The head of the agency that compiles the closely watched monthly jobs report usually toils in obscurity, but on Friday, the current holder of that job was loudly fired by the president of the United States.
Erika McEntarfer, a longtime government employee, bore the brunt of President Donald Trump’s unhappiness with Friday’s jobs report, which showed that hiring had slowed in July and was much less in May and June that previously estimated. He accused her without evidence of manipulating the job numbers and noted she was an appointee of President Joe Biden.
McEntarfer, a longtime government worker who had served as BLS head for a year and a half, did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press. But her predecessor overseeing the jobs agency, former co-workers and associates have denounced the firing, warning about its repercussions and saying McEntarfer was nonpolitical in her role.
Here’s what to know about Erika McEntarfer:
McEntarfer has a strong background on economics
McEntarfer, whose research focuses on job loss, retirement, worker mobility, and wage rigidity, had previously worked at the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy and the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a nonpolitical role.
She has a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from Bard College and a doctoral degree in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
She was confirmed as BLS head on a bipartisan vote
McEntarfer was nominated in 2023 to serve as BLS head, and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions recommended that her nomination go to the full Senate for a vote.
She was confirmed as BLS commissioner in January 2024 on a bipartisan 86-8 Senate vote. Among the Republican senators who voted to confirm her included then-Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who is now Trump’s vice president, and then-Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is now Trump’s secretary of state.
Before her confirmation hearing, a group called the Friends of the BLS, made up of former commissioners who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, members of statistical associations and credentialed economists, said McEntarfer’s background made her a great choice for the job.
“The many reasons to quickly confirm Dr. McEntarfer as the new BLS Commissioner all boil down to this: the agency, like the entire statistical system, is undergoing an intense, significant period of change and Dr. McEntarfer’s wealth of research and statistical experience have equipped her to be the strong leader that BLS needs to meet these challenges,” Friends of the BLS wrote.
Her former associates and co-workers decry her firing
William Beach, who was appointed BLS commissioner in 2019 by Trump and served until 2023 during President Joe Biden’s administration, called McEntarfer’s firing “groundless” and said in an X post that it “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”
Former Labor Department chief economist Sarah J. Glynn, who received regular briefings from McEntarfer about BLS findings, said McEntarfer was generous with her time explaining what conclusions could or couldn’t be reached from the data.
If the data didn’t support something an administration official was saying, McEntarfer would say so, Glynn said. She also never weighed in on how the administration should present or interpret the data, Glynn said — she would simply answer questions about the data.
“She had a sterling reputation as someone who is concerned about the accuracy of the data and not someone who puts a political spin on her work,” Glynn said.
Heather Boushey, a senior research fellow at Harvard University, served with McEntarfer on the White House Council of Economic Advisers and said McEntarfer never talked politics at work.
“She showed up every day to focus on the best analysis and the best approach to her field and not get political. That is what I saw from her time and again. She is brilliant and well-respected among labor economists generally,” Boushey said. “She wasn’t coming into my office to talk politics or the political implications of something. She definitely wasn’t engaging on that side of things.”
President Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers – from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They’re now facing especially hefty taxes – tariffs – on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7.
The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump’s demands — and avoided even more pain. But it’s unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run — even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump’s protectionist policies.
“In many respects, everybody’s a loser here,’’ said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School.
Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America’s enormous economic power to punish countries that won’t agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do.
“The biggest winner is Trump,” said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. “He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded – dramatically.’’
Everything goes back to what Trump calls “Liberation Day’’ – April 2 – when the president announced “reciprocal’’ taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% “baseline’’ taxes on almost everyone else.
He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs — all of which is now being challenged in court.
Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office
Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate.
Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump’s demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market.
The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States — up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years.
The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year — but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan).
Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola’s tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan’s tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt.
“20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,” Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday.
Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he’d announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there.
Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss
Countries that didn’t knuckle under — and those that found other ways to incur Trump’s wrath — got hit harder.
Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos’ annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria’s $5,600 — versus America’s $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy.
Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn’t like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it’s imported every year since 2007.
Trump’s decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington” to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “They’re clearly not at all happy.’’
Fortunes may change if Trump’s tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law.
In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump’s justifications for the tariffs.
“If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil’s a winner and not a loser,’’ Appleton said.
Paying more for knapsacks and video games
Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits — or risk losing market share in the United States.
But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab.
“This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,” Appleton said. “Sneakers, knapsacks … your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.’’
Trump’s trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates.
“The U.S. consumer’s a big loser,″ Wolff said.
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AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.
Demonstrators wearing masks in the likeness of, from left, Sao Paulo's Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro protest the 50% U.S. tariff on Brazilian goods outside the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.
The best of the internet’s cat videos are coming to the big screen this weekend. Cat Video Fest is a 73-minute, G-rated selection of all things feline —silly, cuddly, sentimental and comedic—that’s playing in more than 500 independent theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
A portion of ticket proceeds benefit cat-focused charities, shelters and animal welfare organization. Since 2019, it’s raised over $1 million.
The videos are curated by Will Braden, the Seattle-based creator of the comedically existential shorts, Henri, le Chat Noir. His business cards read: “I watch cat videos.” And it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Braden watches thousands of hours of internet videos to make the annual compilation.
“I want to show how broad the idea of a cat video can be so there’s animated things, music videos, little mini documentaries,” Braden said. “It isn’t all just, what I call, ‘America’s Funniest Home Cat Videos.’ It’s not all cats falling into a bathtub. That would get exhausting.”
Now in its eighth year, Cat Video Fest is bigger than ever, with a global presence that’s already extended to the UK and Denmark, and, for the first time, to France, Spain, Japan and Brazil. Last year, the screenings made over $1 million at the box office.
In the early days, it was a bit of a process trying to convince independent movie theaters to program Cat Video Fest. But Braden, and indie distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories, have found that one year is all it takes to get past that hurdle.
“Everywhere that does it wants to do it again,” Braden said.
Current theatrical partners include Alamo Drafthouse, IFC Center, Nitehawk, Vidiots, Laemmle and Music Box. The screenings attract all variety of audiences, from kids and cat ladies to hipsters and grandparents and everyone in between.
“It’s one of the only things, maybe besides a Pixar movie or Taylor Swift concert, that just appeals to everybody,” Braden said.
And the plan is to keep going.
“We’re not going to run out of cat videos and we’re not going to run out of people who want to see it,” Braden said. “All I have to do is make sure that it’s really funny and entertaining every year.”
Flaco Jimenez, the legendary accordionist from San Antonio who won multiple Grammys and helped expand the popularity of conjunto, Tejano and Tex-Mex music, died Thursday. He was 86.
Jimenez’s death was announced Thursday evening by his family on social media. He was surrounded by family members when he died in the San Antonio home of his son Arturo Jimenez.
“Dad was in peace when he left. He started saying his goodbyes several days before. He said he was proud of himself for what he had done and he just leaves memories for the public to enjoy. He said he was ready to go,” Arturo Jimenez told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday.
Arturo Jimenez said a cause of death has not yet been determined. His father had been hospitalized in January after getting a blood clot in his leg. Doctors then discovered he had some vascular issues.
Born Leonardo Jimenez in 1939, he was known to his fans by his nickname of Flaco, which means skinny in Spanish.
He was the son of conjunto pioneer Santiago Jimenez. Conjunto is a musical genre that originated in South Texas and blends different genres and cultural influences.
According to the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, the development of conjunto “began more than a century ago when Texans of Mexican heritage (Tejanos) took an interest in the accordion music of German, Polish, and Czech immigrants. The ensuing Tejano accordion music, accompanied by the bajo sexto (replacing the European tuba) soon came to represent the Tejano way of life, which was closely associated with working in the agricultural fields. The music remains unchanged and serves as a symbol that binds many Tejano communities in South and Central Texas.”
Jimenez refined his conjunto musical skills by playing in San Antonio saloons and dance halls. He began performing in the 1960s with fellow San Antonio native Douglas Sahm, the founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Jimenez would later play with Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Ry Cooder and the Rolling Stones.
Throughout his career, Jimenez added other influences into conjunto music, including from country, rock and jazz.
