A prominent governor running in the Democratic primary is at serious risk of getting shut out of the party’s first presidential debates — while a meditation guru and obscure tech entrepreneur take the stage for the most important event of the race so far.

That’s the state of play less than a week before the deadline to qualify for the debates on June 26-27 under the rules set by the Democratic National Committee.

Presidential hopefuls have until June 12 to cross one of two thresholds to qualify for the primary debates, and 13 of the 20 slots available are set. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is currently out, one of the foremost candidates in danger of missing the stage. His camp blasted what it called the DNC’s eleventh-hour "unmasking" of "arbitrary" polling rules, but the DNC said the Bullock campaign has been aware of the criteria for months.

Bullock’s status isn’t the only question remaining in the final week of qualifying, but the latest update comes after the Democratic National Committee provided POLITICO with additional guidance about its polling criteria — the first time the party committee has publicly addressed questions surrounding the previously announced guidelines.

The DNC declined to comment, as it has done in the past, on the qualifications for any individual candidate. POLITICO’s analysis for who has (and has not) qualified for the debate is based off public polling and public comments from the campaigns about their donor counts.

But if Bullock does manage to qualify before next Wednesday’s deadline, it could throw the status of other second-tier candidates into doubt, unleashing a complicated set of DNC-written tiebreaker rules that could leave another current officeholder high and dry.

In order to be eligible for the debates, candidates must cross one of two thresholds: earning 1 percent in three polls approved by the DNC, or receiving donations from 65,000 people, with 200 in 20 different states. Thirteen have met both thresholds and clinched their spots. But there are at least 10 credible candidates bidding for the final seven spots — a list that includes two sitting senators, three congressmen, a governor, a former governor and the mayor of New York.

Next week’s deadline is a make-or-break moment for these second-tier candidates, who risk fading into irrelevance if they aren’t among the 20 candidates onstage in Miami.

The 13 candidates who can book their tickets include the race’s top figures. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Julián Castro are the top-polling candidates; following a random drawing, they will be split across the two nights, with five on one night and four on the other.

But also meeting both the polling and fundraising thresholds are Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and two lesser-known figures: Marianne Williamson, best known for authoring spiritual, self-help books, and Andrew Yang, a first-time candidate who wears a baseball cap that says “MATH” on the front as he touts his proposal for a universal basic income.

After those 13 candidates, the rest of the field gets murky. According to a POLITICO analysis, an additional seven candidates have hit the polling threshold: Michael Bennet, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Tim Ryan and Eric Swalwell.

That list does not include Bullock — who POLITICO has previously believed to have qualified. On Thursday, the DNC told POLITICO that a pair of Washington Post/ABC News polls would not be considered eligible polls that candidates can use to qualify. One of the three polls Bullock would have relied on to qualify was a Post/ABC poll taken in January.

Bullock’s campaign was sharply critical of the announcement. "While Gov. Bullock was expanding Medicaid to one in ten Montanans despite a two-thirds Republican legislature, the DNC was making arbitrary rules behind closed doors," Jenn Ridder, Bullock’s campaign manager, said in a statement. "The DNC’s unmasking of this rule singles out the only Democratic candidate who won a Trump state — and penalizes him for doing his job."

"We notified the Bullock team in March, so they have known for months," DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told POLITICO shortly after the publication of this story.

The rules, initially announced in February, list ABC News and The Washington Post as qualified poll sponsors, but did not give any guidance on methodology. ABC/Post polls stood out from the rest of the qualified polls because, unlike every other poll that can qualify candidates for the debate stage, the ABC/Post poll asked respondents about the Democratic primary in an open-ended question, as opposed to reading off a list of candidates.

But there was nothing laid out in the original set of rules that explicitly ruled out open-ended polling from counting for the first and second debates. Arguably, earning 1 percent in a poll in which respondents have to volunteer a candidate’s name instead of repeating it from an interviewer’s list is an even higher bar to meet. And the initial set of rules were announced after the first ABC/Post poll was already publicly released.

POLITICO was not alone in its assessment believing that Bullock has passed the threshold, before the DNC announced the Post/ABC poll will not count. Other media outlets — including MSNBC (one of the media partners for the first debate), ABC News, The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, and New York magazine — had all previously published analysis saying Bullock has crossed the polling threshold. Bullock is the only candidate whose debate prospects currently are hinging on the ABC/Post poll.

The DNC also publicly announced how to count a Reuters poll that had multiple samples, which affirms de Blasio as a qualifying candidate — something POLITICO’s analysis could not originally confirm.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll presented results among several samples. In one sample of all Americans, de Blasio has crossed the 1 percent bar. In another sample included in the poll, a slightly more restrictive screen of registered voters, de Blasio has not.

