MILAN (AP) — Global sales of personal luxury goods are ”slowing down but not collapsing,” according to a Bain & Co. consultancy study released Thursday.
Personal luxury goods sales that eroded to 364 billion euros ($419 billion) in 2024 are projected to slide by another 2% to 5% this year, the study said, citing threats of U.S. tariffs and geopolitical tensions triggering economic slowdowns.
“Still, to be positive in a difficult moment — with three wars, economies slowing down, inequality at a maximum ever — it’s not a market in collapse,’’ said Bain partner and co-author of the study Claudia D’Arpizio. “It is slowing down but not collapsing.”
Alongside external headwinds, luxury brands have alienated consumers with an ongoing creativity crisis and sharp price increases, Bain said. Buyers have also been turned off by recent investigations in Italy that revealed that sweatshop conditions in subcontractors making luxury handbags.
Sales are slipping sharply in powerhouse markets the United States and China, the study showed. In the U.S., market volatility due to tariffs has discouraged consumer confidence. China has recorded six quarters of contraction on low consumer confidence.
The Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia are recording growth. Europe is mostly flat, the study showed.
This has created a sharp divergence between brands that continue with strong creative and earnings growth, such as the Prada Group, which posted a 13% first-quarter jump in revenue to 1.34 billion euros, and brands like Gucci, where revenue was down 24% to 1.6 billion euros in the same period.
Gucci owner Kering last week hired Italian automotive executive Luca De Meo, the former CEO of Renault, to mount a turnaround. The decision comes as three of its brands — Gucci, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta — are launching new creative directors.
Kering’s stock surged 12% on news of the appointment. D’Arpizio underlined his track record, returning French carmaker Renault to profitability and previous roles as marketing director at Volkswagen and Fiat.
“All of these factors resonate well together in a market like luxury when you are in a phase where growth is still the name of the game, but you also need to make the company more nimble in terms of costs, and turn around some of the brands,’’ she said.
Brands are also making changes to minimize the impact of possible U.S. tariffs. These include shipping directly from production sites and not warehouses and reducing stock in stores.
With aesthetic changes afoot “stuffing the channels doesn’t make a lot of sense,’’ D’Arpizio said.
Still, many of the headwinds buffering the sector are out of companies’ control.
“Many of these (negative) aspects are not going to change soon. What can change is more clarity on the tariffs, but I don’t think we will stop the wars or the political instability in a few months,’’ she said, adding that luxury consumer confidence is tied more closely to stock market trends than geopolitics.
President of Italian luxury brand association Altagamma Matteo Lunelli underlined hat the sector recorded overall growth of 28% from 2019-2024, “placing us well above pre-pandemic levels.”
While luxury spending is sensitive to global turmoil, it is historically quick to rebound, powered by new markets and pent-up demand.
The 2008-2009 financial crisis plummeted sales of luxury apparel, handbags and footwear from 161 billion euros to 147 billion euros over two years. The market more than recovered the losses in 2010 as it rebounded by 14%, with an acceleration in the Chinese market. Similarly, after sales plunged by 21% during the pandemic, pent-up spending powered sales to new records.
BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — Israel’s defense minister threatened Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday after the latest missile barrage from Iran damaged the main hospital in southern Israel and hit several other residential buildings near Tel Aviv. Israel meanwhile struck a heavy water reactor that is part of Iran’s nuclear program.
At least 240 people were wounded by the Iranian missiles, four of them seriously, according to Israel’s Health Ministry. The vast majority were lightly wounded, including more than 70 people from the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba, where smoke rose as emergency teams evacuated patients.
In the aftermath of the strikes, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”
U.S. officials said this week that President Donald Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei. Trump later said there were no plans to kill him “at least not for now.”
Israel carried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, in its latest attack on the country’s sprawling nuclear program. The conflict began last Friday with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting military sites, senior officers and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired over 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds.
Meanwhile, an Israeli military official said that Iran used a missile with multiple warheads in an attack Thursday, posing a new challenge to its defenses.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
There was no immediate independent analysis that could be made. However, Iran has hinted in the past that it was pursuing such weaponry.
Instead of having to track one warhead, missiles with multiple warheads can pose a more difficult challenge for air defense systems, like Israel’s Iron Dome.
Missile hits main hospital in southern Israel
Two doctors told The Associated Press that the missile struck almost immediately after air raid sirens went off, causing a loud explosion that could be heard from a safe room. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
The hospital said the main impact was on an old surgery building that had been evacuated in recent days. After the strike, the medical facility was closed to all patients except for life-threatening cases, it said. Soroka has over 1,000 beds and provides services to around 1 million residents of Israel’s south.
There were no serious injuries from the strike on the hospital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and vowed a response, saying: “We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, though most have been shot down by Israel’s multi-tiered air defenses, which detect incoming fire and shoot down missiles heading toward population centers and critical infrastructure. Israeli officials acknowledge it is imperfect.
Many hospitals in Israel activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to hospital floors and moving patients underground, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly.
Israel’s military said its fighter jets targeted the Arak facility and its reactor core seal in order to prevent it from being used to produce plutonium.
“The strike targeted the component intended for plutonium production, in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development,” the military said. Israel separately claimed to have struck another site around Natanz it described as being related to Iran’s nuclear program.
Iranian state TV said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” from the attack on the Arak site. An Iranian state television reporter, speaking live in the nearby town of Khondab, said the facility had been evacuated and there was no damage to civilian areas around the reactor.
Israel had warned earlier Thursday morning it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.
Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program
Iran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes. However, it also enriches uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich at that level.
Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East but does not acknowledge having such weapons.
The strikes came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel had lifted some restrictions on daily life Wednesday, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he would travel to Geneva for meetings with his European counterparts on Friday, indicating a new diplomatic initiative might be taking shape. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the meeting would include foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany and the European Union’s top diplomat.
Trump has said he wants something “much bigger” that a ceasefire and has not ruled out the U.S. joining in Israel’s campaign. Iran has warned of dire consequences if the U.S. deepens its involvement, without elaborating.
Arak had been redesigned to address nuclear concerns
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility over proliferation concerns.
The reactor became a point of contention after President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high-ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran bought extra parts to replace a portion of the reactor that it had poured concrete into to render it unusable under the deal.
Israel, in conducting its strike, signaled it remained concerned the facility could be used to produce plutonium again one day.
“The strike targeted the component intended for plutonium production, in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
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By SAM MEDNICK, NATALIE MELZER, and JON GAMBRELL. Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed.
LONDON (AP) — Google faced a big setback Thursday in its attempt to overturn a multibillion-dollar European Union antitrust penalty involving Android after a top court’s legal adviser sided with regulators.
The European Court of Justice’s advocate general, Juliane Kokott, recommended in a non-binding opinion that Google’s appeal against the fine worth more than 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) should be dismissed.
The case dates back to 2018, when the EU’s executive Commission slapped Google with a 4.134 billion euro fine after finding that the U.S. tech company used the dominance of its mobile Android operating system to throttle competition and reduce consumer choice.
After Google filed an initial appeal, a lower court trimmed the penalty to 4.125 billion euros in 2022, which the company also appealed to the Court of Justice.
Kokott advised that the Court of Justice confirm the fine and uphold the lower court’s judgment, according to a press release summarizing her opinion.
Google said it was disappointed with the opinion, adding that if the court follows it, it “would discourage investment in open platforms and harm Android users, partners and app developers.”
″Android has created more choice for everyone and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world,” the company said in a statement.
Opinions from the advocate general aren’t legally binding but are often followed by judges.
The judges “are now beginning their deliberations in this case. Judgment will be given at a later date,” the court said.
The fine was one of three antitrust penalties totaling more than 8 billion euros that the European Commission slapped on Google in the last decade, as the 27-nation bloc launched its crackdown on Big Tech companies.
