By GISELA SALOMON

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — As a business owner in the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, Wilmer Escaray is stressed and in shock. He is unsure what steps he needs to take after the Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to strip legal protections from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.

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Escaray owns 15 restaurants and three markets, most of them in Doral, a city of 80,000 in the Miami area people known as “Little Venezuela” or “Doralzuela.” At least 70% of Escaray’s 150 employees and many of his customers are Venezuelan immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS.

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s ruling that had paused the administration’s plans to end TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation.

Like many U.S. business owners with Venezuelan employees, Escaray lacks direction. He does not know how long his employees will have legal authorization to work or if he will be able to help them, he said.

“The impact for the business will be really hard,” said Escaray, a 37-year-old Venezuelan American who came to the U.S. to study in 2007 and opened his first restaurant six years later. “I don’t know yet what I am going to do. I have to discuss with my team, with my family to see what will be the plan.”

TPS allows people already in the U.S. to legally live and work here because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife. The Trump administration said immigrants were poorly vetted after the Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation.

Immigration attorney Evelyn Alexandra Batista said the Supreme Court did not specifically address the extension of TPS-based work permits, and some work authorizations remain in effect. She warned, though, that there is no guarantee that they will continue to remain valid because the Supreme Court can change this.

“This means that employers and employees alike should be exploring all other alternative options as TPS was never meant to be permanent,” said Batista, who has received hundreds of calls from TPS beneficiaries and companies looking for advice in the months since Trump returned to office and began his immigration crackdown.

Among the options they are exploring, she said, are visas for extraordinary abilities, investment visas, and agricultural visas.

The American Business Immigration Coalition estimates that TPS holders add $31 billion to the U.S. economy through wages and spending power. There are no specific estimates of the impact of Venezuelans, although they make up the largest percentage of TPS beneficiaries.

They work in hospitality, construction, agriculture, health care, retail, and food services.

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A key witness stared down Harvey Weinstein and pointed sharply at him as she left court in sobs Tuesday, marking one of the most heated moments of the former studio boss’ sex crimes retrial.

The confrontational moment came after Jessica Mann described Weinstein grabbing, dragging, forcefully undressing and raping her in a Beverly Hills, California, hotel room around the beginning of 2014, after she told him she was dating someone else.

“You owe me one more time!” Weinstein bellowed, according to Mann, who wiped her eyes and took heaving breaths as she testified. Weinstein — who denies ever raping or sexually assaulting anyone — briefly shook his head as he watched from the defense table.

After Mann finished her narrative, she continued crying and didn’t answer when a prosecutor asked whether she needed a break. Judge Curtis Farber called for one.

When Mann passed the defense table on her way out, she turned toward the seated Weinstein, aimed a finger at her eyes and then at him. It wasn’t clear how many jurors saw the gesture, and Mann didn’t respond to a question outside court about what she meant to convey.

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan for his retrial on Tuesday, May 20, 2025 in New York. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP)

After they left, Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala made the latest of more than a half-dozen requests for a mistrial. He cited Mann’s gesticulation, questioned her displays of emotion and complained that she shouldn’t have been asked about the alleged Los Angeles rape, as Weinstein isn’t actually charged with it.

The Oscar-winning producer is charged with raping Mann on another occasion, in 2013 in New York, and forcing oral sex on two other women separately in 2006. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Farber denied the mistrial request. He ruled before the trial that Mann and the other two women could put the charges in the context of their other interactions with Weinstein, including other times when he allegedly made unwanted advances.

As for Mann’s gesture, “I can’t control what people do in the courtroom” — nor what jurors may make of it, Farber said, suggesting that Mann be told not to make any more such moves. The judge noted that he had also seen Weinstein react visibly and mutter at times during the trial.

Mann returned to the witness stand without looking at Weinstein, who watched her stone-faced.

She resumed testifying through an edgy morning. “This is my response!” she interjected at one point when Aidala raised a legal objection to her answer to a prosecutor’s question.

Actress Jessica Mann, center, arrives to testify in Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault trial, Monday, May 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

Aidala hasn’t yet has his turn to question Mann, 39, about her fraught and complex history with Weinstein, 73. During an opening statement last month, the attorney portrayed her as an aspiring actor who had only willing sexual encounters with a Hollywood bigwig she thought could help her.

A cosmetologist and hairstylist, she met Weinstein socially in Los Angeles over a decade ago, when she was trying to get acting work.

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Mann said she had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein, but that he was volatile and violated her if she refused him.

Weinstein went from movie mogul to #MeToo pariah in 2017, after allegations emerged that he had sexually harassed and sexually abused women for years. He was later convicted of various sex crimes in both New York and California, but his New York conviction was later overturned, leading to the retrial.

