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NoneZelensky Reveals Date Of Russia's Victory; Slams Ukrainian Generals For 'Disconnect' With SoldiersEditor’s note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter . Get news about destinations, plus the latest in aviation, food and drink, and where to stay. Utter the single word “Wetherspoon,” or even the colloquial “Spoons” to a Brit, and they’ll know what you mean. Some will grimace. Some will groan. Others will excitedly rub their hands together like you’d just cooked their favorite meal. Wetherspoon pubs are an institution in the UK. They enjoy cult-like status both among admirers, lured in by real ale and “pub grub” sold at astoundingly low prices, and detractors, who see them as emblematic of everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. More than 800 Wetherspoon chain pubs freckle the country — from The Muckle Cross in Scotland to The Tremenheere in Cornwall. In just a few decades, “Spoons” have become so ingrained into British daily life that they probably now deserve to be up there with Stonehenge on the list of UK cultural institutions. For outsiders, the Wetherspoon concept can take some unpacking. Many are the unsuspecting tourists who find themselves baffled by one of these vast drinking establishments, sometimes documenting their experiences on social media with the same breathless wonder as explorers entering uncharted rainforest. The story of the “Spoons” starts, surprisingly, with English writer George Orwell, the man behind the chilling dystopian fiction of “1984.” Orwell had robust opinions on totalitarianism, surveillance, censorship and class struggle. He also had things to get off his chest about treacle tarts and cups of tea. “How can you call yourself a true tea-lover,” he cried in “A Nice Cup of Tea” , his 11-point plan for brewing a textbook cuppa, “if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it?” With “In Defence of English Cooking” Orwell railed against Francophile foodies, instead extolling the virtues of kippers, Oxford marmalade and new potatoes slicked with melted butter and mint. A keen baker, he also jotted down his own recipes for plum cake and Yorkshire puddings. Biscuits, the author insisted, were “better and crisper in England.” Now there’s a “The Great British Bake-Off” episode we’d all tune into. Of all the “Animal Farm” author’s refreshment-themed essays, though, 1946’s “ The Moon Under Water ” is his best-known. In this romantic wish list of components for the perfect pub, Orwell’s fantasy boozer is frequented by regulars who sit in the same chair night after night, employs chirpy, liver-sausage-sandwich-slinging barmaids, and serves its ale in strawberry-pink china mugs. “...most people like their drink to be transparent,” wrote Orwell, “but in my opinion beer tastes better out of china.” The name “Moon Under Water” nudged its way back into the British public consciousness in April 2021, when a podcast of that name was launched — celebrity guests cobbling together their own pub paradigms: what they’d play on the jukebox, which brews they’d pour. It struck a chord: three years, and over 300 episodes later, the podcast is still streaming. Yet you could argue that a far more substantial, brick-and-mortar tribute to Orwell’s dream pub had already been going for some four decades before that. Its name: J D Wetherspoon. The Moon Under Water Unlike most chains, Wetherspoons don’t merely trade on their dependability, but also their individuality . Each pub name alludes to the building’s former life (The Bank Statement in Swansea), a famous figure from the area (The Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone — in Edinburgh), or in some cases a less-than famous one (The Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren in Nottingham). Beer is sourced from over 350 different brewers, no two bar line-ups the same. Some Brits happily settle in for a Wetherspoons pint multiple times a week. Others actively cross the street to avoid one. So where did this huge, and hugely divisive, pub chain surface from in the first place? Ground zero of Tim Martin’s operation opened in Muswell Hill, North London in 1979. Martin — a larger-than-life entrepreneur in all senses, who was born in Norwich, England, but grew up in New Zealand — called his first pub, rather unimaginatively, “Martin’s.” The name was printed on the plate glass frontage, but after a member of staff serendipitously