PORTLAND, Ore. — Two weeks of storms that have turned roads into icy death traps, frozen people to death from Oregon to Tennessee and caused power outages that could take weeks to fix continued to sock both coasts with another round of weather chaos on Friday.

The rain, snow, wind and bitterly cold temperatures have been blamed for at least 50 deaths in the U.S. over the past two weeks as a series of storms moved across the country. Schools and roads have closed and air traffic has been snarled

There is hope. The forecast for next week calls for above average temperatures across almost the whole country, according to the National Weather Service.

Snow was falling in New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., on Friday. But the biggest problems remained in places hit hard by storms earlier in the week.

On the West Coast, Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night, nearly a week after the start of a crippling ice storm.

Thousands of residents have been without power since last weekend in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of the freezing rain.

“We lost power on Saturday, and we were told yesterday that it would be over two weeks before it’s back on,” said Jamie Kenworthy, a real estate broker in Jasper in Lane County.

More than 100,000 customers remained without electricity Friday morning in the state after back-to-back storms, according to poweroutage.us.

Portland Public Schools canceled classes for the fourth straight day amid concerns about icy roads and water damage to buildings, and state offices in Portland were also ordered closed Friday.

Ice was also a problem in the South. Snow and freezing rain added another coat of ice in Tennessee on Thursday. More than 9 inches of snow has fallen around Nashville since Sunday, nearly twice the yearly average.

Authorities blamed at least 17 deaths on the weather in Tennessee. Several were from traffic wrecks. In Washington County, a patient in an ambulance and someone in a pickup were killed in a head-on crash when the truck lost control on a snowy road.

Exposure to cold was deadly, too. A 25-year-old man was found dead in a mobile home in Lewisburg after a space heater fell over and turned off.

“There was ice on the walls in there,” Marshall County Chief Deputy Bob Johnson said.

The cold broke so many water mains in Memphis that the entire city was placed on a boil water notice because the water pressure was so low, Memphis, Light, Gas and Water said.

Bottled water was being given out in at least two locations in the city Friday.

A significant drop in blood donations led Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Blood Assurance to recommend that more than 70 hospitals in five states halt elective surgeries until Wednesday to let the organization rebuild its inventory. In a news release Thursday, the group cited the weather and several massive blood transfusions in the previous 24 hours in its plea to the hospitals in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The cold in Washington state was blamed for five deaths. The people — most of them presumed homeless — died from exposure to cold in just four days last week in Seattle as temperatures plummeted to well below freezing, the medical examiner’s office said.

Two people died from exposure as far south as Louisiana, where temperatures in part of the state stayed below freezing for more than two days.

On Thursday, Will Compton of the nonprofit Open Table Nashville, which helps homeless people, stopped his SUV outside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to hand out warm hats, blankets, protein drinks and socks as icy rain fell.

“People who are poor and people who are homeless are getting hit the hardest,” Compton said.

Aaron Robison, 62, has been staying at one of Nashville’s warming centers and said the cold wouldn’t have bothered him when he was younger. But now with arthritis in his hip and having to rely on two canes, he needed to get out of the cold.

“Thank God for people helping people on the streets. That’s a blessing,” he said.

On Friday, more bitterly cold air was spilling into the Midwest from Canada. Several states were under an advisory as forecasters warned wind chills dipping to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit could be common through Sunday morning.

Since extreme cold weather set in last week, more than 60 oil spills and other environmental incidents have been reported in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields. Wind chills dipped as low as minus-70 degrees F have strained workers and equipment and regulators said the extreme weather strained workers and made accidents more likely.

Lake-enhanced snow finally moved out of Buffalo, New York, late Thursday after burying parts of the city and some suburbs in five feet of snow in five days. The Buffalo Bills renewed their call for snow shovelers Friday, offering $20 an hour for help digging out Highmark Stadium before this Sunday’s divisional playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

The West Virginia Legislature left after a brief session Friday because not enough lawmakers could get through snow-covered highways to the Capitol to vote on bills.

In Washington, D.C., snow fell softly and the streets around the U.S. Capitol were silent. Schools closed again for the second time in a week and the government was on a two-hour delay. President Joe Biden still planned to host mayors from around the country on Friday, though, and was still heading to his Delaware beach home for the weekend.

