Her choice of Walz was confirmed by three people familiar with the decision who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it had not been made public.

Some things to know about Walz:

Walz comes from rural America

It would be hard to find a more vivid representative of the American heartland than Walz. Born in West Point, Nebraska, a community of about 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, Walz joined the Army National Guard and became a teacher in Nebraska.

He and his wife moved to Mankato in southern Minnesota in the 1990s. That’s where he taught social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School, including for the 1999 team that won the first of the school’s four state championships. He still points to his union membership there.

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring from a field artillery battalion in 2005 as a command sergeant major, one of the military’s highest enlisted ranks.

He has a proven ability to connect with conservative voters

In his first race for Congress, Walz upset a Republican incumbent. That was in 2006, when he won in a largely rural, southern Minnesota congressional district against six-term Rep. Gil Gutknecht. Walz capitalized on voter anger with then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

During six terms in the U.S. House, Walz championed veterans’ issues.

He’s also shown a down-to-earth side, partly through social media video posts with his daughter, Hope. One last fall showed them trying a Minnesota State Fair ride, “The Slingshot,” after they bantered about fair food and her being a vegetarian.

He could help the ticket in key Midwestern states

While Walz isn’t from one of the crucial “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where both sides believe they need to win, he’s right next door. He also could ensure that Minnesota stays in the hands of Democrats.

That’s important because former President Donald Trump has portrayed Minnesota as being in play this year, even though the state hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006. A GOP presidential candidate hasn’t carried the state since President Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972, but Trump has already campaigned there.

When Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton decided not to seek a third term in 2018, Walz campaigned and won the office on a “One Minnesota” theme.

Walz also speaks comfortably about issues that matter to voters in the Rust Belt. He’s been a champion of Democratic causes, including union organizing, workers’ rights and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

He has experience with divided government

In his first term as governor, Walz faced a Legislature split between a Democratic-led House and a Republican-controlled Senate that resisted his proposals to use higher taxes to boost money for schools, health care and roads. But he and lawmakers brokered compromises that made the state’s divided government still seem productive.

Bipartisan cooperation became tougher during his second year as he used the governor’s emergency power during the COVID-19 pandemic to shutter businesses and close schools. Republicans pushed back and forced out some agency heads. Republicans also remain critical of Walz over what they see as his slow response to sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Things got easier for Walz in his second term, after he defeated Republican Scott Jensen, a physician known nationally as a vaccine skeptic. Democrats gained control of both legislative chambers, clearing the way for a more liberal course in state government, aided by a huge budget surplus.

Walz and lawmakers eliminated nearly all of the state abortion restrictions enacted in the past by Republicans, protected gender-affirming care for transgender youth and legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

Rejecting Republican pleas that the state budget surplus be used to cut taxes, Democrats funded free school meals for children, free tuition at public colleges for students in families earning under $80,000 a year, a paid family and medical leave program and health insurance coverage regardless of a person’s immigration status.

He has an ear for sound-bite politics

Walz called Republican nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance “just weird” in an MSNBC interview last month and the Democratic Governors Association — which Walz chairs — amplified the point on a post on X. Walz later reiterated the characterization on CNN, citing Trump’s repeated mentions of the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.

The word quickly morphed into a theme for Harris and other Democrats, and has a chance to be a watchword of the undoubtably weird 2024 election.

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The Florida-based airline said Tuesday the top ticket will be a “Go Big” package that includes priority check-in, a roomier seat, snacks and drinks, a checked bag, a carry-on bag and free WiFi.

CEO Ted Christie said the changes are “taking low-fare travel to new heights.” They also indicate the deep trouble with Spirit’s longtime business model.

The airline with bright yellow planes hasn’t made a full-year profit since 2019 — it has lost nearly $2.4 billion since — leading industry analysts to mull whether a bankruptcy filing could be in Spirit’s future.

Full-service carriers Delta and United account for an outsized share of the U.S. airline industry’s profit, and they are doing it by focusing on premium flyers while also selling bare-bones “basic economy” fares that compete with Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant for travelers on tight budgets.

