By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sent out tariff letters to seven smaller U.S. trading partners on Wednesday with a pledge to announce import taxes on other countries later in the day.

None of the countries targeted in the first batch of letters — the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka — is a major industrial rival to the United States. It’s a sign that a president who has openly expressed his love for the word “tariff” is still infatuated with the idea that taxing trade will create prosperity for America.

Most economic analyses say the tariffs will worsen inflationary pressures and subtract from economic growth, but Trump has used the taxes as a way to assert the diplomatic and financial power of the U.S. on both rivals and allies. His administration is promising that the taxes on imports will lower trade imbalances, offset some of the cost of the tax cuts he signed into law on Friday and cause factory jobs to return to the United States.

Trump, during a White House meeting with African leaders talked up trade as a diplomatic tool. Trade, he said, “seems to be a foundation” for him to settle disputes between India and Pakistan, as well as Kosovo and Serbia.

“You guys are going to fight, we’re not going to trade,” Trump said. “And we seem to be quite successful in doing that.”

On Monday, Trump placed a 35% tariff on Serbia, one of the countries he was using as an example of how fostering trade can lead to peace.

Officials for the European Union, a major trade partner and source of Trump’s ire on trade, said Tuesday that they are not expecting to receive a letter from Trump listing tariff rates. The Republican president started the process of announcing tariff rates on Monday by hitting two major U.S. trading partners, Japan and South Korea, with import taxes of 25%.

According to Trump’s letters, imports from Libya, Iraq, Algeria and Sri Lanka would be taxed at 30%, those from Moldova and Brunei at 25% and those from the Philippines at 20%. The tariffs would start Aug. 1.

The Census Bureau reported that last year U.S. ran a trade imbalance on goods of $1.4 billion with Algeria, $5.9 billion with Iraq, $900 million with Libya, $4.9 billion with the Philippines, $2.6 billion with Sri Lanka, $111 million with Brunei and $85 million with Moldova. The imbalance represents the difference between what the U.S. exported to those countries and what it imported.

Taken together, the trade imbalances with those seven countries are essentially a rounding error in a U.S. economy with a gross domestic product of $30 trillion.

The letters were posted on Truth Social after the expiration of a 90-day negotiating period with a baseline levy of 10%. Trump is giving countries more time to negotiate with his Aug. 1 deadline, but he has insisted there will be no extensions for the countries that receive letters.

Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s chief trade negotiator, told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday that the EU had been spared the increased tariffs contained in the letters sent by Trump and that an extension of talks until Aug. 1 would provide “additional space to reach a satisfactory conclusion.”

Trump on April 2 proposed a 20% tariff for EU goods and then threatened to raise that to 50% after negotiations did not move as fast as he would have liked, only to return to the 10% baseline. The EU has 27 member states, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The tariff letters are worded aggressively in Trump’s style of writing. He frames the tariffs as an invitation to “participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States,” adding that the trade imbalances are a “major threat” to America’s economy and national security.

The president threatened additional tariffs on any country that attempts to retaliate. He said he chose to send the letters because it was too complicated for U.S. officials to negotiate with their counterparts in the countries with new tariffs. It can take years to broker trade accords.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba interpreted the Aug. 1 deadline as a delay to allow more time for negotiations, although he cautioned in remarks that the tariffs would hurt his nation’s domestic industries and employment.

Malaysia’s trade minister, Zafrul Aziz, said Wednesday that his country would not meet all of the U.S. requests after a Trump letter placed a 25% tariff on its goods. Aziz said U.S. officials are seeking changes in government procurement, halal certification, medical standards and digital taxes. Aziz he indicated those were red lines.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to arrive Thursday in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Associated Press writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

After many years of acrimony, Lou Gramm — headliner of the inaugural Yacht Rock Detroit festival taking place this weekend — says it’s smooth sailing between him and the Foreigner camp these days.

Gramm, the band’s original frontman and co-writer, with founder Mick Jones, of its biggest hits, made his final departure from Foreigner in early 2003. And even while making special guest appearances with the group starting in 2017, there was tension over a variety of issues. But Gramm, 75, has a new attitude after Foreigner’s “life-changing” induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October.

“Ever since (the induction,) it felt like, personally, I had to find a way to let go of some of the things I’ve been holding onto for years and kind of, like the song says, ‘let it be,'” says Gramm, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with Jones in 2013.

“It’s a hackneyed sentiment, but it’s true — life’s too short. And a lot of the things that are blown up and made big deals about are easy enough to get over and humble yourself and reach out a little bit, ’cause what you’ve been made about for the past 20 years is not a monumental thing.”

Gramm has certainly been a strong presence in Foreigner’s world during the past 10 months or so.

He appears on the unreleased 1996 track “Turning Back the Time” from the recent compilation of the same name, while he helped finish another vaulted song, “Fool If You Love Him,” for a reissue of the 1981 album “4” in September. Gramm was also a featured guest on Foreigner’s tour of South and Central America earlier this year and will do the same for U.S. dates in December.

“I don’t think there’s any contrivance or people questioning the reason why I would be up there with that band,” Gramm says. “They’ve done a great job over the last two decades of keeping the name up there and flying the flag. They deserve a lot of credit and I love getting the chance to work with them whenever we can.”

Yacht Rock Detroit takes place Friday and Saturday, July 11-12, at the Roostertail, 100 Marquette Drive, Detroit. Other performers include Ben Sharkey and the Seven Wonders Fleetwood Mac tribute. 313-822-1234 or yachtrockdetroit.com.

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his advisers promised a lightning round of global trade negotiations with dozens of countries back in April.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro predicted “90 deals in 90 days.’’ Administration officials declared that other countries were desperate to make concessions to avoid the massive import taxes – tariffs — that Trump was threatening to plaster on their products starting July 9.

But the 90 days have come and gone. And the tally of trade deals stands at two – one with the United Kingdom and one with Vietnam. Trump has also announced the framework for a deal with China, the details of which remain fuzzy.

Trump has now extended the deadline for negotiations to Aug. 1 and tinkered with his threatened tariffs, leaving the global trading system pretty much where it stood three months ago — in a state of limbo as businesses delay decisions on investments, contracts and hiring because they don’t know what the rules will be.

“It’s a rerun, basically,’’ said William Reinsch, a former U.S. trade official who’s now an adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Trump and his team “don’t have the deals they want. So they’re piling on the threats.”

The pattern has repeated itself enough times to earn Trump the label TACO — an acronym coined by The Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“This is classic Trump: Threaten, threaten more, but then extend the deadline,” Reinsch said. “July 30 arrives, does he do it again if he still doesn’t have the deals?’’ (Trump said Tuesday that there will be no more extensions.)

The deal drought represents a collision with reality.

Negotiating simultaneously with every country on earth was always an impossible task, as Trump himself belatedly admitted last month in an interview with the Fox News Channel. (“There’s 200 countries,’’ the president said. “You can’t talk to all of them.’’) And many trading partners — such as Japan and the European Union — were always likely to balk at Trump’s demands, at least without getting something in return.

“It’s really, really hard to negotiate trade agreements,” which usually takes several months even when it involves just one country or a small regional group, said Chad Bown, an economic adviser in the Obama White House and now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “What the administration is doing is negotiating a bunch of these at the same time.’’

The drama began April 2 – “Liberation Day,” Trump called it — when the tariff-loving president announced a so-called baseline 10% import tax on everybody and what he called “reciprocal’’ levies of up to 50% on countries with which the United States runs trade deficits.

The 10% baseline tariffs appear to be here to stay. Trump needs them to raise money to patch the hole his massive tax-cut bill is blasting into the federal budget deficit.

By themselves, the baseline tariffs represent a massive shift in American trade policy: Tariffs averaged around 2.5% when Trump returned to the White House and were even lower before he started raising them in his first term.

But the reciprocal tariffs are an even bigger deal.

In announcing them, Trump effectively blew up the rules governing world trade. For decades, the United States and most other countries abided by tariff rates set through a series of complex negotiations known as the Uruguay round. Countries could set their own tariffs – but under the “most favored nation’’ approach, they couldn’t charge one country more than they charged another.

Now Trump is setting the tariff rates himself, creating “tailor-made trade plans for each and every country on this planet,’’ in the words of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

But investors have recoiled at the audacious plan, fearing that it will disrupt trade and damage the world economy. Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, for instance, set off a four-day rout in global financial markets. Trump blinked. Less than 13 hours after the reciprocal tariffs took effect April 9, he abruptly suspended them for 90 days, giving countries time to negotiate with his trade team.

Despite the Trump administration’s expressions of confidence, the talks turned into a slog.

“Countries have their own politics, their own domestic politics,” Reinsch said. “Trump structured this ideally so that all the concessions are made by the other guys and the only U.S. concession is: We don’t impose the tariffs.’’

But countries like South Korea and Japan needed “to come back with something,’’ he said. Their thinking: “We have to get some concessions out of the United States to make it look like this is a win-win agreement and not a we-fold-and-surrender agreement. ”

Japan, for example, wanted relief from another Trump tariff — 50% levies on steel and aluminum.

