By MATT BROWN

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations on Thursday declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination policies, personal freedoms and Black economic advancement in response to President Donald Trump ‘s upending of civil rights precedents and the federal agencies traditionally tasked with enforcing them.

The National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report accuses the federal government of being “increasingly determined to sacrifice its founding principles” and “threatening to impose a uniform education system and a homogenous workforce that sidelines anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow, exclusionary mold,” according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

“If left unchecked,” the authors write, “they risk reversing decades of progress that have made America more dynamic, competitive, and just.”

Report critiques racism entering ‘mainstream’ of American politics

The report, released Thursday at the group’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio, criticizes the administration for downsizing federal agencies and programs that enforce civil rights policies. The authors aimed to highlight what they saw as a multiyear, coordinated effort by conservative legal activists, lawmakers and media personalities to undermine civil rights policy and create a political landscape that would enable a hard-right agenda on a range of social and economic policy.

“It is not random. It is a well-funded, well-organized, well-orchestrated movement of many, many years,” said Marc Morial, president of the Urban League. “For a long time, people saw white supremacist politics and white nationalism as on the fringe of American politics. It has now become the mainstream of the American right, whose central foundation is within the Republican Party.”

The report directly critiques Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint for conservative governance coordinated by The Heritage Foundation think tank. Project 2025 advised approaches to federal worker layoffs, immigration enforcement and the congressional and legislative branches similar to the Trump administration’s current strategy.

The Urban League report condemns major corporations, universities and top law firms for reversing diversity, equity and inclusion policies. It also criticizes social media companies like Meta and X for purported “censorship” of Black activists and creatives and content moderation policies that allegedly enabled “extremists” to spread “radicalizing” views.

Debates over civil rights enter the center of the political fray

The Trump administration has said many policies implemented by both Democratic and Republican administrations are discriminatory and unconstitutional, arguing that acknowledgments of race and federal and corporate policies that seek to address disparities between different demographics are themselves discriminatory. Trump has signed executive orders banning “illegal discrimination” and promoting “merit based opportunity.”

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said civil rights groups that oppose the administration “aren’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the president is focused on uniting our country.”

The report, meanwhile, calls for the creation of a “new resistance” to counter the administration’s agenda. Morial urged other organizations to rally to that cause.

The Urban League and other civil rights groups have repeatedly sued the Trump administration since January. Liberal legal groups and Democratic lawmakers similarly sued over parts of the administration’s agenda.

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Veteran civil rights activists, Black civic leaders, former federal officials, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and seven members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, contributed to the text.

Raoul said that civil rights allies have felt “on the defense” in recent years but that now “it’s time to act affirmatively.” For instance, if rollbacks of DEI policies result in discrimination against women or people of color legal action could follow, he warned.

“It all depends on how they do it. We’re going to be watching,” he said. “And just because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in disparate impact anymore doesn’t mean the rest of the universe must believe that.”

The report criticizes the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the Education Department, and denounces changes to programs meant to support communities of color at the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development, among others. The transformation of the Justice Department’scivil rights division was singled out as “an existential threat to civil rights enforcement.”

The Justice Department pointed to its published civil rights policy and a social media post from its civil rights arm that reads the division “has returned to enforcing the law as written: fairly, equally, and without political agenda.”

Nevada Rep. Steve Horsford, a contributor to the report, said Trump “betrayed the American people” in enacting plans he said were similar to Project 2025.

Lawmakers reflect on the long fight for civil rights

Another contributor, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said civil rights advocates and their Democratic allies must do more to communicate with and educate people.

“When you have an administration that’s willing to take civil rights gains and call it reverse racism, then there’s a lot of work to be done to unpack that for folks,” the New York Democrat said. “I think once people understand their connection to civil rights gains, then we will be in a position to build that momentum.”

The Urban League originally planned to focus its report on the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the law’s 60th anniversary but pivoted after Trump returned to office to focus on “unpacking the threats to our democracy” and steps civil rights advocates are taking to pull the country back from “the brink of a dangerous tilt towards authoritarianism.”

For many veteran civil rights activists, the administration’s changes are condemnable but not surprising. Some lawmakers see it as a duty to continue the long struggle for civil rights.

“I think it’s all part of the same struggle,” said Rep. Shomari Figures, an Alabama Democrat who contributed to the report and whose father was successfully brought a wrongful-death suit against a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. “At the end of the day, that struggle boils down to: Can I be treated like everybody else in this country?”

Republican Scott Jensen announced his candidacy for governor on Thursday.

Jensen, a family physician and former state senator, unsuccessfully ran against Gov. Tim Walz in 2022 when he took 44% of the vote. He is the second high-profile Republican to announce in a 2026 bid, alongside Republican Kendall Qualls , who also ran in 2022.

“Minnesotans want their state back,” Jensen said in a statement on his candidacy. “We remember the days when our communities were safe, our schools were strong and our leaders put people — not politics — first. That’s the Minnesota we’re going to fight to bring back.”

Walz has yet to decide whether he will seek a third term as governor and is expected to announce a decision around the end of summer, his staff said. Walz has ruled out other offices, such as the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tina Smith.

