By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Actor and comedian Adam Sandler became the 24th recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday, at an evening event featuring stars Jennifer Aniston, Chris Rock and Conan O’Brien to celebrate his comedy and career.

Sandler, whose movies include “Spanglish,” “The Wedding Singer,” and “The Waterboy,” was celebrated for his comedic chops that, while not always winning the hearts of critics, have won over fans and generated billions of dollars.

Dressed uncharacteristically in business attire instead of his trademark shorts and T-shirt, Sandler, 56, said he thought his suit was baggy.

“I don’t know if this suit fits me or not, I just threw it on … for the second time,” he told reporters on the red carpet ahead of the show.

“But everything else … the honor itself, never thought about this in my entire life, never expected anything like this.”

Comedian Dana Carvey referred to Sandler’s longevity. “No one’s had a career like this,” Carvey told reporters ahead of the show. “Who’s lasted this long? He’s beloved.”

Sandler’s friends and acting partners, along with his mother and his wife, took to the Kennedy Center stage to gently rib the actor and highlight his development as a stand-up comic, movie actor and singer.

“You’re making a terrible, terrible mistake,” comedian O’Brien quipped at the top of the show to the Kennedy Center for selecting Sandler, a former “Saturday Night Live” star.

Sandler’s mother, Judy, made light of his wardrobe preferences. “I say he’s a slob,” she said in her own quasi- comedy routine, before praising her son. “We are so proud of him.”

Comedian David Spade expressed mock awe at Sandler’s box office success. “Four billion dollars in movies, with this much talent!” Spade said, with a hand gesture that suggested a minute amount.

Aniston, who appeared with Sandler in films such as “Just Go with It” and Netflix’s “Murder Mystery,” praised her co-star. “Adam Sandler, you have no equal,” she said.

With the White House a short distance from the Kennedy Center, some presenters touched on politics.

Carvey did impressions of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, and comedian Chris Rock mentioned potential criminal charges against the Republican leader.

“Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” Rock asked. “This is only going to make him more popular!”

Rock, who was slapped on stage at the Oscars in 2022 by actor Will Smith, also referred to Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was attacked by an intruder in their San Francisco home last year.

“Paul Pelosi – only guy that knows how I felt,” Rock said, as the Pelosis sat in the audience.

Sandler joins the ranks of other comedians who have received the Mark Twain Prize, including Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Letterman, Carol Burnett, Eddie Murphy and Ellen DeGeneres.

The prize is named after novelist and essayist Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. The show will air on CNN on March 26.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A lawyer called to testify behind closed-doors in New York on Monday may challenge the claims of a key witness before a grand jury decides whether to charge former President Donald Trump over hush money paid to a [censored] star, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday.

    Robert Costello has been asked to appear before the grand jury at the request of Trump’s lawyers because he may have information that calls into question events as described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, the source said.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has asked Cohen to be available on Monday as a rebuttal witness, if needed, according to a second source, who did not want to be named. Cohen testified before the grand jury twice last week.       

Trump, whose supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to overturn his 2020 election defeat, said Saturday that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests. He said “illegal leaks” indicated an arrest on Tuesday, but provided no evidence, and his spokesman said Trump had not been notified of any impending arrest.

Trump’s call for protests overshadowed the start of a three-day Florida retreat for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I don’t think people should protest this, no,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “We want calmness out there.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office earlier this month invited Trump to testify before the grand jury probing the payment, which legal experts said was a sign that an indictment could be close. Trump declined the offer, a person familiar with the matter said.

No U.S. president, while in office or afterward, has faced criminal charges. Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has said he would continue campaigning even if charged with a crime.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating a $130,000 hush payment made by Cohen, Trump’s estranged former fixer, to [censored] star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sources have said Bragg’s office has been presenting evidence to a grand jury about the payment that was made to Daniels in return for her silence about an affair she said she had with Trump a decade earlier.

The grand jury will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to formally charge Trump with a crime. The proceedings are not public.