The budget carriers have suffered more than the giants from a glut of flights within the United States, which has led to price-cutting. Delta, United and American have a booming business right now in long-haul international flights that can offset weak pricing power at home. Spirit does not.

The budget carriers are trying to adapt. Frontier Airlines — which, like Spirit, has been losing money for more than four years — matched a pandemic-era move by the bigger airlines and dropped flight-change and cancellation fees for many customers this spring. Spirit quickly copied the move.

Spirit has other problems, including a looming debt payment of more than $1 billion and a shortage of planes because some of its jets are grounded for inspections and repairs of Pratt & Whitney engines. Spirit expects compensation of up to $200 million from the engine maker, but its condition is dire enough that Spirit announced in April it would furlough some pilots and delay delivery of new jets.

TD Cowen analysts downgraded Spirit shares to “Sell” this month and said if Spirit can’t renegotiate its debt or return leased planes to lessors, a pre-packaged bankruptcy filing is possible.

Spirit’s announcement Tuesday targets travelers who might not consider a budget airline.

It said customers will be able to book any of the four new ticket bundles starting Aug. 16. That means they won’t be available during the height of summer-vacation travel but will be in use over the busy Labor Day holiday.

“We listened to our guests and are excited to deliver what they want: choices for an elevated experience that are affordable and provide unparalleled value,” Christie said in a statement issued by Spirit.

Spirit shares gained 5% in afternoon trading but are down more than 80% this year.

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About 8 in 10 Democrats say they would be somewhat or very satisfied if Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted after Biden withdrew from the race.

In a separate AP-NORC poll, taken before Biden dropped out but after his debate against Republican former President Donald Trump, only about 4 in 10 Democrats said they were somewhat or very satisfied that he was the Democratic Party’s likely nominee for president.

The rapidly changing views among Democrats in such a short time span underscore how swiftly the party — from rank-and-file voters to elected officials — has coalesced behind Harris as its standard-bearer, motivated by the fresh face at the top of the ticket and newfound confidence in the party’s prospects against Trump in November.

Gary Hines, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said he wasn’t particularly impressed by Harris’ first presidential bid but now, she’s shown “she’s up to the task, can do the work, has proven that she’s running a strong campaign so far and maybe on a bigger level, she’s somebody that can beat Donald Trump.” All those factors have ignited an enthusiasm in Hines that wasn’t there when Biden was still in the race, he said.

“I really want to go out and maybe knock on doors, which I would’ve never done,” said Hines, 68. “It’s jazzed me up quite a bit.”

Americans are also more likely to say that Harris would make a good president than they were earlier in July, a shift that was primarily driven by Democrats. They still see a tough contest looming, though: A majority of U.S. adults, 56%, say that if Trump and Harris are their parties’ nominees for the general election in November, Trump is more likely to win.

Lauren Schulman, a Democrat from Pompano Beach, Florida, said she admires Biden and what he has accomplished during his presidency. But she said with him at the top of the ticket, “I have just been so terrified that we were going to lose.”

With Harris, on the other hand, “she’s been a bright, shining star,” said Schulman, 66, noting that the vice president is “smart and she’s younger, and she even comes off younger than she is. That makes such a huge contrast with Trump.”

Growing enthusiasm for Harris — especially compared to Biden

About 7 in 10 Black adults and about half of Hispanic adults would be satisfied with Harris as the Democratic nominee — a marked increase from earlier in July, when about half of Black adults and 15% of Hispanic adults felt satisfied with Biden as the Democrats’ expected nominee. (The poll did not include enough Asian adults to analyze their responses separately.)

The share of younger adults (those under the age of 45) who say they would be satisfied with Harris as the nominee, at around 4 in 10, is higher than the 17% who said they were satisfied with Biden in July.

Bryan Seigler, a Democrat from Raleigh, North Carolina, praised Harris’ “broad appeal” and pointed to a contrast that Democrats weren’t able to make before.

“Donald Trump is the old guy now,” said Seigler, 36.

