Former Del. Jay Jones will look to be the face of legal resistance to President Donald Trump in Virginia after winning Tuesday’s closely watched Democratic state primary for attorney general.

Jones will face Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares in the November general election. His victory was a critical step for Democrats in rounding out their ticket ahead of a bellwether election later this year.

Democrats are also nominating their pick for lieutenant governor from a field of six candidates. State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi led Former Richmond City Mayor Levar Stoney in the tightly locked race Tuesday night, and she declared victory, but The Associated Press deemed the race too early to call.

The November election is sure to make history as Virginia is set to elect its first female governor since the state’s first governorship 250 years ago. Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who ran for the Democratic nomination unopposed, will battle Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — the only Republican who qualified for the ballot.

Virginia is one of two states that host statewide elections the year after a presidential election — New Jersey is the other — and the races are typically seen as referendums on the party in power before Congress heads into midterm elections.

Analysts will be looking for clues in both states about voter sentiment with Trump back in the Oval Office and Republicans controlling power in Washington.

Democrats’ hold on Virginia has slipped in recent years, moving it close to swing-state status nationally. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2021.

Still, Democrats have history on their side: The party of the sitting president typically suffers defeat in Virginia’s statewide races. And considering Trump has never won the state, Democrats are probably better positioned to make gains once their ticket solidifies.

Jones won the Democratic nomination in the race for attorney general despite his opponent casting him as lacking criminal prosecutorial experience.

Jones, who represented Norfolk in the House of Delegates for four years, comes from a long line of Hampton Roads politicians. His father was also a delegate, and his grandfather was the first Black member of the Norfolk School Board. Jones previously ran for attorney general in 2021 but lost the primary to Democratic incumbent Mark Herring.

He defeated Democrat Shannon Taylor, who has served more than a decade as the top prosecutor in the suburbs outside Richmond after flipping the open seat in 2011.

On the campaign trail, Jones touted himself as a candidate with the experience best suited for the job: He had worked as an assistant attorney general in Washington, where he said he had litigated consumer protection cases.

If elected attorney general, he also vowed to push back against Trump in court.

“I am ready for this fight and to win this November,” Jones said in a victory statement.

The six Democrats vying to be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor aren’t all that different on the issues: They support rights to abortion, a living wage, affordable housing and accessible health care. They also share similar criticisms of Trump.

The candidates notably fracture along regional lines.

Stoney has touted his ties to the Democratic Party and experience working under former Govs. Mark Warner and Terry McAuliffe.

Hashmi is also from the Richmond area, representing part of the city and suburbs. She has pushed reproductive health in her bid and has been endorsed by abortion rights political action committees.

Virginia Sen. Aaron Rouse, from Virginia Beach with ties to southwest Virginia, has also highlighted his legislative accomplishments.

Prince William County School Board Chair Barbur Lateef, former federal prosecutor Victor Salgado and retired U.S. Department of Labor worker Alex Bastani are from northern Virginia.

Only one Republican candidate in each statewide contest is advancing to the ballot.

Earle-Sears became the gubernatorial nominee after Republicans Dave LaRock and Amanda Chase failed to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Both LaRock and Chase initially challenged Earle-Sears for not being fully aligned with Trump.

Conservative talk-radio host John Reid became the de facto nominee for lieutenant governor after his primary opponent left the race, and despite intraparty quarreling over whether he was tied to a social media account reposting pornography.

Miyares sailed to his spot on the ballot as the nominee for attorney general after announcing his reelection bid. On Tuesday night, he said of Jones’ victory: “My opponent’s ideological record makes Virginia families less safe and our streets more violent.”

All 100 seats of the House of Delegates are up for election in November.

In Virginia’s more competitive districts, Democrat May Nivar won her primary race and will be taking on Republican incumbent Del. David Owen in a Richmond-area district that House liberals are vying to flip. Democrat Lindsey Dougherty won her primary race and will battle Republican Del. Carrie Coyner in a Petersburg-area district.

