The response frames the spending battle to come over the next weeks as lawmakers work to reach consensus on a short-term spending bill that would prevent a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Lawmakers hope to avoid a shutdown just weeks before voters go to the polls.

Johnson is punting the final decisions on full-year spending into next year when a new president and Congress take over. He’s doing so at the urging of members within his conference who believe that Republicans will be in a better position next year to secure the funding and policy priorities they want.

But Democrats said the appropriations process should be wrapped up by this Congress, and the short-term measure should reflect that. It also needs to be free of “partisan policy changes,” Jeffries said.

“There is no other viable path forward that protects the health, safety and economic well-being of hardworking American taxpayers,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to House Democrats released Monday.

Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week following a traditional August recess spent mostly working in their home states and districts. They are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund the agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure.

Johnson’s proposal is not only running into resistance from Democrats, but it was clear Monday night that there are also some in the GOP conference who won’t vote for any stopgap bill, let alone one they say spends too much. Johnson can afford to lose only four dissenters from within his conference if Democrats are united in opposition.

“We need to stop spending at a level that is untenable for the American people,” said Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who also predicted the bill would not have the votes to pass.

The House bill including the proof of citizenship mandate for voter registration complicates the effort. The voter registration measure is popular with House Republicans and has already passed once before in that chamber. The House Freedom Caucus, which generally includes the chamber’s most conservative members, called for it to be attached to the spending bill. But Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed.

Republicans say that requiring proof of citizenship would ensure that U.S. elections are only for American citizens, improving confidence in the nation’s federal election system, something that former President Donald Trump has sought to undermine over the years.

Opponents say it is already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and that the document requirements would disenfranchise millions of Americans who do not have the necessary documents readily available when they get a chance to register.

Trump and other Republicans have revved up their complaints about the issue of noncitizens voting with the influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border under President Joe Biden’s administration. They are contending Democrats let them in to add them to the voter rolls. But the available evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is incredibly rare.

Johnson called the proof of citizenship mandate a “righteous fight” as he entered the Capitol Monday afternoon. He said that even if a small percentage of people who have entered the U.S. illegally end up registering to vote, “they can throw the election. This is serious business.”

Senate Democrats have also come out against Johnson’s proposal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill “pure partisan posturing.”

“Speaker Johnson knows deep down that he needs to work with Democrats to get anything done,” Schumer said.

The White House said that if the bill reached Biden’s desk he will veto it. The veto threat said states already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain accurate voter rolls.

“Instead of working in a bipartisan manner to keep the Government open and provide emergency funding for disaster needs, House Republicans have chosen brinksmanship,” the White House statement said.

The bill does provide an additional $10 billion for a disaster relief fund administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But the White House said it did not cover the full amount needed through other disaster relief programs, such as for highways and bridges damaged by disasters in 38 states.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that long-term continuing resolutions, such as the current one before the House this week, harm military readiness. Austin said in a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees that, if passed, the bill would mark the second year in a row and the seventh time in the past 15 years that the department is delayed in moving forward with some critical priorities.

“These actions subject Service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events,” Austin wrote.

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

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Francine, the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was expected to become a hurricane shortly, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday night. The storm was already being felt in Mexico, where drenching rains closed schools as the storm gathered strength in the Gulf.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged residents “not to panic, but be prepared” and heed evacuation warnings. Forecasters said Francine’s landfall in south Louisiana was expected Wednesday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 96 to 110 mph (155-175 kph).

“We do not want people to wait to the last minute to get on the road and then run out of fuel,” Landry said. “We put a lot of information throughout the summer, throughout hurricane season, so that people can be prepared. The more prepared we are, the easier it is for us.”

Francine is taking aim at a Louisiana coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in the region in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of storm destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.

Francine’s storm surge on the Louisiana coast could reach as much as 10 feet (3 meters) from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said.

“It’s a potential for significantly dangerous, life-threatening inundation,” said Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, adding it could also send “dangerous, damaging winds quite far inland.”

He said landfall was likely somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana line — and Morgan City, Louisiana, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the east.

Louisiana officials urged residents to immediately prepare while “conditions still allow” for it, Mike Steele, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told The Associated Press. He warned Francine could rapidly intensify.

