By LISA MASCARO, Associated Press Congressional Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans have unveiled the cost-saving centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Tallying hundreds of pages, the legislation revealed late Sunday is touching off the biggest political fight over health care since Republicans tried but failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, during Trump’s first term in 2017.

While Republicans insist they are simply rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” to generate savings with new work and eligibility requirements, Democrats warn that millions of Americans will lose coverage. A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over the decade.

“Savings like these allow us to use this bill to renew the Trump tax cuts and keep Republicans’ promise to hardworking middle-class families,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, the GOP chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles health care spending.

But Democrats said the cuts are “shameful” and essentially amount to another attempt to repeal Obamacare.

“In no uncertain terms, millions of Americans will lose their health care coverage,” said Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the panel. He said “hospitals will close, seniors will not be able to access the care they need, and premiums will rise for millions of people if this bill passes.”

As Republicans race toward House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, they are preparing to flood the zone with round-the-clock public hearings this week on various sections before they are stitched together in what will become a massive package.

The politics ahead are uncertain. More than a dozen House Republicans have told Johnson and GOP leaders they will not support cuts to the health care safety net programs that residents back home depend on. Trump himself has shied away from a repeat of his first term, vowing there will be no cuts to Medicaid.

All told, 11 committees in the House have been compiling their sections of the package as Republicans seek at least $1.5 trillion in savings to help cover the cost of preserving the 2017 tax breaks, which were approved during Trump’s first term and are expiring at the end of the year.

But the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee has been among the most watched. The committee was instructed to come up with $880 billion in savings and reached that goal, primarily with the health care cuts, but also by rolling back Biden-era green energy programs. The preliminary CBO analysis said the committee’s proposals would reduce the deficit by $912 billion over the decade — with at least $715 billion coming from the health provisions.

Central to the savings are changes to Medicaid, which provides almost free health care to more than 70 million Americans, and the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded in the 15 years since it was first approved to cover millions more.

To be eligible for Medicaid, there would be new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents. People would also have to verify their eligibility to be in the program twice a year, rather than just once.

This is likely to lead to more churn in the program and present hurdles for people to stay covered, especially if they have to drive far to a local benefits office to verify their income in person. But Republicans say it’ll ensure that the program is administered to those who qualify for it.

Many states have expanded their Medicaid rosters thanks to federal incentives, but the legislation would cut a 5% boost that was put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal funding to the states for immigrants who have not shown proof of citizenship would be prohibited.

There would be a freeze on the so-called provider tax that some states use to help pay for large portions of their Medicaid programs. The extra tax often leads to higher payments from the federal government, which critics say is a loophole that creates abuse in the system.

The energy portions of the legislation run far fewer pages, but include rollbacks of climate-change strategies President Joe Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act.

It proposes rescinding funds for a range of energy loans and investment programs while providing expedited permitting for natural gas development and oil pipelines.

Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.

By ANNIE MA, MAKIYA SEMINERA and JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press

As he finishes college in China, computer science student Ma Tianyu has set his sights on graduate school in the United States. No country offers better programs for the career he wants as a game developer, he said.

He applied only to U.S. schools and was accepted by some. But after the initial excitement, he began seeing reasons for doubt.

First, there was President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Then, China’s Ministry of Education issued a warning about studying in America. When Ma saw the wave of legal status terminations for international students in the U.S., he realized he needed to consider how American politics could affect him.

The recent developments soured some of his classmates on studying in the U.S., but he plans to come anyway. He is ready “to adapt to whatever changes may come,” he said.

American universities, home to many programs at the top of their fields, have long appealed to students around the world hoping to pursue research and get a foothold in the U.S. job market. The durability of that demand faces a test under the Trump administration, which has taken actions that have left international students feeling vulnerable and considering alternate places to study.

“All of the Trump administration’s activities have been sending a message that international students are not welcome in the U.S.,” said Clay Harmon, executive director of AIRC, a professional association for international enrollment managers at colleges.

Competitors see an opening to carve into US dominance

Around 1.1 million international students were in the U.S. last year. A large decline in their ranks could cripple school budgets that rely on tuition from foreign students, who are ineligible for federal student aid and often pay full price to attend.

It’s too early to quantify any impact from the administration’s crackdown, which has included new scrutiny of student visas and efforts to deport foreign students for involvement in pro-Palestinian activism. But many fear the worst.

“Students and their families expect and need certainty,” said Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. “And they do not function well in a volatile environment like the one we have currently.”

The U.S. has been rebounding from a decline in international enrollment that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As top competitors such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom rolled back recruiting efforts and made immigration policies less welcoming, the U.S. appeared ready to bring in far more students.

Now, a few months into the Trump administration, industry experts say it’s unlikely the U.S. will be able to capitalize.

“The U.S. was so perfectly positioned to become the far and away, clear first-choice destination for international students,” said Mike Henniger, CEO of Illume Student Advisory Services. His company works with colleges in the U.S., Canada and Europe to recruit international students. “Then it just went out the door.”

In Canada, where colleges saw enrollment increases during the first Trump administration, they are hoping for another bounce. In a letter following the recent election, a member organization for Canadian universities urged the new Liberal government to address immigration policies that have affected recruitment of foreign students.

“This is a moment of real opportunity for the country to attract international talent,” said Gabriel Miller, president of Universities Canada.

America’s appeal as a place to start a career remains resilient

The U.S. holds strong appeal for students prioritizing career outcomes, in part because of the “optional practical training” program, which allows foreign students to stay on their student visas and work for up to three years, said Lindsey López of ApplyBoard, an application platform for students seeking to study abroad.

Graduates earning this post-college work experience were among the foreigners whose legal status or visas were terminated this spring.

Still, the diversity and size of the U.S. job market could help American schools stay ahead of the competition, López said.

“The U.S. is the largest economy in the world,” she said. “It’s just the vastness and also the economic diversity that we have in the U.S., with a whole variety of different industries, both public and private, for students to choose from.”

William Paterson University, a public institution of 10,000 students in New Jersey, typically has around 250 international students. It expects an increase in foreign students in the fall, according to George Kacenga, vice president for enrollment management. The school has focused on designing programs around STEM majors, which appeal to international students because they open access to OPT programs.

Students have expressed concern about securing visas, but most of the school’s international students are from India and report they are getting appointments, he said.

In Shanghai, many students in Austin Ward’s 12th grade class have either committed to attending U.S. colleges or are considering it. Ward teaches literature in a high school program offering an American Common Core curriculum for Chinese students.

Ward said he avoids discussing politics with his students, but some have asked him about the U.S. government’s termination of students’ legal statuses, signaling their concern about going to the U.S.

To Ward’s knowledge, the students who planned to attend American colleges have not changed their minds. Frustrated with the stress the situation has caused, Ward said he wrote a letter to his U.S. representative on the need to protect international students.

His students are coming to America to “expand their horizons,” he said, not threaten the country.

“If my students have to worry about that, and if students are losing their visas, then America is not going to have that strength of being an academic center,” he said.

---

The Associated Press’ education 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.

By AMANDA SEITZ, SEUNG MIN KIM and WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he will set a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs in a sweeping executive order that he will sign on Monday.

The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs, according to a White House official who briefed the press on the executive order ahead of its signing.

If a deal is not reached, a new rule will kick in that will tie the price of what the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries.

Trump teased the executive order in a social media post on Sunday evening.

“I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the Republican president posted, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.

The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on prescription drugs, injectables, transfusions and other medications every year through Medicare, which covers nearly 70 million older Americans.

The nation’s leading pharmaceutical lobby on Sunday pushed back, calling it a “bad deal” for American patients. Drugmakers have long argued that any threats to their profits could impact the research they do to develop new drugs.

“Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines,” Stephen J. Ubl, the president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. “It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines.”

Trump’s so-called “most favored nation” approach to Medicare drug pricing has been controversial since he first tried to implement it during his first term. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, which called for the U.S. to only pay a lower price that other countries pay for drugs administered in a doctor’s office.

But even that more narrow executive order faced hurdles, with a court order that blocked the rule from going into effect under President Joe Biden’s administration. The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s 2020 attempt would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S.

Trump has played up the announcement, saying it will save taxpayers big money.

“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” Trump added.

He has touted immediate savings, but the health department is limited in its control of drug pricing. It has the most authority around the drug prices it pays for Medicare and Medicaid, which covers roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans. The price that millions of Americans covered by private insurance pay for drugs is harder for the agency to manipulate.

Trump boasted in his post that the plan will save “TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS.”

The executive order will also encourage the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to examine enforcement action the agencies can take around the pricing of drugs.

The U.S. routinely outspends other nations on drug prices, compared with other large and wealthy countries, a problem that has long drawn the ire of both major political parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.

Trump came into his first term accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” and complaining that other countries whose governments set drug prices were taking advantage of Americans.

On Sunday, Trump took aim at the industry again, writing that the “Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE.”

Referring to drug companies’ powerful lobbying efforts, he said that campaign contributions “can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”

“We are going to do the right thing,” he wrote.

By WILL WEISSERT and AMANDA SEITZ, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’ll sign an executive order on Monday that, if implemented, could bring down the costs of some medications — reviving a failed effort from his first term on an issue he’s talked up since even before becoming president.

The order Trump is promising will direct the Department of Health and Human Services to tie what Medicare pays for medications administered in a doctor’s office to the lowest price paid by other countries.

“I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the president posted Sunday on his social media site, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.

“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” Trump added.

His proposal would likely only impact certain drugs covered by Medicare and given in an office — think infusions that treat cancer, and other injectables. But it could potentially bring significant savings to the government, although the “TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS” Trump boasted about in his post may be an exaggeration.

Medicare provides health insurance for roughly 70 million older Americans. Complaints about U.S. drug prices being notoriously high, even when compared with other large and wealthy countries, have long drawn the ire of both parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.

Under the planned order, the federal government would tie what it pays pharmaceutical companies for those drugs to the price paid by a group of other, economically advanced countries — the so-called “most favored nation” approach.

The proposal will face fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.

It was a rule that Trump tried to adopt during his first term, but could never get through. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, but a court order later blocked the rule from going into effect under the Biden administration.

