Washington
Trump-backed Missouri congressional map returns to the high court for the third time
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fight over Missouri’s congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time late Tuesday, after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Donald Trump.
The new map was drawn to help Republicans gain a U.S. House seat in the pivotal midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The Supreme Court has twice blocked efforts to use it in November.
The latest emergency appeal comes after an unusual federal appeals court ruling that ordered a last-minute return to a GOP-friendly map even after the Supreme Court halted such a move.
The justices had left in place a Missouri Supreme Court decision requiring the state to use its previous map. The state court ruled that the new districts could not take effect unless voters approved them in a statewide referendum.
The U.S. Supreme Court gave supporters of the new map until midday Wednesday to respond to the latest appeal.
The dispute has caused confusion for over a million potential voters who could be shuffled among districts. Absentee voting already is underway in Missouri using districts adopted in 2022, after the last census.
The new congressional map backed by Trump significantly reshapes a Kansas City-based district held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Republicans hope the map could help them win seven of the state’s eight House seats — one more than they currently hold.
Missouri’s redistricting battle has been the longest and most complex among roughly a dozen states that sought to change their U.S. House districts over the past year. Districts are usually redrawn at the start of each decade, after a census. But Trump spurred a spate of mid-decade redistricting last year when he urged Republican-led states to redraw districts to gain an edge in the midterm.
Utah
U.S. Justice Department charges Utah postal worker with dumping mail ballots in trash during primary
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state’s June primary, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said during a news conference that Damon Matai Seei was arrested Tuesday and appeared in federal court in Salt Lake City to be arraigned.
The 34-year-old from Payson, Utah, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of destruction or delay of mail. If convicted, he could face up to five years in federal prison. A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.
Seei was delivering mail in Eagle Mountain, a conservative suburb of Provo, when he threw the ballots and other mail into a dumpster in a church parking lot not long after his shift started, McCotter said.
Melissa Holyoak, the U.S. attorney for Utah, said Seei indicated to authorities that he had no political agenda and did not intend to discard the ballots. He told investigators in an interview that he acted out of “laziness,” throwing away mail to “lighten his workload,” according to court documents.
In a written statement quoted in court filings, Seei said he felt overwhelmed that day by the quantity of mail, and he decided to toss out advertisements so he could focus on other deliveries.
He told law enforcement he had set aside the ballots at the beginning of his shift, prosecutors said, arguing it was implausible that Seei didn’t know they were in the discard pile.
Most voters in Utah cast ballots by mail or deposit them in drop boxes. Nationwide, nearly a third of voters use mail-in ballots.
All active registered voters in Utah are automatically sent ballots by mail, though that system is set to end in 2029 under a new state law requiring voters to opt-in.
Several Eagle Mountain residents complained to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson that they never received their ballots, leading him to investigate. He determined that the rate of voter participation in the community was unusually low and learned through outreach that the number of voters who did not receive ballots was in the hundreds, according to court documents.
Seei is no longer employed by the Postal Service. The investigation remains ongoing, officials said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempts to impose new Postal Service rules that would have restricted mail voting for the midterm elections.
Texas
Judge orders state to have air conditioning at all prisons by 2030
DALLAS (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Texas to install air conditioning in all of its prisons by the end of 2029, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights.
The ruling was hailed as a major victory by advocates who have fought for years for air conditioning in prisons across Texas, where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must immediately begin developing a plan for the installations. He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right to not be given “cruel and unusual punishments.”
“Witnesses in this case who had been incarcerated in un-air-conditioned Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons described themselves and their fellow inmates getting sick, passing out, and reaching a level of desperation to cool off that made it ‘common’ to splash toilet water on themselves,” Pitman wrote in the ruling. “These are not humane conditions.”
The ruling said that the state prison agency has estimated that systemwide air conditioning would cost about $1.5 billion.
The state prison agency said Tuesday that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that it has “robust heat mitigation efforts in place” and is already committed to installing air conditioning in units. The agency said its number of air-conditioned beds has increased from 35,000 in 2018 to an expected 60,000 by the end of this year, and that the number will reach 90,000 in 2028.
Texas has about 143,000 people in prisons across the state.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, the former mortician serving a life sentence whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie.” Several prisoners’ rights groups then asked to join his legal fight and expand it.
In 2025, Pitman found that the extreme heat in Texas’ prisons was “plainly unconstitutional,” but declined at that time to order the state to immediately start installing air conditioning. The case then went to trial earlier this year.
The ruling said the agency has acknowledged that 23 people died in its facilities from heat-related causes between 1998 and 2012, and that the agency acknowledged three additional heat-related deaths in 2023. The judge wrote in the order that plaintiffs also presented “credible evidence” of additional deaths from 2023 to 2025 that were at least in part caused by heat.