put an A-board through said window, Martin took the opportunity to give his fledgling pub chain a quirky rebrand. Recalling a well-meaning yet beleaguered teacher from his childhood, Martin renamed the pub “Wetherspoon.” (The “J D” was a nod to J.D. “Boss” Hogg from “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV series.) The rest was history. By 1992, the chain had grown to 50 pubs, opened its first airport branch (Heathrow), and was on its way to becoming a household name. Orwell entered the story about seven years into the business. “The first I’d ever heard of George Orwell’s essay about the mythical Moon Under Water was in 1986 when we opened up pub number 10 in Stroud Green in North London,” Martin tells CNN. “A kind journalist wrote about our new pub [the White Lion of Mortimer] which had been converted from a car showroom, and said that it reminded him of the Moon Under Water. “So I read the article and thought ‘ahh, I’ve got something in common with George Orwell’.” The journalist had rightly hit on parallels between Orwell’s dream pub and Martin’s real ones: The “no music” rule. Stout poured on tap. Somewhere “you can get a good, solid lunch”. Welcoming accompanied children in (although at a Wetherspoon they are not allowed, as Orwell suggested, to “fetch drinks for their parents”). Martin duly opened a number of new Wetherspoons in the 1980s and ’90s as the Moon Under Water — a trend which he later dialed back after someone suggested it was “getting corny.” Even so, there are still 34 Moon Under Waters in the UK today, including the one in Watford where he’s going for a drink straight after this interview. A Frankenstein’s monster of a pub chain While the traditional British drinking establishment is a skew-whiff coaching inn or a shimmering Victorian gin palace, Wetherspoons tend towards the magisterial: renovated picture houses, theaters, banks, royal baths. Veined marble columns and glass cupolas greet you at the Crosse Keys in the City of London. In Ramsgate, Kent, the grand Royal Victoria Pavilion backs out onto a golden beach and the North Sea beyond it. All very photogenic. Except that sticky tables, blaring fruit machines, microwaved food and mid-morning binge-drinking are also hallmarks of the chain. The more you try to explain what a Wetherspoon is, the more you realize it must be seen to be understood. Martin — a man so lofty and square-jawed, he was once mistaken by a small child for Frankenstein’s monster — has created a freak of a pub empire, stitched together from the discarded limbs and organs of Britain’s architectural heritage. A beast of epic proportions like this comes imbued with its own legends. Books have been written about the patterned carpets, each individually designed and woven, often with a nod to the surrounding local history. Drinkers spend years of their life questing to “complete” all the branches . A game has swept the internet, where customers post a picture of themselves at any Wetherspoon on a Facebook group; online strangers then order gifts of mountains of pies and pints to their table via the Wetherspoon app. A much older Wetherspoon “game” is that of locating the bathroom. Given the immensity of many venues — and because the toilets are often buried deep in the bowels — this is a running joke. In 2023, someone posted a video of “going to the toilet in a Scottish Wetherspoon ,” a mission that takes them past Edinburgh Castle, Angus cows, and to the summit of Arthur’s Seat, a local hill. “I’ve got lost trying to find my way back to the bar,” admits Tim Martin. “You can open the wrong door and end up in the Ladies’ [bathroom] if you’re not careful.” The venues might be cavernous, but the prices are small. “Mate refuses to buy round unless it’s in Wetherspoons” ran a recent headline on the satirical “Daily Mash” website. Glossy menus half the size of the table spill over with fry-ups , curries, wraps, puddings — most sold at prices you’d equate with some 20 years ago. Free coffee refills aren’t a thing in British cafes but in a Spoons you can replenish your latte until you’re dancing on the coffered ceiling. “A 92-year-old woman came up to me and said, ‘We do so love your pubs because we can afford to come out for two or three coffees,’” says Martin. In what is a financially wobbly era for the UK, it is no mystery why a Wetherspoon sign burns brightly like a beacon. But not everyone is there for the coffee. With pints sometimes clocking in