Costello’s testimony is expected to focus on the payment to Stormy Daniels and how that came about, the first source said. Costello is better known for his representation of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Cohen consulted with Costello years ago, and was given a retainer agreement but never signed it, the first source said. Cohen also waived attorney-client privilege in 2019, the source added.

‘WITCH HUNT’

Cohen was sentenced to prison in 2018 after pleading guilty in federal court to campaign finance violations tied to hush money payments to Daniels and another woman during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, among other crimes.

Trump has denied the affair with Daniels happened and called the investigation by Bragg a political persecution.

“THE WITCH HUNT NEVER ENDS, BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump posted on social media on Sunday.

Talk of a Trump arrest could be boosting his support, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a fellow Republican, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“It’s building a lot of sympathy for the former president,” said Sununu, a relative moderate, who is considering his own presidential run and appeared to be trying to avoid alienating Trump supporters.

Asked if Trump had special responsibility to ensure protests did not turn violent, Sununu said “well, sure” but quickly added this was a broader societal responsibility, saying “you can’t just put it on the former president.”

Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former economic adviser Gary Cohn on Sunday both urged Trump supporters to respond peacefully to any developments this week.

Prominent Republicans, such as Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence and House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, suggested a possible prosecution by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, would be politically motivated.

Trump also took to social media on Sunday to accuse President Joe Biden of playing a role in the Manhattan probe but offered no evidence. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Bragg declined to comment on Sunday.

Legal experts have said if Trump were indicted that any trial could still be more than a year away, possibly coinciding with the final months of the 2024 presidential campaign.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and by Arshad Mohammed, Michelle Nichols, Kanishka Singh, Nandita Bose and David Morgan in Washington; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mark Porter, Chris Reese, Diane Craft and Don Durfee)

By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump could be charged in New York as soon as this week for allegedly covering up hush money payments to a [censored] star during his 2016 presidential campaign, nearly seven years after the money changed hands.

But any trial of the former U.S. president would still be more than a year away, legal experts said, and could coincide with the final months of the 2024 presidential campaign as Trump seeks a return to the White House.

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday and called on his followers to protest, though a spokesperson later said Trump has not been notified of any pending arrest.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has presented evidence to a New York grand jury about a $130,000 payment to [censored] star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair, according to sources. Trump has denied the affair, and his lawyer has accused Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, of extortion.

Were he charged, Trump would become the first former U.S. president to face criminal prosecution. Polls show him leading other potential rivals for the Republican nomination, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to mount a White House bid.

The average criminal case in New York takes more than a year to move from indictment to trial, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, and Trump’s case is far from typical.

That raises the possibility of Trump having to stand trial in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign, or even after Election Day, though putting a president-elect or president on trial for state charges would enter uncharted legal waters. If elected, he would not hold the power to pardon himself of state charges.

“This is so unprecedented that it’s hard for me to say,” Agnifilo said when asked whether a judge would put Trump on trial close to the election. “I think it’s tricky.”

The New York case is one of several focused on Trump, including a Georgia election interference probe and a pair of federal investigations into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters trying to overturn his defeat and into his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House.

CHALLENGING THE CASE

In his early career in real estate, as a television celebrity and then in politics, the famously litigious Trump has employed aggressive counter-attacks and delay tactics when confronted with legal challenges.

Trump has accused Bragg, an elected Democrat, of targeting him for political gain and could try to seek dismissal of the charges on those grounds.

Trump would likely pursue other avenues as well, some of which could present thorny legal issues that take time to resolve.

While serving as president, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels payments, and federal prosecutors who charged Cohen said in court papers that the payments were falsely recorded as for legal services. The New York Times, citing sources, has reported the most likely charges against Trump would be for falsifying business records, typically a misdemeanor.

To elevate that charge to a felony, prosecutors must prove that Trump falsified records to cover up a second crime. One possibility, according to the Times, is that prosecutors could assert the payment itself violated state campaign finance law, since it was effectively an illegal secret donation to boost his campaign.

Using state election law to elevate a false business record charge is an untested legal theory, experts said, and Trump’s lawyers would be sure to challenge it.

