Chemical manufacturer 3M will pay up to $7.35 billion to settle lawsuits by people who say they were sickened by groundwater contamination from compounds used in firefighting foam and other consumer products.
The St. Paul, Minnesota-based company announced the settlement Tuesday. It will pay the money over nine years to as many as 120,000 people who say they were harmed by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS. The chemicals contaminated groundwater near military bases, airports and other locations where the foam was used to extinguish fires.
3M did not admit liability for the contamination under the agreement.
Called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to health problems including liver and immune system damage and some cancers. The chemicals are also used in nonstick, water- and grease-resistant products, including clothing and cookware.
3M chairman William Brown called the settlement a “significant milestone” that substantially reduces uncertainty from the litigation. The company previously reached settlements in other PFAS-related lawsuits, including a $450 million agreement with the state of New Jersey to settle claims of natural resource contamination and a deal to pay more than $10 billion to many U.S. public drinking water systems.
Other manufacturers, including DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc., have agreed to settlements totaling more than $1 billion to resolve PFAS claims.
Fred Thompson, an attorney with the Motley Rice law firm that helped negotiate the 3M settlement for the plaintiffs, called it welcome news for “the thousands of victims who have sought answers and accountability for nearly a decade.”
He said in a news release that the plaintiffs urgently need help covering mounting medical bills and other costs.
Under the terms of the settlement, the payouts will begin with $50 million this year, followed by yearly payments of more than $1 billion each year from 2028 to 2033.
3M could make additional payments if enough plaintiffs participate. If too few sign on, 3M has the option to cancel the settlement and continue fighting the lawsuit.
Environmental activists say PFAS manufacturers knew about the chemicals' health risks long before they became public. They noted that the same attributes that make the chemicals so valuable in many uses — resistance to breakdown — also make them hazardous to people.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set strict limits on PFAS in drinking water from public utilities and requires testing, but those rules do not apply to private wells.
A study that would help federal regulators understand which industries dump the forever chemicals with their wastewater has been stalled for two years, awaiting review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
FILE - The 3M chemical manufacturer's building in a suburb of Sydney on May 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — At the urging of President Donald Trump, Republicans in eight states redrew the boundaries of dozens of congressional districts over the past year while angling for an edge that could help them hold onto a slim House majority in a tough midterm election.
Ultimately, it didn't work.
Republicans lost most of the Democratic-held seats they had targeted to flip, lost others they had banked on retaining and got swept out of power by a Democratic surge fueled by voter dissatisfaction with Trump, the economy and the war with Iran.
The Republican redistricting plan fell flat in Alabama, Florida and Texas. It got scuttled by courts in Missouri and then firmly defeated by its voters Tuesday. And it got offset in California, where a retaliatory Democratic redistricting flipped all five of the Republican-held seats it targeted.
“This is a catastrophic rebuke of Donald Trump’s failed effort to gerrymander the country into oblivion to save the U.S. House of Representatives for himself," John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said Wednesday.
Congressional voting districts typically are redrawn after a census at the start of each decade to account for population changes. But Trump spurred an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last year when he urged Texas Republicans to reshape U.S. House districts to give the GOP a shot at winning five additional seats in the midterm election.
A cascade of redistricting followed, spurred along in the South by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for majority Black districts. Republicans hoped their redistricting could net as many as four more seats in Florida, two in Ohio and one each in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee.
In all but one of those revamped districts, Trump would have carried over 54% of the vote had they been in place for the 2024 election, according to Associated Press estimates.
“In normal times, that sort of district is relatively safe,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who runs the “All About Redistricting” website.
But the presumed Republican districts got undercut by shifting viewpoints of Trump. The AP Voter Poll found about 6 in 10 disapprove of how Trump is handling the presidency. Views of Trump’s priorities also were mostly negative.
“If we look across the country, that entire mid-decade redistricting gambit was a complete bust for Republicans,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
In Texas, Republicans won just one of the five seats they had targeted to flip. But Democrats flipped two Republican-held districts, putting the GOP at a net loss.