at under a single British pound (around $1.25), and pitchers of cocktails served at two for £15 (under $19), Wetherspoons can become honeypots for irresponsible drinking and rowdyism. Mass brawls , police vans and ambulances are not unknown. In 2023, traffic was brought to a halt in Liverpool, when a bottle-smashing fight played out in front of the Thomas Frost pub. The image is at odds with Orwell’s make-believe establishment: “...drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights,” he wrote optimistically about his own Moon Under Water. A quintessential taste of Britain? For many Brits jetting off on vacation, their last pint of lager or fried breakfast on home soil is in an airport Wetherspoon. Gatwick in South London has three — a miniature pub crawl in its own right. Conversely, for overseas tourists visiting the UK, a trip to a Wetherspoon can be a way to understand and ingratiate themselves with the country — not to mention get a thrifty brunch. On YouTube and TikTok, wide-eyed North Americans wait for non-existent waiters, and wonder why table 117 is next to table 30. They peruse the menus and wonder if something drastic’s happened to the exchange rate since they landed. They snicker at the Wetherspoon concept of an “American cheeseburger.” Tim Martin himself suggests a first-timer orders eggs benedict for breakfast, a southern fried chicken wrap for lunch, and steak and kidney pie or fish and chips for dinner. His recommended tipple — despite the fact Wetherspoon offers the widest range of real ales in the country — will always be the same: “Abbot Ale. Forty-five years of experience went into that answer,” says the self-labeled monogamous beer drinker. Whatever’s being ordered though, Martin agrees with Orwell that the magic ingredient for any pub is atmosphere. “The thing about Wetherspoons pubs which differentiates them from many is that they have a very wide cross-section of customers. That’s what pubs used to do. They used to be the local melting pot which wasn’t the church. “I think [overseas visitors] just like the pub atmosphere — that it’s looked upon as being a quintessential British thing that often isn’t available in that form in their own country.” That may be so, yet some Brits have vowed never to set foot in one of Tim Martin’s establishments again. During 2016’s Brexit debate, the pub boss sided with the Vote Leave campaign, railing against the “undemocratic” nature of the European Union and donating £200,000 [$260,000 dollars] to support the effort that ultimately ejected Britain from the EU, with arguably catastrophic consequences. In the lead-up to the 2024 General Election, the right-wing British politician and Brexit campaigner-in-chief Nigel Farage used the Moon and Starfish Wetherspoon in Clacton as his de facto campaign HQ, only for his face to be met with an airborne protest milkshake on the steps outside. Eight years after the Brexit vote, Martin is sticking by his guns. His argument was never anti-immigration, he says, insisting that the number of EU workers in his pubs is more or less the same as it was in 2016. “Quite a few of our pub managers who are Polish have gone back to Poland,” he says, “But there hasn’t been a massive change that I’ve noticed.” When pushed, Martin is unable to put his finger on any legacies of Brexit that have specifically benefited his business, although he does suggest the UK has lately enjoyed one of the lowest unemployment rates in its history. Something else that has plunged in recent years is the number of Wetherspoons. In 2021, there were 871 pubs, including expanding operations in Ireland; in the fall of 2024 that number had dipped by 70. Martin says this has nothing to do with Brexit, but instead, what he classifies as the one big mistake he made with the business. “We copied the brewers of old who opened pubs close to each other, not realizing that that was because they had dray horses to deliver the beer, so they couldn’t go very far... It only took me about 35 years to discover that error!” While thinning out its current clusters of pubs, then, might Martin take this opportunity to open some new pubs scattered further afield — say in an overseas airport? “I sometimes fly to America, so I’m hoping to have a pub in JFK Airport...” says Martin, before flashing a smirk to show he’s kidding. Wetherspoons might be here, there and everywhere — but chances are, they’ll only be here, there and everywhere if you’re in the UK.