Amite Dominick, founder and president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the ruling “made clear that the state cannot keep treating human lives as a budget line.”
“We will be watching every deadline in this order,” Dominick said.
Washington
Judge strikes down a Trump policy barring some immigrants from Head Start preschools
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Rhode Island has struck down a Trump administration directive that would have barred some immigrants from accessing certain federal programs, including Head Start preschools, community health clinics and adult education initiatives.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, temporarily barred his administration from moving forward with the rule last year, so it was never implemented.
On Monday, she made the injunction permanent.
Officials from the Republican administration had said the directive would stop “illegal aliens” from accessing federal benefits by reclassifying broad swaths of social services programs under a Clinton-era law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
But the rule also would have swept up many immigrants in the U.S. legally, including work and student visa holders. It also would have barred services from Temporary Protected Status holders, who are granted work permits if the U.S. government determines conditions in their home country are too dangerous to return, along with recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, who were brought to the country illegally as children and receive temporary protection from deportation and work authorization.
Those groups, which are considered “nonqualified aliens” under the law, are already unable to access full Medicaid benefits and federally funded food aid and cash assistance.
The Trump administration issued its directive in July 2025. Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia sued.
They said the change upended three decades of policy allowing people to access community health clinics, domestic violence shelters and Head Start centers without proving their immigration status. They warned the harms could spread, deterring any immigrant from seeking services and throwing up barriers even for U.S. citizens unable to document their legal status.
The new rules also would have put administrative burdens on underfunded social service agencies, including Head Start operators, which might have been forced to close if they were unable to comply with the directive’s new requirements, the lawsuit said.
In her ruling, McElroy declared the directive “unlawful” and said the Trump administration did not follow the proper avenues to rewrite the rules. She called the administration’s actions “procedurally invalid.” She added that the administration still could pursue rule changes through the federal notice-and-comment process, which officials bypassed when they issued the directive last year.
Requests for comment were sent to the departments named as defendants in the wide-ranging lawsuit. The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Head Start, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. The Labor Department referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was among those who sued, hailed the judge’s ruling.
“From cancer screenings to food banks to early childhood education, the federal government’s attempts to decimate the social safety net would have been catastrophic for working families,” James said.
Trump-backed Missouri congressional map returns to the high court for the third time
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fight over Missouri’s congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time late Tuesday, after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Donald Trump.
The new map was drawn to help Republicans gain a U.S. House seat in the pivotal midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The Supreme Court has twice blocked efforts to use it in November.
The latest emergency appeal comes after an unusual federal appeals court ruling that ordered a last-minute return to a GOP-friendly map even after the Supreme Court halted such a move.
The justices had left in place a Missouri Supreme Court decision requiring the state to use its previous map. The state court ruled that the new districts could not take effect unless voters approved them in a statewide referendum.
The U.S. Supreme Court gave supporters of the new map until midday Wednesday to respond to the latest appeal.
The dispute has caused confusion for over a million potential voters who could be shuffled among districts. Absentee voting already is underway in Missouri using districts adopted in 2022, after the last census.
The new congressional map backed by Trump significantly reshapes a Kansas City-based district held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Republicans hope the map could help them win seven of the state’s eight House seats — one more than they currently hold.
Missouri’s redistricting battle has been the longest and most complex among roughly a dozen states that sought to change their U.S. House districts over the past year. Districts are usually redrawn at the start of each decade, after a census. But Trump spurred a spate of mid-decade redistricting last year when he urged Republican-led states to redraw districts to gain an edge in the midterm.
Utah
U.S. Justice Department charges Utah postal worker with dumping mail ballots in trash during primary
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state’s June primary, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said during a news conference that Damon Matai Seei was arrested Tuesday and appeared in federal court in Salt Lake City to be arraigned.
The 34-year-old from Payson, Utah, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of destruction or delay of mail. If convicted, he could face up to five years in federal prison. A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.
Seei was delivering mail in Eagle Mountain, a conservative suburb of Provo, when he threw the ballots and other mail into a dumpster in a church parking lot not long after his shift started, McCotter said.
Melissa Holyoak, the U.S. attorney for Utah, said Seei indicated to authorities that he had no political agenda and did not intend to discard the ballots. He told investigators in an interview that he acted out of “laziness,” throwing away mail to “lighten his workload,” according to court documents.
In a written statement quoted in court filings, Seei said he felt overwhelmed that day by the quantity of mail, and he decided to toss out advertisements so he could focus on other deliveries.