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By BOB THOMAS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the wholesome pop star of the 1950s and ‘60s whose hits included “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter would serve as an ironic title for a personal life filled with heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.

Her death was announced Thursday by her friend and publicist, Ron Roberts, who did not immediately provide additional details. Earlier this month, Francis posted that she had been hospitalized with “extreme pain.” Francis had gained renewed attention in recent months after “Pretty Little Baby” became a sensation on TikTok, with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among the many celebrities citing it.

“I’m flabbergasted and excited about the huge buzz my 1962 recording of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ is making all over the world,” she said in a video on TikTok, which she had joined in response to the song’s unexpected revival. “To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me.”

Francis was a top performer of the pre-Beatles era, rarely out of the charts from 1957-64. Able to appeal to both young people and adults, she had more than a dozen Top 20 hits, starting with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and including the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like other teen favorites of her time, she also starred in several films, including “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”

The dark-haired singer was just 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on several TV variety shows. Her earliest recordings attracted little attention, but then she released her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an old ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

It, too, had little success initially until Dick Clark played it on his “American Bandstand” show in 1958. Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she said in later years that without his support, she would have abandoned her music career.

Francis followed with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her records became hits worldwide as she re-recorded versions of her original songs in Italian and Spanish, among other languages. Her concerts around the country quickly sold out.

Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to write songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair was planning a wedding, he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path.

She chronicled some of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”

“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she told The Associated Press in 1984, the year the book came out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”

Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who played the accordion. She was just 3 when her father presented her with a child-size accordion, as soon as she began to show an aptitude for music. When she was 4, he began booking singing dates for her, going on to become her manager.

Although her acting career had faded by the mid-1960s, Francis was still popular on the concert circuit when she appeared at the Westbury Music Center in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her hotel room and was asleep when a man broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was never captured.

Francis sued the hotel, alleging its security was faulty, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of court for $1,475,000 as an appeal was pending. She said the attack destroyed her marriage and put her through years of emotional turmoil.

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She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to death as he was leaving his New Jersey home. Later that decade, her father had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. At one point, she tried to kill herself by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.

Around that time, she wrote to President Ronald Reagan and volunteered to help others, calling herself ″America’s most famous crime victim.″ Reagan appointed her to a task force on violent crime.

″I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,″ she told The New York Times in 1981. ″I have my voice, a gift from God I took for granted before. He gave it back to me.″

She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was worth the trouble. The other marriages each lasted less than a year.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. At age 9 she began appearing on television programs, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who suggested she shorten her last name.

National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting from New York. Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Associated Press, was the principal writer of this obituary and died in 2014.

By MARIA CHENG and LAURA UNGAR

LONDON (AP) — Eight healthy babies were born in Britain with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday.

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Most DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, and it’s that genetic material — some inherited from mom, some from dad — that makes us who we are. But there’s also some DNA outside of the cell’s nucleus, in structures called mitochondria. Dangerous mutations there can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death.

Testing during the in vitro fertilization process can usually identify whether these mutations are present. But in rare cases, it’s not clear.

Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method, where scientists take genetic material from the mother’s egg or embryo, which is then transferred into a donor egg or embryo that has healthy mitochondria but the rest of its key DNA removed.

The latest research “marks an important milestone,” said Dr. Zev Williams, who directs the Columbia University Fertility Center and was not involved in the work. “Expanding the range of reproductive options … will empower more couples to pursue safe and healthy pregnancies.”

Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother’s egg, the father’s sperm and the donor’s mitochondria — and it required a 2016 U.K. law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the U.S.

Experts at Britain’s Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant.

One of the eight babies born had slightly higher than expected levels of abnormal mitochondria, said Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research. He said it was still not considered a high enough level to cause disease, but should be monitored as the baby develops.

Dr. Andy Greenfield, a reproductive health expert at the University of Oxford, called the work “a triumph of scientific innovation,” and said the method of exchanging mitochondria would only be used for a small number of women for whom other ways of avoiding passing on genetic diseases, like testing embryos at an early stage, was not effective.

Lovell-Badge said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria. The genetic material from the donated egg makes up less than 1% of the baby born after this technique.

“If you had a bone marrow transplant from a donor … you will have much more DNA from another person,” he said.

In the U.K., every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country’s fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique.

Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it’s impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations.

“Currently, pronuclear transfer is not permitted for clinical use in the U.S., largely due to regulatory restrictions on techniques that result in heritable changes to the embryo,” Williams, of Columbia, said in an email. ”Whether that will change remains uncertain and will depend on evolving scientific, ethical, and policy discussions.”

For about a decade, Congress has included provisions in annual funding bills banning the Food and Drug Administration from accepting applications for clinical research involving techniques, “in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.”

But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.

Liz Curtis, whose daughter Lily died of a mitochondrial disease in 2006, now works with other families affected by them. She said it was devastating to be told there was no treatment for her eight-month-old baby and that death was inevitable.

She said the diagnosis “turned our world upside down, and yet nobody could tell us very much about it, what it was or how it was going to affect Lily.” Curtis later founded the Lily Foundation in her daughter’s name to raise awareness and support research into the disease, including the latest work done at Newcastle University.

“It’s super exciting for families that don’t have much hope in their lives,” Curtis said.

Ungar reported from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.