North Carolina
Judge rejects Democrats’ plea for early voting sites at 3 colleges
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge refused Sunday to help in attempts to open early voting sites at three public North Carolina universities, declining requests to overrule decisions by Republican-controlled elections boards leading up to the state’s upcoming primary.
U.S. District Judge William Osteen rejected arguments by the College Democrats of North Carolina and some students that they were likely to win a recent lawsuit because decisions by GOP board members placed undue burdens on the right to vote.
The decision by Osteen — nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush — to deny a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order can be appealed.
Early in-person voting for the March 3 primary begins this coming Thursday. It features nomination races for U.S. Senate and House, the legislature and local elections.
Osteen also wrote that formally backing efforts to open the sites so close to voting could risk confusion.
Osteen’s ruling marks a key decision on policy preferences by the State Board of Elections and elections boards in all 100 counties since a state law recently shifted them from having Democratic majorities to Republican majorities.
The College Democrats of North Carolina — an arm of the state party — and four voters sued in late January accusing the state board and boards in Jackson and Guilford counties of violating the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit involves votes by the state board and the two county boards to not include early voting sites at Western Carolina University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University, also in Greensboro. A&T is the largest historically Black university in the country.
An early voting site at Western Carolina has operated regularly since 2016. Sites at the Greensboro campuses have been offered in recent presidential-year elections but not in midterm elections.
Voting sites are offered at college campuses elsewhere in the state. Same-day registration is available at early voting sites.
Without the sites, the lawsuit says, students will be forced to travel off-campus to vote, imposing time and money upon those least familiar with voting.
Lawyers for the boards defended the panels’ actions, writing in legal briefs that there is no requirement boards must retain voting sites used in previous election cycles, and that site decisions were based on reasonable circumstances like parking access and past turnout.
New York
Judge: Feds can’t withhold social service funds from 5 blue states amid fraud claims
A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must keep funds flowing to child care subsidies and other social service programs in five Democratic-controlled states — at least for now.
U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick in New York, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, granted the states’ request for a preliminary injunction and a stay against the administration to bar it from withholding the money while a lawsuit works its way through the courts.
The states affected include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The five states said they receive a total of more than $10 billion a year from the programs.
Attorneys representing the federal government in the case did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday night. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
Two temporary rulings had been issued in January, when the states sued, that blocked the federal government from holding back the funding, with the latest set to expire on Friday.
The programs in question are the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for 1.3 million children from low-income families nationally; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance and job training; and the Social Services Block Grant, a smaller fund that provides money for a variety of programs.
“Every day, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rely on these funds to pay for necessities and provide their children a safe place to learn,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This illegal funding freeze would have caused severe chaos in the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in our state. I am proud to have secured another victory in this case to put a stop to it.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta added in a statement, “The Trump Administration’s actions are not only unlawful — they are cruel, targeting the most vulnerable among us.”
The government’s explanation of its actions has shifted.
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was withholding the money, it said there was “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally. It did not initially explain where the information came from. But in a court hearing, a federal government lawyer said it was largely in reaction to news reports about possible fraud.
HHS did not immediately return an email request for comment.
And while the government’s initial news release said it “froze” access to money, federal lawyers told the judge that wasn’t what was happening. Rather, they said, the Trump administration was requiring more information from those states.
The government says it wants more records from the group of states, including names and Social Security numbers for beneficiaries of some of the programs.
Advocates warn that cutting off the child care subsidies could have deep impacts. Day cares that accept the subsidies could face the risk of layoffs or closures. And that would affect both the lower-income families who receive the subsidies and families who don’t. And for many families, losing child care can make it hard or impossible to work.
The Trump administration has targeted multiple programs in Minnesota due to previous fraud cases and new allegations, mostly involving members of the state’s Somali community.
Besides the heightened requirements for the four other Democratic-led states, the administration also has required all states to submit more information about how they’re using money in the child care program before they can draw down the funds.
Georgia
Falcons rookie faces 5 felony charges, future with team at risk
ATLANTA (AP) — The attorney for Atlanta Falcons rookie James Pearce Jr. says Pearce “maintains his innocence” as he faces five felony charges following his arrest near Miami on Saturday night.
Pearce’s charges include fleeing police after what Doral police said was a domestic dispute with WNBA player Rickea Jackson. Pearce was arrested after crashing his car. His charges include two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated stalking.
Pearce posted bond of $20,500 Sunday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
“We look forward to working with the State Attorney’s office in fully investigating this case and uncovering the truth,” Pearce’s attorney, Jacob Nunez, said in a statement released to The Associated Press on Monday.
Pearce was given a pre-trial stay-away order from Jackson. Pearce and Jackson’s relationship began when both played at Tennessee. Jackson sat beside Pearce at the 2025 NFL draft.
The charges could threaten Pearce’s future with the team.
The Falcons traded their 2026 first-round draft pick to the Los Angeles Rams for the No. 26 overall pick in last year’s draft used to select Pearce. He then set a Falcons rookie record with a team-leading 10 1/2 sacks. The Falcons set a team record with 57 sacks, one year after finishing next to last in the league with only 31.
