NEW YORK (AP) — Even by Donald Trump’s standards, this was a dizzying week.

The first criminal prosecution of a former president began in earnest with opening statements and testimony in a lower Manhattan courtroom. But the action quickly spread to involve more than half a dozen cases in four states and the nation’s capital. Twice during the week, lawyers for Trump were simultaneously appearing in different courtrooms.

The collision of so many cases within a five-day span underscores the challenges Trump will face as he campaigns again for the White House while his legal matters intensify. While the presumptive Republican nominee sought to talk about the economy and other issues, his intended message was repeatedly overshadowed by the latest developments popping up across the country.

Here’s how the week broke down and what’s ahead:

The week began with a moment for the history books, with prosecutors for the first time presenting a jury with a criminal case against a former American president. In opening statements, prosecutors told jurors that hush money payments made to an adult film actor were “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” while Trump’s lawyers argued the case is baseless. Testimony then began with former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker giving the public the most tangible look yet at the allegations.

It also gave the clearest picture yet of Trump’s defense and how he is blending his roles as candidate and criminal defendant. Trump is starting and ending the day appearing before waiting reporters at the courthouse, offering complaints that he is required to be there and commentary on how cold it is in the courtroom or remarks on unrelated national news.

In a separate but nearby courthouse, one of Trump’s lawyers struck a deal with New York state lawyers over a $175 million bond that Trump posted to pause a large civil fraud judgment he’s appealing in a separate case.

Trump returned to court where prosecutors began by urging the judge to hold Trump in contempt for social media posts that they said violated a gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others involved. The judge did not immediately rule on the request but seemed skeptical of defense arguments that Trump was just responding to others’ attacks.

Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, testified the rest of the day and said he pledged to help suppress harmful stories about Trump during the 2016 election.

Trial proceedings were not scheduled for Wednesday so Trump didn’t trek to the Manhattan courthouse from his namesake penthouse tower. But he did fire off a post at 2 a.m. on Truth Social, his social media platform, criticizing the judge and did it again later in the day in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Meanwhile, more court documents were unsealed in Florida in another criminal case in which federal prosecutors have charged Trump and two of his employees with mishandling classified documents after he left the White House. Though the case has proceeded at a plodding pace in recent months and seems unlikely to reach trial this year, the documents show, among other things, the warnings that Trump received from associates to return the sensitive files he was later charged with possessing.

Beyond cases in which Trump is charged as a defendant, Arizona’s attorney general on Wednesday indicted 18 of his associates for their roles in an effort to overturn Trump’s loss in that state to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Trump was referred to in the Arizona case as an unindicted co-conspirator.

In a similar case in Michigan, a state investigator testified that he considers Trump to be an uncharged co-conspirator in that state’s case against fake electors.

Trump’s hush money case in New York state court resumed Thursday. But prosecutors began the day by arguing before the judge that Trump had again violated the gag order with social media posts and comments he made early that morning at a dawn campaign stop in the city.

New York state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on whether to hold Trump in contempt. Pecker later resumed testimony. Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide who was among the 18 charged in Arizona a day earlier, was listening in the courtroom.

At the same time in Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed whether Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his loss to Biden. The justices in their questions seemed skeptical of Trump’s claims of absolute immunity from prosecution, but a few seemed to signal they had reservations about the charges, and that could result in a delay in that trial beyond November’s election.

In New York federal court on Thursday, a judge rejected Trump’s request for a new trial in a defamation case in which he was ordered to pay $83.3 million to an advice columnist for his social media attacks over her claims that he sexually assaulted her.

The hush money trial continued in New York on Friday, with Pecker wrapping up testimony and Trump’s lawyers seeking to discredit him. Two other witnesses, Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff and Gary Farro, a banker for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Epshteyn again was seated in the courtroom.

The New York hush money case is not expected to resume until Tuesday because of a long-scheduled day off Monday. Testimony is expected to continue Thursday and Friday, giving Trump a chance to make campaign stops in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the judge has scheduled a morning hearing on prosecutors’ most recent push to punish Trump over the gag order.

And in the Arizona case, details could emerge about the charges against Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Sixteen of the 18 people indicted by a grand jury have been charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery for their role in submitting a false slate of electors to Congress; the state attorney general has yet to confirm charges against the two remaining defendants. The indictment makes clear, based on their statements and positions, that they are Giuliani and Meadows, but the charges against them are still redacted.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that’s probably because it has, at least if you’re measuring via internet time. What’s now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?

Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner within a year or to shut down. It’s not clear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or that ByteDance would agree to sell.

Here’s how TikTok came to this juncture:

ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.

Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.

Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change that made the company’s logo visible when users shared their videos.

ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.

ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.

Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.

Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.

TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.

The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.

The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.

The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.

U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok’s influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports.

The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.

TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.

Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.

TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.

India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.

President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok as retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operations within 90 days.

Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.

Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn’t offer new policy on TikTok and won’t take office until January, but Trump’s plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.

Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.

TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.

A Wall Street Journal report finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.

TikTok announces new rules to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.

“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.

TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data.

BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users, based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn’t directly address the BuzzFeed report.

TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn’t prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.

FBI Director Chris Wrap raises national security concerns about TikTok, warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app’s recommendation algorithm for influence operations.

The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.

A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.

Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.

The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.

The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.

BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Republican activists gathered in a school lunchroom last month to hear political pitches from candidates and agreed on the top issue in the Denver suburbs these days: immigration.

The area has been disrupted by the arrival of largely Venezuelan migrants coming north through Mexico, they said. Virtually everyone in the meeting said they were uncomfortable with the new population, which has overwhelmed public services and become a flashpoint in local and national elections.

“We’ve lived here our whole lives, and now we have to pay for hotels and debit cards and health care” for the migrants, through government spending, said Toni Starner, a marketing consultant. “My daughter’s 22 and she can’t even afford to buy a house.”

