Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) has ended his independent campaign for reelection as he prepares to resign after his conviction on federal bribery and corruption charges.

Menendez filed to run as an independent in June while his trial was underway, looking to keep his options open pending the outcome. He was convicted six weeks later and announced he would resign effective Tuesday.

Still, his continued candidacy as an independent raised the possibility that he could complicate the race between the major-party nominees, Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw. Friday was the deadline for Menendez to withdraw as an independent candidate.

The New Jersey Division of Elections received an email Friday afternoon from Menendez asking to be removed from the ballot.

“By means of this email please be advised that as an Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in November’s election I am advising you that I wish to have my name withdrawn from the ballot,” Menendez wrote to the division’s acting director.

Menendez’s email came the same day that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) appointed his former chief of staff, George Helmy, to temporarily fill the Senate seat after Menendez steps down next week. Helmy will not run for the full term that starts in January, allowing Kim and Bashaw to face off in the November election.

Democrats are expected to retain the Senate seat in solidly blue New Jersey.

Menendez was convicted in July of taking bribes from three businessmen who provided gifts to him and his wife, including a luxury car and gold bars. A jury in Manhattan federal court found him of all 16 felony counts he was facing.

“Bob Menendez’s corruption has been a distraction in New Jersey government and politics for years,” Bashaw said in a statement Friday. “It’s time to move on with this election and make it a clean, straightforward race focusing on the issues facing our state.”

House Republicans on Friday launched an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s connections to China, turning their scrutiny from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate after the sudden change in the 2024 Democratic ticket last month.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote that Walz (D) had “concerning ties” to China, citing the governor’s dozens of trips to the country, and requested a trove of documents and information related to Chinese entities that Walz has engaged with.

“Americans should be deeply concerned that Governor Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, has a long-standing and cozy relationship with China,” Comer said in a statement. “Mr. Walz has visited China dozens of times, served as a fellow at a Chinese institution that maintains a devotion to the CCP, and spoke alongside the President of a Chinese organization the State Department exposed as a CCP effort to influence and co-opt local leaders.”

Walz first went to China in 1989 as part of a teach-abroad program run by Harvard University, and he taught English and American history for one year. Later on with his wife, Gwen, Walz established Educational Travel Adventures, which coordinated trips to China.

In the years since, during his time in elected office, Walz has served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and spearheaded legislation that censured the country’s human rights record. He has been critical of the Chinese government’s actions for most of his time in public office.

But since Walz’s selection as Harris’s running mate this month, Republicans and Trump allies have taken up Walz’s relationship with China as a line of attack, alongside questioning his military service and criticizing his legislative efforts as Minnesota’s governor.

Comer’s pivot to the new Democratic ticket comes after a 19-month GOP-led investigation into Biden alleging that members of the Biden family capitalized financially on their father’s name. But the investigation quietly sputtered out after no evidence or testimony obtained by congressional Republicans showed that the president was a direct participant in or beneficiary of his family’s business dealings. House Republicans’ report on the findings of their failed bid to impeach Biden has yet to be released. Comer himself also promised multiple criminal referrals against Biden that never materialized.

With less than three months until the election, Comer and House Republicans are now scrambling to refocus the majority’s investigative powers on Harris and Walz.

Last week, Comer announced an investigation into Harris’s work on immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, misrepresenting her as Biden’s “border czar” as Republicans seek to tie her to the surge in migrants at the border. Harris, however, was never tasked with border enforcement; in 2021, Biden tapped her to address the “root causes” of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to the United States.

Now, Republicans have put a magnifying glass over Walz’s work-related engagements history with China, suggesting that he will be soft on Beijing.

Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz, said in a statement Friday that Walz, along with Harris, would “ensure we win the competition with China, and will always stand up for our values and interests in the face of China’s threats.”

“Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China,” Tschann said.

In interviews with The Washington Post this month, analysts were ambivalent about whether Walz would help stabilize U.S.-China relations if he were elected vice president. But, they added that his previous relationship with the country is unlikely to further spoil the connection between the two governments, noting that he is one of multiple American officials who have been critical in the same manner.

Rebecca Tan and Vic Chiang contributed to this report.

A divided Supreme Court refused to require some states to enforce new rules on how schools should handle complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination, leaving in place a ban on the provisions while lower-court battles continue.

The Department of Education had asked the court to lift the preliminary injunctions on enforcing the rules, arguing that the decisions by federal courts in Louisiana and Kentucky to block the entirety of Title IX regulations in a number of states were overly broad. States requested the injunctions based on objections to provisions within the regulations that deal with discrimination based on gender identity.

Friday’s 5-4 ruling leaves in place a messy status quo, where the regulations are in effect in about half of U.S. states. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the court’s three liberals in dissenting from the majority opinion.

The regulations, issued in April, represent the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a half-century-old law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools and applies to K-12 schools, colleges and universities that accept federal funding.

They took effect Aug. 1 in the states not covered by the injunctions. For the first time, the regulations say that discrimination based on sex includes conduct related to a person’s gender identity. The rules could require, for instance, schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity and to use trans students’ pronouns.