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Associated Press journalists Jonathan Mattise and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville; Adrian Sainz in Memphis; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Colleen Long in Washington, D.C.; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia South Carolina, contributed.

SANTA FE, N.M. — A grand jury indicted Alec Baldwin on Friday on an involuntary manslaughter charge in a 2021 fatal shooting during a rehearsal on a movie set in New Mexico, reviving a dormant case against the actor.

Special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in Santa Fe this week, months after receiving a new analysis of the gun that was used. They declined to answer questions after spending about a day and a half presenting their case to the grand jury.

Defense attorneys for Baldwin indicated they’ll fight the charge.

“We look forward to our day in court,” said Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, defense attorneys for Baldwin, in an email.

While the proceeding is shrouded in secrecy, two of the witnesses seen at the courthouse included crew members — one who was present when the fatal shot was fired and another who had walked off the set the day before due to safety concerns.

Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger, and the gun fired.

The charge has again put Baldwin in legal trouble and created the possibility of prison time for an actor who has been a TV and movie mainstay for nearly 40 years, with roles in the early blockbuster “The Hunt for Red October,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” and the sitcom “30 Rock.”

The indictment provides prosecutors with two alternative standards for pursuing an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in the death of Hutchins. One would be based on negligent use of a firearm, and the other alleges felony misconduct “with the total disregard or indifference for the safety of others.”

Judges recently agreed to put on hold several civil lawsuits seeking compensation from Baldwin and producers of “Rust” after prosecutors said they would present their case to a grand jury. Plaintiffs in those suits include members of the film crew.

Los Angeles-based attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the slain cinematographer’s parents and younger sister in a civil case, said Friday that her clients have been seeking the truth about what happened the day Hutchins was killed and will be looking forward to Baldwin’s trial.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers firm in Los Angeles, pointed to previous missteps by prosecutors, saying they will need to do more than present ballistics evidence to make a case that Baldwin had a broader responsibility and legal duty when it came to handling the gun on the set.

Special prosecutors dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in April, saying they were informed the gun might have been modified before the shooting and malfunctioned. They later pivoted and began weighing whether to refile a charge against Baldwin after receiving a new analysis of the gun.

The analysis from experts in ballistics and forensic testing relied on replacement parts to reassemble the gun fired by Baldwin, after parts of the pistol were broken during testing by the FBI. The report examined the gun and markings it left on a spent cartridge to conclude that the trigger had to have been pulled or depressed.

The analysis led by Lucien Haag of Forensic Science Services in Arizona stated that although Baldwin repeatedly denied pulling the trigger, “given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver.”

The weapons supervisor on the movie set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering in the case. Her trial is scheduled to begin in February.

“Rust” assistant director and safety coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to unsafe handling of a firearm last March and received a suspended sentence of six months of probation. He agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the shooting.

An earlier FBI report on the agency’s analysis of the gun found that, as is common with firearms of that design, it could go off without pulling the trigger if force was applied to an uncocked hammer, such as by dropping the weapon.

The only way the testers could get it to fire was by striking the gun with a mallet while the hammer was down and resting on the cartridge, or by pulling the trigger while it was fully cocked. The gun eventually broke during testing.

The 2021 shooting resulted in a series of civil lawsuits, including wrongful death claims filed by members of Hutchins’ family, centered on accusations that the defendants were lax with safety standards. Baldwin and other defendants have disputed those allegations.

The Rust Movie Productions company has paid a $100,000 fine to state workplace safety regulators after a scathing narrative of failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set before the fatal shooting.

The filming of “Rust” resumed last year in Montana, under an agreement with the cinematographer’s widower, Matthew Hutchins, that made him an executive producer.

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Associated Press journalist Susan Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque.

TOKYO — Japan hopes to make the world’s first “pinpoint landing” on the moon early Saturday, joining a modern push for lunar contact with roots in the Cold War-era space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Japan’s attempt to bring down its lander at a precise location follows the April failure of a Japanese company’s spacecraft that crashed while attempting to land on the moon.

As Japan and others look to enter a club so far occupied by only the United States, the Soviet Union, India and China, victory would mean international scientific and diplomatic accolades and potential domestic political gains.

Failure would mean a very expensive and public embarrassment.

Here’s a look at high-profile recent and upcoming attempts, and what they might mean, before Japan’s moon landing.

