NEW YORK — The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.

Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission.

In Colorado, the department demanded “all records” relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election.

Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law.

The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.

It also signals the transformation of the Justice Department’s involvement in elections under President Donald Trump. The department historically has focused on protecting access to the ballot box. Today, it is taking steps to crack down on voter fraud and noncitizen voting, both of which are rare but have been the subject of years of false claims from Trump and his allies.

The department’s actions come alongside a broader effort by the administration to investigate past elections and influence the 2026 midterms. The Republican president has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and continues to falsely claim he won. Trump also has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to the GOP.

The Justice Department does not typically “engage in fishing expeditions” to find laws that may potentially have been broken and has traditionally been independent from the president, said David Becker, a former department lawyer who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“Now it seems to be operating differently,” he said.

The department responded with an emailed “no comment” to a list of questions submitted by the AP seeking details about the communications with state officials.

Requests to states vary and some are specific

Election offices in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Utah, and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received letters from the voting section requesting their statewide voter registration lists. At least one other, Oklahoma, received the request by phone.

Many requests included basic questions about the procedures states use to comply with federal voting laws, such as how states identify and remove duplicate voter registrations or deceased or otherwise ineligible voters.

Certain questions were more state-specific and referenced data points or perceived inconsistencies from a recent survey from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an AP review of several of the letters showed.

The Justice Department already has filed suit against the state election board in North Carolina alleging it failed to comply with a part of the federal Help America Vote Act that relates to voter registration records.

More inquiries are likely on the way

There are signs the department’s outreach isn’t done. It told the National Association of Secretaries of State that “all states would be contacted eventually,” said Maria Benson, a NASS spokeswoman.

The organization has asked the department to join a virtual meeting of its elections committee to answer questions about the letters, Benson said. Some officials have raised concerns about how the voter data will be used and protected.

Election officials in at least four California counties — Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Francisco —said the Justice Department sent them letters asking for voter roll records. The letters asked for the number of people removed from the rolls for being noncitizens and for their voting records, dates of birth and ID numbers.

Officials in Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received an email from two department lawyers requesting a call about a potential “information-sharing agreement.”

The goal, according to several copies of the emails reviewed by the AP, was for states to provide the government with information about instances of election fraud to help the Justice Department “enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections.” One of those sending the emails was a senior counsel in the criminal division.

The emails referred to Trump’s March executive order on elections, part of which directs the attorney general to enter information-sharing agreements with state election officials to the “maximum extent possible.”

Skeptical state election officials assess how to reply

Election officials in several states that received requests for their voter registration information have not responded. Some said they were reviewing the inquiries.

Officials in some other states provided public versions of voter registration lists to the department, with certain personal information such as Social Security numbers blacked out. Elsewhere, state officials answered procedural questions from the Justice Department but refused to provide the voter lists.

In Minnesota, the office of Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said the federal agency is not legally entitled to the information.

In a July 25 letter to the Justice Department’s voting section, Simon’s general counsel, Justin Erickson, said the list “contains sensitive personal identifying information on several million individuals.” He said the office had obligations under federal and state law to not disclose any information from the statewide list unless expressly required by law.

In a recent letter, Republican lawmakers in the state called on Simon to comply with the federal request as a way “to protect the voting rights of the citizens of Minnesota.”

Maine’s secretary of state, Democrat Shenna Bellows, said the administration’s request overstepped the federal government’s bounds and that the state will not fulfill it. She said doing so would violate voter privacy.

The department “doesn’t get to know everything about you just because they want to,” Bellows said.

Some Justice Department requests are questionable, lawyers say

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Justice Department requesting information on state procedures or the states providing it, said Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general who teaches at Loyola Law School.

But the department’s requests for voter registration data are more problematic, he said. That is because of the Privacy Act of 1974, which put strict guidelines on data collection by the federal government. The government is required to issue a notice in the Federal Register and notify appropriate congressional committees when it seeks personally identifiable information about individuals.