Pearce’s arrest and uncertain legal ramifications add significant difficulty to the challenge of building the team’s first winning season and playoff appearance since 2017.
Arizona
Judge strikes down old abortion restrictions that clash with voter-backed guarantees
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona must stop enforcing abortion restrictions that predate and contradict a 2024 voter-approved constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights, a judge ordered in a ruling released Friday.
Maricopa Superior Court Judge Greg Como found that the older laws present unnecessary obstacles to getting an abortion, including barring one if a woman was seeking it because the fetus had a non-fatal genetic abnormality, and requiring patients to see a doctor twice, at least 24 hours apart, before obtaining one.
He also took issue with the laws because they required abortion seekers to undergo ultrasounds and Rh blood testing, and barred doctors from prescribing abortion pills by telehealth and mailing them to patients. Pills are the most common way abortion is obtained.
“Each of these laws infringe on a woman’s ‘autonomous decision making’ by mandating medical procedures and disclosure of information regardless of the patient’s needs and wishes,” Como wrote.
Kris Mayes, the state’s Democratic attorney general, supported the plaintiffs.
Two of Arizona’s top legislative Republicans — House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen — intervened in the lawsuit in support of the restrictions, arguing that abortion rights advocates wanted to sweep away health and safety regulations in the name of the constitutional amendment.
Peterson’s office said the ruling will be appealed.
In Arizona and many other states, abortion law has been in flux since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and cleared the way for states to ban abortion. Even after voters approved the abortion rights amendment, throwing out a 2022 law that banned abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation, some older restrictions remained on the books.
Two obstetricians and the Arizona Medical Association sued last year over the continued enforcement of the old laws. They said the voter-backed constitutional amendment guaranteed the “fundamental right to abortion” and specifically barred the state from enacting, adopting or enforcing a law that “denies, restricts or interferes with that right before fetal viability.”
“My patients will no longer be forced to make additional unnecessary visits for care, nor will I be required to give them disinformation that stigmatizes abortion.” Dr. Laura Mercer, an OB-GYN and member of the board at the Arizona Medical Association, said in a statement Friday.
Ingrid Duran, the National Right to Life Committee’s state legislative director, told The Associated Press on Friday that she’s disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. She said the group intends to work on educating people in Arizona about its position to “expand our base into more pro-lifers who believe that the unborn child deserves protection.” But she said the group doesn’t expect the ruling to be overturned.
Since Roe was overturned, voters in several states have passed laws allowing abortion, while voters in others have rejected such measures. Missouri voters will decide this year whether to overturn a voter-backed amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.
Judge rejects Democrats’ plea for early voting sites at 3 colleges
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge refused Sunday to help in attempts to open early voting sites at three public North Carolina universities, declining requests to overrule decisions by Republican-controlled elections boards leading up to the state’s upcoming primary.
U.S. District Judge William Osteen rejected arguments by the College Democrats of North Carolina and some students that they were likely to win a recent lawsuit because decisions by GOP board members placed undue burdens on the right to vote.
The decision by Osteen — nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush — to deny a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order can be appealed.
Early in-person voting for the March 3 primary begins this coming Thursday. It features nomination races for U.S. Senate and House, the legislature and local elections.
Osteen also wrote that formally backing efforts to open the sites so close to voting could risk confusion.
Osteen’s ruling marks a key decision on policy preferences by the State Board of Elections and elections boards in all 100 counties since a state law recently shifted them from having Democratic majorities to Republican majorities.
The College Democrats of North Carolina — an arm of the state party — and four voters sued in late January accusing the state board and boards in Jackson and Guilford counties of violating the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit involves votes by the state board and the two county boards to not include early voting sites at Western Carolina University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University, also in Greensboro. A&T is the largest historically Black university in the country.
An early voting site at Western Carolina has operated regularly since 2016. Sites at the Greensboro campuses have been offered in recent presidential-year elections but not in midterm elections.
Voting sites are offered at college campuses elsewhere in the state. Same-day registration is available at early voting sites.
Without the sites, the lawsuit says, students will be forced to travel off-campus to vote, imposing time and money upon those least familiar with voting.
Lawyers for the boards defended the panels’ actions, writing in legal briefs that there is no requirement boards must retain voting sites used in previous election cycles, and that site decisions were based on reasonable circumstances like parking access and past turnout.
New York
Judge: Feds can’t withhold social service funds from 5 blue states amid fraud claims
A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must keep funds flowing to child care subsidies and other social service programs in five Democratic-controlled states — at least for now.
U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick in New York, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, granted the states’ request for a preliminary injunction and a stay against the administration to bar it from withholding the money while a lawsuit works its way through the courts.
The states affected include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The five states said they receive a total of more than $10 billion a year from the programs.
Attorneys representing the federal government in the case did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday night. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
Two temporary rulings had been issued in January, when the states sued, that blocked the federal government from holding back the funding, with the latest set to expire on Friday.
The programs in question are the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for 1.3 million children from low-income families nationally; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance and job training; and the Social Services Block Grant, a smaller fund that provides money for a variety of programs.