POLITICO had long opted to use the sample of registered voters from the May poll in its analysis as opposed to the all Americans sample, but several other outlets previously listed de Blasio as a qualifying candidate, using the all Americans sample. The DNC affirmed to POLITICO that it is counting the all Americans sample, definitively giving de Blasio his third qualifying poll.

A de Blasio campaign official told POLITICO Wednesday that de Blasio asked DNC Chairman Tom Perez which sample would count in the past and was told the adult sample counted. Until Thursday, the DNC had not publicly clarified which sample to count. The Reuters/Ipsos polls were also conducted online, the only qualified polls to do so.

The DNC has moved to address these disputed polls, which have long vexed those trying to forecast the debate stage, for later debates. For the debates that will be hosted in the fall, Reuters was struck as an approved poll sponsor, and a rule was instituted to explicitly disallow open-ended questions from counting.

The DNC has said it will allow no more than 20 candidates across the two nights in June — leaving no room to spare with 20 candidates having qualified, by POLITICO’s updated analysis. The DNC, is the final arbiter for who has qualified for the debate.

But all hope for making the first debate stage is not lost for Bullock. There’s still six more days to go for candidates to qualify, and more polls may still come out in that time period.

If Bullock does ultimately qualify, that would make 21 candidates who have met at least one of the two criteria. The DNC has repeatedly said it would limit the first two debates to 20 participants, and it has outlined a series of tiebreakers to trim the field.

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Candidates who have not crossed both thresholds will be sorted by their polling average — which is calculated by taking a candidate’s top three-highest polls, so long as those polls are from different pollsters, or the same pollster in different regions. So far, no candidate who has only crossed the polling threshold has a polling average higher than 1.5 percent.

Three of these candidates have an average of 1.3 percent: Gillibrand, Hickenlooper and Ryan. The remainder — Bennet, de Blasio, Delaney and Swalwell — have a polling average of 1 percent (Bullock could join this group).

Rep. Seth Moulton, Wayne Messam and former Sen. Mike Gravel have not crossed either threshold. They appear unlikely to hit the polling threshold, based off past results, and because 20 candidates have hit the polling threshold, it is impossible for them to qualify through donors alone.

To break any tie among candidates with identical polling averages, the DNC previously announced that it will then look at the number of qualifying polls in which a candidate received 1 percent. Delaney has four polls, but the remaining 1-percent candidates have only three polls, the bare minimum to get on stage.

If the DNC determines that more than 20 candidates have crossed the polling threshold, the difference between the 20th candidate on the stage and the 21st candidate left off could — theoretically — be determined by one candidate getting 1 percent in one more poll than the other candidate. Every poll for lower-tier candidates could be crucial.

But with many of the lower-tier candidates frequently posting zeroes in qualified polls, it is also plausible that there’s a tie in both the polling average and in the number of qualified polls between the 20th and 21st candidate. The DNC did not answer questions about what would happen in that situation.

After the DNC confirms which 20 candidates qualified next Wednesday, there will be a random drawing — expected on June 14 — to determine the debate lineups.

The candidates will be split into two groups: one of high-polling candidates (those whose average is at or above 2 percent) and one of the lower-polling candidates. Those two groups will then be evenly and randomly divided across the two nights.

Sally Goldenberg in New York contributed to this report.

Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan, Eric Swalwell, Tulsi Gabbard and Seth Moulton aren’t likely to be elected president in 2020.

But faced with a stagnant leadership structure in the House and a political environment defined more by internet fame than legislative achievement, these Democratic lawmakers are weighing long-shot bids for the White House or have already jumped into the race.

The four junior Democrats will forgo a traditional career path on Capitol Hill to instead try to build their national profiles on the campaign trail, focusing on a narrow slate of issues that could help catapult their post-primary careers.

After watching President Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O’Rourke become national sensations by bending Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to their advantage, these little-known lawmakers think they have a shot.

“Back in the day, it used to be very hierarchical and top-down, and now it’s flat,” Ryan said in an interview Thursday, speaking of the revolution that social media has caused in national politics. “That gives every candidate an opportunity to build up millions of low-dollar donors that can keep you in the game.”

Ryan and the three other sitting House members eyeing 2020 bids face a field already crowded with a half-dozen senators, as well as several former colleagues like O’Rourke — who’d been a backbench lawmaker, too, just two years ago.

“I think there’s a sense, especially after Trump, that lightning can strike anybody,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “And here’s an opportunity to broaden your platform and see what happens.”

