Feeling nostalgic for the days when going back to school meant picking out fresh notebooks, pencils and colored markers at a local drugstore or stationary shop? The annual ritual is both easier and more complicated for today’s students.

Big retail chains generate online lists of school supplies for customers who type in their zip codes, then choose a school and a grade level. One click and they are ready to check out. Some schools also offer busy parents a one-stop shop by partnering with vendors that sell premade kits with binders, index cards, pens and other needed items.

Yet for all the time-saving options, many families begin their back-to-school shopping months before Labor Day, searching around for the best deals and making purchases tied to summer sales. This year, the possibility of price increases from new U.S. tariffs on imports motivated more shoppers to get a jump start on replacing and refilling school backpacks, according to retail analysts.

Retail and technology consulting company Coresight Research estimates that back-to-school spending from June through August will reach $33.3 billion in the U.S., a 3.3% increase from the same three-month period a year ago. The company predicted families would complete about 60% of their shopping before August to avoid extra costs from tariffs.

“Consumers are of the mindset where they’re being very strategic and conscientious around price fluctuations, so for back to school, it prompts them to shop even earlier,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, the research division of software company Adobe Inc.

Getting a head start

Miami resident Jacqueline Agudelo, 39, was one of the early birds who started shopping for school supplies in June because she wanted to get ahead of possible price increases from new U.S. tariffs on imported products.

The teacher’s supply list for her 5-year-old son, who started kindergarten earlier this month, mandated specific classroom items in big quantities. Agudelo said her shopping list included 15 boxes of Crayola crayons, Lysol wipes and five boxes of Ticonderoga brand pencils, all sharpened.

Agudelo said she spent $160 after finding plenty of bargains online and in stores, including the crayons at half off, but found the experience stressful.

“I am overwhelmed by the need to stay on top of where the deals are as shopping has become more expensive over the years,” she said.

A lot of the backpacks, lined paper, glue sticks — and Ticonderoga pencils — sold in the U.S. are made in China, whose products were subjected to a 145% tariff in the spring. Under the latest agreement between the countries, general merchandise from China is taxed at a 30% rate when it enters the U.S.

Many companies accelerated shipments from China early in the year, stockpiling inventory at pre-tariff prices. Some predicted consumers would encounter higher prices just in time for back-to-school shopping. Although government data showed consumer prices rose 2.7% last month from a year earlier, strategic discounting by major retailers may have muted any sticker shock for customers seeking school supplies.

Backpacks and lunchboxes, for example, had discounts as deep as 12.1% during Amazon’s Prime Day sales and competing online sales at Target and Walmart in early July, Adobe Insights said. Throughout the summer, some of the biggest chains have advertised selective price freezes to hold onto customers.

Walmart is promoting a back-to-school deal that includes 14 supplies plus a backpack for $16, the lowest price in six years, company spokesperson Leigh Stidham said. Target said in June that it would maintain its 2024 prices on 20 key back-to-school items that together cost less than $20.

An analysis consumer data provider Numerator prepared for The Associated Press showed the retail cost of 48 products a family with two school age children might need — two lunchboxes, two scientific calculators, a pair of boy’s shoes — averaged $272 in July, or $3 less than the same month last year.

Digital natives in the classroom

Numerator, which tracks U.S. retail prices through sales receipts, online account activity and other information from 200,000 shoppers, reported last year that households were buying fewer notebooks, book covers, writing instruments and other familiar staples as students did more of their work on computers.

The transition does not mean students no longer have to stock up on plastic folders, highlighters and erasers, or that parents are spending less to equip their children for class. Accounting and consulting firm Deloitte estimates that traditional school supplies will account for more than $7 billion of the $31 billion it expects U.S. parents to put toward back-to-school shopping.

Shopping habits also are evolving. TeacherLists, an online platform where individual schools and teachers can upload their recommended supply lists and parents can search for them, was launched in 2012 to reduce the need for paper lists. It now has more than 2 million lists from 70,000 schools.

Users have the option of clicking on an icon that populates an online shopping cart at participating retail chains. Some retailers also license the data for use on their websites and in their stores, said Dyanne Griffin, the architect and vice president of TeacherLists.

The typical number of items teacher request has remained fairly steady at around 17 since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Griffin said. “The new items that had come on the list, you know, in the last four or five years are more the tech side. Everybody needs headphones or earbuds, that type of thing, maybe a mouse,” she said.

She’s also noticed a lot of schools requiring clear backpacks and pencil pouches so the gear can’t be used to stow guns.

Enter artificial intelligence

For consumers who like to research their options before they buy, technology and retail companies have introduced generative AI tools to help them find and compare products. Rufus, the AI-powered shopping assistant that Amazon launched last year, is now joined by Sparky, an app-only feature that Walmart shoppers can use to get age-specific product recommendations and other information in response to their questions.

Just over a quarter of U.S. adults say they use AI for shopping, which is considerably lower than the number who say they use AI for tasks such as searching for information or brainstorming, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July.

Some traditions remain

Before the pandemic turned a lot more people into online shoppers, schools and local Parent Teacher Associations embraced the idea of making back-to-school shopping easier by ordering ready-made bundles of teacher-recommended supplies. An extra fee on the price helped raise money for the school.

Market data from Edukit, a supplier of school supply kits owned by TeachersList parent company School Family Media, shows that about 40% of parents end up buying the boxes, meaning the other 60% need to shop on their own, Griffin said. She noted that parents typically must commit no later than June to secure a bundle, which focus on essentials like notebooks and crayons.

Agudelo said her son’s school offered a box for $190 that focused on basics like crayons and notebooks but didn’t include a backpack. She decided to pass and shop around for the best prices. She also liked bringing her son along for the shopping trips.

“There’s that sense of getting him mentally prepared for the school year,” Agudelo said. “The box takes away from that.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/LM Otero

After a few frightening incidents seeing family and friends collapse in Phoenix’s grueling heat, Ashton Dolce, 17, began to wonder why his country’s leaders were not doing more to keep people safe from climate change.

“I was just dumbfounded,” Dolce said.

He became active in his hometown, organizing rallies and petitions to raise awareness about extreme heat and calling for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make such conditions eligible for major disaster declarations.

Just before his senior year of high school in 2024, Dolce got the chance to really make his concerns heard: He became one of 15 students across the United States selected to join the FEMA Youth Preparedness Council, a 13-year-old program for young people to learn about and become ambassadors for disaster preparedness.

“It was this really cool opportunity to get involved with FEMA and to actually have a specified seat at the table where we could develop resources by and for youth,” Dolce said.

Then came signs of trouble.

On Jan. 16, the young people were told by email that a culminating summit in the nation’s capital this summer was canceled. By February, the students stopped hearing from their advisers. Meetings ceased. After months of silence, the students got an email Aug. 1 saying the program would be terminated early.

“We were putting so much time and effort into this space,” he said, “and now it’s fully gutted.”

FEMA took action to ensure it was ‘lean’

In an email to students reviewed by The Associated Press, the agency said the move was intended “to ensure FEMA is a lean, deployable disaster force that is ready to support states as they take the lead in preparedness and disaster response.”

The council’s dissolution, though dwarfed in size by other cuts, reflects the fallout from the chaotic changes at the agency charged with managing the federal response to disasters. Since the start of Republican President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has reduced FEMA staff by thousands, delayed crucial emergency trainings, discontinued certain survivor outreach efforts and canceled programs worth billions of dollars.

Dolce said ignoring students undermines resilience, too.

“This field needs young people and we are pushing young people out,” he said. “The administration is basically just giving young people the middle finger on climate change.”

Larger federal programs related to youth and climate are also in turmoil.

In April, the administration slashed funding to AmeriCorps, the 30-year-old federal agency for volunteer service. As a result, 2,000 members of the National Civilian Community Corps, who commonly aid in disaster recovery, left their program early.

