BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On a day when stock markets around the world dropped precipitously, Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl led a celebration of the president whose global tariffs sparked the sell-off.

With no mention of the Wall Street roller coaster and global economic uncertainty, Wahl declared his state GOP’s “Trump Victory Dinner” — and the broader national moment — a triumph. And for anyone who rejects President Donald Trump, his agenda and the “America First” army that backs it all, Wahl had an offer: “The Alabama Republican Party will buy them a plane ticket to any country in the world they want to go to.”

Wahl’s audience — an assembly of lobbyists and donors, state lawmakers, local party officials and grassroots activists — laughed, applauded and sometimes roared throughout last week’s gala in downtown Birmingham, the rare Democratic stronghold in one of the nation’s most Republican states. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. elicited perhaps the most enthusiasm with an unapologetically partisan pitch, even repeating the lie that his father won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.

Yet beyond the cheerleading, there were signs of a more cautious optimism and some worried whispers over Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the particulars of his deportation policy and the aggressive slashing by his Department of Government Efficiency.

That doesn’t mean Trump or Republicans are in danger of losing their grip in Alabama, where the GOP holds all statewide offices, dominates the Legislature and has won every presidential electoral vote since 1980. But it’s a notable wrinkle in a place where there’s long been tension between relying on the federal government for funding and jobs, and an embrace of the kind of anti-Washington, anti-establishment populism that has twice propelled Trump to the Oval Office. And any cracks for Trump in Alabama — where he got 65% of the vote in 2024 — could portend trouble elsewhere, as the effects of a seismic shift in U.S. policy reach across the economy and society.

“There are some concerns, some conversations,” said John Merrill, a former secretary of state, over just what Trump’s agenda will mean on the ground. Alabama, he acknowledged, has “been a net recipient” of the very federal government and economic model Trump is upending, meaning it receives more money back from Washington than its taxpayers send the federal government.

“It’s a big risk,” said Merrill, who sported a Trump 45-47 pin on his lapel, a nod to the president’s two terms.

Blocks to the south of the complex where Republicans convened sits the multibillion-dollar University of Alabama at Birmingham health system, a regional gem where research depends on grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, listed as a “Silver Sponsor” of the gala, didn’t join the Democratic attorneys general suing the Trump administration to stop the cancellation of certain research funding streams Congress already has approved.

Most of the medical services provided at UAB and many other hospitals throughout the state are covered by Medicare and Medicaid, two of the largest federal outlays. Alabama, because its per-capita income ranks among the lower tier among states, has one of the most generous federal match rates for Medicaid funding.

A short drive west toward Tuscaloosa sits a gargantuan Mercedes-Benz complex, one of the earliest examples of foreign auto manufacturers coming to the American South, where state laws are hostile to organized labor. The plants have provided jobs at wages higher than the local norms but in some cases lower than in union shops of the Great Lakes region around Detroit. Many suppliers have followed in the South, but not so many that the assembly plants don’t still import many parts that now will be subject to Trump’s tariffs.

Terry Martin, a county GOP committeeman in Tallapoosa County, said he supports the tariffs as leverage. Trump has “something to bargain with,” Martin said. But, “the parts that are coming from overseas … it’s going to pop it up” in price, he said, at least in the short term.

Agriculture, meanwhile, is still a dominant Alabama industry. Meat processing plants in the North and row crop farms in the South depend on migrant labor that Merrill, the former secretary of state, said involves workers who are in the U.S. both legally and illegally. Alabama, he recalled, passed its own strict immigration bill during Barack Obama’s presidency only to roll it back after industry leaders complained of a depleted workforce.

Wahl, in an interview after the gala, took a more nuanced approach than he did at the podium.

“It is possible to secure our border and still take into account migrants who deserve to be here,” he said. “This has to be a two-pronged approach.”

Back in Birmingham, Interstate 65 splits the city. The aging, increasingly congested artery is a local priority for widening. The proposal has support from Alabama’s two Republican senators, Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt. U.S. interstate projects, though, are typically a 90-10 split, meaning 90% of the money comes from Washington, 10% from the state.