The new poll shows that Harris’ overall favorability has risen slightly, from 39% at the beginning of the summer — before the debate — to 46% now. Democrats’ opinions of Harris have also shifted in a slightly more positive direction. Eight in 10 Democrats have a positive view of Harris, up slightly from around 7 in 10 in early June.

Harris would be a historic candidate — she would be the first woman to win the presidency, as well as the first Black woman, the first South Asian American, and the first Asian American. Around 4 in 10 Americans say that it would be a good thing for the country to elect either a woman or a person of color to be president. Even more — about 6 in 10 when asked about electing a person of color and about half when asked about electing a woman — say it does not matter.

Majorities of Democrats, however, say it would be good for the country to elect a woman or person of color.

Views of Biden’s decision

Most Americans, 54%, say they have heard or read a lot about Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. About three-quarters of Americans approve of his decision to withdraw as the Democratic nominee for president, including most Democrats and Republicans.

For many Democrats, Biden’s catastrophic June 27 debate showed that — even if they were largely satisfied with his accomplishments during his time in office — the incumbent president should not be running for a second term because of concerns about how his age was affecting his public performance or his ability to campaign effectively against Trump.

“When I watched the debate, you could just tell his cognitive ability was hardly there,” said Julian Castañeda, a Democrat in Pocatello, Idaho. “He had a hard time forming sentences and a lot of his responses, I couldn’t even understand what he was saying. At his age right now, it was appropriate for him to stand aside.”

Biden’s choice to endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee for president is slightly more divisive, with about half of U.S. adults in support, though Democrats overwhelmingly approve. There are similar levels of support for Biden’s decision to serve out the rest of his presidential term.

Withdrawing from the race didn’t do much to change Americans’ views of Biden overall. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how Biden is handling his job as president. That number is roughly in line with where it has been for the last two years. Biden’s favorability ratings are similar to where they were before he dropped out of the race, with about 4 in 10 adults and about three-quarters of Democrats holding a positive view.

Americans see a tough election contest for Harris

Even as the new Harris campaign has reasons for optimism, the vice president faces an opponent who is better known by the country and who has a reputation for a loyal base of support.

Most Americans perceive Trump as having the advantage going into the November election. A majority of U.S. adults say that if Trump and Harris are the candidates, Trump is more likely to win. About 9 in 10 Republicans say Trump is more likely to become president, while only about 7 in 10 Democrats say that about Harris.

Schulman thinks Harris is more likely to win this fall. Still, she added: “Democrats, we’re like a real, nervous, paranoid bunch these days.”

___
The poll of 1,143 adults was conducted July 25-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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The regulation also adds protections for pregnant students and students who are parents, and details how schools must respond to sexual misconduct complaints.

For schools, the impact of the court challenges could be a combination of confusion and inertia in terms of compliance as the academic year begins.

“I think it is likely that school district-to-school district or state-to-state, we’re going to see more or less a continuation of the current status quo,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The rights of transgender people — and especially young people — have become a major political battleground in recent years as trans visibility has increased. Most Republican-controlled states have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and several have adopted policies limiting which school bathrooms trans people can use and barring trans girls from some sports competitions.

In April, President Joe Biden’s administration sought to settle some of the contention with a regulation to safeguard rights of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money. The rule was two years in the making and drew 240,000 responses — a record for the Education Department.

The rule declares that it’s unlawful discrimination to treat transgender students differently from their classmates, including by restricting bathroom access. It does not explicitly address sports participation, a particularly contentious topic.

It also enhances protections for students who are pregnant or have children, widens the scope of the sexual misconduct cases schools must investigate, and removes a Trump administration rule requiring schools to let the accused cross-examine their accusers in live hearings.

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court for permission to enforce the elements of the new regulation that don’t address transgender rights, but it’s not clear when the justices might rule.

Meanwhile, Title IX enforcement remains highly unsettled.