“He always wanted to try to incorporate accordion into all sorts of different genres and how to make the accordion blend in. That was always a fascination of his and he was able to,” Arturo Jimenez said.
In the 1990s, Jimenez was part of the Tejano supergroup the Texas Tornados, which included Sahm, Augie Meyers and Freddy Fender. The group won a Grammy in 1991 for the song, “Soy de San Luis.”
Jimenez also won another Grammy in 1999 as part of another supergroup, Los Super Seven.
Jimenez earned five Grammys and was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
He was also inducted into the National Hispanic Hall of Fame and NYC International Latin Music Hall of Fame and was named a Texas State Musician in 2014.
Arturo Jimenez said his father was a humble man who never wanted to be a showman and was focused on playing music for his fans.
“I’ve seen where fans come up to him and they literally cry and they thank my dad for all the good music and how dad’s music has been there for them in multiple situations, either happiness or sadness,” Arturo Jimenez said.
When Jimenez was named a 2022 National Medal of Arts recipient, the White House said he was being honored for “harnessing heritage to enrich American music” and that by “blending Norteño, Tex Mex, and Tejano music with the Blues, Rock n’ Roll, and Pop Music, he sings the soul of America’s Southwest.”
“We appreciate the gift of your musical talent, which brought joy to countless fans. Your passing leaves a void in our hearts,” the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame and Museum said in a post on social media.
Kyle Young, the CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, said Jimenez “was a paragon of Tejano conjunto music” who “drew millions of listeners into a rich musical world they might not have discovered on their own.”
Jimenez lived all his life in San Antonio, a city that was “very close to his heart,” his son said.
“They call him ‘el hijo de San Antonio’ and my dad always was proud of that,” Arturo Jimenez said, quoting a Spanish phrase that means the son of San Antonio.
His family plans to have a private funeral service followed by a celebration of his life with the public.
As a student in western New York’s rural Wyoming County, Briar Townes honed an artistic streak that he hopes to make a living from one day. In high school, he clicked with a college-level drawing and painting class.
But despite the college credits he earned, college isn’t part of his plan.
Since graduating from high school in June, he has been overseeing an art camp at the county’s Arts Council. If that doesn’t turn into a permanent job, there is work at Creative Food Ingredients, known as the “cookie factory” for the way it makes the town smell like baking cookies, or at local factories like American Classic Outfitters, which designs and sews athletic uniforms.
“My stress is picking an option, not finding an option,” he said.
Even though rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their peers in cities and suburbs, fewer of them go on to college.
Many rural school districts, including the one in Perry that Townes attends, have begun offering college-level courses and working to remove academic and financial obstacles to higher education, with some success. But college doesn’t hold the same appeal for students in rural areas where they often would need to travel farther for school, parents have less college experience themselves, and some of the loudest political voices are skeptical of the need for higher education.
College enrollment for rural students has remained largely flat in recent years, despite the district-level efforts and stepped-up recruitment by many universities. About 55% of rural U.S. high school students who graduated in 2023 enrolled in college, according to National Clearinghouse Research Center data.That’s compared to 64% of suburban graduates and 59% of urban graduates.
College can make a huge difference in earning potential. An American man with a bachelor’s degree earns an estimated $900,000 more over his lifetime than a peer with a high school diploma, research by the Social Security Administration has found. For women, the difference is about $630,000.
A school takes cues from families’ hopes and goals
A lack of a college degree is no obstacle to opportunity in places such as Wyoming County, where people like to say there are more cows than people. The dairy farms, potato fields and maple sugar houses are a source of identity and jobs for the county just east of Buffalo.
“College has never really been, I don’t know, a necessity or problem in my family,” said Townes, the middle of three children whose father has a tattoo shop in Perry.
At Perry High School, Superintendent Daryl McLaughlin said the district takes cues from students like Townes, their families and the community, supplementing college offerings with programs geared toward career and technical fields such as the building trades. He said he is as happy to provide reference checks for employers and the military as he is to write recommendations for college applications.
“We’re letting our students know these institutions, whether it is a college or whether employers, they’re competing for you,” he said. “Our job is now setting them up for success so that they can take the greatest advantage of that competition, ultimately, to improve their quality of life.”
Still, college enrollment in the district has exceeded the national average in recent years, going from 60% of the class of 2022’s 55 graduates to 67% of 2024’s and 56% of 2025’s graduates. The district points to a decision to direct federal pandemic relief money toward covering tuition for students in its Accelerated College Enrollment program — a partnership with Genesee Community College. When the federal money ran out, the district paid to keep it going.
“This is a program that’s been in our community for quite some time, and it’s a program our community supports,” McLaughlin said.
About 15% of rural U.S. high school students were enrolled in college classes in January 2025 through such dual enrollment arrangements, a slightly lower rate than urban and suburban students, an Education Department survey found.
Rural access to dual enrollment is a growing area of focus as advocates seek to close gaps in access to higher education. The College in High School Alliance this year announced funding for seven states to develop policy to expand programs for rural students.
Higher education’s image problem is acute in rural America
Around the country, many students feel jaded by the high costs of college tuition. And Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value of college, polls have shown, with Republicans, the dominant party in rural America, losing confidence in higher education at higher rates than Democrats.
“Whenever you have this narrative that ‘college is bad, college is bad, these professors are going to indoctrinate you,’ it’s hard,” said Andrew Koricich, executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. “You have to figure out, how do you crack through that information ecosphere and say, actually, people with a bachelor’s degree, on average, earn 65% more than people with a high school diploma only?”
In much of rural America, about 21% of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, compared to about 36% of adults in other areas, according to a government analysis of U.S. Census findings.
Some rural educators don’t hold back on promoting college
In rural Putnam County, Florida, about 14% of adults have a bachelor’s degree. That doesn’t stop principal Joe Theobold from setting and meeting an annual goal of 100% college admission for students at Q.I. Roberts Jr.-Sr. High School.
Paper mills and power plants provide opportunities for a middle class life in the county, where the cost of living is low. But Theobold tells students the goal of higher education “is to go off and learn more about not only the world, but also about yourself.”
“You don’t want to be 17 years old, determining what you’re going to do for the rest of your life,” he said.
Families choose the magnet school because of its focus on higher education, even though most of the district’s parents never went to a college. Many students visit college campuses through Camp Osprey, a University of North Florida program that helps students experience college dorms and dining halls.
In upstate New York, high school junior Devon Wells grew up on his family farm in Perry but doesn’t see his future there. He’s considering a career in welding, or as an electrical line worker in South Carolina, where he heard the pay might be double what he would make at home. None of his plans require college, he said.
“I grew up on a farm, so that’s all hands-on work. That’s really all I know and would want to do,” Devon said.
Neither his nor Townes’ parents have pushed one way or the other, they said.
“I remember them talking to me like, `Hey, would you want to go to college?’ I remember telling them, ‘not really,’” Townes said. He would have listened if a college recruiter reached out, he said, but wouldn’t be willing to move very far.
The pilots of a U.S. Army helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over Washington in January would’ve had difficulty spotting the plane while wearing night vision goggles, experts told the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday.
The Army goggles would have made it difficult to see the plane’s colored lights, which might have helped the Black Hawk determine the plane’s direction. The goggles also limited the pilots’ peripheral vision as they flew near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The challenges posed by night-vision goggles were among the topics discussed at the NTSB’s third and final day of public testimony over the fatal midair crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both aircrafts.
Experts said another challenge that evening was distinguishing the plane from lights on the ground while the two aircraft were on a collision course. Plus, the helicopter pilots may not have known where to look for a plane that was landing on a secondary runway that most planes didn’t use.
“Knowing where to look. That’s key,” said Stephen Casner, an expert in human factors who used to work at NASA.
Two previous days of testimony underscored a number of factors that likely contributed to the collision, sparking Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to “do better” as she pointed to warnings the agency had ignored years earlier.
Some of the major issues that have emerged so far include the Black Hawk helicopter flying above prescribed levels near the airport as well as the warnings to FAA officials for years about the hazards related to the heavy chopper traffic there.
It’s too early for the board to identify what exactly caused the crash. A final report from the board won’t come until next year.
But it became clear this week how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.