That funding — along with money for schools, Medicaid and other areas — could be at risk with Trump adviser Elon Musk and DOGE carrying Trump’s blessing to slash spending. GOP lawmakers who control Congress have supported Trump’s agenda, which also includes dismantling the Education Department.

Tallapoosa County GOP Chair Denise Bates said “absolutely” there’s a possibility DOGE could go too far. “I hope there are guardrails,” she said, noting she was once a local school board member.

“Am I 100% for getting rid of the Department of Education? I can’t say that I am,” she said, adding a phrase similar to Merrill’s description of the state as a whole. “You know, we’re a net receiver.”

Yet for all the caveats offered in one-on-one conversations, the GOP crowd cheered when Tuberville, the former football coach turned Trump acolyte on Capitol Hill, offered a plainspoken defense of Musk and his pop-up agency, telling the crowd, “We’re dead broke.” And they roared as he addressed tariffs.

“It’s past time we level the playing field and tell the rest of the world to get off their ass and start paying their fair share,” Tuberville said.

Bates argued that Alabama’s embrace of Trump’s “America First” push is not simply loyalty to the president. She said it reflects generations of voters watching the steel industry decline in Birmingham and, after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted in 1994, the textile industry leaving for Mexico and, eventually, Southeast Asia.

“We just want jobs,” she said.

Still, state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, the longest-serving member of the Alabama Legislature, made clear Trump’s visceral appeal, declaring him “the most popular president here since Ronald Reagan, hands down.”

Wahl recalled Trump’s first massive outdoor rally as a presidential candidate: 30,000 people at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, in August 2015.

Wahl, who owns a butterfly farm outside Huntsville, said perhaps the best way to understand Trump and Alabama and this moment of uncertainty is to see a president who, at least to his supporters in the state, has earned the benefit of the doubt.

“He’s going to let everybody know he’s serious,” the chairman said. Trump is “going to bring people to the bargaining table. We’re actually going to see the negotiator conduct business.”

AUSTIN, Texas — AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is gearing up for a potential U.S. Senate run while no longer shadowed by a federal corruption investigation that hung over his rising profile in the Republican Party.

That durability would be tested against Republican Sen. John Cornyn should Paxton embark on what would likely be one of the country’s most contentious 2026 primary battles.

Paxton, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has hinted at challenging Cornyn for more than a year but has not said when he will make a decision.

In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Justice Department decided not to pursue its investigation into Paxton over bribery allegations, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Though the date of the decision was not immediately clear, it was made in the final weeks of the President Joe Biden’s presidency, one of the people said.

The accusations were arguably the most serious of multiple legal troubles Paxton has faced since becoming attorney general in 2015, including felony securities fraud charges that hovered over him for nearly a decade before he agreed to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution fees. The attorney general also faced an investigation by the Texas State Bar for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Paxton characterized the investigation as a “bogus witch hunt” in a social media post on X responding to the news Thursday. He also tacked on a fresh barb toward Cornyn.

“Care to comment now, John?” Paxton posted.

Paxton declined an interview request through a spokesperson Thursday.

Spokespeople for Cornyn did not immediately respond to phone and email requests seeking comment.

The quiet dismissal underscores Paxton’s political resiliency and ascendency among his party’s hard-right in recent years while also potentially giving his opponents less fodder for political attacks.

“There are no more clouds over him,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Texas lobbyist and friend of Paxton.

Paxton has targeted Cornyn since the senator became one of few prominent Republicans to criticize him. Cornyn, who helped push a bipartisan gun control bill after the 2022 mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school, also previously came under criticism from conservative activists who have driven the party’s agenda farther to the right.

Cornyn, who also served as Texas attorney general, has served in the Senate since 2002 and is a popular member of the GOP conference. But Cornyn lost to South Dakota Sen. John Thune in a close bid to become Senate majority leader. If Paxton enters the race, it will likely be the senator’s most competitive primary campaign to date.