In a series of rulings, federal courts have declared that the rule cannot be enforced in most of the Republican states that sued while the litigation continues. In a ruling Tuesday, a judge in Alabama went the other way, allowing enforcement to start in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

A Kansas-based federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump added another wrinkle, asserting power over states led by Democrats: He said the rule cannot be enforced in schools attended by the children of members of Moms for Liberty or colleges with members of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United. That’s keeping the regulation from taking effect in hundreds of colleges and some 1,700 schools in states where it can otherwise be enforced.

In many school districts across the country, the rule is to be enforced in some schools but can’t be followed in others.

“There aren’t many other parallels I can give you of two different sets of rules applying in the very same place, one school on one side of the street operating from a different playbook from a school on the other side of the street,” said Brett Sokolow, chair of the Association of Title IX Administrators.

Administrators have been frustrated by lack of guidance from the Biden administration, he said. When the Education Department recently sent schools information about implementing the new policies, it noted that they don’t apply in many places. Sokolow said some districts may need to consider having two separate teams — one trained on the previous rules, the other on the 2024 version — to be prepared for either scenario.

Jay Warona, the deputy executive director and general counsel for the New York State School Boards Association, said his state already offers transgender students some similar protections, but not all of the other components of the new regulation are addressed in state policy.

Warona said he’s fielding messages from school districts wondering what to do, and he’s telling them to check with their district lawyers.

Caius Willingham, senior policy advocate at the National Center for Transgender Equality, said it’s important to note that the injunctions don’t prevent school districts from having similar policies, even as they bar the federal government from enforcing its new regulations in some places.

Meanwhile, students are facing real impacts. Some people barred from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender hold their bladder all day, avoid hydrating or even drop out of school, he said.

“If you can’t meaningfully participate in the educational systems as your true self,” Willingham said, “you’re not going to be able to thrive.”

For Kaemo Mainard O’Connell, a transgender and nonbinary high school senior in Arkansas, the lack of federal protections seems like a signal to encourage behavior such as deadnaming and bullying.

“It means I’m going to have to work much harder to be respected by teachers and by students,” they said. “What not having federal protection does is, it makes it seem like my issues are not real issues.”

Since Arkansas now prohibits transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, Kaemo has instead been using a single-person restroom at the school, and is required to sign in and often wait before using it.

Similar worries are shared by families of trans kids in Utah, where lawmakers in June passed resolutions instructing state employees to disregard the Title IX directive. Utah is among the states challenging the rules in court, but is struggling to enforce its bathroom restrictions meanwhile: A tip form to report possible violations has been flooded with hoax submissions, and the state official tasked with filtering through them has made his lack of enthusiasm known.

“The bathroom law brought unpleasant conversations and definitely made our kiddo feel othered,” said Utah mom Grace Cooper, whose child is nonbinary. “It also brought a lot of allies out of the woodwork, but without federal protections, my worries as a mother are ever-present.”

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As of April 1 of this year, Florida had 23,002,597 residents, according to estimates released earlier this month by the state Demographic Estimating Conference.

Florida is the third most populous state in the U.S., trailing only California’s 39.5 million residents and Texas’ 30.5 million inhabitants.

Florida added almost 359,000 people last year and has been adding about 350,000 to 375,000 people each year this decade, according to the estimates.

The population growth is expected to peak this year and get smaller with each following year for the rest of the 2020s as the final cohort of baby boomers entering retirement gets smaller, according to the estimates.

By the early 2030s, Florida’s growth rate will be under 1% after hitting an expected 1.6% this year.

Since a little bit before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, all of Florida’s growth has come from people moving to the Sunshine State from other parts of the United States or abroad. Deaths have outpaced births in Florida since late 2019 and early 2020, and that trend is predicted to continue well into the next decade.

Almost 10% of Florida’s residents are age 75 and older, second only to Puerto Rico among U.S. states and the territory.

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Menendez had insisted after the July 16 verdict that he was innocent and on Tuesday in his letter promised to appeal “all the way,” including to the Supreme Court, he wrote to fellow Democrat, Gov. Phil Murphy. The roughly monthlong delay in leaving gives his staff time for an orderly transition, Menendez wrote. The date also coincides with a Senate payday.