“We always talk about how anytime something gets into the Gulf, things can change quickly, and this is a perfect example of that,” Steele said.

Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, began forming long lines as people filled gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others filled sandbags at city-operated locations to protect homes from possible flooding.

“It’s crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said, urging residents to stock up on three days of food, water and essentials.

A mandatory evacuation was ordered for seven remote coastal communities by the Cameron Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness. They include Holly Beach, a laid-back stretch dubbed Louisiana’s “Cajun Riviera,” where many homes sit on stilts. The storm-battered town has been a low-cost paradise for oil industry workers, families and retirees, rebuilt multiple times after past hurricanes.

In Grand Isle, Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island, Mayor David Camardelle recommended residents evacuate and ordered a mandatory evacuation for those in recreational vehicles. Hurricane Ida decimated the city three years ago, destroying 700 homes.

Officials warn that flooding, along with high winds and power outages, is likely in the area beginning Tuesday afternoon through Thursday.

In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to prepare to shelter in place. “Now is the time to finalize your storm plans and prepare, not only for your families but looking out for your neighbors,” she said.

City officials said they were expecting up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) inches of rain, gusty winds and “isolated tornado activity” with the most intense weather likely to reach New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday.

The hurricane center said Francine was last about 145 miles (235 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 425 miles (690 kilometers) south-southwest of Cameron, with top sustained winds of about 65 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). It was moving north-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).

As rain fell Monday in northern Mexico, more than a dozen neighborhoods in Matamoros — across the border from Brownsville, Texas — flooded, forcing schools to close Monday and Tuesday. Marco Antonio Hernandez Acosta, manager of the Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, said they were waiting for Mexico’s federal government to provide pumps to drain affected areas.

The storm was expected to move in north-northeast motion through Monday evening and then accelerate to the northeast beginning Tuesday before nearing the upper Texas and Louisiana coastlines Wednesday.

Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas and Alfredo Peña from Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.

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Weinstein, 72, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan from the Rikers Island jail complex late Sunday “due to severe medical conditions,” his publicist Juda Engelmayer and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld said.

“We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein had a procedure and surgery on his heart today,” Engelmayer and Rothfeld said. Weinstein was out of surgery as of Monday afternoon and is in recovery, they said.

Rothfeld identified the procedure as pericardiocentesis surgery. He said Weinstein had not been feeling well for several weeks and was worsening by the day.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said they requested that jail officials immediately move Weinstein to Bellevue “based on his complaints to us regarding chest pains.” In one email, Aidala said, he told them: “This guy is going to die on your watch if you don’t do something.”

The city Department of Correction’s public inmate-lookup website was updated Monday to show that Weinstein was moved to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward from the West Facility at Rikers Island, which is used to isolate inmates with contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, or for other reasons.

News of Weinstein’s hospitalization was first reported by ABC News.

Weinstein has been in and out of Bellevue Hospital since returning to Rikers Island from state prison in April after an appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault convictions and ordered a new trial.

In July, he was hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said.

After his February 2020 conviction, Weinstein left court in an ambulance and detoured to Bellevue, complaining of chest pains and high blood pressure. He later had a stent inserted to unblock an artery.

After his sentencing a few weeks later, he returned to the hospital with more chest pains. He later tested positive for COVID-19 just days after being transferred to a state prison near Buffalo.

In 2021, when Weinstein was being extradited to California for prosecution on rape charges there, his lawyers disclosed a litany of afflictions, including: diabetes, coronary artery disease, anemia, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic lower back pain, sciatica, chronic leg pain, arthritis, and eye ailments that had severely degraded his vision. At recent court hearings, he has used a wheelchair.

“As we have extensively stated before, Mr. Weinstein suffers from a plethora of significant health issues that need ongoing treatment,” Engelmayer and Rothfeld said Monday.

The state’s Court of Appeals found that the judge in the 2020 trial unfairly allowed testimony from women whose claims against Weinstein weren’t part of the case.

Last week, prosecutors disclosed that they’ve begun taking steps to potentially charge him with up to three additional sex assaults.

They said they’ve started presenting evidence to a grand jury of up to three previously uncharged allegations against Weinstein -– two sexual assaults in the mid-2000s and another sexual assault in 2016.