In 2020, eight of Paxton’s closest aides accused him of using his office to benefit a Texas real estate developer who employed a woman Paxton was having an extramarital affair with. He was impeached and acquitted in the Texas Senate in 2023.

Nate Paul, the real estate developer, pleaded guilty in January to federal charges for lying to banks to receive millions of dollars in loans.

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Associated Press reporters Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker contributed to this report from Washington, D.C. Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

MADISON, Wis. — Judge Susan Crawford preserved liberals’ narrow majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday by defeating conservative Brad Schimel, but in a way the real loser of the election was billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk and his affiliated groups sunk at least $21 million into the normally low-profile race and paid three individual voters $1 million each for signing a petition in an effort to goose turnout in the pivotal battleground state contest. That made the race the first major test of the political impact of Musk, whose prominence in President Donald Trump’s administration has skyrocketed with his chaotic cost-cutting initiative that has slashed federal agencies.

Crawford and the Democrats who backed her made Musk the focus of their arguments for holding the seat, contending he was “buying” the election, which set records for the costliest judicial race in history.

“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford said in her victory speech. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”

Trump endorsed Schimel as the race turned into a proxy fight over national political issues. The state’s high court can rule on cases involving voting rights and redistricting in a state likely to be at the center of both next year’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential contest.

But Musk’s involvement dialed those dynamics up to 11: “A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” the billionaire said Tuesday in a last-ditch call to voters on his social media site X. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

Notably, America PAC, the super PAC backed by Musk, spent at least $6 million on vendors who sent door-to-door canvassers across the state, according to the non-partisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It was a reprise of what the group did across the seven most competitive presidential battleground states, including Wisconsin, which were carried by Trump in November.

But the end results this time were not good for Musk. Despite the millions he spent on Schimel, as of late Tuesday night the Supreme Court candidate was losing by four percentage points more than the other Republican-backed statewide candidate, Brittany Kinser, who also fell short in her bid for superintendent of public instruction.

Musk’s court race defeat wasn’t only because of crushing Democratic margins in deep blue cities like Madison and Milwaukee. Crawford’s margins were higher in places where the Musk-backed group America PAC had been active, including Sauk County, just north of Madison, which Crawford was carrying by 10 points after Trump won it by less than 2 points in November.

In Brown County, the home of Green Bay where Musk headlined a campaign rally with 2,000 people on Sunday, Crawford beat Schimel. Trump won the county by 7 percentage points last year.

Overnight, Musk posted on his X platform that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary.” In another comment, he seemed to take solace from voters’ approval to elevate the state’s photo ID requirement from state law to constitutional amendment. The platform was rife with criticism from Trump opponents for his involvement in the race.

“Please send @elonmusk to all the close races!” Jon Favreau, former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, wrote.

“Elon Musk is not good at this,” J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor and a billionaire himself who donated to support Crawford, posted on X.

Voters definitely had Musk on their minds.

“There’s an insane situation going on with the Trump administration, and it feels like Elon Musk is trying to buy votes,” said Kenneth Gifford, a 22-year-old Milwaukee college student, as he cast his ballot on Tuesday. “I want an actual, respectable democracy.”

Others may not have had their vote decided by the billionaire but were all-too aware of the money pouring into their state.

Jim Seeger, a 68-year-old retiree who previously worked in communications and marketing, said he voted for Schimel because he wants Republicans to maintain their outsized majority in Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, which could be at risk if Crawford wins and the court orders the maps redrawn. But, he added, he was disappointed the election had become a “financial race.”

“I think it’s a shame that we have to spend this much money, especially on a judicial race,” Seeger said as he voted in Eau Claire.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General, Josh Kaul, sued to bar Musk from making his payments to voters if they signed a petition against “activist judges.” The state Supreme Court unanimously declined to rule on the case over a technicality.

Musk swooped into the race shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Republicans were pessimistic about being able to win the seat. They lost a longtime conservative majority on the state high court in 2023, and Democrats have excelled in turning out their educated, politically tuned-in coalition during obscure elections such as the one in Wisconsin.