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THE UNITED STATES

NASA plans to send astronauts to fly around the moon next year, and to land there in 2026.

Just this week, however, a U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, said its lunar lander will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere after a failed moonshot.

The lander, named Peregrine, developed a fuel leak that forced Astrobotic to abandon its attempt to make the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years. The company suspects a stuck valve caused a tank to rupture.

NASA is working to commercialize lunar deliveries by private businesses while the U.S. government tries to get astronauts back to the moon.

For now, the United States’ ability to spend large sums and marshal supply chains give it an advantage over China and other moon rivals. Private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made crewed space missions a priority.

Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, plans to launch its own lunar lander next month.

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INDIA

Last year, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, where scientists believe that perpetually darkened craters may hold frozen water that could aid future missions.

In 2019, a software glitch caused an Indian lander to crash on its lunar descent. So the $75 million success in August brought widespread jubilation, with people cheering in the streets and declaring India’s rise as a scientific superpower.

Indian scientists said that the next step is a manned lunar mission.

The success is seen as key to boosting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity before a crucial general election this year.

India has been pushing for a space program since the 1960s and aims to visit the International Space Station next year in collaboration with the United States.

New Delhi also sees victory in space as important in its rivalry with nuclear-armed neighbor China. Relations between India and China have plunged since deadly border clashes in 2020.

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CHINA

China landed on the moon in 2013, and last year launched a three-person crew for its orbiting space station. It hopes to put astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.

In 2020, a Chinese capsule returned to Earth from the moon with the first fresh lunar rock samples in more than 40 years. China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the USSR and the United States to put a person into space.

China’s space ambitions are linked to its rivalry with the United States as the world’s two largest economies compete for diplomatic, political and military influence in Asia and beyond.

China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, in part because of U.S. objections over the Chinese space program’s intimate ties to the military.

China and the United States are also considering plans for permanent crewed bases on the moon. That has raised questions about competition and cooperation on the lunar surface.

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RUSSIA

Also last year, Russia’s Luna-25 failed in its attempt to land in the same area of the moon that India reached.

It came 47 years after the Soviets landed on the moon, and Russian scientists blamed that long break, and the accompanying loss of space expertise, for the recent failure.

The Soviets launched the first satellite in space in 1957 and put the first human in space in 1961, but Russia’s program has struggled since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union amid widespread corruption and Western sanctions that have hurt scientific development.

Russia is planning for another moon mission in 2027.

Russia’s failures and the growing role of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX have cost Russia its once-sizable niche in the lucrative global space launch market.

Just as India’s success was seen as evidence of its rise to great power status, Russia’s failure has been portrayed by some as casting doubt on its global influence and strength.

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AP journalists around the world contributed to this story.

LOS ANGELES — Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank in 2023 to a nearly 30-year low, as sharply higher mortgage rates, rising prices and a persistently low level of homes on the market combined to push homeownership out of reach for many Americans.

The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 4.09 million last year, an 18.7% decline from 2022. That is the weakest year for home sales since 1995 and the biggest annual decline since 2007, the start of the housing slump of the late 2000s.

The median national home price for all of last year edged up just under 1% to record high $389,800, the NAR said.

Last year’s home sales slump echoes the nearly 18% annual decline in 2022, when mortgage rates began rising, eventually more than doubling by the end of the year. That trend continued in 2023, driving the average rate on a 30-year mortgage by late October to 7.79%, the highest level since late 2000.

The sharply higher home loan borrowing costs limited home hunters’ buying power on top of years of soaring prices. A dearth of homes for sale also kept many would-be homebuyers and sellers on the sidelines.

Mortgage rates have been mostly easing since November, echoing a pullback in the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing loans. The yield has largely come down on hopes that inflation has cooled enough for the Federal Reserve to shift to cutting interest rates this year.

The average rate on a 30-year home loan was 6.6% this week, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. If rates continue to ease, as many economists expect, that should help boost demand heading into the spring homebuying season, which traditionally begins in late February.

Still, the average rate remains sharply higher than just two years ago, when it was 3.56%. That large gap between rates now and then has helped limit the number of previously occupied homes on the market by discouraging homeowners who locked in rock-bottom rates from selling.

“We need more inventory to get the market moving,” said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist.