Google still faces a decision from Brussels in an antitrust case targeting its digital ad business.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative artificial intelligence will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years as the online giant begins to increase its usage of the technology.
“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said in a message to employees. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
The executive said that Amazon has more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure is a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.
Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the e-commerce company’s AI plans.
“As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team’s brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams,” he said.
Earlier this month Amazon announced that it was planning to invest $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products.
The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has meanwhile fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. Amazon said earlier this month that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania.
In March Amazon began testing artificial intelligence-aided dubbing for select movies and shows offered on its Prime streaming service. A month earlier, the company rolled out a generative-AI infused Alexa.
Amazon has also invested more heavily in AI. In November the company said that it was investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Two months earlier chipmaker Intel said that its foundry business would make some custom artificial intelligence chips for Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon’s cloud computing unit and a main driver of its artificial intelligence ambitions.
“There was finally a sense of calm,’’ said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
That respite didn’t last long.
On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.’’
The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s actual policy, and Shi says now “there’s fear and worry once more.”
“That’s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally — an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.
Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,’’ said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration.
One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. “You can’t turn off cows,’’ said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.’’
Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they’re in the country legally or not — have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center.
“They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,” Gonzalez said. “They kind of feel like it’s based on skin color.”
In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards.
“We’ve not heard of any real raids,’’ said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington’s Wenatchee River Valley. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.’’
Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t show up for work.’’
The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
It was another case of Trump’s political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry.
“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference.
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars.
The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of U.S. registered voters — including 59% of Trump supporters — agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens don’t want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping into recession.
In the past, economists estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.
Now Trump’s deportation plans — and the uncertainty around them — are weighing on businesses and the economy.
“The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor — skilled, hardworking people who’ve been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,” says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. “ We’re not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they’ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.”
Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: “ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work … All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.’’
The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security ‘s trust funds have moved up as rising health care costs and new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to earlier projected depletion dates, according to an annual report released Wednesday.
The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.
Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.
The trustees say the latest findings show the urgency of needed changes to the programs, which have faced dire financial projections for decades. But making changes to the programs has long been politically unpopular, and lawmakers have repeatedly kicked Social Security and Medicare’s troubling math to the next generation.
President Donald Trump and other Republicans have vowed not to make any cuts to Medicare or Social Security, even as they seek to shrink the federal government’s expenditures.
Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano, sworn into his role in May, said in a statement that “the financial status of the trust funds remains a top priority for the Trump Administration.” A common misconception is that Social Security would be completely unable to pay benefits once it reaches its go-broke date.
“Current-law projections indicate that Medicare still faces a substantial financial shortfall that needs to be addressed with further legislation. Such legislation should be enacted sooner rather than later to minimize the impact on beneficiaries, providers, and taxpayers,” the trustees state in the report.
The trustees are made up of six people — the Treasury Secretary serves as managing trustee, alongside the secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the commissioner of Social Security. Two other presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed trustees serve as public representatives, however those roles have been vacant since July 2015.
About 68 million people are enrolled in Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance that covers those 65 and older, as well as people with severe disabilities or illnesses.
Wednesday’s report shows a worsening situation for the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund compared to last year. But the forecasted go-broke date of 2033 is still later than the dates of 2031, 2028 and 2026 predicted just a few years ago.
Once the fund’s reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients’ hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.
The report said expenses last year for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund came in higher than expected.
Income exceeded expenditures by nearly $29 billion last year for the hospital insurance trust fund, the report stated. Trustees expect that surplus to continue through 2027. Deficits then will follow until the fund becomes depleted in 2033.
A payroll tax on covered earnings provides the main funding for the hospital insurance trust fund. Future expenses paid by the fund are expected to increase at a faster pace than earnings.
Legislation is needed to change those tax rates.
The report states that the Social Security Social Security Fairness Act, enacted in January, which repealed the Windfall Elimination and Government Pension Offset provisions of the Social Security Act and increased Social Security benefit levels for some workers, had an impact on the depletion date of SSA’s trust funds.
Romina Boccia, a director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the libertarian CATO Institute called the repeal of the provisions “a political giveaway masquerading as reform. Instead of tackling Social Security’s structural imbalances, Congress chose to increase benefits for a vocal minority—accelerating trust fund insolvency.”
“It’s a clear sign that populist pressure now outweighs fiscal responsibility and economic sanity on both sides of the aisle,” She said. “Pair that with a Republican reconciliation bill that increases tax giveaways while refusing to rein in even the most dubious Medicaid expansions, and the message is unmistakable: Washington is still in giveaway mode.”
AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said “Congress must act to protect and strengthen the Social Security that Americans have earned and paid into throughout their working lives.” “More than 69 million Americans rely on Social Security today and as America’s population ages, the stability of this vital program only becomes more important.”
Social Security benefits were last reformed roughly 40 years ago, when the federal government raised the eligibility age for the program from 65 to 67. The eligibility age has never changed for Medicare, with people eligible for the medical coverage when they turn 65.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the popular public benefit program said in a statement that “there are two options for action: Bringing more money into Social Security, or reducing benefits. Any politician who doesn’t support increasing Social Security’s revenue is, by default, supporting benefit cuts.”
Congressional Budget Office reporting has stated that the biggest drivers of debt rising in relation to GDP are increasing interest costs and spending for Medicare and Social Security. An aging population drives those numbers.
Several legislative proposals have been put forward to address Social Security’s impending insolvency.
The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security’s trust funds have moved up as rising health care costs and new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to closer projected depletion dates. That's according to an annual report released Wednesday.
The U.S. has approved the world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, the first step in an anticipated global rollout that could protect millions – although it’s unclear how many in the U.S. and abroad will get access to the powerful new option.
While a vaccine to prevent HIV still is needed, some experts say the shot made by Gilead Sciences — a drug called lenacapavir — could be the next best thing. It nearly eliminated new infections in two groundbreaking studies of people at high risk, better than daily preventive pills they can forget to take.
“This really has the possibility of ending HIV transmission,” said Greg Millett, public policy director at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.
Condoms help guard against HIV infection if used properly but what’s called PrEP — regularly using preventive medicines such as the daily pills or a different shot given every two months — is increasingly important. Lenacapavir’s six-month protection makes it the longest-lasting type, an option that could attract people wary of more frequent doctor visits or stigma from daily pills.
Millett said “gaping holes in the system” in the U.S. and globally “are going to make it difficult for us to make sure we not only get lenacapavir into people’s bodies but make sure they come back” twice a year to keep up their protection.
Gilead’s drug already is sold to treat HIV under the brand name Sunlenca. The prevention dose will be sold under a different name, Yeztugo. It’s given as two injections under the skin of the abdomen, leaving a small “depot” of medication to slowly absorb into the body. People must test negative for HIV before getting their twice-a-year dose, Gilead warned. It only prevents HIV transmission — it doesn’t block other sexually transmitted diseases. Some researchers who helped test the shot advise cold packs to counter injection-site pain.
Global efforts at ending the HIV pandemic by 2030 have stalled. There still are more than 30,000 new infections in the U.S. each year and about 1.3 million worldwide.
Only about 400,000 Americans already use some form of PrEP, a fraction of those estimated to benefit. A recent study found states with high use of PrEP saw a decrease in HIV infections, while rates continued rising elsewhere.
About half of new infections are in women, who often need protection they can use without a partner’s knowledge or consent. One rigorous study in South Africa and Uganda compared more than 5,300 sexually active young women and teen girls given twice-yearly lenacapavir or the daily pills. There were no HIV infections in those receiving the shot while about 2% in the comparison group caught HIV from infected sex partners.
A second study found the twice-yearly shot nearly as effective in gay men and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S. and in several other countries hard-hit by HIV.
