Category: National News Feed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is expected late Thursday to approve President Donald Trump’s request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid as Republicans target institutions and programs they view as bloated or out of step with their agenda.

The White House had described the package as a test case and said that if Congress went along, more would come. The House’s approval would mark the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted a rescissions request to Congress. Trump undertook a similar effort in his first term, but the bill faltered in the Senate.

Opponents voiced concerns not only about the programs targeted, but about Congress ceding its spending powers to the executive branch as investments approved on a bipartisan basis are being subsequently canceled on party-line votes. No Democrats supported the measure when it passed the Senate, 51-48, in the early morning hours Thursday. Two Republicans also voted no.

The House has already approved a previous version of the bill. But it now needs to take up the version that passed the Senate before it can be sent to Trump’s desk for his signature.

“We need to get back to fiscal sanity and this is an important step,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters shortly after the chamber opened.

The package cancels about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

The effort to claw back a sliver of federal spending comes just weeks after Republicans also muscled through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase the U.S. debt by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

A heavy blow to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPR represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.

The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Democrats were unsuccessful in restoring the cut in the Senate.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies have voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”

Later in the day Tuesday, as the Senate debated the bill, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.

But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”

Inside the cuts to foreign aid

Among the foreign aid cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and family reunification for refugees and $496 million to provide food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There also is a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost economies and democratic institutions in developing nations.

Democrats argued that the Republican administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.

“When we retreat from the world diplomatically and through our assistance to vulnerable people, America will be alone, without allies, in a less stable world,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “And you know who will come out ahead? China. Russia. Iran.”

The White House argued that many of the cuts would incentivize other nations to step up and do more to respond to humanitarian crises and that the rescissions best served the American taxpayer.

“The money that we’re clawing back in this rescissions package is the people’s money. We ought not to forget that,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chair of the House Rules Committee.

After objections from several Republicans, Senate GOP leaders took out a $400 million cut to PEPFAR, a politically popular program to combat HIV/AIDS that is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under Republican President George W. Bush.

Looking ahead to future spending fights

Democrats say the bill upends a legislative process that typically requires lawmakers from both parties to work together to fund the nation’s priorities.

Triggered by the official rescissions request from the White House, the legislation only needs a simple majority vote to advance instead of the 60 votes usually required to break a filibuster. That meant Republicans could use their 53-47 majority to pass it along party lines.

In the end, two Republican senators, Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, joined with Democrats in voting against the bill, though a few other Republicans also raised concerns about the process.

“Let’s not make a habit of this,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who voted for the bill but said he was wary that the White House wasn’t providing enough information on what exactly will be cut.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the imminent successful passage of the rescissions shows “enthusiasm” for getting the nation’s fiscal situation under control.

“We’re happy to go to great lengths to get this thing done,” he said during a breakfast with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

In response to questions about the relatively small size of the cuts — $9 billion — Vought said that was because “I knew it would be hard” to pass in Congress. Vought said another rescissions package is ’likely to come soon.”

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho judge lifted a sweeping gag order Thursday in Bryan Kohberger’s quadruple murder case.

Kohberger avoided a potential death sentence by pleading guilty earlier this month to the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students at a rental home near campus in 2022.

A coalition of news organizations including The Associated Press had asked the court to lift the gag order since a trial is no longer planned.

During a hearing Thursday morning, 4th District Judge Steven Hippler agreed that lifting the gag order would protect the First Amendment rights of the public and press.

“The primary purpose of the non-dissemination order, which is to ensure that we can seat an impartial jury, is no longer at play,” Hippler said. He said he couldn’t justify continuing the gag order because the public has the right to receive information about the case, and those rights are “paramount.”

Kohberger’s defense team argued against lifting the gag order, saying it could lead to more media coverage and jeopardize the integrity of the sentencing process.

“The media frenzy, as it’s been described, will continue regardless,” Hippler said. “Lifting the non-dissemination order does not require the counsel or others previously bound by it to speak.”

A different judge in Moscow, Idaho, originally issued the gag order early in the case, saying additional publicity could harm Kohberger’s right to a fair trial.

More than 240 orders sealing documents have been issued in the case since it began in 2022. The media coalition also asked Hippler to immediately unseal those documents. He said he would go through the documents carefully to determine which ones could be made public, but said that process would not start until the sentencing is over.

Though the gag order has been lifted, both the prosecutor’s office and the defense team declined interview requests for now, as did former Moscow Police Chief James Fry.