Some 1,200 miles to the south, migrants are also transforming the prosperous industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico. Haitian migrants speak Creole on downtown streets and Central American migrants ask motorists for help at intersections.

But the new arrivals aren’t even part of Mexico’s political conversation as the country gears up for its presidential vote on June 2.

“If it were a problem, the politicians would already be mentioning it in their campaigns,” said Ingrid Morales, a 66-year-old retired academic who lives on Monterrey’s south side.

Every 12 years, the coincidence of presidential elections in the U.S. and Mexico provides a valuable comparative snapshot. The different ways migration is resonating in the two countries’ elections this year reflects the neighbors’ very different styles of democracy.

Mexican politics are still dominated by institutional political parties, while Donald Trump disrupted the United States’ two-party system with his more populist approach, and moved anti-immigration sentiment to center stage in U.S. politics.

Mexican politics also revolve more around “bread-and-butter” issues like the economy than in the wealthier United States, which is increasingly consumed with questions of national identity, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.

What’s more, just about every Mexican family has an immediate experience with migration, with many still having relatives living in other countries. While migrants must travel through Mexico to enter the U.S., they are more dispersed as they travel and have not generated similar scenes of an overwhelmed Mexican side of the border.

“In Mexico, there isn’t that same perception of chaos,” Selee said.

Trump is making that perception of chaos his campaign’s main theme as he tries to return to the White House. AP VoteCast, a survey of the national electorate, found immigration was a top issue among voters in the Republican presidential primary’s initial states. An AP-NORC poll conducted last month found that 58% of Americans say immigration is an extremely or very important issue for them personally.

In contrast, Mexico’s presidential frontrunner, Claudia Sheinbaum, didn’t even include a mention of immigration when she announced 100 campaign commitments last month. When she came to the state where Monterrey sits — Nuevo Leon — in February she talked about security and the water supply. Her main opponent, Xochitl Gálvez, visited the city last month and talked about her proposals to raise police salaries and combat gender violence.

But Monterrey, a three-hour drive from the Texas border, has increasingly become a critical waystation, even destination, for tens of thousands of migrants. Local authorities and international organizations have scrambled to find a place for the new arrivals.

Femsa, the owner of the ubiquitous convenience store chain Oxxo, has hired hundreds of migrants to work in its stores through a program with the United Nations refugee agency.

An annual survey of Nuevo Leon found last year that nearly nine in 10 residents noticed an increase in migrants and about seven in 10 felt that they should be provided work. It’s not as if Mexicans aren’t divided over the issue: Those surveyed in Nuevo Leon were split over whether Mexico should admit more migrants or stop the flow.

The lack of clear political advantage could explain why politicians have stayed away from talking about immigration, said Luis Mendoza Ovando, a political analyst and columnist with the main local newspaper, El Norte.

“Ultimately, society says if there are more migrants, give them work and everything is good,” he said.

Ricardo Cobián, 30, runs a beauty salon in downtown Monterrey. The next administration will have to deal with immigration but it is not a top priority for the nation, he said.

“The main issues for the candidates must be resolving security and ensuring economic stability,” said Cobián, adding that he has sympathy for migrants because he knows of his own relatives’ recent struggles to reach the United States.

Colorado became a stop on the migrant trail even more recently than Monterrey. In late 2022, Venezuelans crossing into Texas from Mexico found that it costs less to take a bus from the border city of El Paso to Denver than many of the United States’ better-known metropolises. And Denver — a liberal, fast-growing city — offered migrants food and shelter.

Now, Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, reports that his city of 710,000 has received nearly 40,000 migrants, what he calls the highest number of new migrants per capita of any city in the United States. The largely Venezuelan population is mainly confined to Denver but has started to trickle into surrounding suburbs like Brighton, often selling flowers or window-washes at streetcorners.

Unlike in Monterrey, where many migrants found jobs with established employers, paperwork hassles and federal regulations have prevented most migrants in Denver from receiving authorization to work. Irregular labor like yard work or housecleaning is their only way of making a living.

That’s led to a heavy burden on Denver’s coffers, and other cities in Colorado have watched in alarm. The two next largest after Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs, both passed resolutions saying they don’t want large numbers of migrants sent to their cities.

The migrants in Denver say they feel increased pressure in the form of fewer city benefits and stepped up warnings from local police that they can’t sell windshield washes, flowers or home-cooked food from streetcorners without a permit. The wary feelings towards them extend to the heavily Hispanic suburbs just north of Denver that comprise the state’s 8th congressional district, likely to be one of the most heated fights in this year’s battle for control of the House of Representatives.

State Rep. Gabe Evans, one of the Republicans competing for the party’s nomination against Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo, said that the district’s residents are fed up.

Evans’ grandfather immigrated from Mexico and earned his U.S. citizenship by serving in World War 2.

“The citizenship for the Chavez family was paid for in blood,” Evans said. “Then you have people crossing the border and just getting handed things.”

Cynthia Moreno, a Democrat, said her father came from Mexico legally in the 1920s. Though she has personal sympathy for the migrants’ plight, she’s aghast they’re allowed to stay.

“If I lived in Denver, I’d be pissed right now,” Moreno said, calling immigration “the nation’s top priority.”

Far from everyone in the area says it’s overwhelmed.

Alex Marvin lives in the 8th Congressional District but works in personnel for the city of Denver and watches buses drop off new arrivals outside his municipal office building. He thinks the federal government needs to compensate the city for the influx, but is proud the city is welcoming the new arrivals.

“We need to support people and help people the most we can,” said Marvin, a 35-year-old Democrat.

Rep. Caraveo was born in Colorado, but her parents were Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who obtained legal status under the 1986 immigration bill signed by then-President Ronald Reagan. Caraveo became a pediatrician and state legislator before running for Congress in 2022 and winning by only 1,600 votes.

That 1986 immigration bill was the last significant one passed by Congress, which has deadlocked for decades over whether to legalize additional generations of people living in the country illegally. In a sign of how the politics of immigration have shifted, that issue didn’t even come up in the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump killed earlier this year. Instead, the proposal focused on border enforcement.