Countries may also be hesitant to reach a deal with the United States while the Trump administration conducts investigations that might result in new tariffs on a range of products, including pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Trump on Monday sent letters to Japan, South Korea and 12 other countries, saying he’d hit them with tariffs Aug. 1 if they couldn’t reach an agreement. The levies were close to what he’d announced on April 2; Japan’s, for example, would be 25%, compared to the 24% unveiled April 2.

Trump did sign an agreement last month with the United Kingdom that, among other provisions, reduced U.S. tariffs on British automotive and aerospace products while opening the U.K. market for American beef and ethanol. But the pact kept the baseline tariff on British products mostly in place, underlining Trump’s commitment to the 10% tax despite the United States running a trade surplus — not a deficit — with the U.K. for 19 straight years, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

On July 2. Trump announced a deal with Vietnam. The Vietnamese agreed to let U.S. products into the country duty free while accepting a 20% tax on their exports to the United States, Trump said, though details of the agreement have not been released.

The lopsided deal with Vietnam suggests that Trump can successfully use the tariff threat to bully concessions out of smaller economies.

“They just can’t really negotiate in the same way that the (European Union) or Korea or Japan (or) Canada can negotiate with the United States,’’ said Dan McCarthy, principal in McCarthy Consulting and a former official with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the Biden administration. “A lot of (smaller) countries just want to get out of this and are willing to cut their losses.’’

But wrangling a deal with bigger trading partners is likely to remain tougher.

“The U.S. is gambling that these countries will ultimately be intimidated and fold,” Reinsch said. “And the countries are gambling that the longer this stretches out, and the longer it goes without Trump producing any more deals, the more desperate he gets; and he lowers his standards.

“It’s kind of a giant game of chicken.’’

A 46-year-old Rochester Hills man died Tuesday, three days after losing control of the vehicle he was driving and hitting a tree, officials said.

According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, Pranit Birje suffered a medical emergency while driving a 2020 Nissan Rogue on West Tienken Road in Rochester Hills. The vehicle crossed the centerline, left the roadway and struck a tree near Bridgestone Drive. It happened shortly after 1 p.m. last Saturday.

Witnesses said the car had crossed the centerline multiple times before the crash, the sheriff’s office said.

Birge was wearing a seatbelt, the sheriff’s office said. Paramedics from the Rochester Hills Fire Department transported him to an area hospital for treatment where he subsequently died, the sheriff’s office said.

The incident was investigated by the crash reconstruction unit of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

Teen dead, another hospitalized in Pontiac shooting

 

By GABRIELA AOUN ANGUEIRA

Just weeks ago, President Donald Trump said he wanted to begin “phasing out” the Federal Emergency Management Agency after this hurricane season to “wean off of FEMA” and “bring it down to the state level.”

But after months of promises to overhaul or eliminate the federal agency charged with responding to disasters, Trump and his administration are touting a fast and robust federal response to the devastating Texas floods. In doing so, they are aligning more closely with a traditional model of disaster response — and less with the dramatic reform the president has proposed.

The president approved Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for a major disaster declaration just one day after it was submitted, activating FEMA resources and unlocking assistance for survivors and local governments. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Trump in a presidential Cabinet meeting Tuesday morning that FEMA was deploying funding and resources quickly. “We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it, much like your vision of how FEMA should operate,” Noem said.

Noem said the rapid delivery of funds to Texas resembled the “state block grants” model Trump has promoted. It’s an idea that would replace FEMA’s current system of reimbursing states for response and recovery expenses at a cost-share of at least 75%.

But ex-FEMA officials say it’s unclear how the response differs from FEMA’s typical role in disasters, which is to support states through coordination and funding. Instead, they say, the vigorous federal response underscores how difficult it would be for states to take on FEMA’s responsibilities if it were dismantled.

“This is a defining event that can help them realize that a Federal Emergency Management Agency is essential,” said Michael Coen, FEMA chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations. “Imagine if an event like this happened a year from now, after FEMA is eliminated. What would the president or secretary (Noem) offer to the governor of Texas if there is no FEMA?”

The Department of Homeland Security and FEMA did not immediately respond to questions about Noem’s remarks, including whether FEMA was doing something different in how it moved money to Texas, or why it resembled a block-grant system.

FEMA will have multiple roles in Texas

While Noem and Trump have emphasized that Texas is leading the response and recovery to the floods, that has always been FEMA’s role, said Justin Knighten, the agency’s director of external affairs during the Biden administration.

“The state is in the lead. FEMA is invited into the state to support,” Knighten said. He said that while Texas’ division of emergency management is one of the most experienced in the country, even the most capable states face catastrophes that overwhelm them: “When there’s capacity challenges and resource need, that’s where FEMA steps in.”

One of FEMA’s primary roles will be to coordinate resources from other federal agencies. If the state needs the Army Corps of Engineers to help with debris removal, Health and Human Services for mortuary support and crisis counseling, or EPA for water quality testing, FEMA arranges that at the state’s request and then reimburses those agencies. “FEMA becomes a one-point entry for all federal support,” Coen said.

The agency also coordinates first-responder support — like search-and-rescue teams deployed from across the country — and reimburses those costs. It administers the National Flood Insurance Program, which gives homeowners and renters access to flood coverage not typically included in general policies.

Those with insufficient insurance or none at all will rely heavily on FEMA’s Individual Assistance program, which supports survivors with needs like temporary housing and home repairs. On Wednesday, the agency is opening disaster recovery centers where households can get help applying for assistance, according to Texas Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd. The Public Assistance program will reimburse state and local governments for most or all of the costs of infrastructure repairs.

States would have trouble replacing FEMA

While Trump and Noem often say they want states to take on more responsibility in disaster response, experts say the tragedy in Texas underscores how even the most capable states need support.

“It’s true that Texas is very capable, but I think it’s something that people forget that FEMA pays for a lot of state and local emergency capacity,” said Maddie Sloan, director of the disaster recovery and fair housing project at the policy nonprofit Texas Appleseed. The Texas Division of Emergency Management’s budget of over $2 billion is mostly funded through federal grants.

“If a state like Texas asks for federal assistance within two days, the smaller states that are less capable don’t stand a chance,” said Jeremy Edwards, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs during the Biden administration.

States would have to set up their own recovery programs and to coordinate with each federal agency if they were given block grants in lieu of FEMA involvement. “Without FEMA, a governor or a state has to be calling around and have a Rolodex of the whole federal government to call and try and figure out what support they can get,” Coen said.

There are plenty of reforms that could improve how FEMA reimburses states and helps survivors, experts said, but eliminating it risks big gaps in recovery. “We have spent a lot of time encouraging FEMA to be better, but if FEMA goes away, there is no help for individual families,” Sloan said.

Uncertain future for federal disaster response

Trump has deflected questions about what the Texas response means for FEMA’s future. A 12-member review council established by the president and charged with proposing FEMA reforms will meet for the second time Wednesday. Abbott and Kidd are both on the council.

At the first meeting, Abbott called FEMA “slow and clunky” and said reforms should “streamline the effort.” He has praised Trump’s quick disaster declaration in Texas.

While no large reforms to the agency have been enacted yet, smaller policy changes could impact Texas’ recovery.

This spring, the administration did away with FEMA’s practice of door-to-door canvassing to help households enroll for assistance, calling it “wasteful and ineffective.” Many of the impacted areas in Kerr County and beyond still lack power and accessible roads, which will make it difficult for households to apply immediately for help.

Amid the upheaval of DOGE-related FEMA layoffs and departures this spring, the administrator and deputy administrator of FEMA Region 6, which covers Texas, left the agency. Region 6 is operating under an acting administrator. Coen called the loss of experienced staff “significant” but said the team is still capable.

Abbott’s request for hazard mitigation funding, a common add-on to public and individual assistance that helps communities rebuild with resilience, is also still pending. Trump has not approved any hazard-mitigation assistance requests since February.

By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June is a great time to fire up your grill and move at least some of your daily or weekly dinner duties to the backyard.

Cooking outdoors is usually cooler, tends to have a better view and is generally a lot more fun for both the cook and those he or she is trying to feed.

Chicken is often a prime choice when it comes to proteins to cook on gas or charcoal because it’s cheaper to feed a crowd with than beef or seafood. It’s also a lot more forgiving since it doesn’t require a lot of technique so long as you 1) cook over a moderate heat, 2) use an instant read thermometer to know when it’s done and 3) remember to let the grilled chicken rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing or serving so it can reabsorb some of its juices.

And if you take the time to soak it in a tasty marinade or stir together a homemade sweet-and-tangy barbecue sauce for basting, it will both elevate the flavor of the finished product and help keep the meat moist and tender.

While chicken breast is often a favorite choice because it’s leaner and has a milder, more subtle flavor, it’s also more expensive than other parts of the bird. Without a whole lot of fat to protect it from flames or heat as you grill it, it’s really easy to overcook and dry out.

That’s why I almost always opt for chicken thigh when I’m planning a cookout. It’s true that, as a fattier meat, dark-colored thigh packs more calories onto your plate than chicken breast. Still, it’s so much juicier and incredibly flavorful.