Musk duplicated and expanded on some of the methods he used in the final weeks of last year’s presidential race, when he spent more than $200 million on Trump’s behalf in the seven swing states, including Wisconsin.

This time, in addition to the $1 million checks, Musk offered to pay $20 to anyone who signed up on his group’s site to knock on doors for Schimel and posted a photo of themselves as proof. His organization promised $100 to every voter who signed the petition against liberal judges and another $100 for every signer they referred.

Democrats were happy to make Musk a lightning rod in the race.

“People do not want to see Elon Musk buying election after election after election,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said Monday. “If it works here, he’s going to do it all over the country.”

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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Washington contributed to this report.

BERLIN — Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory in a national election Sunday, while Alternative for Germany doubled its support in the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, projections showed.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called “a bitter election result.” Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election.

Merz said he hopes to put a coalition government together by Easter. But that’s likely to be challenging.

The election took place seven months earlier than originally planned after Scholz’s unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.

The campaign was dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of Europe’s biggest economy and pressure to curb migration — something that caused friction after Merz pushed hard in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe’s alliance with the United States.

Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier, after the U.S. It will be central to shaping the continent’s response to the challenges of the coming years, including the Trump administration’s confrontational foreign and trade policy.

The projections, based on exit polls and partial counting, put support for Merz’s Union bloc around 28.5% and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, about 20.5% — roughly double its result from 2021.

They put support for Scholz’s Social Democrats at just over 16%, far lower than in the last election and below their previous post-war low of 20.5% from 2017. The environmentalist Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, were on about 12%.

Out of three smaller parties, one — the hard-left Left Party — strengthened its position, winning up to 9% of the vote after a remarkable comeback. The pro-business Free Democrats, who were the third party in the collapsed government, looked likely to lose their seats in parliament with about 4.5%. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, was hovering around the 5% threshold needed to win seats.

Whether Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Scholz’s Social Democrats or need a second partner too, which would realistically have to be the Greens, will depend on whether the BSW gets into parliament. The conservative leader said that “the most important thing is to re-establish a viable government in Germany as quickly as possible.”

“I am aware of the responsibility,” Merz said. “I am also aware of the scale of the task that now lies ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect, and I know that it will not be easy.”

“The world out there isn’t waiting for us, and it isn’t waiting for long-drawn-out coalition talks and negotiations,” he told cheering supporters.

The Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, said that Merz would do well to moderate his tone after a hard-fought campaign.

“We have seen the center is weakened overall, and everyone should look at themselves and ask whether they didn’t contribute to that,” said Habeck. “Now he must see that he acts like a chancellor.”

The Greens were the party that suffered least from participating in Scholz’s unpopular government. The Social Democrats’ general secretary, Matthias Miersch, suggested that their defeat was no surprise — “this election wasn’t lost in the last eight weeks.”

AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla told cheering supporters that “we have achieved something historic today.”

“We are now the political center and we have left the fringes behind us,” he said. The party’s strongest previous showing was 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered the national parliament.

The party’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said it is “open for coalition negotiations” with Merz’s party, and that “otherwise, no change of policy is possible in Germany.” Merz has repeatedly ruled out working with AfD, as have other mainstream parties — and did so again in a televised post-election exchange with Weidel and other leaders.

Weidel suggested AfD wouldn’t have to make many concessions to secure a theoretical coalition, arguing that the Union largely copied its program and deriding its “Pyrrhic victory.”

“It won’t be able to implement it with left-wing parties,” she said. If Merz ends up forming an alliance with the Social Democrats and Greens, “it will be an unstable government that doesn’t last four years, there will be an interim Chancellor Friedrich Merz and in the coming years we will overtake the Union.”

Merz dismissed the idea that voters wanted a coalition with AfD. “We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, on security policy, in many other areas, regarding Europe, the euro, NATO,” he said.

“You want the opposite of what we want, so there will be no cooperation,” Merz added.

Scholz decried AfD’s success. He said that “that must never be something that we will accept. I will not accept it and never will.”

More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million were eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin’s landmark Reichstag building.

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Associated Press journalists Kirsten Grieshaber, Vanessa Gera and Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed.