Becker said there is nothing in federal law that compels states to comply with requests for sensitive personal data about their residents. He added that while the outreach about information-sharing agreements was largely innocuous, the involvement of a criminal attorney could be seen as intimidating.

“You can understand how people would be concerned,” he said.

___

Fields reported from Washington. Associated Press state government reporters from around the country contributed to this report.

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Today in history:

On August 3, 2019, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 23 people; after surrendering, the gunman told detectives he targeted “Mexicans” and had outlined the plot in a screed published online shortly before the attack.

Also on this date:

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on his first voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.

In 1852, in America’s first intercollegiate sporting event, Harvard rowed past Yale to win the first Harvard-Yale Regatta.

In 1916, Irish-born British diplomat Roger Casement, a strong advocate of independence for Ireland, was hanged for treason.

In 1936, Jesse Owens of the United States won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he took the 100-meter sprint.

In 1972, the U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In 1977, the Tandy Corporation introduced the TRS-80, one of the first widely-available home computers.

In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, seeking pay and workplace improvements (two days later, President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking union members and barred them from federal employment).

In 2004, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty opened to visitors for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.

In 2018, Las Vegas police said they were closing their investigation into the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting that left 58 people dead at a country music festival without a definitive answer for why Stephen Paddock unleashed gunfire from a hotel suite onto the concert crowd.

In 2021, New York’s state attorney general said an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo found that he had sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees; the report brought increased pressure on Cuomo to resign, including pressure from President Joe Biden and other Democrats. (Cuomo resigned a week later.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Football Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy is 100.
• Actor Martin Sheen is 85.
• Football Hall of Famer Lance Alworth is 85.
• Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is 84.
• Film director John Landis is 75.
• Actor JoMarie Payton (TV: “Family Matters”) is 75.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne is 74.
• Actor John C. McGinley is 66.
• Rock singer/guitarist James Hetfield (Metallica) is 62.
• Actor Lisa Ann Walter (TV: “Abbott Elementary”) is 62.
• Rock musician Stephen Carpenter (Deftones) is 55.
• Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady is 48.
• Actor Evangeline Lilly is 46.
• Olympic swimming gold medalist Ryan Lochte is 41.
• Model Karlie Kloss is 33.

Today in history:

On August 2, 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted seven former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal (though they would later be banned from Major League Baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis).

Also on this date:

In 1790, the first United States Census began under the supervision of Thomas Jefferson; a total of 3,929,214 people were counted in the census, nearly 700,000 of whom were enslaved.

In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.

In 1876, frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.

In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.

In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.

In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)

In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Author Isabel Allende is 83.
• Actor Butch Patrick (TV: “The Munsters”) is 72.
• Rock music producer/drummer Butch Vig is 70.
• Actor Mary-Louise Parker is 61.
• Filmmaker Kevin Smith is 55.
• Actor Sam Worthington is 49.
• Actor Edward Furlong is 48.
• Actor Lily Gladstone is 39.
• Singer Charli XCX is 33.
• Olympic swimming gold medalist Simone Manuel is 29.

Deputies spent Saturday traversing a rugged mountainous area of Montana with helicopters overhead as a manhunt for a military veteran suspected of fatally shooting four people at a bar stretched into a second day with no capture.

Michael Paul Brown, 45, fled The Owl Bar in the small town of Anaconda in a white pickup before ditching it at some point, according to Lee Johnson, administrator of the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation, which is overseeing the case. He urged residents late Friday to stay at home and remain on high alert.

Authorities released a photo of the suspect said to be taken as he fled after the shooting: Gaunt, barefoot and wearing nothing but black shorts, he is seeing walking down what appears to be a flight of outdoor concrete steps.

“While law enforcement has not received reports of Brown harming any other individuals, he is believed to be armed, and he is extremely dangerous,” Johnson said.

The search was still focused on an area off Stumptown Road west of Anaconda, both on the ground and by air, and included multiple local, state, and federal agencies.

Anaconda-Deer Lodge Police Chief Bill Sather said Saturday that businesses in the area could open, but he urged caution.