And if they don’t win, they could grow their influence, leading to a Cabinet position, a state-wide run, or even a career as a TV pundit.

So far, Ryan and Gabbard are the only sitting representatives to formally declare a presidential bid. Moulton and Swalwell, who have both traveled to early primary states, have said they’ll make a decision this month.

When asked "Why is this happening?" about his potential presidential campaign, Swalwell joked in a text message that’s “The title of my memoir.”

To stand out in the crowded field — which by month’s end could include as many as 11 House and Senate Democrats — most of these House members are picking a singular issue and sticking to it.

Moulton, an ex-Marine who upped his I.D. by helping elect veterans in 2018, is pitching himself as the answer to Republicans’ traditional advantage on national security.

Swalwell says he’s the candidate to take on gun control, which has become a key litmus test for Democrats in 2020. The California Democrat plans to hold a town hall in Parkland, Fla. — where a gunman killed 17 people in a high school — next week, and has also posted photos of himself at a shooting range alongside prominent gun control activists. Unlike his three House colleagues, Swalwell is a Pelosi ally and a member of the Democratic leadership, serving as co-chair of the Steering and Policy Committee.

Ryan, who officially announced on Thursday, wants to focus on jobs and uniting the country, boasting that he could “rebuild the blue wall” and win back his home state of Ohio, which Trump carried by 9 points.

“The administration I will run will focus on creating dignified jobs for people, but the main issue before you even get to that is healing,” said Ryan, sounding like a cross between fellow Ohioan Sen. Sherrod Brown and New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, who is already in the race. “How do we unite the country? The No. 1 enemy in the United States today is division.”

As one staffer to a 2020 presidential campaign put it, focusing on one issue “allows you to distinguish yourself,” and “insert yourself into a conversation” to draw attention.

Since Gabbard announced her candidacy in early February, she has made repeated trips to New Hampshire and Iowa, yet also spent time in Los Angeles and Selma, Ala., non-traditional venues for candidates. She holds progressive views on "Medicare for All," the $15 minimum wage and "Equality for All." An Iraq War veteran who backed Bernie Sanders in 2016, Gabbard was heavily criticized for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a quixotic bid to end that country’s civil war.

The Democratic Party boasts the most diverse field of presidential candidates in history, and the base is increasingly clamoring for a nominee who is a woman or a person of color — or both.

Some Democrats have openly speculated what these House members — three out of four of whom are straight, white men — will bring to a field that already include O’Rourke and Sen. Bernie Sanders, and will likely include former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I don’t think we necessarily need another white guy to be president, but [what] I think we do need is someone who listens,” said Ryan, who represents a district that is half African-American. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a person of color in America, but I have learned to listen and to try to understand. And I think that is the most important quality in a president.”

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn — who will play a key role in the South Carolina Democratic primary — said he welcomed his colleagues into the race, if they all do run. And it didn’t bother Clyburn that three of those members are white men.

“It’s open for the black guys in our caucus if they want to get in,” Clyburn quipped.

Yet Clyburn knows how hard it is for people who have made their name in the House to break out of the pack.

“It’s only happened once in the history of the country,” Clyburn said, referring to the presidential election of Ohio Rep. James Garfield in 1880. But he added: “It‘s indicative of the soundbite world we live in.”

By historical standards, it’s rare but hardly unprecedented for four sitting House members to seek the presidency. That last happened in 2008 when three Republicans — Reps. Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter Sr. and Tom Tancredo — all made early runs. Rep. Dennis Kucinich also ran that year as a Democrat.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) joked that "it’s good for my relationship with my grandchildren to say that I served in the Congress with an avalanche of members running for the presidency."

But the veteran Democratic lawmaker noted the unwritten rule in American politics was "that you serve in the House, then you go over to the Senate or run for governor. Then you can go for president."

That doesn’t exist anymore in the post-Trump world. "A lot of things have changed," Cleaver said.

The surge in interest for the White House among House Democrats is unusual after their party resoundingly won the majority less than six months ago.

But back-bench lawmakers face daunting prospects in the House, where securing a coveted gavel can take a decade, and only then if they have the right relationships and raise staggering sums.

That’s particularly challenging for lawmakers like Moulton, Ryan and Gabbard, who have in some way challenged Pelosi’s leadership during their tenure.

The House’s hierarchy is shifting, though, with a wave of hard-charging freshmen like Ocasio-Cortez, with her millions of Twitter followers, who have eschewed the usual route to influence.

Still, three- and four-term lawmakers like Swalwell and Gabbard have watched as O’Rourke morphed into an online sensation during his statewide run, and later entered the presidential race as one of the top names.