The legislation never made it to the floor of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But Caraveo, who introduced her own package of immigration measures last month that included a proposal to legalize those brought to the country illegally as children, said she would have supported the bipartisan immigration bill anyway.

“The process is broken. We’re seeing the brokenness of it in front of our faces,” she said.

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Martínez reported from Monterrey, Mexico.

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https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections/

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By P.J. Huffstutter and Christopher Walljasper

JASPER COUNTY, INDIANA (Reuters) – Dave Duttlinger’s first thought when he saw a dense band of yellowish-brown dust smearing the sky above his Indiana farm was: I warned them this would happen.

About 445 acres of his fields near Wheatfield, Indiana, are covered in solar panels and related machinery – land that in April 2019 Duttlinger leased to Dunns Bridge Solar LLC, for one of the largest solar developments in the Midwest.

On that blustery spring afternoon in 2022, Duttlinger said, his phone rang with questions from frustrated neighbors: Why is dust from your farm inside my truck? Inside my house? Who should I call to clean it up?

According to Duttlinger’s solar lease, reviewed by Reuters, Dunns Bridge said it would use “commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any damage to and disturbance of growing crops and crop land caused by its construction activities” outside the project site and “not remove topsoil” from the property itself. Still, sub-contractors graded Duttlinger’s fields to assist the building of roads and installation of posts and panels, he said, despite his warnings that it could make the land more vulnerable to erosion.

Crews reshaped the landscape, spreading fine sand across large stretches of rich topsoil, Duttlinger said. When Reuters visited his farm last year and this spring, much of the land beneath the panels was covered in yellow-brown sand, where no plants grew.

“I’ll never be able to grow anything on that field again,” the farmer said. About one-third of his approximately 1,200-acre farm – where his family grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa for cattle – has been leased.

The Dunns Bridge Solar project is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources LLC, the world’s largest generator of renewable energy from wind and solar. Duttlinger said when he approached NextEra about the damage to his land, the company said it would review any remedial work needed at the end of its contract in 2073, as per the terms of the agreement.

NextEra declined to comment on the matter or on what future commitments it made to Duttlinger, and Reuters could not independently confirm them. Project developer Orion Renewable Energy Group LLC directed questions to NextEra.

The solar industry is pushing into the U.S. Midwest, drawn by cheaper land rents, access to electric transmission, and a wealth of federal and state incentives. The region also has what solar needs: wide-open fields.

A renewable energy boom risks damaging some of America’s richest soils in key farming states like Indiana, according to a Reuters analysis of federal, state and local data; hundreds of pages of court records; and interviews with more than 100 energy and soil scientists, agricultural economists, farmers and farmland owners, and local, state and federal lawmakers.

Some of Duttlinger’s farm, including parts now covered in solar panels, is on land classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the most productive for growing crops, according to a Reuters analysis.  

For landowners like Duttlinger, the promise of profits is appealing. Solar leases in Indiana and surrounding states can offer $900 to $1,500 an acre per year in land rents, with annual rate increases, according to a Reuters review of solar leases and interviews with four solar project developers. In comparison, farmland rent in top corn and soybean producers Indiana, Illinois and Iowa averaged about $251 per acre in 2023, USDA data shows.

    Farmland Partners Inc, a publicly traded farmland real estate investment trust (REIT) has leased about 9,000 acres nationwide to solar firms. Much of that ground is highly productive, said Executive Chairman Paul Pittman.

“Do I think it’s the best use of that land? Probably not. But our investors would kill us if we didn’t pursue this,” he said.

    Some renewable energy developers said not all leases become solar projects. Some are designing their sites to make it possible to grow crops between panels, while others, like Doral Renewables LLC, said they use livestock to graze around the panels as part of their land management. Developers also argue that in the Midwest, where more than one-third of the U.S. corn crop is used for ethanol production, solar energy is key for powering future electric vehicles.

Some agricultural economists and agronomists counter that taking even small amounts of the best cropland out of production for solar development and damaging valuable topsoil impacts future crop potential in the United States.

Common solar farm construction practices, including clearing and grading large sections of land, also can lead to significant erosion and major runoff of sediment into waterways without proper remediation, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department.

Solar development comes amid increasing competition for land: In 2023, there were 76.2 million – or nearly 8% – fewer acres in farms than in 1997, USDA data shows, as farmland is converted for residential, commercial and industrial use.

In response to Reuters’ findings, USDA said that urban sprawl and development are currently bigger contributors to farmland loss than solar, citing reports from the Department of Energy and agency-funded research.

BUILDING ON PRIME CROPLAND

No one knows how much cropland nationwide is currently under solar panels or leased for possible future development. Land deals are typically private transactions. Scientists at the United States Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been compiling a database of existing solar facilities across the country. While that project is incomplete and ongoing, Reuters found that around 0.02% of all cropland in the continental U.S. intersected in some way with large-scale, ground-based solar panel sites they had identified as of 2021.

The total power capacity of the solar operations tracked in the data set represents over 60 gigawatts of electric power capacity. In the following two years, solar capacity has nearly tripled, according to a Dec. 2023 report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.

To better understand future land-use patterns, Reuters analyzed federal government data to identify cropland that USDA classified as prime, unique, or of local or statewide importance. Reuters also reviewed more than 2,000 pages of solar-related documents filed at local county recorders’ offices in a small sample of four Midwestern counties – Pulaski, Starke and Jasper counties in Indiana, and Columbia County in Wisconsin.

The counties, representing an area of land slightly bigger than the state of Delaware, are where some of the nation’s largest projects are being developed or built. The sample is not necessarily representative of the broader United States but gives an idea of the potential impact of solar projects in farm-heavy counties.