World number one Luke Humphries continued his bid for back-to-back World Championship titles after easing through to the last 16. While there was high drama in Alexandra Palace on the first day back after the Christmas break, where Damon Heta threw a nine-dart finish, Humphries enjoyed a serene evening. He beat Nick Kenny 4-0 to set up a mouth-watering fourth-round meeting with two-time champion Peter Wright. THE WORLD NUMBER ONE KICKS ON! Luke Humphries comfortably books his spot in the Last 16 with a 4-0 whitewash victory over Nick Kenny, averaging 98.59! 📺 https://t.co/pIQvhqYxEj #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/XAADalXD4Q — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 Kenny was unable to produce the form that saw him beat Raymond van Barneveld in the previous round and Humphries did not need to be anywhere near his best. “It was one of those games I didn’t want to take for granted,” he said. “I expected a tough game and I wasn’t firing, I felt there is so much more to give, I felt there was more to come out of me. “I didn’t want to give anyone an inch because they can take a mile. “I’m not going to give up this world title without a fight, I wasn’t at my best but when someone pushes me I know I can come up with the goods.” Earlier in the day Heta set the tournament alight on its resumption with a stunning nine-dart finish before bowing out. The Australian, seeded ninth, achieved darting perfection in the second set of his match with Luke Woodhouse to earn a cool £60,000 payday. However, his joy was short-lived as Woodhouse won a thrilling battle 4-3, having trailed 3-1. HEROIC HETA HITS THE NINE! 🔥 UNBELIEVABLE SCENES! 🤯 Damon Heta lands the second nine-darter of the tournament to raise the roof at Alexandra Palace! #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/DW6rhvFqez — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 Heta was millimetres away from throwing a nine-darter in the previous round when he missed the double 12, but he made no mistake this time in the first match after the Christmas break. Heta’s feat was the second time a nine-darter has been thrown in the 2025 tournament and the 16th of all time at the World Championship, following Christian Kist’s effort before Christmas. As well as landing the Australian a hefty payday, it also saw a lucky fan in Ally Pally win a £60,000, with £60,000 also being donated to Prostate Cancer UK. There were several other titanic battles, none better than Gerwyn Price’s sudden-death leg victory over Joe Cullen. Price looked like he was going to have an easy night when he coasted into a 3-0 lead, but Cullen hit back to send it to a decider, which went all the way. Cullen landed a ‘Big Fish’ 170 checkout to send the tie to a sudden-death leg on his throw but Price hit some big numbers to steal victory. “That was tough, I just wanted to get over the winning line,” he said during his on-stage interview. PRICE WINS A THRILLER! That might just be the game of the tournament so far! 💥 Gerwyn Price manages to break the Rockstars throw in the final leg of the game, and beats Joe Cullen 4-3 and books his place in the Last 16! 📺 https://t.co/pIQvhqYxEj #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/VnjnJxP0T0 — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 “He kept coming back, the crowd were way behind him. “I thought I was going to lose, but I kept in there right to the end and got the win. “He played some good darts at the right times. I put myself in that position, I got myself out of it and I’m still in.” Seventh seed Jonny Clayton also battled to victory after squandering a 3-0 lead against Daryl Gurney. Gurney then had six darts to send the decider to a tiebreaker but lost his nerve and Clayton stole a 4-3 win. Stephen Bunting and Peter Wright, who was suffering from a chest infection, enjoyed much more safe passages with routine wins over Madars Razma and Jermaine Wattimena respectively.KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — American skier Mikaela Shiffrin said she suffered an abrasion on her left hip and that something “stabbed” her when she crashed during her second run of a World Cup giant slalom race Saturday, doing a flip and sliding into the protective fencing. Shiffrin stayed down on the edge of the course for quite some time as the ski patrol attended to her. She was taken off the hill on a sled and waved to the cheering crowd before going to a clinic for evaluation. “Not really too much cause for concern at this point, I just can’t move,” she said later in a video posted on social media . “I have a pretty good abrasion and something stabbed me. ... I’m so sorry to scare everybody. It looks like all scans so far are clear.” She plans to skip the slalom race Sunday, writing on Instagram she will be “cheering from the sideline.” The 29-year-old was leading after the first run of the GS and charging for her 100th World Cup win. She was within sight of the finish line, five gates onto Killington’s steep finish pitch, when she an outside edge. She hit a gate and did a somersault before sliding into another gate. The fencing slowed her momentum as she came to an abrupt stop. Reigning Olympic GS champion Sara Hector of Sweden won in a combined time of 1 minute, 53.08 seconds. Zrinka Ljutic of Croatia was second and Swiss racer Camille Rast took third. The Americans saw Paula Moltzan