Kohberger admitted to breaking into the rental home through a sliding door and killing the four friends, who had no connection with him.

Prosecutors said he spent months carefully planning the attack, and that his studies as a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University helped him take steps to cover up his tracks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the United States, according to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press.

The information will give ICE officials the ability to find “the location of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement has not been announced publicly.

The extraordinary disclosure of millions of such personal health data to deportation officials is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people daily.

Lawmakers and some CMS officials have challenged the legality of deportation officials’ access to some states’ Medicaid enrollee data. It’s a move, first reported by the AP last month, that Health and Human Services officials said was aimed at rooting out people enrolled in the program improperly.

But the latest data-sharing agreement makes clear what ICE officials intend to do with the health data.

“ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” the agreement says.

Such an action could ripple widely

Such disclosures, even if not acted upon, could cause widespread alarm among people seeking emergency medical help for themselves or their children. Other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration have made schools, churches, courthouses and other everyday places feel perilous to immigrants and even U.S. citizens who fear getting caught up in a raid.

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon would not respond to the latest agreement. It is unclear, though, whether Homeland Security has yet accessed the information. The department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an emailed statement that the two agencies “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans.”

The database will reveal to ICE officials the names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers for all people enrolled in Medicaid. The state and federally funded program provides health care coverage program for the poorest of people, including millions of children.

The agreement does not allow ICE officials to download the data. Instead, they will be allowed to access it for a limited period from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, until Sept. 9.

“They are trying to turn us into immigration agents,” said a CMS official did not have permission to speak to the media and insisted on anonymity.

Immigrants who are not living in the U.S. legally, as well as some lawfully present immigrants, are not allowed to enroll in the Medicaid program that provides nearly-free coverage for health services. Medicaid is a jointly funded program between states and the federal government.

But federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, a temporary coverage that pays only for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to anyone, including non-U.S. citizens. Emergency Medicaid is often used by immigrants, including those who are lawfully present and those who are not.

Many people sign up for emergency Medicaid in their most desperate moments, said Hannah Katch, a previous adviser at CMS during the Biden administration.

“It’s unthinkable that CMS would violate the trust of Medicaid enrollees in this way,” Katch said. She said the personally identifiable information of enrollees has not been historically shared outside of the agency unless for law enforcement purposes to investigate waste, fraud or abuse of the program.

Trump team has pursued information aggressively

Trump officials last month demanded that the federal health agency’s staffers release personally identifiable information on millions of Medicaid enrollees from seven states that permit non-U.S. citizens to enroll in their full Medicaid programs.

The states launched these programs during the Biden administration and said they would not bill the federal government to cover the health care costs of those immigrants. All the states — California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado — have Democratic governors.

That data sharing with DHS officials prompted widespread backlash from lawmakers and governors. Twenty states have since sued over the move, alleging it violated federal health privacy laws.

CMS officials previously fought and failed to stop the data sharing that is now at the center of the lawsuits. On Monday, CMS officials were once again debating whether they should provide DHS access, citing concerns about the ongoing litigation.

In an email chain obtained by the AP called “Hold DHS Access — URGENT,” CMS chief legal officer Rujul H. Desai said they should first ask the Department of Justice to appeal to the White House directly for a “pause” on the information sharing. In a response the next day, HHS lawyer Lena Amanti Yueh said that the Justice Department was “comfortable with CMS proceeding with providing DHS access.”

Dozens of members of Congress, including Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, sent letters last month to DHS and HHS officials demanding that the information-sharing stop.

“The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American. This massive violation of our privacy laws must be halted immediately,” Schiff said in response to AP’s description of the new, expanded agreement. “It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”

The new agreement makes clear that DHS will use the data to identify, for deportation purposes, people who in the country illegally. But HHS officials have repeatedly maintained that it would be used primarily as a cost-saving measure, to investigate whether non-U.S. citizens were improperly accessing Medicaid benefits.

“HHS acted entirely within its legal authority – and in full compliance with all applicable laws – to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them,” Nixon said in a statement responding to the lawsuits last month.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is allowing vaping brand Juul to keep its e-cigarettes on the market, providing relief to a company that has struggled for years after being widely blamed for sparking the teen vaping trend.

FDA regulators said Thursday that Juul’s studies show its e-cigarettes are less harmful for adult smokers, who can benefit from switching completely to vaping.

