By MAKIYA SEMINERA, AP Education Writer

A federal judge has issued a nationwide block on a Trump administration directive that prevented children in the U.S. illegally from enrolling in Head Start, a federally funded preschool program.

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Head Start associations in several states filed suit against the policy change by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ruling by a federal judge in Washington state on Thursday comes after a coalition of 21 Democratic attorney generals succeeded in temporarily halting the policy’s implementation within their own states.

With the new ruling, the policy is now on hold across the country.

In July, HHS proposed a rule reinterpretation to disallow immigrants in the country illegally from receiving certain social services, including Head Start and other community health programs. Those programs were previously made accessible by a federal law in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

The change was part of a broader Trump administration effort to exclude people without legal status from accessing social services by making changes to federal eligibility rules.

Those immigrants would be barred from accessing the impacted programs because they would be reclassified as federal public benefits — an alteration that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said could disincentivize illegal immigration. People in the country unlawfully are largely ineligible for federal public benefits, which include food stamps and student loans.

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and BILL BARROW, Associated Press

Charlie Kirk began plotting a way to mold young minds into conservatism at an age when he was still sorting out his own path. Looking to channel his political inclinations into action after a rejection from West Point, Kirk was 18 when he launched a grassroots organization from an Illinois garage that would grow alongside the rise of President Donald Trump and fuel the “Make America Great Again” movement.

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Kirk admitted later he had “no money, no connections and no idea what I was doing” when he started Turning Point USA in 2012. But his rhetorical gifts for countering progressive ideas by inflaming cultural tensions and making provocative declarations instantly resonated with college audiences during the Obama years and Trump’s first presidency.

As video clips of his early campus appearances spread online, it helped him secure a steady stream of donations that transformed Turning Point into one of the country’s largest political organizations, attracting young people to star-studded gatherings and making it a presence at high schools and colleges around the country.

“No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump said on Wednesday after Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah.

In the early stages, Kirk described his group as a student organization that advocated for free markets and limited government. He needled peers who bashed capitalism and backed presidential candidate and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders yet “shamelessly enjoy the fruits of the free market,” like Starbucks, Amazon and Netflix.

Over time, Turning Point began holding mass rallies that drew tens of thousands of young voters each year to hear top conservative leaders – Trump included – speaking on glitzy stages with massive screens, pyrotechnics and lighting shows befitting a stadium concert.

Alongside Turning Point’s growth, Kirk’s fame skyrocketed, and he leveraged his nonprofit, celebrity status and a successful podcast into considerable personal wealth.

It is not immediately clear who will lead Turning Point after Kirk’s death.

“You don’t replace a Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “He was unique.”

FILE – Minnesota State University Mankato students applaud Charlie Kirk as he finished his speech at an event on Oct. 5, 2021, in Mankato, Minn. (AP Photo/Jackson Forderer, File)

Turning Point spreads conservative ideas across college campuses

Kirk’s bread-and-butter remained anchored on college campuses.

His final appearance Wednesday at Utah Valley University was the opening event of his latest series, titled the “American Comeback Tour.”

In his college stops, Kirk would often sit beneath a tent, as he was when he was shot. He was often behind his “Prove Me Wrong” table, where he held forth.

He mainly drew young conservatives — many sporting “Make America Great Again” hats — who said they often felt unwelcome or out of place at school. And he had hundreds of Turning Point employees and volunteers there to recruit students into becoming GOP voters and activists themselves.

The real draw, however, was Kirk arguing with students. He seemed to relish jeers when he had a less friendly audience.

Kirk frequently repeated Trump’s false claims that former Vice President Kamala Harris was directly responsible for all immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. He called George Floyd, a Black man whose death by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national debate over racial injustice, a “scumbag.”

He espoused culturally conservative views, advocating for gun rights, condemning abortion, holding up women as wives and mothers — and men as heads of households. And he mastered the art of the “what about?” retort, turning questions back on progressives and liberals who challenged him.