ATLANTA — Good-government advocates, anti-tax conservatives, politicians of various stripes and everyday Americans grouse about “waste, fraud and abuse” across the U.S. government.

President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, opened the latest chapter for a phrase hailed as common sense and derided as propaganda.

“It’s a very broad idea,” said Matt Weidinger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “But this phrase ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ obviously means different things to different people.”

Here is a look at this rhetorical cudgel and how it relates to the outset of Trump’s second administration.

Pinpointing the genesis of “waste, fraud and abuse” as political rhetoric is difficult. But the concept and resulting battles are older than the nation: Think “taxation without representation” and the break from Great Britain.

After winning independence, the early American republic reprised the arguments.

Two generations fought over Alexander Hamilton’s national bank — a philosophical forerunner to everything from the Federal Reserve system to Small Business Administration loans, federally backed mortgage securities and bank deposit insurance.

Trump’s populist hero, Andrew Jackson, cast the Second National Bank as a sop to its wealthy stockholders. “There are no necessary evils in government,” the seventh president wrote in one veto message. “Its evils exist only in its abuses.”

Many of Jackson’s fellow Southerners opposed the related “internal improvements” of Henry Clay’s American System. The enslaving planter class viewed the spending for roads, bridges and navigable waterways — long before Washington had “infrastructure weeks” — as an unconstitutional federal overreach that transferred their wealth indirectly to factory owners, bankers and shipping magnates in more industrialized northern states.

Ronald Reagan cemented modern conservatives’ approach in his first inaugural address. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” he said in 1981. “Government is the problem.”

He railed against “the welfare queen” as the public face of an inefficient social safety net and unaccountable federal government. Reagan based the attack, which critics lambasted as a racist trope, on one woman’s criminal fraud case for getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in assistance.

In a forerunner to DOGE, Reagan impaneled a group of private sector CEOs to identify waste. The “Grace Commission,” colloquially named for its chairman, businessman J. Peter Grace, moved more deliberately than DOGE, and its recommendations were not implemented on a broad scale. Reagan and Congress did raise the retirement age for Social Security eligibility.

The federal government spent about $6.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023.

The libertarian Cato Institute counts the biggest-ticket items this way: $3.19 trillion in transfer payments; $1.15 trillion in aid to states; $950 billion in interest payments on national debt; $840 billion in purchases of goods and services; and $560 billion to pay federal workers.

Social Security and Medicare comprise most of Cato’s transfer category, along with programs like food assistance and the earned income tax credit for low-income households. Medicaid accounts for most state aid, which also includes education, transportation and other infrastructure.

The issue for Musk, or perhaps for Trump and Republican majorities in Congress, is that Americans hold conflicting views about the details.

March 2023 polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 6 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. government was spending “too much” overall. Yet an AP-NORC poll taken in January 2025 found that about two-thirds of American adults say the U.S. government is spending “too little” on Social Security and education. About 6 and 10 said the same about Medicare, the government health insurance program for older Americans, and assistance to poor Americans.

Most adults also say Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poorest working-age Americans and low-income children, is underfunded. Medicare and Medicaid payments do not go directly to patients but to health care providers — physicians, hospitals, clinics, pharmaceutical companies and medical supply firms in communities across the country.

The Government Accountability Office and other agencies produce regular reports identifying inefficiencies and other problems. The GAO said in 2024 that its enacted recommendations have saved about $667 billion since 2011.

Vivek Ramaswamy, another Trump ally initially involved with DOGE, seized on hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts and programs that Congress may not have reauthorized explicitly. Yet contrary to Ramaswamy’s characterization, most are ongoing programs from veterans medical care to NASA functions.

Trump has not addressed another pool of potential money: the so-called “tax gap.” That’s not about the Republican vs. Democratic debate over rates and loopholes. It’s the estimated gap between what the federal government should collect under existing law and what actually gets paid on time. Like “improper payments,” it’s a mix of clerical error and intentional fraud.

The IRS estimate for the 2022 tax year: $696 billion.