Army Colonel Andrew DeForest told the NTSB that “flights along the D.C. helicopter routes were considered relatively safe,” but some pilots in the 12th Battalion that flew alongside the crew that crashed told investigators they regularly talked about the possibility of a collision because of the congested and complicated airspace.
The American Airlines jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.
The collision was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the traveling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation.
‘Significant frustration’
NTSB members scolded FAA officials during Friday’s hearing, accusing them of saying the right things about safety in public while failing to cooperate in private. They said the FAA has repeatedly refused to provide information requested by investigators.
Board member Todd Inman said there was “significant frustration between what’s actually occurring” and “what’s being said for public consumption.”
Frank McIntosh, the head of the FAA’s air traffic control organization, said he would start working immediately to make sure the agency complies with the investigation. McIntosh also acknowledged problems with the culture in the tower at Reagan National, despite past efforts to improve compliance with safety standards.
“I think there were some things that we missed, to be quite honest with you, not intentionally, but I was talking about how certain facilities can drift,” McIntosh said.
Homendy told McIntosh she believes agency leaders are sincere about wanting to improve safety, but the solution must be more than just sending a top-down message of safety and also actually listening to controllers in the field.
Questions over lack of alcohol testing
Tim Lilley, an aviation expert whose son Sam was a pilot on the passenger jet, said he’s optimistic the tragic accident will ultimately lead to some positive changes.
“But we’ve got a long way to go,” he told The Associated Press.
Lilley said he was particularly struck by the FAA’s lack of alcohol testing for air traffic controllers after the crash.
“And they made a bunch of excuses why they didn’t do it,” Lilley said. “None of them were valid. It goes back to a whole system that was complacent and was normalizing deviation.”
Homendy said during Thursday’s hearings that alcohol testing is most effective within two hours of a crash and can be administered within eight hours.
Nick Fuller, the FAA’s acting deputy chief operating officer of operations, testified that the controllers weren’t tested because the agency did not immediately believe the crash was fatal. The FAA then decided to forgo it because the optimum two-hour window had passed.
Controller didn’t warn the jet
FAA officials testified this week that an air traffic controller should have warned the passenger jet of the Army helicopter’s presence.
The controller had asked the Black Hawk pilots to confirm they had the airplane in sight because an alarm sounded in the tower about their proximity. The controller could see from a window that the helicopter was too close, but the controller did not alert the jetliner.
In a transcript released this week, the unidentified controller said in a post-crash interview they weren’t sure that would have changed the outcome.
Additionally, the pilots of the helicopter did not fully hear the controller’s instructions before the collision. When the controller told the helicopter’s pilots to “pass behind” the jet, the crew didn’t hear it because the Black Hawk’s microphone key was pressed at that moment.
‘Layer after layer of deficiencies’
Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA crash investigator, told the AP that a combination of factors produced this tragedy, like “holes that line up in the Swiss cheese.”
Any number of things, had they been different, could have prevented the collision, he said. They include the Black Hawks having more accurate altimeters, as well as a key piece of locating equipment, known as ADS-B Out, turned on or working. In turn, air traffic control could have seen the problem earlier.
Just a few feet could have made a difference, Guzzetti said.
“It just goes to show you that an accident isn’t caused by one single thing,” Guzzetti said. “It isn’t caused by ‘pilot error’ or ’controller staffing.’ This accident was caused by layer after layer of deficiencies that piled up at just the right moment.”
Ex-official: FAA and Army share blame
Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, told the AP that both the Army and the FAA appear to share significant blame.
The Black Hawks’ altimeters could be off by as much as 100 feet and were still considered acceptable, she said. The crew was flying an outdated model that struggled to maintain altitude, while the helicopter pilots’ flying was “loose” and under “loose” supervision.
“It’s on the individuals, God rest their souls, but it’s also on the military,” Schiavo said. “I mean, they just seem to have no urgency of anything.”
Schiavo was also struck by the air traffic controllers’ lack of maps of the military helicopter routes on their display screens, which forced them to look out the window.
“And so everything about the military helicopter operation was not up to the standards of commercial aviation … it’s a shocking lack of attention to precision all the way around,” she said.
Schiavo also faulted the FAA for not coming off as terribly responsive to problems.
“I called the Federal Aviation Administration, the Tombstone Agency, because they would only make change after people die,” Schiavo said. “And sadly, 30 years later, that seems to still be the case.”
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, on monitor left, swears-in the witnesses from left: Dan Cooper, Sikorsky Aircraft, Lance Gant, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Army CW4 Kylene Lewis, Steve Braddom, U.S. Army, and Scott Rosengren, U.S. Army, during the NTSB fact-finding hearing on Wednesday.
A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk’s car company Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $240 million in damages.
The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cellphone before hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the coming months.
The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial.
“This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”
The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.
“We finally learned what happened that night, that the car was actually defective,” said Benavides’ sister, Neima Benavides. “Justice was achieved.”
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up.
“Today’s verdict is wrong,” Tesla said in a statement, “and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology.” They said the plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”
In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must also pay $43 million of a total $129 million in compensatory damages for the crash, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million.
“It’s a big number that will send shock waves to others in the industry,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s not a good day for Tesla.”
Tesla said it will appeal.
Even if that fails, the company says it will end up paying far less than what the jury decided because of a pre-trial agreement that limits punitive damages to three times Tesla’s compensatory damages. Translation: $172 million, not $243 million. But the plaintiff says their deal was based on a multiple of all compensatory damages, not just Tesla’s, and the figure the jury awarded is the one the company will have to pay.
It’s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla’s reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019.
But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, Brett Schreiber, said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.
Schreiber said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology.
“Words matter,” Schreiber said. “And if someone is playing fast and lose with words, they’re playing fast and lose with information and facts.”
Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars.
The Tahoe spun around so hard it was able to launch Benavides 75 feet through the air into nearby woods where her body was later found. It also left Angulo, who walked into the courtroom Friday with a limp and cushion to sit on, with broken bones and a traumatic brain injury.
But Schreiber said Tesla was at fault nonetheless. He said Tesla allowed drivers to act recklessly by not disengaging the Autopilot as soon as they begin to show signs of distraction and by allowing them to use the system on smaller roads that it was not designed for, like the one McGee was driving on.
“I trusted the technology too much,” said McGee at one point in his testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”
The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn’t crashed during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing alone: “The cause is that he dropped his cellphone.”
The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of Tesla liability despite a driver’s admission of reckless behavior would pose significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that increasingly drive themselves.
Dillon Angulo, who was seriously injured in a Florida crash involving Tesla’s Autopilot driver assist technology, speaks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Miami, Friday.
President Donald Trump on Friday called for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors to usurp the power of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing the head of the U.S. central bank for not cutting short-term interest rates.
Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Powell “stubborn.” The Fed chair has been subjected to vicious verbal attacks by the Republican president over several months.
The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump’s massive tariffs had on inflation.
If Powell doesn’t “substantially” lower rates, Trump said, “THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”
Trump sees the rate cuts as leading to stronger growth and lower debt servicing costs for the federal government and homebuyers. The president argues there is virtually no inflation, even though the Fed’s preferred measure is running at an annual rate of 2.6%, slightly higher than the Fed’s 2% target.
Trump has called for slashing the Fed’s benchmark rate by 3 percentage points, bringing it down dramatically from its current average of 4.33%. The risk is that a rate cut that large could cause more money to come into the economy than can be absorbed, possibly causing inflation to accelerate.
The Supreme Court suggested in a May ruling that Trump could not remove Powell for policy disagreements. This led the White House to investigate whether the Fed chair could be fired for cause because of the cost overruns in its $2.5 billion renovation projects.
Powell’s term as chair ends in May 2026, at which point Trump can put his Senate-confirmed pick in the seat.
President Donald Trump speaks as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell listens during a visit to the Federal Reserve, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Washington.
Stealth submarines fitted with space-shooting lasers, supply-chain sabotage and custom-built attack satellites armed with ion thrusters. Those are just some of the strategies Chinese scientists have been developing to counter what Beijing sees as a potent threat: Elon Musk’s armada of Starlink communications satellites.
Chinese government and military scientists, concerned about Starlink’s potential use by adversaries in a military confrontation and for spying, have published dozens of papers in public journals that explore ways to hunt and destroy Musk’s satellites, an Associated Press review found.