Authorities said they would release the names of the victims once all of their families have been notified.

“This is a small, tight-knit community that has been harmed by the heinous actions of one individual who does not represent what this community or Montanans stand for,” Johnson said.

Anaconda, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Butte, is home to roughly 9,000 people. Hemmed in by mountains, it was founded by copper barons who profited from nearby mines in the late 1800s. A smelter stack that is no longer operational looms over the valley.

Brown lived next door to The Owl Bar, according to owner David Gwerder, who was not there when the shooting happened Friday morning. Gwerder told The Associated Press that the bartender and three patrons were killed, and he did not think anyone else was inside. He was not aware of any conflicts between Brown and the victims.

“He knew everybody that was in that bar. I guarantee you that,” Gwerder said. “He didn’t have any running dispute with any of them. I just think he snapped.”

Brown served in the Army as an armor crewman from 2001 to 2005 and deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005, according to Lt. Col. Ruth Castro, an Army spokesperson. Brown was in the Montana National Guard from 2006 to March 2009, Castro said, and left military service at the rank of sergeant.

Brown’s niece, Clare Boyle, told AP her uncle has struggled with mental illness for years and she and other family members repeatedly sought help.

“This isn’t just a drunk/high man going wild,” she said in a Facebook message. “It’s a sick man who doesn’t know who he is sometimes and frequently doesn’t know where or when he is either.”

A lockdown of the Stumptown Road area was lifted on Saturday.

A helicopter hovered over a nearby mountainside as officers moved among the trees, said Randy Clark, a retired police officer who lives there.

Word of the shooting spread through the town after it took place, and business owners locked their doors and sheltered inside with customers.

___

Associated Press writer Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.

MIAMI (AP) — A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk’s car company Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $240 million in damages.

The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cellphone before hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the coming months.

The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial.

“This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”

The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.

“We finally learned what happened that night, that the car was actually defective,” said Benavides’ sister, Neima Benavides. “Justice was achieved.”

Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up.

“Today’s verdict is wrong,” Tesla said in a statement, “and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology,” They said the plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”

In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must also pay $43 million of a total $129 million in compensatory damages for the crash, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million.

“It’s a big number that will send shock waves to others in the industry,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s not a good day for Tesla.”

Tesla said it will appeal.

Even if that fails, the company says it will end up paying far less than what the jury decided because of a pre-trial agreement that limits punitive damages to three times Tesla’s compensatory damages. Translation: $172 million, not $243 million. But the plaintiff says their deal was based on a multiple of all compensatory damages, not just Tesla’s, and the figure the jury awarded is the one the company will have to pay.

It’s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla’s reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019.

But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, Brett Schreiber, said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.

Schreiber said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology.

“Words matter,” Schreiber said. “And if someone is playing fast and lose with words, they’re playing fast and lose with information and facts.”

Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars.

The Tahoe spun around so hard it was able to launch Benavides 75 feet through the air into nearby woods where her body was later found. It also left Angulo, who walked into the courtroom Friday with a limp and cushion to sit on, with broken bones and a traumatic brain injury.

But Schreiber said Tesla was at fault nonetheless. He said Tesla allowed drivers to act recklessly by not disengaging the Autopilot as soon as they begin to show signs of distraction and by allowing them to use the system on smaller roads that it was not designed for, like the one McGee was driving on.

“I trusted the technology too much,” said McGee at one point in his testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”

The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn’t crashed during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing alone: “The cause is that he dropped his cellphone.”

The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of Tesla liability despite a driver’s admission of reckless behavior would pose significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that increasingly drive themselves.

Condon reported from New York.

The shooting happened around 10:30 a.m. at The Owl Bar in Anaconda, according to the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation, which is leading the investigation. The agency confirmed four people were pronounced dead at the scene.

The suspect, who was identified as 45-year-old Michael Paul Brown, lived next door to the bar, according to public records. Authorities said his home was cleared by a SWAT team and that he was last seen in the Stump Town area, which is just west of Anaconda.