The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s 2020 attempt would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S.. The industry has long argued that forcing lower prices will hurt profits, and ultimately affect innovation and its efforts to develop new medicines.

Only drugs on Medicare Part B — the insurance for doctor’s office visits — are likely to be covered under the plan. Medicare beneficiaries are responsible for picking up some of the costs to get those medications during doctor’s visits, and for traditional Medicare enrollees there is no annual out-of-pocket cap on what they pay.

A report by the Trump administration during its first term found that the U.S. spends twice as much as some other countries in covering those drugs. Medicare Part B drug spending topped $33 billion in 2021.

More common prescription drugs filled at a pharmacy would probably not be covered by the new order.

Trump’s post formally previewing the action came after he teased a “very big announcement” last week. He gave no details, except to note that it wasn’t related to trade or the tariffs he has announced imposing on much of the world.

“We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make — like as big as it gets,” Trump said last week.

He came into his first term accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” and complaining that other countries whose governments set drug prices were taking advantage of Americans.

On Sunday, Trump took aim at the industry again, writing that the “Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE.”

Referring to drug companies’ powerful lobbying efforts, he said that campaign contributions “can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”

“We are going to do the right thing,” he wrote.

By JAMEY KEATEN, DAVID McHUGH, ELAINE KURTENBACH and KEN MORITSUGU, Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) — U.S. and Chinese officials said Monday they had reached a deal to roll back most of their recent tariffs and call a 90-day truce in their trade war to allow for more talks on resolving their trade disputes.

Stock markets rose sharply as the globe’s two major economic powers took a step back from a clash that has unsettled the global economy. Economists warned that tariffs still remained higher than before and that the outcome of future talks was uncertain.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S. agreed to drop its 145% tariff rate on Chinese goods by 115 percentage points to 30%, while China agreed to lower its rate on U.S. goods by the same amount to 10%.

A deal averts a total blockade

Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the tariff reductions at a news conference in Geneva.

The two officials struck a positive tone as they said the two sides had set up consultations to continue discussing their trade issues. Bessent said at the news briefing following two days of talks that the high tariff levels would have amounted to a complete blockage of each side’s goods — an outcome neither side wants.

“The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling,” Bessent said. “And what had occurred with these very high tariff … was an embargo, the equivalent of an embargo. And neither side wants that. We do want trade.”

“We want more balanced trade,” he said. “And I think that both sides are committed to achieving that.”

The delegations, escorted around town and guarded by scores of Swiss police, met for at least a dozen hours on both days of the weekend at a sunbaked 17th-century villa that serves as the official residence of the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

At times, the delegation leaders broke away from their staffs and settled into sofas on the villa’s patios overlooking Lake Geneva, helping deepen personal ties in the effort to reach a much-sought deal.

Finally, a deal

China’s Commerce Ministry said the two sides agreed to cancel 91% in tariffs on each other’s goods and suspend another 24% in tariffs for 90 days, bringing the total reduction to 115 percentage points.

The ministry called the agreement an important step for the resolution of the two countries’ differences and said it lays the foundation for further cooperation.

“This initiative aligns with the expectations of producers and consumers in both countries and serves the interests of both nations as well as the common interests of the world,” a ministry statement said.

China hopes the United States will stop “the erroneous practice of unilateral tariff hikes” and work with China to safeguard the development of their economic and trade relations, injecting more certainty and stability into the global economy, the ministry said.

The joint statement issued by the two countries said China also agreed to suspend or remove other measures it has taken since April 2 in response to the U.S. tariffs.

China has increased export controls on rare earths, including some critical to the defense industry, and added more American companies to its export control and unreliable entity lists, restricting their business with and in China.

Markets rally as two sides de-escalate

The full impact on the complicated tariffs and other trade penalties enacted by Washington and Beijing remains unclear. And much depends on whether they will find ways to bridge longstanding differences during the 90-day suspension.

Bessent said in an interview with CNBC that U.S. and Chinese officials will meet again in a few weeks.

But investors rejoiced as trade envoys from the world’s two biggest economies blinked, finding ways to pull back from potentially massive disruptions to world trade and their own markets.

Futures for the S&P 500 jumped 2.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2%. Oil prices surged more than $1.60 a barrel and the dollar gained against the euro and the Japanese yen.

“This is a substantial de-escalation,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics. But he warned “there is no guarantee that the 90-day truce will give way to a lasting ceasefire.”

Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard University, said that the two countries had stepped back “from a needless trade war’’ but that U.S. tariffs on China remain high at 30% “and will mainly hurt U.S. consumers.’’

U.S. President Donald Trump “has obtained absolutely nothing from China for all the chaos he generated. Zilch,’’ Rodrik wrote, posting on Bluesky.

Trump last month raised U.S. tariffs on China to a combined 145%, and China retaliated by hitting American imports with a 125% levy. Tariffs that high essentially amount to the two countries boycotting each other’s products, disrupting trade that last year topped $660 billion.

The announcement by the U.S. and China sent shares surging, with U.S. futures jumping more than 2%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surged nearly 3% and benchmarks in Germany and France were both up 0.7%

The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on countries worldwide, but its fight with China has been the most intense. Trump’s import taxes on goods from China include a 20% charge imposed because Trump says Beijing has not done enough to stop trafficking in the precursor chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

“The drop from sky-high to merely high tariffs, along with the uncertainty about the path of future tariffs, will still serve as a constraint on trade and investment flows between the two economies,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

“Nevertheless, it is a positive omen for the world economy that U.S. tariffs might eventually end up as significant trade barriers but not unsurmountable walls that block off international trade altogether,’’ he said.

McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany; Kurtenbach from Mito, Japan; and Moritsugu from Beijing. Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Jenissa Conway drove in the first run with a double in the top of the sixth inning and Lauren Derkowski and Erin Hoehn combined on a three-hitter as the eighth-seeded Michigan Wolverines completed an improbable run to the Big Ten Tournament championship with a 2-0 victory over the second-seeded UCLA Bruins on Saturday.

The Wolverines (38-19) advanced to the title game with a 5-0 victory over the No. 1 seed Oregon Ducks in the quarterfinals and a 4-2 semifinal win over the tournament host and 12th-seeded Purdue Boilermakers. It was Michigan’s second straight Big Ten tourney title and its 12th overall.

Indiana Langford started the rally for Michigan when she singled off UCLA starter Addisen Fisher (16-2) and took second on an error by left fielder Rylee Slimp. Conway plated Langford when she doubled to center and Ella Stephenson added an insurance run with a two-out infield single after Conway took third on a groundout.

Derkowski (17-12) allowed three hits and two walks in five innings. Hoehn entered after Derkowski issued a walk to Jordan Woolery leading off the sixth. Hoehn retired all six batters she faced.

The Bruins advanced to the final after a 4-2 victory over third-seeded Nebraska in the semifinals.

Michigan won its only softball title in 2005. They were runners-up in 2015. The Wolverines have appeared in 12 Women’s College World Series in 30 previous NCAA Tournament appearances.

UCLA (49-10) was playing in its third straight conference tournament final in its first season in the Big Ten with the previous two coming while the Bruins were members of the Pac-12.

UCLA has won 13 NCAA softball championships — most recently in 2019 — as well as being runners-up seven times. The Bruins have advanced to the WCWS in 33 of 40 tournament appearances.

The trial of a Michigan police officer charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old Black man has ended in a mistrial.

The post Robert Prevost, first American pope in history of the Catholic Church, will take the name Leo XIV appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

Today is Wednesday, May 7, the 127th day of 2025. There are 238 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.

Also on this date:

In 1945, Nazi Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II.

In 1954, the 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces; it would be the last major battle of the First Indochina War.

In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford formally declared an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — the Viet Cong celebrated its takeover.

In 1977, Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.

In 1984, Monsanto and six other chemical companies agreed to pay a $180 million settlement to Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

In 2020, Georgia authorities arrested a white father and son and charged them with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood near the port city of Brunswick. (The two men and a third white man would be convicted of murder in state court and hate crimes in federal court.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Singer Thelma Houston is 82.
• Rock musician Bill Kreutzmann (Grateful Dead) is 79.
• Actor/former boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb is 75.
• Actor Breckin Meyer is 51.
• Reggaeton musician J Balvin is 40.
• Actor-comedian Aidy Bryant is 38.
• Actor-writer Maya Erskine is 38.
• Actor Alexander Ludwig is 33.
• YouTube personality MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) is 27.

By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — One hundred and thirty-three cardinals are sequestering themselves behind the Vatican’s medieval walls for the start of a conclave starting Wednesday to elect a successor to Pope Francis.

Here are some things to know about the election of the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church, which has 1.4 billion faithful across the world.

Why is the conclave being held now?

The conclave was called after Francis died on April 21 at age 88. There was a delay between his death and the conclave to allow time for a funeral, burial and a period of mourning. It was also necessary to give cardinals time to arrive in Rome from all corners of the Earth, and to let them get acquainted before entering the conclave, an ancient ritual steeped in mystery and ritual.

What happens in a conclave?

The cardinals are cut off from the world at the Vatican, between residences and the Sistine Chapel, where they vote in secret — and in silence — beneath Michelangelo’s famed ceiling fresco of the Creation and his monumental “Last Judgment.”

The process — fictionalized in the 2024 political thriller “Conclave” — is said to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and is designed to be both contemplative and free from outside interference.

Taking no chances, the Vatican is asking cardinals to hand over their phones for the duration of the conclave and is deactivating cell phone coverage at the Vatican. It also plans to use signal jammers around the Sistine Chapel and the Domus Santa Marta hotel and adjacent residence where the cardinals will sleep, in order to prevent surveillance and communication with the outside world.

White or black smoke signals?

The electors cast paper ballots, and voting continues until one candidate receives a two-thirds majority, or 89 votes. After two rounds of voting, ballots are burned in a special stove — black smoke signals no decision, while white smoke means a new pope has been chosen.

Electors must be under 80 years old, and are more geographically diverse than ever. They represent Catholicism’s growing presence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as its traditional power base in Europe.

How long does it take?

The longest conclave in history lasted nearly three years, but it’s reasonable to assume that this conclave will be much, much shorter.