A vote on a potential new indictment was expected soon.

At the same time, British prosecutors said last week they were dropping two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein in 2022 because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.’’

Weinstein has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone. He remains in custody in New York while awaiting a retrial in Manhattan that’s tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12. He is due back in court for a pretrial hearing Sept. 12.

Weinstein became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which took root in 2017 when women began to go public with accounts of his behavior.

At the original trial, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. Those allegations will be part of his retrial. Weinstein’s acquittals on charges of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape still stand.

After the retrial, Weinstein is due to start serving a 16-year sentence in California for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles, authorities said. Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022.

Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company film studios, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, producing such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

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Questions about the reliability of the transistors on the Europa Clipper spacecraft arose earlier this year after similar problems cropped up elsewhere. With the tight launch window looming, NASA rushed to conduct tests to verify that the electronic parts could survive the $5 billion mission to determine whether the suspected ocean beneath Europa’s icy crust might be suitable for life.

Liftoff remains scheduled for Oct. 10 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA has three weeks to launch the spacecraft before standing down for more than a year to await another proper planetary alignment; the spacecraft needs to swing past Mars and then Earth for gravity assists.

Project manager Jordan Evans said the transistors — located in circuits across the entire spacecraft — are expected to degrade when Europa Clipper is exposed to the worst of the radiation during the 49 flybys of the moon. But they should recover during the three weeks between each encounter, said Evans of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Teams from labs across the country came to that conclusion following round-the-clock testing over the past four months.

The project has “high confidence we can complete the original mission for exploring Europa as planned,” Evans said. “We are ready for Jupiter.”

It will take six years for Europa Clipper to reach Jupiter, where it will orbit the gas giant every three weeks. Dozens of flybys are planned of Europa as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers), allowing cameras and other instruments — including ice-penetrating radar — to map virtually the entire moon.

Europa Clipper is the biggest spacecraft ever built by NASA to investigate another planet, spanning more than 100 feet (30 meters) with its solar panels unfurled.

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NEW YORK — A poignant phrase echoes when 9/11 victims’ relatives gather each year to remember the loved ones they lost in the terror attacks.

“I never got to meet you.”

It is the sound of generational change at ground zero, where relatives read out victims’ names on every anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people are expected again at this year’s ceremony Wednesday.

Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos, and a sense of solemn responsibility.

Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the Sept. 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.

“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13.

He read the names of his grandfather and several other people the last two years, and plans to do so on on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementoes in his room from his grandfather Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter.

The teen told the audience last year that he’s heard so much about his grandfather that it feels like he knew him, “but still, I wish I had a chance to really know you,” he added.

Allan volunteered to be a reader because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes to have children who’ll participate.

“It’s an honor to be able to teach them because you can let them know their heritage and what to never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he already finds himself teaching peers who know little or nothing about 9/11.

When it comes time for the ceremony, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he’s assigned to read.

“He reflects on everything and understands the importance of what it means to somebody,” his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz, said.

Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond ground zero. War memorials honor fallen military members by speaking their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations host readings of Holocaust victims’ names on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah.

The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the memorial there.

On Sept. 11 anniversaries, the Pentagon’s ceremony includes military members or officials reading the names of the 184 people killed there. The Flight 93 National Memorial has victims’ relatives and friends read the list of the 40 passengers and crew members whose lives ended at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The hourslong observance at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is almost exclusively dedicated to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three sites, plus the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. All are read by relatives who volunteer and are chosen by lottery.

Each is given a subset of names to render aloud. Readers also generally speak briefly about their own lost kin, frequently in touching detail.

“I think often about how, if you were still here, you would be one of my best friends, looking at colleges with me, getting me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, hanging out at the Jersey Shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo.

Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversation.

“Chris would have loved that” is a phrase often heard around the house.

She has read twice at the trade center ceremony.

“It means a lot to me that I can kind of keep alive my uncle’s name and just keep reading everybody else’s name, so that more of the upcoming generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass down the importance of what happened.”

Her two younger sisters also have read names, and one is preparing to do so again Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to steel herself to sign up.

“I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, who is Mozzillo’s sister. “They’re braver.”