The proceedings have been graphic, exhaustively detailed and tense at times as his accusers underwent days of questioning. One of them, Miriam Haley, cursed at Weinstein from the witness stand. Another, Kaja Sokola, was dismayed by questions about her private journal, which Weinstein’s lawyers had gotten without her knowledge.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who alleged they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified. Haley, Mann and Sokola have done so.

Associated Press video journalist Joseph B. Frederick contributed.

A lawsuit was filed Monday against Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, Minnesota State High School League executive director Erich Martens and numerous others by a group representing three metro high school softball athletes centered on the state allowing an athlete to play high school softball who plaintiffs allege was born male.

The organization behind the suit is Female Athletes United, which is representing one softball player from Maple Grove and two from Farmington. The suit cites an unfair playing field.

The MSHSL voted in 2015 to allow the inclusion of transgender athletes into girls sports. That decision came back under fire on Feb. 5, when President Trump signed an executive order aimed at prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in female sports.

At the time, the Minnesota State High School League said the executive order is at odds with the Human Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Minnesota Constitution, which prohibits discrimination “against any person in any protected class, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The U.S. Department of Education then announced it was launching an investigation into the high school athletic associations in Minnesota and California.

Ellison filed a suit against the Trump administration last month, saying in part that the he viewed the President’s executive orders as “bullying” of transgender children.

The lawsuit states that Minnesota’s policy “expands opportunities for male athletes to compete and experience victory at the expense of female athletes. Minnesota’s female athletes suffer as a result — experiencing fewer opportunities to play, win, advance, and receive recognition in their own. And these female athletes also suffer the mental burden of knowing that their rights are secondary. Their hard work may never be enough to win.”

The lawsuit describes the three represented players’ interactions with the athlete it alleges to be male as one player’s team repeatedly losing to and struggling to score against the pitcher, one pitcher having to compete with the other athlete for playing time on a club team and the third athlete getting hit by a pitch thrown by the alleged male athlete.

The suit stated that the athletes didn’t believe it was “fair” that that would have to potentially compete against the alleged male athlete in postseason competition.

Section softball tournaments opened across the state this week.

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Days after a bombing outside a Southern California fertility clinic, a White House official confirmed Tuesday that the Trump administration is reviewing a list of recommendations to expand access to in vitro fertilization.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February asking for ways to protect access and “aggressively” lower “out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote the list of recommendations over the last 90 days.

“This is a key priority for President Trump, and the Domestic Policy Council has completed its recommendations,” Desai said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Desai did not offer additional details about when the recommendations or a plan would be released or give details about the contents of the report.

The report was sent to the president days after an explosion damaged part of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. The FBI believes a 25-year-old man was responsible for the blast, and authorities said his writings suggest he held anti-natalist views that include a belief that it’s morally wrong for people to bring children into the world. Investigators have called the attack an act of terrorism.

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The explosion brought renewed attention to the common fertility treatment IVF after it became a major political talking point during the 2024 U.S. presidential race.

Dr. Brian Levine, a New York City reproductive endocrinologist and IVF specialist, said he expects the White House report will contain recommendations for the states and also hopes it calls for expanding IVF coverage for members of the military and federal government employees.

“As a fertility doctor who’s been practicing for the last 13 years, I don’t think I’ve ever had this level of excitement for what the government is going to do,” he said. “For the first time in my career, IVF is a priority at the highest levels of the government. It signals to patients that finally our advocacy is being heard. Both sides of the aisle are recognizing the problem we have in this country with access to IVF care.”

Trump called for universal coverage of IVF treatment while on the campaign trail, after his Supreme Court nominees helped to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had provided a constitutional right to abortion for half a century. That 2022 decision has led to a wave of restrictions in Republican-led states, including some that have threatened IVF access by trying to define life as beginning at conception.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to make the fertility treatment free for women but didn’t give details about how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work. Abortion rights groups countered that IVF would not be threatened if not for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which Trump has proudly taken credit for.

IVF costs vary but range from about $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle, and people often need more than one cycle. Insurance coverage can be patchy. Some plans cover it, some partly cover it and some don’t cover it at all.

Most Americans want access to IVF protected. Last year, a poll from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about six out of 10 U.S. adults support that.

Trump’s stance on IVF has put him at odds with the actions of much of his own party. While Trump has claimed the Republican Party has been a “leader” on IVF, many Republicans have been left grappling with the tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.

GOP efforts to create a national narrative that it is receptive of IVF also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.

Mini Timmaraju, CEO and president of the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All, called Trump’s comments about IVF “lip service.”

“All Trump has done is stack his administration with extremists, restrict access to reproductive care, and implement the dangerous Project 2025 plan, which would threaten access to IVF nationwide,” she said.

Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report from Louisville, Kentucky.

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