The FDA decision applies to both tobacco- and menthol-flavored versions of the reusable product, which works with nicotine-filled cartridges sold in two different strengths. Juul previously discontinued several fruit and candy flavors that helped drive its popularity but were favored by teens.

Juul will be one of only two U.S. companies authorized to sell menthol-flavored vapes, which many adults prefer to tobacco flavor.

“This is an important milestone for the company and I think we made a scientifically sound case for the role that menthol can play in e-vapor,” Juul CEO K.C. Crosthwaite told The Associated Press.

Parents, politicians and antitobacco groups are certain to oppose FDA’s decision. They have argued for years that Juul should be permanently banned from selling its products due to its role in triggering a yearslong spike in underage vaping

Juul was once valued at over $13 billion and its small, sleek e-cigarettes revolutionized the image and technology of the vaping industry. But the company has since been forced to slash hundreds of jobs and pay billions to settle lawsuits over its role in the rise of youth vaping.

The FDA had ordered the company to remove its products from the market in June 2022. But then the agency abruptly reversed course days later and agreed to reopen its scientific review of Juul’s application after the company pushed back in court.

Juul said that regulators had overlooked thousands of pages of scientific data critical to its submission.

Thursday’s announcement is not an approval or endorsement, and the FDA reiterated that people who do not smoke should not use Juul or any other e-cigarettes. The FDA determination indicates that smokers who switch completely to Juul can reduce their exposure to deadly carcinogens and other chemicals found in traditional cigarettes.

The FDA decision applies to Juul’s original product, which is now roughly a decade old. Crosthwaite said the company hopes to win authorization for its next-generation device and is also considering applying to FDA for more flavors.

In recent years, the FDA has authorized a handful of e-cigarettes to help adult smokers cut back on traditional cigarettes, while rejecting more than a million other vaping products that failed to meet agency standards. Juul’s main competitors, Vuse and Njoy, each previously received FDA permission to remain on the market.

To meet FDA requirements, companies must show that their e-cigarettes benefit public health. In practice, that means proving that adult smokers who use them are likely to quit or reduce their smoking, while teens are unlikely to get hooked on them.

The brainchild of two Stanford University students, Juul launched in 2015 and within two years rocketed to the top of the vaping market.

Juul quickly outpaced earlier brands with its high-nicotine, fruity-flavored cartridges, sold in mango, mint and creme brulé. The company’s small, discrete devices provided a more potent, user-friendly alternative to older, bulkier devices.

But the company’s rise was fueled by underage use, and e-cigarettes quickly became ubiquitous in U.S. schools. In 2019, the company was pressured into halting all advertising and eliminating most of its flavors, leaving only tobacco and menthol-flavored options.

By then the company was already the target of multiple investigations and lawsuits by federal, state and local officials as well as class action attorneys.

In 2022, the company paid $1.7 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits brought by families of Juul users, school districts, city governments and Native American tribes. The company separately agreed to pay $1.1 billion to settle lawsuits or investigations from most U.S. states.

Juul is no longer the top-selling e-cigarette brand and now trails Vuse, which is sold by Reynolds American.

Teens have also shifted away from the brand amid a wider drop in vaping, according to the latest federal survey. The FDA reported last year that teen vaping dropped to a 10-year low, after stepped up enforcement against unauthorized brands imported from China, such as Elf Bar.

Unlike Juul, disposable e-cigarettes like Elf Bar still come in fruit and candy flavors, despite efforts by regulators to block their use.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumers picked up their spending in June after an earlier pullback, despite anxiety over tariffs and the state of the U.S. economy.

Retail sales rose a better-than-expected 0.6% in June, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after two consecutive months of spending declines, a 0.1% pullback in April and a 0.9% slowdown in May.

Retail was buoyed earlier in the year by car sales as Americans attempted to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s 25% duty on imported cars and car parts.

The erratic consumer spending is taking place during a period of mixed signals about the economy as well. The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March, but the U.S. job market is proving to be very resilient, and major tariffs keep getting postponed.

Healthy spending continues, with a heavy focus on necessities, rather than electronics or new appliances.

Yet consumers haven’t completely cut out spending on nonessential goods. Sales at restaurants, the lone services component within the Census Bureau report and a barometer of discretionary spending, rose moderately.

“Consumers are only feeling a modest amount of pressure from tariffs, and any weakness here is not having much of an effect in forcing them to pull back on more discretionary areas of spending such as restaurants and bars,” wrote William Blair’s macro analyst Richard de Chazal.