By now, many of the children of 9/11 victims — such as Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — have long since grown up. But about 100 were born after the attacks killed one of their parents, and are now young adults.

“Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony.

One young reader after another at the event commemorated aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers whom the children have missed throughout their lives.

“My whole life, my dad has said I reminded him of you.”

“I wish you got to take me fishing.”

“I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.”

“Even though I never got to meet you, I will never forget you.”

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ATLANTA (AP) — From her earliest campaigns in California to her serving as President Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has honed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to blend punch lines with details that build toward a broader narrative. She might shake her head to signal her disapproval while her opponent is speaking, counting on viewers to see her reaction on a split screen. And she has a go-to tactic to pivot debates back in her favor: saying she’s glad to answer a question as she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend a past one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will put the Democratic vice president’s skills to a test unlike any she’s faced. Harris faces former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who will participate in his seventh general election debate since 2016 for an event that will be seen by tens of millions of viewers just as early voting in November’s election starts around the country.

People who have competed against Harris and prepared her rivals say she brings a series of advantages to the matchup, including her prosecutorial background juxtaposed with Trump being the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Still, Harris allies warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who veers between policy critiques, personal attacks, and falsehoods or conspiracy theories.

“She can meet the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation against Harris in the fall of 2020. “She has shown that in different environments. I would not underestimate that in any way.”

Julian Castro, a Democrat who ran for president against Harris in the 2020 primary, said Harris blended “knowledge, poise and the ability to explain things well” to stand out during crowded primary debates.

“Some candidates get too caught up with trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a very good balance.”

Balancing narrative and detail

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about her approach, said the vice president views the events like a jury trial she would have led when she was district attorney in San Francisco or querying a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill as a U.S. senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on merit while leaving more casual or piecemeal viewers with key takeaways.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves but also about a larger strategy of offering a vision for what your leadership and style looks like,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 primary debate preparation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but folds them into a broader narrative — the same way she would talk to jurors.

“She states a thesis and then follows with fact, fact, fact,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris hammered Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable 2019 primary debate when she skewered Biden for how he had talked about race and institutional racism. She weaved her critique of Biden’s record with her own biography as a young, biracial student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl was me,” Harris said in a widely circulated quip that punctuated her story about court-ordered busing that helped non-white students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument aren’t good at wrapping that with an effective narrative,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Landing memorable punches

Castro said Harris has a good feel for when to strike, a quality he traced to her trial experience. In 2019, as multiple Democratic candidates talked over one another, Harris sat back before getting moderators to recognize her.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” she said, taking control of the conversation and drawing applause.

When Harris faced Pence in 2020, it was a mostly civil, substantive debate. But she got in digs that framed Pence as a serial interrupter, as Trump had been in his first debate with Biden.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at one point, with a stern look. At another: “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation.”

Finding traps in policy

Debates have sometimes put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primary matches, Tulsi Gabbard, who this year has endorsed Trump, blitzed Harris over how aggressively she prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders as a district attorney.

That fall, Pence made Harris sometimes struggle to defend Biden’s positions. Now, her task will be to defend not just Biden’s record, but her own role in that record and what policies she would pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top aides, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about more liberal positions Harris took in her 2020 primary campaign, especially on fracking, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery and how to treat migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.

“We were surprised that she missed some opportunities (against Pence) when the conversation was centered around policy,” Short said.

Timing, silence and nonverbal communication

One of Harris’ earliest debate triumphs came in 2010 as she ran for California attorney general. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public pension while still being paid a salary for a current public post.

“I earned it,” Republican Steve Cooley said of the so-called “double-dipping” practice.

Harris looked on silently, with a slightly amused look as Cooley explained himself. When moderators recognized her, she said just seven words – “Go for it, Steve. You earned it!” — in a serious tone but with a look that communicated her sarcasm. The exchange landed in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is quite effective at nonverbal communication and knowing when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often will shake her head and, with other looks, telegraph her disapproval while her opponent is speaking. Then she smiles before retorting, or attacking, in a conversational tone.

“She defuses some of the argument that Trump makes that she is ‘a nasty woman,’ that she’s engaging in egregiously unfair behavior, because her nonverbal presentation is actually undercutting that line of attack,” Jamieson said.