Cardinals this week said they expect a short conclave, though it will likely take at least a few rounds of voting. The conclave opens late afternoon Wednesday. Cardinals are expected to hold the first round of voting on Wednesday, but there is no requirement that they do so.

For most of the past century, it has taken between three and eight ballots to find a pope. John Paul I — the pope who reigned for 33 days — was elected on the third ballot in 1978. His successor, St. John Paul II, needed eight. Francis was elected on the fifth in 2013.

Who are the contenders?

There are no official candidates for the papacy, but some cardinals are considered “papabile,” or possessing the characteristics necessary to become pope.

After John Paul II broke the Italian hold on the papacy in 1978, the field has broadened considerably, such that cardinals from far-flung countries are now seen as contenders. The past three popes have hailed from Poland (John Paul II), Germany (Benedict XVI) and Argentina (Francis).

Of the 133 cardinals expected to vote at the conclave, 108 were appointed by Francis. They may feel a loyalty to continuing his legacy — even though the late pontiff didn’t choose cardinals based on ideology, but rather for their pastoral priorities and geographical diversity.

Beyond that, the cardinals will consider practical matters, like age. Picking a relatively young man — say in his 60s — could result in a papacy of 20 years or longer.

Picking a pope from where the church is growing – Asia or Africa – could bring more upheaval to the Vatican’s Italian-heavy bureaucracy that is still smarting from the Argentine pope’s go-it-alone style.

What happens after a new pope is chosen?

Once a candidate receives the necessary votes and accepts, he chooses a papal name and enters the “Room of Tears” — named for the emotional weight of the responsibility ahead — to don his papal vestments.

Minutes later, he is introduced to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica with the proclamation in Latin: “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam!” (“I bring you tidings of great joy: We have a pope!”)

That will be immediately followed by the revelation of his baptismal name, in Latin, followed by the papal name he has chosen.

A line that stretches back to St. Peter and Jesus

Every new pope is seen as a successor to St. Peter, the apostle believed by Catholics to have been appointed by Jesus as the head of the church. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells him, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” a verse that forms the biblical basis for the papacy.

According to tradition, Peter traveled to Rome to spread the Christian message and was martyred there during the reign of the Emperor Nero, around 64 A.D., as Christians were being persecuted. He was said to be crucified upside down at his own request, considering himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.

St. Peter’s Basilica now stands over what is believed to be his tomb.

Why does the pope matter beyond the Catholic Church?

Though the pope leads a religious institution, his influence extends far beyond it. Pope John Paul II played a pivotal role in supporting the Solidarity movement in his native Poland and encouraging resistance to Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. His moral leadership was credited by many with helping to hasten the end of the Cold War.

Pope Francis, the first pontiff from Latin America, became a prominent voice on global issues from climate change to migration and economic inequality. He called for compassion toward refugees, warned against the dangers of nationalism, and urged action to protect the planet — stances that resonated well beyond church walls, and at times put him at odds with political leaders.

A name to signal a papal direction

The first sign of the new pope’s priorities will come in the name he chooses.

A Francis II might signal a new pope’s embrace of Francis’ legacy of prioritizing the poor and marginalized; a Pius would hint at a traditionalist restoration.

From John Paul to Benedict to Francis, each name has carried historical weight and theological intent. For the 267th pope, it will be his first message to the world.

---

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — With all the pomp, drama and solemnity that the Catholic Church can muster, 133 cardinals on Wednesday begin the secretive, centuries-old ritual to elect a successor to Pope Francis, opening the most geographically diverse conclave in the faith’s 2,000-year history.

The cardinals, from 70 countries, will be sequestered from the outside world, their cellphones surrendered and airwaves around the Vatican jammed to prevent them from all communications until they find a new leader for the 1.4 billion-member church.

Francis named 108 of the 133 “princes of the church,” choosing many pastors in his image from far-flung countries like Mongolia, Sweden and Tonga that had never had a cardinal before.

His decision to surpass the usual limit of 120 cardinal electors and include younger ones from the “global south” — those often marginalized countries with lower economic clout — has injected an unusual degree of uncertainty in a process that is always full of mystery and suspense.

Many hadn’t met one another until last week and lamented they needed more time to get to know one another, raising questions about how long it might take for one man to secure the two-thirds majority, or 89 ballots, necessary to become the 267th pope.

“Wait and see, a little patience, wait and see,” said Cardinal Mario Zenari, the Vatican’s ambassador to Syria as he arrived for the final day of pre-vote discussions.

A final Mass, then ‘All out’

The cardinals begin by participating in a final pre-conclave Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. The dean of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re, celebrates the Mass, which is meant to pray for cardinals to find the wisdom, counsel and understanding to elect a worthy new shepherd.

Re, 91, had presided at Francis’ funeral, delivering a heartfelt sermon recalling history’s first Latin American pope and the reforming 12-year papacy he oversaw.

At 4:30 p.m. (1430 GMT; 10:30 a.m. EDT) the cardinals walk solemnly into the frescoed Sistine Chapel, chanting the meditative “Litany of the Saints” and the Latin hymn “Veni Creator,” imploring the saints and the Holy Spirit to help them pick a pope.

Once there, they pledge to maintain secrecy about what is about to transpire and to not allow “any interference, opposition or any other form of intervention” from outsiders to influence their voting.

Standing before Michelangelo’s vision of heaven and hell in “The Last Judgment,” each cardinal places his hand on the Gospel and swears to carry out that duty “so help me God and these Holy Gospels, which I touch with my hand.”

After that, the retired preacher of the papal household, Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, delivers a meditation. The master of papal liturgical ceremonies, Archbishop Diego Ravelli, calls out “Extra omnes,” Latin for “all out.” Anyone not eligible to vote then leaves and the chapel doors close, allowing the work to begin.

The cardinals don’t have to take a first vote on Wednesday, but they usually do. Assuming no winner is found, the Vatican said black smoke could be expected out of the Sistine Chapel chimney at around 7 p.m.

The cardinals retire for the night and return Thursday morning. They can hold up to two ballots in the morning and two in the afternoon until a winner is found.

While cardinals this week said they expected a short conclave, it will likely take at least a few rounds of voting. For the past century, it has taken between three and eight ballots to find a pope. John Paul I — the pope who reigned for 33 days in 1978 — was elected on the third ballot. His successor, John Paul II, needed eight. Francis was elected on the fifth in 2013.

Challenges facing a new pope

There are any number of challenges facing a new pope and weighing on the cardinals, above all whether to continue and consolidate Francis’ progressive legacy on promoting women, LGBTQ+ acceptance, the environment and migrants, or roll it back to try to unify a church that became more polarized during his pontificate. The clergy sex abuse scandal hung over the pre-conclave talks.

Since Francis chose 80% of the voters, continuity is likely but the form it might take is uncertain.

As a result, identifying front-runners has been a challenge. But some names keep appearing on lists of “papabile,” or cardinals having the qualities to be pope.

• Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 70, is a leading Italian, by nature of his office: He was Francis’ secretary of state, the Vatican No. 2, so known to every cardinal.
• Filippino Cardinal Luis Tagle, 67, is a top candidate to be history’s first Asian pope. He had a similarly high-profile job, heading the Vatican’s evangelization office responsible for the Catholic Church in much of the developing world.
• Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, 72, the archbishop of Budapest, is a leading candidate representing the more conservative wing of the church.

A choreography to the vote:

The voting follows a strict choreography, dictated by church law.

Each cardinal writes his choice on a paper inscribed with the words “Eligo in summen pontificem” — “I elect as Supreme Pontiff.” They approach the altar one by one and say: “I call as my witness, Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected.”

The folded ballot is placed on a round plate and tipped into an oval silver and gold urn. Once cast, the ballots are opened one by one by three different “scrutineers,” cardinals selected at random who write down the names and read them aloud. Cardinals can keep their own tally on a sheet of paper provided but must turn their notes in to be burned at the end of voting.

The scrutineers, whose work is checked by other cardinals called revisors, then add up the results of each round of balloting and write the results down on a separate sheet of paper, which is preserved in the papal archives.

As the scrutineer reads out each name, he pierces each ballot with a needle through the word “Eligo” and binds them with thread and ties a knot. The ballots are then put aside and burned in the chapel stove along with a chemical to produce either black smoke to signal no winner, or white smoke to announce that a new pope has been elected.

---

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

The conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis will begin Wednesday.

A conclave is the centuries-old election of a pope that derives its name from the Italian “con clave” (with a key) to underscore that cardinals are sequestered until they find a winner.

Cardinals have no contact with the outside world after the master of liturgical ceremonies utters the words “Extra Omnes” the Latin phrase for “all out,” to ask all those present except the cardinal electors to leave the Sistine Chapel to begin the voting process.

In between votes, the cardinals will be staying at the Domus Santa Marta hotel in Vatican City and possibly another nearby Vatican residence, since there are more cardinal electors than Santa Marta hotel rooms.

The Associated Press is providing a livestream here:

How will it work?

The conclave begins May 7, in the afternoon.

The day begins with Mass celebrated in the morning by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

In the afternoon, the cardinals process into the Sistine Chapel and take their seats. A priest delivers a meditation and the cardinals take an oath. After the “Extra Omnes,” the conclave begins.

Unless there are any outstanding questions or problems, cardinals take a single vote the afternoon of May 7, seeking a two-thirds majority. If they don’t find a winner on the first ballot, they retire for the evening and return to the Sistine Chapel the following morning.

They can take up to two votes each morning, and two each afternoon until they have a winner.

How does the conclave announce that they’ve selected a new pope?

After the ballots are pierced, they are burned in a cylindrical stove at the end of the voting session. Black smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney means no decision; white smoke signals the cardinals have chosen a pope and that he has accepted.

Chemical cartridges are added to ensure there is no confusion over the color. To produce black smoke, a cartridge containing potassium perchlorate, anthracene — the component of coal tar — and sulfur is burned with the ballots. For white smoke, a cartridge of potassium chlorate, lactose and chloroform resin is burned with the ballots.

Bells also are rung to signal the election of a pope, for further clarity.

The new pope is introduced from the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square with the words, “Habemus Papam!” (“We have a pope!”) and his chosen papal name. The new pope then emerges and gives his first blessing.

---

By HALLIE GOLDEN, Associated Press

The vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board has been abruptly removed from his position, the White House confirmed Tuesday, a rare move that comes as the agency investigates more than 1,000 cases.