Chinese researchers believe that Starlink — a vast constellation of low-orbit satellites that deliver cheap, fast and ubiquitous connectivity even in remote areas — poses a high risk to the Chinese government and its strategic interests. That fear has mostly been driven by the company’s close ties to the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment, as well as its growing global footprint.
“As the United States integrates Starlink technology into military space assets to gain a strategic advantage over its adversaries, other countries increasingly perceive Starlink as a security threat in nuclear, space, and cyber domains,” wrote professors from China’s National University of Defense Technology in a 2023 paper.
Chinese researchers are not the only ones concerned about Starlink, which has a stranglehold on certain space-based communications. Some traditional U.S. allies are also questioning the wisdom of handing over core communications infrastructure — and a potential trove of data — to a company run by an unpredictable foreign businessman whose allegiances are not always clear.
Apprehensions deepened after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine made clear the battlefield advantages Starlink satellites could convey and have been exacerbated by Musk’s proliferating political interests.
Musk pumped tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s reelection effort and emerged, temporarily, as a key adviser and government official. As Musk toys with the idea of starting his own political party, he has also taken an increasing interest in European politics, using his influence to promote an array of hard-right and insurgent figures often at odds with establishment politicians.
Musk left the Trump administration in May and within days his relationship with Trump publicly imploded in a feud on social media. SpaceX, the rocket launch and space-based communications company that Musk founded and that operates Starlink, remains inextricably linked with core U.S. government functions. It has won billions in contracts to provide launch services for NASA missions and military satellites, recuperate astronauts stranded at the International Space Station and build a network of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.
Starlink’s space dominance has sparked a global scramble to come up with viable alternatives. But its crushing first-mover advantage has given SpaceX near monopoly power, further complicating the currents of business, politics and national security that converge on Musk and his companies.
Starlink dominates space
Since its first launches in 2019, Starlink has come to account for about two-thirds of all active satellites, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who writes a newsletter tracking satellite launches. SpaceX operates more than 8,000 active satellites and eventually aims to deploy tens of thousands more.
Beijing’s tendency to view Starlink as tool of U.S. military power has sharpened its efforts to develop countermeasures — which, if deployed, could increase the risk of collateral damage to other customers as SpaceX expands its global footprint. The same satellites that pass over China also potentially serve Europe, Ukraine, the United States and other geographies as they continue their path around the earth.
Starlink says it operates in more than 140 countries, and recently made inroads in Vietnam, Niger, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. In June, Starlink also obtained a license to operate in India, overcoming national security concerns and powerful domestic telecom interests to crack open a tech-savvy market of nearly 1.5 billion people.
On the company’s own map of coverage, it has very few dead zones beyond those in North Korea, Iran and China.
No other country or company is close to catching up with Starlink. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has taken aim at rival Musk with Project Kuiper, which launched its first batch of internet satellites into orbit in April. So far Amazon has just 78 satellites in orbit, with 3,232 planned, according to McDowell, and London-based Eutelstat OneWeb has around 650 satellites in orbit, a fraction of the fleet it had initially planned.
The European Union is spending billions to develop its own satellite array — called the IRIS2 initiative — but remains woefully behind. EU officials have had to lobby their own member states not to sign contracts with Starlink while it gets up and running.
“We are allies with the United States of America, but we need to have our strategic autonomy,” said Christophe Grudler, a French member of the European Parliament who led legislative work on IRIS2. “The risk is not having our destiny in our own hands.”
China has been public about its ambition to build its own version of Starlink to meet both domestic national security needs and compete with Starlink in foreign markets. In 2021, Beijing established the state-owned China SatNet company and tasked it with launching a megaconstellation with military capabilities, known as Guowang. In December, the company launched its first operational satellites, and now has 60 of a planned 13,000 in orbit, according to McDowell.
Qianfan, a company backed by the Shanghai government, has launched 90 satellites out of some 15,000 planned. The Brazilian government in November announced a deal with Qianfan, after Musk had a scorching public fight with a Brazilian judge investigating X, who also froze Space X’s bank accounts in the country. Qianfan is also targeting customers in Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan and Uzbekistan and has ambitions to expand across the African continent, according to a slide presented at a space industry conference last year and published by the China Space Monitor.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine supercharges concerns
Concerns about Starlink’s supremacy were supercharged by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war was a turning point in strategic thinking about Starlink and similar systems. Ukraine used the Starlink network to facilitate battlefield communications and power fighter and reconnaissance drones, providing a decisive ground-game advantage. At the same time, access to the satellites was initially controlled by a single man, Musk, who can — and did — interrupt critical services, refusing, for example, to extend coverage to support a Ukrainian counterattack in Russia-occupied Crimea.
U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow after the full-scale invasion also curtailed the availability of Western technology in Russia, underscoring the geopolitical risks inherent in relying on foreign actors for access to critical infrastructure.
“Ukraine was a warning shot for the rest of us,” said Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, a public policy research center based in Bangalore, India. “For the last 20 years, we were quite aware of the fact that giving important government contracts to Chinese companies is risky because Chinese companies operate as appendages of the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, it’s a risk because the Chinese Communist Party can use technology as a lever against you. Now it’s no different with the Americans.”
Nearly all of the 64 papers about Starlink reviewed by AP in Chinese journals were published after the conflict started.
Assessing Starlink’s capabilities and vulnerabilities
Starlink’s omnipresence and potential military applications have unnerved Beijing and spurred the nation’s scientists to action. In paper after paper, researchers painstakingly assessed the capabilities and vulnerabilities of a network that they clearly perceive as menacing and strove to understand what China might learn — and emulate — from Musk’s company as Beijing works to develop a similar satellite system.
Though Starlink does not operate in China, Musk’s satellites nonetheless can sweep over Chinese territory. Researchers from China’s National Defense University in 2023 simulated Starlink’s coverage of key geographies, including Beijing, Taiwan, and the polar regions, and determined that Starlink can achieve round-the-clock coverage of Beijing.
“The Starlink constellation coverage capacity of all regions in the world is improving steadily and in high speed,” they concluded.
In another paper — this one published by the government-backed China Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team — researchers mapped out vulnerabilities in Starlink’s supply chain. “The company has more than 140 first-tier suppliers and a large number of second-tier and third-tier suppliers downstream,” they wrote in a 2023 paper. “The supervision for cybersecurity is limited.”
Engineers from the People’s Liberation Army, in another 2023 paper, suggested creating a fleet of satellites to tail Starlink satellites, collecting signals and potentially using corrosive materials to damage their batteries or ion thrusters to interfere with their solar panels.
Other Chinese academics have encouraged Beijing to use global regulations and diplomacy to contain Musk, even as the nation’s engineers have continued to elaborate active countermeasures: Deploy small optical telescopes already in commercial production to monitor Starlink arrays. Concoct deep fakes to create fictitious targets. Shoot powerful lasers to burn Musk’s equipment.
Some U.S. analysts say Beijing’s fears may be overblown, but such assessments appear to have done little to cool domestic debate. One Chinese paper was titled, simply: “Watch out for that Starlink.”
In Myanmar, a board signaling an access to a Starlink device is erected on a road in an area under the control of armed groups fighting the Burmese army who took power in a coup in February 2021.
China’s cyberspace regulators on Thursday summoned Nvidia over security concerns that its H20 chips can be tracked and turned off remotely, the Cyberspace Administration of China said on its website.
In the meeting, Chinese regulators demanded that the U.S. chip company provide explanations on “backdoor safety risks” of its H20 chips to be sold in China and submit relevant materials, the office said.
“Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to AP.
It came just about two weeks after the Trump administration lifted the block on the computing chips and allowed Nvidia to resume sales of H20 chips to the Chinese market. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, made the announcement with fanfare when he was in Beijing earlier this month.
The latest episode appears to be another turbulence in the tech rivalry between the United States and China, which have left businesses in both countries tussling with governments over market access and national security concerns.
Any safety concern by Beijing could jeopardize the sale of H20 chips in China. Citing unnamed U.S. AI experts, the Chinese regulators said Nvidia has developed mature technology to track, locate and remotely disable its computing chips. The regulators summoned Nvidia to “safeguard the cybersecurity and data security of Chinese users,” in accordance with Chinese laws, the statement said.