Meeting a new challenge with Trump

For all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and massive stage. Democrats who ordinarily tear into Trump instead appeared on Sunday’s news shows to make clear that Harris faced a big task ahead.

“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, yet another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, on CNN. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “a nasty and crafty stage presence” who makes preparation difficult. And with ABC keeping the candidates’ microphones off when they are not speaking, Harris may not find it as easy to produce another viral moment that hinges on viewers having seen or heard Trump at his most outlandish.

“The best thing she can do,” Castro said, “is not get distracted by his antics.”

ATLANTA — The mother of a student at the Georgia high school where a teen allegedly killed four people says information indicating staff were warned he was having a crisis shows the shooting could have been prevented.

“The school failed them, that they could have prevented these deaths and they didn’t,” Rabecca Sayarath said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I truly, truly feel that way.”

Sayarath’s daughter, Lyela, told reporters on Wednesday, the day of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, that administrators appeared to be looking for Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who has been charged with four counts of murder, before the gunfire began.

Others, though, are declining to blame school or law enforcement officials.

“I’m not going to referee or second-guess what happened with the authorities the other night,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I applaud our first responders. When others are running away from danger, they run toward the danger in order to do the best they can.”

Officials say Gray shot and killed students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and a teacher were injured — seven of them shot — and are expected to recover.

Annie Brown told The Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and warned staff of an “extreme emergency” before the killings. Brown said Marcee Gray urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school at 9:50 a.m. Warrants for Gray’s arrest say the shooting started at 10:20 a.m.

Brown confirmed the reporting to The Associated Press on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.

Marcee Gray expressed remorse for the shootings Saturday to The Washington Post and The New York Post.

“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” Gray told The Washington Post in a text.

“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” Gray told The New York Post outside her father’s home in Fitzgerald, Georgia, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Atlanta.

Charles Polhamus, the boy’s grandfather, has told multiple news outlets that Marcee Gray got a text from her son on Wednesday saying he was sorry. Polhamus told CNN that Marcee Gray drove to Winder, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Fitzgerald, immediately after the shooting.

The Washington Post also reported that texts show relatives contacted the school about the boy’s mental health a week before the shooting, and that Brown told a relative he was having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.” The newspaper reported that the teen’s grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, met with a school counselor to request help.

The boy “starts with the therapist tomorrow,” Polhamus wrote in a text to Brown after that meeting.

Investigators haven’t said what they believe might have motivated Gray or whether they believe he targeted particular victims.

Authorities have said Gray’s father, Colin Gray, gave him access to the semiautomatic AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting. It’s not clear how Gray brought the gun to campus or what he did with it in the two hours between school starting at 8:15 a.m. and when shots first rang out.

Colin Gray became the first parent of a school shooting suspect to be charged in Georgia, District Attorney Brad Smith said Friday. He’s accused of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children for providing his son with the rifle.

Colin Gray is jailed in Barrow County after declining to seek bail in a brief court hearing Friday in Winder. Colt Gray is being held in a juvenile detention center after declining to seek bail. Neither has been indicted or entered a plea.

Lyela Sayarath said Wednesday that Colt Gray had left her algebra classroom and that she believed he was skipping class.

In the minutes before the shooting, a female administrator came to her class looking for a student with the same last name and almost identical first name as Gray, she said. That other student was in the bathroom, but the administrator demanded to see his bag. That student returned with his bag moments later, Sayarath said, and told her that administrators had concluded he wasn’t the student they were looking for.

Someone also called the teacher on the intercom, apparently asking about Gray, Sayarath said. She said as the intercom buzzed a second time, the teacher responded, “Oh he’s here,” seeing Gray outside the classroom door.

When students went to open the door, which automatically locks from the inside when closed, Sayarath said they backed away. She said she saw Colt Gray turn away through the window of the door and then she said she heard gunshots — “10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back.”

Rabecca Sayarath, Lyela’s mother, has said she believed the school erred by sending an unarmed administrator to look for Colt Gray instead of one of Apalachee High’s armed school resource officers.

When she questioned Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith about her daughter’s account at a Wednesday night news conference, Smith cautioned, “With all due respect, ma’am, I think your information is incorrect.”

