By AMANDA SEITZ (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether doctors can provide abortions to pregnant women with medical emergencies in states that enact abortion bans.

The Justice Department has sued Idaho over its abortion law, which only allows a woman to get an abortion when her life — not her health — is at risk. The state law has raised questions about when a doctor is able to provide the stabilizing treatment that federal law requires.

The federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires doctors to stabilize or treat any patient who shows up at an emergency room.

Here’s a look at the history of EMTALA, what rights it provides patients and how a Supreme Court ruling might change that.

WHAT PROTECTIONS DOES EMTALA PROVIDE ME AT AN ER?

Simply put, EMTALA requires emergency rooms to offer a medical exam if you present at their facility. The law applies to nearly all emergency rooms – any that accept Medicare funding.

Those emergency rooms are required to stabilize patients if they do have a medical emergency before discharging or transferring them. And if the emergency room doesn’t have the resources or staff to properly treat that patient, staff are required to arrange a medical transfer to another hospital, after they’ve confirmed the facility can accept the patient.

So, for example, if a pregnant woman shows up at an emergency room concerned that she is in labor but there is no OB/GYN on staff, hospital staff cannot simply direct the woman to go elsewhere.

WHY WAS THIS LAW CREATED?

Look to Chicago in the early 1980s.

Doctors at the city’s public hospital were confronting a huge problem: thousands of patients, many of them Black or Latino, were arriving in very bad condition – and they were sent there by private hospitals in the city who refused to treat them. Most of them did not have health insurance.

Chicago wasn’t alone. Doctors working in public hospitals around the country reported similar issues. Media reports, including one of a pregnant woman who delivered a stillborn baby after being turned away by two hospitals because she didn’t have insurance, intensified public pressure on politicians to act.

Congress drafted legislation with Republican Sen. David Durenberger of Minnesota saying at the time, “Americans, rich or poor, deserve access to quality health care. This question of access should be the government’s responsibility at the federal, state, and local levels.”

Then President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1986.

WHAT HAPPENS IF A HOSPITAL TURNS AWAY A PATIENT?

The hospital is investigated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If they find the hospital violated a patient’s right to care, they can lose their Medicare funding, a vital source of revenue for most hospitals to keep their doors open.

Usually, however, the federal government issues fines when a hospital violates EMTALA. They can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WHY IS THE SUPREME COURT LOOKING AT THE LAW?

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly reminded hospitals that his administration considers an abortion part of the stabilizing care that EMTALA requires facilities to provide.

The administration argues that Idaho’s law prevents ER doctors from offering an abortion if a woman needs one in a medical emergency.

But Idaho’s attorney general has pointed out that EMTALA also requires hospitals to consider the health of the “unborn child” in its treatment, too.

WHAT ARE ADVOCATES SAYING?

Anti-abortion advocates argue that state laws banning abortion can co-exist with the federal law that requires hospitals to stabilize pregnant patients in an emergency.

The prominent anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday that all 50 states offer life-saving care to women. The group responded to an AP article that found pregnancy-related EMTALA complaints spiked in some states with strict abortion bans in 2022.

“This is not a red state-blue state issue, this is a nationwide need for better emergency care for women and their unborn children,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the group’s state public affairs director. “EMTALA clearly requires care for both patients.”

But many doctors say it’s not as clear cut as anti-abortion advocates claim. Idaho’s state law banning abortion, except for the life of the mother, has left some doctors weighing if a patient is close enough to death to treat.

Most other states allow doctors to perform abortions to save the health of a mother. But, if the Supreme Court rules in Idaho’s favor, it could invite other states to pass restrictions without that exemption.

In a statement released Monday, Jack Resneck, the former president of the American Medical Association, said Idaho’s law forces doctors to withhold proper treatment for patients.

The state’s “dangerous standard cannot be applied to the real-life situations faced in emergency departments every day,” Resneck said. “There is no bright line when each patient’s condition suddenly reaches “life-threatening,” and deteriorating patients don’t want their physicians delaying care.”

By GARY FIELDS (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power.

Yet it’s a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film actor that might provide the only legal reckoning this year on whether the Republican tried to undermine a pillar of American democracy.

Trump is charged in the hush money case with trying to falsify business records, but it was hard to tell that as the trial opened Monday.

Lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wasted little time during opening statements tying the case to Trump’s campaigning during his first run for the presidency. He said the payments made to Stormy Daniels amounted to “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

Whether the jury accepts that connection will be pivotal for Trump’s fate. The presumptive GOP nominee faces charges related to falsifying business records that would typically be misdemeanors unless the alleged act could be tied to another crime. Prosecutors were able to charge them as felonies because they allege that the false records were part of an effort to cover up state and federal election law violations — though that’s still not the type of direct election interference that Trump is charged with elsewhere.

Trump has referred to the New York trial and the three other criminal cases against him as a form of election interference, suggesting without evidence that they’re part of a Democratic plan to undermine his campaign to return to the White House.

“I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning, and it’s very unfair,” he told reporters before Monday’s court session.