Ian Haddock of Houston had tried PrEP off and on since 2015 but he jumped at the chance to participate in the lenacapavir study and continues with the twice-yearly shots as part of the research follow-up.
“Now I forget that I’m on PrEP because I don’t have to carry around a pill bottle,” said Haddock, who leads the Normal Anomaly Initiative, a nonprofit serving Black LGBTQ+ communities.
“Men, women, gay, straight – it really just kinds of expands the opportunity for prevention,” he added. Just remembering a clinic visit every six months “is a powerful tool versus constantly having to talk about, like, condoms, constantly making sure you’re taking your pill every day.”
Gilead said the U.S. list price, meaning before insurance, is $28,218 a year, which it called similar to some other PrEP options. The company said it anticipated insurance coverage but also has some financial assistance programs.
Most private insurers are supposed to cover PrEP options without a co-pay although the Supreme Court is considering a case that could overturn that requirement. Congress also is considering huge cuts to Medicaid. And while community health centers still are an option, the Trump administration has largely dismantled HIV prevention work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that would normally get the message to vulnerable populations who’d qualify for the shot, said Carl Schmid of the nonprofit HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute.
Schmid worries the shot won’t meet its potential because “we’re basically pulling the rug out of HIV prevention and testing and outreach programs.”
Gilead also has applications pending for the twice-yearly shot in other countries. Last fall, the company signed agreements with six generic drug makers to produce low-cost versions of the shot for 120 poor countries mostly in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Gilead plans to make enough shots to supply 2 million people in those countries, at no profit, until the generics are available, said company senior vice president Dr. Jared Baeten.
Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, said in a statement the price is still too high. If it’s unaffordable, she said, “it will change nothing.”
And HIV experts worry the arrangements Gilead has made to reduce costs in some countries leave out middle-income countries like some in Latin America.
“Everyone in every country who’s at risk of HIV needs access to PrEP,” said Dr. Gordon Crofoot of Houston, who helped lead the study in men. “We need to get easier access to PrEP that’s highly effective like this is.”
Southern Mexico’s Pacific coast was braced for a Thursday morning impact with the approach of Hurricane Erick, which was upgraded to an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 early Thursday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The major storm threatens to unleash destructive winds near where the eye crashes ashore, flash floods and a dangerous storm surge, forecasters said.
The Miami-based center reported Erick was about 70 miles (110 kilometers) west-southwest of Puerto Angel, Mexico, and about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Punta Maldonado, Mexico. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 145 mph (230 kph) and was moving northwest at 9 mph (15 kph).
A hurricane is defined as Category 4 when wind speeds reach 130-156 mph (209-251 kph).
Storm moves south on approach
Late Wednesday, Erick’s projected path crept south, closer to the resort city of Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca state, and centered on a sparsely populated stretch of coastline between the Oaxacan resort and Acapulco to the northwest.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a video message Wednesday night that all activities in the region were suspended and she urged people to stay in their homes or to move to shelters if they lived in low-lying areas.
Waves were crashing onto the esplanade in Puerto Escondido by nightfall, swamping wooden fishing boats that had been pulled up there for safety. The beach disappeared under pounding waves and the rising tide had already reached the interiors of some waterfront restaurants.
Last-minute purchases ended at nightfall as stores closed and the streets emptied.
Earlier in the day, fishermen in Puerto Escondido pulled their boats out of the water ahead of the storm’s arrival. Some surfers continued to ride waves at the Zicatela beach, even with red flags up to warn people to stay out of the water.
The storm’s course shift could be welcome relief for residents of storm-battered Acapulco.
The city of nearly 1 million was devastated in October 2023 by Hurricane Otis, a Category 5 hurricane that rapidly intensified and caught many unprepared. At least 52 people died in Otis and the storm severely damaged almost all of the resort’s hotels.
Acapulco still scarred by Otis
Acapulco residents said they were bracing for Erick’s arrival with more preparation and trepidation because of the memory of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Otis two years earlier.
Guerrero state Gov. Evelyn Salgado said via X that all movement in Acapulco and other beach communities was to be suspended at 8 p.m. Schools across the state were to remain closed for a second day Thursday.
Carlos Ozuna Romero, 51, lost his restaurant at the edge of an Acapulco beach when Otis slammed the resort with devastating winds. On Wednesday, he directed workers storing tables and chairs.
“Authorities’ warnings fill us with fear and obviously make us remember everything we’ve already been through,” Ozuna Romero said in reference to Otis.
Elsewhere, workers nailed sheets of plywood over shop windows and stacked sandbags outside doorways. Cars lined up to fill their tanks and shoppers made last-minute purchases before rushing home.
Verónica Gómez struggled through the streets of Acapulco with a large jug of water. “We’re all afraid because we think the same thing could happen,” said the 40-year-old employee of a shipping company.
But she said she and others learned a lot from Otis. “Now it’s not going to catch us by surprise,” she said, holding out a bag of canned food as evidence.
In Acapulco on Wednesday, there was a strong presence of National Guard and police in the streets, but most visible were trucks from the national power company. Crews worked to clear drainage canals and brush.
Rain could be Erick’s legacy
Forecasters said Erick was expected to lash Mexico’s Pacific coast with heavy rain, strong winds and a fierce storm surge. Rains of up to 16 inches (40 centimeters) could fall across the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, with lesser totals in Chiapas, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states, the center’s advisory said. The rainfall threatened flooding and mudslides, especially in areas with steep terrain.
A hurricane warning was in effect from Acapulco to Puerto Ángel. A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected in the area, and preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion, according to the hurricane center advisory.
Laura Velázquez, Mexico’s national civil defense coordinator, said Erick was forecast to bring “torrential” rains to Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas in southern Mexico. The mountainous region along the coast is especially prone to mudslides with numerous rivers at risk of flooding.
Guerrero Gov. Evelyn Salgado said all schools would remain closed and the state had alerted all of the fishing and tourism operators to make their boats storm-ready. Acapulco’s port closed Tuesday evening. Salgado said 582 shelters were set to receive people who might evacuate their homes.
Sheinbaum warned in her daily briefing that those in the hurricane’s path should heed government instructions and wait out the storm in their homes or designated shelters.
Erick quickly doubled in strength
Having doubled in strength in less than a day, Erick was churning through an ideal environment for quick intensification. Last year, there were 34 incidents of rapid intensification — when a storm gains at least 35 mph in 24 hours — which is about twice as many as average and causes problems with forecasting, according to the hurricane center.
The department said consular officers will be on the lookout for posts and messages that could be deemed hostile to the United States, its government, culture, institutions or founding principles.
In a notice made public Wednesday, the department said it had rescinded its May suspension of student visa processing but said new applicants who refuse to set their social media accounts to “public” and allow them to be reviewed may be rejected. It said a refusal to do so could be a sign they are trying to evade the requirement or hide their online activity.
The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while preparing to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said.
Students around the world have been waiting anxiously for U.S. consulates to reopen appointments for visa interviews, as the window left to book their travel and make housing arrangements narrows ahead of the start of the school year.
On Wednesday afternoon, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student in Toronto was able to secure an appointment for a visa interview next week. The student, a Chinese national, hopes to travel to the U.S. for a research internship that would start in late July. “I’m really relieved,” said the student, who spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname, Chen, because he was concerned about being targeted. “I’ve been refreshing the website couple of times every day.”
Students from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines have posted on social media sites that they have been monitoring visa booking websites and closely watching press briefings of the State Department to get any indication of when appointment scheduling might resume.
In reopening the visa process, the State Department also told consulates to prioritize students hoping to enroll at colleges where foreigners make up less than 15% of the student body, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail information that has not been made public.
Foreign students make up more than 15% of the total student body at almost 200 U.S. universities, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data from 2023. Most are private universities, including all eight Ivy League schools. But that criteria also includes 26 public universities, including the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. Looking only at undergraduate students, foreign students make up more than 15% of the population at about 100 universities, almost all of them private.