Grilled boneless, skinless chicken thigh builds the foundation for this summery budget meal for four. A scratch, ketchup-based barbecue sauce sweetened with brown sugar and spiced up with hot sauce and vinegar adds the perfect mix of tang and sugar, and because our recipe makes a lot of it, there’s plenty left over for dipping.

We serve it with a corn salad made with fresh kernels off the cob, salty feta and cherry tomatoes tossed in a simple four-ingredient dressing (if you don’t count the salt and pepper) that can be whisked together in seconds.

Rounding out the meal are roasted sweet potato chips and super-easy brown sugar blondies studded with butterscotch chips and chopped pecans and topped with gooey swirls of homemade strawberry jam.

It’s a feast fit if not for a king or queen (that’d require steak) at the very least a member of a royal family — especially since you’ll probably get some leftovers out of it.

Also impressive: It rings up 28 cents under our budget of $25.

I’m always surprised when a salad dish ends up costing more than dessert, but there’s no getting around the fact that fresh fruits and vegetables are becoming increasingly more expensive. All told, the corn salad added up to $6.55, or almost three times the price of the sweet potatoes ($2.25 for two) and more than half the total cost of the chicken, including the barbecue sauce.

Then again, I went with fresh ears of corn instead of canned or frozen and added not just a nice crumble of feta but also a generous handful of fat and juicy cherry tomatoes I couldn’t resist in the produce aisle.

Thanks in (small) part to the decreasing price of eggs and the fact that I almost always have homemade jam in my refrigerator, the blondies were quite economical, even with the addition of chips and pecans. Where else can you find a decadent, butterscotch-forward dessert for 42 cents a serving but from a home kitchen?

As always, I reached into my pantry and fridge for some of the ingredients most home cooks and/or bakers have on hand — olive oil, baking soda, vanilla, honey, vinegar and mustard — and I also did not calculate the cost of the basil in the salad because as someone who loves Italian cuisine, I am never without it.

Ditto with the red onion, a few of which are always in my refrigerator crisper, and various spices (though I did try to calculate the cost based on price per ounce).

Nothing on the menu takes more than 30 minutes to prepare, and if you get all your ducks in a row before you preheat the grill, you can make everything in one fell swoop.

As always, folks, remember to shop for ingredients at home before heading to the grocery store — it’s amazing how we forget what we already have on hand and then buy in duplicate, or let go to waste.

Corn-Tomato Salad

PG tested

Fresh corn is best for this recipe, but you also can use canned or frozen. I threw it into a hot skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and fried it while continuously shaking the pan until the kernels were charred, about 7 minutes.

The salad is equally delicious warm, at room temperature or chilled, if you want to make it ahead.

For salad

• 4 cups fresh or frozen corn, rinsed and drained if frozen, and steamed, boiled or grilled if fresh
• 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or quartered
• 1/3 cup crumbled feta
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh basil (about a handful), thinly sliced, optional

For dressing

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Juice of 1 lime
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Toss corn, tomatoes, feta, onion and basil in a large bowl and set aside while you make dressing.

In a small jar or bowl, stir together olive oil, lime juice, honey and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper

Add dressing to the corn mixture and mix well to combine. Taste and add more salt or pepper, if needed.

Serves 4.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

Grilled Barbecue Chicken

PG tested

Chicken thighs are not only cheaper than chicken breast, but they’re also juicier and have a richer flavor. The homemade barbecue sauce that goes on top is spicy-sweet — brush it on while you’re cooking and also serve on the side for dipping.

For chicken

• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1 tablespoon dry rub of choice

For barbecue sauce

• 1 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon barbecue rub
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon each garlic and onion powder

Prepare barbecue sauce: In saucepan over medium-low heat, stir together ingredients until well combined. Simmer for 5-10 minutes and use immediately or transfer when cool to an airtight container and store in refrigerator for up to a month. (Makes about 1 cup.)

Preheat grill to medium-high heat (400 degrees) and lightly oil the grates. If using charcoal, set up the briquettes underneath the grill grate.

Place the chicken on the grill and cook for 3-4 minutes, until grill marks have formed and the chicken is nicely browned.

Flip the thighs over and let cook for 3 minutes. Brush on the side facing up lightly with barbecue sauce and cook an additional 3 minutes.

Flip the chicken again, and brush lightly with more barbecue sauce on this side. Cook for 2 minutes.

Flip one last time, and brush again with barbecue sauce.

Continue to cook until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees (about 20 total minutes on the grill). Serve immediately, either whole or sliced.

Serves 4.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

Roasted Sweet Potato Chips

PG tested

Sweet potatoes are more nutritious than regular potatoes, and they’re also so easy to cook. In this recipe, you just slice, sprinkle with spices and bake.

• 2 large sweet potatoes
• Olive oil, for coating
• Salt and paprika, for seasoning

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Use a mandolin slicer or chefs knife to cut sweet potatoes into paper-thin rounds. Depending on how big your potatoes are, you may also want to then slice then into half-moons.

Pile sweet potato rounds into a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Using your hands, gently toss to coat every piece with oil. Lay the rounds out on the baking sheets in a single layer.

Sprinkle the chips lightly with salt and smoked paprika. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until crisp and golden around the edges.

Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

Strawberry-Pecan Blondies

PG tested

I used strawberry jam and pecans for this recipe, but it’s easy to customize with your favorite flavors. Try almonds and blueberry jam or pistachios and raspberry jam. Perfect for a simple dessert — or breakfast.

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for pan
• 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 large egg, slightly beaten
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup butterscotch chips
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 3 tablespoons strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, leaving an overhang on 2 sides. (I used parchment paper.) Butter the foil.

Combine butter and brown sugar in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave until the butter is melted, about 1 minute.

Stir in vanilla. Let cool slightly, then stir in the egg.

Whisk the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Stir into the butter mixture.

Stir in butterscotch chips and pecans and spread the batter in the pan. Drop dollops of strawberry jam on top and swirl with a knife.

Bake the blondies until set, about 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool 15 minutes, then lift out of the pan using the foil. Transfer to rack to cool completely.

Discard the foil and cut into squares.

Makes 9 blondies.

— adapted from “Baking for Fun: 75 Great Cookies, Cakes, Pies & More” by Food Network Magazine

©2025 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By LINLEY SANDERS and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most of the U.S. adults who have experienced major flooding in the past five years think climate change was at least a partial cause, according to polling conducted earlier this year, before the deadly Texas floods.

But while Americans largely believed the federal government should play a major role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters, an analysis of recent AP-NORC polls shows less consensus about whether the government should be involved in combating climate change to try to keep extreme weather from getting worse.

The polls from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research were conducted in February and June, before catastrophic flooding in Texas killed more than 100 people over the Fourth of July weekend and left others missing. The polls found that Americans generally had a high level of confidence in the National Weather Service and their local weather report, and most thought the federal government should play a central role in alerting Americans to weather events.

That trust could now be undermined, as officials face scrutiny over flood preparations and the timing of alerts and evacuations. Although meteorologists warn that human-caused climate change can make bad storms worse, it’s unclear if overall views of climate change — and the government’s role in combating it — will be altered.

Many have experienced recent major flooding

About 2 in 10 Americans said they had experienced major flooding in recent years, according to the February poll. And among those, about 7 in 10 said climate change was at least a partial cause of the recent weather events they had experienced.

That’s in line with the share of Americans who have been affected in the past five years by any severe weather event, including extreme heat, droughts, hurricanes or extreme cold.

Those living in the Northeast and the South were more likely to say they had been personally impacted by major flooding in recent years.

Most see a role for government in tracking weather events

About 7 in 10 Americans believe the federal government should have a “major role” in tracking weather events and warning people about them, according to AP-NORC polling from June.

That includes about 8 in 10 Democrats, compared with roughly two-thirds of Republicans.

About 8 in 10 Americans want the government to provide aid to affected communities and help with rebuilding efforts, the June poll found. But there was less agreement on whether the government should be combating climate change to try to keep extreme weather from getting worse.

Just over half, 56%, of U.S. adults say the government should have a key role in combating climate change to try to prevent extreme weather from worsening. Scientists have said climate change has led to frequent and more extreme alterations in weather patterns. About 8 in 10 Democrats say the government should play a major role in fighting climate change, compared with about 3 in 10 Republicans.

Confidence in the National Weather Service was high before the floods

Following the disaster, National Weather Service and local officials disagreed about who was ultimately to blame for the lack of awareness about the flood severity.

The AP-NORC polling showed that before the Texas floods, Americans placed a relatively high level of trust in the National Weather Service and their local weather report. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said in the June survey that they were “extremely” or “very” confident in the National Weather Service or their local weather provider. Another 4 in 10, roughly, were “somewhat confident” in the National Weather Service or their local weather report.

Confidence in the Federal Emergency Management Agency was lower. Before the floods, only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults said they were “extremely” or “very” confident in FEMA, while about 4 in 10 said they were “somewhat” confident.