He did not mention the federal conviction in the letter but cited his work helping Superstorm Sandy victims and getting transit funding, among other items and addressed the governor directly, reminding him that he had once praised Menendez — before calling for his resignation.

“These successes led you, Governor, to call me the ‘Indispensable Senator,’” he wrote.

The Senate received a copy of Menendez’s resignation letter, according to Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, who was presiding in the chamber on Tuesday.

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Here are some takeaways from the historic day.

Democrats who had been in disarray are falling in line
Since Biden’s disastrous debate in June, the Democratic party has been in disarray. Drip by drip, high-level party officials reversed course and started to send signals that the president needed to step aside.

Before Sunday, seeing Biden step aside did not necessarily mean making room for Harris. The vice president’s approval ratings were as grim as Biden’s, and there’s widespread skepticism on the left about her electability after her disappointing performance in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

But on Sunday, Democrats started lining up behind Harris. Dozens of members of Congress and senators endorsed her. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — himself a dream nominee for many Democrats who have hoped Biden would step aside — also came out in favor of Harris, as did California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Two big names — former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama — notably withheld endorsements. But with less than two months before early voting begins in the presidential election, Democrats may be deciding they don’t have time for further turmoil.

It’s also a reminder of the stark difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Trump took over the Republican Party on the strength of his personality and loyal following of party voters. Harris has been assiduously working the phones to key Democratic members of Congress to assemble a durable coalition. Democrats are still trying to balance multiple power centers.

The GOP only has one power center now.

Will the election be about Trump, or Harris, or someone else?
Normally, a president’s reelection campaign is a referendum on the incumbent. For months, Biden tried to make it about Trump.

When pushed in interviews about his own poor debate performance, Biden tried to counter it by highlighting Donald Trump’s deceptions. He made the perceived threat of another Trump presidency his big pitch to donors, saying that the Republican would end U.S. democracy. But after the debate, the framing quickly turned to Biden, and whether he had the capacity to serve another four years.

Now Democrats hope Harris, at 59, can cast a spotlight on Trump, who is just three years younger than Biden.

The GOP made no secret that it preferred to run against Biden, but it’s pivoting to attack Harris in similar ways. Republicans are already criticizing Harris for defending Biden’s ability to do his job over the past several years. They’re tying her to the least popular aspects of Biden’s presidency, like border policy and immigration. During last week’s GOP convention, speaker after speaker called Harris the “border czar” — which has never been her title, but was shorthand for how Biden tasked her with handling immigration early in his term.

Voters: Are you happy now?
The one constant since Trump announced in November of 2022 has been voters pleading, begging for a different matchup.

The desire is clear in both polls and conversations with regular voters. In late 2023, an AP-NORC poll found that 58% would be unhappy with Trump as the GOP nominee and 56% with Biden. Democrats were more likely to be dissatisfied with Biden then Republicans with Trump.

The problem for the replace-Biden movement is no single candidate captured the imagination of Democratic voters. Running essentially unopposed, Biden cleaned up in the Democratic primary. It wasn’t until the June 27 debate that Democratic powerbrokers began to listen to voters’ unease.

Now there’s a different election. But the question remains — will voters be happy about a fresher face? Or will they treat Harris like they did Biden, either because they see her as tightly connected to him or because their unhappiness wasn’t just about the re-run of the 2020 race, but other factors in American life?

A new battle over a diverse electorate?
The main contours of the presidential race were set with Trump’s announcement in November of 2022. Now, if Democrats choose Harris, those battle lines come into much sharper focus. Harris, as the nation’s first Black woman vice president, and first of South Asian descent, has the potential to generate an overperformance among women, particularly women of color, while Trump will try to do the same among white men.

But Trump isn’t putting all his eggs in a single demographic basket. After performing better than expected with Latinos in 2020 his campaign has been trying to boost his numbers with that ethnicity even more and also targeting Black voters. Meanwhile, Biden’s hold on older white voters — who are more likely to cast ballots — kept him competitive.