It’s unclear if Barrow County school authorities knew before the shooting that Colt and Colin Gray previously had been interviewed by a sheriff’s deputy in neighboring Jackson County in May 2023 after a report of an online threat to shoot up a middle school that Colt Gray, then 13, attended.

Colt Gray told the deputy that “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” according to a report filed by investigators. No action was taken because of inconsistent information about the social media account used to make the threats.

Colin Gray told the investigator back then that Colt had access to unloaded guns in the house but knew “how to use them and not use them.” He also said his son had struggled since he and his wife separated and that Colt was picked on in school.

Nicole Valles, a spokesperson for the Barrow County school district, declined to comment Sunday in response to emailed questions seeking more details about what may have happened before the shooting.

“Because this is an active investigation and now court proceedings have begun, we are not commenting on specific details,” Valles wrote, referring questions to the district attorney.

Smith didn’t immediately respond to emails Sunday with similar questions, while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation referred requests for comment to the district attorney.

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Amazon is challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board in a lawsuit that also accuses the agency of improperly influencing the outcome of a union election at a company warehouse more than two years ago.

The complaint, filed Thursday at a federal court in San Antonio, mirrors legal arguments the tech giant made in front of the agency earlier this year after NLRB prosecutors accused the company of maintaining policies that made it challenging for workers to organize and retaliating against some who did so.

In the new legal filing, attorneys for Amazon pointed back to a lawsuit the agency filed against the company in March 2022, roughly a week before voting for a union election was set to begin at a company warehouse in the New York borough of Staten Island.

Amazon views the agency’s lawsuit, which sought to force the company to give a union organizer his job back, as improperly influencing the outcome of the election. The company has also cited the action as one of its objections to the historic election, where workers voted in favor of union representation for the first time in the U.S.

Last month, the NLRB’s board denied Amazon’s appeal to review its objections, closing off any options for the company to get the election results overturned within the agency.

In its new complaint, Amazon said the four NLRB board members who authorized the injunction were later judges reviewing the objections that came before them. It argued that structure was unconstitutional because board members are shielded from removal by the president, violates Amazon’s due process rights as well as right to a jury trial.

Other companies, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s, have also challenged the structure of the agency in pending lawsuits or administrative cases. Kayla Blado, spokesperson for the NLRB General Counsel noted that while big companies have sought to challenge the NLRB, the Supreme Court in 1937 upheld the agency’s constitutionality.

“While the current challenges require the NLRB to expend scarce resources defending against them, we’ve seen that the results of these kinds of challenges is ultimately a delay in justice, but that ultimately justice does prevail,” Blado said.

Earlier this year, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said at an event that the challenges were intended to prevent the agency from enforcing labor laws as companies “divert attention away from the fact that they’re actually law-breakers.”

Amazon is asking the court to issue an order that stops the agency from pursuing “unconstitutional” administrative proceedings against the company as the case plays out.

Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son Jim Moret told news outlets.

Moret told The Hollywood Reporter that Darren was supposed have had an aortic valve replacement but was too weak for the surgery. “I always thought he would pull through,” his son told the entertainment trade, “because he was so cool. He was always cool.”

In his long career, Darren acted, sang and built up a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director, helming episodes of such well-known series as “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” In the 1980s, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the television cop show “T.J. Hooker.”

But to young movie fans of the late 1950s, he would be remembered best as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the smash 1959 release “Gidget.” Dee starred as the title character, a spunky Southern Californian who hits the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”

The film was based on a novel that a California man, Frederick Kohner, had written about his own teenage daughter and helped spur interest in surfing — one that influenced pop music, slang and even fashion.

For Darren, his success with teen fans led to a recording contract, as it did with many young actors at the time, among them Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren’s singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (“Goodbye Cruel World” also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans.”) Other singles included “Gidget” and “Angel Face.”

Darren was the only “Gidget” cast member who appeared in both its sequels, 1961’s “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” and 1963’s “Gidget Goes to Rome.” Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carol in the third. (“Gidget” later became a television show, launching the career of Sally Field. )

“They had me under contract; I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But with those lovely young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ll ever be in.”

As a contract player at Columbia Studios, Darren appeared in grown-up films, too, including “The Brothers Rico,” “Operation Meatball” and “The Guns of Navarone.”