But the bulk of the regulation deals with other matters, notably how schools must handle complaints of sexual assault and harassment on campus.

A Department of Education spokeswoman decried the court’s decision, as did Shiwali Patel, senior director of Safe and Inclusive Schools at the National Women’s Law Center. “We are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision that creates significant harm to students across the country who are in need of the critical protections the new Title IX rule offers and clarifies,” Patel said in a statement.

In issuing the rules, Biden administration officials pointed to a 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex discrimination in employment includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The same logic applies to Title IX, they said.

Gender identity has become a major political flash point in recent years, particularly in education. At least a dozen states across the country have rules limiting transgender access to the bathrooms and facilities that match their gender identity, according to tracking by the Movement Advancement Project. Some school boards bar students from changing their names or pronouns without parental permission or prohibit teachers from using pronouns that don’t match the sex assigned to the student at birth.

Twenty-six states, working in groups, filed seven separate lawsuits seeking to block the new Title IX regulations from going into effect. Six of the suits were successful at the district court level and the seventh group won at the appellate court. As a result, the regulation took effect as scheduled in 24 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but is on hold in the 26 states that are party to the challenges.

The challengers argued that the Biden administration exceeded its authority in crafting the rules and said the regulations violate state laws that limit the rights of transgender students.

The requests denied by the Supreme Court only dealt with two of the lawsuits and therefore only affect the 10 states that are party to those suits. Jonathan Scruggs of Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group involved in one of the lawsuits, applauded the court’s decision.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, undermines fairness, and threatens student safety and privacy,” Scruggs said in a statement. “This administration is ignoring biological reality, science, and common sense.”

Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho challenged the Title IX regulations in May. In June, a federal district court judge in Louisiana granted the states a preliminary injunction blocking the implementation of the entire set of regulations, not just those related to gender identity.

Six states — Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia — won a similar stay from a federal district court judge in Kentucky.

Courts of appeal in both circuits denied requests by the Biden administration to temporarily enforce the Title IX regulations while legal challenges continue.

In her filings with the Supreme Court seeking to lift the injunctions, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said Title IX was an omnibus rule and most of its provisions did not deal with transgender issues. She also wrote that the rules were intended to stand alone, so there was no reason to block Title IX in its entirety.

“Respondents have not challenged the vast majority of those changes,” Prelogar wrote. “Instead, they object to three discrete provisions.”

Twelve other states also won injunctions against the Title IX rules in four other separate cases, but they are not part of the current litigation before the Supreme Court.

In a separate action, the Supreme Court has agreed to review during the coming term a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for people younger than 18. It will be the first time the court has explored the issue. More than 20 states have passed similar bans since 2021.

The U.S. Secret Service has dispatched some members of President Joe Biden’s protective detail to assist former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in advance planning for campaign rallies and other events, officials said Friday.

Officials said the agents from the Presidential Protective Division are working to coordinate and enhance security for the candidates in the run-up to the November election.

For Trump, the Republican nominee, officials said the increased assistance followed the July 13 assassination attempt against him at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, has heightened security as vice president but is also benefiting from additional expertise from Biden’s security team, officials said.

As president, Biden receives the highest level of Secret Service protection in the United States on a daily basis, officials said. The agents assisting the candidates are not among those assigned to shield Biden. But Biden is traveling less since he dropped out of the presidential race, freeing up some security personnel to assist the candidates as they campaign.

The Presidential Protective Division includes several hundred highly trained special agents, as well as technical experts and other personnel, said agency spokeswoman Alexi Worley.

“On a case-by-case basis for complex and large-scale events, experienced Presidential Protective Division personnel may assist in advance planning for former President Donald Trump and other high-level protectees,” Worley said in a statement, adding that the others included Harris. “This support is separate from Presidential Protective Division operational demands.”

Harris announced her candidacy for president after Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her last month.

Secret Service officials said adjusting resources is common when needs arise, such as when world leaders visit the United States or for major gatherings such as the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The agency, which protects more than 30 people, is also intensely busy in an election year. In Trump’s case, the agency’s top officials testified before Congress that they immediately expanded his security after the shooting at the rally.

The Secret Service came under intense scrutiny after the shooting — considered the worst attack on a U.S. leader under the agency’s protection in four decades. Multiple investigations are examining why law enforcement officers failed to intercept a gunman who climbed atop an unsecured roof and fired multiple shots from an AR-style rifle, wounding Trump, killing a rallygoer and seriously injuring two others.

The Secret Service this week confirmed that it had approved a new security plan that would use ballistic glass and other measures to increase Trump’s security at outdoor campaign events and to protect him onstage.

Sheets of ballistic glass are typically reserved for presidents and vice presidents, and are considered a major enhancement for a presidential candidate, according to a Secret Service official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security measures. The Defense Department coordinates the provision of ballistic glass.

Harris would be given the same protection if needed, officials said.

Other measures, such as the increased use of drones, are also expected, though officials declined to provide details to avoid jeopardizing security.

Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the Secret Service director days after the July attack, after lawmakers from both parties urged her to step down.

Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.