Will Harris be able to blunt Trump’s potential gains among more diverse parts of the electorate? Will she be able to replicate her boss’ strength in Rust Belt states where white voters are disproportionately powerful? Can she put in play states like Georgia and North Carolina that have a higher share of Black voters?

Any changes between Harris’ coalition and Biden’s are likely to be small, but this election is likely to be close and turn on tiny shifts in the electorate.

Will Harris be able to make a second first impression?
Harris has long been an electoral mystery. She has the resume of a top-of-the-line electoral juggernaut — female career prosecutor of racially mixed descent, quick and charismatic. But she’s underperformed in the races she ran in California. Though she won her statewide contests, she usually didn’t get as many votes as other Democrats running statewide.

The nadir came in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Harris ended up dropping out before voting began to preserve her viability after doing so poorly in the initial stretch of the race.

Harris’ checkered electoral history may have been a factor on Democratic disquiet about Biden, because they didn’t trust his heir apparent to beat Trump. They now may have no choice but to believe in her and have been encouraged by her sharper, clearer attacks on the Republican nominee recently.

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A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Justice Department alleges employees of Southwest Key Programs Inc. sexually abused and harassed children in their care for at least eight years. During that time, the nonprofit organization amassed billions of dollars in government contracts and continued to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children entering the U.S.

It remained unclear Friday how many children are currently in Southwest Key shelters, and federal officials did not respond to questions about whether any actions would be taken in response to the lawsuit. Critics say it reflects a system that has lacked accountability for years.

“The whole point of this complaint is that there’s this pattern and practice,” said Leecia Welch, deputy legal director at Children’s Rights. “If they’re bringing this complaint that they saw a pattern and practice of sexual harassment and violating these kids while still placing kids at Southwest Key during the same time period, that’s why I have such a disconnect.”

Southwest Key, which operates under grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, has 29 child migrant shelters — 17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona and two in California — with room for more than 6,300 children.

The department did not respond to emailed requests for comment asking whether children will continue to be placed there. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment beyond the lawsuit announcement Thursday. Southwest Key did not respond to an additional emailed request for comment Friday.

“ORR continued to contract with Southwest Key despite knowing of some of these issues, so right now there isn’t in another place to put all these kids,” said Diane de Gramont, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law. “And we would be extremely concerned if kids then ended up in border patrol facilities for longer periods of time because ORR didn’t have enough beds for them.”

The Border Patrol must transfer custody of unaccompanied children within 72 hours of arrest to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which releases most to parents or close relatives after short stays at Southwest Key or shelters operated by other contracted providers.

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a nonprofit organization that advocates for immigrant children, called for children in custody to be immediately reunited with family members and have access to attorneys as well as “independent courts who will hear their claims of harm.”

Previous abuse at some Southwest Key shelters led to their closure, including two large facilities in Arizona in 2018. The state revoked their licenses for not properly conducting background checks on their employees, and further investigation revealed several cases of physical and sexual abuse, including accusations from the government of El Salvador.

The abuse reflects the important role of state oversight, something that is now lacking in states like Texas and Florida, where Republican governors revoked state licensing of facilities that house migrant children.

Critics say there exists no equivalent system to report and investigate child abuse and neglect through the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the housing of migrant children.

“If there is an incident of abuse, when the state is there, there’s a clear hotline for anybody to call,” de Gramont said. “There’s a mandatory investigation … there’s a strict series of events that’s supposed to happen there.”

Some experts also wondered why the complaint was filed as a civil lawsuit where no one would be held criminally liable.

Daniel Hatoum, a Texas Civil Rights Project attorney whose experience includes defending children subject to the work of immigration contractors, said a criminal lawsuit could come later.

“Corporate liability can be a lot harder for the Department of Justice than civil liability and especially individual criminal liability,” he said. The civil lawsuit is seeking a jury trial and requesting monetary damages for the victims of the alleged abuse.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes less than three weeks after a federal judge granted its request to lift special court oversight of the Health and Human Services Department’s care of unaccompanied migrant children, known as the Flores agreement. This gave attorneys representing child migrants broad authority to visit custody facilities and conduct interviews with staff and other migrants, as well as register complaints with the court.

