Oregon has long been known as a mecca for high-quality marijuana, but that reputation has come with a downside. Illegal growers offer huge amounts of cash to lease or buy land and then leave behind pollution, garbage and a drained water table. A bill passed by the Oregon Legislature seeks to tackle that by making the landowners themselves responsible for the aftermath. The bill prohibits using rivers or groundwater at the illegal sites. It also makes it a crime to seize the identity papers of migrant workers who tend the plants. Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek is expected to sign it next week.

Donald Trump’s historic criminal case on felony charges of mishandling classified documents is set to unfold in Florida and will at least initially be overseen by a federal judge who issued rulings favorable to him last year and expressed repeated skepticism of Justice Department positions. The assignment of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, confirmed Friday by a person familiar with the development, is a rare bit of good news for Trump in the face of an indictment with several criminal charges that carries the prospect of a years-long prison sentence. Trump has declared his innocence. He is due in court Tuesday in Miami.

Donald Trump's indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate has brought renewed attention to one of the most notable cases in Justice Department history.

The presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is busy courting white evangelicals – a key voting bloc for the GOP. The governor’s religious rhetoric and hard-charging policies are at the center of his faith outreach. And yet, when it comes to his own Catholicism, the culture warrior is much more guarded, rarely mentioning the specifics of his faith and practice. The governor is the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump. If DeSantis captures the Republican nomination and takes on Joe Biden, two Catholic presidential candidates will face off for the first time in U.S. history.

The presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is busy courting white evangelicals – a key voting bloc for the GOP. The governor’s religious rhetoric and hard-charging policies are at the center of his faith outreach. And yet, when it comes to his own Catholicism, the culture warrior is much more guarded, rarely mentioning the specifics of his faith and practice. The governor is the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump. If DeSantis captures the Republican nomination and takes on Joe Biden, two Catholic presidential candidates will face off for the first time in U.S. history.

FBI agents have arrested a Texas businessman at the center of the scandal that led to the historic impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Online records show that Nate Paul was booked into an Austin jail Thursday afternoon after being taken into custody by federal agents. It was not immediately clear what charges led to his arrest, and the jail records said only that he was being held on a federal detainer. Paul’s entanglements with Paxton were central to the GOP-led state House of Representatives’ overwhelming vote to impeach the Republican last month.

Drake could make an impactful mark at the BET Awards later this month. The chart-topping performer scored seven nominations at the show airing live on June 25 in Los Angeles. He’s up for best male hip-hop artist, male R&B/pop artist along with best collaboration and viewer’s choice with Future and Tems for their song “Wait for U.” Drake’s three other nominations are shared with 21 Savage, who is up for five nods. The tandem is nominated for album of the year through “Her Loss,” best group and viewer’s choice for their hit “Jimmy Cooks." Rapper GloRilla will enter the ceremony as the second-most nominated act with six.

Pat Robertson united tens of millions of evangelical Christians through the power of television. And then he pushed them in a far more conservative direction with the grace of a folksy, Baptist minister. Robertson's biggest impact may have been wedding evangelical Christianity to the Republican party to an extent once unimaginable. One expert says the culture wars waged today by Republican candidates for president are partly a product of Robertson. The religious broadcaster died Thursday at the age of 93.

This week’s Supreme Court decision ordering Alabama to redraw its congressional maps was seen by many minority lawmakers and voting rights activists as a stunning victory with the potential to become a major stepping stone for undoing gerrymandered political maps that dilute the political strength of communities of color. The court majority found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it much more difficult to elect more than one candidate of their choice. Similar maps have been drawn in other states, primarily by Republican-controlled legislatures. Voting rights activists said they believe maps will have to be redrawn in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana ahead of the 2024 elections.

Donald Trump says he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate. The remarkable development makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government that he once oversaw. The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. But it also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump had been dominating. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that he willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information. The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the indictment publicly.

New York would create a commission to consider reparations to address the lingering, negative effects of slavery under a bill passed by the state Legislature. The measure passed Thursday will be sent to New York Governor Kathy Hochul for consideration. New York is following the lead of California, which became the first state to form a reparations task force in 2020. State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages says "this is about beginning the process of healing our communities." The New York legislation would create a nine-member commission that would address persistent economic, political and educational disparities experienced by Black people in the state today.

Donald Trump's legal problems appear to have escalated significantly on Thursday with federal charges over the retention of top secret documents, but investigators aren't done yet.

