By MATTHEW BROWN

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man faces years in prison at his Wednesday sentencing for threatening to assault former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after becoming upset with the government for not shooting down a Chinese spy balloon that floated over the defendant’s home city.

Richard Rogers, 45, of Billings, will appear before U.S. District Judge Susan Watters after a jury convicted him last year for threatening a member of Congress and making harassing phone calls to the FBI and congressional staff in which he routinely made vulgar and obscene comments.

The threat against McCarthy carries a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Because Rogers has no criminal history, federal sentencing guidelines call for a shorter term, and his attorneys requested a sentence of probation.

Rogers, a former phone customer service representative, delivered the threat to a McCarthy staffer during a series of more than 100 calls to the Republican speaker’s office in just 75 minutes on Feb. 3, 2023, prosecutors said. That was one day after the Pentagon acknowledged it was tracking the spy balloon, which was later shot down off the Atlantic Coast.

Rogers testified at trial that his outraged calls to the FBI and McCarthy’s office were a form of civil disobedience. One of his lawyers said during the trial that Rogers “just wanted to be heard.”

Prosecutors asked the court to send a “strong deterrent message” that threats against public officials are not protected by the First Amendment. They asked for a sentence of two years in prison.

“Rogers’ conduct in this case contributes to a rising and concerning myth that the First Amendment somehow gives a person complete immunity from all consequences as long as their speech or conduct is framed as ‘political protest,’” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Defense attorney Daniel Ball asked for Rogers to be spared prison and sentenced to supervised release.

Threats against public officials in the U.S. have risen sharply in recent years, including against members of Congress, their spouses, election workers and local officials. Rogers’ case was among more than 8,000 threats to lawmakers investigated by the U.S. Capitol Police in 2023.

A 30-year-old Billings man was sentenced last year to 2 1/2 years in federal prison after leaving voicemail messages threatening to kill former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his family. Another Montana man was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in 2023 for threats against Tester.

By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is creating a registry for all people who are in the United States illegally, and those who don’t self-report could face fines or prosecution, immigration officials announced Tuesday.

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Everyone who is in the U.S. illegally must register, give fingerprints and provide an address, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. It cited a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the complex immigration law — as justification for the registration process, which would apply to anyone 14 and older.

The announcement comes as the administration seeks to make good on campaign promises to carry out mass deportations of people in the country illegally and seal the border to future asylum-seekers.

“An alien’s failure to register is a crime that could result in a fine, imprisonment, or both,” the statement said. “For decades, this law has been ignored — not anymore.”

On its website, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service said it would soon create a form and process for registration.

In one of his 10 inauguration day executive orders related to immigration, President Donald Trump initially outlined plans for creating a registry and required that Homeland Security “immediately announce and publicize information about the legal obligation of all previously unregistered aliens in the United States to comply.”

It was not immediately clear how many people living in the country illegally would voluntarily come forward and give the federal government information about who they are and where they’re living. But failure to register would be considered a crime, and the administration has said its initial priority target for deportation is people who’ve committed crimes in the U.S.

The National Immigration Law Center, an immigration advocacy group, said in a posting on its website before the Tuesday night announcement that “the Alien Registration Act of 1940 is the only time the U.S. government carried out a comprehensive campaign to require all noncitizens to register.”

The organization said under that process, people had to go to their local post office to register, and the goal was to identify “potential national security threats broadly characterized as communist or subversive.”

The group warned that the registry was meant to help find potential targets for deportation.

“Any attempt by the Trump administration to create a registration process for noncitizens previously unable to register would be used to identify and target people for detention and deportation,” the organization said.

By CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agencies must develop plans to eliminate employee positions, according to a memo distributed by President Donald Trump ‘s administration that sets in motion what could become a sweeping realignment of American government.

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The memo expands the Republican president’s effort to downsize the federal workforce, which he has described as bloated and impediment to his agenda. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired, and now his administration is turning its attention to career officials with civil service protection.

Agencies are directed to submit by March 13 their plans for what is known as a reduction in force, which would not only lay off employees but eliminate the position altogether. The result could be extensive changes in how government functions.

“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” said the memo from Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as a human resources agency. “At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public.”

Trump foreshadowed this goal in an executive order that he signed with Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who is advising Trump on overhauling the government.

The order said agency leaders “shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force,” or RIF.

Some departments have already begin this process.

The General Services Administration, which handles federal real estate, told employees on Monday that a reduction in force was underway and they would “everything in our power to make your departure fair and dignified.”

The memo came as Trump prepared for the first Cabinet meeting of his second term. He planned to include Musk, who oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “all of the Cabinet secretaries take the advice and direction of DOGE.”

“They’ll be providing updates on their efforts, and they’ll also be providing updates on what they’re doing at their agencies in terms of policies and implementing the promises that the president made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said.