Yet Chazal fears that the administration may be picking up false assurances from strong consumer spending. Consumer sentiment and markets have tumbled after aggressive tariff announcements, and many economist expect rising prices will have a greater impact on consumers before the year is over.

Retail sales in June included a 1.2% gain in sales of autos and auto parts. Spending expanded across most major categories including clothing and personal care. Excluding autos and automotive parts, sales rose 0.5%, according to the Commerce Department

Clothing and accessories sales rose 0.9%, while health and personal care sales saw a 0.5% bump. Online retailers recorded a 0.4% gain.

Electronics and appliance retailers, furniture stores and department stores all saw sales declines. The products sold in these sectors are heavily imported.

A category of sales that excludes volatile sectors such as gas, cars, and restaurants rose last month by 0.5% from the previous month. The figure feeds into the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s consumption estimate and is sign that consumers are still spending on some discretionary items.

Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that layoffs remain low and consumers are still confident enough that the economy is chugging along.

“Don’t count the American consumer out yet,” said Long in a statement. “There’s still a lot of trepidation about tariffs and likely price hikes, but consumers are willing to buy if they feel they can get a good deal. The word of the summer for the economy is resilient.”

The retail sales report arrives amid a whipsaw frenzy of on and off again tariffs have that jolted businesses and households. Business owners say it’s become very difficult to manage supplies and inventories. Americans, when they do shop, are generally steering clear of the things they don’t absolutely need.

The latest government report showed that inflation rose last month to its highest level since February as Trump’s sweeping tariffs push up the costs of everything from groceries and clothes to furniture and appliances.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3% from May to June, after rising just 0.1% the previous month.

Trump insists that the U.S. effectively has no inflation as he has attempted to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell into reducing short-term interest rates.

Yet the new inflation data makes it increasingly likely that the central bank will leave rates where they are for at least a bit longer. Powell has said that he wants to measure the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs on prices before reducing borrowing costs.

A notable litmus test about the state of the consumer was Amazon’s four-day Prime event along with competing retail sales from the likes of Walmart and Target that kicked off last week. Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks online sales, reported that the sales events drove $24.1 billion in online spending, a 30.3% increase compared with the same period last year.

And again, those who were spending prioritized essentials like dish soap and paper products over big-ticket purchases, according to consumer data provider Numerator, based on its analysis of Amazon Prime orders.

Deborah Weinswig, founder and CEO of Coresight Research, said she’s becoming more optimistic about the financial health of the consumer after the big retail events. She said inventories are at a healthy level, and she didn’t see big fire sales.

”People aren’t buying things that they don’t need,” she said. “I think it’s a healthier retail environment.”

Retailers are now turning their attention to the back-to-school shopping season, which is the second largest consumer rush after the winter holidays. Coresight Research estimates that total U.S. back-to-school spending will increase by 3.3% year compared with the year-ago period, to $33.3 billion. And it predicts that shoppers will do a big chunk of their shopping before August to get ahead of tariffs.

Economists will also dissect quarterly financial reports next month from major retailers like Walmart, Target and Macy’s, both for consumer behavior and to gauge how businesses are navigating a chaotic period of global trade due to fluid U.S. policies.

Levi Strauss & Co. said last week that it was cutting back on making styles that aren’t selling and making targeted price increases as it moves production away from China due to tariffs.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — In 2006, top U.S. Border Patrol officials were asked how long it would take to hire 6,000 agents, a roughly 50% increase at the time. Michael Fisher, then deputy chief in San Diego, says the officials concluded they would need five years.

“You have 2 1/2 years,” Fisher recalls being told.

With Immigration and Customs Enforcement now preparing to add 10,000 employees within five years to assist with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, the Border Patrol’s torrid expansion in the early 2000s serves as a cautionary tale. Hiring and training standards were changed and arrests for employee misconduct rose. Pressure to turbo-charge growth can also lead to attrition.

“If they don’t uphold pretty rigorous standards and background checks, you can end up hiring the wrong people, and then you pay a huge price in how the public perceives them,” said Gil Kerlikowske, who was commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, from 2014 to 2017.

ICE, the main agency responsible for arresting and deporting people within the U.S., is set to get $76.5 billion, nearly 10 times its annual budget, under a bill Trump signed on July 4. Most of that money is for detention, but some is for hiring and other uses. The White House says ICE will grow from 20,000 employees to about 30,000.

