Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, presidential hopeful and populist who championed Democratic Party reforms in the turbulent 1960s, died Saturday. He was 94.

Harris’ wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear where he died, but he had lived in New Mexico since 1976 and was a resident of Corrales at the time of his death.

“Fred Harris passed peacefully early this morning of natural causes. He was 94. He was a wonderful and beloved man. His memory is a blessing,” Elliston said in a text message.

Harris served eight years in the Senate, first winning in 1964 to fill a vacancy, and made unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1976.

It fell to Harris, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, to help heal the party’s wounds from the tumultuous national convention in 1968 when protesters and police clashed in Chicago.

He ushered in rule changes that led to more women and minorities as convention delegates and in leadership positions.

“I think it’s worked wonderfully,” Harris recalled in 2004, when he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “It’s made the selection much more legitimate and democratic.”

“The Democratic Party was not democratic, and many of the delegations were pretty much boss-controlled or -dominated. And in the South, there was terrible discrimination against African Americans,” he said.

Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, quitting after poor showings in early contests, including a fourth-place win in New Hampshire. The more moderate Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency.

Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico. He wrote and edited more than a dozen books, mostly on politics and Congress. In 1999 he broadened his writings with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.

Throughout his political career, Harris was a leading liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty programs to help minorities and the disadvantaged.

“Democrats everywhere will remember Fred for his unparalleled integrity and as a pioneer for instituting core progressive values of equity and opportunity for prosperity as core tenets of our party,” the Democratic Party of New Mexico said in a statement.

Along with his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he also was active in Native American issues.

“I’ve always called myself a populist or progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I’m against concentrated power. I don’t like the power of money in politics. I think we ought to have programs for the middle class and working class.”

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham praised his work for their shared state and the nation.

“In addition to being a highly accomplished politician and professor, he was a decent, honorable man who treated everyone with warmth, generosity, and good humor,” she said in a statement. “Sen. Harris was a lesson in leadership that public officials would be wise to emulate now and forever.”

Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s.

The commission’s groundbreaking report in 1968 declared, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

Thirty years later, Harris co-wrote a report that concluded the commission’s “prophecy has come to pass.”

“The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are suffering disproportionately,” said the report by Harris and Lynn A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, which continued the work of the commission.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris rose to prominence in Congress as a “fiery populist.”

“That resonates with people … the notion of the average person against the elite,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to articulate those concerns, particularly of the downtrodden.”

In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He and others pressed Humphrey to use the convention to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited to do so until late in the campaign, and narrowly lost to Republican Richard Nixon.

“That was the worst year of my life, ’68. We had Dr. Martin Luther King killed. We had my Senate seatmate Robert Kennedy killed and then we had this terrible convention,” Harris said in 1996.

“I left the convention — because of the terrible disorders and the way they had been handled and the failure to adopt a new peace platform — really downhearted.”

After assuming the Democratic Party leadership post, Harris appointed commissions that recommended reforms in the procedures for selecting delegates and presidential nominees. While lauding the greater openness and diversity, he said there had been a side effect: “It’s much to the good. But the one result of it is that conventions today are ratifying conventions. So it’s hard to make them interesting.”

“My own thought is they ought to be shortened to a couple of days. But they are still worth having, I think, as a way to adopt a platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to get people together in a kind of coalition-building,” he said.

Harris was born Nov. 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, about 15 miles from the Texas line. The home had no electricity, indoor toilet or running water.

At age 5 he was working on the farm and received 10 cents a day to drive a horse in circles to supply power for a hay bailer.

He worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to help for his education at University of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952, majoring in political science and history. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954, and then moved to Lawton to practice.

In 1956, he won election to the Oklahoma state Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he launched his career in national politics in the race to replace Sen. Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963.

Harris won the Democratic nomination in a runoff election against J. Howard Edmondson, who left the governorship to fill Kerr’s vacancy until the next election. In the general election, Harris defeated an Oklahoma sports legend — Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had coached OU football for 17 years.

Harris won a six-year term in 1966 but left the Senate in 1972 when there were doubts that he, as a left-leaning Democrat, could win reelection.

Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and had three children, Kathryn, Byron and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is leaving Saturday on a diplomatic trip to Europe that includes a meeting of foreign ministers from the leading industrialized nations that will focus on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The State Department said Blinken will participate in Group of Seven and bilateral meetings outside Rome on Monday and Tuesday as the Biden administration winds down amid concerns that President-elect Donald Trump’s team may substantially alter U.S. foreign policy.