and Nina O’Brien finish fifth and sixth. “It’s just so sad, of course, to see Mikaela crash like that and skiing so well,” Hector said on the broadcast after her win. “It breaks my heart and everybody else here.” The crash was a surprise for everyone. Shiffrin rarely DNFs — ski racing parlance for “did not finish.” In 274 World Cup starts, she DNF'd only 18 times. The last time she DNF'd in GS was January 2018. Shiffrin also has not suffered any devastating injuries. In her 14-year career, she has rehabbed only two on-hill injuries: a torn medial collateral ligament and bone bruising in her right knee in December 2015 and a sprained MCL and tibiofibular ligament in her left knee after a downhill crash in January 2024. Neither knee injury required surgery, and both times, Shiffrin was back to racing within two months. Saturday was shaping up to be a banner day for Shiffrin, who skied flawlessly in the first run and held a 0.32-second lead as she chased after her 100th World Cup win. Shiffrin, who grew up in both New Hampshire and Colorado and sharpened her skills at nearby Burke Mountain Academy, has long been a fan favorite. Shiffrin is driven not so much by wins but by arcing the perfect run. She has shattered so many records along the way. She passed Lindsey Vonn’s women’s mark of 82 World Cup victories on Jan. 24, 2023, during a giant slalom in Kronplatz, Italy. That March, Shiffrin broke Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark’s Alpine mark for most World Cup wins when she captured her 87th career race. To date, she has earned five overall World Cup titles, two Olympic gold medals — along with a silver — and seven world championships. In other FIS Alpine World Cup news, the Tremblant World Cup — two women’s giant slaloms at Quebec’s Mont-Tremblant scheduled for next weekend — were canceled. Killington got 21 inches of snow on Thanksgiving Day, but Tremblant — five hours north of Killington — had to cancel its races because of a lack of snow. AP Sports Writer Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report. More AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing

Wow: It turns out the National Archives and Records Administration has been holding onto photographic proof of then-Veep Joe Biden promoting Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China for all these years that Joe has been insisting he did no such thing . Yes: NARA had pics of Hunter and Joe meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and with multiple execs of BHR Partners, a Chinese state-backed company aligned with Xi’s global Belt and Road Initiative — a company then in the process of being co-launched by Hunter. That is: The sitting vice president was using his office to promote his son’s ambitions to earn tens of millions promoting the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. And the only thing Hunter ever had to sell was access to Joe, meaning his dad was advertising that he was indirectly for sale, you just needed to pay his son. This was the fundamental takeaway of The Post’s reporting off of Hunter’s laptop back in October 2020. But that news was significantly suppressed by media and social-media companies that chose to believe “the laptop is Russian disinformation” — which was itself a disinformation op by the Biden campaign (abetted by months of setup by federal “disinformation experts”). And so the American people elected a president who’d effectively sold out years before to China, now our top global rival. A man whose entire approach to politics and government is utterly transactional — a fact long- and well-known in Washington, but ignored and concealed by power players who found Joe useful, including former President Barack Obama. All of whom, along with most of the media, were desperate to unseat then-President Donald Trump. Even now, with Trump headed back to the White House and Biden’s political career ended months ago, NARA only coughed up the photos in response to litigation by the Trump-allied America First Legal Foundation, which filed for the info back in September 2022. “Lawyers and representatives for President Biden and President Obama delayed NARA’s release of these photos — as they did with other critical records — until after Election Day,” write AFL’s Stephen Miller. America won’t have to worry about Joe Biden’s corruption after Jan. 20, but the nation still needs to face the corruption of all those who covered for him.The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they don't have a place of their own. That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of COVID-19 pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population. "No American should face homelessness, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring every family has access to the affordable, safe, and quality housing they deserve," HUD Agency Head Adrianne Todman said in a statement, adding that the focus should remain on "evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness." Among the most concerning trends was a nearly 40% rise in family homelessness — one of the areas that was most affected by the arrival of migrants in big cities. Family homelessness more than doubled in 13 communities impacted by migrants including Denver, Chicago and New York City, according to HUD, while it rose less than 8% in the remaining 373 communities. Almost 150,000 