Republicans reconfigured three heavily Latino districts in the Rio Grande Valley, which had shifted toward Trump in 2024, to try to boost their chances of unseating Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. But both won reelection Tuesday. And Democrats instead unseated Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, whose district is sandwiched between theirs.
Though De La Cruz's new district retained the same percentage of Trump-inclined voters as the 2024 version, about 3 in 5 voting-age residents were new — making it harder for her to compete against Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido, a well-known Latin Grammy award winner.
The AP Voter Poll indicates a substantial shift in Hispanics moving away from Republicans compared with Trump’s victory just two years ago. Nationally about one-third of Hispanics say they backed the Republican in their local U.S. House race, while roughly 4 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago.
The new Texas districts were drawn by Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
“Trying to pick up five seats in Texas, without putting anything else in serious jeopardy, it was a Herculean task,” Kincaid said Wednesday. He added: “It required the trends that we had been seeing over the past several years to continue, and that did not happen.”
Had Republicans not redrawn the Texas districts, however, they likely would have lost even more seats, Kincaid said.
Republicans in Florida tried to tilt four more House seats to the GOP in Trump’s adopted home state. Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz was among their targets, but he decided to run anyway in one of the redrawn districts. He won reelection Tuesday.
“I’ve worked across the aisle. I’ve delivered results for my community, and they spent $26 million trying to beat me,” Moskowitz said after his victory in Florida’s 25th Congressional District. “They lit that money on fire tonight.”
He said voters in his new district, like those nationwide, were most concerned about the economy and their ability to afford a good quality of life. But he said that redistricting angered voters, too.
After redistricting, about two-thirds of voting-age residents were new to the district represented by Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. But she also won reelection. Democrat Pia Dandiya won yet another district -- an open seat in southern Florida — that Republicans had reshaped for an advantage.
In Alabama, a Supreme Court ruling allowed the Republican-led Legislature to revert to what the GOP considered to be a friendlier map. But Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures won reelection anyway, defying Republicans' plans.
Republicans redrew two congressional districts in eastern North Carolina with a goal of unseating Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the 1st Congressional District, which has sent a Black member to Congress for more than 30 years. They made Davis' district a bit more Republican by bringing in thousands of voters from the 3rd Congressional District, held by Republican Rep. Greg Murphy. In exchange, they reassigned thousands of voters in Democratic-leaning areas to Murphy's district.
The ensuing advertising battle for Davis' seat cost well over $50 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, ranking among the most expensive House races nationally.
Davis held a slight lead Wednesday, and the race between Murphy and Democratic challenger Raymond Smith was particularly close.
What started as a Republican redistricting effort could become a Democratic redistricting movement ahead of the presidential election.
Maryland voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment that will make it easier for the state's Democratic-led General Assembly to redraw districts to the party's advantage. Democratic proponents, backed by former President Barack Obama, have touted it as a way to “stop Trump.”
Democrats who made gains in numerous state legislatures Tuesday also could use that power for redistricting — most notably in Wisconsin, where districts were tilted toward Republicans. And Democratic lawmakers in New York already have taken an initial step toward congressional redistricting before the 2028 elections.
But the recent midterm redistricting revealed it can be difficult to anticipate voter behavior when trying to gerrymander districts for partisan advantage. That could particularly be the case for the next presidential election, which would be the first in a dozen years without Trump's name atop the ballot, making it hard to know how his supporters would realign behind new candidates.
The midterm election "shows districts aren’t destiny – that if voters actually show up, they can overcome district lines,” Levitt said.
Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
Santiago Rivera paints on a sign outside a polling place after casting his ballot on Election Day during the midterm election Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., mingles with supporters at an election night event, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)
Democratic House candidate Bobby Pulido arrives at a polling location at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's Student Academic Center on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Edinburg, Texas. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via AP)