Despite easing mortgage rates, existing home sales fell 1% in December from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.78 million, the slowest sales pace since August 2010, the NAR said.

December’s sales fell 6.2% from a year earlier. Last month’s sales pace is short of the roughly 3.83 million that economists were expecting, according to FactSet.

“The latest month’s sales look to be the bottom before inevitably turning higher in the new year,” Yun said. “Mortgage rates are meaningfully lower compared to just two months ago, and more inventory is expected to appear on the market in upcoming months.”

Home prices rose for the sixth straight month in December. The national median home sales price rose 4.4% in December from a year earlier to $382,600, the NAR said.

NEW YORK — Franz Welser-Möst is back on the Cleveland Orchestra’s podium, concentrating again on music instead of his health.

“It was not my best year, the last year,” he said Wednesday. “I feel good. You learn to live with the circumstances, and I’m extremely and grateful that I’m back at work.”

On track to surpass George Szell as Cleveland’s longest-tenured music director, the 63-year-old Austrian returned to his orchestra at Cleveland’s Severance Music Center last week and leads it in a pair of programs at Carnegie Hall this weekend. He will be in Austria for five concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic in late February, then leads that orchestra on a seven-concert tour in early March to New York and Naples and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Franz Welser-Möst to retire as Cleveland Orchestra music director in June 2027

Quite a schedule, given his setbacks in 2023.

He had a slipped disk in his neck while conducting Wagner’s four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)” at the Vienna State Opera in June, an injury that caused him to enter an orthopedic clinic in the second half of July and again in August. He was forced to cancel a high-profile new production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Salzburg Festival.

Welser-Möst had surgery Sept. 1 to remove a cancerous tumor from his bladder and came back to Cleveland to conduct the orchestra’s season opener on Sept. 28. After leading two weeks of programs there, he took the orchestra to Vienna and Linz for their 21st international tour together, then had a second operation on Oct. 25.

That was followed in November by six weeks of once-a-week immunotherapy treatment. He is scheduled for additional three-week cycles of treatment in March, July and October.

“The doctors are very happy. So am I, that it seems to work. It has been in my family, so it’s genetic,” Welser-Möst said. “Both my brothers had the same thing a couple of years ago. Both are very well now, so there’s every reason to be optimistic.”

Welser-Möst has been Cleveland’s music director since 2002-03 and has appointed 69 musicians, including 52 of the current 105 members.

“One of the keys to Franz’s success is his incredible discipline. He’s like a great athlete in that way,” said André Gremillet, the Cleveland Orchestra’s president and CEO. “He’s very focused, very disciplined in the way he approaches everything, and I think that has served him well also in facing his health challenges.”

His name at birth in Linz, Austria, was Franz Leopold Maria Möst, and he switched it in 1985 to Welser-Möst in honor of Wels, a nearby city he grew up in. The change was made on the advice of a benefactor, Baron Andreas von Bennigsen of Liechtenstein.

Welser-Möst spent a decade studying the technique of Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Philharmonic’s chief conductor from 1954-89. He was 19 when he was brought to Karajan in 1979 by Albert Moser, then general director of Vienna’s Musikverein. Welser-Möst was among the 10 finalists of the Karajan International Conductors Competition, though he failed to win.

“I’d been to a lot of rehearsals in Vienna, in Salzburg and Berlin, and that made a huge impression on me because Karajan was highly efficient in rehearsals,” Welser-Möst recalled. “He would just say one sentence and the sound of the orchestra changed completely. And in those days, of course, I was like: How on earth is he doing that?”

Welser-Möst first conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1993 and became music director for the 2002-03 season. On the afternoon of his return concert on Jan. 11, he announced he will retire as music director at the end of 2026-27, his 25th season. Welser-Möst maintained he wasn’t focused on topping Szell’s reign, which stretched from 1946-70.

“I’m not into that game. It just happened,” he said.

Welser-Möst’s New York concerts are part of Carnegie Hall’s “Perspectives” series and its focus this winter and spring on the fall of the Weimar Republic.

“It is something that is so important to him and so important to his life,” Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson said. “I remember doing one Zoom call where he was in his library and he showed me all the books he’s got on Weimar.”

Welser-Möst is proud of extending the orchestra’s flexibility by programming semi-staged operas, with Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)” next this May. He already has scheduled Janáček’s “Jenůfa” for next season, Beethoven’s “Fidelio” for 2025-26 and Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow)” for 2026-27.