Kirk was sometimes kept away from schools. In 2018, Turning Point said a Chicago university denied requests for him to speak on their campus citing safety concerns, and a Florida high school would not allow him to speak to students two months after a teenager with an assault rifle had killed 17 people there.

Tommy Richardson, a 36-year-old from Mesa, Arizona, arrived at the Turning Point headquarters after Kirk’s death was announced. He praised Kirk as a charismatic leader who helped shape his generation of conservatives and “was a champion of everything we believe.”

“That’s a huge legacy that will have repercussions for the political landscape for decades to come,” he said.

FILE – From left, Republican National Committee deputy press secretary Raffi Williams, Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA, and Sen. Ben Sasse R-Neb., participate in a panel discussion in National Harbor, Md., Feb. 26, 2015. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Kirk helped mobilize youth for Trump

In 2024, Kirk used his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to praise Trump as an economic master and argue that Gen Z voters could not afford another Democratic administration.

“Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to illegals and foreign nations, while Gen Z has to pinch pennies just so that they can never own a home, never marry, and work until they die, childless,” he said.

Speaking directly to his generation, the multimillionaire influencer said, “You don’t have to stay poor. You don’t have to accept being worse off than your parents. You don’t have to support leaders who lied to you and took advantage of you for your vote.”

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of the 2024 electorate, 47% of voters aged 18-29 opted for Trump, while 51% went for Harris. But that was a much narrower gap than in 2020, when Joe Biden outpaced Trump 61% to 36%.

“I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk. He’s really an amazing guy. Amazing guy. And his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic victory,” Trump said at a Turning Point gathering in Arizona last December.

Vice President JD Vance said Kirk’s influence continued past the inauguration.

“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance said on X late Wednesday. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”

FILE – Charlie Kirk, center, conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, speaks to supporters of President Donald Trump at a rally, Nov. 6, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Young conservatives call him mentor and inspiration

Several young politicians and figures credit Kirk with inspiring or boosting their public careers.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was one of the first “to believe in me.” When she ran for Congress from New Hampshire in 2022, Kirk endorsed her in the Republican primary. She lost the general election.

Kirk “believed in the potential and promise of young people,” she said. “He inspired millions of them to get involved in politics and fight for our nation’s conservative values.”

Vance said Kirk first reached out through a private message on Twitter after a Fox News appearance in 2017 when he was an author and not a politician. They became friends, and Kirk was one of the first people Vance called when he thought of running for the U.S. Senate in early 2021. Kirk introduced him to people who eventually ran his campaign — and to Donald Trump Jr.

“Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him too,” Vance posted on X.

Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican congresswoman, said Kirk recruited her as national Hispanic outreach director when she was planning to attend medical school.

“He’s part of the reason I’m in office right now,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said of Kirk from outside the Capitol Wednesday.

Kennedy Peterson, 20, was among the young people who came to Turning Point headquarters after Kirk’s death was announced Wednesday.

“From the day that he started with the Campus Victory Project, I think that his intentions were to create a world that he thought was better than what we have now,” Peterson said.

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington, and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, contributed to this report.

By MELINA WALLING, Associated Press

Every time humans cut into the Amazon rainforest or burn or destroy parts of it, they’re making people sick.

It’s an idea Indigenous people have lived by for thousands of years. Now a new study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment adds to the scientific evidence supporting it, by finding that instances of several diseases were lowered in areas where forest was set aside for Indigenous peoples who maintained it well.

With the United Nations climate summit set for Brazil in November, the study authors and outside experts said the work highlights the stakes for people around the world as negotiators try to address climate change. Belem, the city hosting the conference, is known as the gateway to the Amazon, and many who will be attending, from activists to delegates, think the role of Indigenous communities in climate action and conservation will be highlighted in a distinct way.