The Trump administration removed ​​Alvin Brown a little more than a year after he was sworn in. The White House didn’t say why he was removed.

The decision comes as NTSB investigates nearly 1,250 active cases across the U.S., while supporting more than 160 foreign investigations, according to March testimony by NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy.

The investigations include the deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people in January and the medical transport plane that plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January, killing eight people.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former National Transportation Safety Board and FAA accident investigator, said he has never seen an administration remove a member of the board.

Board members have been known to stay on after their term is over if the administration hasn’t appointed anyone yet and then they leave once the next administration selects someone, he said.

“That happens a lot over the years, but that’s normal and expected because you served your term and now it’s time for someone else to serve in there,” he said. “But this wasn’t that. This was just more abrupt and directly from the administration,n and I don’t know what the impetus is.”

By Tuesday evening, Brown’s photo and biography had already been removed from NTSB’s website.

The agency includes five board members who serve five year terms, according to the NTSB website. They are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The chairman and vice chairman are both designated by the president and serve for three years. By Tuesday evening, the website only showed four members of the board.

Brown was sworn in as a member of the board in April 2024 after being nominated by then-President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate to fill one of two vacancies. His term was expected to run through 2026, according to an NTSB press release at the time. He was the only Black member of the board.

He was the mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, from 2011 to 2015 and joined the board after serving as senior adviser for community infrastructure opportunities for the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to the release.

NTSB typically works on about 2,200 domestic and 450 foreign cases each year, according to Homendy. She said she expects “the number of cases annually to remain high and continue to increase in complexity.”

Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report.

Jurors have struggled to reach a unanimous verdict on whether former Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr was justified when he shot and killed Patrick Lyoya in April 2022.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is eyeing Hollywood for his next round of tariffs, threatening to levy all films produced outside the U.S. at a steep rate of 100%.

Over the weekend, Trump accused other countries of “stealing the movie-making capabilities” of the U.S. and said that he had authorized the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of implementing this new import tax on all foreign-made films. But further specifics or dates weren’t provided. And the White House confirmed that no final decisions had been made as of Monday.

Trump later said that he would meet with industry executives about the proposal but a lot remains unclear about how an import tax on complex, international productions could even be implemented.

If imposed, experts warn that such a tariff would dramatically hike the costs of making movies today. That uncertainty could put filmmakers in limbo, much like other industries that have recently been caught in the crosshairs of today’s ongoing trade wars.

Unlike other sectors that have recently been targeted by tariffs, however, movies go beyond physical goods, bringing larger intellectual property ramifications into question. Here’s what we know.

Why is Trump threatening this steep movie tariff?

Trump is citing national security concerns, a justification he’s similarly used to impose import taxes on certain countries and a range of sector-specific goods.

In a Sunday night post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that the American movie industry is “DYING to a very fast death” as other countries offer “all sorts of incentives” to draw filmmaking away from the U.S.

Trump has previously voiced concern about movie production moving overseas. And in recent years, U.S. film and television production has been hampered between setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood guild strikes of 2023 and the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Incentive programs have also long-influenced where movies are shot both abroad and within the U.S., with more production leaving California to states like Georgia and New Mexico — as well as countries like Canada.

But unlike other sectors targeted by Trump’s recently-imposed tariffs, the American film industry currently holds a trade deficit that’s in the U.S.’s favor.

In movie theaters, American-produced movies overwhelmingly dominate the domestic marketplace. Data from the Motion Picture Association also shows that American films made $22.6 billion in exports and $15.3 billion in trade surplus in 2023 — with a recent report noting that these films “generated a positive balance of trade in every major market in the world” for the U.S.

Last year, international markets accounted for over 70% of Hollywood’s total box office revenue, notes Heeyon Kim, an assistant professor of strategy at Cornell University. She warns that tariffs and potential retaliation from other countries impacting this industry could result in billions of dollars in lost earnings and thousands of jobs.

“To me, (this) makes just no sense,” she said, adding that such tariffs could “undermine otherwise a thriving part of the U.S. economy.”

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents behind-the-scenes entertainment workers across the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement Monday that Trump had “correctly recognized” the “urgent threat from international competition” that the American film and television industry faces today. But the union said it instead recommended the administration implement a federal production tax incentive and other provisions to “level the playing field” while not harming the industry overall.

How could a tax on foreign-made movies work?

That’s anyone’s guess.

“Traditional tariffs apply to physical imports crossing borders, but film production primarily involves digital services — shooting, editing and post-production work that happens electronically,” notes Ann Koppuzha, a lawyer and business law lecturer at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business.

Koppuzha said that film production is more like an applied service that can be taxed, not tariffed. But taxes require Congressional approval, which could be a challenge even with a Republican majority.

Making a movie is also an incredibly complex — and international — process. It’s common for both large and small films to include production in the U.S. and in other countries. Big-budget movies like the upcoming “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” for instance, are shot around the world.

U.S. studios frequently shoot abroad because tax incentives can aid production costs. But a blanket tariff across the board could discourage that or limit options, Kim said — hurting both Hollywood films and the global industry that helps create them.

“When you make these sort of blanket rules, you’re missing some of the nuance of how production works,” added Steven Schiffman, a longtime industry veteran and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “Sometimes you just need to go to the location, because frankly it’s way too expensive just to try to create in a soundstage”

Schiffman points to popular titles filmed outside the U.S. — such as Warner Bros’ “Harry Potter” series, which was almost entirely shot in the U.K. “The cost to have done that would have like literally double to produce those movies under this proposed tariff,” he said.

Could movie tariffs have repercussions on other intellectual property?

Overall, experts warn that the prospect of tariffing foreign-made movies ventures into uncharted waters.

“There’s simply no precedent or sense for applying tariffs to these types of creative services,” Koppuzha said. And while the Trump administration could extend similar threats to other forms of intellectual property, like music, “they’d encounter the same practical hurdles.”

But if successful, some also warn of potential retaliation. Kim points to “quotas” that some countries have had to help boost their domestic films by ensuring they get a portion of theater screens, for example. Many have reduced or suspended such quotas over the years in the name of open trade — but if the U.S. places a sweeping tariff on all foreign-made films, these kinds of quotas could come back, “which would hurt Hollywood film or any of the U.S.-made intellectual property,” Kim said.

And while U.S. dominance in film means “there are fewer substitutes” for retaliation, Schiffman notes that other forms of entertainment — like game development — could see related impacts down the road.

Others stress the potential consequences of hampering international collaboration overall.

“Creative content distribution requires thoughtful economic approaches that recognize how modern storytelling flows across borders,” notes Frank Albarella, U.S. media and telecommunications sector leader at KPMG. “The question hanging over every screen: Might we better nurture American storytelling through smart, targeted incentives, or could we inadvertently force audiences to pay more for what could become a narrower creative landscape?”

AP Writers Jake Coyle and Jill Colvin in New York, Aamer Madhani in Palm Beach, Florida and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Harvard University will receive no new federal grants until it meets a series of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration, the Education Department announced Monday.

The action was laid out in a letter to Harvard’s president and amounts to a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school. The administration previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard, and Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status.

In a press call, an Education Department official said Harvard will receive no new federal grants until it “demonstrates responsible management of the university” and satisfies federal demands on a range of subjects. It applies to federal research grants and not federal financial aid students receive to help cover tuition and fees.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the decision on a call with reporters.

The official accused Harvard of “serious failures” in four areas: antisemitism, racial discrimination, abandonment of rigor and viewpoint diversity. To become eligible for new grants, Harvard would need to enter negotiations with the federal government and prove it has satisfied the administration’s demands.

Harvard’s president has previously said he will not bend to government’s demands. The university sued to halt its funding freeze last month.

---

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

State prosecutors have dropped felony charges against seven people accused of trespassing and resisting police a year ago during the break-up of a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Michigan.

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Let the year’s biggest fashion party begin! A rainy Met Gala got underway Monday with a tuxedoed choir and a trend true to the menswear theme: Emma Chamberlain and other women in pinstripe gowns.

Chamberlain and Zuri Hall were among those who wore sleek, sexy gowns that play on men’s suiting in pinstripes and other details.

“I expect this to be a frequent thing tonight, women wanting to maintain a traditionally feminine dress silhouette while still respecting the theme,” said William Dingle, director of style for blackmenswear.com, a cultural impact agency that focuses on uplifting Black men.

The suggested dress code, “Tailored for You,” is inspired by Black dandyism. Teyana Taylor went for a stunning Zoot Suit look with a red, feather-adorned top hat and a huge matching cape dripping with flowers and bling.

The Zoot was popularized in Harlem in the 1940s.

Colman Domingo, one of the evening’s hosts, wore a pleated, gold adorned cape over a gray and black suit, his jacket a pearled windowpane design with a huge dotted black flower. His look, including his cape and a dotted black scarf at his neck, evoked the late André Leon Talley, the fashion icon who made history as a rare Black editor at Vogue.

Domingo arrived with Vogue’s Anna Wintour, dressed in a baby blue coat over a shimmery white gown. Fellow co-chair Lewis Hamilton donned a jaunty ivory tuxedo with a cropped jacket and matching beret.

Pharrell Williams, another co-host, was demure in a double-breasted, beaded evening jacket and dark trousers. He kept his dark shades on while posing for the cameras. Williams walked with his wife, Helen Lasichanh, in a black bodysuit and matching jacket.

Pharrell’s jacket consists of 15,000 pearls and took 400 hours to construct, his representative said.

Monica L. Miller, whose book inspired the evening, wore a bejeweled cropped cape over a dress adorned with cowrie shells by Grace Wales Bonner. It’s a direct connection to a piece in the gala’s companion Metropolitan Museum of Art spring exhibit that Miller guest curated.

NEW YORK (AP) — Pharrell Williams has high hopes for the Met Gala, the first to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years to have a menswear theme.

“I want it to feel like the most epic night of power, a reflection of Black resiliency in a world that continues to be colonized, by which I mean policies and legislation that are nothing short of that,” he recently told Vogue.

“It’s our turn.”

Indeed. And welcome to the first Monday in May.