“I’m an old dog when it comes to opera,” he said. “I’ve conducted about 90 different operas in my life. When I was in Zurich for nearly 14 years, I conducted 43 opening nights of a piece.”

His retirement creates another coveted U.S. podium vacancy. Riccardo Muti stepped down from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June and Gustavo Dudamel shifts from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the New York Philharmonic for the 2026-27 season.

“Every institution needs once in a while new input and new ideas,” Welser-Möst said. “I’m not saying I’m running out of ideas, but I always tried to live that philosophy here, that music comes first, the institution second, the individual third.”

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Friday it has tested a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone in response to a combined naval exercise by South Korea, the United States and Japan this week, as it continues to blame its rivals for raising tensions in the region.

The test of the drone, purportedly designed to destroy naval vessels and ports, came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared he is scrapping his country’s long-standing goal of a peaceful reunification with South Korea and that his country will rewrite its constitution to define South Korea as its most hostile foreign adversary.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen to their highest point in years, with Kim accelerating his weapons testing and threatening nuclear conflict. The United States and its Asian allies have responded by strengthening their combined military exercises, which Kim calls rehearsals for an invasion.

The underwater drone, which North Korea said it first tested last year, is among a broad range of weapon systems demonstrated in recent years as Kim expands his arsenal of nuclear-capable weapons. South Korea’s military says North Korea has exaggerated the capabilities of the drone.

North Korea’s military said it conducted the test in the country’s eastern waters in response to a naval drill by the U.S., South Korea and Japan which ended Wednesday in waters south of Jeju island. It did not say when the test occurred.

“Our army’s underwater nuke-based countering posture is being further rounded off and its various maritime and underwater responsive actions will continue to deter the hostile military maneuvers of the navies of the U.S. and its allies,” North Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“We strongly denounce the U.S. and its followers for their reckless acts of seriously threatening the security of (North Korea) from the outset of the year and sternly warn them of the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by them,” it said.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry denounced North Korea’s recent tests as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a threat to “peace in the Korean Peninsula and the world.” It said in a statement that the U.S. and South Korean militaries were maintaining a firm defense posture against possible North Korean provocations.

North Korea in recent months has tested various missile systems designed to target the United States and its Asian allies, and announced an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes the military to conduct preemptive nuclear strikes if North Korea’s leadership is under threat.

North Korea conducted its first ballistic missile test of 2024 on Sunday. State media described it as a new solid-fuel, intermediate-range missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead, likely intended to target U.S. military bases in Guam and Japan.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, South Korea urged the council “to break the silence” over North Korea’s escalating missile tests and threats. Russia and China, both permanent members of the Security Council, have blocked U.S.-led efforts to increase sanctions on North Korea over its recent weapons tests, underscoring a divide deepened over Russia’s war on Ukraine. South Korea is serving a two-year term on the council.

COLUMBUS — The legal dispute over whether it was appropriate to freeze $8 million in personal assets belonging to a former top Ohio utility regulator caught up in a federal bribery investigation has ping-ponged once again.

In a ruling Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court reversed the Tenth District Court of Appeals’ decision and reinstated a lower court’s order, allowing Sam Randazzo’s assets to be frozen once again. The high court determined the appeals court erred on a technicality when it unfroze Randazzo’s property.

It’s just the latest development in the yearslong fight over property belonging to Randazzo, a one-time chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Federal prosecutors last month charged Randazzo with 11 counts in connection with an admission by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. that it paid him a $4.3 million bribe in exchange for favorable treatment. Randazzo has pleaded not guilty.

Writing for the majority, Justice Pat DeWine said the three-judge panel was wrong when it unfroze Randazzo’s assets in December 2022 — a decision that had been on hold amid the ongoing litigation. The panel reversed a lower court, finding that the state had not proven it would suffer “irreparable injury” if Randazzo were given control of his property.

“The problem is that the irreparable injury showing was not appealable,” DeWine wrote.

Instead, when Randazzo wanted to object to a Franklin County judge’s unilateral decision from August 2021 granting Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s request to freeze his assets, the appropriate remedy would have been a full hearing before the trial court, the high court said. As a result, the court reversed the appellate court’s decision.