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

Wu-Tang Clan hardly seems like a group that needs to worry about its legacy. But Robert “RZA” Diggs and company are not taking any chances.

The 11-member collective’s Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber tour — which stopped Tuesday night, July 8, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit — is part of a five-year “exit plan” designed to ensure that the troupe is remembered, preferably as what El-P of opening act Run The Jewels called “the greatest rap group of all-time.”

 

The effort has included a documentary (“Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men”), a biopic series n Hulu (“Wu-Tang: An American Saga”), the first-ever rap residency in Las Vegas and the high-profile $2 million of the only copy of the “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album.

And, under the moniker Wu-Tang, the group released “Black Samson, the Bastard Swordsman,” for Record Store Day in April.

Farewell outings are often taken with a grain of salt, of course, and the fluid nature of Wu-Tang’s makeup and membership has kept the crew coming together and breaking apart into satellite components often since it formed during 1992 in Staten Island, N.Y. But if it truly is The Final Chamber, the group is certainly leaving on the highest of notes, when it can still raise a righteous ruckus.

Wu-Tang’s mythology — the Shaolin philosophy, kung-fu movie tropes and gritty street sensibilities — were on full display during the 95-minute show, especially on three massive video screens above and beside the stage. But the real allure of the Wu-Tang live is in its hot performance chops — skilled, often-breakneck rhymes and a smooth but aggressive ensemble sensibility that flows one member’s flow into the others’ with precise, seamless ease. A seven-piece live band and two female singers, meanwhile, brought a more organic and impactful flavor to the proceedings — even if a rendition of Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were” wasn’t necessarily on your Wu-Tang bingo card.

More tends to equal more with Wu-Tang Clan, which is why Tuesday’s best moments were when the full complement of MCs — which swelled to 11 during the closing “Triumph” — and longtime DJ Mathematics was karate-chopping it up together. That happened early, when after a politically tinged welcome speech from RZA — who promised “Wu-Tang Clan is something they can never exploit — group members trooped on one at a time for “Bring Da Ruckus,” “Clan in da Front” and an epic “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” all from 1993’s landmark “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” debut album. The latter was highlighted by Young Dirty Bastard, sporting a Detroit Pistons jersey and taking the place of his late father, Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Method Man, dressed in preppy tennis whites, completed the picture with the song that bears his name, and Wu-Tang’s unified might was on full display during “Shame On a Nigga” and “Protect Ya Neck” before it began breaking into smaller group renditions of Cappadonna’s ’97 Mentality,” Raekwon’s “Ice Cream,” Method Man’s “All I Need” and the GZA/Genius classic “Liquid Swords.” Gang Starr’s “Above the Clouds” received an airing as a memorial tribute to that group’s Guru, and Wu-Tang also paid tribute during the show to “fallen soldiers” such as the Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Nipsy Hustle, A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg and others.

Detroit also received plenty of love from the Wu, too, whether it was the Pistons and Tigers jerseys the MCs sported throughout the night or RZA shouting out Motown and saluting the city’s comeback. “This has always been a special place, ’cause y’all understand like we understand that…Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to f*** with,” he said in introducing the song of that name.

The more than 12,000 at Little Caesars certainly understood, and were audibly thrilled to raise their W-shaped Wu-Tang hand salutes (maybe) one last time. Wu-Tang may be going, but this show, like most of its predecessors, will not be forgotten.

An audience of nearly 200 people at a town hall meeting in Troy was asked if someone they knew would be affected by Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Nearly all raised their hands.

Four state legislators who represent parts of Oakland County hosted the meeting at the Troy Community Center on Monday, July 7. They and their audience expressed uncertainty and outrage about the bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate by narrow margins last week. Trump signed it on July 4.

State senators Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, and Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, and state representatives Sharon MacDonell, D-Troy, and Natalie Price, D-Berkley, hosted the meeting.

Irma Hoops of Oxford came to the meeting out of concern for a 65-year-old friend on Medicaid who is “near suicidal” over the changes, she said.

“I just can’t help but fear there are going to be more people affected,” she said. “This is going to impact all of us.”

She is particularly concerned for veterans. “We owe them the respect to try to stand up to this,” she said.

Supporters of the sweeping tax and spending legislation say the changes to Medicaid, food aid and other programs will encourage personal responsibility and stop those who are scamming the system.

Critics say it will put the lives of those who are already vulnerable at risk.

The bill slashes more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, according to a release from MacDonell.

It also creates an estimated $2 billion hole in Michigan’s budget; the state administers Medicaid and the food stamp program. The cuts threaten the food and health security of over 2 million Michiganders and would force the state to either slash services or raise taxes to make up the difference, the release said.

Chang said the state will not be able to “backfill” the cuts, and legislators are doing the best they can to minimize the impact on Michiganders.

McMorrow encouraged those with concerns to contact their state legislators – especially if they are Republicans, who support the One Big Beautiful Bill.

U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-7th District, which includes part of western Oakland County, said in a release that he supported the bill because it “delivers on promises made to hardworking families and businesses in Michigan.”

He said it prevents a 22% tax hike on the average taxpayer by making 2017 tax cuts permanent, saving middle-class Americans who earn between $30,000 and $80,000 as much as 15%.

Additionally, it provides the largest border security investment in American history, including funding to build 701 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, equip border agents with new surveillance technology and hire more agents.

Barrett said the legislation “preserves Medicaid for the people the program is designed to serve: expectant mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly.”

He said it requires healthy, able-bodied adults on Medicaid to return to the workforce or do volunteer work. The bill also denies coverage for undocumented immigrants, duplicative or deceased enrollees and other ineligible people, he said.

Trump signs his tax and spending cut bill at the White House July 4 picnic

Midway through 2025, Oakland County’s homicides down nearly 13% over this time last year

What Trump’s big tax law could mean for the youngest Americans

 

 

A Pontiac woman charged with running an illegal animal shelter has another Oakland County court date.

Karmen Schooly’s pretrial hearing was before Sixth Circuit Court Judge Daniel P. O’Brien on June 30 and she is scheduled to return to his courtroom at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 9.

She’s been charged with failure to provide adequate care to 25 or more animals. It’s a felony and if convicted, Schooly would face up to seven years in prison, fines up to $10,000 and up to 500 hours of community service. She was also charged with operating an unregistered animal shelter, a misdemeanor with penalties of up to 90 days in jail and/or a fine up to $500.

Schooly is also facing separate changes in Macomb County of animal abandonment and cruelty related to foster care for seven puppies. Schooly’s Pontiac-based TriCounty Dog Rescue had a foster agreement with Alicia Coleman of Lenox Township in 2023.

Two of those puppies were sick with highly contagious canine parvovirus. Coleman paid for veterinary care for the sick dogs, which survived. Schooly refused to take any of the dogs back or pay for the veterinary care, according to Coleman’s court testimony. Coleman was able to find a home for one of the dogs that hadn’t been ill and brought the rest to Macomb County Animal Control.

Macomb County charged Schooly with one felony count of animal cruelty/abandonment, one felony count of unauthorized practice as a veterinarian/ health professional and a misdemeanor charge of operating an unlicensed animal shelter.

In January 2024, Judge William Hackel III ruled Schooly owed the county $70,255 for the dogs’ care which lasted a year. Unable to pay, Schooly forfeited the dogs to the county. Each dog was eventually adopted.

Schooly has so far rejected a Macomb plea deal that would include dropping the unauthorized practice charge. As part of that deal, she would not be allowed to own any animals unless they are licensed by Oakland County and her home would be subject to random inspections by Oakland County Animal Control.

Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Julie Gatti said if Schooly accepted the plea agreement, which Lozen said would be on the table until the trial, she would be willing to allow Schooly to make monthly payments toward the $70,255 during her probation as opposed to paying one lump sum. The plea deal remains on the table until Schooly’s Aug. 27 Macomb trial.

 

ALLEN PARK— For David Shaw, it was supposed to be a one-year detour.

Instead, it turned into a nearly two-decade run that’s defined his career.

Jim Harbaugh convinced Shaw to join his staff at San Diego in 2006, becoming the team’s passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach. Shaw was direct in his intentions: This shift into the collegiate ranks — Shaw had spent about the previous 10 years in various assistant roles in the NFL — was to last one year. At season’s end, he was returning to the league.

That was the plan, until Harbaugh landed the job at Stanford, Shaw’s alma mater where he tallied 664 yards on 57 catches from 1991-94. Shaw couldn’t pass that up. He followed Harbaugh and was the Cardinal’s offensive coordinator for four seasons. He was named head coach in 2011 after Harbaugh left for the San Francisco 49ers, and he led the university to a 96-54 record over the next 12 years. The Cardinal made a bowl game in each of Shaw’s first eight seasons, and they won at least 10 games five times.

Shaw, 52, finally made his return to coaching in the NFL earlier this year, hired by the Detroit Lions to be their passing game coordinator under head coach Dan Campbell and new offensive coordinator John Morton. Joining the Lions is poetic for Shaw, who remembers being around running back James Jones and wide receiver Pete Mandley while his father, Willie Shaw, coached Detroit’s defensive backs from 1985-88.