Trump could also challenge whether the statute of limitations – five years in this instance – should have run out. Under New York law, the statute of limitations can be extended if the defendant has been out of state, but Trump may argue that serving as U.S. president should not apply.

“There’s a whole host of possibilities,” said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent and prosecutor and a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “This is a dream case for defense attorneys.”

FINGERPRINTS AND MUGSHOT

In the near term, any indictment would require Trump to travel to the district attorney’s office in downtown New York to surrender. In white-collar cases, the defendant’s lawyers and prosecutors typically agree on a date and time, rather than arresting the person at home.

Trump would have his fingerprints and mugshot taken and would appear for arraignment in court. He would likely be released on his own recognizance and allowed to head home, experts said.

Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told CNBC on Friday that Trump would surrender if charged. If Trump refused to come in voluntarily, prosecutors could seek to have him extradited from Florida, where he currently resides.

In an ironic twist, DeSantis would typically have to give formal approval for an extradition demand in his capacity as governor, though Florida legal experts said his role would be strictly administrative.

(This story has been refiled to correct typo to “changed hands” in paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen and Tom Hals; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

By Blake Brittain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A trademark dispute over a poop-themed dog toy shaped like a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle coming before the U.S. Supreme Court could redefine how the judiciary applies constitutional free speech rights to trademark law.

In a case to be argued on Wednesday, the nine justices are expected to use this legal dogfight to clarify the line between a parody protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and a trademark-infringing ripoff, with repercussions extending beyond booze and pet accessories. A ruling is due by the end of June.

Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc, owned by Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corp, is appealing a lower court’s decision that Phoenix-based VIP Products LLC’s “Bad Spaniels” chew toy is an “expressive work” protected by the First Amendment.

Some companies have expressed concern that a ruling against Jack Daniel’s would weaken their control over their brands and reputations. Others argue that a ruling favoring the whiskey maker would stifle free-speech rights.

“This is an interesting case because it’s a court that does care about the First Amendment but also cares about business,” said Elizabeth Brannen, a partner at the law firm Stris & Maher who has worked on intellectual property cases before the Supreme Court. “And this is a case where those interests intersect in a way that’s kind of hard to sort out.”

The toy mimics Lynchburg, Tennessee-based Jack Daniel’s famous whiskey bottles with humorous dog-themed alterations – replacing “Old No. 7” with “the Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet” and alcohol descriptions with “43% Poo By Vol.” and “100% Smelly.”

“Jack Daniel’s loves dogs and appreciates a good joke as much as anyone,” the company told the justices in a brief. “But Jack Daniel’s likes its customers even more, and doesn’t want them confused or associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.”

THE ROGERS TEST

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its 2020 ruling in favor of VIP cited a 1989 decision by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by Hollywood legend Ginger Rogers. The actress unsuccessfully sued to block the release of the 1986 film “Ginger and Fred” from director Federico Fellini that referred to her famed dance partnership with actor Fred Astaire.

That precedent lets artists use trademarks if they have artistic relevance to a work and would not explicitly mislead consumers into thinking the trademark owner endorsed it.

Jack Daniel’s said that under the 2nd and 9th Circuit decisions, “anyone could use a famous mark to sell sex toys, drinking games or marijuana bongs, while misleading customers and destroying billions of dollars in goodwill – all in the name of just having fun.”

President Joe Biden’s administration supports Jack Daniel’s appeal, saying in a brief the 9th Circuit should have applied the normal standard for trademark infringement – whether a product creates a likelihood of confusion – with parody among several factors to consider.

Prominent brand owners including Nike, Campbell Soup, Patagonia and Levi Strauss told the Supreme Court that the 9th Circuit wrongly applied the Rogers test to consumer products and that a ruling for VIP would threaten their ability to protect their brands from bad actors.

VIP Products has said a ruling favoring Jack Daniel’s would make it easier for trademark owners to stifle free speech.