children experienced homelessness on a single night in 2024, reflecting a 33% jump from last year. Disasters also played a part in the rise in the count, especially last year's catastrophic Maui wildfire, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. More than 5,200 people were in emergency shelters in Hawaii on the night of the count. "Increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing," Renee Willis, incoming interim CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement. "As advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience have warned, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to increase as more people struggle to afford sky-high housing costs." Robert Marbut Jr., the former executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021, called the nearly 33% increase in homelessness over the past four years "disgraceful" and said the federal government needs to abandon efforts to prioritize permanent housing. "We need to focus on treatment of substance use and mental illness, and bring back program requirements, like job training," Marbut said in an email. Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts The numbers also come as increasing numbers of communities are taking a hard line against homelessness. Angered by often dangerous and dirty tent camps, communities — especially in Western states — have enforced bans on camping. That follows a 6-3 ruling this summer by the Supreme Court that found outdoor sleeping bans don’t violate the Eighth Amendment. Homeless advocates argued that punishing people who need a place to sleep would criminalize homelessness. There was some positive news in the count, as homelessness among veterans continued to trend downward. Homelessness among veterans dropped 8% to 32,882 in 2024. It was an even larger decrease for unsheltered veterans, declining 11% to 13,851 in 2024. "The reduction in veteran homelessness offers us a clear roadmap for addressing homelessness on a larger scale," Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement. "With bipartisan support, adequate funding, and smart policy solutions, we can replicate this success and reduce homelessness nationwide. Federal investments are critical in tackling the country's housing affordability crisis and ensuring that every American has access to safe, stable housing." Several large cities had success bringing down their homeless numbers. Dallas, which worked to overhaul its homeless system, saw a 16% drop in its numbers between 2022 to 2024. Los Angeles, which increased housing for the homeless, saw a drop of 5% in unsheltered homelessness since 2023. California, the most populous state in the U.S., continued to have the nation's largest homeless population, followed by New York, Washington, Florida and Massachusetts. The sharp increase in the homeless population over the past two years contrasts with success the U.S. had for more than a decade. Going back to the first 2007 survey, the U.S. made steady progress for about a decade in reducing the homeless population as the government focused particularly on increasing investments to get veterans into housing. The number of homeless people dropped from about 637,000 in 2010 to about 554,000 in 2017. The numbers ticked up to about 580,000 in the 2020 count and held relatively steady over the next two years as Congress responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with emergency rental assistance, stimulus payments, aid to states and local governments and a temporary eviction moratorium.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there's one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas. That's because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory. The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn't been enforced since 2018. Kansas provides a cautionary tale about how pursuing an election concern that in fact is extremely rare risks disenfranchising a far greater number of people who are legally entitled to vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, championed the idea as a legislator and now says states and the federal government shouldn't touch it. “Kansas did that 10 years ago,” said Schwab, a Republican. “It didn’t work out so well.” Steven Fish, a 45-year-old warehouse worker in eastern Kansas, said he understands the motivation behind the law. In his thinking, the state was like a store owner who fears getting robbed and installs locks. But in 2014, after the birth of his now 11-year-old son inspired him to be “a little more responsible” and follow politics, he didn’t have an acceptable copy of his birth certificate to get registered to vote in Kansas. “The locks didn’t work,” said Fish, one of nine Kansas residents who sued the state over the law. “You caught a bunch of people who didn’t do anything wrong.” Kansas' experience appeared to receive little if any attention outside the state as Republicans elsewhere pursued proof-of-citizenship requirements this year. Arizona enacted a requirement this year, applying it to voting for state and local elections but not for Congress or president. The Republican-led U.S. House passed a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the summer and plans to bring back similar legislation after the GOP won control of the Senate in November. In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state