“It was my dad’s first NFL job,” Shaw said in May. “To be there for training camp, to meet a lot of the players and be there for (the) ‘Monday Night Football’ game against the ‘85 Bears, like, that was an exciting time for me. (There’s some) nostalgia to be back in this area. I went to Rochester Adams High School. Did that a couple weekends ago, went back up to Rochester Hills and drove around a little bit. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Shaw is now tasked with helping the Lions maintain their elite offense, which has posted more total yards (20,134) and helped the team score more points (1,478) than any other franchise in the league over the last three seasons. Shaw will be working alongside Morton, who he has been close with since the two crossed paths with the then-Oakland Raiders in the late 1990s.

Morton was an offensive assistant (1998-99) and quality control coach (2000-01) with the Raiders before he was promoted to senior offensive assistant (2002-03) and tight ends coach (2004). Shaw, meanwhile, was a quality control coach (1998-2000) and the team’s quarterbacks coach (2001).

“We present very, very differently. We are flip sides of the same coin,” Shaw said of his relationship with Morton. “Super competitive. (Jon) Gruden-trained. … We have a very, very similar mind in attacking defenses and what we see in the game. While we present very differently, since the first day we have met, our personalities have meshed.

“We’ve always pushed each other, too. It’s not one of those relationships like, ‘Oh, I just want to say hi once in a while.’ It’s, ‘Hey, you looking at this here? What do you see there? Why did you guys do that?’ We’ve always had the personal side of a professional relationship that has always meshed.”

Shaw estimates he had about three NFL interview opportunities each year through his first decade at Stanford, but he turned them down because of the principles he developed as a coach’s kid. He never wanted to be looking over the fence, wondering what else was out there. He would see through his Stanford tenure, which ended with his resignation in November 2022 following a pair of three-win seasons.

Much of Shaw’s success with the Cardinal can be drawn back to his implementation of NFL concepts on the offensive side. He was also able to learn from and work with Vic Fangio, who spent one season as Stanford’s defensive coordinator in 2010. Fangio is one of the most influential defensive minds in recent history, and he won Super Bowl LIX with the Philadelphia Eagles in February.

“If you ever watched us play, we looked starkly different than most college offenses,” Shaw said. “Pretty much my entire time at Stanford, we were a West Coast-based NFL offense and a Vic Fangio-based NFL defense.”

The Denver Broncos hired Shaw in 2024 to be a senior personnel executive, an off-field role that gave him a chance “to look at the game from a different point of view, knowing that eventually I was probably gonna come back to the coaching side.”

Now, fulfilling a goal that was set almost 20 years ago, Shaw intends to do all he can to make the most of it.

“One of those things I believe in — it was on our wall back when I was at Stanford — every single day, you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse,” Shaw said. “You’re never staying the same. So, we’re not resting on our laurels. We’re trying to push the envelope. We’re trying to grow, we’re trying to push ourselves, push the players to be better. That’s the goal every year, is to be better, to go farther and take our best shot at winning that trophy.”

By AMANDA SEITZ and JONEL ALECCIA, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday praised a company that makes $7-a-pop meals that are delivered directly to the homes of Medicaid and Medicare enrollees.

He even thanked Mom’s Meals for sending taxpayer-funded meals “without additives” to the homes of sick or elderly Americans. The spreads include chicken bacon ranch pasta for dinner and French toast sticks with fruit or ham patties.

“This is really one of the solutions for making our country healthy again,” Kennedy said in the video, posted to his official health secretary account, after he toured the company’s Oklahoma facility last week.

But an Associated Press review of Mom’s Meals menu, including the ingredients and nutrition labels, shows that the company’s offerings are the type of heat-and-eat, ultraprocessed foods that Kennedy routinely criticizes for making people sick.

The meals contain chemical additives that would render them impossible to recreate at home in your kitchen, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and food policy expert, who reviewed the menu for The AP. Many menu items are high in sodium, and some are high in sugar or saturated fats, she said.

“It is perfectly possible to make meals like this with real foods and no ultra-processing additives but every one of the meals I looked at is loaded with such additives,” Nestle said. “What’s so sad is that they don’t have to be this way. Other companies are able to produce much better products, but of course they cost more.”

Mom’s Meals do not have the artificial, petroleum dyes that Kennedy has pressured companies to remove from products, she noted.

Mom’s Meals said in an emailed response that its food products “do not include ingredients that are commonly found in ultra-processed foods.” The company does not use synthetic food dyes, high fructose corn syrup, certain sweeteners or synthetic preservatives that are banned in Europe, said Teresa Roof, a company spokeswoman.

The meals are a “healthy alternative” to what many people would find in their grocery stores, said Andrew Nixon, U.S. Health and Human Services spokesman, in response to questions about Mom’s Meals.

Mom’s Meals is one of several companies across the U.S. that deliver “medically tailored” at-home meals. The meal programs are covered by Medicaid for some enrollees, including people who are sick with cancer or diabetes, as well as some older Americans who are enrolled in certain Medicare health insurance plans.

Patients recently discharged from the hospital can also have the meals delivered, according to the company’s website.

It’s unclear how much federal taxpayers spend on providing meals through Medicaid and Medicare every year. An investigation by STAT news last year found that some states were spending millions of dollars to provide medically tailored meals to Medicaid enrollees that were marketed as healthy and “dietician approved.” But many companies served up meals loaded with salt, fat or sugar — all staples of an unhealthy American’s diet, the report concluded.

Defining ultraprocessed foods can be tricky. Most U.S. foods are processed, whether it’s by freezing, grinding, fermentation, pasteurization or other means. Foods created through industrial processes and with ingredients such as additives, colors and preservatives that you couldn’t duplicate in a home kitchen are considered the most processed.

Kennedy has said healthier U.S. diets are key to his vision to “Make America Healthy Again.” His call for Americans to increase whole foods in their diets has helped Kennedy build his unique coalition of Trump loyalists and suburban moms who have branded themselves as “MAHA.”

In a recent social media post where he criticized the vast amount of ultraprocessed foods in American diets, Kennedy urged Americans to make healthier choices.

“This country has lost the most basic of all freedoms — the freedom that comes from being healthy,” Kennedy said.

Aleccia reported from Temecula, Calif.

By MEG KINNARD, Associate Press

Elon Musk has said that he’s formed a new political party, but it’s unclear what steps — if any — he’s taken to do so, or how the effort might affect upcoming elections.

Musk has not yet released any additional information. Spokespeople for Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, didn’t immediately comment Monday.

While there are many recent federal elections filings that reference the Tesla and SpaceX CEO or his companies, Musk himself has even gone on his social media platform batting down at least one filing as fake.

The possible new political party marks another development in the rift between Musk and President Donald Trump over the Republican’s sweeping tax cuts law, which the tech billionaire has called “insane.”

The fissures between Trump and his one-time top surrogate and Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutter-in-chief have exposed not only the fragile nature of relations between two of the country’s most visible personalities but also the potential political consequences of disagreeing with the priorities of either man. The squabble could be particularly costly for Musk, whose businesses rely on billions of dollars in government contracts, and whose publicly traded company Tesla has taken a market hit.

Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about Musk’s new political party:

Musk says he’s formed the America Party

Musk said Saturday on X that he had formed the America Party “to give you back your freedom.” He’d teased the move for days, threatening to make his own party if “this insane spending bill passes” Congress. He spent part of Sunday taking feedback from X users about the party, which he indicated he’d use to get involved in the 2026 midterm elections.

Some new Musk-related parties seem fishy

The Federal Election Commission database has teemed with newly formed political entities that make reference either to Musk or one of his companies, but there are details that cast doubts on their authenticity.

As of Monday afternoon, there were multiple political parties listed in the Federal Election Commission database formed in the hours since Musk’s Saturday X post, with versions of “America Party” or “DOGE” or “X” in the name, or Musk listed among people affiliated with the entity.

But none appeared to be real, listing contacts for the organization as email addresses such as “wentsnowboarding@yahoo.com” or untraceable Protonmail addresses. Several listed Vaibhav Taneja — the chief financial officer of Tesla — as a contact for the party, along with a Texas address for a building affiliated with X. Several pointed to a home in Maryland.

When a Musk supporter posted screengrabs of one of the formation documents to X, Musk took to X Sunday to say that the “filing is false and has been reported as such to the FEC.”

What could Musk do with a new party?

While indicating earlier this year that he might play less of a role in elected politics moving forward, Musk — the world’s richest man who spent at least $250 million supporting Trump in the 2024 election — could use a new party to try to do the opposite.

New political parties are often formed but typically struggle to pull any significant support away from the Republican and Democratic parties. But Musk could impact next year’s elections determining control of Congress if he is willing to spend significant amounts of money — through a new party or existing ones.

During the tax cuts debate, Musk pledged to work toward supporting primary challengers for members of Congress who backed the bill. He also said he would support Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican targeted by Trump for opposing the measure.

What has Trump said about Musk’s new party?

Trump on Sunday called Musk’s proposition “ridiculous,” going on to tout “tremendous success with the Republican Party.”