“Every First Amendment case has a spillover effect into other areas,” VIP’s attorney Ben Cooper of the firm Dickinson Wright said in an interview. “So this can’t be seen as being compartmentalized into the world of trademarks.”

“Whenever one person’s speech is limited, it gets everyone else nervous,” Cooper added.

VIP told the justices its toy comments on “iconic alcohol brands’ self-serious bombardment of consumers with advertising and dog owners’ joyful humanization of their pets.”

A group of intellectual property professors told the court the First Amendment was “under attack by brand owners that lack a sense of humor, monopolize discussion about their brands and exaggerate the harm expressive references cause to their trademarks.”

Megan Bannigan, a partner at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton who submitted the brief, said the impact of dumping the Rogers test could “go well beyond parody” and “impact all expression.”

The Brooklyn modern-art collective MSCHF, which has faced trademark lawsuits from Nike and Vans, filed a brief supporting VIP’s argument.

Its attorney, Bill Patterson of the firm Swanson Martin & Bell, said the case is “supremely important to MSCHF as it threatens its ability to challenge and comment on culture outside the safe havens of white-walled galleries.”

MSCHF’s brief included “connect-the-dots” puzzles for the justices and their law clerks to complete and return for the collective to sell, with winking references to their personal histories and famous trademarks. Patterson said the group has not yet received any of them back.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City prosecutor who was publicly criticized for declining to charge Donald Trump last year now appears very close to bringing the first criminal indictment against a former president in U.S. history.

Trump on Saturday said that he expects to be arrested this week on charges by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is investigating whether Trump falsified business records by concealing his reimbursement of his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment Cohen made to [censored] star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

The payment, made during the waning weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign for the White House, was intended to secure Daniels’ silence about an affair she said she had with Trump, prosecutors said. A spokesman for Bragg declined to comment on Saturday.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday and called on his supporters to protest.

Trump, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, did not say he had been formally notified of forthcoming charges and did not discuss the possible charges in the post.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after a fiery speech in which he falsely claimed his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud.

Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January 2022, after his predecessor indicted the former president’s family company and its top financial executive over a 15-year-tax fraud scheme.

A prosecutor leading that probe, Mark Pomerantz, resigned in February 2022 after Bragg declined to charge Trump himself for financial crimes. Pomerantz has publicly criticized Bragg’s decision not to bring charges and published a book about the investigation.

Pomerantz has said concerns about potentially losing the case should be weighed against the possibility of “promoting disrespect for the law” by not bringing charges when warranted.

Bragg has defended his decision.

“I bring hard cases when they are ready,” Bragg said in a Feb. 7 news conference. “Mark Pomerantz’s case simply was not ready. So I said to my team, let’s keep working.”

Trump has called the probe a “witch hunt.”

A grand jury began hearing evidence in the case earlier this year.

Cohen previously testified that Trump directed him to arrange the payment, and Cohen pleaded guilty in December 2018 to campaign finance violations and other charges.

“For the DA’s office to charge former President Trump, a victim of extortion, with a crime because his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, a convicted liar, paid the extortionist would be unprecedented and outrageous selective prosecution,” Trump lawyer Susan Necheles said in a statement on March 10.

Proving Trump intended to commit a crime may be one of Bragg’s biggest challenges, said Jennifer Beidel, a partner at law firm Saul Ewing and former federal prosecutor.

“One would think that the former president would try to argue that people independent of him were making their own choices about what to do, maybe out of motivation to please him, but maybe not with his direction,” Beidel said.

Bragg, the first Black District Attorney in Manhattan, previously served as a federal prosecutor and as a senior official in the New York State Attorney General’s office, where he oversaw a lawsuit that forced the former president’s namesake charitable foundation to dissolve.

Shortly after taking office, his critics complained about a plan to refrain from prosecuting some minor offenses, reduce pretrial detention and limit sentence length. Bragg argued that “over-incarceration” has not improved public safety.

In the biggest trial victory so far in his tenure, his office last December won the conviction of the Trump Organization on tax fraud charges. Allen Weisselberg, the organization’s former chief financial officer, had pleaded guilty and testified against the company at trial.