FEMA did not respond to questions about why it shut down the youth council. In an email bulletin last week, the agency said it would not recruit “until further notice.”

The council was created for students in grades 8 to 11 to “bring together young leaders who are interested in supporting disaster preparedness and making a difference in their communities,” according to FEMA’s website.

Disinvesting in youth training could undermine efforts to prepare and respond to more frequent and severe climate disasters, said Chris Reynolds, a retired lieutenant colonel and emergency preparedness liaison officer in the U.S. Air Force.

“It’s a missed opportunity for the talent pipeline,” said Reynolds, now vice president and dean of academic outreach at American Public University System. “I’m 45-plus years as an emergency manager in my field. Where’s that next cadre going to come from?”

Some speak of a trickle-down effect

The administration’s goal of diminishing the federal role in disaster response and putting more responsibility on states to handle disaster response and recovery could mean local communities need even more expertise in emergency management.

“You eliminate the participation of not just your next generation of emergency managers, but your next generation of community leaders, which I think is just a terrible mistake,” said Monica Sanders, professor in Georgetown University’s Emergency and Disaster Management Program and its Law Center.

Sanders said young people had as much knowledge to share with FEMA as the agency did with them.

“In a lot of cultures, young people do the preparedness work, the organizing of mutual aid, online campaigning, reuniting and finding people in ways that traditional emergency management just isn’t able to do,” she said. “For FEMA to lose access to that knowledge base is just really unfortunate.”

Sughan Sriganesh, a rising high school senior from Syosset, New York, said he joined the council to further his work on resilience and climate literacy in schools.

“I thought it was a way that I could amplify the issues that I was passionate about,” he said.

Sriganesh said he got a lot out of the program while it lasted. He and Dolce were in the same small group working on a community project to disseminate preparedness resources to farmers. They created a pamphlet with information on what to do before and after a disaster.

Even after FEMA staff stopped reaching out, Sriganesh and some of his peers kept meeting. They decided to finish the project and are seeking ways to distribute their pamphlet themselves.

“It’s a testament to why we were chosen in the first place as youth preparedness members,” Sriganesh said. “We were able to adapt and be resilient no matter what was going on.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Rebecca Noble

Billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk says he plans to sue Apple for not featuring X and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot app in its top recommended apps in its App Store.

Musk posted the comments on X late Monday, saying, “Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Grok is owned by Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Musk went on to say that “Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action.”

He gave no further details.

In an emailed statement, Apple defended the fairness of its App Store.

“The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias,” it said. “We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria. Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”

The company has faced various allegations of antitrust violations in recent years.

A federal judge recently found that Apple violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games.

Regulators of the 27-nation European Union fined Apple 500 million euros in April for breaking competition rules by preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.

Last year, the EU fined the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps.

As of early Tuesday, the top app in Apple’s App Store was TikTok, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube and Bumble. Open AI’s ChatGPT was ranked 7th.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Leon Neal/Foto de Pool via AP, Arquivo

Amazon is now rolling out a service where its Prime members can order their blueberries and milk at the same time as basic items like batteries and T-shirts and get them within hours.

The online juggernaut said Wednesday that customers in more than 1,000 cities and towns including Raleigh, North Carolina; Milwaukee; and Columbus, Ohio, now have access to fresh groceries with its free same-day delivery service on orders over $25 for Prime members, with plans to reach over 2,300 cities and towns by year-end.

Amazon called the move “one of the most significant grocery expansions” for the online retailer as it introduces thousands of perishable items into its existing logistics network. The expansion is expected to put pressure on grocery delivery services offered by such rivals as Walmart, Kroger and Target, which all saw their shares take a hit in trading Wednesday.

Amazon’s shares rose 1%.

Amazon said that if an order doesn’t meet the minimum, members can still choose same-day delivery for a $2.99 fee. For customers without a Prime membership, the service is available with a $12.99 fee, regardless of order size.

In the past, Prime subscribers’ grocery orders were fulfilled through Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market.

Prime members pay $14.99 monthly or $139 annually.

Amazon launched its Prime membership in 2005, and it has become the gold standard for subscription services with a slew of perks including unlimited streaming with Prime Video and discounts at Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. Walmart, which launched its membership program called Walmart + in 2020, has been racing to add more benefits. It costs $12.95 per month or $98 per year. Depending on members’ location and availability, Walmart members can schedule same-day delivery for their groceries, including perishables.

“We’re continuously innovating to make grocery shopping simpler, faster, and more affordable for our customers, especially Prime members,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, in a statement. “By introducing fresh groceries into our Same-Day Delivery service, we’re creating a quick and easy experience for customers. ”

Herrington noted that customers can order milk alongside electronics; oranges, apples, and potatoes with a mystery novel; and frozen pizza at the same time as tools for their next home improvement project—and check out with one cart and have everything delivered to their doorstep within hours.

The company first tested the service in Phoenix, last year, and then added Orlando, Florida and Kansas City, Missouri, earlier this year.

Amazon noted that many of its customers were first-time Amazon grocery shoppers who now return to shop twice as often with the same-day deliver service compared to those who didn’t purchase food. It also noted that based on early sales, strawberries now regularly knock AirPods out of the top five best sellers of all products sold, while bananas, Honeycrisp apples, limes, and avocados round out the top ten best-selling perishable grocery items in their same-day delivery carts.

“It’s a nice step forward,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and communications company. “It definitely makes them more competitive” in perishables.

Goldberg noted that Amazon has struggled to succeed in fresh food and that shoppers have been confused ordering shelf stable items and perishables, and having them appear in different online shopping carts, including Amazon Fresh. He said this move will greatly improve the experience.

Amazon said it generated over $100 billion in gross sales of groceries and household essentials last year not including sales from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh.

In June, Amazon said it was investing more than $4 billion to triple the size of its delivery network by 2026, with a focus on small towns and rural communities across the country.

It also noted that it’s using artificial intelligence to help it predict local customer preferences so it can stock popular items alongside items targeted for specific communities

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

The White House is ordering a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian museums and exhibitions ahead of the country’s 250th birthday with a goal of aligning the institution’s content with President Donald Trump’s interpretation of American history.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, the White House laid out in detail the steps it expects the organization to take as part of the announced review. The examination will look at all public-facing content, such as social media, exhibition text and educational materials, to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals,” according to the letter.

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter said.

The Smithsonian said it remained committed to “scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history.”

“We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents,” it said in a statement.

The review, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is the latest attempt by the president to bring the country’s cultural institutions in line with his vision. In March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the Smithsonian of coming under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology” and called upon it to “remove improper ideology” from the institution’s museums.

In February, Trump removed the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, replaced them with his supporters and named himself chairman. He vowed to end events featuring performers in drag, indicating he would take on a larger role in dictating the institution’s programming schedule.

The review of the Smithsonian will initially focus on eight museums — the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The letter said additional museums would be reviewed in subsequent phases.

Civil rights leaders have criticized the administration’s particular focus on the National Museum of African American History and Culture as efforts to minimize Black Americans’ contributions to the country and to recast the obstacles they faced throughout history.

The Smithsonian has repeatedly denied allegations that it has changed or removed exhibit details in response to pressure from the administration. Recently, the institution removed references to Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit on the American presidency.

A spokesman for the museum said the references, which were added in 2021, were intended to be a temporary measure and said a future exhibit would include details on all presidential impeachments.

The review ordered by the White House directs the museums to submit materials from exhibits and drafts for upcoming events within 30 days. Within 120 days, the letter said, museums will be expected to take corrective action, “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

The first black bear hunt in Florida in a decade will take place in December under a rule adopted Wednesday by state wildlife officials despite strong opposition to the eventual use of dogs and targeting the animals in baited locations.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously in favor of the plan during a meeting that drew 168 people for a public hearing in the Panhandle town of Havana, with both supporters and opposents present. The panel had given preliminary approval in May, citing a need to manage growing bear populations.