Reuters found the percentage of these counties’ most productive cropland secured by solar and energy companies as of end of 2022 was as follows: 12% in Pulaski, 9% in Starke, 4% in Jasper and 5% in Columbia.

Jerry Hatfield, former director of USDA Agricultural Research Service’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment, said Reuters’ findings in the four counties are “concerning.”

“It’s not the number of acres converting to solar,” he said. “It’s the quality of the land coming out of production, and what that means for local economies, state economies and the country’s future abilities for crop production.” 

More than a dozen agronomists, as well as renewable energy researchers and other experts consulted by Reuters, said the approach to measuring solar’s impact was fair. The news agency also shared its findings with six solar developers and energy firms working in these counties. Three said Reuters’ sample size was too small, and the range of findings too wide, to be a fair portrayal of industry siting and construction practices.

By 2050, to meet the Biden Administration’s decarbonization targets, the U.S. will need up to 1,570 gigawatts of electric energy capacity from solar.

While the land needed for ground-based solar development to achieve this goal won’t be even by state, it is not expected to exceed 5% of any state’s land area, except the smallest state of Rhode Island, where it could reach 6.5%, by 2050, according to the Energy Department’s Solar Futures Study, published in 2021.

Researchers at American Farmland Trust, a non-profit farmland protection organization which champions what it calls Smart Solar, forecast last year that 83% of new solar energy development in the U.S. will be on farm and ranchland, unless current government policies changed. Nearly half would be on the nation’s best land for producing food, fiber, and other crops, they warned.

FUEL DEBATE

    Five renewable developers and solar energy firms interviewed by Reuters counter that the industry’s use of farmland is too small to impact domestic food production overall and should be balanced with the need to decarbonize the U.S. energy market in the face of climate change.

    Doral Renewables, the developer behind the $1.5 billion Mammoth Solar project in Pulaski and Starke counties, does not consider corn or soybean yields in its siting decisions.

Instead, the company looks at the land’s topography, zoning and closeness to an electrical grid or substation – and tries to avoid wooded areas, ditches and environmentally sensitive areas, said Nick Cohen, Doral’s president and CEO.

    Shifting corn acres for solar? “I don’t see it as replacing something that is vital to our society,” Cohen said. Solar can make farmland “more productive from an economic perspective,” he added.

Indiana farmer Norm Welker says he got a better deal leasing 60% of his farmland to Mammoth than he would have growing corn, with prices dipping to three-year lows this year.

“We’ve got mounds of corn, we’re below the cost of production, and right now, if you’re renting land to grow corn – you’re losing money,” Welker said. “This way, my economic circumstances are very good.”

(Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago, Columbia County, Wisconsin, and Jasper, Starke and Pulaski Counties, Indiana. Reporting by Christopher Walljasper in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Claudia Parsons)

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Before students set up a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on a Columbia University lawn last week, some of them took an optional course called “Columbia 1968” about protests against the Vietnam War, a similarly galvanizing moment of campus activism.

Frank Guridy, the Columbia history professor who has taught the class since 2017, along with a couple of his students stopped by the encampment at the New York City campus on Thursday to discuss the parallels at a teach-in called “1968: Continuing the Fight.” Protesters listened sitting on mats on the grass outside their tents, eating free kidney beans and rice and kosher Passover snacks off paper plates from a nearby community kitchen set up on tables under canopies.

The school administration suspended dozens of protesting students and had them arrested last week. Some of them say they are only acting on the lessons and education they have received on campus as they oppose Israel’s war in Gaza.

Bo Tang, a second-year undergraduate history student, said he was part of the student protesters’ research group, which looked at the strategies and tactics of past and present social justice movements to “try to take lessons from them.”

The group interviewed alumni involved in the 1968 protests, some found through Guridy’s class, Tang said, getting them to share lessons on building support for a protest movement.

Tang and other students say classmates and professors previously agnostic about the protest showed up at the encampment after police were called in, including faculty who have donned yellow vests to help with security and safety.

Protest encampments have also appeared at colleges across the U.S. and abroad in solidarity with the Columbia students, drawing criticism from the White House, many Republican lawmakers and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who call the protesters antisemitic and intimidating to Jewish students.

Many Jewish students are among the organizers, though, and bristle at allegations of antisemitism. Over many hours spent at the encampment this week, Reuters journalists have seen students peacefully chatting, reading, eating and holding both Jewish and Muslim prayer ceremonies. There have been jazz performances, lectures, first aid courses, bouts of pro-Palestinian revolutionary chants and writing workshops. Sometimes heated but non-violent debates break out between anti-Zionist Jews and pro-Israel students visiting the camp.

A typical sign warns those in the encampment, however, to be careful in their interactions with counterprotesters: “WE DO NOT ENGAGE WITH INSTIGATORS.”

‘LIBERATED ZONE’

The student protesters set up the encampment at dawn on April 17 without required school permission, demanding Columbia divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies that support Israel’s government and military. The protests, held in coalition with dozens of other student groups, have been led by Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, both of which the school suspended in November for an earlier unauthorized pro-Palestinian protest.

The day after the encampment was set up, Columbia President Minouche Shafik called in police, who arrested 108 of the students on trespassing charges, outraging some faculty. Students have since rebuilt the encampment, more bustling than before.

Shafik, who declined interview requests through a spokesperson, has said she called police as a last resort for rule-breaking, that the encampment has caused “rancor” on campus, and that school policy cannot be dictated by a subset of students and staff. Her administration has been holding stop-and-start negotiations with the protesting students, while steadily filling adjoining lawns with bleachers and scaffolding ahead of the school’s May 15 commencement ceremony.

“We have our demands; they have theirs,” she wrote in a campus-wide email.

At his teach-in, Guridy and his students told the protesters how their 1968 predecessors were outraged by Columbia disciplining six students who had protested the school’s ties to weapons research, and the university’s plans to build a racially segregated gym near Harlem.

The 1968 protesters occupied multiple buildings on campus and held the acting dean hostage for a day before police violently ended the occupation a week later, arresting some 700 students.