How to watch the 2025 Met Gala

Vogue will livestream the gala starting at 6 p.m. Eastern on Vogue.com, its YouTube channel and across its other digital platforms. Teyana Taylor, La La Anthony and Ego Nwodim will host the stream. Emma Chamberlain will also do interviews on the carpet.

The Associated Press will stream the gala carpet on delay beginning at 6:30 p.m. The feeds will be available on YouTube and APNews.com.

E! will begin live coverage at 6 p.m. on TV. The livestream will be available on Peacock, E! Online and YouTube, along with the network’s other social media feeds.

By ALAN SUDERMAN

In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the president’s meme coin into two valuable commodities: serious cash and access to the president.

Since the coin was launched earlier this year, it has generated more than $320 million in fees for its creators, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. And on Monday, Trump promoted a dinner he’s set to attend on May 22nd that’s open to almost anyone who buys enough of the coins.

According to the contest’s rules, the top 220 holders of the meme coin will get to go to the dinner at Trump’s Washington-area golf club. The top 25 holders will also get to attend a reception where they can rub shoulders with Trump beforehand.

“Let the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own!” the meme coin said on its website promoting the dinner.

Trading activity in the meme coin jumped after the dinner was first announced and the price rose as well. But the Trumps don’t need to sell any coins to make money.

How Trump makes money off the meme coin

Decentralization is foundational to cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular crypto, was born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency meant to be uncontrolled by banks or governments.

Trump meme coins can be traded on a decentralized exchange, which is essentially a place where traders can swap goods without a middleman.

Instead of matching buyers and sellers one by one, decentralized exchanges use something called a liquidity pool to ensure trades can happen easily and instantly. Liquidity pools are essentially an automated pot of funds that pair meme coins like $TRUMP with more popular types of crypto that can be easily traded.

When the Trump meme coin was first launched, its creators initially released 20% of the planned 1 billion total coins. Half of that 20% was put up for public sale while the other half was put into a liquidity pool. CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and another company receive “trading revenue derived from trading activities” of the Trump meme coins, according to its website.

Through the liquidity pool, the creators of Trump’s meme coins make money by charging tiny fees on each trade.

“You don’t really care about what happens to the price. You only care that there is continuous volume,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at the blockchain analytics firm Nansen. “Because the more volume there is, that means more trades and therefore more fees for you.”

Since cryptocurrency blockchains are public, it’s possible to track how much in trading fees has been paid. Chainalysis said Trump meme coin creators made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the week after the dinner was first announced. The value of the meme coin jumped from about $9 to around $14 just after the announcement. It was trading around $11 on Monday afternoon.

Trump downplays profits

Launched just before he took office, Trump’s meme coin has become one of the most high-profile ways the norm-breaking president has mixed politics and his personal finances.

The remaining 80% of Trump’s meme coins, which are still under a lock-up, have been allocated to CIC Digital and another company. An ethics agreement prohibits Trump from “day-to-day” decision making at the Trump Organization when he’s president and limits the financial information about the business that can be shared with him.

During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press over the weekend, Trump said he didn’t follow the price swings of his meme coin and dismissed the idea that he was profiting from the presidency. He also rejected a suggestion that he would forgo any profits made from his crypto endeavors.

“Should I contribute all of my real estate that I’ve owned for many years if it goes up a little bit because I’m president and doing a good job? I don’t think so,” Trump said.

Heavy promotion

The team behind Trump’s meme coins has been aggressively trying to promote the chance to eat with the president.

“Good News! President Trump is allowing one more person to attend Dinner with Trump,” the meme coin’s official account on X said last week, encouraging people to reply with memes featuring Trump. “Our favorite $TRUMP memes will be shown to President Trump and we will pick 1 person who gets to come to the dinner on May 22nd!”

The creators have also tried to up the ante by offering $100,000 Trump-themed watches to the top four holders of Trump’s meme coins.

Unknown guests

On Monday night, Trump is hosting a “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” fundraiser sponsored by his Maga, Inc. super PAC at his golf club outside Washington. An invitation to the event that circulated online instructs those invited to pay $1.5 million per person to attend. The super PAC will be required to list donors in its regular public disclosures.

But whether the public will ever know who bought their way into the meme coin dinner with the president is unclear. Unlike political donations that must be publicly reported, there’s no disclosure requirement for meme coin buyers. The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether it would share details of the dinner’s attendees.

Critics of Trump’s foray into meme coins, which includes several Democrats, say the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency gives bad actors the opportunity to try and unduly influence the president through purchasing his digital assets.

The Trump meme coin website assures those who register for the contest that their full legal name and contact information will “never be publicly shown.”

Instead, registrants pick a username that’s displayed on the website’s leaderboard. The ranking is dependent not just on how many Trump meme coins someone holds, but also on how long.

After No. 220, the board has a note of encouragement for those just below the cut to buy more of the meme coins.

“You’re so close. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for your $TRUMP dinner.”

Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army on Friday confirmed there will be a military parade on President Donald Trump’s birthday in June, as part of the celebration around the service’s 250th birthday.

Plans for the parade, as first detailed by The Associated Press on Thursday, call for about 6,600 soldiers to march from Arlington, Virginia, to the National Mall along with 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters. Until recently, the Army’s birthday festival plans did not include a massive parade, which officials say will cost tens of millions of dollars.

But Trump has long wanted a military parade, and discussions with the Pentagon about having one in conjunction with the birthday festival began less than two months ago.

The Army’s 250th birthday happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

In a statement Friday, Army spokesman Steve Warren said the Army’s birthday celebration will include “a spectacular fireworks display, a parade, and a daylong festival on the National Mall.”

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked a White House executive order targeting an elite law firm, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against the legal profession.

U.S. District Beryl Howell said the executive order against the firm of Perkins Coie amounted to “unconstitutional retaliation” as she ordered that it be immediately nullified and that the Trump administration halt any enforcement of it.

“No American President,” Howell wrote in her 102-page order, “has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

The ruling was most definitive rejection to date of Trump’s spate of similarly worded executive orders against some of the country’s most elite law firms, part of a broader effort by the president to reshape American civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will. Several of the firms singled out for sanction have either done legal work that Trump has opposed, or currently have or previously had associations with prosecutors who at one point investigated the president.

The edicts have ordered that the security clearances of attorneys at the targeted firms be suspended, that federal contracts be terminated and that their employees be barred from federal buildings. The punished law firms have called the executive orders an affront to the legal system at odds with the foundational principle that lawyers should be free to represent whomever they’d like.

In the case of Perkins Coie, the White House cited its representation of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race. Trump has also railed against one of the firm’s former lawyers, Marc Elias, who engaged the services of an opposition research firm that in turn hired a former British spy who produced files of research examining potential ties between Trump and Russia. Elias left the firm 2021.

In her opinion, Howell wrote that Perkins Coie was targeted because the firm “expressed support for employment policies the President does not like, represented clients the President does not like, represented clients seeking litigation results the President does not like, and represented clients challenging some of the President’s actions, which he also does not like.”

“That,” she wrote, “is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.”

The decision was not surprising given that Howell had earlier temporarily blocked multiple provisions of the order and had expressed deep misgivings about the edict at a more recent hearing, when she grilled a Justice Department lawyer who was tasked with justifying it.

The other law firms that have challenged orders against them —WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — have succeeded in at least temporarily blocking the orders. But other major firms have sought to avert orders by preemptively reaching settlements that require them, among other things, to dedicate tens of millions of dollars in free legal services in support of causes the Trump administration says it supports.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk ’s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.

The emergency appeal comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the team’s access under federal privacy laws.

Social Security holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, bank details, salary information and medical and mental health records for disability recipients, according to court documents.

The government says the DOGE team needs access to target waste in the federal government, and asked the justices to put the lower court order on hold as the lawsuit over the issue plays out.

Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the judge’s restrictions disrupt DOGE’s urgent work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch functions. “Left undisturbed, this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making,” he wrote.

Musk has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud, describing it as a “ Ponzi scheme ” and insisting that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending.

An appeals court refused to immediately to lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges in the minority said there’s no evidence that the team has done any “targeted snooping” or exposed personal information.

The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland that blocked DOGE from Social Security systems did allow staffers to access data that has been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable.

The appeal is the latest in a string of emergency applications to the nation’s highest court as the Trump administration faces about 200 lawsuits challenging various aspects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping conservative agenda.

Christopher Schurr testified in his own defense at his second-degree murder trial for the 2022 killing of Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese immigrant.

The post Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

The Justice Department is suing four states over climate action. The DOJ says plans by Michigan and Hawaii to take legal action over climate harm would infringe on the federal government’s authority.

The post Pistons beat Knicks 106-103 in Game 5 to stay alive in the first-round series appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

The post Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals win an election upended by Trump appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

The post Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, White Stripes and Outkast get into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Romano spent more than 17 years at the Justice Department, eventually becoming a supervisor on the team that would prosecute more than 1,500 people charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The moment he watched the largest investigation in department history get wiped away with the stroke of a pen — on President Donald Trump’s first day back in the White House — Romano knew he had to leave.

“I knew on January 20th, when the pardons were announced, that I needed to find my way out,” Romano said in an interview with The Associated Press weeks after his resignation from the Justice Department. “It would be untenable for me to stay, given the pardons and given the false narratives that were being spread about January 6.”

Now, Romano says he fears Trump’s decision to pardon even the most violent rioters — whom his own vice president once said “obviously” shouldn’t be pardoned — could embolden right-wing extremists and encourage future political violence.

“The way that the pardons have been received by the January 6th defendants and by other right-wing extremists, as I understand it, is to recognize that if you support the president and if you commit violence in support of the president, that he might insulate you from the consequences, that he might protect you from the criminal justice system,” Romano said. “And so that might encourage people to commit these sort of acts.”

Romano is among dozens of Justice Department lawyers who have resigned, been pushed out or fired in the weeks since Trump’s new leadership has taken over and begun making sweeping changes to align the law enforcement agency with the priorities of the Republican president whom the department once prosecuted.

Trump’s return to the White House has ushered in a dizzying change for many in the Justice Department, but perhaps few have felt it more than the lawyers who spent years working on the largest-scale serious attack on the Capitol since the war of 1812.