The statement also referred to a call by U.S. lawmakers to require tracking and locating capabilities on U.S. advanced chips sold overseas.
In May, Rep. Bill Huizenga, R.-Michigan, and Rep. Bill Foster, D.-Illinois, introduced the Chip Security Act that would require high-end chips to be equipped with “security mechanisms” to detect “smuggling or exploitation.” The bill has not moved through Congress since its introduction.
Foster, a trained physicist, then said, “I know that we have the technical tools to prevent powerful AI technology from getting into the wrong hands.”
The U.S. still bans the sale to China of the most advanced chips, which are necessary for developing artificial intelligence. Both countries aim to lead in the artificial intelligence race. The Trump administration in April blocked the sales of H20 chips, which Nvidia developed to specifically comply with U.S. restrictions for exports of AI chips to China.
After the ban was lifted, Nvidia expected to sell hundreds of thousands more H20 chips in the Chinese market.
But the easing of the ban has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. On Monday, a group of top Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to express their “grave concerns”.
While chips like the H20 have differing capabilities than the most advanced chips such as Nvidia’s H100, “they give (China) capabilities that its domestically-developed chipsets cannot,” the senators wrote.
Shortly after the ban was lifted, Rep. John Moolenaar, R.-Michigan, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, objected. “The Commerce Department made the right call in banning the H20. Now it must hold the line,” Moolenaar wrote in a letter to Lutnick.
“We can’t let the CCP use American chips to train AI models that will power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation,” Moolenaar wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party by its acronym.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talks with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, left, before President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington.
President Donald Trump has raised the tariff rate on U.S. imports from Canada to 35% from 25%, effective Friday.
The announcement from the White House late Thursday said Canada had failed to “do more to arrest, seize, detain or otherwise intercept … traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs.”
Trump has heckled Canada for months and suggested it should become its 51st U.S. state. He had threatened to impose the higher tariff on Canada if no deal was reached by Friday, his deadline for reaching trade agreements with dozens of countries.
Earlier Thursday, the president said Canada’s announcement it will recognize a Palestinian state would “make it very hard” for the United States to reach a trade agreement with its northern neighbor. Trump has also expressed frustration with a trade deficit with Canada that largely reflects oil purchases by America.
Prime Minister Mark Carney had tempered expectations over tariffs, saying Ottawa would only agree to a deal “if there’s one on the table that is in the best interests of Canadians.”
In a statement released early Friday, he said he was disappointed by Trump’s actions and vowed to diversify Canada’s exports.
“Canada accounts for only 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce these volumes,” he said, pointing to heavy investments in border security.
Carney added that some industries — including lumber, steel, aluminum and automobiles — will be harder hit, but said his government will try to minimize the impact and protect Canadian jobs.
Canada was not included in Trump’s updated list of tariff rates on other countries announced late Thursday. Those import duties are due to take effect on Aug. 7.
Trump sent a letter to Canada a few weeks ago warning he planned to raise duties on many goods imported from Canada to 35%, deepening the rift between the two North American countries that has undermined their decades-old alliance.
Some imports from Canada are still protected by the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which is up for renegotiation next year.
The White House’s statement said goods transshipped through Canada that are not covered by the USMCA would be subject to a 40% tariff rate. It did not say where the goods might originate.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that there would be a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico after a call with that country’s leader, Claudia Sheinbaum, keeping 25% tariff rates in place.
A federal appeals court has upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly, clearing the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shakeup that’s designed to give consumers more choices.
The unanimous ruling issued Thursday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivers a double-barreled legal blow for Google, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials that resulted in different pillars of its internet empire being declared as domineering scofflaws monopolies since late 2023.
The unsuccessful appeal represents a major victory for video game maker Epic Games, which launched a legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps and Apple’s iPhone app store nearly five years ago in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions.
Although not as lucrative as Google’s search engine or ad system, the Play Store for Android apps has long been a gold mine that generated billions of dollars in annual revenue by taking a 15% to 30% cut from in-app transactions funneled through the company’s own payment processing system.
Following a month-long trial, a nine-person jury determined that Google had rigged its system to thwart alternative app stores from offering better deals to consumers and software developers. That verdict resulted in U.S. District Judge James Donato ordering Google to tear down digital walls shielding the Play Store from competition, triggering the company’s appeal to overturn the jury’s finding and void the judge’s mandated shakeup.
But a three-judge panel that heard Google’s appeal in February rejected its lawyers’ contention that Donato erred by allowing the case to be determined by a jury that deviated from the market definition outlined by another federal judge who mostly sided with Apple in Epic’s case against the iPhone maker’s app store.
Epic’s lawsuit “was replete with evidence that Google’s anticompetitive conduct entrenched its dominance, causing the Play Store to benefit from network effects,” the judges wrote in the decision.
Unless Google can extend the enforcement delay placed on Donato’s order issued last October, the company will have to begin an overhaul that includes making the Play Store’s entire library of more than 2 million Android apps available to would-be rivals and also help distribute the alternative options. Google has argued that the required revisions will raise privacy and security risks by exposing consumers to scam artists and hackers masquerading as legitimate app stores.
But Epic’s lawyers have ridiculed Google’s warnings about the changes as scare tactics in a desperate attempt to protect the fortunes of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc.
Although Epic fell short in its attempt to have the iPhone’s app store declared a monopoly, that case resulted in a judge issuing an order that required Apple to surrender exclusive control over the payment processing of in-app transactions and allow links to alternative systems without collecting a commission.
Besides being hit with Donato’s order, Google still faces further trouble ahead that could leave an even bigger dent in its finances.
As part of the effort to address Google’s illegal monopoly in search, a federal judge is weighing a proposal by the U.S. Justice Department that would require the sale of its Chrome web browser and ban the multibillion dollar deals that company has been making with Apple and others to lock-in its search engine as the main gateway to the internet.
Google is also facing a proposed breakup of its advertising technology as part of the countermeasures to its monopoly in that business. A trial on that proposal is scheduled to begin in September.
With President Donald Trump’s dramatic tariff hikes on the cusp of starting, countries around the world scrambled on Thursday to finalize their trade frameworks with the United States, figure out the tax rates their goods might face and prepare for the unknown.
Shortly before Friday deadline for the tariffs beginning, Trump said he would enter into a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico, one of the nation’s largest trading partners, with the current 25% tariff rates staying in place, down from the 30% he had threatened earlier.
“We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue,” Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on X after a call with Trump that he referred to as “very successful” in terms of the leaders getting to know each other better.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Thursday’s news briefing that Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” would sign an order to impose new rates starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday. Countries that had not received a prior letter from Trump or negotiated a framework would be notified of their likely tariff rates, either by letter or executive order, she said.
The unknowns created a sense of drama that have defined Trump’s rollout of tariffs over several months, with the one consistency being his desire to levy the import taxes that most economists say will ultimately be borne to some degree by U.S. consumers and businesses.
“We have made a few deals today that are excellent deals for the country,” Trump told reporters on Thursday afternoon without detailing the terms of those agreements or nations involved.
Trump said that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had called ahead of 35% tariffs being imposed on many of his nation’s goods, but “we haven’t spoken to Canada today.”
Trump imposed the Friday deadline after his previous “Liberation Day” tariffs in April resulted in a stock market panic. His unusually high tariff rates unveiled in April led to recession fears, prompting Trump to impose a 90-day negotiating period. When he was unable to create enough trade deals with other countries, he extended the timeline and sent out letters to world leaders that simply listed rates, prompting a slew of hasty deals.
Trump reached a deal with South Korea on Wednesday, and earlier with the European Union, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that there were agreements with Cambodia and Thailand after they had agreed to a ceasefire to their border conflict.
Among those uncertain about their trade status were wealthy Switzerland and Norway.
Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said it was “completely uncertain” whether a deal would be completed before Trump’s deadline.
But even the public announcement of a deal can offer scant reassurance for an American trading partner.
EU officials are waiting to complete a crucial document outlining how the framework to tax imported autos and other goods from the 27-member state bloc would operate. Trump had announced a deal Sunday while he was in Scotland.