“We make decisions based on science,” said commission chair Rodney Barreto.

Opponents called the hunt cruel, unnecessary and an excuse for hunters to bag a trophy animal when the real issue is the encroaching human population in bear habitat as Florida continues to grow.

“Not all the hunters support this hunt. We’d like to see nature in balance,” said Lauren Jorgensen, whose family owns a ranch in rural Suwannee County.

There are an estimated 4,000 black bears in Florida, one of the few states with sizable populations that do not have a bear hunting season. Several pro-hunt speakers noted that bears are much more commonly seen in many areas than in the past, causing interactions with humans that provoke fear and concern.

Ottice Amison, a member of the Franklin County Commission, said residents there report bears on porches, rooting through garbage cans, roaming neighborhoods and playgrounds.

“The reality is that the frequency and severity of bear interactions continues to rise,” Amison told the wildlife commission. “Right now, too many of our residents see bears as threats and pests.”

There has been only one documented fatal black bear attack in Florida, the May mauling of 89-year-old Robert Markel and his daughter’s dog in a rural part of Collier County, in southwest Florida.

The plan adopted Wednesday has more stringent rules than the previous Florida hunt in 2015, in which hunting permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them. That led to a chaotic event shut down days early after 300-plus bears were killed, including at least 38 females with cubs, meaning the young bears probably died too.

Hunt opponents predict this year will be more of the same.

“This decision reflects political pressure, not ecological necessity or public will,” said Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club Florida chapter.

Under the new rule, there would be a random drawing of permits with a limit of 187. Hunters could kill only one bear each and only in certain parts of Florida where the bear population is large enough. There would be no killing of cubs and none of females with cubs, according to the FWC staff.

A permit would cost $100 for Florida residents and $300 for nonresidents.

For 2025, the plan is to hold the hunt from Dec. 6 to Dec. 28. In the future, the FWC foresees a bear hunt between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, subject to more studies about the effect of hunting and the population of the animals. In future years, hunters could use up to six dogs each to pursue bears.

Private landowners with 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) or more could hold what the FWC calls a “bear harvest program” on their property under the proposal. Bears could be hunted at bait feeding stations on private property. Also, bowhunting will be allowed under rules similar to those for deer.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP, file)

President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that there will be “very severe consequences” if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war against Ukraine after the two leaders meet for a summit later this week in Alaska.

Trump made the comment in response to a question from a reporter after announcing this year’s Kennedy Center Honors recipients in Washington. He did not say what the consequences might be.

The remark came soon after Trump consulted with European leaders, who said the president assured them he would make a priority of trying to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine when he meets with Putin on Friday in Anchorage.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined several of Kyiv’s main allies in the virtual meeting with the U.S. leader, and Zelenskyy told the group that Putin “is bluffing” ahead of the planned summit about Russia’s ability to occupy all of Ukraine and shake off sanctions.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said afterward that “important decisions” could be made in Alaska, but he stressed that “fundamental European and Ukrainian security interests must be protected.”

Merz convened Wednesday’s meeting in an attempt to make sure European and Ukrainian leaders are heard ahead of the summit.

He stressed that a ceasefire must come at the beginning of negotiations. He told reporters that Trump “also wants to make this one of his priorities” in the meeting with Putin.

Trump “was very clear” that the U.S. wants to achieve a ceasefire at the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a separate appearance in France.

Following Friday’s summit, Macron added, Trump will “seek a future trilateral meeting” — one involving Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy. He said he hoped that it could be held in Europe “in a neutral country that is acceptable to all parties.”

Merz, who described Wednesday’s conversation as “constructive and good,” said the Europeans made clear that “Ukraine must sit at the table as soon as there are follow-up meetings.”

European allies have pushed for Ukraine’s involvement in any peace talks, fearful that discussions that exclude Kyiv could otherwise favor Moscow.

The Ukrainian president, who traveled to Berlin to join the meeting alongside Merz, has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Putin would negotiate in good faith. He said Wednesday that he hoped an immediate ceasefire will be “the central topic” in Alaska, but also argued that Putin “definitely does not want peace.”

Zelenskyy said Putin “is trying to apply pressure … on all sectors of the Ukrainian front” in an attempt to show that Russia is “capable of occupying all of Ukraine.” Putin is also bluffing that sanctions “do not matter to him and are ineffective,” he added. “In reality, sanctions are very helpful and are hitting Russia’s war economy hard.”

The stakes for Europe

Trump has said he wants to see whether Putin is serious about ending the war, now in its fourth year, describing Friday’s summit as “a feel-out meeting” where he can assess the Russian leader’s intentions.

Yet Trump has disappointed allies in Europe by saying Ukraine will have to give up some Russian-held territory. He has also said Russia must accept land swaps, although it was unclear what Putin might be expected to surrender.

Trump on Monday ducked repeated chances to say that he would push for Zelenskyy to take part in his discussions with Putin, and was dismissive of Zelenskyy and his need to be part of an effort to seek peace. Trump said that following Friday’s summit, a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders could be arranged, or that it could also be a meeting with “Putin and Zelenskyy and me.”

The Europeans and Ukraine are wary that Putin, who has waged the biggest land war in Europe since 1945 and used Russia’s energy might to try to intimidate the European Union, might secure favorable concessions and set the outlines of a peace deal without them.

The overarching fear of many European countries is that Putin will set his sights on one of them next if he wins in Ukraine.

Merz said that “if there is no movement on the Russian side in Alaska, then the United States and the Europeans should and must increase the pressure” on Moscow.

Land concessions a non-starter for Kyiv

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30% of the Donetsk region that it still controls as part of a ceasefire deal, a proposal the leader categorically rejected.

Zelenskyy reiterated that Ukraine would not give up any territory it controls, saying that would be unconstitutional and would serve only as a springboard for a future Russian invasion.

He said diplomatic discussions led by the U.S. focusing on ending the war have not addressed key Ukrainian demands, including security guarantees to prevent future Russian aggression and including Europe in negotiations.

Three weeks after Trump returned to office, his administration took the leverage of Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table — something Putin has demanded — and signaled that the EU and Ukraine must handle security in Europe now while America focuses its attention elsewhere.

Senior EU officials believe Trump may be satisfied with simply securing a ceasefire in Ukraine and that he is probably more interested in broader U.S. interests and great power politics, aiming to ramp up business with Russia and rehabilitate Putin.

Russian advances in Donbas

Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have been closing in on a key territorial grab around the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donbas region that comprises Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, which Putin has long coveted.

Military analysts using open-source information to monitor the battles have said Ukraine’s ability to fend off those advances could be critical: Losing Pokrovsk would hand Russia an important victory ahead of the summit and could complicate Ukrainian supply lines to the Donetsk region, where the Kremlin has focused the bulk of military efforts.

___

Corbet reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Annie Ma in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Fewer Americans are reporting that they drink alcohol amid a growing belief that even moderate alcohol consumption is a health risk, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

A record high percentage of U.S. adults, 53%, now say moderate drinking is bad for their health, up from 28% in 2015. The uptick in doubt about alcohol’s benefits is largely driven by young adults — the age group that is most likely to believe drinking “one or two drinks a day” can cause health hazards — but older adults are also now increasingly likely to think moderate drinking carries risks.

As concerns about health impacts rise, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink. The survey finds that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer. That’s lower than at any other point in the past three decades.

The findings of the poll, which was conducted in July, indicate that after years of many believing that moderate drinking was harmless — or even beneficial — worries about alcohol consumption are taking hold. According to Gallup’s data, even those who consume alcohol are drinking less.

