By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration and Louisiana officials have lifted another decades-old school desegregation order, part of a campaign to end court mandates they describe as outdated.

A federal judge on Monday approved a joint motion from Louisiana and the U.S. Justice Department to dismiss a 1967 lawsuit in DeSoto Parish schools, a district of about 5,000 students in the state’s northwest. It’s the second such dismissal since the Justice Department began working to overturn desegregation cases it once championed.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill thanked President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday for “helping us to finally end some of these cases.”

“DeSoto Parish has its school system back,” Murrill said in a statement. “For the last 10 years, there have been no disputes among the parties, yet the consent decree remained.”

The case dates to 1967, when the Justice Department sued DeSoto Parish to end its racially segregated school system. The case resulted in a 1970 court order requiring the district to eliminate segregation and provide regular progress reports. The order was modified several times over the decades but there had been little activity in recent years.

In the motion for dismissal, Louisiana and Trump officials said the order was no longer needed.

“While this case has been pending for over a half-century, there has been no dispute among the parties since 2014,” they wrote in a Dec. 30 court filing. “The parties thus are no longer adverse, and there is no case or controversy.”

Their motion was approved by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr., who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

State officials say the court orders place an unfair burden on school districts. Districts under such orders usually have to get approval from the court to build new schools, change attendance boundaries or make policy changes touching on court orders.

Civil rights groups say the orders are needed to fight the enduring impact of racial discrimination.

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DeSoto went to the court for numerous changes over the years, including new attendance zones in 2014 that remain in place today. The district also files status reports showing the racial breakdown of students and teachers, along with data on student transfers. The district’s last report was filed in October.

Louisiana Republicans see the decades-old desegregation orders as a challenge to local control and have worked to get them lifted in recent years. Working alongside Trump’s justice officials, they successfully dismissed a 1966 order in the Plaquemines Parish.

In the Plaquemines case, the lawsuit had been idle for decades after the judge overseeing it died in the 1970s.

An effort to overturn a 1960s order in Concordia Parish schools has faced pushback from a federal court. A judge in that case rejected a motion to dismiss the suit, saying Concordia must first demonstrate it has fully ended segregation. State and federal officials are appealing the decision.

The Concordia case was originally brought by Black families who demanded access to the town’s all-white schools.

The Associated Press’ education 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.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension issued a statement Thursday saying that it is no longer part of the investigation into an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis. The full statement is below:

On Jan. 7, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) was notified that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel were involved in a shooting in Minneapolis that resulted in a woman’s death. That morning, after consultation with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, it was decided that the BCA Force Investigations Unit would conduct a joint investigation with the FBI. The BCA responded promptly to the scene and began coordinating investigative work in good faith.

Later that afternoon, the FBI informed the BCA that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had reversed course: the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.

Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands. As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation. The BCA Force Investigations Unit was designed to ensure consistency, accountability and public confidence, none of which can be achieved without full cooperation and jurisdictional clarity.

The BCA Force Investigations Unit was created in 2020 by the legislature to provide an independent, consistent and trusted mechanism for investigating use of force incidents involving law enforcement officers. This unit is the result of years of scrutiny, public engagement and bipartisan legislative action following the Deadly Force Encounters Working Group. Minnesotans made it clear that they expect a transparent and thorough process when a peace officer uses deadly force in our state, and the BCA has earned their trust by delivering on that expectation.

We expect the FBI to conduct a thorough and complete investigation and that the full investigative file will be shared with the appropriate prosecutorial authorities at both the state and federal levels.

The BCA remains fully committed to our partnerships to build public trust in use of deadly force investigations. If the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI were to reconsider this approach and express a willingness to resume a joint investigation, the BCA is prepared to reengage in support of our shared goal of public safety in Minnesota.

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By STAN CHOE

NEW YORK (AP) — Modest moves for Wall Street overall on Thursday are masking some big gains underneath the surface for makers of weapons and other military equipment after President Donald Trump said he wants to increase spending on them sharply.

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Wall Street’s strong start to the year slows as stocks drift

The S&P 500 dipped 0.1% in midday trading, coming off its first loss in four days, and remains near its all-time high set earlier this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 272 points, or 0.6%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% lower.

The majority of stocks climbed as yields ticked higher in the bond market following mixed reports on the U.S. economy.

The number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits rose last week, a potential indicator of increasing layoffs, but by no more than economists expected. Other reports said U.S. workers improved their productivity by more in the summer than economists expected, while the U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly shrank in October.

On Wall Street, defense-industry companies led the market after Trump said he wants to increase U.S. military spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 from $901 billion in order to build the “Dream Military.”

Northrop Grumman climbed 4.3%, Lockheed Martin soared 5.3% and L3Harris Technologies jumped 5.8%. They more than made up their losses from the prior day, when Trump complained defense contractors were making military equipment too slowly.

RTX came under particular criticism by Trump, and its stock rose less than peers. It added 2% after Trump said that it was the “slowest in increasing their volume.”

Trump signed an executive order Wednesday calling on the Pentagon to ensure future contracts with contractors contain a provision prohibiting their ability to buy back their own stock during a period of underperformance on U.S. government contracts.

Another winner on Wall Street was Constellation Brands, which climbed 4.8% after the beer and wine company reported a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

That helped offset drops for several technology stocks that held back the overall market. Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after dropping 2.3%, which gave back some of its big gain of nearly 40% last year.

Elsewhere, oil prices jumped to continue their zigzags since Trump ousted the leader of Venezuela last weekend.

A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude climbed 1.8% to $57.02. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2% to $61.14 per barrel.

Venezuela is potentially sitting on more oil than any other country in the world, and any increase in production could push further downward on prices, which have already fallen on expectations for plentiful supplies. But billions of dollars of investment are likely necessary to get Venezuela’s aging infrastructure in good-enough shape to ramp up production sharply.

It’s not just Venezuela where the U.S. military could see action, as Trump talks about “troubled and dangerous times.” The president in recent days has also called for taking over the Danish territory of Greenland for national security reasons and has suggested he’s open to carrying out military operations in Colombia.

In stock markets abroad, indexes moved modestly in Europe following a weak finish in Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% for one of the world’s bigger moves, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.2%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.17% from 4.15% late Wednesday.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A judge disqualified a federal prosecutor from overseeing investigations into New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling Thursday that he had been serving in his post unlawfully when he requested subpoenas.

U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield blocked subpoenas requested by John Sarcone, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

“The subpoenas are unenforceable due to a threshold defect: Mr. Sarcone was not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney when the subpoenas were issued,” the judge wrote.

James, a Democrat, had challenged Sarcone’s authority after he issued subpoenas seeking information about lawsuits she filed against President Donald Trump, claiming he had committed fraud in his business dealings, and separately against the National Rifle Association and some of its former leaders.

Justice Department lawyers say Sarcone was appointed properly and that the subpoenas were valid. James claims the inquiry into her lawsuits is part of a campaign of baseless investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies.

The ruling is the latest to address the legality of unusual maneuvers the Trump administration has performed to try and keep its favored candidates for U.S. attorney in those jobs indefinitely, without going through the usual process of getting them confirmed in the U.S. Senate.

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