“Every day, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rely on these funds to pay for necessities and provide their children a safe place to learn,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This illegal funding freeze would have caused severe chaos in the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in our state. I am proud to have secured another victory in this case to put a stop to it.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta added in a statement, “The Trump Administration’s actions are not only unlawful — they are cruel, targeting the most vulnerable among us.”
The government’s explanation of its actions has shifted.
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was withholding the money, it said there was “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally. It did not initially explain where the information came from. But in a court hearing, a federal government lawyer said it was largely in reaction to news reports about possible fraud.
HHS did not immediately return an email request for comment.
And while the government’s initial news release said it “froze” access to money, federal lawyers told the judge that wasn’t what was happening. Rather, they said, the Trump administration was requiring more information from those states.
The government says it wants more records from the group of states, including names and Social Security numbers for beneficiaries of some of the programs.
Advocates warn that cutting off the child care subsidies could have deep impacts. Day cares that accept the subsidies could face the risk of layoffs or closures. And that would affect both the lower-income families who receive the subsidies and families who don’t. And for many families, losing child care can make it hard or impossible to work.
The Trump administration has targeted multiple programs in Minnesota due to previous fraud cases and new allegations, mostly involving members of the state’s Somali community.
Besides the heightened requirements for the four other Democratic-led states, the administration also has required all states to submit more information about how they’re using money in the child care program before they can draw down the funds.
Georgia
Falcons rookie faces 5 felony charges, future with team at risk
ATLANTA (AP) — The attorney for Atlanta Falcons rookie James Pearce Jr. says Pearce “maintains his innocence” as he faces five felony charges following his arrest near Miami on Saturday night.
Pearce’s charges include fleeing police after what Doral police said was a domestic dispute with WNBA player Rickea Jackson. Pearce was arrested after crashing his car. His charges include two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated stalking.
Pearce posted bond of $20,500 Sunday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
“We look forward to working with the State Attorney’s office in fully investigating this case and uncovering the truth,” Pearce’s attorney, Jacob Nunez, said in a statement released to The Associated Press on Monday.
Pearce was given a pre-trial stay-away order from Jackson. Pearce and Jackson’s relationship began when both played at Tennessee. Jackson sat beside Pearce at the 2025 NFL draft.
The charges could threaten Pearce’s future with the team.
The Falcons traded their 2026 first-round draft pick to the Los Angeles Rams for the No. 26 overall pick in last year’s draft used to select Pearce. He then set a Falcons rookie record with a team-leading 10 1/2 sacks. The Falcons set a team record with 57 sacks, one year after finishing next to last in the league with only 31.
Pearce’s arrest and uncertain legal ramifications add significant difficulty to the challenge of building the team’s first winning season and playoff appearance since 2017.
Arizona
Judge strikes down old abortion restrictions that clash with voter-backed guarantees
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona must stop enforcing abortion restrictions that predate and contradict a 2024 voter-approved constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights, a judge ordered in a ruling released Friday.
Maricopa Superior Court Judge Greg Como found that the older laws present unnecessary obstacles to getting an abortion, including barring one if a woman was seeking it because the fetus had a non-fatal genetic abnormality, and requiring patients to see a doctor twice, at least 24 hours apart, before obtaining one.
He also took issue with the laws because they required abortion seekers to undergo ultrasounds and Rh blood testing, and barred doctors from prescribing abortion pills by telehealth and mailing them to patients. Pills are the most common way abortion is obtained.
“Each of these laws infringe on a woman’s ‘autonomous decision making’ by mandating medical procedures and disclosure of information regardless of the patient’s needs and wishes,” Como wrote.
Kris Mayes, the state’s Democratic attorney general, supported the plaintiffs.
Two of Arizona’s top legislative Republicans — House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen — intervened in the lawsuit in support of the restrictions, arguing that abortion rights advocates wanted to sweep away health and safety regulations in the name of the constitutional amendment.
Peterson’s office said the ruling will be appealed.
In Arizona and many other states, abortion law has been in flux since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and cleared the way for states to ban abortion. Even after voters approved the abortion rights amendment, throwing out a 2022 law that banned abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation, some older restrictions remained on the books.
Two obstetricians and the Arizona Medical Association sued last year over the continued enforcement of the old laws. They said the voter-backed constitutional amendment guaranteed the “fundamental right to abortion” and specifically barred the state from enacting, adopting or enforcing a law that “denies, restricts or interferes with that right before fetal viability.”
“My patients will no longer be forced to make additional unnecessary visits for care, nor will I be required to give them disinformation that stigmatizes abortion.” Dr. Laura Mercer, an OB-GYN and member of the board at the Arizona Medical Association, said in a statement Friday.
Ingrid Duran, the National Right to Life Committee’s state legislative director, told The Associated Press on Friday that she’s disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. She said the group intends to work on educating people in Arizona about its position to “expand our base into more pro-lifers who believe that the unborn child deserves protection.” But she said the group doesn’t expect the ruling to be overturned.
Since Roe was overturned, voters in several states have passed laws allowing abortion, while voters in others have rejected such measures. Missouri voters will decide this year whether to overturn a voter-backed amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.