More than a dozen officers from local and state police converged on that area, locking it down so no one was allowed in or out. A helicopter also hovered over a nearby mountainside as officers moved among the trees, said Randy Clark, a retired police officer who lives there.

Brown was believed to be armed, the Montana Highway Patrol said in a statement.

As reports of the shooting spread through town, business owners locked their doors and sheltered inside with customers. At Caterpillars to Butterflies Childcare, a nursery a few blocks from the shooting scene, owner Sage Huot said she’d kept the children inside all day after someone called to let her know about the violence.

“We’re constantly doing practice drills, fire drills and active shooter drills, so we locked down the facility, locked the doors, and we have a quiet spot where we play activities away from all of our windows and doors,” Huot said.

Anaconda is about 75 miles southeast of Missoula in a valley hemmed in by mountains to the north and south. A town of about 9,000 people, it was founded by copper barons who profited off nearby mines in the late 1800s. A smelter stack that’s no longer operational looms over the valley.

The owner of the Firefly Café in Anaconda said she locked up her business at about 11 a.m. Friday after getting alerted to the shooting by a friend.

“We are Montana, so guns are not new to us,” café owner Barbie Nelson said. “For our town to be locked down, everybody’s pretty rattled.”

Brown reported from Billings, Montana, and Slevin from Denver. AP writer Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.

The NFL and ESPN are expected to announce an agreement next week under which most of the league’s significant media holdings would go to the sports network.

People familiar with the transaction said the multibillion-dollar deal would give the NFL an equity stake in ESPN.

The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized. It was first reported by The Athletic.

The NFL and ESPN had no comment.

The NFL has been trying to sell its media properties for nearly five years. ESPN and the league have been involved in on-again, off-again talks for the past three years.

The proposed move comes as ESPN is expected to soon launch its direct-to-consumer service, possibly before the end of August. The service would give cord cutters access to all of ESPN’s programs and networks for $29.99 per month. Most cable, satellite and viewers who have streaming services will receive the service for free as part of their subscription.

ESPN would get access to the popular RedZone channel, as well as NFL Network and an additional seven regular-season games (six international and a Saturday afternoon late-season contest).

A couple of weeks ago, ESPN announced that NFL Network host Rich Eisen’s three-hour program would air on ESPN Radio as well as stream on Disney+ and ESPN+. “The Rich Eisen Show” is not affiliated with NFL Network.

ESPN has carried NFL games since 1987 and “Monday Night Football” since 2006. Under the current TV contract, it will have the 2027 and 2031 Super Bowls for the first time.

NFL Network started in November 2003 and was the second major pro league to have its own network. NBA TV started in 1999, MLB Network in 2009 and NHL Network in the United States in 2007.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cornerstone of American culture for three generations, announced Friday it would take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by Congress — marking the end of a nearly six-decade era in which it fueled the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and even emergency alerts.

The demise of the corporation, known as CPB, is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. The closure is expected to have a profound impact on the journalistic and cultural landscape — in particular, public radio and TV stations in small communities across the United States.

CPB helps fund both PBS and NPR, but most of its funding is distributed to more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the country.

The corporation also has deep ties to much of the nation’s most familiar programming, from NPR’s “All Things Considered” to, historically, “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and the documentaries of Ken Burns.

The corporation said its end, 58 years after being signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, would come in an “orderly wind-down.” In a statement, it said the decision came after the passage through Congress of a package that clawed back its funding for the next two budget years — about $1.1 billion. Then, the Senate Appropriations Committee reinforced that policy change Thursday by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president and CEO.

A last-gasp attempt at funding fails

Democratic members of on the Senate Appropriations Committee made a last-ditch effort this week to save the CBP’s funding.

As part of Thursday’s committee deliberations, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., authored but then withdrew an amendment to restore CPB funding for the coming budget year. She said she still believed there was a path forward “to fix this before there are devastating consequences for public radio and television stations across the country.”

“It’s hard to believe we’ve ended up in the situation we’re in,” she said. “And I’m going to continue to work with my colleagues to fix it.”