Other government reports identify “improper payments” — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance — that total several hundred billion in typical years.

Weidinger, the AEI budget expert, said that includes some fraudulent spending but is mostly overpayments or payments that require more documentation. Mistakes could include a Social Security payment a month after a recipient has died, a government miscalculation of someone’s benefit, someone getting one unemployment check after getting a new job or an insufficiently documented claim from a health care provider.

But Weidinger also noted that special government programs, such as unemployment during the COVID pandemic, carried a much higher rate of outright fraud — identity thieves, including from foreign nations, gaming the system to get money.

“We won’t ever recover all of that,” he said.

And, he added, the government’s estimates of fraud and improper payments are probably too low even if they almost certainly do not reach the levels of savings Musk and Trump have promised.

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SANTA FE, N.M. — The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday struck down abortion restrictions by conservative cities and counties at the request of the state attorney general.

The unanimous opinion reinforces the state’s position as having some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. The ruling preserves access to abortion procedures across a state that has become a major destination for people from other states with bans who seek procedures elsewhere.

Nearly a decade ago, intense protests over racial injustice rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, leading to the resignation of two top administrators. The university then hired its first-ever vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity. Tensions were so high that football players were threatening a boycott and a graduate student went on hunger strike.

Today, the entire diversity office is gone, an example of changes sweeping universities in states led by conservatives, and a possible harbinger of things to come nationwide.

“I feel like that is the future, especially for the next four years of Trump’s presidency,” said Kenny Douglas, a history and Black studies major on the campus in Columbia, Missouri.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, both conservative and liberal politicians say higher education changes in red parts of America could be a road map for the rest of the country.

Dozens of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have already closed in states including Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. In some cases, lessons about racial and gender identity have been phased out. Supports and resources for underrepresented students have disappeared. Some students say changes in campus climate have led them to consider dropping out.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to end “wokeness” and “leftist indoctrination” in education. He pledged to dismantle diversity programs that he says amount to discrimination, and to impose fines on colleges “up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

Many conservatives have taken a similar view. Erec Smith, a research fellow at the free-market Cato Institute whose scholarship examines anti-racist activism and Black conservatism, said DEI sends the message that “whiteness is oppression.” Diversity efforts are “thoroughly robbing Black people and other minorities of a sense of agency,” he said.

The New College of Florida, a tiny liberal arts institution once known as the most progressive of Florida’s public campuses and a refuge for LGBTQ+ students, became a centerpiece for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke.” DeSantis overhauled the school’s Board of Trustees in 2023, appointing a new majority of conservative allies, including culture war strategist Christopher Rufo.

Many faculty departed last year, leaving vacancies that the new leadership has filled with a variety of conservative academics — and non-academics, including British comedian and conservative commentator Andrew Doyle, who will be teaching a new course this January called “The Woke Movement.”

“This is only the beginning,” Rufo wrote in the forward to school President Richard Corcoran’s new book, “Storming the Ivory Tower.”

Trump’s opponents dismiss his depictions of liberal indoctrination on campuses as a fiction. But conservatives point to diversity programs and the student debt crisis as evidence colleges are out of touch.

“What happens if you are an institution that’s trying to change society?” asked Adam Kissel of the conservative Heritage Foundation — the group behind Project 2025, a sweeping anti-DEI blueprint for a new GOP administration that Trump has disavowed while nominating some of its authors for administrative roles. “Society will push back on you.”

Pushback is exactly what DEI programs have faced.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, in March signed into law a bill barring state funding for public colleges that advocate for “divisive concepts” including that someone should feel guilty because of their race or gender. The law also states people at schools and colleges must use the bathroom that matches their gender assigned at birth.

The effects of the anti-DEI law rippled through campuses including the University of Alabama and Auburn University, the state’s two largest four-year colleges. DEI offices and designated areas for LGBTQ+ and Black students closed when classes started in late August — just before the law took effect.

Dakota Grimes, a graduate student in chemistry, was disappointed when Auburn University closed the campus’ Pride Center, a designated safe space for LGBTQ+ people and allies. Grimes’ organization, Sexuality and Gender Alliance, still meets regularly in the library, she said, but LGBTQ+ students don’t feel as welcome on campus. Students are subjected to homophobic and transphobic slurs, Grimes said.