While the charges are felonies, the New York case is seen as the least consequential against the former president. In the two election cases, Trump is accused of more direct involvement in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

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He faces a four-count federal indictment in Washington in connection with his actions in the run-up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. He and others were charged in Georgia with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law by scheming to illegally overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him in those cases and a fourth charging him with mishandling classified documents.

All the other cases are tied up in appeals that are expected to delay any trials until after the November election. If that happens, the New York case will stand as the only legal test during the campaign of whether Trump attempted to illegally manipulate an election — and the case isn’t even about the election results he tried to overthrow.

On Monday, Trump’s attorney quickly moved to undercut the idea that a case in which the charges center on record-keeping could seriously be considered an effort to illegally undermine an election.

“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy,” said his attorney, Todd Blanche. “They put something sinister on this idea, as if it’s a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”

Some legal experts monitoring the cases against Trump said they were skeptical of connecting the payments to a form of “election interference.” Doing so also runs the risk of diminishing the gravity of the other charges in the public mind.

Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and former associate White House counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said he believed the facts of the case met the evidence needed to determine whether a felony had been committed that violated campaign law, but added, “The election interference part, I have a little bit of trouble on this.”

Richard Hasen, a UCLA law school professor, said the New York case does not compare to the other election-related charges Trump faces.

“We can draw a fairly bright line between attempting to change vote totals to flip a presidential election and failing to disclose embarrassing information on a government form,” he wrote in a recent Los Angeles Times column.

In an email, Hasen said New York prosecutors were calling the case election interference “because that boosts what may be the only case heard before the election.”

Some said prosecutors’ decision to characterize the New York case as election interference seemed to be a strategy designed to raise its visibility.

“When (Manhattan District Attorney) Alvin Bragg calls it an election interference case, that’s more of a public relations strategy,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law and former federal prosecutor. “I think there was concern that people were looking at the other prosecutions and they weren’t discussing the Manhattan case.”

Declaring the case a hush money trial made it seem less important than the others and “so they’ve styled it … as a case about election interference. But again, what he’s charged with is falsifying business records.”

Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

The key question in the prosecution’s argument is why were the business records falsified, said Chris Edelson, an American University assistant professor of government. Their allegation is that “Trump was preventing voters from making an informed decision in the election.”

It’s an argument he believes prosecutors can make. “I think that the prosecutors will have to explain this to the jury. I don’t think it’s impossible to do,” he said.

The New York trial revolves around allegations of a $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, made to Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the final days of the 2016 race.

“Candidates want to suppress bad news about them. But there’s a difference between trying to limit people knowing about that information and about breaking the law to keep them from finding out,” said Andrew Warren, a former state attorney in Florida who was suspended by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and is running for his old office while his court battle continues.

Warren said he believes the case has always been about more than the payments. If it is accepted as a hush money case, “Trump wins,” he said. “If there was intent to deceive the voters, the prosecution wins.”

By ED WHITE (Associated Press)

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department announced a $138.7 million settlement Tuesday with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling allegations of sexual assault against Larry Nassar in 2015 and 2016, a critical time gap that allowed the sports doctor to continue to prey on victims before his arrest.

When combined with other settlements, $1 billion now has been set aside by various organizations to compensate hundreds of women who said Nassar assaulted them under the guise of treatment for sports injuries.

Nassar worked at Michigan State University and also served as a team doctor at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics. He’s now serving decades in prison for assaulting female athletes, including medal-winning Olympic gymnasts.

Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said Nassar betrayed the trust of those in his care for decades, and that the “allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset.”

“While these settlements won’t undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing,” Mizer said of the agreement to settle 139 claims.

The Justice Department has acknowledged that it failed to step in. For more than a year, FBI agents in Indianapolis and Los Angeles had knowledge of allegations against him but apparently took no action, an internal investigation found.

FBI Director Christopher Wray was contrite — and very blunt — when he spoke to survivors at a Senate hearing in 2021. The assault survivors include decorated Olympians Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.

“I’m sorry that so many different people let you down, over and over again,” Wray said. “And I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.”

After a search, investigators said in 2016 that they had found images of child sex abuse and followed up with federal charges against Nassar. Separately, the Michigan attorney general’s office handled the assault charges that ultimately shocked the sports world and led to an extraordinary dayslong sentencing hearing with gripping testimony about his crimes.

“I’m deeply grateful. Accountability with the Justice Department has been a long time in coming,” said Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, who is not part of the latest settlement but was the first person to publicly step forward and detail abuse at the hands of Nassar.

“The unfortunate reality is that what we are seeing today is something that most survivors never see,” Denhollander told The Associated Press. “Most survivors never see accountability. Most survivors never see justice. Most survivors never get restitution.”

Michigan State University, which was also accused of missing chances over many years to stop Nassar, agreed to pay $500 million to more than 300 women and girls who were assaulted. USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee made a $380 million settlement.

Mick Grewal, an attorney who represented 44 people in claims against the government, said the $1 billion in overall settlements speaks to “the travesty that occurred.”

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Associated Press reporters Mike Householder in Detroit; Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky; and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.

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For more updates on the cases against Larry Nasser: https://apnews.com/hub/larry-nassar