International students in the U.S. have been facing increased scrutiny on several fronts. In the spring, the Trump administration revoked permission to study in the U.S. for thousands of students, including some involved only in traffic offenses, before abruptly reversing course. The government also expanded the grounds on which foreign students can have their legal status terminated.
As part of a pressure campaign targeting Harvard University, the Trump administration has moved to block foreign students from attending the Ivy League school, which counts on international students for tuition dollars and a quarter of its enrollment. Trump has said Harvard should cap its foreign enrollment at 15%.
This latest move to vet students’ social media, the State Department said Wednesday, “will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.”
In internal guidance sent to consular officers, the department said they should be looking for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy evokes the ideological vetting of the Cold War, when prominent artists and intellectuals were excluded from the U.S.
“This policy makes a censor of every consular officer, and it will inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States,” Jaffer said.
The Trump administration also has called for 36 countries to commit to improving vetting of travelers or face a ban on their citizens visiting the United States. A weekend diplomatic cable sent by the State Department says the countries have 60 days to address U.S. concerns or risk being added to a travel ban that now includes 12 nations.
Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel said Wednesday they have finalized their “historic partnership,” a deal that gives the U.S. government a say in some matters and comes a year-and-a-half after the Japanese company first proposed its nearly $15 billion buyout of the iconic American steelmaker.
The pursuit by Nippon Steel for the Pittsburgh-based company was buffeted by national security concerns and presidential politics in a premier battleground state, dragging out the transaction for more than a year after U.S. Steel shareholders approved it.
It also forced Nippon Steel to expand the deal, including adding a so-called “golden share” provision that gives the federal government the power to appoint a board member and a say in company decisions that affect domestic steel production and competition with overseas producers.
“Together, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel will be a world-leading steelmaker, with best-in-class technologies and manufacturing capabilities,” the companies said.
The combined company will become the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker in an industry dominated by the Chinese, and bring what analysts say is Nippon Steel’s top-notch technology to U.S. Steel’s antiquated steelmaking processes, plus a commitment to invest $11 billion to upgrade U.S. Steel facilities.
In exchange, Nippon Steel gets access to a robust U.S. steel market, strengthened in recent years by tariffs under President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, analysts say.
Anthony Rapa, a Blank Rome lawyer in Washington who advises firms on trade, operations and investments, said the government’s intervention in the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel deal is another sign of a trend that the U.S. is increasingly equating economic security with national security.
He doesn’t see the government’s intervention as chilling foreign investment and said a “golden share” mechanism — to the extent it’s used again by the U.S. to ease national security concerns — is likely to emerge only in sensitive and complex cases.
Still, the episode could cause investors to be more strategic in how they approach transactions, Rapa said.
Anil Khurana, executive director of the Baratta Center for Global Business at Georgetown University, said the U.S. government’s interest in the deal is a sign of the growing importance it places on economic competition with China.
“Clearly the definition of what is national security has expanded to included national economic security, which is where I think this comes in,” Khurana said.
But in a statement Wednesday, the companies said the federal government will have the right to appoint an independent director and get “consent rights” on specific matters.
Those include reductions in Nippon Steel’s capital commitments in the national security agreement; changing U. S. Steel’s name and headquarters; closing or idling U.S. Steel’s plants; transferring production or jobs outside of the U.S.; buying competing businesses in the U.S.; and certain decisions on trade, labor and sourcing outside the U.S.
Nippon Steel announced in December 2023 that it planned to buy the steel producer for $14.9 billion in cash and debt, and committed to keep the U.S. Steel name and Pittsburgh headquarters.
The United Steelworkers union, which represents some U.S. Steel employees, opposed the deal, and Biden and Trump both vowed from the campaign trail to block it.
Biden used his authority to block Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel on his way out of the White House after a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
After he was elected, Trump changed course, expressing openness to working out an arrangement and ordering another review by the committee.
That’s when the idea of the “golden share” emerged as a way to resolve national security concerns and protect American interests in domestic steel production.
As it sought to win over American officials, Nippon Steel began adding commitments. Those included putting U.S. Steel under a board made up of a majority of Americans and a management team of Americans.
It pledged not to conduct layoffs or plant closings as a result of the transaction or to import steel slabs to compete with U.S. Steel’s blast furnaces in Braddock, Pennsylvania and Gary, Indiana.
In the final agreement, it pledged to produce and supply U.S. Steel from domestic sources — such as mining operations in Minnesota — and to allow U. S. Steel to pursue trade actions under U.S. law.
It also made a series of bigger capital commitments in U.S. Steel facilities, tallying $11 billion through 2028, it said.
Nippon Steel said its annual crude steel production capacity is expected to reach 86 million tons, closer to its goal of 100 million tons.
The United Steelworkers on Wednesday noted that its current labor agreement with U.S. Steel expires in 2026.
“Rest assured, if our job security, pensions, retiree health care or other hard-earned benefits are threatened, we are ready to respond with the full strength and solidarity of our membership,” its international president, David McCall, said in a statement.
The Federal Reserve kept its key rate unchanged Wednesday as it waits for additional information on how tariffs and other potential disruptions will affect the economy this year.
The Fed’s policymakers signaled they still expect to cut rates twice this year, even as they also project that President Donald Trump’s import duties will push inflation higher. They also expect growth to slow and unemployment to edge up, according to their latest quarterly projections released Wednesday.
Fed policymakers had cut their rate three times late last year but have since have been on hold. Inflation has cooled steadily since January, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference that tariffs are likely to reverse that progress and push inflation higher in the coming months. The Fed expects the bump to inflation will be temporary, but they want to see more data to be sure.
“Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity,” Powell said. “This is something we know is coming, we just don’t know the size of it.”
Changes to the Fed’s rate typically — though not always — influence borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and business loans.
So far inflation has continued to decline while some cracks have appeared in the economy, particularly in housing, where elevated borrowing costs are slowing sales and homebuilding. Hiring has also slowed. Such trends would typically lead the Fed to reduce its key rate, which is currently at about 4.3%.
Yet Powell said the economy remains in good shape and the Fed has to consider the potential for prices to rise soon.
“You can see perhaps a very, very slow continued cooling” in the job market, “but nothing that’s troubling at this time,” he said.
“We have to be forward looking,” Powell said later. “We expect a meaningful amount of inflation to arrive in coming months and we have to take that into account.”
Powell also said the Fed will learn much more over the summer about how tariffs will affect the economy. George Pearkes, global macro strategist for Bespoke Investment Group, said he interpreted that to mean the Fed won’t cut until September, at the earliest. Its next meeting is in July.
“Unless we see a really, really rapid deterioration in the labor market we won’t see a cut until September, and maybe not even then,” he said.
Wall Street investors currently expect the Fed to cut in September, according to futures prices tracked by CME Fedwatch.
Fed officials see inflation, according to their preferred measure, rising to 3% by the end of this year, from 2.1% in April, according to the projections released Wednesday. They also project the unemployment rate will rise to 4.5%, from 4.2% currently. Growth is expected to slow to just 1.4% this year, down from 2.5% last year.
Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Fed economist, said that the projections show that policymakers do expect inflation to come down in 2026 and 2027, with the tariffs having just a temporary impact. Without the duties, officials would be more likely to cut rates soon, she said.
“The Fed seems to be in agreement that this will be temporary, but they don’t have high enough conviction yet,” she said.
So far, inflation has cooled this year to just 2.1% in April, essentially back at the central bank’s target of 2%. Core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, remains elevated at 2.5%.
Trump has pointed to the mild inflation figures to argue that the Fed should lower borrowing costs and has repeatedly criticized Powell for not doing so. On Wednesday he called Powell “stupid” and accused him of being “political” for not cutting rates.