President Joe Biden’s administration argued that new federal safeguards rendered special oversight unnecessary 27 years after it began. In one court document, Health and Human Services Department official Toby Biswas painted a rosy picture of the new regulations’ numerous protections for unaccompanied children as well as independent accountability for their custody conditions.

Advocates instead saw a void in oversight.

Carrie Van der Hoek, deputy program director for the Young Center’s Child Advocate Program in Texas, said in an affidavit opposing the termination of the Flores agreement that her staff reported approximately 10 instances of alleged abuse and neglect to the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services since Texas revoked its licensing in 2021.

“When we have made these reports, in some cases, DFPS officials told us that they would not investigate the complaint because DFPS did not have jurisdiction over ORR facilities,” Van der Hoek said. “In other cases, we received no response and were not aware of any actions taken by DFPS or any other state agency to investigate the report.”

Van der Hoek also said that if a child called preprogrammed telephones in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, facilities that allow them to reach the state child abuse and neglect hotline, they would get the same response.

Biswas said they began conducting “in-depth reviews” of abuse allegations at Texas facilities beginning March 2022 and will begin its own investigations of alleged child abuse and neglect in Texas “or in any other state if it ceases to perform such investigations” as of July of this year.

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Special counsel Jack Smith’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order is expected to tee up a court fight that might reach the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in the reinstatement of the indictment and even conceivably the reassignment of the case to a different judge.

There’s no scenario in which a revived prosecution could reach trial before the November election — and it presumably won’t take place at all in the event Trump is elected president and orders his Justice Department to dismiss it. Still, Cannon’s order ensures many more months of legal wrangling in a criminal case that became snarled over the last year by interminable delays.

“The only good thing about this is that it is finally a decision,” said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge in Massachusetts who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “The difficulty with Judge Cannon has been that she has made no decisions. She has simply sat on the case. And since she has made no decisions, there was nothing to appeal.”

The judge’s 93-page order held that Smith’s selection as special counsel violated the Constitution because he was named to the position directly by Attorney General Merrick Garland instead of being appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Prosecutors vigorously challenged that argument when it was raised by Trump’s lawyers, and filed a formal notice of appeal Wednesday to initiate the process.

It’s impossible to say whether the opinion will stand or be reversed on appeal, though other judges in other districts in recent years have reached opposite conclusions of Cannon, upholding the constitutionality of special counsels who were appointed by Justice Department leadership and funded by a permanent indefinite appropriation.

The Supreme Court, in a 50-year-old opinion involving President Richard Nixon, held that the Justice Department had the statutory authority to appoint a special prosecutor.

And even though Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised questions this month about the legality of Smith’s appointment, no other justice signed onto his concurring opinion in a case conferring broad immunity on former presidents.

The Smith team is likely to point to all of those court holdings in casting Cannon to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as an outlier who made not just a bad decision but one requiring swift reversal, said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law school professor.

A spokesman for Smith’s office, in announcing Monday that the Justice Department had authorized an appeal, said the opinion “deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel.”

But Jesse Panuccio, a former associate attorney general in the Trump administration Justice Department, said anger over Cannon’s opinion — which he called a “careful and scholarly” analysis — was misplaced.

“If you took out of the equation the derangement that comes from anyone analyzing anything that has to do with Trump and you just asked legal scholars 10 years ago, ‘Hey, are there any issues involving independent counsels, special counsels?’” he said, the answer would be yes.

Panuccio added: “I think this is a very serious issue, and it’s an issue frankly that when I was at the Justice Department, I had reservations about.”

Trump on Monday said the dismissal “should be just the first step” and the three other cases against him, which he called “Witch Hunts,” should also be thrown out.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, has exasperated the Justice Department since even before the indictment was filed, meaning if prosecutors do seek her removal, they could presumably cite a laundry list of grievances with her handling of the case.