As a deputy chief of the now-disbanded Capitol Siege Section that prosecuted the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Romano had a close-up view of the evidence, including harrowing videos and court testimony detailing the violence that unfolded when the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify former President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

Romano joined the Justice Department in 2007 straight out of law school, and was working in the section in Washington that handles public corruption cases on Jan. 6, 2021. He recalled watching the riot unfold on television, and quickly deciding he wanted to help with the prosecution of what he described as a “crime of historic proportions.”

Trump’s pardons cemented the president’s yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack.

While vying to return to the White House, Trump repeatedly downplayed the violence that left more than 100 police officers injured, and lauded the rioters as patriots and hostages whom he contended were unfairly persecuted by the Justice Department for their political beliefs. Only two Capitol riot defendants were acquitted of all charges, which Trump supporters cited as evidence that Washington juries can’t be fair and impartial. Some Jan. 6 defendants are now considering running for office.

The scope of Trump’s clemency hours after the inauguration came as a surprise to many, considering the president had suggested in the weeks prior that instead of blanket pardons, he would look at the Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis. Trump’s proclamation described the prosecution as “a grave national injustice” and declared that the pardons would begin “a process of national reconciliation.”

Trump’s pardons led to the release from prison of the leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power as well as rioters convicted of brutal attacks on police — many of whose crimes were captured on camera and broadcast on live TV. Trump has defended his pardons, saying the sentences handed down for actions that day were “ridiculous and excessive” and that “these are people who actually love our country.”

Romano said the notion that the Jan. 6 defendants were not treated fairly by in the justice system or not given the due process they were entitled is “simply not true.” In many cases, he said prosecutors had overwhelming evidence because the defendants “filmed themselves proudly committing crimes.”

“They had the full protection of rights guaranteed to them by the American justice system and the Constitution,” Romano said. “It was my experience when dealing with these cases and seeing the way that the rioters and some of their attorneys behaved in court, that their take was that they should be treated like heroes and not prosecuted at all.”

Despite the pardons, Romano said he still believes that the Capitol Siege Section’s work was important because it left behind a “historical record” of what happened on Jan. 6 that cannot be changed.

“In light of the efforts to whitewash the history of that day, in light of the efforts for people to lie about that day for their own benefit, which is what’s happening, it’s important that people really understand the truth about what happened on January 6th,” he said.

By AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ahead of his second go-around in the White House, President Donald Trump spoke with certainty about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine in the first 24 hours of his new administration and finding lasting peace from the devastating 18-month conflict in Gaza.

But as the Republican president nears the 100th day of his second term, he’s struggling to make good on two of his biggest foreign policy campaign promises and is not taking well to suggestions that he’s falling short. And after criticizing President Joe Biden during last year’s campaign for preventing Israel from carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump now finds himself giving diplomacy a chance as he tries to curb Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

“The war has been raging for three years. I just got here, and you say, ‘What’s taken so long?’” Trump bristled, when asked about the Ukraine war in a Time magazine interview about his first 100 days. As for the Gaza conflict, he insisted the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in 2023 that triggered the war “would have never happened. Ever. You then say, ‘What’s taking so long?’”

Measuring a U.S. president by his first 100 days in office is an arbitrary, albeit time-honored, tradition in Washington. And brokering peace deals between intractable warring parties is typically the work of years, not weeks.

But no other president has promised to do as much out of the gate as Trump, who is pursuing a seismic makeover of America’s approach to friends and foes during his second turn in the White House.

Trump has moved at dizzying speed to shift the rules-based world order that has formed the basis for global stability and security in the aftermath of World War II.

All sides have scrambled to acclimate as Trump launched a global tariff war and slashed U.S. foreign aid all while talking up the ideas of taking Greenland from NATO ally Denmark and making Canada the 51st state.

But Trump’s inability to broker deals in Ukraine and Gaza — at least to date — might be the most demonstrable evidence that his effort to quickly shake up U.S. foreign policy through sheer will could have its limits.

And Trump hasn’t obscured his frustration, particularly over the Ukraine war, which he’s long dismissed as a waste of U.S. taxpayer money and of lives lost in the conflict.

The president and his team have gone hot and cold about prospects for peace in Ukraine since Trump’s Oval Office blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February.

In that encounter, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance lectured the Ukrainian leader for being insufficiently grateful for U.S. assistance in the fight to repel Russia’s invading forces before asking him to leave the White House grounds.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that the White House is ready to walk away if Ukraine and Russia don’t make substantial progress toward a peace deal soon.

And Trump on back-to-back days this past week lambasted Zelenskyy for “prolonging” the “killing field” and then Russian President Vladimir Putin for complicating negotiations with “very bad timing” in launching brutal strikes that pummeled Kyiv.

But by Friday, Trump was expressing optimism again after his special envoy Steve Witkoff met in Moscow with Putin. Following the talks, Trump declared that the two sides were “very close to a deal.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump was once again downcast after he met with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral, expressing doubt in a social media post that Putin was serious about forging a deal.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” Trump said of Putin and Russia’s ongoing bombardment of Ukraine.

Trump again expressed frustration with Putin in an exchange with reporters on Sunday evening. “I want him to stop shooting, sit down and sign a deal,” Trump said. “We have the confines of a deal, I believe. And I want him to sign it and be done with it.”

The Kremlin on Monday declared a ceasefire in Ukraine on May 8-10 as Russia marks Victory Day over Nazi Germany.

White House National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said Trump remains committed to getting a deal done and is “closer to that objective than at any point during Joe Biden’s presidency.”

“Within 100 days, President Trump has gotten both Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table with the aim to bring this horrific war to a peaceful resolution,” Hewitt said. “It is no longer a question of if this war will end but when.”

Peace in Gaza remains elusive

Trump started his second term with some momentum on ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

His envoy Witkoff, a fellow New York real estate maverick turned high-stakes diplomat, teamed up with the outgoing Biden Middle East adviser Brett McGurk to get Israeli and Hamas officials to agree to a temporary ceasefire deal that went into effect one day before Trump’s inauguration. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

On the eve of his return to office, Trump took full credit for what he called an “epic” agreement that would lead to a “lasting peace” in the Middle East.

The temporary ceasefire led to the freeing of 33 hostages held in Gaza and the release of roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

But the truce collapsed in March, and fighting resumed, with the two sides unable to come to an agreement for the return of 59 remaining hostages, more that half of whom Israeli officials believe are dead.

Conditions in Gaza remain bleak. Israel has cut off all aid to the territory and its more than 2 million people. Israel has disputed that there is a shortage of aid in Gaza and says it’s entitled to block the assistance because, it claims, Hamas seizes the goods for its own use.

Trump, as he flew to Rome on Friday for the pope’s funeral, told reporters that he’s pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “very hard” to get food and medicine into Gaza but dismissed questions about how the Israeli leader is responding to his appeal.

“Well, he knows all about it, OK?” Trump told reporters.

Hewitt, the National Security Council spokesman, pushed back on the notion that Trump has fallen short on his effort to find an endgame to the Gaza conflict, setting the blame squarely on Hamas.

“While we continue to work to secure the release of all remaining hostages, Hamas has chosen violence over peace, and President Trump has ensured that Hamas continues to face the gates of hell until it releases the hostages and disarms,” Hewitt said.

Trump’s team says the president has racked up more foreign policy wins than any other U.S. president this early in a term.

The White House counts among its early victories invoking a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport Venezuelan migrants it accuses of being gang members, securing the release of at least 46 Americans detained abroad, and carrying out hundreds of military strikes in Yemen against Houthi militants who have been attacking commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea.

Trump hopeful for Iran nuclear deal breakthrough

The White House this month also launched direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program, a renewed push to solve another of the most delicate foreign policy issues facing the White House and the Middle East.

Trump says his administration is making progress in its effort to secure a deal with Iran to scupper Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Witkoff flew directly from meeting with Putin in Moscow to Muscat, Oman, to take part in talks on Saturday, the third engagement between U.S. and Iranian officials this month.

The U.S. and other world powers in 2015 reached a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear agreement in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever.”

Since Trump pulled out of the Obama-era deal, Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium.

The president said on Friday that he’s open to meeting with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or President Masoud Pezeshkian, while also indicating military action — something that U.S. ally Israel has advocated — remains an option.

As Trump increasingly expresses his preference for diplomacy rather than military action, Iran hawks at home are urging him to tread carefully in his hunt for a legacy-defining deal.

“The Iranians would have the talking point that they forced the same person who left the deal many years later, after them resisting maximum pressure, into an equal or worse deal,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

But Trump wants a solution, and fast.

“I think a deal is going to be made there,” Trump said Sunday “That’s going to happen pretty soon.”

By JACK BROOK, Associated Press/Report for America

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The textile mills that once served as the backbone of Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, have long been shuttered, and officials believed federal money would be key to the town’s overdue revitalization. They hoped an improved stormwater drainage system and secured electrical wires — funded through a program to help communities protect against natural disasters and climate change — would safeguard investments in new businesses like a renovated historic theater to spur the largely rural economy.

Mount Pleasant was about to receive $4 million when the Federal Emergency Management Agency eliminated the program. Officials say their plans — years in the making — and those of hundreds of communities nationwide supported by the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program have been upended.

“This is a generational set of infrastructure projects that would set us up for the next hundred years and it just — poof — went away,” said Erin Burris, assistant town manager for Mount Pleasant, 25 miles east of Charlotte.

FEMA’s elimination this month of the BRIC program revoked upwards of $3.6 billion in funding earmarked for communities like Mount Pleasant. Though President Donald Trump has openly questioned whether to shutter FEMA completely, local officials said they were blindsided by the move to end BRIC, established during the Republican president’s first term.

Many affected communities are in Republican-dominated, disaster-prone regions. FEMA called the BRIC grants “wasteful” and “politicized” tools, but officials and residents say they were a vital use of government resources to proactively protect lives, infrastructure and economies. Money would have gone toward strengthening electrical poles to withstand hurricane-force winds in Louisiana, relocating residents in Pennsylvania’s floodplains and safeguarding water supply lines in Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley.

Disasters affect the vast majority of Americans — 95% live in a county that has had a federally declared weather disaster since 2011, said Amy Chester, director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit focused on disaster prevention.