“So we have no inflation, we have only success,” Trump said, before the Fed announced its decision. “And I’d like to see interest rates get down.”
Trump has previously argued that a rate cut would boost the economy. Now his focus has shifted to the federal government’s borrowing costs, which have shot higher since the pandemic, with interest payments running at an annual rate of more than $1 trillion.
Pushing the Fed to cut rates simply to save the government on its interest payments typically raises alarms among economists, because it would threaten the Fed’s congressional mandate to focus on stable prices and maximum employment.
One of Trump’s complaints is that the Fed isn’t cutting rates even as other central banks around the world have reduced their borrowing costs, including in Europe, Canada, and the U.K. On Tuesday, the Bank of Japan kept its key short-term rate unchanged at 0.5%, after actually raising it recently.
But the European Central Bank, Bank of Canada, and Bank of England have reduced their rates this year in part because U.S. tariffs are weakening their economies. So far the U.S. economy is mostly solid, with the unemployment rate low.
The Bank of England has cut its rate twice this year but is expected to keep it unchanged at 4.25% when it meets Thursday.
Tax credits for clean energy and home energy efficiency would still be phased out, albeit less quickly, under Senate Republicans’ latest proposed changes to a massive tax bill. Electric vehicle incentives and other provisions intended to move the United States away from fossil fuels would be gutted rapidly.
Senate Republicans cast their version of the bill as less damaging to the clean energy industry than the version House Republicans passed last month, but Democrats and advocates criticized it, saying it would still have significant consequences for wind, solar and other projects.
Ultimately, wherever Congress ends up could have a big impact on consumers, companies and others that were depending on tax credits for green energy investments. It could also impact long-term how quickly America transitions to renewable energies.
“They want everybody to believe that after the flawed House bill, that they have come up with a much more moderate climate approach,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the finance committee, during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
“The reality is, if the early projections on the clean energy cuts are accurate, the Senate Republican bill does almost 90%” as much damage as the House proposal, added Wyden, who authored clean energy tax credits included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed during former President Joe Biden’s term. “Let’s not get too serious about this new Senate bill being a kinder, gentler approach.”
The Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing investor-owned electric companies, issued a statement applauding the Senate proposal for including “more reasonable timelines for phasing out energy tax credits.”
“These modifications are a step in the right direction,” said the statement from Pat Vincent-Collawn, the institute’s interim chief executive officer, adding that the changes balance “business certainty with fiscal responsibility.”
Whether all of the changes will be enacted into law isn’t clear yet. The Senate can still modify its proposals before they go to a vote. Any conflicts in the draft legislation will have to be sorted out with the House as the GOP looks to fast-track the bill for a vote by President Donald Trump’s imminent Fourth of July target.
Notably, many Republicans in Congress have advocated to protect the clean-energy credits, which have overwhelmingly benefited Republican congressional districts. A report by the Atlas Public Policy research firm found that 77% of planned spending on credit-eligible projects are in GOP-held House districts.
The clean energy tax credits stem from Biden’s climate law, which aimed to boost to the nation’s transition away from planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and toward renewable energy such as wind and solar power.
The House version of the bill took an ax to many of the credits and effectively made it impossible for wind and solar providers to meet the requirements and timelines necessary to qualify for the incentives. After the House vote, 13 House Republicans lobbied the Senate to preserve some of the clean energy incentives that GOP lawmakers had voted to erase.
The Senate proposal further “achieves significant savings by slashing Green New Deal spending and targeting waste, fraud and abuse in spending programs while preserving and protecting them for the most vulnerable,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho and chairman of the committee.
On the chopping block are tax credits for residential rooftop solar installations, ending within 180 days of passage, and a subsidy for hydrogen production. Federal credits for wind and solar would have a longer phaseout than in the House version, but it would still be difficult for developers to meet the rules for beginning construction in order to receive the credit.
At the same time, it would boost support for geothermal, nuclear and hydropower projects that begin construction by 2033.
“The bill will strip the ability of millions of American families to choose the energy savings, energy resilience, and energy freedom that solar and storage provide,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “If this bill passes as is, we cannot ensure an affordable, reliable and secure energy system.”
Opponents of the Senate’s text also decry domestic manufacturing job and economic losses as a result.
“This is a 20-pound sledgehammer swung at clean energy. It would mean higher energy prices, lost manufacturing jobs, shuttered factories, and a worsening climate crisis,” said Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Home energy efficiency credits and EVs
The bill would also cancel incentives such as the Energy Efficient Home Improvement credit — which helps homeowners make improvements such as insulation or heating and cooling systems that reduce their energy usage and energy bills — 180 days after enactment. An incentive for builders constructing new energy-efficient homes and apartments would end 12 months after signing. The House’s proposed end date for both is Dec. 31.
“Canceling these credits would increase monthly bills for American families and businesses,” Steven Nadel, executive director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy said in a statement.
The Senate proposal moves up the timeline for ending the consumer electric vehicle tax credit from the end of this year to 180 days after passage. It also cuts the provision that would have extended until the end of 2026 a credit for automakers that had not made 200,000 qualifying EVs for U.S. sale. It would also immediately eliminate the $7,500 credit for leased EVs.
This administration has staunchly gone after EVs amid Trump’s targeting of what he calls a “mandate,” incorrectly referring to a Biden-era target for half of new vehicle sales by 2030 be electric.
Nicholas Hartnett, owner of Pure Power Solar, carries a panel as he and Brian Hoeppner, right, install a solar array on the roof of a home in Frankfort, Ky., July 17, 2023.
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week to extend a deadline for TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the popular video sharing app, the White House announced Tuesday.
Trump had signed an order in early April to keep TikTok running for an additional 75 days after a potential deal to sell the app to American owners was put on ice.
“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”
Trump had told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew back to Washington early Tuesday from the Group of Seven summit in Canada that he “probably” would extend the deadline again.
Trump also said he thinks Chinese President Xi Jinping will “ultimately approve” a deal to divest TikTok’s business in the United States.
It will be the third time Trump has extended the deadline.
The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when the ban approved by Congress — and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — took effect.
The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement.
It is not clear how many times Trump can — or will — keep extending the ban as the government continues to try to negotiate a deal for TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance. Trump has amassed more than 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. He said in January that he has a “warm spot for TikTok.”
Trump had signed an order in early April to keep TikTok running for an additional 75 days after a potential deal to sell the app to American owners was put on ice.
Downtown Los Angeles businesses hoped customers would return quickly on Tuesday after Mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew she had imposed last week to prevent vandalism and break-ins during nighttime protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The protests, which have been concentrated in a few blocks of downtown where federal and local government buildings are, were in response to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city and subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines.
The curfew set in place June 10 provided “successful crime prevention and suppression efforts” and protected stores, restaurants, businesses and residents, the Democratic mayor said. It covered a relatively tiny slice of the sprawling city.
Little Tokyo neighborhood hit hard
On Tuesday afternoon, the impact of days of protests could be seen in the boarded-up windows lining the streets of Little Tokyo, a historical Japanese American district right next to a federal detention building still heavily guarded by military troops.
A steady stream of tourists stopped in the neighborhood to take photos of baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani wearing Dodgers blue in a massive mural on the side of a hotel.
Don Tahara, the owner of Far Bar, said businesses in the area have been hit hard with vandalism and some break-ins.
On June 8, thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to Trump’s deployment of the Guard, blocking off a major freeway as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd. Photos captured several Waymo robotaxis set on fire.
A day later, police officers used flash bangs and shot projectiles as they pushed protesters through Little Tokyo, where bystanders and restaurant workers rushed to get out of their way. Some protesters set off fireworks and threw water bottles at the officers, yelling, “Shame!”
