By JANIE HAR, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.

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A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.

An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.

The 9th Circuit panel found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the department had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior TPS extension because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit for it.

“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” the court wrote.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.

It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans whose protections expired in April. Protections for another group of 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.

Congress authorized Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.

In ending the protections, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that conditions in both Haiti and Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from the two countries to stay on for what is a temporary program.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. The country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and and an ineffectual government.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain more seats in the 2026 midterm elections, delivering a win for President Donald Trump and his desire to hold onto a slim GOP majority in the U.S. House.

The Texas map drafted in rare mid-decade redistricting prompted fierce protests from Democrats and sparked a gerrymandering tug-of-war for voters in states across the country.

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“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video he posted on X of him signing the legislation.

Before Texas lawmakers passed their new map, California passed a bill asking voters to approve new Democratic-leaning districts to counter any Republican gains in Texas.

The incumbent president’s party usually loses congressional seats in the midterm election. On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority.

Texas Democrats have vowed to challenge the new map in court. They delayed a vote by two weeks by leaving Texas on Aug. 3 in protest and to rally support nationally. Upon their return, they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring to ensure they showed up for debate.

But the large Republican majority in the Texas Legislature made its ultimate passage all but inevitable.

The head of Texas’ Democratic Party criticized Abbott, saying he and Republicans “effectively surrendered Texas to Washington” with the new map.

“They love to boast about how ‘Texas Tough’ they are, but when Donald Trump made one call, they bent over backwards to prioritize his politics over Texans,” state Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said in a statement. “Honestly, it’s pathetic.”

Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing in court that it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.

Republican leaders have denied the map is racially discriminatory and contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one. They have also been explicit in their desire to draw a new map for a goal of electing more Republicans.

This version corrects when Democrats left Texas to Aug. 3 instead of July.

A Coon Rapids man was killed Thursday night when his motorcycle crashed into a Volkswagen sport utility vehicle on Snelling Avenue near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights.

The Volkswagen Touareg was traveling southbound on Snelling Avenue, which is also Minnesota 51, and turned to go eastbound on Garden Avenue around 10:20 p.m. when it was struck by a Yamaha MT09 operated by 27-year-old Jacob Isaac Lewer, according to Minnesota State Patrol.

Lewer was declared dead. His passenger, a 25-year-old Scandia woman, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Road conditions were dry and it is unknown if alcohol was a factor in the crash.

Roseville Police, St. Anthony Police and the St. Paul Fire Department EMS also responded to the scene. The driver of the SUV, a 28-year-old Roseville woman, was not injured and showed no evidence of alcohol impairment, according to State Patrol.

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By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

A measure that would allow nearly any private citizen to sue out-of-state prescribers and others who send abortion pills into Texas has won first-round approval in the state House.

It would be the first law of its kind in the country and part of the ongoing effort by abortion opponents to fight the broad use of the pills, which are used in the majority of abortions in the U.S. — including in states where abortion is illegal.

The bill passed in the House on Thursday and could receive a final vote in the Republican-dominated state Senate next week. If that happens, it would be up to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to decide whether to sign it into law.

Here are things to know about the Texas legislation and other legal challenges to abortion pills.

The Texas measure is a new approach to crack down on pills

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed state abortion bans, pills — most often a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol — were the most common way to obtain abortion access.

Now, with Texas and 11 other states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, and four more that bar most of them after the first six weeks or so of gestation, the pills have become an even more essential way abortion is provided in the U.S.

“We believe that women need to be protected from the harms of chemical abortion drugs,” said Amy O’Donnell, a spokesperson for Texas Alliance for Life, which supports the bill. “They harm women and their intent is to harm unborn babies.”

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Under the bill, providers could be ordered to pay $100,000. But only the pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives could collect the entire amount. Anyone else who sues could receive only $10,000, with the remaining $90,000 going to charity.

The measure echoes a 2021 Texas law that uses the prospect of lawsuits from private citizens to enforce a ban on abortion once fetal activity can be detected — at about six weeks’ gestation. The state also has a ban on abortions at all stages of pregnancy.

The pill bill also contains provisions intended to keep those with a history of family violence from collecting and barring disclosure of women’s personal or medical information in court documents.

Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice, a group that helps women access abortion, including by traveling to other states for it, said the law is problematic.

“It establishes a bounty hunting system to enforce Texas’ laws beyond the state laws,” she said.

A law could open the door to further battles between states

While most Republican-controlled states have restricted or banned abortions in the last three years, most Democratic-controlled states have taken steps to protect access.

And at least eight states have laws that seek to protect prescribers who send abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned.

There are already legal battles that could challenge those, both involving the same New York doctor.

Louisiana has brought criminal charges against Dr. Maggie Carpenter, accusing her of prescribing the pills to a pregnant minor. And a Texas judge has ordered her to pay a $100,000 penalty plus legal fees for violating that state’s ban on prescribing abortion medication by telemedicine. New York officials are refusing to extradite her to Louisiana or to enter the Texas civil judgement.

If the Texas law is adopted and use, it’s certain to trigger a new round of legal battles over whether laws from one state can be enforced in another.

“Its very different from what’s come before it,” said Greer Donley, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who studies the legal landscape of abortion.

Two key states seek to get into anti-mifepristone legal battle

Texas and Florida — the second and third most populous states in the country — asked a court last week to let them join a lawsuit filed last year by the Republican attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to make mifepristone harder to access.

Those states contend — as many abortion opponents do — that mifepristone is too risky to be prescribed via telehealth and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should roll back approvals and tighten access.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year unanimously rejected a case making similar arguments, saying the anti-abortion doctors behind it did lacked the legal standing to take up the case.

This week, more than 260 reproductive health researchers from across the nation submitted a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration affirming the safety record of the abortion medication mifepristone. In the letter, the researchers urge the FDA not to impose new restrictions on the drug and to make decisions based on “gold-standard science.”

The FDA is also facing a lawsuit from a Hawaii doctor and heath care associations arguing that it restricts mifepristone too much

Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this article.