“They don’t feel safe just sitting in the student center because of the kind of environment that a lot of students and even teachers create on campus,” Grimes said.

Julia Dominguez, a political science senior at the University of Alabama and president of the Hispanic-Latino Association, said funding for the group’s annual Hispanic Heritage Month festival was pulled two weeks before the event in September. Students who were once excited about being at a school that celebrates Latino culture, she said, are now feeling dejected and disillusioned.

The organization isn’t giving up, Dominguez said.

“We are still present,” Dominguez said. “We are still doing the work. It’s just harder now. But we’re not going to allow that to steal our joy because joy is resistance.”

In Idaho, DEI programs have been under attack for years, with Republican lawmakers blasting efforts to build an inclusive culture as “divisive and exclusionary.” In recent sessions, the Legislature has blocked colleges and universities from using taxpayer dollars on campus DEI programs. A 2024 law banned written “diversity statements” in higher education hiring and student admissions.

In December, the State Board of Education scrapped DEI offices, causing shockwaves at the University of Idaho. Doctoral student Nick Koenig is considering leaving the state.

“Where do your true values lie?” asked Koenig, who decided to move to Idaho to research climate change after a Zoom call with the then-director of the school’s LGBT center. “It’s not with the students that are most marginalized.”

So far, nearly all of the threats to DEI have come from state legislatures, said Jeremy Young, of the free-expression group PEN America.

“There hasn’t been much support at the federal level to do anything,” he said. “Now, of course, that’s going to change.”

Young anticipates that diversity considerations will be eliminated for research grants and possibly for accreditation. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights typically investigates discrimination against people of color, but under Trump, that office could start investigating diversity programs that conservatives argue are discriminatory.

Republicans also may have more leeway to take action at the state level, thanks to an administration that’s “going to get out of the way of red states and let them pursue these policies,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow who studies higher education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

Colleges are also cutting some programs or majors seen as unprofitable. Whether politics plays into decisions to eliminate certain courses of student remains to be seen.

Douglas, the University of Missouri student, is concerned. He said the promise of change that followed the earlier protests on the Columbia campus has dissipated.

This fall, a student group he is part of had to rename its Welcome Black BBQ because the university wanted it to be “welcoming to all.” The Legion of Black Collegians, which started in 1968 after students waved a Confederate flag at a football game, complained the change was erasing its visibility on campus.

For Douglas and many others, the struggle for civil rights that prompted diversity efforts isn’t a thing of the past. “White people might have moved past it, but Black people are still experiencing it,” he said.

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Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri; Gecker from San Francisco; Richert from Boise, Idaho; Morris from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. AP Education Writer Alia Wong contributed from Washington.

NEW YORK — Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Tuesday he was withdrawing his name from consideration, becoming the second person selected by the president-elect to bow out quickly after being nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation.

Sheriff Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, said in a post on X that he was backing away from the opportunity, which he called “the honor of a lifetime.”

“Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister wrote. He did not elaborate, and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Chronister follows former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first pick to serve as attorney general, in withdrawing his name for a post in the administration. Gaetz withdrew following scrutiny over a federal sex trafficking investigation that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer.

Trump’s pick of Chronister for the DEA job drew backlash from conservatives, who raised concerns over his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic and his saying that his office “does not engage in federal immigration enforcement activities.”

In March 2020, Chronister arrested the pastor of a megachurch who held services with hundreds of people and violated a safer-at-home order in place aimed at limiting the spread of the Covid virus.

“Shame on this pastor, their legal staff and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job. That’s not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency,” Chronister said at the time. “We are hopeful that this will be a wakeup call.”

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, was among those airing public complaints, saying Chronister should be “disqualified” for the arrest.

Others flagged comments Chronister made in a video about Florida’s immigration laws that he released in 2023 that circulated again online after Trump named him last weekend.