The 2024 protesters decided to instead occupy one lawn of the main Columbia campus, noting that school administrators

recently designated it for protests, albeit with permission.

Maryam Alwan, a third-year Palestinian-American undergraduate student among those arrested and suspended last week, said the easily circumvented hedge-lined lawn was chosen so administrators could not accuse them of disrupting classes.

“We looked at some of the imagery of the ’68 protests,” Alwan said. A famous photograph of the 1968 protests shows students holding a large sign saying: “Liberated Zone.” The 2024 protesters erected a similar sign over their camp, and Alwan was delighted to see the sign since spread to other campuses.

“My class is not a boot camp for revolution,” Guridy said in an interview after his teach-in. “It’s a history class.”

He called Tang one of his “sharpest students.”

Around protests, Tang still has to finish his final paper for Guridy’s “Columbia 1968” class.

“It’s hard to get A-pluses in the humanities classes,” Tang said. “But I’m shooting for it.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Caitlin Ochs in New York; Editing by Donna Bryson and Tom Hogue)

NEW YORK (AP) — Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at at universities across U.S., some of whom have clashed with police in riot gear, dug in Saturday and vowed to keep their demonstrations going, while faculty at several schools condemned university presidents who have called in law enforcement to remove protesters.

As Columbia University continues negotiations with those at a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the New York school’s campus, the university’s senate passed a resolution Friday that created a task force to examine the administration’s leadership, which last week called in police in an attempt to clear the protest, resulting in scuffles and more than 100 arrests.

Though the university has repeatedly set and then pushed back deadlines for the removal of the encampment, the school sent an email to students Friday night saying that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.

As the death toll mounts in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.

In France, students at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, which counts President Emmanuel Macron among its many famous alumni, students blocked access to a campus building and classes went online as the wave of protests reached overseas.

The decisions to call in law enforcement, leading to hundreds of arrests nationwide, have prompted school faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas to initiate or pass votes of no confidence in their leadership. They are largely symbolic rebukes, without the power to remove their presidents.

But the tensions pile pressure on school officials, who are already scrambling to resolve the protests as May graduation ceremonies near.

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, gave protestors who have barricaded themselves inside a building since Monday until 5 p.m. Friday to leave and “not be immediately arrested.” The deadline came and went. Only some of the protesters left, others doubled down. After protesters rebuffed police earlier in the week, the campus was closed for the rest of the semester.

In Colorado, police swept through an encampment Friday at Denver’s Auraria Campus, which hosts three universities and colleges, arresting around 40 protesters on trespassing charges.

Students representing the Columbia encampment, which inspired the wave of protests across the country, said Friday that they reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their protest.

After meetings Thursday and Friday, student negotiators said the university had not met their primary demand for divestment, although there was progress on a push for more transparent financial disclosures.

“We will not rest until Columbia divests,” said Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a fourth-year doctoral student.

In the letter sent to Columbia students Friday night, the university’s leadership said “we support the conversations that are ongoing with student leaders of the encampment.”

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, faced significant criticism from faculty Friday, but retained the support of trustees.

A report by the university senate’s executive committee, which represents faculty, found Shafik and her administration took “many actions and decisions that have harmed Columbia University.” Those included calling in police and allowing students to be arrested without consulting faculty, misrepresenting and suspending student protest groups and hiring private investigators.

“The faculty have completely lost confidence in President Shafik’s ability to lead this organization,” said Ege Yumusak, a philosophy lecturer who is part of a faculty team protecting the encampment.

In response, university spokesperson Ben Chang said in the evening that “we are committed to an ongoing dialogue and appreciate the Senate’s constructive engagement in finding a pathway forward.”

Also Friday, Columbia student protester Khymani James walked back comments made in an online video in January that recently received new attention. James said in the video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and people should be grateful James wasn’t killing them.

“What I said was wrong,” James said in a statement. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.”

James, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian encampment as a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was banned from campus Friday, according to a Columbia spokesperson.

Protest organizers said James’ comments didn’t reflect their values. They declined to describe James’ level of involvement with the demonstration.

Police clashed with protesters Thursday at Indiana University, Bloomington, where 34 were arrested; Ohio State University, where about 36 were arrested; and at the University of Connecticut, where one person was arrested.

The University of Southern California canceled its May 10 graduation ceremony Thursday, a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus. The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school ceremonies.

Universities where faculty members have initiated or passed votes of no confidence in their presidents include Cal Poly Humboldt, University of Texas at Austin and Emory University.

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Perry reported from Meredith, New Hampshire. Associated Press journalists in various locations contributed, including Aaron Morrison, Stefanie Dazio, Kathy McCormack, Jim Vertuno, Acacia Coronado, Sudhin Thanawala, Jeff Amy, Jeff Martin, Mike Stewart, Collin Binkley, Carolyn Thompson, Jake Offenhartz, Jesse Bedayn and Sophia Tareen.

HOSCHTON, Ga. (AP) — May’s election for the Georgia Supreme Court is playing out as races for the state’s highest court have for decades: sitting justices running uncontested.

But there is an exception, and it’s driven by the issue that has roiled politics across the country for the past two years: abortion.

Justice Andrew Pinson is the only one of four incumbents seeking election to draw a challenge, and it’s a formidable one. Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Democrat, hopes to harness a voter backlash to abortion restrictions to unseat Pinson in what could be a model for future Georgia court contests in a state that has become a partisan battleground.

The May 21 general election for a six-year term is nonpartisan, and a Barrow victory wouldn’t change the conservative leanings of the court. Eight of the nine justices, including Pinson, were appointed by Republican governors. The other won his seat unopposed after being appointed to a state appellate court by a Democratic governor.

Barrow’s bid is seen as a longshot. Pinson, appointed two years ago by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, appears to be raising more campaign money as the state’s legal establishment closes ranks around him.

