The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Wisconsin parents who wanted to challenge a school district’s guidance for supporting transgender students.

The justices, acting in a case from Eau Claire, left in place an appellate ruling dismissing the parents’ lawsuit.

Three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, would have heard the case. That’s one short of what is needed for full review by the Supreme Court.

Parents with children in Eau Claire public schools argued in a lawsuit that the school district’s policy violates constitutional protections for parental rights and religious freedom.

Sixteen Republican-led states had urged the court to take up the parents’ case.

Lower courts had found that the parents lacked the legal right, or standing. Among other reasons, the courts said no parent presented evidence that the policy affected them or their children.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals included two judges Republican Donald Trump appointed during his first term.

But Alito described the case as presenting “a question of great and growing national importance,” whether public school districts violate parents’ rights when they encourage students to transition or assist in the process without parental consent or knowledge.

“Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” encourages transgender students to reach out to staff members with concerns and instructs employees to be careful who they talk to about a student’s gender identity, since not all students are “out” to their families.

A top Romanian court on Thursday asked the official electoral authority to recount and verify all of the ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election, which was won by a far-right outsider candidate, sending shockwaves through the political establishment.

The Constitutional Court in Bucharest approved the recounting of the more than 9.4 million ballots, and said its decision was final. The Central Election Bureau is expected to meet on Thursday afternoon to discuss the request.

Calin Georgescu, a little-known, far-right populist and independent candidate, won the first round, beating the incumbent prime minister. Georgescu was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi, the leader of the Save Romania Union party, in a Dec. 8. runoff.

Georgescu’s unexpected success has prompted nightly protests by people concerned with previous remarks he made in praising Romanian fascist and nationalist leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and believe he poses a threat to democracy.

Without naming Georgescu, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis’ office said following a Supreme Council of National Defense meeting in Bucharest on Thursday that an analysis of documents revealed that “a presidential candidate benefited from massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.”

Earlier this week, Romania’s National Audiovisual Council asked the European Commission to investigate TikTok’s role in the Nov. 24 vote. Pavel Popescu, the vice president of Romania’s media regulator Ancom, said he would request TikTok’s suspension in Romania if investigations find evidence of “manipulation of the electoral process.”

The vote recount was prompted by a complaint made by Cristian Terhes, a former presidential candidate of the Romanian National Conservative Party who garnered 1% of the vote. Terhes alleged that Lasconi’s party had urged people to vote before some diaspora polls had closed on Sunday, saying it violated electoral laws against campaign activities on polling day.

After Thursday’s court ruling, Terhes’ press office posted on Facebook that the court ordered the recount “due to indications of fraud,” and alleged that valid votes cast for Ludovic Orban — who had dropped out of the race but remained on the ballot — had been reassigned to Lasconi.

It is the first time in Romania’s 35-year post-communist history that the country’s most powerful party, the Social Democratic Party, did not have a candidate in the second round of a presidential race. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned as party leader after he narrowly lost to Lasconi by just 2,740 votes.

Republicans and Democrats awaited the outcome of vote-counting for crucial U.S. House districts in California on Wednesday, as the GOP clinched majority control of the chamber next year with a race call in neighboring Arizona.

In a rematch from 2022, Rep. Ken Calvert — the longest-serving Republican in the state’s congressional delegation — defeated rival Democrat Will Rollins in the 41st District, which lies east of Los Angeles and was a top target for national Democrats.

In Southern California’s Orange County, Democrat Dave Min defeated Republican Scott Baugh in a closely divided swing district, ending Baugh’s bid to seize the seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in what was once a conservative stronghold.

The 47th District, southeast of Los Angeles, was a top target for national Republicans looking to protect and possibly expand the their narrow majority.

Calvert, who was backed by President-elect Donald Trump, claimed his 17th term in a district narrowly carried by Trump in 2020.

“This is a hard-fought victory that shows voters want someone who will put results above partisan politics,” Calvert said in a post on the social platform X.

Min, also posting on X, said that in Congress he will “fight to protect our democracy, safeguard our freedoms and expand economic opportunity.”

Baugh said on the same platform that “despite running a strong campaign … that effort is going to come up a little short.”

On Tuesday, Republican Rep. David Valadao’s victory in California’s 22nd District moved Republicans within two wins of retaining the House gavel, with the tally 216-207 in favor of the GOP, as counting continued in a sliver of races across the country.

With Calvert’s win, the Republican tally reached 217. That became 218 on Wednesday night, securing a majority margin, as Rep. Juan Ciscomani won reelection to a seat representing southeastern Arizona. Some squeaker races remained in play in California.

In the 45th District, anchored in Orange County, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel’s lead over Democrat Derek Tran was whittled down to a few hundred votes as counting continued.

California is known as a liberal protectorate — Democrats hold every statewide office, dominate the Legislature and congressional delegation and outnumber registered Republicans by a staggering 2-1 ratio. Still, Republicans retain pockets of political clout in the Southern California suburbs and vast rural stretches, including the Central Valley farm belt.

Orange County was once considered conservative holy ground, where white, suburban homeowners delivered winning margins for Republicans year after year. It was a foundational block in the Reagan revolution. But the county has become more demographically diverse and Democratic over time, like much of the state.

The 47th District, which includes Huntington Beach and other famous surf breaks, has been occupied by Porter, a progressive favorite who in 2022 narrowly defeated Baugh, a former Republican legislator. Porter, known for grilling CEOs during Capitol Hill hearings, stepped aside to run for U.S. Senate, but lost in the primary.