“The U.S. has made these commitments. Now it’s up to the U.S. to implement them. The ball is in their court,” EU Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said. The document would not be legally binding.
Trump said as part of the agreement with Mexico that goods imported into the U.S. would continue to face a 25% tariff that he has ostensibly linked to fentanyl trafficking. He said autos would face a 25% tariff, while copper, aluminum and steel would be taxed at 50% during the negotiating period.
He said Mexico would end its “Non Tariff Trade Barriers,” but he didn’t provide specifics.
Some goods continue to be protected from the tariffs by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term.
But Trump appeared to have soured on that deal, which is up for renegotiation next year. One of his first significant moves as president was to tariff goods from both Mexico and Canada earlier this year.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the U.S. ran a $171.5 billion trade imbalance with Mexico last year. That means the U.S. bought more goods from Mexico than it sold to the country.
The imbalance with Mexico has grown in the aftermath of the USMCA as it was only $63.3 billion in 2016, the year before Trump started his first term in office.
Besides addressing fentanyl trafficking, Trump has made it a goal to close the trade gap.
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
Numerous countries around the world are facing the prospect of much higher duties on their exports to the United States on Friday, a potential blow to the global economy, because they haven’t yet reached a trade deal with the Trump administration.
Some of the United States’ biggest trading partners have reached agreements, or at least the outlines of one, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Even so, those countries face much higher tariffs than were in effect before Trump took office. And other large trading partners — most notably China and Mexico — received an extension to keep negotiating and won’t be hit with new duties Friday, but they will likely end up paying more.
President Donald Trump intends the duties to bring back manufacturing to the United States, while also forcing other countries to reduce their trade barriers to U.S. exports. Trump argues that foreign exporters will pay the cost of the tariffs, but so far economists have found that most are being paid by U.S. companies. And measures of U.S. inflation have started to tick higher as prices of imported goods, such as furniture, appliances, and toys rise.
For those countries without an agreement, they could face duties of as much as 50%, including on large economies such as Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, and India. Many smaller countries are also on track to pay more, including South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even tiny Lesotho.
The duties originated from Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement that the United States would impose import taxes of up to 50% on nearly 60 countries and economies, including the 27-nation European Union. Those duties, originally scheduled for April 9, were then postponed twice, first to July 9 and then Aug. 1.
Will the deadline hold this time?
As of Thursday afternoon, White House representatives — and Trump himself — insisted that no more delays were possible.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” will sign an order to impose new tariff rates starting midnight on Friday.
Countries that have not received a prior letter on tariffs from Trump or negotiated a trade framework will be notified of their likely tariff rates, Leavitt said, either in the form of a letter or Trump’s executive order. At least two dozen countries were sent letters setting out their tariff rates.
On Wednesday, Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social, “THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE IS THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE — IT STANDS STRONG, AND WILL NOT BE EXTENDED.”
Which countries have a trade agreement?
In a flurry of last minute deal-making, the Trump has been announcing agreements as late as Thursday, but they are largely short on details.
On Thursday, the U.S. and Pakistan reached a trade agreement expected to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves and lower tariffs for the South Asian country.
And on Wednesday, Trump announced a deal with South Korea that would impose 15% tariffs on goods from that country. That is below the 25% duties that Trump threatened in April.
Agreements have also been reached with the European Union, Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. The agreement with the Philippines barely reduced the tariff it will pay, from 20% to 19%.
And which countries don’t?
The exact number of countries facing higher duties isn’t clear, but the majority of the 200 have not made deals. Trump has already slapped large duties on Brazil and India even before the deadline was reached.
In the case of Brazil, Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday imposing a 50% duty on imports, though he exempted several large categories, including aircraft, aluminum, and energy products. Trump is angry at Brazil’s government because it is prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting to overturn his election loss in 2022. Trump was indicted on a similar charge in 2023.
While Trump has sought to justify the widespread tariffs as an effort to combat the United States’ chronic trade deficits, the U.S. actually has a trade surplus with Brazil — meaning it sells more goods and services to Brazil than it buys from that country.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Canada have been complicated by the Canadian government’s announcement that it will recognize a Palestinian state in September. Trump said early Thursday that the announcement “will make it very hard” for the U.S. to reach a trade deal with Canada.
Late Wednesday, Trump said that India would pay a 25% duty on all its exports, in part because it has continued to purchase oil from Russia.
On Thursday, the White House said it had extended the deadline to reach a deal with Mexico for another 90 days, citing the complexity of the trade relationship, which is governed by the trade agreement Trump reached when he updated NAFTA in his first term.
For smaller countries caught in Trump’s cross hairs, the Aug. 1 deadline is particularly difficult because the White House has acknowledged they aren’t able to negotiate with every country facing tariff threats. Lesotho, for example, a small country in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% duty on April 2, and even though it was postponed, the threat has already devastated its apparel industry, costing thousands of jobs.
“There’s 200 countries,’’ the president acknowledged earlier this month. “You can’t talk to all of them.’’
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AP Writers Josh Boak and Wyatte Grantham-Philipps contributed to this report.
In 2020, a disgruntled litigant posing as a deliveryman opened fire at the New Jersey home of District Judge Esther Salas, killing her 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl. Five years later, as President Donald Trump steps up hiscriticism of federal judges who have blocked some of his agenda, dozens of judges have had unsolicited pizzas delivered to their homes, often in Daniel Anderl’s name.
District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of Rhode Island, who stalled Trump’s initial round of across-the-board spending cuts, is among those who received pizzas in Anderl’s name. His courtroom also has been flooded by threatening calls, including one profanity-laced one that called for his assassination.
McConnell, Jr. played a recording of the call during an unusual discussion Thursday where multiple federal judges discussed threats they have received — a notable conversation because judges usually only speak publicly from the bench and through their rulings, and rarely if ever, about personal threats and attacks. Salas and others said the number of attacks has escalated in recent months.
Without using his name, Salas called on Trump and his allies to tone down the rhetoric and stop demonizing the judiciary, for fear of what more could happen.
“We’re used to being appealed. But keep it on the merits, stop demonizing us,” Salas said. “They’re inviting people to do us harm.”
Thursday’s event was sponsored by Speak up for Justice, a nonpartisan group supporting an independent judiciary. District Judge John C. Coughenour of Washington recalled having a police SWAT team called to his home to respond to a false report of an attack after Coughenour in January halted Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of people in the country illegally.
District Judge Robert S. Lasnik of Washington also had pizzas delivered in Anderl’s name to both his home and those of his two adult children, each in different cities, after an article in which he was quoted as being critical of attacks on judges was picked up by a television station in the Pacific Northwest, where he hears cases.
“The message to me was ‘we know where you live, we know where your kids live, and they could end up dead like Daniel Anderl did,’” Lasnik said in an interview.
Salas says U.S. Marshals have told her of more than 100 cases of so-called “pizza doxings,” unwanted deliveries to the homes of federal judges and their families, since 2024, with most occurring this year. Salas added that she’s heard of additional cases targeting state judges in states ranging from Colorado to Florida, incidents that wouldn’t be tracked by Marshals, who protect federal judges.
“This is not some random, silly act, this is a targeted, concentrated, coordinated attack on judges,” Salas said in an interview, “and yet we don’t hear any condemnation from Washington.”
Salas, nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, in 2022 was critical of protests at the homes of Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices who revoked women’s right to have an abortion, which were followed by the arrest of a man at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh who said he was there to assassinate the justice. Salas said both sides of the political aisle have used worrying rhetoric about judges, but it’s reached a new peak since Trump took office.
“I’ve often referred to it as a bonfire that I believe the current administration is throwing accelerants on,” Salas said.
Trump himself has led the charge against judges, often going after them by name on social media. He’s said judges who’ve ruled against his administration are “sick,” “very dangerous” and “lunatic.” Trump’s allies have amplified his rhetoric and called for impeaching judges who rule against the president or simply disobeying their rulings. Earlier this year, several judges at the panel noted, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee had a “wanted” poster of judges who’d crossed the president hanging outside his congressional office.
Lasnik said many judges appointed by presidents of both parties have told him of concerns but are nervous about discussing the issue openly.