Yost made his request out of concern that Randazzo appeared to be scrambling to unload personal assets. He transferred a home worth $500,000 to his son and liquidated other properties worth a combined $4.8 million, sending some $3 million of the proceeds to his lawyers in California and Ohio.

During oral arguments in the case this summer, lawyers disagreed sharply over whether the assets should have been frozen. An attorney for Yost’s office told justices Randazzo was “spending down criminal proceeds” when the attorney general moved in to freeze his assets. Randazzo’s lawyer argued that the state needed more than “unsupported evidence” of a bribe to block Randazzo’s access to his property and cash.

Randazzo resigned as PUCO chair in November 2020 after FBI agents searched his Columbus home, close on the heels of the arrest of then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others.

The bribe that FirstEnergy said it paid Randazzo was part of a scheme that a jury determined was led by Householder to win the speakership, elect allies, pass a $1 billion bailout of two aging FirstEnergy-affiliated nuclear plants and block a referendum to repeal the bailout bill.

Householder, a Republican, and lobbyist Matt Borges, a former chair of the Ohio GOP, were convicted on racketeering charges in March for their roles in the scheme. Householder, considered the ringleader, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Borges to five. Both are pursuing appeals.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to extend current federal spending and keep the government open, sending a short-term measure to the House that would avoid a shutdown and push off a final budget package until early March.

The House is scheduled to vote on the measure and send it to President Joe Biden later in the day.

The stopgap bill, passed by the Senate on a 77-18 vote, comes after a bipartisan spending deal between House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., this month and a subsequent agreement to extend current spending so the two chambers have enough time to pass individual spending bills.

The temporary measure will run to March 1 for some federal agencies whose approved funds were set to run out Friday and extend the remainder of government operations to March 8.

Johnson has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap the budget agreement with Schumer, and the bill to keep the government running will need Democratic support to pass the Republican-majority House. Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal as moderates in the party have urged him not to back out.

It would be the third time Congress has extended current spending as House Republicans have bitterly disagreed over budget levels and some on the right have demanded steeper cuts. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.

“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said Tuesday about the decision to extend federal funding yet again. “We’re not going to get everything we want.”

Most House Republicans have so far refrained from saying that Johnson’s job is in danger. But a revolt of even a handful of Republicans could endanger his position in the narrowly divided House.

Virginia Rep. Bob Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, has been pushing Johnson to reconsider the deal with Schumer.

“If your opponent in negotiation knows that you fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement more than they fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement, you will lose every time,” Good said this week.

Other Republicans acknowledge Johnson is in a tough spot. “The speaker was dealt with the hand he was dealt,” said Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr. “We can only lose one vote on the majority side. I think it’s going to have to be bipartisan.”

The short-term measure comes amid negotiations on a separate spending package that would provide wartime dollars to Ukraine and Israel and strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border. Johnson is also under pressure from the right not to accept a deal that is any weaker than a House-passed border measure that has no Democratic support.

Johnson, Schumer and other congressional leaders and committee heads visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss that spending legislation. Johnson used the meeting to push for stronger border security measures while Biden and Democrats detailed Ukraine’s security needs as it continues to fight Russia.

Biden has requested a $110 billion package for the wartime spending and border security.

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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

A year ago, anti-abortion activists from across the U.S. gathered for their annual March for Life with reason to celebrate: It was their first march since the Supreme Court, seven months earlier, had overturned the nationwide right to abortion.

At this year’s march, on Friday, the mood will be very different — reflecting formidable challenges that lie ahead in this election year.

“We have undeniable evidence of victory — lives being saved,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life. “But there is also a realization of the significant hurdles that our movement has right now in the public conversation.”

Participants at the march in Washington will salute the 14 states enforcing bans on abortion throughout pregnancy. They will proclaim that thousands of babies have been born who otherwise might have been aborted, even as studies show the total number of abortions provided in the U.S. rose slightly in the year after that enforcement began.

Moreover, anti-abortion leaders know that their side has a seven-state losing streak in votes on abortion-related ballot measures. Even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky, the outcomes favored keeping abortion access legal.

In this year’s election, several more states are expected to have abortion-rights ballot measures, and Democratic candidates in many tight races are likely to highlight their support for abortion access.

“We have been around for more than 50 years, and I don’t know of any year that was easy,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee.