President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.

Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The justices asked for a response from prosecutors by Thursday morning. Trump’s team sought an immediate stay of the scheduled sentencing, saying it would wrongly restrict him as he prepares to take office. While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects.

The sentencing should be delayed as he appeals the conviction to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” they argued.

The emergency motion is from lawyers John Sauer, Trump’s pick for solicitor general, who represents the government before the high court, and Todd Blanche, in line to be the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.

They also pointed to the Supreme Court ruling giving Trump and other presidents broad immunity from prosecutions over their actions in office, saying it supports their argument that his New York conviction should be overturned.

Their filing said the New York trial court “lacks authority to impose sentence and judgment on President Trump — or conduct any further criminal proceedings against him— until the resolution of his underlying appeal raising substantial claims of Presidential immunity, including by review in this Court if necessary.”

The Republican president-elect’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, called for the case to be dismissed in a statement. Trump simultaneously filed an emergency appeal in front of New York’s highest court.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, said it will respond in court papers. Trump’s convictions arose from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. He denies it.

The Supreme Court’s immunity opinion came in a separate election interference case against him, but Trump’s lawyers say it means some of the evidence used against him in his hush money trial should have been shielded by presidential immunity. That includes testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.

Merchan has disagreed, finding they would qualify as personal business. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision was largely about official acts of presidents while in office.

Social media platform X said Saturday it will close its operations in Brazil, claiming Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest its legal representative in Brazil if they did not comply with orders.

X is removing all remaining Brazil staff in the country “effective immediately,” though the company said service will still be available to the people of Brazil. The company did not clarify how it could claim to suspend operations while continuing to provide services to Brazilians.

Earlier this year, the company clashed with de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation on X. The company said his most recent orders amounted to censorship, and shared a copy of the document on X.

The Supreme Court’s press office didn’t immediately respond to Associated Press email requests seeking comment, or to confirm the veracity of the document, on Saturday.

In the United States, free speech is a constitutional right that’s much more permissive than in many countries, including Brazil, where de Moraes in April ordered an investigation into CEO Elon Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution.

Whether investigating former President Jair Bolsonaro, banishing his far-right allies from social media, or ordering the arrest of supporters who stormed government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023, de Moraes has aggressively pursued those he views as undermining Brazil’s young democracy.

“Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process,” the company said in a statement on X.

In a tweet Saturday morning, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” and owner of X, Musk, said de Moraes “is an utter disgrace to justice.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers who are transferred from one job to another against their will to pursue job discrimination claims under federal civil rights law, even when they are not demoted or docked pay.

Workers only have to show that the transfer resulted in some, but not necessarily significant, harm to prove their claims, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The justices unanimously revived a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police sergeant after she was forcibly transferred, but retained her rank and pay.

Sgt. Jaytonya Muldrow had worked for nine years in a plainclothes position in the department’s intelligence division before a new commander reassigned her to a uniformed position in which she supervised patrol officers. The new commander wanted a male officer in the intelligence job and sometimes called Muldrow “Mrs.” instead of “sergeant,” Kagan wrote.

Muldrow sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Lower courts had dismissed Muldrow’s claim, concluding that she had not suffered a significant job disadvantage.

“Today, we disapprove that approach,” Kagan wrote. “Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test.”

Kagan noted that many cases will come out differently under the lower bar the Supreme Court adopted Wednesday. She pointed to cases in which people lost discrimination suits, including those of an engineer whose new job site was a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, a shipping worker reassigned to exclusively nighttime work and a school principal who was forced into a new administrative role that was not based in a school.

Although the outcome was unanimous, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas each wrote separate opinions noting some level of disagreement with the majority’s rationale in ruling for Muldrow.

Madeline Meth, a lawyer for Muldrow, said her client will be thrilled with the outcome. Meth, who teaches at Boston University’s law school, said the decision is a big win for workers because the court made “clear that employers can’t decide the who, what, when, where and why of a job based on race and gender.”