One longtime member, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), said the array of candidates from the House stems from the historic nature of the party’s majority and the chamber’s rising visibility, with Democrats now positioned to challenge Trump head-on.

“I think it’s part of our ascendancy," Grijalva said. "The belief was that what happens in the House isn’t as important as what happens in a governorship or in the Senate. I think it’s a harbinger of things to come."

Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luján announced Monday he is running for Senate in New Mexico, halting his rise through House leadership for a shot at a seat in the upper chamber.

Luján, the fourth-ranking House Democrat and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he was "humbled by all of the outreach encouraging me to run" for the Senate.

"To move forward, we’ve got to fix the Senate, where Mitch McConnell stands in the way of progress," Luján said in the video, recorded at his farm in Nambé, New Mexico. He said he would formally launch his campaign in the coming weeks.

Luján is running to fill the seat of Democratic Sen. Tom Udall, who announced last week he would not seek a third term in the Senate. The Democratic field could become crowded: Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and first-term Rep. Deb Haaland are both considering running. But Luján’s experience and the vast political and donor network established during his time as DCCC chairman gives him a significant edge in the Democratic primary.

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Republicans have not won a Senate race in the state since 2002 and Democrats are favored to hold the seat next year.

Ask just about any Iowa Democrat about the state’s 2016 fight-to-the-death caucuses and it elicits a similar response: a long pause, a deep breath and a plea to talk about something — anything — else.

The ghosts of Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin victory over Bernie Sanders are still so vivid, and the vitriol of their Iowa battle is still so fresh, state and local Democratic Party leaders are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure the 2020 caucuses are as peaceful and bloodless as possible.

They’re shutting down the conspiracy theorists at local meetings who continue to insist the 2016 caucus outcome was rigged for Clinton. They’re holding back on candidate endorsements in the hopes of avoiding conflict. They’re even encouraging the individual candidates to save the aggression for the general election, while going so far as to hold social events to help rival Democratic campaign staffers build a rapport.

By exerting subtle but persistent pressure on the campaigns to remain respectful to each other, Iowa officials are aiming to keep Democrats focused on the prize — defeating Donald Trump — rather than risk a repeat of a destructive cycle three years ago that ultimately hobbled the party as it moved toward November.

“There is no tolerance whatsoever for the bullshit this time,” said Polk County Chair Sean Bagniewski. “When I see people standing up spouting conspiracy theories in meetings, people start reacting. When it’s on social media, there’s an avalanche of people saying, ‘not this year, we’re not doing this again.’ There’s almost an overreaction.”

It’s hard to overstate the bad blood created by the rancorous 2016 fight. Clinton barely edged out Sanders by three-tenths of a percentage point, 49.9 percent to 49.6 percent, on caucus night, leading to a subsequent round of county and district conventions that, in many cases, devolved into shouting matches between the Clinton and Sanders factions. A fist fight broke out in one county; in another, activists dug through trash cans to make sure evidence of their turnout weren’t destroyed.

“It was just hell,” said Bagniewski, who was not yet county chair in 2016, describing the convention he attended. “Worst day of my life.”

Party leaders say the Clinton-Sanders divisions ran so deep, it depressed the Democratic general election turnout in Iowa, contributing to Trump’s 10-point romp after Barack Obama twice carried the state.

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“To get the reputation that you’re helping serve this up to Trump again — it’s a death wish,” Bagniewski said.

Those marathon, cutthroat county and district conventions took their toll on party leaders: according to the Iowa Democratic Party, 75 percent of Iowa’s county chairs have changed since 2016, with many of them stepping down or feeling pressured to retire.

State party leadership also changed over, and sweeping new rules to the caucuses were adopted.

This time around, fearful of reigniting distrust at the grassroots level, many county Democratic chairs — who have the ability to act as influential on-the-ground surrogates for candidates — are holding off on endorsements.

Woodbury County Chair Jeremy Dumkrieger, who supported Sanders in 2016, is among the chairs who won’t endorse in 2020 and he’s called on other chairs to do the same. That’s not always easy given the aggressive courtship by 2020 contenders who are inundating local pols with invites to dinners or private meetings in the hopes of winning their support.

“We just don’t need any question whatsoever about that kind of thing,” Dumkrieger said. “We need to be on the complete up and up.”

The presidential campaigns have gotten the message. Bagniewski says he’s noticed the friendly banter between candidates when they’re visiting the state at the same time. Staffers of competing campaigns in Iowa and other early states have helped to advance the notion of civility, posting photos of social gatherings under the hashtag #friendship2020.