The BRIC program told communities, “We’re going to help your community be stronger ahead of time,” she said. “Cutting one of the sole sources of funding for that need is essentially telling Americans that it’s OK that they’re suffering.”

Officials call FEMA’s program imperfect but important

Across multiple states, officials said the BRIC program was far from perfect — they were often frustrated with the wait for funding.

But in southeastern Louisiana, Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said despite his issues with FEMA’s bureaucracy, he’s seen firsthand that money invested to fortify homes and infrastructure works.

The hurricane-ravaged state receives the highest rate of federal disaster assistance per capita, with more than $8 billion pouring in since 2011, according to Rebuild by Design. Lafourche Parish has seen more than a dozen federally declared extreme weather disasters since 2011.

Lafourche had been set to receive more than $20 million from several grants to replace wooden electrical poles with steel and take other steps to lower the soaring costs of home insurance.

Chaisson, a Republican whose parish saw 80% of voters support Trump in November, said he backs efforts to streamline federal agencies — as long as funding continues to flow for disaster prevention.

“I’m hopeful that that’s what the president’s trying to do with this,” he said. “Is there some other way to get the money so we can continue to do these projects? … No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, the programs themselves and the dollars allocated make our communities more resilient.”

Research backs him up: A 2024 study funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found every $1 invested in disaster preparation saved $13 in economic impact, damage and cleanup costs.

Democratic officials in states that lost money have publicly expressed outrage. Few Republicans have joined in at a national level, even though about two-thirds of the top 15 states in total FEMA funds received, spending per person and number of federally declared disasters lean heavily Republican.

An exception has been Louisiana’s senior U.S. senator, Bill Cassidy. He took to the Senate floor this month calling for BRIC’s reinstatement, saying it’s “a lifesaver and a cost-saver.”

About $185 million intended for Louisiana evaporated, and officials had to shelve dozens of applications for hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, according to data compiled by state and federal agencies.

“This isn’t waste,” Cassidy said. “To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress.”

FEMA says more than $3.6 billion of BRIC funds will be returned to the federal Disaster Relief Fund, for disaster response and recovery, and an additional $882 million is being returned to the U.S. Treasury or reapportioned by Congress in the following fiscal year. Agency officials did not comment further for this story.

Some states fight to restore funds

Twenty-two mostly blue states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit demanding the federal government release obligated funding, including FEMA grants.

The lawsuit highlights Grants Pass in conservative southern Oregon, where FEMA has refused to release BRIC funding awarded for a $50 million water treatment facility.

Flooding could knock out the water supply for 60,000 people for months, said Jason Canady, city public works director. Funding would have been used in part to build a modernized plant on higher ground.

“If you can’t provide drinking water, hospitals, groceries, restaurants are going to have trouble. Economically, it would be devastating,” he said. “It really is the cornerstone on which the community is built.”

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Mayor Will Joyce spent two years working with FEMA on a BRIC application to overhaul and provide backup supply for a regional water system used by 100,000 people. Its 36-mile pipeline is at risk of damage from tornadoes and flooding. If it breaks, Stillwater has less than a day’s worth of reserve drinking water.

“We can’t just hope nothing bad happens,” Joyce said. “This project is a necessity.”

Without FEMA’s support, he said, Stillwater will have to double the cost of water for residents to fund the project.

In an open letter, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr., a northeast Pennsylvania Republican, urged FEMA to revive BRIC, saying communities in his district would struggle to fund disaster adaptation work, including relocating families in flooded homes.

Bresnahan wrote that “programs like BRIC are not wasteful, but well within the purview of federal coordination of disaster relief efforts” and noted that Trump “promised not to leave the forgotten men and women of America behind.”

Some towns fear their needs will be forgotten

In Mount Pleasant, Whit Moose, the fourth-generation owner of a downtown pharmacy, said few of his neighbors seem aware that funding disappeared, though his own business would have benefited.

“It was going to be a wonderful thing,” he said. “Now we just got to start over.”

Republican voters in the town embrace efforts to downsize government, but the perception is that cuts are focused on federal bureaucracy, related waste and redundancy, or diversity, equity and inclusion spending, said Jim Quick, vice chairman of the Cabarrus County Republican Party.

“It would be a surprise for us to learn that those budget cuts would be impacting a local municipality,” Quick said. “The reality is all of us have to trim back.”

Town voters are unlikely to retract their support for Trump, he said, noting that 80% supported him in November.

Burris, the assistant town manager, worries about flooding downtown. And she points to one vulnerable utility pole she’s nicknamed Atlas — after the Greek god carrying the world on his shoulders — holding up the electricity, internet and telecommunications for the town’s 1,700 people.

“It’s a special community, and it deserves good things,” Burris said, choking up. “I don’t know what was political about Mount Pleasant — little, teeny, tiny Mount Pleasant — getting a little bit of help with some stormwater flooding.”

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Since President Donald Trump returned to office, every week has been a whirlwind of activity to show Americans that his administration is relentlessly pursuing his promises.

With a compliant Republican-controlled Congress, Trump has had a free hand to begin overhauling the federal government and upending foreign policy.

As Trump hits his 100th day in office Tuesday, his imprint is everywhere. But will it last?

Very much unsettled is whether the Republican president has run up his scorecard lawfully. Trump has faced lawsuits over his attempts to surge deportations, punish law firms and slash the federal workforce. All of that and more is being adjudicated in courtrooms, meaning much of what he’s done could come undone.

Here’s a look at where progress on his promises stands:

He promised to beat inflation

“We’re going to get those prices down,” he told voters.

Prices have come down — before Trump took office and since. Inflation has been falling since a peak of 9.1% in 2022. It was at 3% in January, the month Trump was inaugurated, and 2.4% in March.

But the Federal Reserve has warned that the president’s tariff plans will most likely lead to higher prices by taxing foreign imports.

He’s cracked down on illegal immigration

Trump has clearly made progress on a signature promise to control the border.

The number of people trying to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico dropped steeply in President Joe Biden’s last year, from a high of 249,740 in December 2023 to 47,324 in December 2024. Under Trump, the numbers sank to only 8,346 in February and 7,181 in March.

For all the legal wrangling about Trump’s unorthodox and possibly illegal tactics to get immigrants out of the country, it’s unclear whether he’s matching Biden’s aggressive deportation record last year — the numbers are not yet in.

Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting large numbers of people across the country. Many who assert their innocence have been deported without due process.

He promised to slash energy bills

Trump told voters he’ll reduce their energy costs by half to three-quarters in 12 to 18 months. That promise comes due next year.

He brought on the tariffs

Trump vowed in the campaign: “I will impose across-the-board tariffs on most foreign-made goods.”

He’s followed through, big time, though with frequently changing caveats.

Trump began by escalating tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, ostensibly as punishment for allowing fentanyl into the U.S. Then he announced even more widespread taxes on foreign imports on April 2, part of what he described as “Liberation Day.” Trump retreated from parts of that plan, choosing to pursue negotiations instead, but he left in place tariffs on China as high as 145%.

The stock market has whipsawed from the hefty import taxes and the erraticism in their application.

He failed to end a war as promised

At rally after rally last summer, Trump promised peace between Russia and Ukraine merely by winning the election. “Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” he told a Detroit conference in August. By then, he’d been making the same vow at least since May. It did not happen.

At times, he framed the promise differently, saying he would end the war in one day. That day has not come.

He promised big tax cuts

Trump has tested the limits of what he can do by decree, but he’ll need Congress to achieve his promised tax cuts.

He pledged to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security payments, and he said he will make permanent the expiring tax cuts he enacted during his first term.

None of this has happened. And with big tariffs kicking in, the tax burden is on track to get worse before it possibly gets better. Trump is working with Republicans in Congress to push through legislation achieving the tax cuts, but his party has thin majorities.

He went after pillars of education

Trump’s threats to choke off billions in tax dollars to many universities flow from multiple promises in the campaign — to combat antisemitism on campuses, to take on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to rid campuses of foreign students he considers hostile to American values.

After several other prominent schools signaled their willingness to comply with Trump’s demands, Harvard stood firm against the pressure.

In response, Trump has called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status, has threatened to block it from enrolling foreign students — more than a quarter of its enrollments — and has frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts.

… and pillars of culture

Trump’s promised agenda against “woke” policy swept quickly through the government, as DEI programs from the Biden years were halted and references to diversity in federal communications were purged.

At the Pentagon, in particular, a messy revisionism ensued, as thousands of images on webpages and other online content were flagged for removal. An image of the Enola Gay bomber from World War II was flagged for deletion — because of the “gay” — as were materials paying tribute to Black and Navajo war heroes and pioneering women. Most of the targeted material ultimately survived.

An executive order from Trump on “restoring truth and sanity to American history” forbids federal money to Smithsonian programs that promote “improper ideology.”

He promised to roll back transgender rights

Trump campaigned against the participation of transgender athletes in sports and against broader moves in society, especially in Democratic-led jurisdictions, to accommodate views that gender is not inherently binary.

As president, he has signed executive orders to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s teams, and he’s asked the Supreme Court to rule against lower courts that have blocked his attempt to remove transgender troops from the military.

He promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and he did

In the campaign, Trump celebrated the Jan. 6 rioters as “patriots” and “hostages” of the justice system and promised, “I will sign their pardons on Day 1.” He did exactly that. Roughly 1,500 people, including those who attacked police officers, received pardons.

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

First-time nominees Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker and Bad Company will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a class that also includes pop star Cyndi Lauper, the hip-hop pioneers Outkast, the rock duo the White Stripes and grunge masters Soundgarden.

Salt-N-Pepa, the first female rap act to achieve gold and platinum status, and the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon will get the Musical Influence Award. The late record producer Thom Bell, pianist Nicky Hopkins and bassist Carol Kaye will each get the Musical Excellence Award.

The late Cocker, who sang at Woodstock and was best known for his cover of The Beatles With a Little Help From My Friends, had the backing of Billy Joel, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top and Pete Thomas, a member of Elvis Costello & The Attractions, who argued that Cocker is "about as rock and roll as it gets.

Soundgarden with the late Chris Cornell as singer get into the Hall on their third nomination. They follow two other grunge acts in the Hall Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Bad Company get in having become radio fixtures with such arena-rock staples as Feel Like Makin Love, Cant Get Enough and Rock n Roll Fantasy.

