By JEFF AMY

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Republicans are pushing for more restrictions on local prosecutors, saying their investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis proves the moves are needed.

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Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case was dismissed in November after courts barred Willis and her office from pursuing it because of an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from a romantic relationship she had with a prosecutor she had hired to lead the case.

Several of the state senators who backed a measure that passed the chamber on Friday are running for statewide office, with primaries set for May 19. The fate of legislation concerning local prosecutors is unclear in the House, which is less rawly partisan than the Senate, although still under GOP control.

The measure that passed the Senate adds more reasons that local prosecutors can be disciplined or removed by a commission created in 2024 to provide oversight to elected district attorneys in Georgia, as well as elected solicitors general who prosecute lower-level crimes in some counties.

The measure lets the commission discipline prosecutors for violating bar rules, for failing to notify crime victims of prosecutor actions, failing to comply with public records requests, or showing “undue bias or prejudice” against the person being prosecuted.

“There was quite a bit of evidence presented to us, and testimony about conduct of prosecutors and really the lack of public faith in the independence and the impartiality of the prosecuting attorneys in the state,” said state Sen. Bill Cowsert, an Athens Republican running for attorney general.

Cowsert denied the measure was targeted at Willis, but Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has been endorsed by Trump in his run for governor, saw it differently.

“But Fani Willis’ lawfare of President Trump and his allies has highlighted why oversight by the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission is vital,” Jones said in a statement. “This bill gives the PAQC the ability to go after DAs who refuse to be transparent, who engage in unprofessional attorney conduct, and who don’t take seriously their duties to victims of crimes.”

Of 140 complaints filed with the commission in 2025, only three related complaints about the same solicitor general in a rural county, were not dismissed. Washington County Solicitor General Michael Howard resigned in July while under investigation, agreeing to never run for a prosecutor post again.

Earlier in the session, senators passed a bill to enhance the commission’s investigatory power. But it’s a relatively meager outcome for the investigation, including an appearance by Willis herself in Decemnber when she engaged in a combative back-and-forth with Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor.

A second measure Friday was defeated that would have made district attorneys and some other county officials be elected on a nonpartisan basis in five Democratic-dominated metro Atlanta counties. That would have included Willis, a Democrat. Sen. Ed Setzler, a Republican from Acworth, argued that nonpartisan officials would be more effective and efficient. But the measure failed after eight Republicans voted against it.

A third measure originally would have allowed Georgia’s attorney general to intervene in serious criminal cases without the district attorney’s consent, but Democrats supported the measure after Cowsert watered it down to allow district attorneys to request assistance.

The state Senate, created the Special Committee on Investigations in January 2024 to examine allegations of misconduct against Willis, an elected Democrat, with regard to her prosecution of Trump.

Gasoline prices in the United States jumped again Friday, the latest in a series of increases that has pushed up the price of a gallon by 34 cents, or about 11%, since the start of the war led by the United States and Israel against Iran.

The average price of unleaded gas hit $3.32 per gallon on Friday, the highest since September 2024, according to the AAA motor club. A surge in oil prices suggests that prices at the pump may continue to rise. The U.S. crude benchmark settled on Friday at $90.90 a barrel, up 12.2% for the day and 35.6% for the week.

The rise in costs could become a political problem for President Donald Trump, who has frequently boasted about how gasoline prices have fallen during his second term, and exaggerated the extent of the decline. After the recent gains, prices are now higher than when this term began.

Energy prices have jumped as oil and gas shipments out of the Persian Gulf were choked off by the fighting, as well as Iranian threats to oil tankers looking to traverse the narrow waterway that serves as the Gulf’s exit.

In an interview Thursday with Reuters, Trump suggested that the military operation in Iran was his priority and that he was willing to tolerate a rise in prices. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.

By Friday, domestic crude oil futures had gained more than 30% since the conflict began on Feb. 28. Rising energy prices could also affect everything from the cost of an airline ticket to home heating.

The price of diesel has risen even faster than regular gasoline. A gallon of diesel in the United States cost on average $4.33 Friday, the data from AAA showed. That’s the highest since November 2023. This could directly affect the cost of shipping goods, pressuring businesses to raise prices.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO

NEW YORK (AP) — The parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus is closing more department stores as it focuses on its most profitable businesses and trims debt during its Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring.

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Saks Global Inc. said Friday it will close 12 more Saks Fifth Avenue stores and three more Neiman Marcus stores. The shuttered Saks stores include sites in Chevy, Chase, Maryland, Chicago and San Antonio, Texas. The stores will remain open until the end of May, a company spokesperson said.

The closures come on top of the eight Saks Fifth Avenue stores and one Neiman Marcus store it said it would close last month. The stores targeted for the first round of closing are expected to remain open until the end of April.

With plans to close a total of 24 department stores by spring, that would leave the parent company with 13 Saks Fifth Avenue stores — including its flagship store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue — as well as 32 Neiman Marcus locations and Bergdorf Goodman in New York City.

Saks also said 500 brands have resumed shipping, releasing close to $1.3 billion in retail receipts. That accounts for more than 80% of the inventory the company expects to receive from February through April, with momentum expected to continue, the company said.

The parent company is also in talks or has reached repayment agreements with about 175 suppliers.

Saks Global has been shrinking its business since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. Last month, it said it will wind down 14 standalone Fifth Avenue Club personal styling suites, keeping three.

It also shuttered home goods retailer Horchow.com, a business that Neiman Marcus acquired in the late 1980s. As of Feb. 19, shoppers have been redirected to the home category on NeimanMarcus.com.

It’s also closing down all but 12 of its Saks Off Fifth locations The remaining outlets will serve primarily as a selling channel for residual inventory from Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman.

By MATTHEW PERRONE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration’s embattled vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency — the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after controversial decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases.

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FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced the news to FDA staff in an email late Friday, saying Prasad would depart at the end of April. Makary said Prasad would return to his academic job at the University of California, San Francisco.

Prasad’s latest ouster follows a string of high-profile controversies involving the FDA’s review of vaccines, gene therapies and biotech drugs in which companies have criticized the agency for reversing itself, in some cases calling for new trials of products previously greenlighted by regulators.

In July, Prasad was briefly forced from his job after running afoul of biotech executives, patient groups and conservative allies of President Donald Trump. He was reinstated less than two weeks later with the backing of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Makary.

FILE – In this undated photo provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Vinay Prasad smiles for a portrait. (U.S. FDA via AP)

A longtime academic and critic of the FDA’s standards for drug reviews, Prasad has taken a seemingly contradictory approach to regulation since arriving at the FDA last May. On repeated occasions, Prasad has joined Makary in announcing steps to make FDA drug reviews faster and easier for companies. But he also has imposed new warnings and study requirements for some biotech drugs and vaccines, particularly COVID shots that have long been a target for Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before joining the Trump administration.

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.