Given the stakes in the closely divided district, the contest was especially rancorous. Min ads called Baugh a “MAGA extremist” who would endanger abortion rights. Baugh said Min’s “extreme liberal views” were out of step with the district.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.

Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor. Robinson’s campaign was greatly hampered by a damning report in September that he had posted messages on an online pornography website, including that he was a “black NAZI.”

Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.

As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.

Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.

Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.

For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.

“The people of North Carolina resoundingly embraced a vision that’s optimistic, forward-looking and welcoming, a vision that’s about creating opportunity for every North Carolinian,” Stein told supporters in his victory speech after Cooper introduced him. “We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians.”

Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. In addition to the “black NAZI” comment, Robinson said he enjoyed transgender pornography and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot,” according to the report. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.

In the days following the report, most of Robinson’s top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.

Stein had a clear advantage among women, young and older voters, moderates and urban and suburban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state. White voters were about evenly divided between Stein and Robinson, while clear majorities of Black voters and Latino voters supported Stein.

Fifteen percent of those who voted for Trump also backed Stein for governor, while just 2% of those who cast ballots for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris backed Robinson.

Patrick Stemple, 33, a shipping coordinator attending a Trump rally last week in Greensboro, said he voted early for Trump but also chose Stein for governor.

Stemple mentioned both Stein’s ads talking about how he has fought illegal drug trafficking and his dislike for Robinson’s rhetoric. Stemple said the graphic language that CNN reported was used in Robinson’s posts reinforced his decision not to back Robinson.

Virginia on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove roughly 1,600 voters from its rolls that it believes are noncitizens.

The request comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday unanimously upheld a federal judge’s order restoring the registrations of those 1,600 voters, whom the judge said were illegally purged under an executive order by the state’s Republican governor.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily removals in an effort to keep noncitizens from voting. But U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles ruled late last week that Youngkin’s program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of the November election.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin’s removal program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period is in place to ensure that legitimate voters aren’t removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can’t be rectified in a timely manner.'

The ruling Sunday from the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voters’ registrations.

The appeals court said Virginia is wrong to assert that it is being forced to restore 1,600 noncitizens to the voter rolls. The judges found that Virginia’s process for removing voters established no proof that those purged were actually noncitizens.

Youngkin’s executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of data from the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.

State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.

The plaintiffs said that, as a result of the program, a legitimate voter and citizen could have his or her registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form. The plaintiffs presented evidence showing that at least some of those removed were in fact citizens.

A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

The appeal filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday by Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, asks the high court to intervene by Tuesday. Without any intervention, the injunction issued last week by Giles requires Virginia to notify affect voters and local registrars by Wednesday of the restorations she ordered.

A South Korean court found the former police chief of the country’s capital and two other officers not guilty over a botched response to a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022.

The verdict by the Seoul Western District Court drew angry responses from grieving relatives and their advocates, who accused the court of refusing to hold high-level officials accountable for an incident that was largely blamed on a lack of disaster planning and an inadequate emergency response.

Kim Kwang-ho, former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, was the most senior police officer among more than 20 police and government officials indicted over the crush in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district in Seoul. Prosecutors had sought a five-year prison term for Kim.

An investigation led by the National Police Agency found that police and local officials failed to plan effective crowd control measures even though they expected more than 100,000 people to gather for Halloween events in Itaewon.

The investigators found that Seoul police assigned just 137 officers to Itaewon on the day of the crush. Police also ignored hotline calls placed by pedestrians who warned of swelling crowds before the surge turned deadly. Once people began getting crushed in an alley near Hamilton Hotel, police failed to establish control over the site and allow paramedics to reach the injured in time.

Some experts have called the crush a “manmade disaster” that could have been prevented with relatively simple steps like employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walking lanes, and blocking narrow pathways.

The Seoul court acquitted Kim of professional negligence, saying that prosecutors failed to prove that he had violated his duties or to establish a connection between his conduct and the high toll of deaths and injuries. The court also acquitted two lower-ranking police officers who faced similar charges.

The court stated that while Kim received status updates from various departments in his agency and the Yongsan police station about the situation in Itaewon before the crush on Oct. 29, 2022, this information would not have been sufficient for him to recognize the possibility of an incident of such magnitude.

The court also noted that Kim had instructed various police stations in Seoul, including Yongsan, to establish plans to maintain safety during Halloween celebrations.

“Based solely on evidence submitted by prosecutors, it’s insufficient to conclude that the defendants’ professional negligence and its relationship to the occurrence or escalation of this incident are fully established beyond reasonable doubt,” the court said in a statement. Relatives of the victims embraced and cried outside the court after the verdict was announced.

“This court just granted immunity to the police for whenever these kinds of incidents happen again!” one of them shouted. Others scuffled with security as they tried to approach Kim’s car as he left the court.

Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families, a group representing the victims, said the ruling was “dishonest” and “impossible to understand” and called for prosecutors to appeal.

“We strongly condemn that the main officials of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, who ignored their duties for prevention, preparation and response despite anticipating that a large crowd would develop, and who have been denying their responsibility until now, are being given a free pass,” the group said.

The same court last month sentenced the former chief of Yongsan police station, Lee Im-jae, to three years in prison and convicted two of his colleagues of professional negligence resulting in death, citing their failure to properly prepare for the crowd and respond to the crush.

The court acquitted Park Hee-young, head of the Yongsan ward office, and three other ward officials, saying that they had no legal authority to control or break up crowds.

Lee and another Yongsan police official who received a one-year sentence appealed the ruling earlier this month. The other police official had received a suspended sentence.