Several observers have defended Bragg against Pomerantz’s criticism.

“Bragg’s decision not to pull the trigger in February 2022 … actually may have been courageous, not cowardly,” Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in a review of Pomerantz’s book in the Washington Post. “He hardly had anything to gain and a lot to lose politically by the decision.”

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Grant McCool and Diane Craft)

By Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin may not see the inside of a cell in The Hague any time soon, but his war crimes arrest warrant could hurt his ability to travel freely and meet other world leaders, who may feel less inclined to speak to a wanted man.

Putin is just the third head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court while still in power. Following is a look at what the consequences could be for the Kremlin leader.

WHAT IS THE CASE?

The ICC accuses Putin of responsibility for the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children – at least hundreds, possibly more – to Russia.

The Kremlin was quick to dismiss the allegations and the Russian foreign minister said ICC decisions “have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view.”

TRAVEL ABROAD

The ICC’s 123 member states are obliged to detain and transfer Putin if he sets foot on their territory. Russia is not a member and neither are China, the United States or India, which is hosting a summit later this year of leaders of the G20 group of big economies, which includes Russia.

The world’s permanent war crimes court was created by the Rome Statute, a treaty ratified by all the EU states, as well as Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, 33 African countries and 19 nations in the South Pacific.

Russia signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but withdrew its backing in 2016, after the ICC classified Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula as an armed conflict.

“Putin is not stupid. He’s not going to travel abroad to a country where he might be arrested,” said assistant professor of history at the Utrecht University Iva Vukusic.

“He is not going to be able to travel pretty much anywhere else beyond the countries that are either clearly allies or at least somewhat aligned (with) Russia,” Vukusic said.

ICC’S PAST EXPERIENCE

Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi are the only other leaders to have been indicted by the ICC while serving as head of state. Charges against Gaddafi were terminated after he was overthrown and killed in 2011.

Bashir, indicted in 2009 for genocide in Darfur, remained in office for another decade until being toppled in a coup. He has since been prosecuted in Sudan for other crimes but has not been handed to the ICC.

While in office, he travelled to a number of Arab and African countries, including ICC member states Chad, Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda, which declined to detain him. The court rebuked those countries or referred them to the U.N. Security Council for non-compliance.

The ICC has tried one former head of state after he left office: former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, who was acquitted of all charges in 2019 after a three-year trial.

Kenya’s President William Ruto and his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta were both charged by the ICC before they were elected. The charges against both men have since been dropped. Kenyatta is the only leader to have appeared before the ICC while still serving in office.

OTHER COURTS

Apart from the ICC, several former leaders have been tried by other international courts. Among notable cases:

Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, became the first former head of state to appear before an international tribunal since World War Two when he was tried at a U.N. court for alleged crimes during the 1990s Balkan wars. He died in custody in 2006 before a verdict was reached.

Liberian former leader Charles Taylor was found guilty of war crimes in 2012 by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes by an international court since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War Two.

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, one of Milosevic’s adversaries in the 1990s Balkan wars, left office after being indicted for war crimes by the Kosovo war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He is due to go on trial next month.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch, Stephanie van den Berg and Toby Sterling; Editing by Peter Graff)

By Gram Slattery and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to allow a federal law stand that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.

In February, a three judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans declared that the ban was unconstitutional, saying it violated the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms. It was the latest victory for gun rights advocates since a Supreme Court ruling last June granting a broad right for people to carry firearms outside the home.

The Supreme Court ruling announced a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.

The Justice Department’s petition to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court was posted on Twitter late on Friday by Jake Charles, a law professor at Pepperdine University with expertise on gun control issues. It can take several days for a petition to be posted to the public docket.

“More than a million acts of domestic violence occur in the United States every year, and the presence of a firearm increases the chance that violence will escalate to homicide,” the petition reads.

The Justice Department said it was pursuing the Supreme Court appeal on a “highly expedited schedule” so the justices could potentially take up the case before the current term ends.