The federal government is updating new dietary guidelines, including those around alcohol. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed U.S. alcohol consumption was trending up. But other government surveys have shown a decline in certain types of drinking, particularly among teenagers and young adults.

This comes alongside a new drumbeat of information about alcohol’s risks. While moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for heart health, health professionals in recent years have pointed to overwhelming evidence that alcohol consumption leads to negative health outcomes and is a leading cause of cancer.

Growing skepticism about alcohol’s benefits

Younger adults have been quicker than older Americans to accept that drinking is harmful, but older adults are coming around to the same view.

About two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds believe moderate drinking is unhealthy, according to the poll, up from about 4 in 10 in 2015. Older adults are less likely to see alcohol as harmful — about half of Americans age 55 or older believe this — but that’s a substantial increase, too. In 2015, only about 2 in 10 adults age 55 or older thought alcohol was bad for their health.

In the past, moderate drinking was thought to have some benefits. That idea came from imperfect studies that largely didn’t include younger people and couldn’t prove cause and effect. Now the scientific consensus has shifted, and several countries recently lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer.

The federal government’s current dietary guidelines recommend Americans not drink or, if they do consume alcohol, men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer.

Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, Lydia Saad, said shifting health advice throughout older Americans’ lives may be a reason they have been more gradual than young adults to recognize alcohol as harmful.

“Older folks may be a little more hardened in terms of the whiplash that they get with recommendations,” Saad said. “It may take them a little longer to absorb or accept the information. Whereas, for young folks, this is the environment that they’ve grown up in … in many cases, it would be the first thing young adults would have heard as they were coming into adulthood.”

The government is expected to release new guidelines later this year, under the directive of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promised big changes. Kennedy has not hinted at how the alcohol recommendations may shift.

Drinking rates fall to decade low

Slightly more than half of Americans, 54%, report that they drink alcohol — a low in Gallup’s data that is especially pronounced among women and young adults.

Young Americans’ alcohol consumption has been trending downward for years, accelerating the overall decline in alcohol consumption. In sharp contrast with Gallup’s findings two decades ago, when young adults were likeliest to report drinking, young adults’ drinking rate is now slightly below middle-aged and older adults.

Americans’ reported drinking is among the lowest since the question was first asked in 1939. For most of the last few decades, at least 6 in 10 Americans have reported drinking alcoholic beverages, only dipping below that point a few times in the question’s history.

Americans who drink alcohol are consuming less

Even if concerns about health risks aren’t causing some adults to give up alcohol entirely, these worries could be influencing how often they drink.

The survey found that adults who think moderate drinking is bad for one’s health are just as likely as people who don’t share those concerns to report that they drink, but fewer of the people with health worries had consumed alcohol recently.

About half of those who worry moderate drinking is unhealthy said they had a drink in the previous week, compared with about 7 in 10 who did not think drinking was bad for their health.

Overall, only about one-quarter of Americans who drink said they had consumed alcohol in the prior 24 hours, a record low in the survey. Roughly 4 in 10 said that it had been more than a week since they had poured a drink.

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Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Andrew Cuomo is demanding that his opponent in New York City’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani, vacate his rent stabilized apartment, while pushing a longshot proposal that would bar other middle-class renters from accessing much of the city’s housing.

“I am calling on you to move out immediately,” Cuomo wrote in a widely-viewed social media post this weekend, casting Mamdani as “a very rich person” occupying an apartment that could otherwise be used by a homeless family.

The line of attack drew tens of millions of views online and revived a long-standing debate about who should have access to New York’s highly sought-after rent stabilized units, which make up roughly 40% of the city’s rental stock and are currently open to people of all incomes.

It also illustrated the rhetorical lengths that Cuomo is willing to go to as he mounts an independent bid for mayor against Mamdani, a democratic socialist who defeated him handily in the Democratic primary on a platform that centered on affordability and freezing rent on stabilized units.

Mamdani, who earns $143,000 annually as a state legislator, has said he pays $2,300 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in Queens that he shares with his wife — a living situation that Cuomo called “disgusting.”

By contrast, Cuomo, a multimillionaire who previously served as the state’s governor, spends roughly $8,000 monthly on an apartment in Midtown Manhattan that he moved to last year from Westchester County, a wealthy suburb.

In recent weeks, the 67-year-old Cuomo has adopted a more aggressive social media presence, earning both praise and mockery for his use of millennial internet-speak and repeated references to his opponent’s “privilege.” Mamdani’s mother is a successful independent filmmaker and his father is a Columbia University professor.

On Monday, Cuomo went a step further, releasing a formal proposal, which he dubbed “Zohran’s Law,” barring landlords from leasing vacant rent stabilized units to “wealthy tenants,” defined as those who would pay less than 30% of their income toward the existing rent.

The rent regulation program, which caps how much landlords can raise rent each year on roughly 1 million apartments, does not currently include any income restrictions — something opponents have long pushed to change.

While the average rent stabilized household makes $60,000 annually, it is not uncommon for middle- or higher-income New Yorkers to live in the units, which sometimes rent for several thousand dollars per month.

But Cuomo’s idea drew swift skepticism from some housing experts, who noted the cap would, by definition, mean all new tenants of rent stabilized units would give up a substantial portion of their income.

“The idea that we should only have people living in apartments they can’t afford seems to be setting people up for failure,” said Ellen Davidson, a housing attorney at The Legal Aid Society. “It’s not a proposal from somebody who knows anything about the housing market or New York City.”

The Real Estate Board of New York, a landlord group whose members overwhelmingly backed Cuomo in the primary, did not respond to an inquiry about whether they supported the proposal. But in an email, the group’s president, James Whelan, said that the “benefits of rent regulation are not well targeted” and that some form of means testing should be considered.

Under state law, hikes on rent-stabilized units are decided by an appointed board, rather than landlords.

“Rent stabilization has never been means tested because it’s not an affordable housing program, it’s a program about neighborhood stability,” said Davidson, the housing attorney, adding that the proposal would likely present a “bureaucratic nightmare.”

A spokesperson for Cuomo’s campaign, Rich Azzopardi, said in a text message that “the ultra wealthy and privileged should not be taking advantage of a program meant to aide working New Yorkers,” adding that the income threshold standards would fall under the same system that governs the city’s other programs for low-income housing.

Mamdani’s spokesperson, Dora Pekec, said the proposal proved that Cuomo was both desperate and out of touch.

“While Cuomo cares only for the well-being of his Republican donors, Zohran believes city government’s job is to guarantee a life of dignity, not determine who is worth one,” she added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, file

The U.S. government’s gross national debt has surpassed $37 trillion, a record number that highlights the accelerating debt on America’s balance sheet and increased cost pressures on taxpayers.

The $37 trillion update is found in the latest Treasury Department report issued Tuesday which logs the nation’s daily finances.

The national debt eclipsed $37 trillion years sooner than pre-pandemic projections. The Congressional Budget Office’s January 2020 projections had gross federal debt eclipsing $37 trillion after fiscal year 2030. But the debt grew faster than expected because of a multi-year COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020 that shut down much of the U.S. economy, where the federal government borrowed heavily under then-President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden to stabilize the national economy and support a recovery.

And now, more government spending has been approved after Trump signed into law Republicans’ tax cut and spending legislation earlier this year. The law set to add $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

Chair and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Michael Peterson said in a statement that government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates, “adding costs for everyone and reducing private sector investment. Within the federal budget, the debt crowds out important priorities and creates a damaging cycle of more borrowing, more interest costs, and even more borrowing.”

Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution said Congress has a major role in setting in motion spending and revenue policy and the result of the Republicans’ tax law “means that we’re going to borrow a lot over the course of 2026, we’re going to borrow a lot over the course of 2027, and it’s just going to keep going.”

The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impacts of rising government debt on Americans — including higher borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lower wages from businesses having less money available to invest, and more expensive goods and services.