In the video, Chronister praised the “rich diversity” of his community and called it “a place where people from all walks of life come together.”

He said it was important to note his office “does not engage in federal immigration enforcement activities. We do not target individuals based on their immigration status. That’s the authority of federal agencies.”

Trump has made a sweeping crackdown on immigration a central focus of his campaign and his aims for his coming administration.

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Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republicans will control the White House and both houses of Congress come January. But President-elect Donald Trump’s intent to nominate loyalists to fill key Cabinet posts has set up a possible confrontation with the Senate, which has the constitutional responsibility for “advice and consent” on presidential nominees.

Trump and his Republican allies are talking about going around the Senate and using temporary recess appointments, which last no more than two years.

Invoking that authority could result in a fight that lands at the Supreme Court. Trump might also have to claim another, never-before-used power to force the Senate into a recess, if it won’t agree to one.

In its 234 years, the Supreme Court has decided only one case involving recess appointments. In 2014, the justices unanimously ruled that Democratic President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were illegal.

But they disagreed sharply over the reach of the decision. Five justices backed a limited ruling that held the Senate wasn’t actually in recess when Obama acted and, in any event, a break had to be at least 10 days before the president could act on his own.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the other four justices, would have held that the only recess recognized by the Constitution occurs between the annual sessions of Congress, not breaks taken during a session. That would have ruled out the appointments Trump may be considering after the new Congress begins in January and he is sworn into office.

Just two justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, remain from the five-justice bloc that took the view that preserved the president’s power to make recess appointments during a session of Congress. Three others, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined the Scalia opinion that would have made it virtually impossible for any future president to make recess appointments.

The rest of the court has become more conservative since then, a result of Trump’s three high court appointments in his first term. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have no record on this issue, which rarely arises in the courts. Nor does Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 2022 appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden.

A more conservative Supreme Court might come out differently today, though it’s by no means certain. Once the court decides a case, the ruling is regarded as precedent that is not lightly discarded. So even some justices who initially dissent from a ruling will go along in later cases on a similar topic.

Scalia, an icon of the right, applied his originalist approach to the Constitution to conclude that there was little doubt what the framers were trying to do.

The whole point of the constitutional provision on recess appointments, adopted in 1787 in the era of horse and buggy, was that the Senate could not quickly be summoned to fill critical vacancies, he wrote.

Reading a summary of his opinion aloud in the courtroom on June 26, 2014, Scalia said the power to make recess appointments “is an anachronism.”

The Senate always can be convened on short notice to consider a president’s nominations, he said.

“The only remaining practical use for the recess appointment power is the ignoble one of enabling presidents to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process, which is precisely what happened here,” Scalia said.

It’s not likely to happen quickly. Only someone who has been affected by an action taken by an official who was given a recess appointment would have the legal right, or standing, to sue. In the NLRB case, Obama made his recess appointments in January 2012.

The board then ruled against Noel Canning, a soft drink bottling company in Yakima, Washington, in a dispute over contract negotiations with a local Teamsters union. The company sued, claiming that the NLRB decision against it was not valid because the board members were not properly appointed and that the board did not have enough members to do business without the improperly appointed officials.

The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision came nearly 2 1/2 years later.

Among the most prominent people who were first given recess appointments and later confirmed by the Senate are Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice William Brennan and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Among those who left office after failing to win a Senate vote is John Bolton, who was given a recess appointment as U.N. ambassador under Republican President George W. Bush.

A separate novel legal issue could arise if Trump were to invoke a constitutional provision that his allies suggested would allow him to force the Senate to adjourn, even if doesn’t want to, and enable him to make recess appointments.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution includes a clause about congressional adjournments that has never been invoked. Trump’s allies read it as giving the chief executive the power step in when the House and Senate can’t agree on when to adjourn. The provision reads that “in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.”

But some scholars, including conservative ones, argue that the House has no power to force the Senate to adjourn, and vice versa. Congressional adjournments are spelled out in Article I, which requires one chamber to consent when the other wants to take a break of more than three days. Under this view, the president could intervene only when one house objects to the other’s adjournment plan.