The G7 — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — has been at the forefront of providing military and economic support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and Democratic President Joe Biden is looking to ensure that backing is boosted and sustained. G7 members are particularly concerned about how Trump will change the U.S. approach.

Trump has criticized the billions of dollars that the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine. Washington has recently stepped up weapons shipments ad has forgiven billions in loans provided to Kyiv. The incoming Republican president has said he could end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia now occupies.

On the Middle East, Trump has announced a number of officials who are staunchly pro-Israel. He is expected to pursue a policy that strongly favors Israel over the aspirations of the Palestinians and others for a two-state resolution to the long-running conflict that has been focused on Gaza for the past 13 months since Hamas launched attacks inside Israel.

Several Arab foreign ministers are expected to join the G7 in Italy for urgent discussions on ending the war in Gaza and setting up a mechanism for governance, reconstruction and security for the heavily damaged territory once the fighting is over.

U.S. officials are rushing to complete the formation of that structure before Biden leaves office in January, but there have been numerous complications. Efforts were most recently jolted by the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and top Hamas officials.

Israel’s military operations in Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah will also feature in the G7 discussions. US officials say they are hopeful that a recent flurry of diplomatic activity may yield a cease-fire agreement. .

G7 relations with China will figure in Blinken’s discussions. There are increasing concerns about Beijing’s aggressiveness toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea, as well as trade disputes that Trump has threatened to address by imposing massive tariffs on Chinese products.

Blinken will meet with Pope Francis and several of his top aides in Vatican City on Wednesday before returning to Washington.

WASHINGTON — The White House was tinted green on Thursday, when President Joe Biden — Secret Service code name: Celtic — welcomed “Coach Joe” Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics to the South Lawn to celebrate the franchise’s unprecedented 18th NBA championship.

In a tradition believed to have begun when Bill Russell’s 1963 Celtics met with President John F. Kennedy, Biden welcomed the NBA’s 2024 champions and gave them a tour of the Oval Office. In all, the league’s most-decorated franchise has won at least one title in eight of the last 13 presidential administrations.

“The Celtics aren’t just a basketball team. They’re a way of life,” Biden told the crowd, quoting Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach before receiving a No. 46 jersey from All-Star Jayson Tatum and guard Derrick White.

Biden noted that his Secret Service code name is “Celtic.”

“For real. Because I’m Irish,” the president said. “Everybody behind me is Irish in their heart. I feel a special pride in this trophy. From this old Irish Celtic, to all you Celtics, congratulations.”

Biden, who was once one of the youngest senators in U.S. history and is now the country’s oldest president ever, said he felt a kinship with Mazzulla, who was 35 when he led the Celtics to the title in his second season.

“Joe’s the youngest head coach to win a title since the great Bill Russell,” Biden said. “I told him I used to be the youngest and now I’m the oldest. I liked being the youngest better.”

The Celtics were greeted with a band playing “Shipping up to Boston,” before Biden and team owner Wyc Grousbeck joined them on the risers facing the Washington Monument; green lights shined from from the eaves of the White House behind them. Among those in attendance were Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and most of the state’s congressional delegation.

“I didn’t really know what to expect. I walked in, I was like ‘I’m more excited than I thought I was going be,” White told reporters afterward. “To be in the White House, to be where all the decisions — all the cool things — are happening, that was the best part.”

Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca said Biden’s 4-year-old grandson, Beau Jr., tried on his championship ring. (Oshae Brissett, a member of the 2024 team who is not with the Celtics this year, was at the ceremony and received his championship ring on Thursday.)

Biden also received a commemorative basketball, which he tossed to Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who was sitting in the front row, and then to Celtics center Al Horford.

“I wasn’t expecting a pump fake,” White told reporters. “It’s harder to make a pass in a suit, so I was impressed.”

Biden was well-briefed on the Celtics history and their success last year, when they cruised to 64 wins in the regular season – their most since winning the 2008 title, and the fourth-best in franchise history. They went 16-3 in the playoffs, eliminating the Dallas Mavericks in five games.

Biden even noted that the ’24 Celtics had the highest ratio of points per possession in NBA history – one of the wonkier stats, but one that had team vice president and stats guru Mike Zarren beaming.

“The basketball stats community has come a long way: the President of the United States is talking about points per possession!” Zarren posted on X after speaking to reporters at the ceremony.

Members of the Celtics organization went back into the White House after the festivities to meet with administration officials on pet issues, including “Raise the Age,” which seeks to have 18- to 20-year-olds treated as juveniles in the criminal justice system, and “Curbside Care,” which provides medical aid to new mothers in underserved communities.