“A lot of them don’t know how to speak up and are afraid of crossing a line somewhere where they would get a judicial complaint like judge Boasberg did,” Lasnik said, referring to District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C., who infuriated the Trump administration by finding they likely committed criminal contempt by disobeying his order to turn around a deportation flight to El Salvador.
Though Chief Justice John Roberts has come to Boasberg’s defense, Trump’s Department of Justice this week filed a complaint against Boasberg over comments he made at a judicial conference that other judges worry the Trump administration won’t obey their orders. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department took the extraordinary step of suing every federal judge in Maryland over rules governing how they handle immigration cases.
More than five dozen judges who’ve ruled against Trump are receiving enhanced online protection, including scrubbing their identifying information from websites, according to two Trump-appointed judges who wrote Congress urging more funding for judicial security. In 2022, Congress passed a law named after Daniel Anderl allowing judges to sue internet sites to take down identifying information.
The tariffs planned by President Donald Trump on Friday touched off a feverish bout of activity among trade partners as key details remained unclear and nations didn’t know the taxes their goods could face — keeping an element of surprise to an event long hyped by the U.S. leader.
Just hours before the deadline, Trump on Thursday said he would enter a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico over trade as 25% tariff rates stay in place, providing a bit of clarity to a massive rewiring of the global economy that will require the president to sign a new executive order.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that his phone conversation with Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum was “very successful in that, more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.”
The Republican president had threatened tariffs of 30% on goods from Mexico in a July letter, something that Sheinbaum said Mexico gets to stave off for the next three months.
“We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue,” Sheinbaum wrote on X.
The leaders’ morning call came at a moment of pressure and uncertainty for the world economy. As Trump’s deadline loomed, nations were scrambling to finalize the outlines of trade frameworks so he would not simply impose higher tariff rates that could upend economies and governments.
Trump reached a deal with South Korea on Wednesday, and earlier with the European Union, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that there were agreements with Cambodia and Thailand after they had agreed to a ceasefire to their border conflict.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” will sign an order to impose new rates starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday. Countries that have not received a prior letter from Trump or negotiated a framework will be notified of their likely tariff rates, either by letter or executive order, she said.
Among those uncertain about their trade status were wealthy Switzerland and Norway.
Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said it was “completely uncertain” whether a deal would be completed before Trump’s deadline.
But even the public announcement of a deal can offer scant reassurance for an American trading partner.
EU officials are waiting to complete a crucial document outlining how the framework to tax imported autos and other goods from the 27-member state bloc would operate. Trump had announced a deal Sunday while he was in Scotland.
“The U.S. has made these commitments. Now it’s up to the U.S. to implement them. The ball is in their court,” EU commission spokesman Olof Gill said. The document would not be legally binding.
Trump said as part of the agreement with Mexico that goods imported into the U.S. would continue to face a 25% tariff that he has ostensibly linked to fentanyl trafficking. He said autos would face a 25% tariff, while copper, aluminum and steel would be taxed at 50% during the negotiating period.
He said Mexico would end its “Non Tariff Trade Barriers,” but he didn’t provide specifics.
Some goods continue to be protected from the tariffs by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term.
But Trump appeared to have soured on that deal, which is up for renegotiation next year. One of his first significant moves as president was to tariff goods from both Mexico and Canada earlier this year.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the U.S. ran a $171.5 billion trade imbalance with Mexico last year. That means the U.S. bought more goods from Mexico than it sold to the country.
The imbalance with Mexico has grown in the aftermath of the USMCA as it was only $63.3 billion in 2016, the year before Trump started his first term in office.
Besides addressing fentanyl trafficking, Trump has made it a goal to close the trade gap.
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
A rural Texas county was missing some of its key leadership in the initial hours of a catastrophic flood that came barreling through the region, causing widespread destruction and killing more than 130 people earlier this month.
Kerr County’s sheriff and its emergency management director both acknowledged Thursday during a legislative hearing that they were asleep when it first became apparent that a major flood event was unfolding. Moreover, Judge Rob Kelly, the top executive of Kerrville County, was out of town on July 4, the day of the flood.
Their testimony, which came during a joint House and Senate panel of lawmakers who visited the hard-hit Texas Hill Country, revealed a lack of on-duty leadership in the key initial moments of the flooding that killed at least 136 people, including 27 youths and counselors at an all-girls camp.
William “Dub” Thomas, Kerr County’s emergency management coordinator, told lawmakers that he was sick the day before the flooding occurred and missed two calls with Texas Emergency Management officials. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha and Thomas both acknowledged being asleep as a crisis was unfolding.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expressed his frustration.
“I’m not pointing a finger, I’m not blaming you, I just want to set the record straight. Everyone was here that day working their ass off, and you were nowhere to be found,” Patrick said as the audience applauded.
Thomas said on the morning of July 4, he was first awakened by his wife around 5:30 a.m., about two hours after emergency rescue operations were underway, and quickly drove to the sheriff’s office.
“There was no visible flooding on my drive into the office, but it quickly became clear that the situation was escalating,” he said.
In other testimony, local officials said they needed but lacked an updated warning system, when flash flooding swept away homes and vehicles and left families begging for rescue on the roofs of their homes earlier this month.
Others who testified Thursday before an audience of hundreds of people — some who wore green ribbons in memory of the victims — called for urgent improvements for better flood warnings and flood mitigation.
Kelly said residents had virtually no warning of the impending weather catastrophe until it was too late.
“We need stronger communications and better broadband so we can communicate better,” he said, adding that poor cell service did not help those along the river. “What we experienced on July 4 was sudden, violent and overwhelming.”
Leitha presented a timeline of events to lawmakers and said emergency responders realized they had an “all-hands-on-deck” situation as early as 3:30 a.m., when dispatchers received a call from a family stranded on their roof requesting air evacuation. But Leitha acknowledged he was not alerted of the flooding until about an hour later, at around 4:20 a.m.
Kelly, who holds a position in Texas that functions as the county’s chief executive officer, testified that he was out of town at Lake Travis on the morning of the flood and woke up around 5:30 a.m.
Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Houston, asked Leitha whether the county should have a protocol in place for when three of the top county officials are not available during an emergency.
“Yes, ma’am, we can look at that real hard,” Leitha said. “Yes, I can look and maybe they can call me earlier.”
Residents along the Guadalupe River have said they were caught off guard and had no warning when rainfall struck. Kerr County does not have a warning system along the river after several missed opportunities by state and local agencies to finance one.
The hearing comes as authorities have begun publicly releasing records and audio — including 911 calls — that have provided new glimpses into the escalating danger and chaos in the early hours of the July Fourth holiday. They include panicked and confused messages from residents caught in trees as well as families fleeing with children from homes with water creeping up to the knees.
“People are dying,” one woman tells a 911 operator in call logs released by nearby Kendall County. She says she had a young relative at a church camp in Kerr County who was stranded along with his classmates because of the high waters.
“I don’t want them to get stuck in a low-water crossing. And what are they going to do? They have like 30 kids,” the woman says.
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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Attendees wait for a Senate and House Select Committees on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding public hearing to begin, in Kerrville, Texas, Thursday, July 31, 2025.
Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was arrested Wednesday along with five other people, including a suspected member of an Israeli organized crime group, on suspicion of hosting illegal high-stakes poker games at a Los Angeles mansion owned by Arenas, federal prosecutors said.
All six defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and one count of operating an illegal gambling business, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They were all scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Arenas, 43, is also charged with making false statements to federal investigators, the statement said. He is named in the indictment as ”Agent Zero,” a nickname from his playing days with the Washington Wizards.
Arenas appeared in court Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and was released on a $50,000 bond after pleading not guilty to the charges. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 23.
His attorney Jerome Friedberg said outside the courthouse that he hadn’t had much time to speak with his client and couldn’t comment on the case.
“At this point in the case, he is presumed innocent, right?” Friedberg said. “He has the same right as any other citizen to that presumption and that’s how he should be treated.”
The other five defendants are residents of Los Angeles ranging in age from 27 to 52. Among them is a 49-year-old man described by prosecutors as “a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.”