Trump later posted on social media that he was “saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK,” saying the only thing third parties are good for “is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS.”

What does it take to make a new political party?

There are official steps, like setting up a tax identification number, bank account and treasurer, who can be held liable if future paperwork isn’t filed properly.

According to the FEC, any new party that intends to operate in federal elections has to register with the commission “when they raise or spend money over certain thresholds in connection with a federal election.” Federal campaign finance laws and regulations govern how political parties can take in money. Parties have to file regular reports with the FEC.

But even a federally designated political party has to gain access to ballots state by state, making the entire process, according to University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias, “complicated and expensive.”

Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

Many Americans who love Israel are facing a dilemma: Should they visit now, or hold off until times are safer?

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, Israel has been locked in an ongoing conflict with neighboring countries and territories, most prominently in Gaza, where about 50 Israeli hostages remain and more than 50,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed, and in Iran, where Israel and the United States launched missile attacks on nuclear sites last month. Israeli air space was subsequently closed to travel until June 24.

Tourism to Israel has suffered, and the continuing hostilities have made many frequent visitors reluctant to make the trip. But despite travelers’ hesitancy, some South Floridians with deep connections to the country say now is an important time to go.

“My first piece of advice is: Go, don’t be afraid,” said Delray Beach resident Katie Colburn, who has visited the country about 20 times, most recently in April. “They need us to come right now.”

Rabbi Josh Broide of Boca Raton Synagogue, who is moving to Israel this summer, said travelers are often in awe of Israelis’ resilience.

“Life goes on and visitors are warmly welcomed,” Broide said. “The best way to support the country is to be there — to see it, to stand with it and to experience its strength firsthand.”

There are many experts and travel veterans to consult if you are considering a trip, including your family, tour leaders, Israelis you know and the U.S. Department of State. If you are ready to commit, here are some tips from South Florida travelers and the State Department to help with a smooth visit.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

Check advisories. The U.S. Department of State provides updates on conditions on the ground. As of July 1, the current advisory says Americans should “reconsider” travel to Israel and the West Bank. The statement warns Americans to stay at least 7 miles from Gaza, 2.5 miles from the Syrian and Lebanese borders, and 1.5 miles from the Egyptian border, except for the Taba crossing between Egypt and Israel, which is open. Go to travel.state.gov.

Don’t forget your ETA-IL. For the past year, American visitors have had to get an Electronic Travel Authorization to enter the country. You’ll have to answer a few questions online about your passport and the purpose of your visit. The ETA lets visitors stay in Israel for 90 days and costs about $7. Go to www.gov.il/en/departments/topics/eta-il.

Enroll in STEP. The free Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, allows the U.S. Embassy to keep in touch and send weather and security alerts. You can also share your itinerary so its staff can find you in an emergency. Go to mytravel.state.gov/s/step.

Download the Israel Home Front Command app. This app will send alerts targeted to your location during emergencies. It also allows users to contact the Home Front Command, the Israel Defense Forces’ civil defense unit.

Wherever you’re staying, ask where the closest secured spaces are and find them before going to bed. Traveler Katie Colburn said she heard sirens while she and her husband, David, were sleeping at their hotel in Jerusalem, but they stayed in their room. They weren’t sure what the protocol was. The Israeli government advises tourists and citizens to head for a shelter or safe room when they hear these alarms, which warn of immediate danger.

Know where the closest shelters are if you are out and about. Rabbi Leon Weissberg said there are signs in public places throughout the country directing people to shelters. “You’ll see security everywhere, you’ll see arrows to shelters everywhere,” said the Cooper City resident, who visited in April. “The signs are so prominent now, and they’re in English, Hebrew and Arabic.” The sirens give a 1.5-minute warning of a missile or rocket attack in the central part of the country; times in other areas vary from 3 minutes to “15 seconds or less.”

Stay away from large public assemblies. The U.S. Embassy recommends American visitors steer clear of protests and areas with a large police presence. “Avoid demonstrations and crowds,” the embassy said in a July 1 alert.

Find a professional guide or go with a group if you want to see kibbutzes in the south that were affected by the Oct. 7 raids. “Go with a good guide who can give context and meaning,” Rabbi Broide said. Check in advance to see whether the kibbutz you wish to visit is open; some remain evacuated and closed to tourists.

Kroger Co. is asking Royal Oak to approve a rezoning to allow a new store down the street from a controversial Sheetz gas station, convenience store and restaurant.

The Planning Commission will consider the request at a meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 8, in the commission chambers at City Hall, 203 S. Troy St.

Kroger plans a nearly 103,000-square-foot store and gas station on the site of the shuttered Comau manufacturing facility, 2800 W. 14 Mile Road. The site is at the northeast corner of 14 Mile and Coolidge Highway.

Last month, the City Commission approved the Sheetz proposal amid vigorous opposition from residents concerned about traffic at the T-shaped intersection of 14 Mile and Coolidge.

Sheetz plans to locate at 3200 W. 14 Mile, on the site of the former MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions. At the city’s request, Sheetz will pay to redesign a traffic light at the intersection to address traffic concerns.

Kroger requests a rezoning from a general industrial to general business classification, according to city documents. In addition to the rezoning, the Planning Commission will also review the grocery giant’s site plan.

The Cincinnati-based Kroger plans to demolish the existing manufacturing facility. The grocery store would be at the north or rear of the property and the gas station at the southwest corner.

If the Planning Commission recommends approval, the city will conduct a traffic study before the proposal goes to the City Commission for final consideration.

Kroger operates about 30 stores in Oakland County, including one in Royal Oak, one in Birmingham and four in Troy.

UPDATED: Sheetz station approved for Royal Oak site

Pinky’s Rooftop in Royal Oak closes, latest restaurant in that location to fail

“Write what you know” only gets you so far. An awful lot of debut films, even from writer-directors with talent, start from a personal place only to end up at a weirdly impersonal “universal” one you don’t fully believe, or trust.

“Sorry, Baby” is so, so much better than that. Eva Victor’s first feature as writer-director, and star, feels like a lived experience, examined, cross-examined, ruminated over, carefully shaped and considered.

Its tone is unexpected, predominantly but not cynically comic. The movie doesn’t settle for “write what you know.” Victor followed a tougher, more challenging internal directive: Write what you need to find out about what you know.

The story deals with a college sexual assault, without being “about” that, or only about that. “Sorry, Baby” concerns how Agnes, the sharp-witted protagonist played by Victor, makes sense of her present tense, several years after she was mentored, then raped, by her favorite professor, with the bad thing now in the past but hardly out of sight, or mind.

Victor arranges the telling non-chronologically, which keeps this liquid notion of past and present flowing as a complicated emotional state. When “Sorry, Baby” begins, Agnes is thriving as an English literature professor at the same tiny New England college she attended as a graduate student. She now lives near campus with her cat in a somewhat remote old house, crammed with books. Lydie, Agnes’s good friend from grad school played by the superb Naomi Ackie, has come for a visit, and the magical rightness of the interplay between Victor and Ackie gives the film a warm, energizing hum.

At one point, Lydie asks her if she leaves the house much. Agnes responds verbally, but her body language, her evasive eyes and other “tells” have their own say. Lydie’s question lingers in the air, just before we’re taken back to Agnes and Lydie’s grad school years for the film’s next chapter.

Here we see Agnes on the cusp of her future, surrounded by ideas and novels and opinions, as well as an envious fellow student (Kelly McCormack, a touch broad as written and played in the film’s one tonal misjudgment). Agnes’ writing has attracted the attention of the campus conversation topic Decker (Louis Cancelmi), a faculty member with a faulty marriage and a barely-read but undeniably published novel Agnes admires. The admiration is mutual, even if the power dynamic is not.

At the last minute, the teacher reschedules his meeting with Agnes to take place at his house near campus. We see Agnes arrive, be greeted at the door and go inside. The camera stays outside, down the steps and by the sidewalk, for an unusually long time. Finally she tumbles, more or less, back out on the porch; it’s getting dark by this time; Decker appears in the doorway, trying to apologize, sort of? Kind of?  And the scene is over.

Only later do we learn some unnerving particulars of what happened to Agnes, once she is ready, finally, to talk about it with Lydie. “Sorry, Baby,” as Victor said in one post-screening discussion, began with the notion of how to film the assault — meaning, what not to show. “In real life,” the filmmaker said, “we don’t get to be behind the door. We hear what happened and we believe people. (And) we don’t need to be inside to know.”

From there, “Sorry, Baby” continues its flow back and forth, in the years in between what happened and where Agnes is now. There’s an eccentric neighbor (Lucas Hedges, unerring) who initially appears to be call-the-police material, but it doesn’t work out that way at all. Lifelines can come from anywhere, Agnes learns, and expressing oneself honestly and directly is easier said than done.

Throughout this precisely written film, we see and hear Agnes caught in weird language-built labyrinths as she squares off with the college’s HR department while attempting to file a report against the professor, or — much later — Agnes at jury duty selection for an unrelated matter, explaining the incident in her past to her questioner in weirdly funny ways. Victor’s a tightrope-walker in these scenes; “Sorry, Baby” is as much about everyone around Agnes, performing their understanding, or concern, regarding the Bad Thing in her past.