The family of a 15-year-old who died in the Sacramento River over the weekend says he was trying to save his younger brother and was swept away. Relatives of Amari Quarles say he jumped in to help his 13-year-old brother, Elijah, who went into the river to retrieve a thrown football during a family gathering in Sacramento on Sunday. The river was surging because of snowmelt following a record winter. A boater rescued Elijah and the mother of the two boys but Amari was swept downstream. His body was recovered Monday. Several people have died recently in fast-moving Northern California rivers. Authorities have been warning people to stay out of the water.

A thick, hazardous haze of wildfire smoke is looming over daily life for millions of people across the U.S. and Canada for a third day, and it’s expected to persist as long as the weekend. The conditions Thursday sent asthma sufferers to hospitals, delayed flights, postponed ballgames and pushed back a White House Pride Month celebration. If the worrisome haze is an unnerving novelty for millions of people on the United States’ East Coast, it’s a reminder of what other places experience more regularly. And scientists say it’s a wake-up call about the future.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would enshrine into law regulations on guns, including implementing universal background checks and raising the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21. Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment would also institute a “reasonable” waiting period for all gun purchases and ban assault rifles throughout the country. Amending the Constitution requires either approval from two-thirds of the members of Congress or for 33 states to support the effort and call for holding a convention. Newsom said Thursday that California will call for a convention of states.

Nearly two dozen teenagers from a summer camp were injured when an elevated walkway collapsed Thursday in a beachside city in Texas, with five flown to the hospital by helicopter. It happened Thursday afternoon in Surfside Beach, a small city on the Gulf of Mexico, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of downtown Houston. Brazoria County officials said none of the injuries were expected to be life-threatening. All of the victims were between 14 and 18 years old and from the Bayou City Fellowship summer camp, an official said. Aerial video from TV station KTRK showed the walkway appears to be made from wood and leads to a building.

Authorities say a man wanted in the 1984 killing of a Florida woman has been arrested nearly four decades later. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that Donald Santini has been jailed in San Diego, California. Florida authorities have sought Santini's arrest since June 1984, when a warrant tied him to the strangling death of 33-year-old Cynthia Ruth Wood of Bradenton. The sheriff's office said in a statement that detectives were on their way to California to interview Santini, who is now 65. San Diego County jail records say Santini is being held as a fugitive and has a court hearing Friday. No attorney for him is listed in online records.

Mark Seitz, the Roman Catholic bishop of El Paso, Texas, tells The Associated Press that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' flights of migrants from the Texas border to California are “reprehensible” and “not morally acceptable.” DeSantis’ recruiters zeroed in on Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Paso and its bustling migrant shelter to find asylum-seekers to fly to California’s capital city on Florida's taxpayer-funded jets. Intentionally or not, envoys for Florida’s Catholic governor and Republican presidential candidate infused an element of his own religion into his latest move on immigration. DeSantis says California effectively invited the flights with its own policies.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has died. He had an enormous impact on American politics and religion. Robertson turned a tiny Virginia television station into the far-reaching Christian Broadcasting Network, where he hosted the flagship “700 Club” show for half a century. Robertson ran for president as a Republican in 1988, and from that experience founded the Christian Coalition, which helped cement the Republican Party's enduring alliance with evangelical voters. Robertson also drew attention for his televised pronouncements of God’s judgment on America for everything from homosexuality to teaching evolution. Robertson died Thursday at the age of 93.

The Supreme Court has issued a surprising ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case, rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map. The map had one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The case had been closely watched for its potential to weaken the landmark voting rights law.

The family of the murder victim whose case is chronicled by the podcast “Serial” has asked Maryland’s highest court to give crime victims a right to be heard and challenge evidence at hearings. Attorneys for Young Lee, the brother of victim Hae Min Lee, filed a petition in the state Supreme Court on Thursday. The family says they didn’t get sufficient notice to attend a hearing last fall where the man convicted of her murder had his sentence overturned. An intermediate court agreed with the family and Adnan Syed’s murder sentence was reinstated, although he remains free while the case works its way through the courts.

After years of criticizing mail voting and so-called ballot harvesting as ripe for fraud, Republicans at the top of the party want to change course. They are poised to launch aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns for 2024 that employ just those strategies, attempting to match the emphasis on early voting Democrats have used for years to lock in their supporters well ahead of Election Day. The goal is to persuade voters who support GOP candidates that early voting techniques are secure and to make sure they are able to return their ballots in time to be counted. It marks a notable shift from rhetoric surrounding the 2020 election.