The indictment says that from September 2021 to July 2022, the defendants staged the home in the Encino neighborhood to host “Pot Limit Omaha” poker games and other illegal gambling activity. The poker players paid a “rake,” a fee charged as a percentage or fixed amount from each hand gambled, court documents claim.
One of the defendants hired young women who, in exchange for tips, served drinks and provided massages and “offered companionship” to the poker players, according to prosecutors.
“The women were charged a ‘tax’ – a percentage of their earnings from working the games. Chefs, valets, and armed security guards also were hired to staff these illegal poker games,” the statement said.
The Israeli man faces separate charges including marriage fraud and lying on immigration documents. He is suspected of conspiring with a 35-year-old Los Angeles woman to enter into a sham marriage for the purposes of obtaining permanent legal status in the U.S.
If convicted, the defendants would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count, prosecutors said.
Arenas averaged 20.7 points during an 11-year career with four teams, most notably a seven-plus season stint in Washington from 2004-11.
Charismatic and mercurial, Arenas — who counted “Agent Zero” (representing his number) and “Hibachi” for the way he could heat up during a game among his many nicknames — was a three-time All-Star, a gifted scorer and one of the key cogs in a handful of Wizards teams that enjoyed modest success in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Yet Arenas’ run in Washington ended in disgrace. Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton were suspended for the balance of the NBA season in January 2010 following a locker-room incident in which both players pulled guns on each other.
Arenas returned to play briefly for Washington the following season before being traded to Orlando. He then bounced to Memphis in 2011, coming off the bench for 17 games before stepping away to play in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2012-13. He never returned to the NBA.
His son, Alijah Arenas, was a Los Angeles high school basketball star who is a highly touted freshman player for the University of Southern California. His college career is on hold pending knee surgery and rehab is expected to take months, the school said last week.
Microsoft said Wednesday that annual revenue for its flagship Azure cloud computing platform has surpassed $75 billion, up 34% from a year earlier.
The Azure cloud business is a centerpiece of Microsoft’s efforts to shift its focus to artificial intelligence, but until Wednesday the company hadn’t disclosed how much money it makes.
The revelation came in the software giant’s end-of-year earnings report, one that also showed a 24% spike in the company’s quarterly profit that beat Wall Street expectations and pleased investors wary about Microsoft’s ongoing construction of costly new data centers needed to meet cloud computing and AI demand.
“We continue to scale our own data center capacity faster than any other competitor,” CEO Satya Nadella said on an investor call, boasting that the company now has more than 400 of the sprawling facilities across six continents.
Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter profit was $34.3 billion, or $3.65 per share, beating analyst expectations for $3.37 per share.
It posted revenue of $76.4 billion in the April-June period, up 18% from last year. Analysts polled by FactSet Research had been looking for revenue of $73.86 billion.
Microsoft launched Azure more than a decade ago, but the service has increasingly become intertwined with its AI ambitions, as the company looks to sell its AI chatbot and other tools to big business customers that are also reliant on its core online services.
It still trails behind its lead competitor, Amazon Web Services, which reported $107.6 billion in revenue for its fiscal year that ended in December.
Building the infrastructure to power cloud and AI technology is expensive, and Microsoft has looked for savings elsewhere. It announced layoffs of about 15,000 workers this year even as its profits have soared.
Nadella told employees last week the layoffs were “weighing heavily” on him but also positioned them as an opportunity to reimagine the company’s mission for an AI era.
Still, the overall workforce numbers haven’t changed. The company said it employed 228,000 full-time employees as of June 30, the exact same amount it reported a year ago, though slightly more of them are now U.S.-based and fewer of them are in product support roles or consulting services.
Promises of a leaner approach have been welcomed on Wall Street, especially as Microsoft and other tech giants are trying to justify huge amounts of capital spending to pay for the data centers, chips and other components required to power AI technology.
Google said after releasing its earnings last week it would raise its budget for capital expenditures by an additional $10 billion to $85 billion. Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said she expects capital spending for the July-September quarter to be $30 billion.
Microsoft didn’t disclose Wednesday to what extent sweeping U.S. tariffs are affecting its revenue, but its annual report lists tariffs among a number of risks the company faces.
“Increased geopolitical instabilities and changing U.S. administration priorities create an unpredictable trade landscape,” the company said. It also said the “volatility of U.S. tariffs has triggered economic uncertainty and could impact cloud and devices supply chain cost competitiveness.”
Whether it serves as a chill escape from the onslaught of the real world or simply a way to beat vacation doldrums, a viral Roblox game about gardening has become the surprise hit of the summer.
Grow a Garden, created by a 16-year-old in a few days, has shattered records for the most concurrent players of any game in history, beating out video games that take years and millions of dollars to develop.
And there’s no one to shoot, fight or race. If your last attempt at cultivating vegetables was FarmVille in 2010, don’t worry — your tomatoes will grow even if you never water them.
Grow a Garden is as simple as its name suggests — players can fill a plot of land with plants and animals, harvest and sell, trade or steal each others’ bounty. The game is low stress, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Minecraft and a soundtrack of soothing classical tunes such as Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca playing in the background. Its popularity has further cemented Roblox’ place not just in the gaming world but in popular culture — for better or for worse, it’s where the kids hang out.
“The word I keep hearing used over and over to describe this particular game is that it’s chill, which is just such a nice alternative. I get a lot of sort of that Animal Crossing vibe from it. You know, like you can check in, you can check your gardens, you can get some new seeds, you can plant them,” said Becky Bozdech, editorial director at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. “I have an 11-year-old son who (plays it) and he says to him the big difference is that a lot of games have a big giant objective that you have to do, but in Grow a Garden, you can just kind of hang out and do what you want.”
Coincidence or not, Grow a Garden soared to popularity around the same time that Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay the launch of its wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 until next year. In late June, the gardening game logged 21.6 million concurrent players, surpassing Fortnite’s previous record of 15.2 million according to Roblox. Analysts who follow Roblox’s stock say Grow a Garden is helping boost the company’s revenue and will push the company’s quarterly earnings numbers above Wall Street’s expectations.
While it’s not clear if the GTA audience flocked to this simple gardening game to pass the time until then, the timing reignited the age-old debate about who gamers are and what titles are taken seriously by the video game establishment. It happened with Candy Crush, with puzzle games, with Animal Crossing. Are people who play cozy games true gamers? Or is the title reserved for the folks who shoot enemies in Call of Duty or drive around creating mayhem in GTA?
“There’s a huge percentage of gamers that play Roblox and the actual industry just views it as like this esoterically immature platform of weird gameplay habits,” said Janzen Madsen, the New Zealand-based CEO and founder of Splitting Point studios, which acquired the game from its teenage creator. “Well, I actually think in five years this is what player expectation is gonna be. And because you guys haven’t embraced it, like you’re not gonna know how to make games.”
To start growing your garden, you’ll need a Roblox account. The game will start you out with an empty plot and some money — sheckles — and a starter seed. From there, you can plant seeds, harvest and sell your crops and buy more seeds, animals or tools for your garden. While it is possible to play the game without spending real-world money, it will take longer. Once you sell enough crops, you earn money to buy more expensive seeds beyond basic carrots and blueberries.
“For me, I just, I really want to get all the rarest stuff. I’m a completionist, so I want everything and that’s what’s fun for me,” said Leah Ashe, a YouTuber who plays Grow a Garden and other popular games to an audience of 5.3 million. “It’s really cool because you can come together because the seed shop is global, so everybody’s shop is the exact same. So you can work with other people and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, the sugar apple is in stock. Get online!’ The seed shop updates every five minutes, so there’s always something pulling you back into the game.”
For Roblox, which has faced a backlash for not doing enough to protect kids on its gaming service, Grow a Garden has served as something of a reprieve — along with new safety measures such as chat restrictions and privacy tools.
New players get help from more established peers who send them gifts and let them know when rare seeds become available in the seed shop.
Bozdech said that “if you have the right supervision and guidance,” Roblox can be a positive experience for kids, allowing them to create their own designs or practice coding, for instance.
“Something like Grow a Garden, particularly, is a nice opportunity maybe for parents and kids to play together,” she said.
And perhaps the slow cultivating of a magical garden can benefit parents too.
“It’s hitting a nerve, you know?” Bozdech said. “People need an escape from the world, I think we all do.”
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