“The ‘forest man’ or ‘man forest,’ according to the Indigenous perspective, has always been linked to the reciprocity between human health and the natural environment where one lives,” said Francisco Hernández Cayetano, president of the Federation of Ticuna and Yagua Communities of the Lower Amazon, or FECOTYBA, in the Peruvian Amazon. “If each state does not guarantee the rights and territories of Indigenous peoples, we would inevitably be harming their health, their lives, and the ecosystem itself.”

That harm can look like respiratory diseases such as asthma caused by toxic air pollution after fires, or illnesses that spread from animals to humans such as malaria, said Paula Prist, a senior program coordinator for the Forest and Grasslands Unit at the International Union for Conservation of Nature and one of the study authors.

The researchers compiled and analyzed data on forest quality, legal recognition of Indigenous territory and disease incidence in the countries that border and include the Amazon.

FILE – Ashaninka’s territory sits along the winding Amonia River in Acre state, Brazil, June 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, File)

Outside experts weigh in

The work was “impressive” to University of Washington health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi. She said it highlighted the complexity of factors that affect human health, and the importance of understanding the role Indigenous communities play in shaping it. “Using these methods, others could study other parts of the world,” she said.

The researchers found creative ways to account for other variables that can affect the spread of diseases, like access to health care in a given area, said Magdalena Hurtado, an anthropology and global health professor at Arizona State University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences who was not involved with the study. But she expressed concern that the findings were presented with a precision that may not be warranted, given that they were based on correlation and use data on observations that can be difficult to measure.

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“They claim that Indigenous territories only protect health when forest cover is above 40%. And so that that feels like, why 40%? Why not 35? Or why not a range?” she asked. “It doesn’t mean that the study is wrong, but it means that we need to be cautious because the patterns could change if different, more precise methods were used.”

Still, she thinks this is a starting point that could open the door to future research. “They are actually doing something quite beautiful,” empirically connecting the legal recognition of Indigenous lands to human health outcomes, she said.

Hernández, of FECOTYBA, said that’s important for the global policymakers who are coming to Brazil.

“From my Indigenous perspective, I think that this type of study would make our ancestral knowledge more visible and precise,” he said.

There’s a strong body of evidence showing that Indigenous land tenure helps maintain intact forests, but the paper shows it’s important to maintain forest outside of Indigenous-stewarded areas as well, said James MacCarthy, a wildfire research manager with the Global Forest Watch team at the World Resources Institute who worked on a new report on extreme wildfires and the role of Indigenous communities in addressing them, and who was not involved with the study.

FILE – Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)

Landscapes that produce benefits, and don’t harm human health

Prist said the goal of the study was to understand how landscapes can be healthy for people, but that it would be naive to suggest that all forest landscapes stay exactly as they are, especially with the land needs of farming and livestock production.

The world needs landscapes that provide economic services, but also services that protect people’s health, she said.

For Julia Barreto, an ecologist and data scientist who also worked on the study, it stood out to be part of a team of scientists from different nations working to make information publicly accessible and to bring attention to the Amazon.

“It is not only one country, and the whole world is depending on it somehow,” she said.

Associated Press writer Steven Grattan contributed to this report from Bogota, Colombia.

Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and MORGAN, LEE Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s effort to remove Guatemalan and Honduran children living in shelters or foster care after coming to the U.S. alone, according to a decision Thursday.

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U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez in Tucson extended a decision made over the Labor Day weekend.

Lawyers for the children said their clients have said they fear going home, and that the government is not following laws designed to protect migrant children.

A legal aid group filed a lawsuit in Arizona on behalf of 57 Guatemalan children and another 12 from Honduras between the ages 3 and 17.

Nearly all the children were in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and living at shelters in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Similar lawsuits filed in Illinois and Washington, D.C., seek to stop the government from removing the children.

The Arizona lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interest.

The Trump administration has argued it is acting in the best interest of the children by trying to reunite them with their families at the behest of the Guatemalan government. After Guatemalan officials toured U.S. detention facilities, the government said that it was “very concerned” and that it would take children who wanted to return voluntarily.

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

The Arizona lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to an Arizona legal aid group that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the lawsuit was initially filed on Aug. 30.