word ‘should’ and only 6 of the word ‘must,’” and emphasized that “the Court cannot police itself.”

Professor Leah Litman, who teaches constitutional law and federal courts at the University of Michigan, criticized the financial guidelines, which allow justices to fundraise for law-related nonprofits, calling it “a hall pass for the Federalist Society galas and Koch Network 501c3 and 501c4 [organizations] ”

At the beginning of the month, 66 organizations led by the Alliance for Justice called for Thomas to resign from the Court immediately, citing the justice’s “egregious” conduct that “undermines the ordinary citizen’s faith in the rule of law, further destabilizing our democracy.”

It remains to be seen if an enforcement mechanism will be rolled out.

As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes.

States shouldn’t “shrug their shoulders” and pass up funds, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s troubling that a state would decide to take a complete pass on the funding because part of the reason for the funding is to figure out whether you even have lead,” Olson said.

The Biden administration wants to remove all 9.2 million lead pipes carrying water to U.S. homes. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. The 2021 infrastructure law provides $15 billion to find and replace them. That money will help a lot, but it isn’t enough to get all the toxic pipes out of the ground. State programs distribute the federal funds to utilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is reviewing state requests to decline funds but did not provide a full list of states that have said no so far. That information will be available in October, officials said. States that declined first-year funds can still accept them during the remaining four years.

“EPA has been working closely with our state partners on utilizing Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding that is available,” the agency said.

Lead pipes are far more common in some states such as Michigan and Illinois, which each have hundreds of thousands. The harm there is clear. Flint’s lead crisis elevated lead in tap water to a national health issue. Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, drank water with too much lead for years until all their lead pipes were replaced. In response, however, Michigan is clamoring for as much money as it can get to remove lead.

The states that declined funds have fewer problematic pipes, but that doesn’t mean lead isn’t an issue. There’s concern about lead in some Maine schools. Portland, Oregon, has struggled with high lead levels for years, although recent tests have been better and officials say the issue isn’t lead pipes, but household plumbing.

Washington accepted $85,000 of $63 million it could have taken and said the decision was based on the limited number of water systems that wanted loans. The EPA estimates the state has 22,000 lead pipes. Oregon, which could have accepted $37 million, said inventories are going to be done with existing staff and resources, adding that utilities have no known lead lines. The EPA projected that the state has 3,530 lead pipes — a relatively small number — based in part on information collected from utilities.

Groups opposed to Maine’s new law expanding abortion access won’t attempt to nullify the statute through a so-called People’s Veto referendum.

Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, leader of the Speak Up for LIFE group, said Wednesday that allies have decided to focus their resources on electing candidates who are opposed to abortions instead of collecting signatures and running a referendum campaign.

“At the end of the day, we want to put our effort into the most effective place possible,” Libby, a Republican from Auburn, told The Associated Press. That means flipping legislative seats, she said, particularly in the Maine House.

Wednesday marked the deadline to notify state officials of a People’s Veto, a constitutional provision allowing citizens to repeal legislation through a statewide vote. To move forward, more than 67,000 signatures would have been needed.

Mills presented the bill expanding abortion access after a Yarmouth woman came forward with her story about having to travel to Colorado for an abortion after learning at week 32 of her pregnancy that her unborn son had a fatal condition that would not allow him to survive.

Critics said the law’s language was broader than necessary if the goal was simply to allow abortions in instances of a fatal fetal anomaly later in a pregnancy. They also said the bill put too much power in the hands of doctors.

Passage was considered a foregone conclusion in the Legislature where Democrats controlled both chambers, and there were enough co-sponsors to ensure passage. But the vote was close in the House after emotional testimony.

Beside Maine, six states leave the decision to get an abortion to doctors and their patients, without restrictions. They are Alaska, Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont, plus Washington, D.C.

Police in California are not immune from civil lawsuits for misconduct that happens while they investigate crimes, the state Supreme Court ruled this week, overruling a precedent made by lower courts that had helped protect law enforcement from litigation for decades.

The justices on Thursday unanimously rejected an argument by Riverside County that its sheriff’s deputies couldn’t be sued for leaving a man’s naked body lying in plain sight for eight hours while officers investigated his killing.

California law protects police from being sued for any harm that happens during a prosecution process — even if the officer acted “maliciously and without probable cause.” Now, the Supreme Court says police can be sued for misconduct during investigations.

The ruling cites previous case law that defined investigatory actions as those before charges are filed.

“The potential for factual overlap between investigations and prosecutions does not justify treating them as one and the same,” Justice Leondra Kruger wrote in the ruling.

Kruger noted the court issued a similar ruling in 1974. But in 1994, a state appeals court adopted a broader interpretation to shield police from lawsuits stemming from conduct during investigations. Lower courts have been relying on that ruling to dismiss misconduct lawsuits against law enforcement that did not involve prosecutions.

A lawyer representing Riverside County in the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

A Texas appeals court on Friday dismissed a billionaire’s defamation lawsuit against Democrat Beto O’Rouke that was brought after O’Rourke criticized a $1 million campaign contribution to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

The ruling by the Third Court of Appeals in Austin comes more than a year after O’Rourke repeatedly made critical remarks about the donation during a failed run for governor, at one point saying that it “looks like a bribe to me.”

The contribution came from Kelcy Warren, chairman of pipeline company Energy Transfer, which reported about $2.4 billion in earnings related to the catastrophic February 2021 winter storm that sent natural gas prices soaring in Texas.

Warren, a major Republican donor, accused O’Rourke of trying to humiliate him and discourage other Abbott supporters from making campaign donations.

In the court’s opinion, Chief Justice Darlene Byrne wrote that a reasonable person would view O’Rourke’s statements as “the type of rhetorical hyperbole that is commonplace in political campaigns.”

Dean Pamphilis, an attorney for Warrren, said the decision would be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.

Abbott’s campaign said at the time that it was not involved in the lawsuit. The governor went on to easily beat O’Rourke and win a third term.