“To do it today is an effort that needs to start years ago,” said Matthew Hudak, former Border Patrol deputy chief. “The funding is there, but it is nearly impossible to bring in that many people that quickly because you hit challenges.”

Sponsoring a NASCAR race car and bull riding contests

The Border Patrol nearly doubled its workforce from 11,264 agents in October 2005 to 21,444 agents six years later.

To recruit officers, the agency sponsored a NASCAR race car and bull riding contests. It aired ads during Dallas Cowboys football games. It advertised at military bases. Billboards and job fairs hundreds of miles from the border promised fulfilling careers, resulting in thousands of applications a week.

The agency also loosened some hiring guidelines and training requirements. The age limit for new hires was raised to 40 years old from 37. Spanish language training was cut by up to 30 days, some training was moved online and other instruction was shifted to the field to lessen time at a training academy that the agency opened in Artesia, New Mexico, during the hiring surge, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Arrests for illegal crossings fell to their lowest levels in decades — a sign for some that the strategy succeeded.

But other measurements were more troubling.

In 2008, the Border Patrol struggled to keep new agents, with about 20% failing to graduate from the academy and more leaving after returning to their stations.

Arrests of CBP employees for misconduct increased to 336 in the 2012 fiscal year from 190 seven years earlier. The agency saw a spate of high-profile corruption cases, including agents accused of smuggling people across the border or working with drug cartels to bring illegal drugs into the U.S.

The polygraph pass rate for new applicants tumbled to 33% in 2012 from 58% four years earlier. While the accuracy of the tests came under scrutiny, one applicant admitted that his brother-in-law, a known Mexican drug smuggler, asked him to use his employment to facilitate cocaine trafficking. Another admitted to using marijuana 9,000 times, including the night before the exam.

A 2015 Homeland Security report found that the number of investigators assigned to internal wrongdoing was “woefully inadequate” for the agency’s growth.

“Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well,” said T.J. Bonner, the former president of the Border Patrol agents union who retired in 2011. “Too many corners have to be cut. Then when things go wrong. the fingers get pointed.”

Stiff competition for qualified applicants

ICE and Homeland Security did not respond to questions about lessons that the Border Patrol’s hiring spree or detailed plans for hiring at ICE.

“The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hard-working officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, said after Trump signed the bill.

Critics say the administration’s policy to target anyone in the country illegally, not just those with criminal records, could lead to abuses. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and lead architect of his immigration policies, had set an aggressive target of at least 3,000 arrests a day even before any additional hiring.

“When there are no priorities, everybody’s a priority,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director of the American Immigration Council. “You’re very likely to see confusion, delay, wrongful arrest, more mistakes when law enforcement agencies, especially large ones, don’t have clear direction and guidance for prioritization.”

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said competition for qualified law enforcement is tough, with departments now offering signing bonuses of $10,000 to $100,000.

Border Patrol staffing has yet to return to its peaks of the early 2010s. Trump tried to increase staffing in his first term. A contract with consulting firm Accenture PLC cost $13.6 million to set up in 2018 and resulted in only two hires over 10 months.

Trump’s bill allocates about $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement, with $4.1 billion for CBP hiring that includes 3,000 more Border Patrol agents. It comes at a time of historically low crossings after they reached a record high in December 2023.

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Spagat reported from San Diego.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the wholesome pop star of the 1950s and ‘60s whose hits included “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter would serve as an ironic title for a personal life filled with heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.

Radio DJ Bruce “Cousin Brucie” Morrow, a longtime friend, told The Associated Press that she died Wednesday at a hospital in Florida, the state where she had lived for years. Morrow did not cite a specific cause of death, but Francis had posted on social media earlier this month that she had been hospitalized with “extreme pain.”

Francis had gained renewed attention in recent months after “Pretty Little Baby” became a sensation on TikTok, with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among the many celebrities citing it.

“I’m flabbergasted and excited about the huge buzz my 1962 recording of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ is making all over the world,” she said in a video on TikTok, which she had joined in response to the song’s unexpected revival. “To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me.”

Francis was a top performer of the pre-Beatles era, rarely out of the charts from 1957-64. Able to appeal to both young people and adults, she had more than a dozen Top 20 hits, starting with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and including the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like other teen favorites of her time, she also starred in several films, including “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”

The dark-haired singer was just 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on several TV variety shows. Her earliest recordings attracted little attention, but then she released her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an old ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

It, too, had little success initially until Dick Clark played it on his “American Bandstand” show in 1958. Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she said in later years that without his support, she would have abandoned her music career.

