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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A long-awaited update to federal overtime rules means about 1.3 million workers will be entitled to extra pay when they work more than 40 hours a week.

Updated at 11:54 a.m. ET

The Labor Department is expanding the pool of workers eligible for overtime pay by about 1.3 million workers.

But many critics say the rules finalized Tuesday should have been rewritten to benefit more workers who routinely work more than 40 hours a week without additional pay.

Current federal law says most workers making about $23,660 a year are entitled to overtime pay. In other words, to be considered “salaried,” most workers need to make at least that. Starting Jan. 1 next year, that minimum salary threshold will be raised to $35,568.

But a previous proposal, under former President Barack Obama, would have raised it to about $47,000, which would have benefited an estimated 3 million more workers by entitling them to either a shorter workweek, or more pay.

This is something Chip Ahlgren wanted to see. Ahlgren took over the general manager’s role at a Seattle Jiffy Lube last year, a move that meant he went from making $16 an hour to an annual salary of $52,000 — something that seemed, at least at the time, like a step up.

But chronic understaffing meant Ahlgren had to work at the shop most of the time. At times, his workweek extended to over 100 hours, but as a salaried worker, he wasn’t entitled to overtime pay. Ahlgren says that given how much he works, he’d earn more if he were paid the hourly minimum wage.

“There’s nothing protecting me, if I have to work 100 hours a week, from that happening, and I don’t get any more money,” he says.

(Jiffy Lube says it does not comment on its employment policies.)

The last time the minimum salary threshold was set was in 2004. Nowadays, that $23,660 salary falls below the poverty line for a family of four. So just about everyone agrees that needed updating.

The Obama administration sought to expand the number of workers eligible for overtime pay by raising the salary threshold. It proposed more than doubling it to about $47,000. A Texas judge struck that down. Instead, the Trump administration issued its own rule, setting the threshold to a lower level.

Heidi Shierholz, former Labor Department chief economist under Obama, argues that the new rules fall short. She says the proposal she championed would have made four times as many workers eligible for overtime.

“It’s a missed opportunity in the sense that millions more could have been helped,” she says. Moreover, the Trump administration’s new minimum salary cutoff won’t automatically update with inflation — meaning it could be decades before it’s reset again. “So it will be set at $35,000 and that’s it,” Shierholz says.

But employers are pleased with the lower threshold.

“Overall, our feeling is that this is a more workable approach,” says Nancy Hammer, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management. She notes that many employers already pay their workers overtime, even if not required by law.

Meanwhile, a growing number of states have, or are looking to, set their overtime rules above the new federal requirements.

“Workers, community groups and elected officials are all mobilizing around it as a paycheck fairness issue,” says Paul Sonn, state policy director at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. “If you’re going to put in those long hours away from your community and your family, you should at least be paid for it.”

New York and California have already adopted new overtime rules that set their salary thresholds around $50,000. Several more states are considering similar proposals, including Colorado, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Correction Sept. 24, 2019

A previous Web version of this story incorrectly said the last time the minimum salary threshold was set was in 1975. It should have said that it was last set in 2004.

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Institutional racism is a “white man’s problem” in America, former Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

In a 90-minute interview with a small group of reporters at a campaign office in downtown Washington, Biden said racism has always been in America and white supremacists have always existed.

“It’s real,” he said. “It’s there, and the only way — from the founding of this country to today — you deal with it is you attack it. You expose it. You embarrass it. You put people in jail when they engage in things that are illegal when they’re doing it — you call them out. And most of all, you call it out to our children.”

“Silence,” he warned, “is complicity.”

Biden launched his White House bid in April singularly focused on defeating President Donald Trump in 2020. His campaign launch video included footage of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and criticism of Trump for initially claiming that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the clash, which turned fatal.

Hate crimes have risen under Trump’s administration, and the president has been blamed for emboldening white supremacists with his rhetoric — a connection he adamantly rejects.

“What presidents say matter. Words matter,” Biden stressed on Tuesday. “They can make markets rise and fall, they can send people to war, they can, in fact, enliven a nation, they can enrich a nation, they can, in fact, also appeal to the worst damn instincts in human nature. And we possess those instincts in human nature, and it’s overwhelmingly a white man’s problem visited on people of color.”

Biden said he puts white people in three categories: “those who are flat just prejudiced and are supremacists to some degree”; “folks who are agnostic and don’t give a damn about it”; and “folks who think we should just do something about it.”

Biden added that while he wouldn’t try to tell his attorney general what to do — a clear jab at Trump’s attempts to control former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — he would “make absolutely clear” to his Justice Department that white supremacy won’t be tolerated in a Biden administration.