“This was a very exciting and moving day,” Grousbeck told reporters in a video call afterwards. “We had not been focused on this. We got through the banner and opening night, and then it was all business. Joe (Mazzulla) doesn’t want us to dwell too much on the past, he wants everyone to focus on moving forward. Having said that, everyone here, including Joe, seemed to have a great time.”

Zarren said he spoke to a Secret Service agent who was a Celtics fan and had to bear with the Golden State Warriors’ visit two years ago.

“He told them it was a bittersweet moment because he wished his Celtics were here. And they said to him, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon,’” Zarren said. “So for him, it was a good moment to see us show up inside there.”

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

SAO PAULO — SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s federal police said Thursday they indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 other people for allegedly attempting a coup to keep him in office after his defeat in the 2022 elections.

Police said their findings were being delivered Thursday to Brazil’s Supreme Court, which must decide whether to refer them to Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet, who will either formally charge Bolsonaro and put him on trial, or toss the investigation.

The former right-wing president has denied all claims he tried to stay in office after his narrow electoral defeat in 2022 to his rival, leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has faced a series of legal threats since then.

Police said in a brief statement that the Supreme Court had agreed to reveal the names of all 37 people who were indicted “to avoid the dissemination of incorrect news.” The 700-page police document likely will take several days for the court to review, Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes said.

Dozens of former and current Bolsonaro aides also were indicted, including Gen. Walter Braga Netto, who was his running mate in the 2022 campaign; former Army commander Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; Valdemar Costa Neto, the chairman of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party; and his veteran former adviser, Gen. Augusto Heleno.

The investigation started last year. On Tuesday, four military men and one federal police agent were arrested as part of the same probe.

Other investigations focus on Bolosnaro’s potential roles in smuggling diamond jewelry into Brazil without properly declaring them, and in directing a subordinate to falsify his and others’ COVID-19 vaccination statuses. Bolsonaro has denied any involvement in either.

Another probe found that he had abused his authority to cast doubt on the country’s voting system, and judges barred him from running again until 2030.

The far-reaching investigations have weakened Bolsonaro’s status as a leader of Brazil’s right wing, said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

“Bolsonaro is already barred from running in the 2026 elections,” Melo told the The Associated Press.

“And if he is convicted he could also be jailed by then. To avoid being behind bars, he will have to convince Supreme Court justices that he has nothing to do with a plot that involves dozens of his aids. That’s a very tall order,” Melo said.

On Tuesday, the federal police arrested four military and a federal police officer accused of plotting to overthrow the government following the 2022 elections, including alleged plans to kill Lula and other top officials.

Women will for the first time make up a majority of state legislators in Colorado and New Mexico next year, but at least 13 states saw losses in female representation after the November election, according to a count released Thursday by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.

While women will fill a record number of state legislative seats in 2025, the overall uptick will be slight, filling just over third of legislative seats. Races in some states are still being called.

“We certainly would like to see a faster rate of change and more significant increases in each election cycle to get us to a place where parity in state legislatures is less novel and more normal,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the CAWP, which is a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

As of Wednesday, at least 2,450 women will serve in state legislatures, representing 33.2% of the seats nationwide. The previous record was set in 2024 with 2,431 women, according to the CAWP.

The number of Republican women, at least 851, will break the previous record of 815 state lawmakers set in 2024.

“But still, Republican women are very underrepresented compared to Democratic women,” Debbie Walsh, director of the CAWP, said.

By the most recent count, 19 states will have increased the number of women in their state legislatures, according to the CAWP. The most notable increases were in New Mexico and Colorado where women will for the first time make up a majority of lawmakers.

In New Mexico, voters sent an 11 additional women to the chambers. Colorado had previously attained gender parity in 2023 and is set to tip over to a slight female majority in the upcoming year.

The states follow Nevada, which was the first in the country to see a female majority in the legislature following elections in 2018. Next year, women will make up almost 62% of state lawmakers in Nevada, far exceeding parity.

Women in California’s Senate will make up the chamber’s majority for the first time in 2025 as well. Women also made notable gains in South Dakota, increasing its total number by at least nine.

At least thirteen states emerged from the election with fewer female lawmakers than before, with the most significant loss occurring in South Carolina.

Earlier this year, the only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate lost their primaries after they stopped a total abortion ban from passing. Next year, only two women, who are Democrats, will be in the 46-member Senate.