But Barrow hopes a voter backlash against Georgia’s near-total abortion ban is the path to an upset.

In talks primarily to Democratic groups, Barrow says that when Pinson was Georgia’s solicitor general, he was the lawyer most responsible for the state supporting the Mississippi case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a constitutional right to abortion in 2022.

That decision cleared the way for a 2019 Georgia law to take effect banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually in about the sixth week of pregnancy. That’s before many women know they are pregnant.

At an April 15 Democratic meeting in a retirement community northeast of Atlanta, Barrow attacked Pinson’s former membership in the Federalist Society and his term as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, drawing boos from the 50 attendees.

Barrow said he believes Georgians have a state constitutional right to abortion and that voters would boost their chances of restoring broader access to abortion by doing something they’ve never done before: defeating an incumbent state justice.

“I happen to believe that the Georgia Constitution does provide a right of privacy, and that encompasses everything that we associate with what was the law under Roe vs. Wade. And then it’s probably wider,” Barrow said. “That would mean the current statute, the current ban we’re living with right now, violates that provision of the Constitution.”

Opponents of the six-week ban are challenging it in state court, arguing Georgia’s unusually well-developed law protecting privacy should void it. That case is almost certainly headed back to the Georgia Supreme Court

Pinson said it would be inappropriate to discuss his views on abortion or other topics that might come before the court.

“If judges start talking about issues in cases that come before the court, or that could come before the court and opine, ‘Personally, I think this; personally I think that,’ man, it just starts chipping away at people’s confidence in our judiciary,” Pinson said in an interview.

State supreme court races have become more expensive in recent years as courts have weighed issues like political gerrymandering. The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion has put those races under even greater scrutiny in the past two years as the divisive issue has returned to the states.

Public polling shows the majority of people in the U.S. support a right to abortion, and voters have affirmed abortion rights in seven states over the past two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, including in Republican-leaning states such as Kentucky, Montana and Ohio.

Douglas Keith, who tracks state supreme courts for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said money has poured into races from groups on the left and right, creating contests like the one last year in Wisconsin. There, a liberal judge backed by Democrats flipped the court after defeating a former justice supported by Republicans and anti-abortion groups in the most expensive state Supreme Court race ever.

“We are seeing money like we’ve never seen before in these races. Candidates and groups are adopting messages that they’ve never used in judicial elections before, and there’s just generally more attention on these races,” Keith said.

Pinson, 37, graduated first in his law school class at the University of Georgia and served four years as solicitor general, helping Georgia win a long-running water rights dispute. Kemp named Pinson to the state Court of Appeals in 2021 and elevated him to Georgia’s high court a year later. Many lawyers, including some Democrats, have endorsed him for election.

Meaningful electoral challenges to sitting Georgia judges are rare. Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that reflects a “small club dynamic” prevailing within Georgia’s legal establishment.

“I just think that we’re dealing with a kind of old-school mentality, where people don’t really want to engage in the kind of partisan warfare over judicial seats like we’ve seen in some other states,” Kreis said.

Barrow, 69, served five terms in Congress and for a time was the only white Democratic representative from the Deep South. He finally lost in 2014 after Republicans gerrymandered his district a second time. In 2018, he narrowly lost a statewide race for Georgia secretary of state to Republican Brad Raffensperger.

Although justices are elected, the pattern has been for a justice to resign and let the governor appoint a successor. A newly appointed justice then gets two years on the bench before facing voters.

Barrow was denied a chance to run in 2020 after a justice announced he would resign after the election date before his term ended. A challenge arguing the election should be held anyway was rejected. Barrow calls the system of appointments “dysfunctional” and pledges that if elected he will let voters choose his replacement.

“If the voters give me the office, I’m going to give it back to the voters,” he said.

While his victory wouldn’t change the overall political composition of the court, Barrow said it would send the state’s justices a message on abortion rights. He referenced the decision earlier this year by the Alabama Supreme Court that declared frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization could legally be considered children and an Arizona Supreme Court decision earlier this month reviving an abortion ban from 1864, before Arizona was a state.

“We’re getting an education right now all across the country as to how important the office of state supreme court justice is,” Barrow said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a recent afternoon, Grant Oh zigzagged across the University of Southern California campus as if he was conquering an obstacle course, coming up against police blockade after police blockade on his way to his apartment while officers arrested demonstrators protesting the Israel-Hamas war.

In many ways, the chaotic moment was the culmination of a college life that started amid the coronavirus pandemic and has been marked by continual upheaval in what has become a constant battle for normalcy. Oh already missed his prom and his high school graduation as COVID-19 surged in 2020. He started college with online classes. Now the 20-year-old will add another missed milestone to his life: USC has canceled its main commencement ceremony that was expected to be attended by 65,000 people.

His only graduation ceremony was in middle school and there were no caps and gowns.

“It’s crazy because I remember starting freshman year with the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which came after senior year of high school when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening and COVID, and xenophobia,” he said “It feels definitely surreal. It still shocks me that we live in a world that is so fired up and so willing to tear itself apart.”

Oh, who is getting a degree in health promotion and disease prevention, added that his loss of a memorable moment pales in comparison to what is happening: “At the end of the day, people are dying.”

College campuses have always been a hotbed for protests from the civil rights era to the Vietnam war to demonstrations over apartheid in South Africa. But students today also carry additional stresses from having lived through the isolation and fear from the pandemic, and the daily influence of social media that amplifies the world’s wrongs like never before, experts say.

It’s not just about missed milestones. Study after study shows Generation Z suffers from much higher rates of anxiety and depression than Millennials, said Jean Twenge, a psychologist and professor at San Diego State University, who wrote a book called “Generations.” She attributes much of that to the fact that negativity spreads faster and wider on social media than positive posts.

“Gen Z, they tend to be much more pessimistic than Millennials,” she said. “The question going forward is do they take this pessimism and turn it into concrete action and change, or do they turn it into annihilation and chaos?”