Peterson points out how the trillion-dollar milestones are “piling up at a rapid rate.”

The U.S. hit $34 trillion in debt in January 2024, $35 trillion in July 2024 and $36 trillion in November 2024. “We are now adding a trillion more to the national debt every 5 months,” Peterson said. “That’s more than twice as fast as the average rate over the last 25 years.”

The Joint Economic Committee estimates at the current average daily rate of growth an increase of another trillion dollars to the debt would be reached in approximately 173 days.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in a statement that “hopefully this milestone is enough to wake up policymakers to the reality that we need to do something, and we need to do it quickly.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Alex Brandon,File

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. inflation was unchanged last month while a measure of underlying inflation rose to its highest level in five months, as tariffs have raised the cost of some imported goods while gas and procery prices cooled.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in July from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, the same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%, up from 2.9% in June.

The figures suggest that slowing cost growth for rents and cheaper gas are offsetting some of the impact of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Tuesday’s figures likely reflect the 10% universal tariff Trump imposed in April, as well as higher duties on countries such as China and Canada.

Still, stubbornly high inflation puts the Federal Reserve in a difficult spot: Hiring slowed sharply in the spring, after Trump announced tariffs in April. The stalling out of job gains has boosted financial market expectations for an interest rate cut by the central bank.

Yet Fed chair Jerome Powell has warned that worsening inflation could keep the Fed on the sidelines — a stance that has enraged Trump, who has defied traditional norms of central bank independence and demanded lower borrowing costs.

Tuesday’s data arrives at a highly-charged moment for the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects and publishes the inflation data. Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, then the head of BLS, after the Aug. 1 jobs report also showed sharply lower hiring for May and June than had previously been reported.

The president posted on social media Monday that he has picked E.J. Antoni, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a frequent critic of the jobs report, to replace McEntarfer.

“E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Adding to the BLS’s turmoil is a government-wide hiring freeze that has forced it to cut back on the amount of data it collects for each inflation report, the agency has said. UBS economist Alan Detmeister estimates that BLS is now collecting about 18% fewer price quotes for the inflation report than it did a few months ago. He thinks the report will produce more volatile results, though averaged out over time, still reliable.

On a monthly basis, prices are expected to rise modestly, increasing just 0.2% from June to July and core prices rising 0.3%. Gas prices likely fell in July and grocery costs are expected to barely increase, muting overall inflation.

Signs of duties pushing up prices first emerged in the June inflation report released last month. Toy prices jumped 1.8% from May to June, after a 1.3% increase the previous month. Clothing prices rose 0.4% in June, while sporting goods leapt 1.8%.

Meanwhile, the average tariff level has climbed from about 2% before Trump’s inauguration to nearly 18%, the highest since the early 1930s, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. Most imports from the European Union and Japan now face duties of 15%, while goods from Taiwan pay 20% and Switzerland, 39%.

Other trends are helping keep inflation from rising more quickly. Price increases for apartment rents, for example, are steadily cooling after sharp spikes during the pandemic era. And prices for new cars have declined slightly in recent months, even after Trump slapped 25% duties on autos and auto parts.

So far, U.S. and overseas carmakers are paying the tariffs, though economists say they likely will pass them on to consumers soon. Car companies are also paying 50% import taxes on steel and aluminum and 30% on parts from China.

Ford has said it paid $800 million in tariffs in the second quarter, while General Motors shouldered $1.1 billion. Stellantis, the world’s fourth-largest carmaker and the maker of brands such as Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep, has said it has paid $350 million in tariffs out of a $1.7 billion expected cost this year.

Consumers are likely to absorb more costs beyond the auto industry in the coming months, as Trump has begun to finalize many tariffs. Once businesses know what they will be paying, they are more likely to pass those costs to consumers, economists say.

Trump has insisted that overseas manufacturers will pay the tariffs by reducing their prices to offset the duties. Yet the pre-tariff prices of imports haven’t fallen much since the levies were put in place.

Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that foreign manufacturers have absorbed just 14% of the duties through June, while 22% has been paid by consumers and 64% by U.S. companies. Based on previous patterns, however — such as Trump’s 2018 duties on washing machines — the economists expect that by this fall consumers will bear 67% of the burden, while foreign exporters pay 25% and U.S. companies handle just 8%.

Many large firms are still raising prices in response to the tariffs, including apparel makers Ralph Lauren and Under Armour, and eyewear company Warby Parker.

Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, maker of Crest toothpaste, Tide detergent and Charmin toilet paper, said late last month that it would lift prices on about a quarter of its products by mid-single-digit percentages.

And cosmetics maker e.l.f. Beauty, which makes a majority of its products in China, said on Wednesday that it had raised prices by a dollar on its entire product assortment as of Aug. 1 because of tariff costs, the third price hike in its 21-year history.

“We tend to lead and then we will see how many more kind of follow us,” CEO Tarang Amin said on an earnings call Wednesday.

Matt Pavich, CEO of Revionics, a company that provides AI tools to large retailers to help them evaluate pricing decisions, says many companies are raising prices selectively to offset tariffs, rather than across the board.

“Up until now we haven’t seen a massive hit to consumers in retail prices,” Pavich said. “Now, they are going up, we’ve seen that.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Manuel Balce Ceneta—AP Photo

President Donald Trump’stax and spending law will result in less income for the poorest Americans while sending money to the richest, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Monday.

The CBO estimates that the 10% of poorest Americans will lose roughly $1,200 a year as they experience restrictions on government programs like Medicaid and food assistance, while the richest 10% of Americans will see their income increase by $13,600 from tax cuts. Overall, American households will see more income from the tax cuts in the legislation, including middle income households, but the largest benefit will go to the top 10% of earners.

The CBO’s report comes as lawmakers are away from Washington, many taking their messages about the bill to voters. Republicans muscled the legislation — deemed “the big, beautiful bill” by Trump — through Congress in July. Democrats all vehemently opposed the legislation, warning that its tax cuts and spending priorities would come at the expense of vital government aid programs and a ballooning national debt.

“This really is a big, beautiful bill for billionaires, but for the poor and the working class in this country, you are actually poorer,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, in an MSNBC interview on Monday.

Changes to eligibility for government food assistance under the law will impact millions of Americans, the CBO found. Roughly 2.4 million people won’t be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under new work requirements for many recipients. Low-income Americans could also see their income reduced through further restrictions on food aid and other types of assistance included in the law.

Already, more than 10 million Americans are expected to lose health insurance by 2034 due to changes to Medicaid under the law.

Following release of the report, Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he took issue with CBO’s methodology, repeating criticism he has made in the past.

“CBO has a troubled track record of getting its estimates incorrect and, like Democrats, is biased in favor of more federal spending and higher taxes,” Smith said on social media. “Don’t buy it.”

Republicans have been eager to sell the upsides of the legislation — arguing that the tax cuts will spur economic growth — while they are on a monthlong summer break from Washington. But those who have held townhalls in their home districts have often been greeted by an earful from voters and activists.

“Tax the rich,” the crowd in Lincoln, Neb. chanted last week as Republican Rep. Michael Flood attempted to defend the bill.

Still, Trump has been undeterred.

“President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is putting America First like never before, delivering huge savings for hardworking families, boosting our economy, and securing our borders,” said White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson in a statement last week.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

AOL’s dial-up internet is finally taking its last bow.

Yes, while perhaps a dinosaur by today’s digital standards, dial-up is still around. But AOL says it’s officially pulling the plug for its service on Sept. 30.

“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” AOL wrote in a brief update on its support site — noting that dial-up and associated software “optimized for older operating systems” will soon be unavailable on AOL plans.

AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the world wide web for the first time when its dial-up service launched decades ago, rising to prominence particularly in the 90s and early 2000s.

The creaky door to the internet was characterized by a once-ubiquitous series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone used to connect your computer online — along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.

Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to dominance, doing away with dial-up’s quirks for most people accessing the internet today.

Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services connected over telephone lines. In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.

AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, but not the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as other relics of the internet’s earlier days continue to disappear.

Microsoft retired video calling service Skype just earlier this year, for example — as well as Internet Explorer back in 2022. And in 2017, AOL discontinued its Instant Messenger — a chat platform that was once lauded as the biggest trend in online communication since email when it was founded in 1997, but later struggled to ward off rivals.

AOL itself is far from the dominant internet player it was decades ago — when, beyond dial-up and IMs, the company also became known for its “You’ve got mail” catchphrase that greeted users who checked their inboxes, as famously displayed in the 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan by the same name.

Before it was America Online, AOL was founded as Quantum Computer Services in 1985. It soon rebranded and hit the public market in 1991. Near the height of the dot-com boom, AOL’s market value reached nearly $164 billion in 2000. But tumultuous years followed, and that valuation plummeted as the once-tech pioneer bounced between multiple owners. After a disastrous merger with Time Warner Inc., Verizon acquired AOL — which later sold AOL, along with Yahoo, to a private equity firm.

At the time Verzion announced that sale to in 2021, an anonymous source familiar with the transaction told CNBC that the number of AOL dial-up users was “in the low thousands,” down from 2.1 million when Verzion first moved to acquire AOL in 2015 — and far below peak demand seen back in the 90s and early 2000s. But beyond dial-up, AOL continues to offer its free email services, as well as subscriptions that advertise identity protection and other tech support.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File

Nvidia and AMD agreed to share 15% of their revenues from chip sales to China with the U.S. government, President Donald Trump confirmed at a press conference Monday.

The Trump administration halted the sale of advanced computer chips to China in April over national security concerns, but Nvidia and AMD revealed in July that Washington would allow them to resume sales of the H20 and MI308 chips, which are used in artificial intelligence development.

The president said he originally wanted 20% of sales in exchange for Nvidia obtaining export licenses to sell the “obsolete” H20 chip to China, but credited Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for negotiating him down to 15%.

“So we negotiated a little deal. So he’s selling a essentially old chip,” Trump said.

Nvidia did not comment about the specific details of the agreement or its quid pro quo nature, but said they would adhere to the export rules laid out by the administration.

“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” Nvidia wrote in a statement to the AP. “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”

AMD did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The top Democrat on a House panel focusing on competition with China raised concerns over the reported agreement, calling it “a dangerous misuse of export controls that undermines our national security.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, said he would seek answers about the legal basis for this arrangement and demand full transparency from the administration.

“Our export control regime must be based on genuine security considerations, not creative taxation schemes disguised as national security policy,” he said. “Chip export controls aren’t bargaining chips, and they’re not casino chips either. We shouldn’t be gambling with our national security to raise revenue.”

Derek Scissors, senior fellow and China expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, questioned the constitutionality of the deal and also warned against risking national security for revenue.

“There’s no precedent for this, probably because export taxes are unconstitutional,” said Derek Scissors, senior fellow and China expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “They call it a fee, but 15% of sales revenue is about a standard a tax as it comes. For this reason, I don’t think the ‘arrangement’ is at all durable. ‘’

“If it were to last, it has two possible implications. First, there’s a possible export tax that high-profile companies and goods must consider. Or the tax only applies in exceptional situations, such as changing export controls. Then we’d risk national security for the sake of tax revenue, which is effectively the same as cutting the defense budget,” Scissors said.

Back in July, Nvidia argued that tight export controls around their chip sales would cost the company an extra $5.5 billion. They’ve argued that such limits hinder U.S. competition in a sector in one of the world’s largest markets for technology, and have also warned that U.S. export controls could end up pushing other countries toward China’s AI technology.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC in July that the renewed sale of Nvidia’s chips in China was linked to a trade agreement made between the two countries on rare earth magnets.

Restrictions on sales of advanced chips to China have been central to the AI race between the world’s two largest economic powers, but such controls are also controversial. Proponents argue that these restrictions are necessary to slow China down enough to allow U.S. companies to keep their lead. Meanwhile, opponents say the export controls have loopholes — and could still spur innovation. The emergence of China’s DeepSeek AI chatbot in January particularly renewed concerns over how China might use advanced chips to help develop its own AI capabilities.

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Shawn Chen contributed to the reporting.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Ford Motor Co. will invest nearly $2 billion retooling a Kentucky factory to produce electric vehicles that it says will be more affordable, more profitable to build, and will outcompete rival models.

The automaker’s top executive unveiled the new EV strategy Monday at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant which, after producing gas-powered vehicles for 70 years, will be converted to manufacture electric vehicles.

“We took a radical approach to solve a very hard challenge: Create affordable vehicles that are breakthrough in every way that matters — design, technology, performance, space and cost of ownership — and do it with American workers,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a release.

The Big Detroit automakers have continued to transition from internal combustion engines to EV technology even as President Donald Trump’s administration unwinds incentives for automakers to go electric. Trump’s massive tax and spending law targets EV incentives, including the imminent removal of a credit that saves buyers up to $7,500 on a new electric car.

Yet Farley and other top executives in the auto industry say that electric vehicles are the future and there is no going back.

The first EV to roll off the revamped Louisville assembly line will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup truck in 2027 for domestic and international markets, the company said Monday.

The new electric trucks will be powered by lower-cost batteries made at a Ford factory in Michigan. The Detroit automaker previously announced a $3 billion investment to build the battery factory.

The automaker sees this as a “Model T moment” for its EV business — a reference to the mass-produced vehicle that launched the venerable automaker more than a century ago. But Ford says it’s also a nod to the future and the vastly different way Ford says it will build electric vehicles.

The company said it will use a universal platform and production system for its EVs, essentially the underpinning of a vehicle that can be applied across a wide range of models.

The Louisville factory — one of two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky’s largest city — will be revamped to cut production costs and make assembly time faster as it’s prepared to churn out electric vehicles.

The result will be “an affordable electric vehicle that we expect to be profitable,” Farley said in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the announcement. “This is an example of us rejuvenating our U.S. plants with the most modern manufacturing techniques.”

The new platform enables a lineup of affordable vehicles to be produced at scale, Ford said. It will reduce parts by 20% versus a typical vehicle, with 25% fewer fasteners, 40% fewer workstations dock-to-dock in the plant and a 15% faster assembly time, Ford said. The traditional assembly line will be transformed into an “assembly tree” at the Louisville plant, it said. Instead of one long conveyor, three sub-assembly lines will operate simultaneously and then join together, it said.

“Nobody wants to see another good college try by a Detroit automaker to make an affordable vehicle that ends up with idled plants, layoffs and uncertainty,” Farley said in the release. “So, this has to be a good business. From Day 1, we knew there was no incremental path to success. … We reinvented the moving assembly line.”

Other specifications for the midsize electric truck – including its reveal date, starting price, EPA-estimated battery range, battery sizes and charge times — will be announced later, the company said. Ford revealed in its release that the truck will have a targeted starting price of about $30,000.

Ford said its investment in the Louisville plant will secure 2,200 hourly jobs.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday that the automaker’s plans for the Louisville plant will strengthen a more than century-old partnership between Ford and the Bluegrass State.

“This announcement not only represents one of the largest investments on record in our state, it also boosts Kentucky’s position at the center of EV-related innovation and solidifies Louisville Assembly Plant as an important part of Ford’s future,” Beshear said.

Ford said its combined investment of about $5 billion at the Kentucky assembly plant and Michigan battery plant is expected to create or secure nearly 4,000 direct jobs between the two plants while strengthening the domestic supply chain with dozens of new U.S.-based suppliers.

Ford previously forecast weaker earnings growth for this year and further losses in its electric vehicles business as it works to control costs. Model e, Ford’s electric vehicle business, posted a full-year loss of $5.08 billion for 2024 as revenue fell 35% to $3.9 billion.