But Tahara, a third-generation Japanese American immigrant, said he also understands why the protests were necessary, seeing similarities between the current administration’s immigration raids and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“The problems that Little Tokyo had 75 years ago was basically the federal government coming in and imprisoning all of them in concentration camps,” Tahara said. “They were uprooted from their homes and businesses, their churches … we’re seeing a repeat of that.”
Since people assumed the curfew would still be in place Tuesday, Far Bar has still had many cancellations of reservations and events. They decided to open earlier for lunchtime in the past few days, but employees have lost hours from their paychecks. Combined with the lingering effects of the LA wildfires earlier this year, tariff-induced price increases and other increased costs, it has been a challenging climate for businesses to navigate, Tahara said.
On Monday, Bass trimmed back curfew hours from beginning at 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. after a drop in arrests in the area. Bass faulted a relatively small group of “bad actors who do not care about the immigrant community,” a nod to thousands of protesters who exercised their rights peacefully. Trump directed federal immigration officials Sunday to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities, a move that comes after a weekend of large protests all across the country against his administration.
Cindy Reyes, head server at Rakkan Ramen, said they completely shut down the shop for Saturday’s protests and closed early on Sunday. The curfew was especially difficult for their night-shift workers because the ramen joint is usually open until midnight.
“Dinner shift makes the most money because we’re the last restaurant standing so people come to us in the end,” she said.
Historic Core of downtown LA also hurt
The Historic Core of downtown LA, further away from where the protests have occurred and home to many nightclubs and bars, has also suffered from break-ins. Many closed down for the duration of the curfew because their core business happens in the evening.
Rhythm Room owner Vincent Vong said he has lost tens of thousands of dollars from closing for a whole week, not just from the loss of business but also to keep paying his employees.
“I have to schedule people to come in because I need to get them paid somehow,” he said.
He wished there was more support from the city and deployment of law enforcement resources to protecting the “most vulnerable areas,” pointing out that his street has often been the target of vandalism and theft during large demonstrations.
Even as the curfew is lifted, Vong said it will be difficult to bring customers back to an area that still has boarded-up windows and feels “apocalyptic.”
“I have to double down in showing that downtown LA is still a safe place to go,” he said.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would regulate a form of cryptocurrency known as stablecoins, the first of what the industry hopes will be a wave of bills to bolster its legitimacy and reassure consumers.
The fast-moving legislation, which passed by a 68-30 vote and will be sent to the House for potential revisions, comes on the heels of a 2024 campaign cycle in which the crypto industry ranked among the top political spenders in the country, underscoring its growing influence in Washington and beyond.
Eighteen Democratic senators crossed the aisle to vote for the legislation on Tuesday, siding with the Republican majority in the 53-47 Senate. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Rand Paul were the only members of their party to oppose the measure.
It was the second major bipartisan bill to advance through the Senate this year, following the Laken Riley Act on immigration enforcement in January.
Still, most Democrats opposed the bill. They raised concerns that the measure does little to address President Donald Trump’s personal financial interests in the crypto space.
“We weren’t able to include certainly everything we would have wanted, but it was a good bipartisan effort,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., on Monday. Alsobrooks, a co-sponsor of the bill, added, “This is an unregulated area that will now be regulated.”
Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., the bill’s sponsor, said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote that the legislation will have “far reaching implications” for the financial system — a “paradigm shifting development” that he believes will bring it into the 21st century.
“With this bill, the United States is a step closer to being a global leader in crypto,” Hagerty said.
Known as the GENIUS Act, the bill would establish guardrails and consumer protections for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar. The acronym stands for “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins.”
The bill only needed a simple majority vote to pass Tuesday, after it had already cleared its biggest procedural hurdle last week in a 68-30 vote, with 18 Democrats siding with Republicans. But the bill has faced more resistance than initially expected.
Trump’s stake in crypto
There is a provision in the bill that bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins. But that prohibition does not extend to the president and his family, even as Trump builds a crypto empire from the White House.
Last month, the Republican president hosted a private dinner at his golf club in Virginia with top investors in a Trump-branded meme coin. His family holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that launched its own stablecoin, USD1.
Trump reported earning $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty Financial in 2024, according to a public financial disclosure released Friday. A meme coin linked to him has generated an estimated $320 million in fees, though the earnings are split among multiple investors.
The administration is broadly supportive of crypto’s growth and its integration into the economy. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the Senate to pass the bill, saying it could help stablecoins “grow into a $3.7 trillion market by the end of the decade.”
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase — the nation’s largest crypto exchange and a major advocate for the bill — has met with Trump and praised his early moves on crypto. This past weekend, Coinbase was among the more prominent brands that sponsored a parade in Washington commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary — an event that coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
But the crypto industry emphasizes that they view the legislative effort as bipartisan, pointing to champions on each side of the aisle.
“The GENIUS Act will be the most significant digital assets legislation ever to pass the U.S. Senate,” Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., said ahead of a key vote last week. “It’s the product of months of bipartisan work.”
Some Democrats object
The bill did hit one rough patch in early May, when a bloc of Senate Democrats who had previously supported the bill reversed course and voted to block it from advancing. That prompted new negotiations involving Senate Republicans, Democrats and the White House, which ultimately produced the compromise version that won passage Tuesday.
Alsobrooks said “many, many changes” were made during negotiations and “it’s a much better deal because we were all at the table.”
Ahead of the vote Tuesday, GOP Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis said that she is “OK” with where the stablecoin legislation has landed after negotiations.
“I’m not thrilled with it, but it’s OK,” said Lummis, one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
Still, the bill leaves unresolved concerns over presidential conflicts of interest — an issue that remains a source of tension within the Democratic caucus.
“Passing the GENIUS Act without strong anti-corruption measures stamps a Congressional seal of approval on President Trump selling access to the government for personal profit,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement after the bill’s passage.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been among the most outspoken as the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, warning that the bill creates a “super highway” for Trump corruption. She has also warned that the bill would allow major technology companies, such as Amazon and Meta, to launch their own stablecoins.
Among the Democrats who backed the bill was first-term Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who received $10 million in support from a crypto political action committee during her Michigan race last year. Slotkin acknowledged the bill “wasn’t perfect” but called it a “good-faith, bipartisan start” to regulating stablecoins.
The stablecoin legislation still faces several hurdles before reaching the president’s desk. It must clear the narrowly held Republican majority in the House, where lawmakers may try to attach a broader market structure bill — sweeping legislation that could make passage through the Senate more difficult.
Trump has said he wants stablecoin legislation on his desk before Congress breaks for its August recess, now just under 50 days away.
Senate Committee on Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Sen Bill Hagerty R-Tenn., questions Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins, during a hearing to examine proposed budget estimate for fiscal year 2026 for the SEC, on Capitol Hill, on June 3, 2025, in Washington.
A judge on Wednesday is being asked to clear the way for local governments and individual victims to vote on it.
Government entities, emergency room doctors, insurers, families of children born into withdrawal from the powerful prescription painkiller, individual victims and their families and others would have until Sept. 30 to vote on whether to accept the deal, which calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years.
If approved, the settlement would be among the largest in a wave of lawsuits over the past decade as governments and others sought to hold drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies accountable for the opioid epidemic that started rising in the years after OxyContin hit the market in 1996. The other settlements together are worth about $50 billion, and most of the money is to be used to combat the crisis.
In the early 2000s, most opioid deaths were linked to prescription drugs, including OxyContin. Since then, heroin and then illicitly produced fentanyl became the biggest killers. In some years, the class of drugs was linked to more than 80,000 deaths, but that number dropped sharply last year.
The request of U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane comes about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a previous version of Purdue’s proposed settlement. The court found it was improper that the earlier iteration would have protected members of the Sackler family from lawsuits over opioids, even though they themselves were not filing for bankruptcy protection.
Under the reworked plan hammered out with lawyers for state and local governments and others, groups that don’t opt in to the settlement would still have the right to sue members of the wealthy family whose name once adorned museum galleries around the world and programs at several prestigious U.S. universities.