Protesters have pitched tents on campuses from Harvard and MIT to Stanford and the University of Texas, Austin, raising tensions as many schools prepare for spring commencements. Hundreds of students have been arrested across the country. Inspired by demonstrations at Columbia University, students at more than a dozen U.S. colleges have formed pro-Palestinian encampments and pledged to stay put until their demands are met.

The campus will be closed for the semester at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, which has been negotiating with students who have been barricaded inside a campus building since Monday, rebuffing an attempt by the police to clear them out.

USC announced Thursday that it would be calling off its main graduation ceremony after protests erupted over not only the Israel-Hamas war but the school’s decision earlier this month to call off the commencement speech by its valedictorian Asna Tabassum, who expressed support for Palestinians. Officials cited security concerns.

“By trying to silence Asna, it made everything way worse,” Oh said, adding that he hopes there will be no violence on graduation day May 10 when smaller ceremonies will be held by different departments.

Maurielle McGarvey graduated from high school in 2019 so was able to have a ceremony but then she took a gap year when many universities held classes only online. McGarvey, who is getting a degree in screenwriting with a minor in gender and social justice studies at USC, called the cancellations “heartbreaking,” and said the situation has been grossly mishandled by the university. She said police with batons came at her yelling as she held a banner while she and fellow demonstrators said a Jewish prayer.

“It’s definitely been like an overall diminished experience and to take away like the last sort of like typical thing that this class was allowed after having so many weird restrictions, so many customs and traditions changed,” she said. “It’s such a bummer.”

She said the email by the university announcing the cancellation particularly stung with its link to photos of past graduates in gowns tossing up their caps and cheering. “That’s just insult to injury,” she said.

Students at other universities were equally glum.

“Our grade is cursed,” said Abbie Barkan of Atlanta, 21, who is graduating from the University of Texas in two weeks with a journalism degree and who was among a group of Jewish students waving flags and chanting at a counter-protest Thursday near a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus.

University of Minnesota senior Sarah Dawley, who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, is grateful graduation plans have not changed at her school. But she said the past weeks have left her with a mix of emotions. She’s been dismayed to watch colleges call in police.

But she said she also feels hope after having gone through the pandemic and become part of a community that stands up for what they believe in.

“I think a lot of people are going to go on to do cool things because after all this, we care a lot,” she said.

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Watson reported from San Diego. AP journalists Stefanie Dazio and Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles, Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis, Jim Vertuno and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, and Rodrique Ngowi in Boston contributed to this report.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tornadoes wreaked havoc Friday in the Midwest, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes, many around Omaha, Nebraska.

As of Friday night, there were several reports of injuries but no immediate deaths reported. Tornado warnings continued to be issued into the night in Iowa.

Three people were hurt in Nebraska’s Lancaster County when a tornado hit an industrial building, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated and the injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

One of the most destructive tornadoes moved for miles Friday through mostly rural farmland before chewing up homes and other structures in the suburbs of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million.

Photos on social media showed the small city of Minden, Iowa, about 30 miles (48.3 kilometers) northeast of Omaha also sustained heavy damage.

The forecast for Saturday was ominous. The National Weather Service issued tornado watches across parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Forecasters warned that large hail and strong wind gusts were possible.

“It does look like a big outbreak again tomorrow,” said Becky Kern, the warning coordination meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office. “Maybe slightly farther south.”

Hundreds of houses sustained damage in Omaha on Friday, mostly in the Elkhorn area in the western part of the city, Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said.

“You definitely see the path of the tornado,” Bonacci said, adding that many of the homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Police and firefighters went door-to-door to help people, going to the “hardest hit area” with a plan to search anywhere someone could be trapped, Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bossman said.

“We’ll be looking throughout properties in debris piles, we’ll be looking in basements, trying to find any victims and make sure everybody is rescued who needs assistance,” Bossman said.

In one area of Elkhorn, dozens of newly built, large homes were damaged. At least six were wrecked, including one that was leveled, while others had their top halves ripped off. Dozens of emergency vehicles responded to the area.

“We watched it touch down like 200 yards over there and then we took shelter,” said Pat Woods, who lives in Elkhorn. “We could hear it coming through. When we came up our fence was gone and we looked to the northwest and the whole neighborhood’s gone.”

Kim Woods, his wife, added, “The whole neighborhood just to the north of us is pretty flattened.”

Three people, including a child, were in the basement of the leveled home when the tornado hit but got out safely, according to Dhaval Naik, who said he works with home’s owner.

KETV-TV video showed one woman being removed from a demolished home on a stretcher in Blair, a city just north of Omaha.

Two people were transported for treatment, both with minor injuries, Bonacci said.

Crews were doing a second search of homes. Fire crews would work throughout the night to check all the unsafe structures and make sure no one is inside, Bonacci said.

“People had warnings of this and that saved lives,” Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said of the few serious injuries.

The tornado warning was issued in the Omaha area on Friday afternoon just as children were due to be released from school. Many schools had students shelter in place until the storm passed. Hours later, buses were still transporting children home.

“Was it one long track tornado or was it several tornadoes?” Kern of the National Weather Service said.

The agency planned to send out multiple crews over the next several days to determine the number of tornadoes and their strength, which could take up to two weeks, she said.

“Some appeared to be violent tornadoes,” Kern continued. “There were tornadoes in different areas. And so it’s like forensic meteorology, we call it, like piecing together, all the damage indicators.”

Another tornado hit an area on the eastern edge of Omaha, passing directly through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city’s airport. Officials halted aircraft operations to access damage but then reopened the facility, Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy said.

The passenger terminal wasn’t hit by the tornado but people rushed to storm shelters until the twister passed, McCoy said.

After passing through the airport, the tornado crossed the Missouri River and into Iowa, north of Council Bluffs.

Nebraska Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Katrina Sperl said Friday afternoon that damage reports were just starting to come in. Taylor Wilson, a spokesperson for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said they hadn’t seen any injuries yet.

