When Ron DeSantis seemed to say during last week’s Republican presidential debate that he would support a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, some anti-abortion activists called it the news they had been waiting months to hear.

The president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion advocacy group, issued a statement thanking DeSantis “for his commitment to support minimum federal protections for babies.”

But DeSantis’ campaign insisted his comment, which was the candidate’s most direct answer regarding an abortion ban, wasn’t anything new. And millions of voters probably missed the moment entirely.

DeSantis’ pledge came during one of many chaotic exchanges on the debate stage, when Sen. Tim Scott — who has made a nationwide ban on abortion at 15 weeks a central focus of his campaign — shouted a question, asking if the Florida governor also would support it. In a bit of barely audible crosstalk, DeSantis responded: “Yes, I will.”

The exchange and the DeSantis campaign’s response provided another example of the muddiness voters are encountering as they seek specific answers from Republicans regarding abortion policy. Since the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established a federal right to abortion, candidates are being pressed — and sometimes stopping short of a straight answer — on whether states should decide laws governing the procedure, as the court’s ruling allowed, or if the federal government should establish a standard law across all states. Some also are dodging questions about when they believe restrictions should occur and what exceptions, if any, should be allowed.

The variations on how far to go created a dust-up in the GOP presidential primary last month. Former President Donald Trump said during a TV interview that DeSantis made “a terrible mistake” by signing into law a ban on abortions in Florida at six weeks of pregnancy. Trump also said “it’s probably better” from a legal standpoint for abortion to be banned by individual states, rather than nationwide through federal action. The front-runner for the GOP nomination also said he would negotiate with Democrats on abortion legislation.

In states that hold elections in November, there has also been conflict among abortion opponents and accusations from Democrats that GOP candidates are trying to hide their true, extreme positions. The exchange and the DeSantis campaign’s response provided another example of the muddiness voters are encountering as they seek specific answers from Republicans regarding abortion policy. Since the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established a federal right to abortion, candidates are being pressed — and sometimes stopping short of a straight answer — on whether states should decide laws governing the procedure, as the court’s ruling allowed, or if the federal government should establish a standard law across all states. Some also are dodging questions about when they believe restrictions should occur and what exceptions, if any, should be allowed.

The variations on how far to go created a dust-up in the GOP presidential primary last month. Former President Donald Trump said during a TV interview that DeSantis made “a terrible mistake” by signing into law a ban on abortions in Florida at six weeks of pregnancy. Trump also said “it’s probably better” from a legal standpoint for abortion to be banned by individual states, rather than nationwide through federal action. The front-runner for the GOP nomination also said he would negotiate with Democrats on abortion legislation.

In states that hold elections in November, there has also been conflict among abortion opponents and accusations from Democrats that GOP candidates are trying to hide their true, extreme positions.

A federal judge on Saturday blocked two portions of North Carolina’s new abortion law from taking effect while a lawsuit continues. But nearly all of the restrictions approved by the legislature this year, including a near-ban after 12 weeks of pregnancy, aren’t being specifically challenged and remain intact.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles issued an order halting enforcement of a provision to require surgical abortions that occur after 12 weeks — those for cases of rape and incest, for example — be performed only in hospitals, not abortion clinics. That limitation would have otherwise taken effect on Sunday.

And in the same preliminary injunction, Eagles extended beyond her temporary decision in June an order preventing enforcement of a rule that doctors must document the existence of a pregnancy within the uterus before prescribing a medication abortion.

Short of successful appeals by Republican legislative leaders defending the laws, the order will remain in effect until a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a physician who performs abortions challenging the sections are resolved. The lawsuit also seeks to have clarified whether medications can be used during the second trimester to induce labor of a fetus that can’t survive outside the uterus.

The litigation doesn’t directly seek to topple the crux of the abortion law enacted in May after GOP legislators overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. North Carolina had a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks before July 1, when the law scaled it back to 12 weeks.

The law, a response to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, also added new exceptions for abortions through 20 weeks for cases of rape and incest and through 24 weeks for “life-limiting” fetal anomalies. A medical emergency exception also stayed in place.

On medication abortions, which bill sponsors say also are permitted through 12 weeks of pregnancy, the new law says a physician prescribing an abortion-inducing drug must first “document in the woman’s medical chart the ... intrauterine location of the pregnancy.”

Eagles wrote the plaintiffs were likely to be successful on their claim that the law is so vague as to subject abortion providers to claims that they broke the law if they can’t locate an embryo through an ultrasound because the pregnancy is so new.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, but none in Alaska, as it tries to navigate between energy companies seeking greater oil and gas production and environmental activists who want Biden to shut down new offshore drilling in the fight against climate change.

The five-year plan includes proposed sales in the Gulf of Mexico — the nation’s primary offshore source of oil and gas — in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The three lease sales are the minimum number the Democratic administration could legally offer if it wants to continue expanding offshore wind development.

Under the terms of a 2022 climate law, the government must offer at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in any one-year period before it can offer offshore wind leases. The provision tying offshore wind to oil and gas production was added by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a top recipient of oil and gas donations and a key vote in favor of the climate law, which was approved with only Democratic votes in Congress. The landmark law, the Inflation Reduction Act, was signed by Biden as a key step to fight climate change but includes a number of provisions authored by Manchin, a centrist who represents an energy-producing state.

For instance, if the Biden administration wants to expand solar and wind power on public lands, it must offer new oil and gas leases first.

“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to building a clean energy future that ensures America’s energy independence,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. The proposed offshore leasing program “represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history” and “sets a course for (the Interior Department) to support the growing offshore wind industry,” she said.