Under the plan, the Sackler family members would give up ownership of Purdue. They resigned from the company’s board and stopped receiving distributions from its funds before the company’s initial bankruptcy filing in 2019. The remaining entity would get a new name and its profits would be dedicated to battling the epidemic.
Most of the money would go to state and local governments to address the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis, but potentially more than $850 million would go directly to individual victims. That makes it different from the other major settlements.
The payouts would not begin until after a hearing scheduled for Nov. 10, during which Lane is to be asked to approve the entire plan if enough of the affected parties agree.
Protesters who have lost love ones to the opioid crisis protest outside a courthouse in Boston, Aug. 2, 2019, where a judge heard arguments in a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma.
The report, produced by the nonpartisan CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, factors in expected debt service costs and finds that the bill would increase interest rates and boost interest payments on the baseline projection of federal debt by $441 billion.
The analysis comes at a crucial moment as Trump is pushing the GOP-led Congress to act on what he calls his “big, beautiful bill.” It passed the House last month on a party-line vote, and now faces revisions in the Senate. Vice President JD Vance urged Senate Republicans during a private lunch meeting Tuesday to send the final package to the president’s desk.
“We’re excited to get this bill out,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune afterward.
Tuesday’s report uses dynamic analysis by estimating the budgetary impact of the tax bill by considering how changes in the economy might affect revenues and spending. This is in contrast to static scoring, which presumes all other economic factors stay constant.
The CBO released its static scoring analysis earlier this month, estimating that Trump’s bill would unleash trillions in tax cuts and slash spending, but also increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade and leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance.
Republicans have repeatedly argued that a more dynamic scoring model would more accurately show how cutting taxes would spur economic growth — essentially overcoming any lost revenue to the federal government.
But the larger deficit numbers in the new analysis gave Democrats, who are unified against the big bill, fresh arguments for challenging the GOP position that the tax cuts would essentially pay for themselves.
“The Republican claim that this bill does not add to the debt or deficit is laughable, and the proof is in the numbers,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.
“The cost of these tax giveaways for billionaires, even when considering economic growth, will add even more to the debt than we previously expected,” he said.
Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Tuesday on social media that considering the new dynamic analysis, “It’s not only not paying for all of itself, it’s not paying for any of itself.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other Republicans have sought to discredit the CBO, saying the organization isn’t giving enough credit to the economic growth the bill will create.
At the Capitol, Mehmet Oz, who heads up the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and joined Vance at the GOP Senate lunch, challenged CBO’s findings when asked about its estimate that the bill would leave 10.9 million more people without health care, largely from new work requirements.
“What will an American do if they’re given the option of trying to get a job or an education or volunteering their community — having some engagement — or losing their Medicaid insurance coverage?” Oz asked. “I have more confidence in the American people than has been given to them by some of these analyzing organizations.”
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee unveiled their proposal Monday for deeper Medicaid cuts, including new work requirements for parents of teens, as a way to offset the costs of making Trump’s tax breaks more permanent in their draft for the big bill.
The Senate’s version of the package also enhances Trump’s proposed new tax break for seniors, with a bigger $6,000 deduction for low- to moderate-income senior households earning no more than $75,000 a year for singles, $150,000 for couples.
The proposals from Senate Republicans keep in place the current $10,000 deduction of state and local taxes, called SALT, drawing quick blowback from GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, who fought for a $40,000 cap in the House-passed bill. Senators insisted negotiations continue.
Bessent said Tuesday that the Senate Republican proposal for the tax cuts bill “will deliver the permanence and certainty both individual taxpayers and businesses alike are looking for, driving growth and unleashing the American economy.”
“We look forward to continuing to work with the Senate and the House to further refine this bill and get it to President Trump’s desk,” he said in a news release.
While the House-passed bill exempted parents with dependents from the new Medicaid work requirements, the Senate’s version broadened the requirement to include parents of children older than 14, as part of their effort to combat waste in the program and push personal responsibility.
The work requirements “demonstrate that you are trying your hardest to help this country be greater,” Oz said. “By doing that, you earn the right to be on Medicaid.”
The CBO separately released another analysis on the tax bill last week, including a look at how the measure would affect households based on income distribution. It estimates the bill would cost the poorest Americans roughly $1,600 a year while increasing the income of the wealthiest households by an average of $12,000 annually.
The NAACP and an environmental group said Tuesday that they intend to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over concerns about air pollution generated by a supercomputer facility located near predominantly Black communities in Memphis.
The xAI data center began operating last year, powered in part by pollution-emitting gas turbines, without first applying for a permit. Officials have said an exemption allowed them to operate for up to 364 days without a permit, but Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Patrick Anderson said at a news conference that there is no such exemption for turbines — and that regardless, it has now been more than 364 days.
A 60-day notice of an intent to sue, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act, was sent to xAI in a letter. The SELC is representing the NAACP in its possible legal challenge against xAI and its permit application, now being considered by the Shelby County Health Department.
The xAI company responds
The company said Tuesday that it takes its commitment to the community and environment seriously.
“The temporary power generation units are operating in compliance with all applicable laws,” an xAI statement said.
Musk’s xAI has said the turbines will be equipped with technology to reduce emissions — and that it’s already boosting the city’s economy by investing billions of dollars in the supercomputer facility, paying millions in local taxes and creating hundreds of jobs. The company also is spending $35 million to build a power substation and $80 million to build a water recycling plant to the support Memphis, Light, Gas and Water, the local utility.
The chamber of commerce in Memphis made a surprise announcement in June 2024 that xAI planned to build a supercomputer in the city. The data center quickly set up shop in an industrial park south Memphis, near factories and a gas-powered plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
What opponents are saying
Opponents say the supercomputing center is stressing the power grid. They contend that the turbines emit smog and carbon dioxide, pollutants that cause lung irritation such as nitrogen oxides and the carcinogen formaldehyde.
The SELC said the use of the turbines violates the Clean Air Act, and that residents who live near the xAI facility already face cancer risks at four times the national average. The group also has sent a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Critics say xAI installed the turbines without any oversight or notice to the community. The company requests to operate 15 turbines at the site, but the SELC said it hired a firm to fly over the facility and found up to 35 turbines operating there at times.
The permit itself says emissions from the site “will be an area source for hazardous air pollutants.” A permit would allow the health department, which has received 1,700 public comments about the permit, to monitor air quality near the facility.
A contentious public meeting
Opponents of the facility say city leaders have not been transparent with the community about their dealings with xAI, and they are sacrificing the health of residents in return for financial benefit.
At a community meeting hosted by the county health department in April, many of the people speaking in opposition cited the additional pollution burden in a city that already received an “F” grade for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association.
A statement read by xAI’s Brent Mayo at the meeting said the company wants to “strengthen the fabric of the community,” and estimated that tax revenues from the data center are likely to exceed $100 million by next year.
“This tax revenue will support vital programs like public safety, health and human services, education, firefighters, police, parks and so much more,” said the statement.
The company also apparently wants to expand: The chamber of commerce said in March that xAI had purchased a 1 million square-foot property at a second location, not far from the current facility.
The mayor of Memphis weighs in
Mayor Paul Young said In his weekly newsletter Friday that an ordinance now requires that 25% of xAI’s city property tax revenue be reinvested directly into neighborhoods within 5 miles of the facility.
Young also said that no tax incentives or public dollars are tied to the project.
“Let’s be clear, this isn’t a debate between the environment and economics,” Young said. “It’s about putting people before politics. It’s about building something better for communities that have waited far too long for real investment.”
Boxtown punches back
One nearby neighborhood dealing with decades of industrial pollution is Boxtown, a tight-knit community founded by freed slaves in the 1860s. It was named Boxtown after residents used material dumped from railroad boxcars to fortify their homes. The area features houses, wooded areas and wetlands, and its inhabitants are mostly working class residents.