Ford’s new EV strategy comes as Chinese automakers are quickly expanding across the globe, offering relatively affordable electric vehicles.

“We’re not in a race to build the most electric cars,” Farley told the AP when asked about competition from China. “We’re in a race to have a sustainable electric business that’s profitable, that customers love.

“And this new vehicle built in Louisville, Kentucky, is going to be a much better solution to anything that anyone can buy from China,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, file

More than 70 million Americans sweated through the muggiest first two months of summer on record as climate change has noticeably dialed up the Eastern United States’ humidity in recent decades, an Associated Press data analysis shows.

And that meant uncomfortably warm and potentially dangerous nights in many cities the last several weeks, the National Weather Service said.

Parts of 27 states and Washington, D.C., had a record amount of days that meteorologists call uncomfortable — with average daily dew points of 65 degrees Fahrenheit or higher — in June and July, according to data derived from the Copernicus Climate Service.

And that’s just the daily average. In much of the East, the mugginess kept rising to near tropical levels for a few humid hours. Philadelphia had 29 days, Washington had 27 days and Baltimore had 24 days where the highest dew point simmered to at least 75 degrees, which even the the weather service office in Tampa calls oppressive, according to weather service data.

Dew point is a measure of moisture in the air expressed in degrees that many meteorologists call the most accurate way to describe humidity. The summer of 2025 so far has had dew points that average at least 6 degrees higher than the 1951-2020 normals in Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Columbus and St. Louis, the AP calculations show. The average June and July humidity for the entire country east of the Rockies rose to more than 66 degrees, higher than any year since measurements started in 1950.

“This has been a very muggy summer. The humid heat has been way up,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central.

Twice this summer climate scientist and humidity expert Cameron Lee of Kent State University measured dew points of about 82 degrees at his home weather station in Ohio. That’s off the various charts that the weather service uses to describe what dew points feel like.

“There are parts of the United States that are experiencing not only greater average humidity, especially in the spring and summer, but also more extreme humid days,” Lee said. He said super sticky days are now stretching out over more days and more land.

High humidity doesn’t allow the air to cool at night as much as it usually does, and the stickiness contributed to multiple nighttime temperature records from the Ohio Valley through the Mid-Atlantic and up and down coastal states, said Zack Taylor, forecast operations chief at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, Virginia Beach, Va., and Wilmington, N.C., all reached records for the hottest overnight lows. New York City, Columbus, Atlanta, Richmond, Knoxville, Tennessee and Concord, New Hampshire came close, he said.

“What really impacts the body is that nighttime temperature,” Taylor said. “So if there’s no cooling at night or if there’s a lack of cooling it doesn’t allow your body to cool off and recover from what was probably a really hot afternoon. And so when you start seeing that over several days, that can really wear out the body, especially of course if you don’t have access to cooling centers or air conditioning.”

An extra hot and rainy summer weather pattern is combining with climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Woods Placky said.

The area east of the Rockies has on average gained about 2.5 degrees in summer dew point since 1950, the AP analysis of Copernicus data shows. In the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and part of the 1990s, the eastern half of the country had an average dew point in the low 60s, what the weather service calls noticeable but OK. In four of the last six years that number has been near and even over the uncomfortable line of 65.

“It’s huge,” Lee said of the 75-year trend. “This is showing a massive increase over a relatively short period of time.”

That seemingly small increase in average dew points really means the worst ultra-sticky days that used to happen once a year, now happen several times a summer, which is what affects people, Lee said.

Higher humidity and heat feed on each other. A basic law of physics is that the atmosphere holds an extra 4% more water for every degree Fahrenheit (7% for every degree Celsius) warmer it gets, meteorologists said.

For most of the summer, the Midwest and East were stuck under either incredibly hot high pressure systems, which boosted temperatures, or getting heavy and persistent rain in amounts much higher than average, Taylor said. What was mostly missing was the occasional cool front that pushes out the most oppressive heat and humidity. That finally came in August and brought relief, he said.

Humidity varies by region. The West is much drier. The South gets more 65-degree dew points in the summer than the North. But that’s changing.

University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd said uncomfortable humidity is moving further north, into places where people are less used to it.

Summers now, he said, “are not your grandparents’ summers.”

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Borenstein reported from Washington and Wildeman reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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A group of masked thieves stole about $7,000 worth of Labubu dolls from a Los Angeles-area store this week, authorities said.

The incident took place early Wednesday morning at a store in La Puente, a city about 18 miles (29 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, the LA County Sheriff’s Department said. The department said the suspects used a stolen Toyota Tacoma in the incident, which was recovered shortly afterward. The agency said it was investigating the case and did not have additional information.

Labubu dolls, created by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung, have become a popular collectible item a decade after the toothy monsters were first introduced.

Toy vendor One Stop Shop said in an Instagram post that the thieves took all of the store’s inventory and trashed the establishment. The store posted surveillance footage showing a group of people wearing hoodies and face coverings breaking in. The suspects are seen shuffling through items and carrying boxes out of the shop.

“We are still in shock,” the store said in its post, urging people to help find the thieves.

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A top official at the Federal Reserve said Saturday that this month’s stunning, weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market is strengthening her belief that interest rates should be lower.

Michelle Bowman was one of two Fed officials who voted a week and a half ago in favor of cutting interest rates. Such a move could help boost the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money to buy a house or a car, but it could also threaten to push inflation higher.

Bowman and a fellow dissenter lost out after nine other Fed officials voted to keep interest rates steady, as the Fed has been doing all year. The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, has been adamant that he wants to wait for more data about how President Donald Trump’s tariffs are affecting inflation before the Fed makes its next move.

At a speech during a bankers’ conference in Colorado on Saturday, Bowman said that “the latest labor market data reinforce my view” that the Fed should cut interest rates three times this year. The Fed has only three meetings left on the schedule in 2025.

The jobs report that arrived last week, only a couple of days after the Fed voted on interest rates, showed that employers hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. It also said that hiring in prior months was much lower than initially thought.

On inflation, meanwhile, Bowman said she is getting more confident that Trump’s tariffs “will not present a persistent shock to inflation” and sees it moving closer to the Fed’s 2% target. Inflation has come down substantially since hitting a peak above 9% after the pandemic, but it has been stubbornly remaining above 2%.

The Fed’s job is to keep the job market strong, while keeping a lid on inflation. Its challenge is that it has one main tool to affect both those areas, and helping one by moving interest rates up or down often means hurting the other.

A fear is that Trump’s tariffs could box in the Federal Reserve by sticking the economy in a worst-case scenario called “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates but inflation is high. The Fed has no good tool to fix that, and it would likely have to prioritize either the job market or inflation before helping the other.

On Wall Street, expectations are that the Fed will have to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September after the U.S. jobs report came in so much below economists’ expectations.

Trump has been calling angrily for lower interest rates, often personally insulting Powell while doing so. He has the opportunity to add another person to the Fed’s board of governors after an appointee of former President Joe Bidenstepped down recently.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer met privately in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump to make a case he did not want to hear: the automotive industry he said he wants to save were being hurt by his tariffs.

The Democrat came with a slide deck to make her points in a visual presentation. Just getting the meeting Tuesday with the Republican president was an achievement for someone viewed as a contender for her party’s White House nomination in 2028.

Whitmer’s strategy for dealing with Trump highlights the conundrum for her and other Democratic leaders as they try to protect the interests of their states while voicing their opposition to his agenda. It’s a dynamic that Whitmer has navigated much differently from many other Democratic governors.

The fact that Whitmer had “an opening to make direct appeals” in private to Trump was unique in this political moment, said Matt Grossman, a Michigan State University politics professor.