“But it definitely got harder after Dobbs,” she added. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Tobias was referring to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in June 2022, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

The key consequence of Dobbs was to return decision-making on abortion policy to individual states. Some Democratic-governed states — such as California, New York and New Jersey — have strengthened protections for abortion access. Roughly 20 states with Republican-controlled legislatures have either banned abortion or sought to impose new restrictions.

After Dobbs, “I didn’t want anyone to get the false sense that we were at the end of our work,” said Brent Leatherwood, an abortion opponent who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.

“We’ve gone from a focal point at the federal level to 50 different focal points,” he said. “It may be another 50 years before we truly establish a culture of life, where preborn lives are saved and mothers are supported.”

Even the current claims of lives being saved due to the Dobbs decision are subject to question. While abortions have decreased to nearly zero in states with total bans, they have increased elsewhere – notably in states such as Illinois, Florida and New Mexico, which are near those with more restrictions.

Anti-abortion leaders are keenly aware that their opponents in the abortion debate depict the wave of state bans as an infringement on women’s rights and a potential danger to their health.

Thus the theme of this year’s March for Life strives to convey support for women facing unexpected pregnancies: “Pro Life: With Every Woman, For Every Child.”

“ Pregnancy care centers and maternity homes are the very backbone of our movement,” March for Life president Jeanne Mancini wrote in a recent opinion piece.

She and her allies have encouraged states to offer support programs for new mothers in need — helping them find housing, jobs and health insurance.

Among the scheduled speakers at the march is Jean Marie Davis, executive director of Branches Pregnancy Resource Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. Davis says a similar center in New Hampshire helped her break free several years ago after she became pregnant while ensnared in a sex-trafficking operation.

Other scheduled speakers include House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.

Mancini said last year’s march drew tens of thousands of people; she’s hoping this year’s march will be bigger.

The participants, she said, will be in a “persevering mood.”

J.J. Straight, part of an American Civil Liberties Union team working to protect and broaden abortion access, says her side also feels determined, especially in light of the recent ballot-measure results.

“We’ve seen a tremendous pushback to the anti-abortion agenda,” she said. “There’s a huge coalition of folks, regardless of their party and other demographics, who absolutely draw the line at this kind interference in their health care.”

Among the reasons for uncertainty for all parties in the debate is the inconsistent way that federal and state courts have adjudicated abortion-related cases. There have been numerous legal challenges to the various state laws banning or restricting abortion, some failing and others succeeding at least temporarily.

There’s a pending lawsuit in Texas filed by women who say the state’s abortion ban forced them to continue pregnancies despite serious risk to their health.

In an even higher profile Texas case, Kate Cox, a mother of two, sought an abortion after learning the baby she was carrying had a fatal genetic condition. Her request for an exemption from Texas’ ban — one of the country’s strictest — was denied by the state Supreme Court, and Cox left Texas to seek an abortion elsewhere.

For abortion-rights activists, Cox’s case was a powerful illustration of how abortion bans could be dangerous for women with pregnancy complications.

“Never in our history have we had such overwhelming reaction to any case,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We got phone calls, emails, snail-mail. Over and over, people talked about her with awe, her courage in going public.”

Seago, the Texas Right to Life president, defended Texas’ abortion ban. He said the Cox case and the pending lawsuit simply underscored the need for Texas health authorities to clarify what doctors are and aren’t allowed to do in dealing with problem pregnancies.

Carol Tobias acknowledged there can be difficult pregnancies.

“But I don’t think hard circumstances should be used to establish state laws,” she said. In such cases, she added, “the doctors have two patients. They need to take care of both of them to best of their ability.”

All the new bans make an exception to allow abortion if deemed necessary to save the life of the mother. There are divides within the anti-abortion movement over additional exceptions — for example, in cases of rape and incest, or when severe fetal abnormalities are diagnosed.

Other divisions have surfaced over who should be criminalized by the new laws.

Among leading anti-abortion activists, there’s a general consensus that women should not be prosecuted for seeking or obtaining an abortion. But there is support for criminal penalties against doctors and others who help people get an abortion; some states, including Texas and Idaho, seek to deter people from traveling out of state to get abortions or obtaining abortion pills by mail.