Musk has caused turmoil within the federal workforce, most recently by demanding that employees justify their jobs or risk getting fired. OPM later said that the edict was voluntary.

By TIFFANY STANLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans who identify as Christian has declined steadily for years, but that drop shows signs of slowing, according to a new survey Wednesday from the Pew Research Center.

The Religious Landscape Study finds 62% of U.S. adults call themselves Christians. While a significant dip from 2007, when 78% of Americans identified as Christian, Pew found the Christian share of the population has remained relatively stable since 2019.

The rapid rise of the religiously unaffiliated — the so-called “ nones ” — has also reached at least a temporary plateau, according to Pew. Approximately 29% of U.S. adults identify as religiously unaffiliated, including those who are atheist (5%), agnostic (6%) or “nothing in particular” (19%).

“It’s striking to have observed this recent period of stability in American religion after that long period of decline,” said Pew’s Gregory Smith, one of the study’s co-authors. “One thing we can’t know for sure is whether these short-term signs of stabilization will prove to be a lasting change in the country’s religious trajectory.”

By some measures, the U.S. remains overwhelmingly spiritual. Many Americans have a supernatural outlook, with 83% believing in God or a universal spirit and 86% believing that people have a soul or spirit. About seven in 10 Americans believe in heaven, hell or both.

Young adults are less religious than their elders

Despite this widespread spirituality, there are harbingers of future religious decline. Most notably, Pew found a huge age gap, with 46% of the youngest American adults identifying as Christian, compared to 80% of the oldest adults. The youngest adults are also three times more likely than the oldest group to be religiously unaffiliated.

FILE – Members of the choir at Central Moravian Church sing at a “Lovefeast” service in Bethlehem, Pa., Dec. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Andres Henao, File)

“These kinds of generational differences are a big part of what’s driven the long-term declines in American religion,” Smith said. “As older cohorts of highly religious, older people have passed away, they have been replaced by new cohorts of young adults who are less religious than their parents and grandparents.”

Michele Margolis, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist not affiliated with the Pew survey, has studied how religious involvement changes over a lifetime.

Young adults frequently move away from religion. “Then when you get married and have kids, this is a time where scholars have noted that religion is more likely to become important,” Margolis said.

Margolis said one question going forward is whether the youngest American adults firmly reject organized religion, or if some of them will return to the religious fold as they age.

Between 2007 and 2024, Pew religious landscape studies haven’t indicated that Americans are growing more religious as they get older.

Smith at Pew said “something would need to change” to stop the long-term decline of American religion, whether that’s adults becoming more religious with age or new generations becoming more religious than their parents.

How partisan politics intertwines with religious identity

The long-term decline of U.S. Christianity and rise of the “nones” has occurred across traditions, gender, race, ethnicity, education and region. But it is much more evident among political liberals, according to Pew. The survey shows 51% of liberals claim no religion, up 24 points from 2007. Only 37% of U.S. liberals identify as Christian, down from 62% in 2007.

Penny Edgell, a University of Minnesota sociologist and expert adviser for the Pew study, said this religious and political sorting aligns with whether people “support traditional, patriarchal gender and family arrangements.”

Edgell also notes that Black Americans defy the assumption that all Democrats are less religious than Republicans.

“More Black Americans percentagewise are Democrats, but their rates of religious involvement are still really high,” Edgell said. “That has something to do with the way that religious institutions and politics have been intertwined in historically unique ways for different groups.”

FILE – A congregant at Mother Bethel AME Church prays during a service in Philadelphia, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Andres Henao, File)

Roughly seven in 10 Black Protestants told Pew that religion is very important to them — about the same rate as evangelicals and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But Black Protestants are likely to identify as Democrats (72%), whereas evangelicals and Latter-day Saints are likely to identify as Republican (70% and 73%, respectively).

The Pew survey tracks many religious traditions

It’s been nearly 10 years since the last Religious Landscape Study, which tracks religious data that the U.S. census does not.

The new survey found that a majority of immigrants to the U.S. are Christian (58%), but they also follow the upward trend of the religiously unaffiliated, with a quarter of foreign-born U.S. adults claiming no religion.

The number of Americans who belong to religions besides Christianity has been increasing, though it’s still a small portion of the population (7%). That includes the 2% who are Jewish, and the 1% each who are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

Of U.S. Christian adults, 40% are Protestant and 19% are Catholic. The remaining 3% in Pew’s survey include Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and smaller Christian groups.

The two largest Protestant denominations in the Pew survey remain the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church – though both have lost many members since the first Religious Landscape Study in 2007.

The Pew Religious Landscape Study was conducted in English and Spanish between July 2023 and March 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 36,908 respondents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey’s margin of error for results based on the full sample is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.