Most states not giving driver's license data to Washington

An effort by the U.S. Census Bureau to collect state driver's license records as part of President Donald Trump's order to gather citizenship information has been a bust so far.

As of Wednesday, the vast majority of state motor vehicle agencies had not agreed to share their records with the bureau, according to an Associated Press survey of the 50 states. The effort over the past couple of months has alarmed civil rights groups, which see it as part of a backdoor move by the Trump administration to reduce the political power of minorities.

In August, the bureau began requesting five years' worth of driver's license records, promising the information would be kept confidential. The effort began after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump's administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, and the president instead ordered citizenship data compiled through administrative records.

A Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles drivers license service center is shown, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, in Hialeah, Fla. The U.S. Census Bureau has asked the 50 states for drivers' license information, months after President Donald Trump ordered the collection of citizenship information. (AP PhotoWilfredo Lee)

At least 13 states have refused to share the driver's license data, 17 are still deciding what to do, and 17 haven't yet received a request, according to the AP survey. Three states didn't respond to multiple AP queries.

Republican and Democratic states alike have said no, citing privacy concerns and prohibitions in state law.

"Philosophically, we believe the information in the database doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the people who it pertains to," Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said. "It's not ours to give away."

Two of the biggest states, California and New York, haven't received requests yet. Three more of the top five most populous states — Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania — are deciding how to respond.

Census Bureau officials had no immediate comment.

The requests started in August and have continued through this month. Many states got calls or emails similar to one from a Census Bureau official asking an Arkansas Driver Services official if she had time to discuss the bureau's "new and exciting project."

Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the Arkansas agency, said: "We are currently working to determine whether the requested information is eligible for release."

Utah officials turned down the request because state law says personal data can be shared only for public safety reasons, said Marissa Cote, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety in the Republican-leaning state.

Democratic-leaning Nevada also declined.

"We value our residents' privacy and hesitate to release records in bulk," said Kevin Malone, a spokesman for the motor vehicle agency.

States that haven't decided how to respond said they were researching the legal and privacy implications. In issuing driver's licenses, most states require documents such as a birth certificate that would reflect citizenship or require that recipients be either citizens or in the U.S. legally.

The American Civil Liberties Union has urged states to turn the Census Bureau down.

The ACLU and other civil rights groups say the requests are part of an overall strategy by the Trump administration to encourage states to use counts of citizens only, as opposed to total population, when redrawing state and local electoral districts. Such a move could make districts older, whiter and more Republican.

"This endeavor appears to be part of a scheme motivated by an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose to dilute the political power of communities of color," said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project.

The Census Bureau said in its requests that the driver's license records would be used, in part, to help build a statistical model for calculating the number of citizens and noncitizens in the U.S.

Civil rights groups say driver's license records do a poor job of showing if a person is a citizen.

They point to what happened earlier this year when Texas' election chief gave prosecutors a list of 95,000 potential noncitizens on the state's voter rolls. The list was drawn up with the help of motor vehicle records. But it turned out that many of those people had become citizens before casting their ballots.

The battle over whether citizen-only counts can be used for congressional reapportionment or redistricting at the state and local levels is being waged in federal courtrooms in Alabama and Maryland.

It has been longstanding practice in the U.S. to include immigrants living in the country illegally in census counts, which are also used to allocate billions of dollars in federal spending.

Associated Press writers Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Nebraska; Andrew Demillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City; Michelle Price in Las Vegas; and David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)