The decision revives Muldrow’s lawsuit, which now returns to lower courts. Muldrow contends that, because of sex discrimination, she was moved to a less prestigious job, which was primarily administrative and often required weekend work, and she lost her take-home city car.

The Supreme Court cast doubt Monday on state laws that could affect how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate content posted by their users. The cases are among several this term in which the justices could set standards for free speech in the digital age.

In nearly four hours of arguments, several justices questioned aspects of laws adopted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas in 2021. But they seemed wary of a broad ruling, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett warning of “land mines” she and her colleagues need to avoid in resolving the two cases.

While the details vary, both laws aimed to address conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right.

Differences on the court emerged over how to think about the platforms — as akin to newspapers that have broad free-speech protections, or telephone companies, known as common carriers, that are susceptible to broader regulation.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested he was in the former camp, saying early in the session, “And I wonder, since we’re talking about the First Amendment, whether our first concern should be with the state regulating what we have called the modern public square?”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas appeared most ready to embrace arguments made by lawyers for the states. Thomas raised the idea that the companies are seeking constitutional protection for “censoring other speech.”

Alito complained about the term “content moderation” that the sites employ to keep material off their platforms.

“Is it anything more than a euphemism for censorship?” he asked, later musing that term struck him as Orwellian. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, seemingly more favorable to the companies, took issue with calling the actions of private companies censorship, a term he said should be reserved for restrictions imposed by the government.

“When I think of Orwellian, I think of the state, not the private sector, not private individuals,” Kavanaugh said.

The precise contours of rulings in the two cases were not clear after arguments, although it seemed likely the court would not let the laws take effect. The justices posed questions about how the laws might affect businesses that are not their primary targets, including e-commerce sites like Uber and Etsy and email and messaging services.

Dani Alves, one of the most successful soccer players of his generation, was found guilty of raping a woman in a Barcelona nightclub and sentenced to four years and six months in prison on Thursday.

The former Brazil and Barcelona right back was convicted in Spain under a new sexual liberty law that emphasizes the lack of consent of the victim as key to determining sex crimes.

A three-judge panel at the Barcelona Provincial Court convicted the 40-year-old Alves of sexual assault for the incident on Dec. 31, 2022.

The court ordered Alves to pay 150,000 euros ($162,000) in compensation to the victim, banned him from approaching the victim’s home or place of work, and from communicating with her by any means for nine years.

“I still believe in the innocence of Mr. Alves,” Inés Guardiola, Alves’ lawyer, said. “I need to study the ruling, but I can tell you that of course we will appeal.”

Guardiola said Alves was “calm and collected” when he heard the verdict in court.

“We are satisfied,” David Sáenz, a member of the victim’s legal team, said, “because this verdict recognizes what we have always known, that the victim told the truth and that she has suffered.”
The victim’s lawyer, Ester García, said on Wednesday she and her client would not be present for the verdict.

The victim said Alves raped her in the bathroom of a Barcelona nightclub on the morning of Dec. 31, 2022. The court considered it proven that the victim did not consent to sex and there was evidence, in addition to the defendant’s testimony, that she was raped.

Alves denied during the three-day trial this month that he raped the woman, testifying to the court “I am not that kind of man.”

State prosecutors had sought a nine-year prison sentence for Alves while the lawyers representing his accuser wanted 12 years. His defense asked for his acquittal, or if found guilty a one-year sentence plus 50,000 euros compensation for the victim.

The sentence of four years and six months is near the lowest sentence for a rape conviction, which when the rape took place was penalized by four to 12 years under Spanish law. That has since been modified to six to 12 years. The court in its sentence said it considered favorably for Alves that he had “before the trial paid the court 150,000 euros to be given to the victim without any conditions attached.”

Sáenz said his legal team did not agree with the application of the extenuating circumstance, saying the money did not compensate the harm done to their client. During the trial, medical experts testified she was suffering from post-traumatic stress.