It was her third meeting with Trump at the White House since he took office in January. This one, however, was far less public than the time in April when Whitmer was unwittingly part of an impromptu news conference that embarrassed her so much she covered her face with a folder.

On Tuesday, she told the president that the economic damage from the tariffs could be severe in Michigan, a state that helped deliver him the White House in 2024. Whitmer also brought up federal support for recovery efforts after an ice storm and sought to delay changes to Medicaid.

Trump offered no specific commitments, according to people familiar with the private conversation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity to describe it.

Whitmer is hardly the only one sounding the warning of the potentially damaging consequences, including factory job losses, lower profits and coming price increases, of the import taxes that Trump has said will be the economic salvation for American manufacturing.

White House spokesman Kush Desai that no other president “has taken a greater interest in restoring American auto industry dominance than President Trump.” Trade frameworks negotiated by the administration would open up the Japanese, Korean and European markets for vehicles made on assembly lines in Michigan, Desai said.

But the outreach Trump has preferred tends to be splashy presentations by tech CEOs. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the president a customized glass plaque with a gold base as Cook promised $600 billion in investments. Trump claims to have brought in $17 trillion in investment commitments, although none of those numbers has surfaced yet in economic data.

Under his series of executive orders and trade frameworks, U.S. automakers face import taxes of 50% on steel and aluminum, 30% on parts from China and a top rate of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico not covered under an existing 2020 trade agreement. That puts America’s automakers and parts suppliers at a disadvantage against German, Japanese and South Korean vehicles that only face a 15% import tax negotiated by Trump last month.

On top of that, Trump this past week threatened a 100% tariff on computer chips, which are an integral part of cars and trucks, though he would exclude companies that produce chips domestically from the tax.

Whitmer’s two earlier meetings with Trump resulted in gains for Michigan. But the tariffs represent a significantly broader request of a president who has imposed them even more aggressively in the face of criticism.

Materials in the presentation brought Whitmer to the meeting and obtained by The Associated Press noted how trade with Canada and Mexico has driven $23.2 billion in investment to Michigan since 2020.

General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis operate 50 factories across the state, while more than 4,000 facilities support the auto parts supply chain. Altogether, the sector supports nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs, forming the backbone of Michigan’s economy.

Whitmer outlined the main points of the materials to Trump and left copies with his team.

To Grossman, the Michigan State professor, a key question is whether voters who expected to be helped by tariffs would react if Trump’s import taxes failed to deliver the promised economic growth.

“Everyone’s aware that Michigan is a critical swing state and the auto industry has outsized influence, not just directly, but symbolically,” Grossman said.

AP VoteCast found that Trump won Michigan in 2024 largely because two-thirds of its voters described the economic conditions as being poor or “not so good.” Roughly 70% of the voters in the state who felt negatively about the economy backed the Republican. The state was essentially split over whether tariffs were a positive, with Trump getting 76% of those voters who viewed them favorably.

The heads of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have repeatedly warned the administration that the tariffs would cut company profits and undermine their global competitiveness. Their efforts have resulted in little more than a temporary, monthlong pause intended to give companies time to adjust. The reprieve did little to blunt the financial fallout.

In the second quarter alone, Ford reported $800 million in tariff-related costs, while GM said the import taxes cost it $1.1 billion. Those expenses could make it harder to reinvest in new domestic factories, a goal Trump has championed.

“We expect tariffs to be a net headwind of about $2 billion this year, and we’ll continue to monitor the developments closely and engage with policymakers to ensure U.S. autoworkers and customers are not disadvantaged by policy change,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said on his company’s earning call.

Since Trump returned to the White House, Michigan has lost 7,500 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Smaller suppliers have felt the strain, too.

Detroit Axle, a family-run auto parts distributor, has been one of the more vocal companies in Michigan about the impact of the tariffs. The company initially announced it might have to shut down a warehouse and lay off more than 100 workers, but later said it would be able to keep the facility open, at least for now.

“Right now it’s a market of who is able to survive, it’s not a matter of who can thrive,” said Mike Musheinesh, owner of Detroit Axle.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Mark Schiefelbein—AP Photo

 Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungrydata centers.

It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.

But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines.

That has meant pressuring the nation’s biggest power grid operator to clamp down on price increases, studying the effect of data centers on electricity bills or pushing data center owners to pay a larger share of local transmission costs.

Rising power bills are “something legislators have been hearing a lot about. It’s something we’ve been hearing a lot about. More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I’ve ever seen before,” said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s a massive outcry.”

Not the typical electric customer

Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That’s pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.

“A lot of this infrastructure, billions of dollars of it, is being built just for a few customers and a few facilities and these happen to be the wealthiest companies in the world,” said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. “I think some of the fundamental assumptions behind all this just kind of breaks down.”

A fix, Peskoe said, is a “can of worms” that pits ratepayer classes against one another.

Some officials downplay the role of data centers in pushing up electric bills.

Tricia Pridemore, who sits on Georgia’s Public Service Commission and is president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, pointed to an already tightened electricity supply and increasing costs for power lines, utility poles, transformers and generators as utilities replace aging equipment or harden it against extreme weather.

The data centers needed to accommodate the artificial intelligence boom are still in the regulatory planning stages, Pridemore said, and the Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech firms and data center developers, has said its members are committed to paying their fair share.

But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech as the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority.

Data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie published a report in recent weeks that suggested 20 proposed or effective specialized rates for data centers in 16 states it studied aren’t nearly enough to cover the cost of a new natural gas power plant.

In other words, unless utilities negotiate higher specialized rates, other ratepayer classes — residential, commercial and industrial — are likely paying for data center power needs.

Meanwhile, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year’s increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand.

States are responding

Last year, five governors led by Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro began pushing back against power prices set by the mid-Atlantic grid operator, PJM Interconnection, after that amount spiked nearly sevenfold. They warned of customers “paying billions more than is necessary.”

PJM has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power.

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a “massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies.

At least a dozen states are eyeing ways to make data centers pay higher local transmission costs.

In Oregon, a data center hot spot, lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers.

The Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board says there is clear evidence that costs to serve data centers are being spread across all customers — at a time when some electric bills there are up 50% over the past four years and utilities are disconnecting more people than ever.

New Jersey’s governor signed legislation last month commissioning state utility regulators to study whether ratepayers are being hit with “unreasonable rate increases” to connect data centers and to develop a specialized rate to charge data centers.

In some other states, like Texas and Utah, governors and lawmakers are trying to avoid a supply-and-demand crisis that leaves ratepayers on the hook — or in the dark.

Doubts about states protecting ratepayers

In Indiana, state utility regulators approved a settlement between Indiana Michigan Power Co., Amazon, Google, Microsoft and consumer advocates that set parameters for data center payments for service.

Kerwin Olsen, of the Citizens Action Council of Indiana, a consumer advocacy group, signed the settlement and called it a “pretty good deal” that contained more consumer protections than what state lawmakers passed.

But, he said, state law doesn’t force large power users like data centers to publicly reveal their electric usage, so pinning down whether they’re paying their fair share of transmission costs “will be a challenge.”

In a March report, the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard University questioned the motivation of utilities and regulators to shield ratepayers from footing the cost of electricity for data centers.

Both utilities and states have incentives to attract big customers like data centers, it said.

To do it, utilities — which must get their rates approved by regulators — can offer “special deals to favored customers” like a data center and effectively shift the costs of those discounts to regular ratepayers, the authors wrote. Many state laws can shield disclosure of those rates, they said.

In Pennsylvania, an emerging data center hot spot, the state utility commission is drafting a model rate structure for utilities to consider adopting. An overarching goal is to get data center developers to put their money where their mouth is.

“We’re talking about real transmission upgrades, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars,” commission chairman Stephen DeFrank said. “And that’s what you don’t want the ratepayer to get stuck paying for.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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