“He’s crossed a line so far, even those people who want to go like this,” Biden said, covering his eyes with his hands, “aren’t able to do it anymore.”

Another Democratic candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., used similar language earlier this month in challenging white Americans to confront racism.

“If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last few days,” Buttigieg told a conference of black journalists and communications professionals in Miami in the aftermath of mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, “systemic racism is a white problem.”

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Amber Rudd has resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary, accusing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of an “assault on decency and democracy.”

Britain’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions resigned from Boris Johnson’s cabinet on Sunday, accusing the prime minister of “an assault on decency and democracy” for his handling of the ongoing Brexit saga.

In a letter to Johnson, Amber Rudd said she was resigning the Conservative whip — meaning she’ll stay in parliament but no longer serve as a member of the Conservative party.

Rudd blasted Johnson for his decision to expel 21 members of the Conservative Party for opposing his plans to leave the European Union by the October 31st deadline, with or without a deal. Among those he kicked out were senior members of parliament, including Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, and Ken Clarke, the longest serving member of Parliament. Some were notified of their firing via text message.

“This short sighted culling of my colleagues has stripped the Party of broad-minded and dedicated Conservative MPs. I cannot support this act of political vandalism,” Rudd said.

Rudd’s announcement follows a tumultuous week in parliament over Johnson’s Brexit strategy. The controversial plan pushed Johnson’s own brother, Jo Johnson, to step down from parliament, saying he was “torn between family loyalty and the national interest.” Johnson’s Conservative Party also lost MP Phillip Lee, who defected to join the Liberal Democrats. By the end of the week, Johnson had lost his parliamentary majority.

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Rudd has been a member of Parliament since 2010. She represents Hastings and Rye, and voted to remain in the E.U. in the 2016 referendum.

Her denunciations of Johnson’s Brexit strategy echoed the criticisms voiced by members of the opposition Labour Party, and even many members of the Conservatives.

Rudd said she no longer believes “leaving with a deal is the government’s main objective,” adding, “The government is expending a lot of energy to prepare for ‘No Deal’ but I have not seen the same level of intensity go into our talks with the European Union who have asked us to present alternatives to the Irish backstop.”

Last week, the Parliament passed a bill that prevents Britain from leaving the E.U. without a deal. Queen Elizabeth is expected to approve the measure on Monday.

In response, Johnson is calling for snap elections on October 15^th to try and form a majority in Parliament to support his plans to meet the Brexit deadline. Opposition parties oppose his bid for new elections, and say they will veto it.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, photographed in 2017, six years after three reactors melted down.

Three former Japanese utility executives responsible for the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant when it was smashed by a tsunami in 2011 were acquitted Thursday of negligence in connection with multiple reactor meltdowns at the station.

Former Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 79, and former vice chairmen Sakae Muto, 69, and Ichiro Takekuro, 73, were found not guilty in Tokyo District Court. Theirs was the only criminal trial to result from the nuclear disaster, considered second in scope only to the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union.

Prosecutors alleged that the trio failed to act on recommendations for additional safety measures at Fukushima in case of a major tsunami. The defendants pleaded not guilty.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata (center) and others bow before a news conference at the company’s head office in Tokyo days after the nuclear disaster.

Although a 2002 government report posited a tsunami similar in size to the 46-foot waves triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011, the three former executives argued that the data were not reliable and that they could not have predicted such a catastrophic natural disaster.

There has been only one death attributed directly to the three meltdowns that caused the area surrounding the plant to be contaminated. But prosecutors sought to hold the former TEPCO executives liable for 44 elderly patients in a nearby hospital who died during an evacuation caused by the disaster.

Last year, prosecutors called for five-year prison sentences for each of the three defendants. “It was easy to safeguard the plant against tsunami, but they kept operating the plant heedlessly,” the prosecutors said at the time, according to The Asahi Shimbun. “That led to the deaths of many people.”

The giant waves that struck the coast in 2011 overwhelmed a seawall at the plant meant to protect backup generators needed to run cooling pumps in case of a loss of main power. After battery backups were depleted, the pumps stopped and the reactors overheated, causing a buildup of hydrogen, an explosion and subsequent meltdown of the reactor cores.

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An editorial published Thursday in The Asahi Shimbun said that Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority had decided to reopen an investigation into the Fukushima disaster after suspending it five years ago.

“Since it is still impossible to scrutinize conditions inside the reactors, the investigation is unlikely to clarify the entire picture,” the editorial said. “Still, even a limited investigation offers the prospect of important lessons and insights.”

The quake and tsunami along Japan’s northeast coast killed more than 18,000 people and the Fukushima disaster caused some 160,000 people to be evacuated from a 12-mile radius around the plant. Some are still not allowed to return to their homes.