Bernie Sanders’ senior adviser in Iowa, Pete D’Alessandro, said that if in an organizing meeting a supporter reopens complaints from the last election, they’re immediately cut off.

“We can’t keep rehashing 2016 because every time we’re doing it, even at a meeting, we’re not organizing. We’re not knocking on doors,” he said. “2016 is over. It doesn’t do us any good to have blood in the eyes. It’s gone. This is 2020, it’s a different race, it’s a different dynamic. We have to win this time.”

Not everyone is convinced the efforts will work in such a high-stakes environment. Some Democrats say if the 2020 primary heads toward an ideological struggle over the soul of the party, the clash will first play out in Iowa.

“The activist crowd is still thirsty for a fight,” said a Iowa field organizer with one top-tier 2020 candidate, who declined to speak on the record. “There is plenty of discontent under the surface and it’s a matter of how much bubbles up. Main Street Dems just want to win the general but activists are fighting a lot of other internal struggles.”

This time around, new rules will “lock in” the number of delegates on caucus night. Under the old practice, the delegates apportioned to each candidate would remain in flux even after caucus night, contingent on how many supporters for each campaign turned out to subsequent county, district and state conventions, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price said. That only served to extend the primary battle for months.

“Iowa had the Bernie-Hillary divide longer than anywhere in the country; one of the last delegate selection contests in the country,” Price said. “The locking of caucus night results allows us here to move on from the caucuses. The day after the caucuses we can start focusing on the general election.“

Other caucus mechanics will be different in 2020 — more lessons learned from the 2016 experience. The historically close outcome between Sanders and Clinton exposed flaws in a system in long need of a professional upgrade, Price said. There was no mechanism to order a recount, for example, and no uniform way to check in caucusgoers to their local precinct caucuses. Both of those issues have been addressed for 2020.

Price says it’s more evidence the party has moved on from 2016.

“I don’t see a lot of the anger that existed three years ago still at play,” Price said. “There’s still a lot of people out there sizing up candidates. I think that broadly speaking the party is in a much better spot.”

Still, just to be sure, local party leaders like Dumkrieger are doing their part to ensure the 2016 experience isn’t repeated: he’s hosting a barbecue event where he’s inviting staffers from competing 2020 campaigns.

“I just want everyone to know our mission is the same and that’s to get rid of Donald Trump,” he said. “There’s no need for sharp elbows.”

Pete Buttigieg is not the presidential candidate Americans are used to. He’s the mayor of a small city, the first millennial and first openly gay man to seek the Democratic nomination for president.

His quest for presidency is a long shot: He doesn’t have the name recognition, big pockets or national profile of most of his other opponents. Despite that, he’s been moving up in early Democratic polls and garnering a lot of media attention.

But who is he? What does he actually believe?

We caught up with the mayor when the book tour for his pre-election book “Shortest Way Home” made its way to D.C.

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Kathleen O’Donnell, left, with her wife, Casey. Since 2014, the couple has lived in Billings, Mont., where there is no explicit law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations.

It’s a hectic morning at the home of Kathleen O’Donnell and her wife, Casey. Kathleen is getting their 4-year-old foster daughter ready for the park. She got placed with them overnight. Casey is wrangling the four dogs. They’ve already got their 11-year-old son off to school.

They live on a tree-lined street in Billings, Mont. It’s a place they’ve called home since 2014.

“All of my family lives in Billings, so with a kid we wanted to be near them,” Kathleen said.

But when the same-sex couple made the move, they knew it came with risks. While five Montana cities have local nondiscrimination ordinances on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, Billings, the state’s largest city, is not one of them.

Nor does the state have an explicit law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations. Neither do more than half of U.S. states, leaving millions to rely on a patchwork of protections that vary depending on where they happen to live.

It’s why Kathleen and her wife are closely watching three upcoming cases that will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday related to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the federal statute that makes it illegal to discriminate against someone at work on the basis of sex. The court is hearing arguments on whether the definition of sex in Title VII includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

For people like the O’Donnells, whatever the Supreme Court decides will have an outsize impact on their lives. They’ve already felt the limits of the protections in the city they call home.

“The owner does not like that you’re gay”

It started the year the family moved to Billings in 2014. Kathleen was looking for a place to live with her family. She found a house that worked. The landlord handed her an application.

“We met the standard requirements for renting the house. And I had just written [my wife’s] name down and he asked me, ‘OK, well is it a girl or a boy?’ Which is an odd question to ask someone,” Kathleen said. “[Casey and I] had actually previously had that conversation on what do we do if someone asks us, because it is common in Montana, unfortunately, and we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to lie, we’re going to tell the truth.’ And so when I did that, that’s when he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t rent to your kind here.’ “

She said without local protections, there wasn’t much she could do, so she found a different place to live.