Some of the more overt bits of bleak comedy are better finessed than others, and you wouldn’t mind another five or 10 minutes of hangout time, complementing the well-paced overall structure. But even that’s a sign of success. How many standout movies have you seen this year that made you think, you know, that actually could’ve been a little longer? Clear-eyed, disarming and, yes, plainly semi-autobiographical, “Sorry, Baby” takes every right turn in making Agnes far more than a tragic yet wisecracking victim, with a smiling-through-tears ending waiting around the bend. She’s just living her full, up-and-down-and-up life, acknowledging the weight of that life without solving or dissolving the bad thing.

This is Victor’s achievement, too, of course. Already, this quietly spectacular first-time filmmaker’s promise has been fulfilled.

“Sorry, Baby” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content and language)

Running time: 1:44

How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 4

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

In her 2023 cookbook “Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky,” New Mexico-based chef and historian Lois Ellen Frank said the present era of Indigenous cuisine revolves around modern chefs understanding the ingredients and the farming practices of their ancestors.

“It’s now up to each Native American community and each Native American chef to decide what the New Native American Cuisine is and what they are going to serve on their plates,” Frank, who was advised by Navajo chef Walter Whitewater, wrote in her introduction.

Several young women chefs are doing just that in the Denver area, starting food businesses and planting gardens as a way to reconnect with the land and the traditions of the past. They are defining in real time what New Native American Cuisine can be, from cultivation to creation.

Their work is moving forward Indigenous cuisine in a critical time of repossession after the forced relocations of the 19th century and the food distribution programs of the 20th century, a recent period Frank referred to in her cookbook as “the most painful and most difficult in terms of health and wellness in Native American Cuisine history.”

Before the exploration of the Americas, most of the Indigenous diet in the Southwest and Four Corners region came from farmed foods such as corn, beans and squash (sometimes called “the three sisters”). After the country relocated Native Americans to reservations, they were issued government rations of mass-produced food different from what they were used to, Frank writes. To her and some of her colleagues, it amounted to “nutritional genocide.”

Denver has long associated Native American cuisine with Tocabe and its fry bread tacos, made with shredded bison, hominy and roasted green chiles. When Matt Chandra and Ben Jacobs opened Tocabe in 2008, the restaurant was billed as “the only American Indian-owned and -operated restaurant in metro Denver specializing in Native American cuisine.”

After learning that Jacobs, a Native chef, was using some of his family’s recipes, Micaela Iron Shell-Dominguez, 36, knew she had to work there.

An environmental and Indigenous activist — and actor with the Annishabae Theater Exchange — whose father is Lakota and mother is from the San Luis Valley, Iron Shell-Dominguez noted the sanctity of ancestral foods and emphasized the role women played in feeding Native communities.

“I remember after working there for a while, I told Ben and Matt I was so inspired by everything they did that one day I wanted to open and own an Indigenous restaurant just like them,” she said in an email to The Denver Post.

She is now a mother of two and worker-owner of Moonshell Pizza Cooperative (www.moonshell.coop), a roving pizza crew where her partner, Sid Farber, is lead dough roller. The bounty of foods native to the region, such as corn, berries and sage, makes it easy to base dishes around those ingredients, she said. Their buffalo chokecherry pizza is one such example, she added, the chokecherry plant being native to Colorado.

Iron Shell-Dominguez’s multidisciplinary and holistic approach to her Native culture is also shared by Indigenous groups outside of North America.

Andrea Condes, 39, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and adopted into the United States, where she grew up and pursued a career in the culinary arts. It was in Colorado where the self-described “child of the Andes” landed. Although separated by thousands of miles, Condes saw many similarities integral to the experiences of the pre-colonial Americas.

“How people are treated, how the land is respected, how animal relatives and plant relatives are just that: relatives,” Condes said.

Drawn to root vegetables like the potato, which originated in the Andes, she started a catering company, Four Directions Cuisine (www.fourdirectionscuisine.com). She grows her own plants and is hosting meals two weekends a month through October as The Rooted Andina at her home in Arvada.

Learning about Indigenous foods and history, she said, helped her overcome the “cultural gap” of living in another country and brought her closer to her homeland.

“It’s definitely not something that I had language for when I first started walking down this path,” Condes said. “Reconnecting with those foods, I didn’t realize then, but I do now: It was me reconnecting with myself.”

Since growing food was a way of life, some New Native American Cuisine chefs are returning to the practice, what Frank equates with “food sovereignty.” Planting companion crops, such as the three sisters, is one of the cultivation methods Frank teaches in an effort to bring what she calls “traditional ecological knowledge” (TEK) back to Native communities.

Narissa Ribera, a member of the Navajo Nation, started planting out of necessity. She was always fascinated with food systems, a jack-of-all-trades who learned to garden as a child and had years of experience baking cottage foods.

The lifestyle developed into Ch’il Indigenous Foods (www.chil-indigenousfoods.com), a meal pickup service she started three years ago. She works out of a commercial kitchen in the Wheat Ridge Center for Music and Arts in Wheat Ridge, baking cookies with ingredients grown by Indigenous harvesters and other delicacies, like blue corn ice cream. (She’ll soon open an outdoor eating area at the arts center.)

The city of Wheat Ridge lent her two commercial plots of land behind the city’s community garden, where she cultivated the beans, corn and squash (including Apache gourds and Lakota squash) along with sunflowers. It’ll be a couple of years until the crops are ready to harvest, she said.

Until then, Ribera is preparing to launch a Native cookie and tea business with the ingredients for the tea grown in her garden, she said. She received federal grants to help with marketing and her brand, which she would one day like to see in supermarkets.

“I want representation,” Ribera said.

Although she welcomes non-Natives who support her work and want to learn about Indigenous foods, her main concern is reconnecting Native people to their ancestral foods.

“So much was taken from us, including so much of our food,” she said. “You’ll find a lot of Native people… they’re just not interested in cooking.”

She solicits social media followers to help tend the Wheat Ridge gardens and visits classes at Jefferson County schools, showing students how to make Indigenous dishes.

At a winter holiday market, Ribera sold a box of cookies that came with a paper describing each one and the history behind its ingredients. For her, the joy was in having an authentic option for Indigenous people to gift their friends and family.

Phillip Reese, KFF Health News

As summer ushers in peak mosquito season, health and vector control officials are bracing for the possibility of another year of historic rates of dengue. And with climate change, the lack of an effective vaccine, and federal research cuts, they worry the disease will become endemic to a larger swath of North America.

About 3,700 new dengue infections were reported last year in the contiguous United States, up from about 2,050 in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All of last year’s cases were acquired abroad, except for 105 cases contracted in California, Florida, or Texas. The CDC issued a health alert in March warning of the ongoing risk of dengue infection.

“I think dengue is here with us to stay,” said infectious disease specialist Michael Ben-Aderet, associate medical director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, about dengue becoming a new normal in the U.S. “These mosquitoes aren’t going anywhere.”

Dengue is endemic — a label health officials assign when diseases appear consistently in a region — in many warmer parts of the world, including Latin America, India, and Southeast Asia. Dengue cases increased markedly last year in many of those places, especially in Central and South America.

The disease, which can spread when people are bitten by infected Aedes mosquitoes, was not common in the contiguous United States for much of the last century. Today, most locally acquired (meaning unrelated to travel) dengue cases in the U.S. happen in Puerto Rico, which saw a sharp increase in 2024, triggering a local public health emergency.

Most people who contract dengue don’t get sick. But in some people symptoms are severe: bleeding from the nose or mouth, intense stomach pain, vomiting, and swelling. Occasionally, dengue causes death.

California offers a case study in how dengue is spreading in the U.S. The Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes that transmit dengue weren’t known to be in the state 25 years ago. They are now found in 25 counties and more than 400 cities and unincorporated communities, mostly in Southern California and the Central Valley.

The spread of the mosquitoes is concerning because their presence increases the likelihood of disease transmission, said Steve Abshier, president of the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California.

From 2016 through 2022, there were an average of 136 new dengue cases a year in California, each case most likely brought to the state by someone who had traveled and been infected elsewhere. In 2023, there were about 250 new cases, including two acquired locally.

In 2024, California saw 725 new dengue cases, including 18 acquired locally, state data shows.

Climate change could contribute to growth in the Aedes mosquitoes’ population, Ben-Aderet said. These mosquitoes survive best in warm urban areas, often biting during the daytime. Locally acquired infections often occur when someone catches dengue during travel, then comes home and is bitten by an Aedes mosquito that bites and infects another person.

“They’ve just been spreading like wildfire throughout California,” Ben-Aderet said.

Dengue presents a challenge to the many primary care doctors who have never seen it. Ben-Aderet said doctors who suspect dengue should obtain a detailed travel history from their patients, but confirming the diagnosis is not always quick.