The Ahmet Ertegun Award given to nonperforming industry professionals who had a major influence on music will go to Lenny Waronker, a former head of Warner Bros. Records who signed Prince and R.E.M., and had a part in records from Madonna, Randy Newman, the Doobie Brothers, Rickie Lee Jones, Paul Simon and Gary Clark Jr.

Some nominees that didn't get in this year include Mariah Carey, Phish, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Man, the Black Crowes and Oasis.

Checkers recording of The Twist, and subsequent Lets Twist Again are considered among the most popular songs in the history of rock n roll. The 83-year-old has expressed frustration that he hadn't been granted entry before, including telling the AP in 2014: I dont want to get in there when Im 85 years old. Ill tell them to drop dead, so you better do it quick while Im still smiling.

Lauper rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as Time After Time and Girls Just Want To Have Fun and went on to win a Tony Award for Kinky Boots. OutKast, made up of Andr 3000 and Big Boi, have six Grammys and a reputation for pushing the boundaries of hip-hop. The White Stripes made up of Jack White and Meg White were indie darlings in the early 2000s with such songs as Seven Nation Army.

Artists must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years before theyre eligible for induction. The induction ceremony will take place in Los Angeles this fall.

Nominees were voted on by more than 1,200 artists, historians and music industry professionals. The selection criteria include an artists impact on other musicians, the scope and longevity of their career and body of work, as well as their innovation and excellence in style and technique.

Last year, Mary J. Blige,Cher, Foreigner, A Tribe Called Quest, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band and singer-guitarist Peter Frampton all were inducted.

Today is Saturday, April 26, the 116th day of 2025. There are 249 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 26, 1986, in the worst nuclear disaster in history, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.

Also on this date:

In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.

In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an antisemitic mob in 1915.)

In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form what is now known as Tanzania.

In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.

In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, which resulted in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.

In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and the use of child soldiers. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)

In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor-comedian Carol Burnett is 92.
• Composer-producer Giorgio Moroder is 85.
• Olympic swimming gold medalist Donna de Varona is 78.
• Actor Giancarlo Esposito is 67.
• Actor Joan Chen is 64.
• Actor Jet Li is 62.
• Actor-comedian Kevin James is 60.
• Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is 59.
• Actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste is 58.
• First lady Melania Trump is 55.
• Singer Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins (TLC) is 55.
• Country musician Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) is 54.
• Actor Tom Welling is 48.
• Actor Pablo Schreiber is 47.
• Actor Jordana Brewster is 45.
• Actor Channing Tatum is 45.
• New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is 33.

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. His death set off mourning across the Catholic world and days of ritual at the Vatican. Here are the key things to know about the funeral of the first Latin American pontiff in the church’s history:

When and where is his funeral being held?

His funeral is being held on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square. Francis will then be buried, according to his will: in a simple underground tomb at St. Mary Major Basilica. The church is home to his favorite icon of the Virgin Mary, to whom he was particularly devoted.

The sealing of the coffin

The night before the funeral, the camerlengo presided over the closing and sealing of the coffin, in the presence of other senior cardinals. A white cloth was placed over Francis’ face.

A bag containing coins minted during his papacy was placed in the coffin along with a one-page written account of his papacy — known in Italian as a “rogito,” a word indicating an official deed. It was read aloud by the master of liturgical ceremonies and then rolled up and slipped inside a cylindrical tube that was placed inside the coffin. Another copy is kept in the Vatican archives. The covers of both the zinc coffin and the wooden one bear a cross and Francis’ papal coat of arms.

Why not at the Vatican?

Francis had said he wanted to be buried not in St. Peter’s Basilica or its grottoes, where most popes are buried, but in the St. Mary Major Basilica across town. His choice reflects his veneration of an icon of the Virgin Mary that is located there, the Salus Populi Romani (Salvation of the people of Rome).

Before and after every foreign trip, Francis would go to the basilica to pray before the Byzantine-style painting that features an image of Mary, draped in a blue robe, holding the infant Jesus who in turn holds a jeweled golden book.

Which dignitaries are expected to attend?

Heads of state, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron, are among those expected for the funeral. Others dignitaries include: Prince William, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and European Council President António Costa.

How long did the pope serve?

Pope Francis had a 12-year papacy during which he charmed the world with his humility and concern for the poor. But the Argentina-born pope also alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change.

So, how do they choose a new pope?

The death of a pope starts a centuries-old ritual to elect a new one, involving sacred oaths by the cardinals, the piercing of ballots with a needle and thread after they’re counted, and then burning them to produce either the white or black smoke to signal if there’s a new leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

With the burial, the Catholic Church begins nine days of official mourning, known as the “novemdiales”. The date of the conclave to elect a new pope has not yet been announced.

In the conclave, the cardinals will vote in secret sessions, and the ballots will be burned in a special stove after each session. Black smoke indicates no pope has been elected; white smoke says the cardinals have chosen the next head of the Catholic Church.

Any baptized Catholic male is eligible, though only cardinals have been selected since 1378. The winner must receive at least two-thirds of the vote from those cardinals under age 80 who are eligible to participate.

Francis appointed the vast majority of electors, often tapping men who share his pastoral priorities, which suggests continuity rather than rupture.

While it’s impossible to predict who the next pope will be, some cardinals are considered to have better chances than others.

Is it like the movie?

Yes and no. “Conclave” the 2024 film, introduced many laypeople to the ancient selection process with its arcane rules and grand ceremony, albeit with a silver screen twist packed full of palace intrigue and surprise.

Vatican experts say the movie excels at re-creating the look and feel of a conclave. But there are discrepancies, errors and some outlandish storylines in the Hollywood version. And while the voting process was depicted accurately, the ballots are burned not after each vote, but after each session.

The legacy of Francis

Francis was known for his personal simplicity, from the choice of his name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, who renounced wealth to help the poor, to the outward symbols and priorities of his papacy.

He chose to live in the Vatican’s Domus Santa Marta hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace and wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy.

In his teachings, he focused on concern for refugees and other marginalized people. His first trip outside Rome as pope in 2013 was to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to meet with newly arrived migrants. His plea for welcome put him at odds with U.S. and European policies.

He also also signaled a more welcoming stance toward LGBTQ+ people, while also making the fight against climate change a priority. Francis became the first pope to use scientific data in a major teaching document and made care for God’s creation a hallmark of his papacy.

He eschewed the grandiose even in his departure, lying in state in a simple coffin made of wood.

---

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — From some of the world’s most powerful leaders to those on society’s margins whom Pope Francis always made a point to minister to, hundreds of thousands of people were expected at the Vatican Saturday for the funeral rites for the late pontiff.

U.S. President Donald Trump and some 60 other heads of state and reigning sovereigns announced their plans to travel to Rome from around the globe. The Vatican said that “a group of the poor and the needy” would be on the steps of St. Mary Major Basilica to pay homage to the first Jesuit and first Latin American pope before his burial in the church.

The Holy See press office added that the poor had a special place in Francis’ heart. He had chosen for his papacy the name of the medieval Italian saint who famously renounced his family’s wealth when he joined the church.

Already, long lines of the faithful have paid their homage to Francis, who died Monday at age 88, over the three days that his body was lying in state in a simple wooden coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica.

From the beginning of his papacy in 2013, Francis won over many around the world, Catholic or not, with his advocacy for migrants and the environment. His legacy was more mixed on the topics of clergy sexual abuse and LGBTQ+ outreach, which made waves for increasing inclusion but some criticized for not going far enough.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

ROME (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday was among more than 50 heads of state and other dignitaries attending the funeral of Pope Francis, where he’ll personally pay his respects to the Roman Catholic leader who pointedly disagreed with him on a variety of issues.

Trump arrived at the Vatican with his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

Trump told reporters on Friday as he flew to Rome that he was going to the funeral “out of respect” for the pontiff, who died Monday after suffering a stroke at the age of 88.

Francis sharply disagreed with Trump’s approach on issues including immigration, the treatment of migrants and climate change. The Argentine pontiff and the American president sparred early in their relationship over immigration. In 2016, Francis, alluding to then-candidate Trump and his campaign slogan of “Build the wall,” called anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants “ not Christian.” Trump said the comment was “disgraceful.”

But after Francis’ death, the Republican president praised him as a “good man” who “worked hard” and “loved the world.” Trump also directed that U.S. flags be flown at half-staff in Francis’ honor.

Trump had said on a couple of occasions before leaving Washington that he would have “a lot” of meetings with counterparts on the sidelines of the funeral. But he seemed to back away from that as he flew to Rome.

“Frankly, it’s a little disrespectful to have meetings when you’re at the funeral of a pope,” the president told reporters accompanying him aboard Air Force One. Nonetheless, Trump said: “I’ll be talking to people. I’ll be seeing a lot of people.”

The leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Hungary and Argentina are among those expected to attend.

One person Trump didn’t expect to interact with is former President Joe Biden, who planned to attend the funeral with his wife, Jill. Trump said he wasn’t aware his Democratic predecessor would be at the funeral. Asked if they’d meet, Trump said: “It’s not high on my list. It’s really not.”

The pope’s funeral will not be one of those occasions that bring together the current and former U.S. presidents. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are not attending, their offices said. A spokesperson for former President Bill Clinton did not respond to an inquiry about his plans.

Trump didn’t elaborate when asked if he’d just be meeting leaders in passing or holding more in-depth talks. He suggested he might have meetings at Villa Taverna, the U.S. ambassador’s residence, where he spent the night.

“It’s a little tough because we don’t have much time,” Trump said, noting his late arrival in Rome. He was scheduled to head back to the United States immediately after the funeral.

“I think that we’re going to try and see a couple of people that are important in what we’re doing,” said Trump, who is trying to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and negotiate trade agreements with multiple countries.

He posted on Truth Social shortly after arriving in Rome that Ukraine and Russia should meet for “very high level talks” on ending the bloody three-year war sparked by Russia’s invasion. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier Friday, and Trump said both sides were “very close to a deal.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Rome on Saturday to attend the funeral, his press office confirmed, joining first lady Olena Zelenska. Putin is not attending.