Two years later, Kathleen landed a new job at a local auto dealership. Most people were nice, but she said the owner’s son called her names.

“He felt it was OK to make names based on my appearance,” she said. “I would be considered a ‘butch’ lesbian, and I have the short hair, so they didn’t refer to me by Kathleen. They would refer to me as Bob or Bill and use a male verbiage because of my appearance.”

She put up with it.

“With that being your job and the way you provide for your family, unfortunately I just kind of let it be the way it was going to be at that time,” she said.

A few days before her six-month probationary period was up, her supervisor called her into the office and told her the owner asked him to fire her.

“I looked at him and I was like, ‘Why am I being fired?’ I was like, ‘I’ve never been in trouble. I’ve shown up to work,’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘It’s because the owner does not like that you’re gay.’ “

The dealership would not comment on O’Donnell’s allegation. At the time, she said she called the Montana state employment office.

“I told them my story and they’re like, ‘Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do for you,’ ” she said.

The question before the court

LGBTQ advocates say such stories are unfortunately all too common in states where gender identity and sexual orientation are not explicitly protected classes under the law. And while the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it will enforce Title VII’s protections when gender identity and sexual orientation are at issue regardless of the law in any particular state, courts are irrevocably split on whether it has the authority to do so.

That’s the question the Supreme Court is being asked to decide when they hear the three cases, two on sexual orientation and one on gender identity.

“What these cases will decide is does the federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination in employment cover discrimination on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity, because those forms of discrimination are sex-based,” said Adam Romero, the federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Whatever the court decides will have a ripple effect well beyond employment, Romero said.

“Its impact will be most immediately on employment, but the question of discrimination in housing, in education, in public accommodations, in credit and other sort of vital spheres of our lives, there are statutes that prohibit sex discrimination in those settings,” he said. “And so the Supreme Court’s decision in the employment context will inform courts’ decision in these other contexts as well.”

Employers who say Title VII should not include sexual orientation or transgender identity object for a variety reasons. Some claim it’s a dress code issue when it comes to transgender individuals. Others say it’s an issue of freedom of expression or religion.

Others are like Lisa Fullerton, a San Antonio-based owner of fast-food franchises. Fullerton says she worries about the potential repercussions of extending to members of the transgender community business opportunities that were designed to empower women.

“When a person’s sex is arbitrarily defined or interpreted by judges or government, the opportunities are actually going to vanish for the women that they were designed to benefit,” Fullerton said. “Because historically, sex has been biology-based and its association is the basis for government programs that were written to help women.”

Texas, like Montana, does not have explicit state LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections, although San Antonio does. Fullerton says she employs LGBTQ people but is concerned about government overreach.

“My question,” Fullerton said, “is how do we allow people to disagree about such things, coexist, and yet no one lose their liberties without becoming discriminatory?”

A “safe space” for Billings

Back in Billings, Mayor Bill Cole is closely watching what the Supreme Court decides. Cole said there are two reasons the city doesn’t have a nondiscrimination ordinance. Montana’s state laws, he said, already dictate that an employer can’t dismiss someone without good cause once their probationary period ends.

The other reason, he said, is because, “anything that we do may be made moot by cases now pending before the United States Supreme Court.”

LGBTQ advocates argue that that’s all the more reason they want local protections. If the Supreme Court says yes, LGBTQ people are protected, states would be compelled follow. But if they say no, advocates fear, the implications for millions of LGBTQ citizens would be disastrous.

The Supreme Court that expanded gay rights — most notably by legalizing same-sex marriage — is a very different court today. Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, regarded as a champion of gay rights, was the key swing vote in several pivotal cases. But with Kennedy no longer on the court, many advocates fear it will be impossible to assemble a pro-LGBTQ majority with Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Billings’ City Council considered passing a nondiscrimination ordinance in 2014, but it failed to pass. The city’s former mayor, Tom Hanel, cast the deciding vote, saying Billings “just isn’t ready.”

“When that didn’t pass, people in the community were worried about how do we create safe space for LGBTQ people and the youth,” said the Rev. Sarah Beck of Billings’ Grace United Methodist Church.

So the church created the Rainbow Coffee House, a meeting space for LGBTQ teens.

“That’s kind of where the Rainbow Coffee House came out of, was sort of people in the community saying ‘We want our community to be safe for people,’ ” she said.