By the mid-’60s, when Darren appeared in “For Those Who Think Young” and “The Lively Set,” his big-screen acting career was almost over. He appeared in just a handful of movies after the 1960s ended, last appearing in 2017’s “Lucky,” directed by John Carroll Lynch.

But he remained active on television, appearing as a lead on the sci-fi show “The Time Tunnel” in the late 1960s, and doing guest spots and small recurring roles in TV shows such as “The Love Boat,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Fantasy Island.”

Darren was a series regular for four seasons of the William Shatner-starrer “T.J. Hooker” in the 1980s. While appearing on the show, he noticed that no director was listed for an upcoming sequence and asked if he could try out for it.

“When it was shown, I got several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many offers to direct, I kind of gave up acting and singing.”

For almost two years, Darren directed episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and other series. He returned to acting in the 1990s with small roles in “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.”

Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia, not far from such fellow teen idols of the 1950s and ’60s as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came easy to him, and at 14 he was appearing in local nightclubs.

“From the age of 5 or 6 I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or famous maybe,” he said in a 2003 interview with the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. He noted that such luminaries as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino had lived in the same area as he did, “a real neighborhood. It made you feel you could be successful, too.”

According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got a break when he went to New York to get some pictures taken and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout.

He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures, and the newspaper said that after a few appearances, his fan mail at the studio was running “second only to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot.”

Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955 and together had Moret, an “Inside Edition” correspondent and former CNN anchorman. After a divorce he married Evy Norlund, who came to the U.S. as the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was also the godfather of Nancy Sinatra’s daughter A.J. Lambert. Sinatra, his “For Those Who Think Young” co-star, posted The Hollywood Reporter obituary on her X page, with a broken heart emoji.

Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary.

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WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is using a New Hampshire campaign stop on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses — presenting a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.

She wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for small business startup expenses, with the goal of eventually spurring 25 million new small business applications over four years. Harris is making the announcement while visiting the Portsmouth area, across the Piscataqua River from Maine.

New Hampshire has been reliably blue in recent presidential elections, but the trip could also have some benefit across state lines since Maine splits its electoral votes, allowing candidates to win some without carrying the full state. Still, it marks a rare deviation from Harris spending most of her time visiting a tight group of Midwest and Sun Belt battlegrounds likely to decide November’s election.

Since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president has focused on the “ blue wall ” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that have been the centerpiece of successful Democratic campaigns.

She’s also frequently visited Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of which Biden narrowly won in 2020, and North Carolina, which she’s still hoping to flip from Republican former President Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s stop comes after Harris marked Labor Day with Monday rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh and before she heads back to Pittsburgh on Friday — marking her 10th visit to Pennsylvania in 2024. By contrast, Wednesday is her first visit to New Hampshire in years.

Trump has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% — a break with Biden who in his budget proposal in March suggested setting the corporate tax rate at 28%. Harris has released relatively few major policy proposals in the roughly six weeks since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket, but has not suggested she’s planning to deviate greatly from his administration on tax policy.

The small business plan Harris is presenting Wednesday has lots of facets that many in the business community would like. But that contrasts another proposal Harris unveiled last month, where she promised to help fight inflation by working to combat “price gouging” from food producers that she suggests have driven grocery store prices up unnecessarily.

Harris has built her campaign around calls to grow and strengthen the nation’s middle class — and suggested that rich Americans and large corporations should “pay their fair share” in higher taxes.

Biden, who similarly built his campaign around promoting the middle class, won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, but Trump came much closer to winning it against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, the Harris campaign notes that it has 17 field offices operating in coordination with the state Democratic party across New Hampshire, compared to one for Trump’s campaign.

Some of the state’s Democrats were angry that Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to vote in the party’s presidential primary this year — displacing Iowa’s caucus and a first-in-the-nation primary New Hampshire held for more than a century.

Despite that, New Hampshire pressed ahead with an unsanctioned primary. Though Biden didn’t campaign in it, or appear on the ballot, he still easily won via a write-in drive.

Trump is nonetheless hoping to use what happened to his advantage, posting on his social media account that Harris “sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up.”

“Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history,” the former president wrote. “I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will.”

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