In its decision, the 5th Circuit panel, which was comprised of three Republican-appointed judges, threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Kennedale, Texas, home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021.

Rahimi had been under a restraining order since Feb. 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.

Neither the Justice Department, nor the federal public defender representing Rahimi immediately responded to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Nate Raymond; editing by Diane Craft)

By Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon on Friday signed into law a bill outlawing the use or prescription of medication abortion pills that was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month. 

Gordon, a Republican, signed the law as a federal judge in Texas considers ordering a nationwide ban on the abortion pill mifepristone in response to a lawsuit by anti-abortion groups.

The crux of the two-page Wyoming bill is a provision making it illegal to “prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.”

So-called “morning-after” pills, prescription contraceptive medication used after sex but before a pregnancy can be confirmed, are exempted from the ban.

The measure also includes an exemption for any treatment necessary to protect a woman “from an imminent peril that substantially endangers her life or health,” as well as any treatment of a “natural miscarriage according to currently accepted medical guidelines.”

Violation of the ban is to be treated as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $9,000.

The measure stipulates that a woman “upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted shall not be criminally prosecuted.”

The governor said he was also allowing enactment, without his signature, of a separate bill passed by state lawmakers to prohibit conventional abortion procedures except when necessary to protect the health and life of the mother, or in case of rape or incest.

Exception is also permitted to end a pregnancy if doctors determine there to be a lethal abnormality of the fetus.

Legal fights over abortion rights have ramped up in the United States following a Supreme Court ruling last year that overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the procedure.

Gordon acknowledged that abortion rights proponents who have already challenged Wyoming’s “trigger” abortion ban that went into effect after the Roe v. Wade decision have filed suit to block the newly passed Wyoming ban preemptively.

The governor expressed concern that enactment of the new abortion ban could muddy the legal waters, creating a new obstacle to swift resolution of the matter by the courts.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Beech)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. states cannot block shipments of hazardous waste from a Feb. 3 Ohio train derailment to licensed disposal sites, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Friday.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s warning came after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said earlier this week he had blocked a shipment of hazardous waste from the derailment to a facility in his state.

The derailment of the Norfolk Southern operated train in East Palestine, Ohio, has shone a spotlight on railroad safety as residents worry about the health impacts of living near the toxic material.

Regan told reporters he sent letters to all states warning “any attempts to impede interstate shipments of hazardous waste threatens the integrity of the system.” He said the Oklahoma site has a permit to receive the waste.

The EPA said there are typically 97,000 shipments of hazardous waste in the U.S. per month and two-thirds may cross state lines.

Regan said he would hold Norfolk Southern accountable and demanded it enforce its contracts to dispose of contaminated materials from the site.

“EPA will take all actions to ensure the safe hazardous waste handing continues across this country,” he told reporters. “We expect Norfolk Southern to execute and implements its contracts and hold contractees accountable for receipt of this waste.”

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine praised the EPA statement for making clear states must accept shipments.

Both Regan and DeWine said there was nothing unusual about the material from the East Palestine derailment.

“It’s kind of crazy because what we’re sending from here is no worse than stuff they are taking every other day,” DeWine told reporters. “In fact, they are taking a lot worst stuff than we’re sending them.”

Regan said to date the railroad has excavated nearly half of contaminated soil from the tracks and transported 6.8 million gallons of liquid waste and 5,400 tons of solid waste. Regan estimated it would take another three months to complete the site cleanup.

“EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to clean up the mess it made — and no one should impede or prevent this cleanup as we return East Palestine to the beautiful community residents know it to be,” he said.

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw has said the railroad is fully committed to cleaning the site and will testify next week before the Senate Commerce Committee, his second appearance this month before senators.

Norfolk Southern said in a statement it shares “the EPA’s urgency to complete the remediation safely and thoroughly…. We will keep working until the job is done.”

On Tuesday, the state of Ohio sued Norfolk Southern over the derailment that released over a million gallons of hazardous materials and pollutants.

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Marguerita Choy, Josie Kao and Lincoln Feast.)