The lease program will guard against environmental damage caused by oil and gas drilling and other adverse impacts to coastal communities, Haaland said.

If completed, the sales would increase climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 300-page environmental review by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. How much they will increase is uncertain because the review considered five or 10 new sales but not the three sales proposed.

Army Gen. Mark Milley delivered a full-throated defense of democracy and not-so-subtle swipes at former President Donald Trump during a packed ceremony on Friday as he closed out his four, often tumultuous years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Under cloudy skies at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Milley never mentioned the former president by name. But he practically shouted on two different occasions that the U.S. military swears to protect the Constitution “against ALL enemies, foreign AND domestic.”

“We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” he said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

Milley is retiring after more than four decades of military service, including multiple combat deployments and two often turbulent years as Joint Chiefs chairman under Trump. And it was those years, and the battles he fought against Trump, that formed much of the underpinning of his farewell address and also were sprinkled throughout other speeches in the ceremony.

As chairman, Milley pushed back against a host of Trump’s plans, including demands to pull all troops out of Iraq and Syria and his desire to put active-duty troops on Washington’s streets to counter racial protests. Several books have described Milley’s deep concerns about Trump’s fitness as commander in chief and his worries that Trump would try to use the military to help block President Joe Biden’s election.

Just a week ago, Trump railed against Milley in a post on Truth Social, condemning him as a treasonous, “Woke train wreck” whose actions have been “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” The post, which some interpreted as a threat, has prompted Milley to ensure his family has adequate protection.

But seemingly in response, Milley said, his voice booming, the military will protect the Constitution, no matter the personal price, and “we are not easily intimidated.”

Biden, who spoke at the ceremony, continued the democracy theme, praising Milley’s staunch defense of the Constitution, which “has always been Mark’s North Star.” And he said the general has been a steady hand guiding the military during one of the most complex national security environments.

A new law in California will raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour next year, an acknowledgment from the state’s Democratic leaders that most of the often overlooked workforce are the primary earners for their low-income households.

When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in California will have the highest guaranteed base salary in the industry. The state’s minimum wage for all other workers — $15.50 per hour — is already among the highest in the United States.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law Thursday amid a throng of cheering workers and labor leaders at an event in Los Angeles. Newsom dismissed the popular view that fast food jobs are meant for teenagers to have their first experience in the workforce.

“That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist,” Newsom said. “We have the opportunity to reward that contribution, reward that sacrifice and stabilize an industry.”

Newsom’s signature reflects the power and influence of labor unions in the nation’s most populous state, which have worked to organize fast food workers in an attempt to improve their wages and working conditions.

It also settles — for now, at least — a fight between labor and business groups over how to regulate the industry. In exchange for higher pay, labor unions have dropped their attempt to make fast food corporations liable for the misdeeds of their independent franchise operators in California, an action that could have upended the business model on which the industry is based. The industry, meanwhile, has agreed to pull a referendum related to worker wages off the 2024 ballot.

“That was a tectonic plate that had to be moved,” Newsom said, referring to what he said were the more than 100 hours of negotiations it took to reach an agreement on the bills in the final weeks of the state legislative session.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union International, said the law capped 10 years of work — including 450 strikes across the state in the past two years.

The moment was almost too much for Anneisha Williams, who held back tears as she spoke during a news conference just before Newsom signed the bill. Williams, a mother of six — seven if you count her beloved dog — works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Inglewood.

A former director of an Ohio memory-loss clinic accused by dozens of patients of falsely diagnosing them with Alzheimer’s disease has been sentenced on federal fraud charges, along with her physician husband.

Sherry-Ann Jenkins received nearly six years in prison on Tuesday, while Oliver Jenkins got a 41-month sentence. The couple was convicted in March on conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and health-care fraud charges after being indicted in May 2020.

The U.S. Justice Department has said Sherry-Ann Jenkins was not trained or licensed to provide any medical care but presented herself as a doctor and billed patients for unneeded treatments.

The indictment did not directly accuse the couple of falsely diagnosing her patients, but more than 60 people filed lawsuits beginning in 2017 that said Sherry-Ann Jenkins lied and told them they had Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.

The patients said they spent months undergoing treatment while planning out their final years, thinking they would die soon. Some quit their jobs or took one last special trip. One killed himself; others said they considered suicide.

The patients who sued the couple and the clinic resolved the cases out of court. Nearly all of those diagnosed by Sherry-Ann Jenkins began seeing her after suffering traumatic brain injuries or worsening cognitive issues.

Sherry-Ann Jenkins operated the Toledo Clinic Cognitive Center through the Toledo Clinic, a multi-specialty medical center, for slightly more than two years, according to court records.

She would diagnose and treat patients and order tests despite having no training or qualifications, prosecutors said. She also billed patients for treatments that weren’t medically necessary, including memory exercises and using coconut oil to treat cognitive disorders, they said.

Her husband, an ear, nose, and throat doctor and a former partner in the Toledo Clinic, signed off on the tests and was listed as the referring physician on billing even though he was rarely at the clinic and never saw the patients, prosecutors have said.

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.

If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Trump of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.

Trump, in a series of statements, railed against the decision, calling it “un-American” and part of an ongoing plot to damage his campaign to return to the White House.

“My Civil rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether federal or state, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision,” he wrote on his Truth Social site. He insisted his company had “done a magnificent job for New York State” and “done business perfectly,” calling it “A very sad Day for the New York State System of Justice!”

Trump’s lawyer, Christopher Kise, said they would appeal, calling the decision “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the same conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that aim to disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business.