Last year, that safe space was defaced multiple times with anti-gay flyers, a swastika spray-painted on the rainbow flag that hangs in the church window and another on a church door. A church sign was also spray-painted with the words “no gays.”

Now they have extra cameras, a doorbell, new locks and other security measures.

At the time, the community rallied around the church.

“That’s all wonderful, but at the same time, what is the expectation when the message you send to the community is that these people don’t need to be protected?” Beck asked. “These types of things are inevitable.”

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Teenagers hanging out at Rainbow Coffee House, located at Grace United Methodist Church in Billings.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio may not be soaring in the polls, but he said he has one thing going for him that his fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates don’t: He’s been watching President Donald Trump for years and knows all his tricks.

“I know something about Donald Trump that’s different from the other candidates because I watched him for decades,” de Blasio told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning.

“I understand his game plan. I understand his tricks and his strategies, and I do get under his skin. I called him on the first day of my campaign. I called him ‘Con Don’ because he is a con artist. That’s how he’s gotten ahead.”

However, de Blasio is struggling in another aspect of the presidential race. He has the lowest favorability ratings in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, with 76 percent of New York City voters saying they didn’t want him to run for president, an Quinnipiac University poll from April showed. Also, 65 percent of New York state Democrats said they would be unhappy if he secured the nomination next year, according to a Marist College poll.

But he isn’t going to let that slow him down.

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“Voters are going to get to know me, as is true in every election,” de Blasio said. “I’ve had two elections in New York City and won both overwhelmingly. So the people in my city decided they wanted this leadership because it puts working people first. That’s what I do, and people ultimately, after they hear all the facts and look at all the choices, they want someone who knows how to support working people.

“I’ll tell you, and I’ve found this with polls over and over again,” he added. “If I believed the polls and listened to the polls in all my other elections, I might have just stayed home. But it’s not where you start, it’s where you end. So much of the time, the polls don’t tell us the truth. When people get to know you and see what you’re about, that’s what they respond to.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook announces details of the company’s new Apple TV+ video-streaming service Tuesday in Cupertino, Calif.

Apple is entering the video-streaming race, taking on Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others with a monthly subscription of $4.99. The company also announced three new iPhones, even as their sales have been slowing.

The new Apple TV+ service had been previously announced, but on Tuesday the company revealed the low price and the launch date, Nov. 1, with nine original titles, including The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

Apple said it will offer one year for free to customers who buy a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod Touch. An Apple TV+ subscription can be shared with up to six family members.

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Apple’s new service costs considerably less than Netflix, which has a standard subscription of $8.99 per month. The Disney+ service debuts Nov. 12 at $6.99 per month.

As expected, Apple also unveiled its new iPhone 11, which will start at $699, and the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max, starting at $999 and $1,099, respectively. All three phones will feature improved cameras and higher video capabilities.

Along with the new streaming service, Tuesday’s announcements, which included a $4.99 monthly cost for the new Apple Arcade gaming service, represent a continuing shift in the importance of services to Apple’s bottom line.

For years, the iPhone represented the majority of Apple’s sales, but the company has seen its numbers drop. In Apple’s fiscal third quarter, which ended June 29, iPhone sales made up less than half of Apple’s revenues — down from 63% four years ago. China isn’t just where iPhones are made; it’s also one of the top markets for the device. But amid China’s economic slowdown, Apple’s sales in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong fell 19% in Apple’s third quarter from a year earlier.

Bill Hagerty, the former ambassador to Japan under President Donald Trump, launched a run for Senate in Tennessee Monday, two months after Trump endorsed his prospective campaign.

Hagerty, a businessman who served as Trump’s Tennessee Victory chair during the 2016 campaign, is running for the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander. In an interview with POLITICO, Hagerty said he had discussed the prospect of running for Senate with Trump for months after Alexander announced his retirement. Hagerty earned Trump’s endorsement earlier this summer after former Gov. Bill Haslam declined to run.

"He’s looked at all the candidates in this race and he’s decided to endorse me as the candidate best able to put forward conservative Tennessee values in the U.S. Senate," Hagerty said in the interview.

In an announcement video, he called serving in the Trump administration the "honor of a lifetime" and said he felt called to run for office, attacking the "Democrat socialist agenda" and the freshman House Democrats known as "the Squad."

In the interview, Hagerty praised Trump’s record on the economy and appointing conservative judges, saying he has "been in constant contact with the president about those successes and what we can do to increase them." Hagerty said it has taken him several months to extricate himself from his official duties in Japan, where he served as ambassador for two years, but that he has fully returned to Tennessee.