But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., sounded a less optimistic tone.

“I understand your concerns, but we all know we litigated this two weeks ago,” Capito said. “Adopting this amendment would have been contrary to what we have already voted on.”

The closure will come in phases

CPB said it informed employees Friday that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. It said a small transition team will stay in place until January to finish any remaining work — including, it said, “ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

NPR stations use millions of dollars in federal money to pay music licensing fees. Now, many will have to renegotiate these deals. That could impact, in particular, outlets that build their programming around music discovery. NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher estimated recently, for example, that some 96% of all classical music broadcast in the United States is on public radio stations.

Federal money for public radio and television has traditionally been appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes it to NPR and PBS. Roughly 70% of the money goes directly to the 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country, although that’s only a shorthand way to describe its potential impact.

Trump, who has called the CPB a “monstrosity,” has long said that public broadcasting displays an extreme liberal bias, helped create the momentum in recent months for an anti-public broadcasting groundswell among his supporters in Congress and around the country. It is part of a larger initiative in which he has targeted institutions — particularly cultural ones — that produce content or espouse attitudes that he considers “un-American.” The CPB’s demise represents a political victory for those efforts.

His impact on the media landscape has been profound. He has also gone after U.S. government media that had independence charters, including the venerable Voice of America, ending that media outlet’s operations after many decades.

Trump also fired three members of the corporation’s board of directors in April. In legal action at the time, the fired directors said their dismissal was governmental overreach targeting an entity whose charter guarantees it independence.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas as her criminal case generates renewed public attention.

The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been transferred to Bryan, Texas, but did not explain the circumstances. Her attorney confirmed the move but also declined to discuss the reasons for it.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She had been held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, until her transfer to the prison camp in Texas, where other inmates include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”

Minimum-security federal prison camps house inmates the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. Some don’t even have fences.

The prison camps were originally designed with low security to make operations easier and to allow inmates tasked with performing work at the prison, like landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly checking in and out of a main prison facility.

Maxwell’s case has been the subject of heightened public focus since an outcry over the Justice Department’s statement last month saying that it would not be releasing any additional documents from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Since then, administration officials have tried to cast themselves as promoting transparency in the case, including by requesting from courts the unsealing of grand jury transcripts.

Maxwell was interviewed at a Florida courthouse over two days last week by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The House Oversight Committee has separately said that it wants to speak with Maxwell. Her lawyers said this week that she would be open to an interview but only if the panel were to give her immunity from prosecution for anything she said.

Associated Press Writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a warning to Russia, President Donald Trump said Friday he’s ordering the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines “based on the highly provocative statements” of the country’s former president Dmitry Medvedev.

Trump posted on his social media site that based on the “highly provocative statements” from Medvedev he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

The president added, “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what impact Trump’s order would have on U.S. nuclear subs, which are routinely on patrol in the world’s hotspots, but it comes at a delicate moment in the Trump administration’s relations with Moscow.

Trump has said that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. He cut his 50-day deadline for action to 10 days, with that window set to expire next week.

The post about the sub repositioning came after Trump, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, had posted that Medvedev was a “failed former President of Russia” and warned him to “watch his words.” Medvedev responded hours later by writing, “Russia is right on everything and will continue to go its own way.”

Medvedev was president from 2008 to 2012 while Putin was barred from seeking a second consecutive term but stepped aside to let him run again. Now deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, which Putin chairs, Medvedev has been known for his provocative and inflammatory statements since the start of the war in 2022, a U-turn from his presidency, when he was seen as liberal and progressive.

He has frequently wielded nuclear threats and lobbed insults at Western leaders on social media. Some observers have argued that with his extravagant rhetoric, Medvedev is seeking to score political points with Putin and Russian military hawks.

Trump and Medvedev have gotten into online spats before.

On July 15, after Trump announced plans to supply Ukraine with more weapons via its NATO allies and threatened additional tariffs against Moscow, Medvedev posted, “Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care.”

Earlier this week, he wrote, “Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10″ and added, “He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.”

Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.