In Lancaster County, where three people were injured when an industrial building collapsed, sheriff’s officials also said they had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, Nebraska.

Two people who were injured in the county were being treated at the trauma center at Bryan Medical Center West Campus in Lincoln, the facility said in a news release. The hospital said the patients were in triage and no details were released on their condition.

The Omaha Public Power District reported nearly 10,000 customers were without power in the Omaha area. The number had dropped to about 7,300 by Friday night.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted on the social platform X that he had ordered state resources to be made available to help with the emergency response and to support first responders as they assess the damage.

“Nebraskans are no strangers to severe weather and, as they have countless times before, Nebraskans will help Nebraskans to rebuild,” Pillen said.

Daniel Fienhold, manager of the Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, Iowa, said he was outside watching the weather with his daughter and restaurant employees, recalling “it looked like a pretty big tornado was forming” northeast of town.

“It started raining, and then it started hailing, and then all the clouds started to kind of swirl and come together, and as soon as the wind started to pick up, that’s when I headed for the basement, but we never saw it,” Fienhold said.

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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — On a recent weeknight at this bar in northeast Portland, fans downed pints and burgers as college women’s lacrosse and beach volleyball matches played on big-screen TVs. Memorabilia autographed by female athletes covered the walls, with a painting of U.S. soccer legend Abby Wambach mounted above the chalkboard beer menu.

The Sports Bra is a pub where women’s sports are celebrated — and the only thing on TV.

Packed and buzzing with activity, the bar has successfully tapped into a meteoric rise of interest in women’s sports, embodied most recently by the frenzy over University of Iowa basketball phenomenon Caitlin Clark’s records-smashing feats.

Just two years after opening, the bar announced plans this week to go nationwide through a franchise model.

“Things have happened at light speed compared to what my forecast was,” founder and CEO Jenny Nguyen told The Associated Press. “This tiny spot that I built for my friends and I to watch games and give female athletes their flowers means so much more. And not just to me, but to a lot of people.”

Under the plan, bars and entrepreneurs elsewhere will be able to apply to use The Sports Bra brand for their franchises. Nguyen is open to working with people who already have a physical space, as well as those who may only have a business plan. What matters, she said, is that the potential future partners share The Sports Bra’s values.

One aspiring partner is Jackie Reau, who hopes to open a franchise in Cincinnati, where she works as the CEO of a media and marketing agency. During an interview at The Sports Bra, where she happily watched her college women’s lacrosse team on one of the TV sets, she said such establishments “celebrate women’s sports and the champions and the athletes behind the story.”

“It’s exciting to see it grow and gain such popularity,” Reau said of the bar. “It’s just such a moment right now for women’s sports.”

The expansion will be boosted by funding from a foundation created by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is married to tennis legend Serena Williams. Nguyen said she already has received hundreds of inquiries.

Interest in women’s sports is at an all-time high, helped by Clark’s exploits this year, when she shattered all-time NCAA scoring records for women and men. The championship game between Iowa and South Carolina on April 7 drew 18.9 million viewers on average, surpassing the audience for the men’s title match for the first time.

A week later a record 2.45 million viewers on average tuned in to the WNBA draft to watch as Clark went to the Indiana Fever as the No. 1 pick. This week it was reported that she was set to sign a $28 million deal with Nike that would be the richest sponsorship contract for a women’s basketball player.

The rise in interest is not just for women’s basketball, but other sports as well. The 2023 Women’s World Cup reported record attendance with nearly 2 million fans. A University of Nebraska volleyball game played in a football stadium drew more than 92,000 people last August, a world record for largest attendance at a women’s sporting event.

“It’s sort of in this pinnacle moment where eyeballs are plentiful,” said Lauren Anderson, director of the Warsaw Sports Business Center at the University of Oregon. “It’s just been an alignment of many things that has created this incredible moment for women’s sports that seems to be more than just a flash in the pan.”

As the fan base and engagement grow, so too does the appetite for changing a sports bar culture that has traditionally catered to men’s athletics. Other establishments like The Sports Bra have recently opened elsewhere: A Bar of Their Own began operating in Minneapolis earlier this year, and Seattle’s Rough & Tumble launched in late 2022.

Sports bars have not always been welcome spaces for women, Nguyen said. A fan since childhood, she would gather groups of friends to go because she didn’t feel safe going by herself. She recalled encountering macho environments that made her uncomfortable, and bartenders who refused to change the channel to a women’s game.

“That was just what we settled with,” she said. “When I wanted to push back and kind of flip the status quo, that’s when I really started to dig in on how The Sports Bra could matter and change the narrative on sports bars.”

One memory in particular stands out for Nguyen from her time as proprietor: Serena Williams’ last match, in 2022. A massive crowd showed up to watch, spilling over onto the the sidewalk. People outside cupped their eyes with their hands as they peered through the windows to see the screens.

“When Serena would score a point, I swear to God, I thought the glass was going to shatter. My eyeballs were rattling inside my head,” Nguyen said. “And then when they were volleying, I feel like you could hear a burger flip in the kitchen.”

Toward the end, she felt tears welling up. She passed two tissue boxes around for similarly weepy customers as everyone reveled in Williams’ last minutes on the court.

“I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, ‘I don’t know if there’s a single place on the face of the planet that is having this exact moment,’” Nguyen said. “It was amazing.”

Fans can still find it challenging to watch women’s sports games, because many are not broadcast on TV and require different streaming subscriptions, said Tarlan Chahardovali, an assistant professor in the University of South Carolina’s Department of Sport and Entertainment Management.

Women’s sports bars can be a reliable go-to for many events by having those subscriptions. But more broadly, Chahardovali said, much work remains to be done to ensure the media market doesn’t undervalue women’s sports.

“Today’s numbers are hard to ignore, and I think it’s a very exciting time,” she said. “But it’s a moment that needs to be maintained and sustained, and it needs continuous investment.”