Weeks after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents in August 2022, Cannon granted a Trump team request to appoint an independent arbiter to review the seized records — a decision later overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel. In April, prosecutors rebuked Cannon over potential jury instructions she floated that they said rested on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”

It is unclear if Smith’s team will seek to have Cannon reassigned in the event that the appeals court reinstates the case. A Smith spokesperson declined to comment Tuesday on that possibility. It’s an unusual request and one prosecutors in this case had avoided making.

But there is precedent for appeals courts taking that step, including in the same judicial district where the Florida case was charged.

“I think it would be quite a statement if the Circuit Court removes her from the case, but I think in this instance it would be warranted,” said Cheryl Bader, a Fordham University law school professor and former federal prosecutor. “There does seem to be a pattern of Judge Cannon bending over backwards to create delay and obstacles.”

In 1989, the 11th Circuit reinstated a criminal case in Florida of a man charged with trafficking counterfeit Rolex watches and reassigned the case to another judge after the trial judge described the case as “silly” and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

The court laid out three considerations for deciding whether to assign a case to a different judge, including whether such a move is “appropriate to preserve the appearance of justice” and “whether the original judge would have difficulty putting his previous views and findings aside.”

Gerhardt, the North Carolina professor, said he did not see a downside to Smith’s team making such a request.

“Judges do make bad decisions sometimes,” he said. “But not good judges do it more often than they should, and she’s done it more often than any judge should.”

But Panuccio said he didn’t think Cannon’s order gave Smith’s team sufficient cause to complain, especially given that Cannon’s position was backed by a member of the Supreme Court.

“I think Jack Smith would be flirting with fire if he were to make that request based on this opinion simply because he lost an issue,” he said.

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Some 54,300 previously occupied U.S. homes were purchased by non-U.S. citizens in the 12 months ended in March, according to a report this week by the National Association of Realtors.

That’s the fewest homes sold to foreign nationals in data going back to 2009. Sales were down about 36% compared to the same period a year earlier.

Those transactions from April 2023 through March of this year totaled $42 billion, a 21.2% decline from the prior-year period, NAR said.

“International buyers face the same difficult market challenges as domestic buyers — lack of inventory, higher mortgage rates, the affordability condition,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “On top of that, for many international buyers the stronger dollar was not in their favor.”

The U.S. housing market has been stuck in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Existing home sales sank to a nearly 30-year low last year as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage surged to a 23-year high of 7.79%, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.

The average rate has mostly hovered around 7%, limiting home shoppers’ purchasing power. At the same time, the supply of homes for sale, though rising in recent months, remains close to historic lows. That’s kept the market competitive enough to lift home prices to new highs.

On top of those affordability challenges, foreign buyers have to factor in the potential for additional costs when the U.S. dollar is stronger than their currency. The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the value of the greenback relative to a basket of foreign currencies, has risen 3.9% over the past 12 months.

“The strong U.S. dollar makes international travel cheaper for Americans but makes U.S. homes much more expensive for foreigners,” said Yun. “Therefore, it’s not surprising to see a pullback in U.S. home sales from foreign buyers.”

All-cash sales accounted for half the international buyer transactions, compared to just 28% of all existing-home buyers, NAR said.

The report defined international buyers as non-U.S. citizens with permanent residences outside the country and immigrants who had been in the U.S. less than two years when they bought a home. It also included purchases by non-immigrants living in the U.S. for more than six months under professional or educational visas, among others.

The number of existing U.S. homes purchased by international buyers peaked in the 12 months ended March 2017 at 284,500 properties, according to NAR. That was fueled in part by a surge in Chinese nationals snapping up homes.

Among the foreign nationals who bought a U.S. home in the 12 months ended in March of this year, buyers from China accounted for 11% of purchases, matching Mexico, NAR said. Home shoppers from Canada topped the list with 13%.

Where did most of the international home shoppers end up buying a home? Florida drew the most at 20% of all sales to foreign buyers, followed by Texas (13%), California (11%) and Arizona (5%). Georgia, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina each accounted for 4%, NAR said.

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