Boxtown won a victory in 2021 against two corporations that sought to build an oil pipeline through the area. Valero and Plains All American Pipeline canceled the project after protests by residents and activists led by State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who called it a potential danger to the community and an aquifer that provides clean drinking water to Memphis.
Pearson, who represents nearby neighborhoods, said “clean air is a human right” as he called for people in Memphis to unite against xAI.
“There is not a person, no matter how wealthy or how powerful, that can deny the fact that everybody has a right to breathe clean air,” said Pearson, who compared the fight against xAI to David and Goliath.
“We’re all right to be David, because we know how the story ends,” he said.
Kraft Heinz will be pulling artificial dyes from its U.S. products starting in 2027 and will no longer roll out new products with the dyes.
The move comes nearly two months after U.S. health officials said that they would urge foodmakers to phase out petroleum-based artificial colors in the nation’s food supply.
Kraft Heinz said Tuesday that almost 90% of its U.S. products already don’t contain food, drug & cosmetic colors, but that the products that do still use the dyes will have them removed by the end of 2027. FD&C colors are synthetic additives that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in food, drugs and cosmetics.
Kraft Heinz said that many of its U.S. products that still use the FD&C colors are in its beverage and desserts categories, including certain products sold under brands including Crystal Light, Kool Aid, Jell-O and Jet Puffed.
The company said that it will instead use natural colors for the products.
“The vast majority of our products use natural or no colors, and we’ve been on a journey to reduce our use of FD&C colors across the remainder of our portfolio,” Pedro Navio, North America President at Kraft Heinz, said in a statement.
Kraft Heinz stripped artificial colors, flavors and preservatives from its macaroni and cheese in 2016 and said it has never used artificial dyes in its ketchup.
The company plans to work with licensees of its brands to encourage them to remove the dyes.
In April Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference that the agency would take steps to eliminate the synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, largely by relying on voluntary efforts from the food industry.
Health advocates have long called for the removal of artificial dyes from foods, citing mixed studies indicating they can cause neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children. The FDA has maintained that the approved dyes are safe and that “the totality of scientific evidence shows that most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives.”
The FDA currently allows 36 food color additives, including eight synthetic dyes. In January, the agency announced that the dye known as Red 3 — used in candies, cakes and some medications — would be banned in food by 2027 because it caused cancer in laboratory rats.
Artificial dyes are used widely in U.S. foods. In Canada and in Europe — where synthetic colors are required to carry warning labels — manufacturers mostly use natural substitutes. Several states, including California and West Virginia, have passed laws restricting the use of artificial colors in foods.
Many U.S. food companies are already reformulating their foods, according to Sensient Colors, one of the world’s largest producers of food dyes and flavorings. In place of synthetic dyes, foodmakers can use natural hues made from beets, algae and crushed insects and pigments from purple sweet potatoes, radishes and red cabbage.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The man shot and killed while participating in the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City was a successful fashion designer and former “Project Runway” contestant who devoted his life to celebrating artists from the Pacific Islands.
Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, was killed Saturday night when two men shot at a person allegedly brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, and one accidentally struck Ah Loo in the stomach, authorities said. Ah Loo later died at the hospital.
Salt Lake City police said it remained unclear Monday whether the individuals, one of whom identified himself as part of a “peacekeeping” team for the protest, were brought in by the event organizers or acted on their own initiative.
Arturo Gamboa, 24, never shot the rifle he pointed at protesters, but police arrested him on murder charges and said he created the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo’s death. Police said they were investigating whether the man who shot at Gamboa — and fatally hit Ah Loo — was justified in firing his gun. He has not been identified publicly.
Victim was a self-taught designer
Ah Loo leaves behind a wife and two young children, according to a GoFundMe page for his family that raised over $100,000 in 48 hours.
The self-taught fashion designer known to many as Afa devoted his life to doing “good things for his neighbors and community,” state Rep. Verona Mauga, a close friend, told The Associated Press. Their families were from the small village of Lotopa in Samoa, she said.
Ah Loo was born in Samoa and has lived in Utah for about a decade, his friend Benjamin Powell said.
Mauga, who was born in Hawaii, was at the “No Kings” protest a few blocks from where Ah Loo was shot. The Democratic lawmaker said she only realized something was wrong when she saw the crowd scattering.
Peaceful protest turns deadly
The protest Saturday was one of hundreds in cities nationwide to counter President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, which marked the Army’s 250th anniversary and coincided with Trump’s birthday.
There is no record in the Salt Lake City event permit indicating that armed security would be present, police said.
Carl Moore, a 49-year-old Indigenous advocate, was filming the protest when three gunshots rang out through the crowd estimated at 10,000 people. Moore said he observed confusion among police as protesters hid behind barriers and took shelter inside parking garages and nearby businesses.
“They don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re just yelling like, ‘What does he look like?’” Moore recalled.
Weaving culture and community through fashion
Mauga said Ah Loo would have been proud that his last moments were spent advocating for what he believed in.
“If Afa was going to go out any other way than natural causes, it would be standing up for marginalized and vulnerable communities and making sure that people had a voice,” she said.
Powell, a hair salon innovator from Fiji, co-founded Create Pacific with Ah Loo shortly after they met four years ago. The organization uplifts artists from the Pacific Islands, allowing a new generation to connect with their heritage.
The two artists were friends with a rare creative synergy, Powell said. Ah Loo’s vibrant work weaves traditional Pacific Island attire with modern silhouettes and design. He used flowers indigenous to Samoa as motifs and frequently incorporated Tapa, a cloth traditionally made from tree bark in the Pacific Islands, into the garments he created.
Powell admired Ah Loo’s attention to detail that made his work distinctive.
“You would know right away that it was an Ah Loo design,” he said.
Ah Loo was a contestant in 2019 on Bravo’s “Project Runway,” a reality show where fashion designers compete in front of celebrity judges to create runway looks on tight deadlines.
Recently, he designed a garment for the star of the animated Disney movie “Moana 2,” Hawaiian actor Auliʻi Cravalho. According to an interview with Vogue, Cravalho wore the outfit inspired by the Hawaiian ʻahu ʻula — a feather cloak worn by ancient Hawaiian royalty — to the film’s red carpet premiere in Hawaii last November.
A posthumous honor
In an Instagram post Monday, Cravalho said there were “no words to hold the grief of losing” Ah Loo.
“My deepest condolences, sympathies and Aloha to his family, and all who felt his impact,” Cravalho wrote.
Powell and Ah Loo were working on an upcoming August fashion show when he died. Powell said the show will continue and will honor Ah Loo’s unwavering commitment to his community.
Ah Loo also volunteered his time and resources to tailor clothing for people who needed help, often refusing to let people compensate him for his work, Mauga said. Sometimes, he would playfully criticize the outfits the state lawmaker wore on the campaign trail and invite her to his studio so he could make her new blazers or dresses.
“He was just very involved in whatever was going on in the community,” Mauga said. “He cared about making a difference.”
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![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25169496836389-e1750286924426.jpg?w=300 "Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, attends the premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" at The Culver Studios on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, in Culver City, Calif parts of its business, shuttering stores and slashing 29,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs.")
![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25169496836389-e1750286924426.jpg?w=2048 "Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, attends the premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" at The Culver Studios on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, in Culver City, Calif parts of its business, shuttering stores and slashing 29,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs.")
![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25167604833122-e1750177118711.jpg?w=300 "Utah State Rep. Verona Mauga stands next to Arthur Afa Ah Loo, who was shot and killed in the "No Kings" protest")
![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25167604833122-e1750177118711.jpg?w=2048 "Utah State Rep. Verona Mauga stands next to Arthur Afa Ah Loo, who was shot and killed in the "No Kings" protest")