“There’s no easy test for it,” he said. “The only test that we have for dengue is antibody tests.” He added that “most labs probably aren’t doing it commercially, so it’s usually like a send-out test from most labs. So you really have to suspect someone has dengue.”

Best practices for avoiding dengue include eliminating any standing pools of water on a property — even small pools — and using mosquito repellent, Abshier said. Limiting activity at dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes bite most often, can also help.

Efforts to combat dengue in California became even more complicated this year after wildfires ripped through Los Angeles. The fires occurred in a hot spot for mosquito-borne illnesses. San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District officials have worked for months to treat more than 1,400 unmaintained swimming pools left in the wake of fire, removing potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

San Gabriel vector control officials have used local and state resources to treat the pools, said district spokesperson Anais Medina Diaz. They have applied for reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has not historically paid for vector control efforts following wildfires.

In California, vector control agencies are often primarily funded by local taxes and fees on property owners.

Some officials are pursuing the novel method of releasing sterilized Aedes mosquitoes to reduce the problem. That may prove effective, but deploying the method in a large number of areas would be costly and would require a massive effort at the state level, Abshier said. Meanwhile, the federal government is pulling back on interventions: Several outlets have reported that the National Institutes of Health will stop funding new climate change-related research, which could include work on dengue.

This year, reported rates of dengue in much of the Americas have declined significantly from 2024. But the trend in the United States likely won’t be clear until later in the year, after the summer mosquito season ends.

Health and vector control researchers aren’t sure how bad it will get in California. Some say there may be limited outbreaks, while others predict dengue could get much worse. Sujan Shresta, a professor and infectious disease researcher at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said other places, like Nepal, experienced relatively few cases of dengue in the recent past but now regularly see large outbreaks.

There is a vaccine for children, but it faces discontinuation from a lack of global demand. Two other dengue vaccines are unavailable in the United States. Shresta’s lab is hard at work on an effective, safe vaccine for dengue. She hopes to release results from animal testing in a year or so; if the results are positive, human trials could be possible in about two years.

“If there’s no good vaccine, no good antivirals, this will be a dengue-endemic country,” she said.

Phillip Reese is a data reporting specialist and an associate professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento.

This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation .

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Brian Baker, CFA, Bankrate.com

Bitcoin mining is the process of creating new bitcoins by solving extremely complicated math problems that verify transactions in the currency. When a bitcoin is successfully mined, the miner receives a predetermined amount of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is one of the most popular types of cryptocurrencies, which are digital mediums of exchange that exist solely online. Bitcoin runs on a decentralized computer network, or distributed ledger, that tracks transactions in the cryptocurrency. When computers on the network verify and process transactions, new bitcoins are created, or mined. These networked computers, or miners, process the transaction in exchange for a payment in Bitcoin.

As the prices of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular have skyrocketed in recent years, it’s understandable that interest in mining has picked up as well. A miner currently earns 3.125 Bitcoin (about $334,375 as of mid-June 2025) for successfully validating a new block on the Bitcoin blockchain. But for most people, the prospects for Bitcoin mining are not good due to its complex nature and high costs.

Here are the basics of how Bitcoin mining works and some key risks to be aware of.

How Bitcoin mining works

Bitcoin is powered by blockchain, which is the technology behind many cryptocurrencies. A blockchain is a decentralized ledger of all the transactions across a network. Groups of approved transactions together form a block and are joined by computers within the network (called miners) to create a chain. Think of it as a long public record that functions almost like a long-running receipt. Bitcoin mining is the process of adding a block to the chain.

Bitcoin miners pick transactions from a group of unconfirmed transactions, called a mempool, to form a block on the blockchain. Before they can add the block securely to the blockchain, miners must solve what’s called a proof-of-work puzzle by guessing a number (also called a nonce). This number is combined with the block’s data and processed through a function called SHA-256.

The ultimate goal: create a block hash, which is a code with enough leading zeros to be less than, or equal to, the network’s target hash. The target hash is what determines how difficult the puzzle is to solve.

Target hash example: 0000000000000000ffff00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Block hash example: 0000000000000000057e29f1b57c1a9d5b90a6b7f1b4f0c9e2b0a1d3e4f5c6d7

Remember the block hash must be less than or equal to the target hash. Think of it like a dice game where the only way to win is if you roll a number smaller than or equal to a some number you’re given at the beginning. That number is made mostly of zeros, so you’d need a really insane and rare roll — a hash with tons of zeros in front of it — to win. In this example, the target hash’s “ffff” represents numbers that are non-zero and the block hash is less than the target hash, therefore solving the puzzle.

If you’re wondering whether this process requires a ton of computational power, you’re right. Miners use extremely powerful computers, called ASICs, to make billions — or trillions — of guesses about which nonces could work. One computer can cost up to $10,000. ASICs also consume huge amounts of electricity, which has drawn criticism from environmental groups and limits the profitability of miners. Technically, though, you could mine Bitcoin with, say, a MacBook Pro, but unfortunately you won’t get very far because there’s not enough computing power.

If a miner is able to successfully add a block to the blockchain, they will receive 3.125 bitcoins. The reward amount is cut in half roughly every four years, or every 210,000 blocks. As of mid-June 2025, Bitcoin traded at around $107,000, making 3.125 bitcoins worth $334,375.

Risks of Bitcoin mining

• Regulation: Very few governments have embraced cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and many are more likely to view them skeptically because the currencies operate outside government control. There is always the risk that governments could outlaw the mining of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies altogether as China did in 2021, citing financial risks and increased speculative trading.
• Price volatility: Bitcoin’s price has fluctuated widely since it was introduced in 2009. Since just January 2023, Bitcoin has at times traded for less than $18,000 and more than $110,000 recently. This kind of volatility makes it difficult for miners to know if their reward will outweigh the high costs of mining.

How to start Bitcoin mining

Here are the basic components you’ll need to start mining Bitcoin.

This is where any Bitcoin you earn as a result of your mining efforts will be stored. A wallet is an encrypted online account that allows you to store, transfer and accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Companies such as Coinbase, Trezor and Exodus all offer wallet options for cryptocurrency.

There are a number of different providers of mining software, many of which are free to download and can run on Windows and Mac computers. Once the software is connected to the necessary hardware, you’ll be able to mine Bitcoin.

The most cost-prohibitive aspect of Bitcoin mining involves the hardware. You’ll need a powerful computer that uses an enormous amount of electricity in order to successfully mine Bitcoin. It’s not uncommon for the hardware costs to run around $10,000 or more.

Bitcoin mining statistics

• Creating Bitcoin consumes 184.4 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, more than is used by Poland or Egypt, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
• The price of Bitcoin has been extremely volatile over time. In 2020, it traded as low as $4,107 and reached an all-time high of $111,970 in May 2025. As of mid-June, it traded around $107,000.
• The United States (37.8%), Mainland China (21.1%) and Kazakhstan (13.2%) were the largest bitcoin miners as of December 2021, according to the Cambridge Electricity Consumption Index.

Taxes on Bitcoin mining

It’s important to remember the impact that taxes can have on Bitcoin mining. The IRS has been looking to crack down on owners and traders of cryptocurrencies as the asset prices have ballooned in recent years. Here are the key tax considerations to keep in mind for Bitcoin mining.

• Are you a business? If Bitcoin mining is your business, you may be able to deduct expenses you incur for tax purposes. Revenue would be the value of the bitcoins you earn. But if mining is a hobby for you, it’s not likely you’ll be able to deduct expenses.
• Mined bitcoin is income. If you’re successfully able to mine Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, the fair market value of the currencies at the time of receipt will be taxed at ordinary income rates.
• Capital gains. If you sell bitcoins at a price above where you received them, that qualifies as a capital gain, which would be taxed the same way it would for traditional assets such as stocks or bonds.

Check out Bankrate’s cryptocurrency tax guide to learn about basic tax rules for Bitcoin, Ethereum and more.

Is Bitcoin mining profitable?

It depends. Even if Bitcoin miners are successful, it’s not clear that their efforts will end up being profitable due to the high upfront costs of equipment and the ongoing electricity costs.

Worldwide, bitcoin mining uses more electricity than Poland, a nation of 36.7 million people, according to the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.

As the difficulty and complexity of Bitcoin mining has increased, the computing power required has also gone up. Bitcoin mining consumes about 184.4 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, more than most countries, according to the Cambridge index.

One way to share some of the high costs of mining is by joining a mining pool. Pools allow miners to share resources and add more capability, but shared resources mean shared rewards, so the potential payout is less when working through a pool. The volatility of Bitcoin’s price also makes it difficult to know exactly how much you’re working for.

Bottom line

While Bitcoin mining sounds appealing, the reality is that it’s difficult and expensive to actually do profitably. The extreme volatility of Bitcoin’s price adds more uncertainty to the equation.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin itself is a speculative asset with no intrinsic value, which means it won’t produce anything for its owner and isn’t pegged to something like gold. Your return is based on selling it to someone else for a higher price, and that price may not be high enough for you to turn a profit.

(Bankrate’s Logan Jacoby contributed to an update of this article.)

©2025 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.