"I’m eager to get ready and get to work and carry that fight to the Senate and support the president in his efforts and bring Tennessee values, Tennessee conservative values to bear in an area and a time when I think they’re absolutely critical," Hagerty said.

The former ambassador faces a competitive primary against Manny Sethi, a trauma surgeon and conservative who is running as an anti-establishment outsider. Sethi is well funded, with $1.5 million cash on hand as of June 30, $1 million of which was a personal loan.

Hagerty is likely to be well-funded too, given Trump’s endorsement and his own position in Republican and business circles.

Veteran and attorney James Mackler is the only Democrat in the race, though Republicans are heavily favored to hold the seat following GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s decisive victory in 2018 over former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Asked what represented major differences between himself and Sethi, Hagerty cited Trump’s support.

"There’s only one candidate in this race that President Trump has endorsed," Hagerty said. "President Trump has endorsed me to be the person to carry conservative Tennessee values forward for the people of Tennessee and that’s where I stand, that’s where the president stands."

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The Supreme Court will weigh in on a Louisiana abortion law that put restrictions on clinics that provide abortions.

Updated at 6:24 p.m. ET

The U.S. Supreme Court has jumped headlong back into the abortion wars. The court said Friday that it will hear arguments in a case from Louisiana that is nearly identical to a Texas case decided by the court three years ago.

Like the Texas law that the court previously struck down, the Louisiana law requires any doctor performing an abortion to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

The Supreme Court said in the Texas case that wasn’t needed to protect women’s health and that both requirements imposed “a substantial burden” on a woman’s right to abortion.

Louisiana has conceded that its law is virtually identical to the Texas law. The difference between then and now is that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who cast the decisive fifth vote in the 2016 Texas case, has retired and been replaced by Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh, who has indicated his willingness to undermine or discard the 2016 decision.

The Louisiana case — June Medical Services v. Gee — came to the court in an unusual posture last term, after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals became the first such federal court to uphold provisions like those explicitly struck down by the Supreme Court in the Texas case.

After the 5th Circuit decision, abortion clinics in Louisiana appealed to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who had dissented in the 2016 Texas case, switched sides to block the lower court ruling from going into effect immediately. But the 5-4 vote amounted only to a pause to preserve the status quo.

Now the court has said it will hear the case later this term and decide whether to stick by its earlier ruling in the Texas case, trim it back or “begin the assault” on the Supreme Court’s prior abortion decisions, in the words of Irv Gornstein, director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center.

The Louisiana law was initially blocked by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who found that the state law imposed an “undue burden” on the right to an abortion. As the Supreme Court did in the Texas case, he found that the state’s justification for its law — patient safety — could not be sustained.

After a lengthy hearing, he found that the state law is a remedy for “a problem that does not exist.” He noted that abortions performed in Louisiana are “safe procedures” with “very few complications” and that Louisiana law requires clinics to have transfer agreements with local hospitals.

In the “extremely rare” cases where there are serious complications, he observed, patients are routinely treated by hospital staff, obviating the need for clinic doctors to also have hospital admitting privileges.

DeGravelles further found that were the Louisiana law allowed to go into effect, only one clinic and one doctor in the state would be qualified to perform abortions. Even if that doctor worked seven days a week, the judge said, the physician could not provide for the 10,000 women a year seeking abortions in the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit subsequently reversed the district court ruling. A three-judge panel voted 2-to-1 to allow the state law to go into effect.

Writing for the majority, Judge Jerry E. Smith conceded that the state had not provided any instance in which a patient sustained “a worse result” because a doctor lacked hospital admitting privileges. Nonetheless, Smith maintained, the the Louisiana law did not impose “an undue burden” on women seeking abortions. He said that the closing of clinics would not impose driving distances as long as those in Texas and that it was easier to get hospital admitting privileges in Louisiana.

Finally, Smith rejected the district court’s factual finding that the law would make access to abortion more difficult for 70% of women seeking abortions in the state. Smith put the number instead at “at most 30%.”

Judge Patrick Higginbotham, a Reagan appointee like Smith, dissented, accusing his colleague of failing to “meaningfully apply” the Supreme Court’s prior rulings on abortion.

The 5th Circuit is among the most conservative federal appellate courts in the country. Eleven judges on the appeals court are Republican appointees, five of them Trump appointees. Of the 11 active Republican appointees, only one, a George W. Bush appointee, voted to rehear the case. One, a Trump appointee, was recused.

Correction Oct. 4, 2019

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Louisiana law set requirements for clinics including wide corridors and expensive equipment. The law in fact centers on admitting privileges to nearby hospitals.

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