revised the form that poll workers use for voter eligibility challenges to require those not born in the U.S. to show naturalization papers to cast a regular ballot. A federal judge declined to block the practice days before the election. Also, sizable majorities of voters in Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and the presidential swing states of North Carolina and Wisconsin were inspired to amend their state constitutions' provisions on voting even though the changes were only symbolic. Provisions that previously declared that all U.S. citizens could vote now say that only U.S. citizens can vote — a meaningless distinction with no practical effect on who is eligible. To be clear, voters already must attest to being U.S. citizens when they register to vote and noncitizens can face fines, prison and deportation if they lie and are caught. “There is nothing unconstitutional about ensuring that only American citizens can vote in American elections,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, the leading sponsor of the congressional proposal, said in an email statement to The Associated Press. After Kansas residents challenged their state's law, both a federal judge and federal appeals court concluded that it violated a law limiting states to collecting only the minimum information needed to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. That's an issue Congress could resolve. The courts ruled that with “scant” evidence of an actual problem, Kansas couldn't justify a law that kept hundreds of eligible citizens from registering for every noncitizen who was improperly registered. A federal judge concluded that the state’s evidence showed that only 39 noncitizens had registered to vote from 1999 through 2012 — an average of just three a year. In 2013, then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican who had built a national reputation advocating tough immigration laws, described the possibility of voting by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally as a serious threat. He was elected attorney general in 2022 and still strongly backs the idea, arguing that federal court rulings in the Kansas case “almost certainly got it wrong.” Kobach also said a key issue in the legal challenge — people being unable to fix problems with their registrations within a 90-day window — has probably been solved. “The technological challenge of how quickly can you verify someone’s citizenship is getting easier,” Kobach said. “As time goes on, it will get even easier.” The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Kansas case in 2020. But in August, it split 5-4 in allowing Arizona to continue enforcing its law for voting in state and local elections while a legal challenge goes forward. Seeing the possibility of a different Supreme Court decision in the future, U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt says states and Congress should pursue proof-of-citizenship requirements. Schmidt was the Kansas attorney general when his state's law was challenged. "If the same matter arose now and was litigated, the facts would be different," he said in an interview. But voting rights advocates dismiss the idea that a legal challenge would turn out differently. Mark Johnson, one of the attorneys who fought the Kansas law, said opponents now have a template for a successful court fight. “We know the people we can call," Johnson said. “We know that we’ve got the expert witnesses. We know how to try things like this.” He predicted "a flurry — a landslide — of litigation against this.” Initially, the Kansas requirement's impacts seemed to fall most heavily on politically unaffiliated and young voters. As of fall 2013, 57% of the voters blocked from registering were unaffiliated and 40% were under 30. But Fish was in his mid-30s, and six of the nine residents who sued over the Kansas law were 35 or older. Three even produced citizenship documents and still didn’t get registered, according to court documents. “There wasn’t a single one of us that was actually an illegal or had misinterpreted or misrepresented any information or had done anything wrong,” Fish said. He was supposed to produce his birth certificate when he sought to register in 2014 while renewing his Kansas driver's license at an office in a strip mall in Lawrence. A clerk wouldn't accept the copy Fish had of his birth certificate. He still doesn't know where to find the original, having been born on an Air Force base in Illinois that closed in the 1990s. Several of the people joining Fish in the lawsuit were veterans, all born in the U.S., and Fish said he was stunned that they could be prevented from registering. Liz Azore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said millions of Americans haven't traveled outside the U.S. and don't have passports that might act as proof of citizenship, or don't have ready access to their birth certificates. She and other voting rights advocates are skeptical that there are administrative fixes that will make a proof-of-citizenship law run more smoothly today than it did in Kansas a decade ago. “It’s going to cover a lot of people from all walks of life,” Avore said. “It’s going to be disenfranchising large swaths of the country.” Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn't work out so well

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