He told law enforcement he had set aside the ballots at the beginning of his shift, prosecutors said, arguing it was implausible that Seei didn’t know they were in the discard pile.
Most voters in Utah cast ballots by mail or deposit them in drop boxes. Nationwide, nearly a third of voters use mail-in ballots.
All active registered voters in Utah are automatically sent ballots by mail, though that system is set to end in 2029 under a new state law requiring voters to opt-in.
Several Eagle Mountain residents complained to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson that they never received their ballots, leading him to investigate. He determined that the rate of voter participation in the community was unusually low and learned through outreach that the number of voters who did not receive ballots was in the hundreds, according to court documents.
Seei is no longer employed by the Postal Service. The investigation remains ongoing, officials said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempts to impose new Postal Service rules that would have restricted mail voting for the midterm elections.
Texas
Judge orders state to have air conditioning at all prisons by 2030
DALLAS (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Texas to install air conditioning in all of its prisons by the end of 2029, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights.
The ruling was hailed as a major victory by advocates who have fought for years for air conditioning in prisons across Texas, where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must immediately begin developing a plan for the installations. He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right to not be given “cruel and unusual punishments.”
“Witnesses in this case who had been incarcerated in un-air-conditioned Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons described themselves and their fellow inmates getting sick, passing out, and reaching a level of desperation to cool off that made it ‘common’ to splash toilet water on themselves,” Pitman wrote in the ruling. “These are not humane conditions.”
The ruling said that the state prison agency has estimated that systemwide air conditioning would cost about $1.5 billion.
The state prison agency said Tuesday that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that it has “robust heat mitigation efforts in place” and is already committed to installing air conditioning in units. The agency said its number of air-conditioned beds has increased from 35,000 in 2018 to an expected 60,000 by the end of this year, and that the number will reach 90,000 in 2028.
Texas has about 143,000 people in prisons across the state.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, the former mortician serving a life sentence whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie.” Several prisoners’ rights groups then asked to join his legal fight and expand it.
In 2025, Pitman found that the extreme heat in Texas’ prisons was “plainly unconstitutional,” but declined at that time to order the state to immediately start installing air conditioning. The case then went to trial earlier this year.
The ruling said the agency has acknowledged that 23 people died in its facilities from heat-related causes between 1998 and 2012, and that the agency acknowledged three additional heat-related deaths in 2023. The judge wrote in the order that plaintiffs also presented “credible evidence” of additional deaths from 2023 to 2025 that were at least in part caused by heat.
Amite Dominick, founder and president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the ruling “made clear that the state cannot keep treating human lives as a budget line.”
“We will be watching every deadline in this order,” Dominick said.
Washington
Judge strikes down a Trump policy barring some immigrants from Head Start preschools
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Rhode Island has struck down a Trump administration directive that would have barred some immigrants from accessing certain federal programs, including Head Start preschools, community health clinics and adult education initiatives.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, temporarily barred his administration from moving forward with the rule last year, so it was never implemented.
On Monday, she made the injunction permanent.
Officials from the Republican administration had said the directive would stop “illegal aliens” from accessing federal benefits by reclassifying broad swaths of social services programs under a Clinton-era law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
But the rule also would have swept up many immigrants in the U.S. legally, including work and student visa holders. It also would have barred services from Temporary Protected Status holders, who are granted work permits if the U.S. government determines conditions in their home country are too dangerous to return, along with recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, who were brought to the country illegally as children and receive temporary protection from deportation and work authorization.
Those groups, which are considered “nonqualified aliens” under the law, are already unable to access full Medicaid benefits and federally funded food aid and cash assistance.
The Trump administration issued its directive in July 2025. Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia sued.
They said the change upended three decades of policy allowing people to access community health clinics, domestic violence shelters and Head Start centers without proving their immigration status. They warned the harms could spread, deterring any immigrant from seeking services and throwing up barriers even for U.S. citizens unable to document their legal status.
The new rules also would have put administrative burdens on underfunded social service agencies, including Head Start operators, which might have been forced to close if they were unable to comply with the directive’s new requirements, the lawsuit said.
In her ruling, McElroy declared the directive “unlawful” and said the Trump administration did not follow the proper avenues to rewrite the rules. She called the administration’s actions “procedurally invalid.” She added that the administration still could pursue rule changes through the federal notice-and-comment process, which officials bypassed when they issued the directive last year.
Requests for comment were sent to the departments named as defendants in the wide-ranging lawsuit. The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Head Start, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. The Labor Department referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was among those who sued, hailed the judge’s ruling.
“From cancer screenings to food banks to early childhood education, the federal government’s attempts to decimate the social safety net would have been catastrophic for working families,” James said.