Dr. Jamila Perritt, an abortion-rights supporter who is president of Physicians for Reproductive Health, worries that abortion opponents in states with bans will criminalize people who seek abortions outside the formal medical system.

“The impact of their campaign has been devastating — and it will get worse,” she said. “I’m worried about many more people being arrested and prosecuted.”

One of the biggest unknowns, heading toward to Election Day on Nov. 5, is how power in Washington will be divided between the two major parties.

Abortion-rights supporters fear a Republican sweep of Congress and the White House might trigger a bid to impose a federal abortion ban. Conversely, some abortion opponents — including Chris Smith — fear a Democratic sweep might lead to a law overriding the state abortion bans that are now in effect.

Such legislation — as modeled in the unsuccessful Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021-22 — would be “an existential threat,” Smith said.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., has introduced a bill proposing to ban most abortions nationwide after 15 weeks of gestation. SBA Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group, supports the bill, according to its state policy director, Katie Glenn Daniel. But the measure has vehement critics on both sides of the abortion divide.

COLUMBUS — A second transgender candidate running for a seat in the Republican-majority Ohio House is at risk of being disqualified from the ballot after omitting her former name on circulating petitions.

The Mercer County Board of Elections is set to vote Thursday on whether Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from Auglaize County and one of four transgender individuals campaigning for the Legislature, is eligible to run after not disclosing her previous name, also known as her deadname, on her petition paperwork.

A little-used Ohio elections law, unfamiliar even to many state elections officials, mandates that candidates disclose any name changes in the last five years on their petitions paperwork, with exemptions for name changes due to marriage. But the law isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide and there is no space on the petition paperwork to list any former names.

Childrey, who legally changed her name in 2020, said she would have provided her deadname if she had known about the law.

“I would have filled out whatever was necessary, because at the end of the day, while it would have been a hit to my pride, there is something much more important than my pride, and that’s fighting for this community,” Childrey said.

If she isn’t disqualified, Childrey will be running against Rep. Angie King, a Republican lawmaker who has sponsored anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and voted for bans on gender-affirming care for minors as well as barring transgender athletes from female sports.

The law has been in place in some form for decades, though it’s rarely been used and usually arises in the context of candidates wishing to use a nickname.

Last week, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said while his office is open to putting the rule on the candidate guide, they are not open to tweaking the law and that it’s up to candidates to ensure they comply with Ohio election law.

But Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that the law should be amended and that the county boards should stop disqualifying transgender candidates on these grounds. DeWine did not say how it might be amended.

“We shouldn’t be denying ballot access for that reason,” the governor told Cleveland.com’s editorial board. “It certainly should be fixed.”

DeWine recently vetoed a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, but the state House overrode that veto. The Senate is expected to do the same Jan. 24.

In various ways, all four transgender candidates have been affected by the law’s name-change notification requirement.

Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Stark County running for the Ohio House, who legally changed her name in 2022, was the first to be disqualified for omitting her deadname from petition paperwork. She appealed her disqualification but was denied. Joy is now working with legal counsel and the Ohio Democratic Party to try to change the law.

Joy says the current law is a barrier to transgender individuals who want to seek office but do not want to disclose their deadname — the name a transgender person was assigned at birth but does not align with their gender identity.

Ari Faber, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio state Senate from Athens, was cleared to run but must use his deadname since he has not legally changed it.

Bobbie Arnold, a contractor from West Alexandria running as a Democrat for the Ohio House, had her possible disqualification dismissed Tuesday by the Montgomery County Board of Elections and will be on the ballot in the March 19 primary.

When presenting the facts of Arnold’s situation to the county board Tuesday, the board’s director, Jeff Rezabek, recommended the members take no action on the disqualification. He noted that the candidate guide did not list the rule and that there is no evidence Arnold was intentionally deceitful toward voters about her identity. The members went along with Rezabek’s recommendation.

However, under the state law, if Arnold were to win her election, she could still be removed from office for not disclosing her deadname. Arnold is consulting her lawyer about that part of the law but hopes that between Joy’s work with her own team to change the law and DeWine’s call for candidates to stay on the ballot, that won’t be an issue come November.

For now, she’s excited to start campaigning.

“It’s important for the overall well-being of our society that every voice has an opportunity to be heard,” Arnold said. “And that’s something that we’re not experiencing right now in Ohio.”

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Samantha Hendrickson is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.