No other state in the country will have fewer women in its upper chamber, according to the CAWP. Women make up 55% of the state’s registered voters.

Half the members in the GOP dominated state were elected in 2012 or before, so it will likely be the 2040s before any Republican woman elected in the future can rise to leadership or a committee chairmanship in the chamber, which doles out leadership positions based on seniority.

A net loss of five women in the legislature means they will make up only about 13% of South Carolina’s lawmakers, making the state the second lowest in the country for female representation. Only West Virginia has a smaller proportion of women in the legislature.

West Virginia stands to lose one more women from its legislative ranks, furthering its representation problem in the legislature where women will make up just 11% of lawmakers.

Many women, lawmakers and experts say that women’s voices are needed in discussions on policy especially at a time when state government is at its most powerful in decades.

Walsh, director of the CAWP, said the new changes expected from the Trump administration will turn even more policy and regulation to the states. The experiences and perspectives women offer will be increasingly needed, she said, especially on topics related to reproductive rights, healthcare, education and childcare.

“The states may have to pick up where the federal government may, in fact, be walking away,” Walsh said. “And so who serves in those institutions is more important now than ever.”

___

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — A woman told police that she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a detailed investigative report made public late Wednesday.

Hegseth, a Fox News personality and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said.

News of the allegations surfaced last week when local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he had spoken at a Republican women’s event in Monterey.

Hegseth’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday. He has said Hegseth paid the woman in 2023 to head off the threat of a baseless lawsuit.

The 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have transpired — one that is at odds with Hegseth’s version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event and Hegseth.

The woman’s name was not released, and The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said early Thursday that the “report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false.”

The report does not say that police found the allegations were false. Police recommended the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.

Investigators were first alerted to the alleged assault, the report said, by a nurse who called them after a patient requested a sexual assault exam. The patient told medical personnel she believed she was assaulted five days earlier but couldn’t remember much about what had happened. She reported something may have been slipped into her drink before ending up in the hotel room where she said the assault occurred.

Police collected the unwashed dress and underwear she had worn that night, the report said.

The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her, told police that he was worried about her that night after she didn’t come back to their room. At 2 a.m., he went to the hotel bar, but she wasn’t there. She made it back a few hours later, apologizing that she “must have fallen asleep.” A few days later, she told him she had been sexually assaulted.

The woman, who helped organize the California Federation of Republican women gathering at which Hegseth spoke, told police that she had witnessed the TV anchor acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth was giving off a “creeper” vibe, according to the report.

After the event, the woman and others attended an afterparty in a hotel suite where she said she confronted Hegseth, telling him that she “did not appreciate how he treated women,” the report states.

A group of people, including Hegseth and the woman, decamped for the hotel’s bar. That’s when “things got fuzzy,” the woman told police.

She remembered having a drink at the bar with Hegseth and others, the police report states. She also told police that she argued with Hegseth near the hotel pool, an account that is supported by a hotel staffer who was sent to handle the disturbance and spoke to police, according to the report.

Soon, she told police, she was inside a hotel room with Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so that she could not leave, according to the report. She also told police she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” the report said.

Her next memory was laying on a couch or bed with Hegseth hovering over her bare-chested, his dog tags dangling over her, the report states. Hegseth served in the National Guard, rising to the rank of major.

After Hegseth finished, she recalled him asking if she was “OK,” the report states. She told police she did not recall how she got back to her own hotel room and had since suffered from nightmares and memory loss.

At the time of the alleged assault in 2017, Hegseth, now 44, was going through a divorce with his second wife, with whom he has three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with a Fox News producer who is now his wife, according to court records and social media posts by Hegseth. His first marriage ended in 2009, also after infidelity by Hegseth, according to court records.

Hegseth said he attended an after party and drank beer but did not consume liquor, and acknowledged being “buzzed” but not drunk.

He said he met the woman at the hotel bar, and she led him by the arm back to his hotel room, which surprised him because he initially had no intention of having sex with her, the report said.

Hegseth told investigators that the sexual encounter that followed was consensual, adding that he explicitly asked more than once if she was comfortable. Hegseth said in the morning the woman “showed early signs of regret,” and he assured her that he wouldn’t tell anyone about the encounter.

Hegseth’s attorney said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement a few years after the police investigation because Hegseth was concerned that she was prepared to file a lawsuit that he feared could have resulted in him being fired from Fox News, where he was a popular host. The attorney would not reveal the amount of the payment.

___

Slodysko reported from Washington and Linderman reported from Baltimore.