Francis followed with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her records became hits worldwide as she re-recorded versions of her original songs in Italian and Spanish, among other languages. Her concerts around the country quickly sold out.

Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to write songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair was planning a wedding, he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path.

She chronicled some of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”

“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she told The Associated Press in 1984, the year the book came out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”

Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who played the accordion. She was just 3 when her father presented her with a child-size accordion, as soon as she began to show an aptitude for music. When she was 4, he began booking singing dates for her, going on to become her manager.

Although her acting career had faded by the mid-1960s, Francis was still popular on the concert circuit when she appeared at the Westbury Music Fair in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her hotel room and was asleep when a man broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was never captured.

Francis sued the hotel, alleging its security was faulty, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of court for $1,475,000 as an appeal was pending. She said the attack destroyed her marriage and put her through years of emotional turmoil.

She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to death as he was leaving his New Jersey home. Later that decade, her father had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. At one point, she tried to kill herself by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.

Around that time, she wrote to President Ronald Reagan and volunteered to help others, calling herself ″America’s most famous crime victim.″ Reagan appointed her to a task force on violent crime.

″I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,″ she told The New York Times in 1981. ″I have my voice, a gift from God I took for granted before. He gave it back to me.″

She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was worth the trouble. The other marriages each lasted less than a year.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. At age 9 she began appearing on television programs, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who suggested she shorten her last name.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the Westbury Music Fair, not the Westbury Music Center.

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National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed. Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Associated Press and the principal writer of this obituary, died in 2014.

LONDON (AP) — Smartphones, laptops, headphones and other electronic devices are essential for work and play in our daily lives. But all that time spent typing, scrolling or listening also means our devices gradually accumulate grime that needs to be cleaned off.

You might not give much thought to cleaning your devices but there are reasons you should, says Logitech, which makes keyboards, webcams and other computer peripherals.

“Regular cleaning and proper maintenance not only keeps your gadgets looking pristine, and wins you hygiene points, it also helps them perform better and last longer,” the company says. “In the case of devices like earbuds, the accumulated bacteria and debris may even cause health issues or discomfort.”

Here are some pointers on cleaning your tech:

Getting started

Always check if the manufacturer has any specific guidelines for cleaning.

Assemble some basic equipment and material for cleaning, which should include a soft and lint-free cleaning cloth, like a microfiber cloth; cotton swabs; a soft-bristled brush like a toothbrush, paintbrush or makeup brush; compressed air and isopropyl alcohol.

Isopropyl, or rubbing alcohol, is a cleaning solvent that’s antiseptic and antibacterial. It’s popular for cleaning electronics because it doesn’t leave any residue and dries quickly. But you might want to wear gloves to avoid skin irritation. Drip some of it on a cloth instead of pouring it directly onto your device. Also heed some of the more specific warnings below.

Water and mild soap can be useful for cleaning dirty surfaces, but isopropyl alcohol is recommended for cleaning the internals of a device, said Alex Diaz-Kokaisl, senior technical writer at electronics repair company iFixit.

“While there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule for cleaning electronics, we generally use high-concentration isopropyl alcohol (more than 90%) because it evaporates quickly,” he said. “The faster a liquid evaporates, the less likely it is to affect any components that conduct electricity.”

For whatever device you’re cleaning, disconnect or power it off first. Remove any cases, plugs, covers and accessories.

Computers and laptops

When using a computer, the keyboard and mouse are the parts that are touched most often and therefore need the most frequent cleaning. And all those crevices between a keyboard’s keys are sure to catch crumbs.

To remove any loose debris, iFixit’s official in-house cleaning guide recommends using a can of compressed air. Run the spray back and forth across the keys to blow out any bits. If possible, hold the keyboard upside down so the debris falls out.

If you don’t have compressed air, Logitech suggests using a hair dryer on the cold air setting. Some social media users also recommend a handheld balloon pump.

Next, dampen a cleaning cloth with water and gently wipe down the keyboard and mouse.

Logitech says you can also use rubbing alcohol but recommends you test it first on an inconspicuous spot to make sure it doesn’t cause discoloration or scrub the lettering off the keys.

Anti-bacterial baby wipes can also work on devices like a mouse, Diaz-Kokaisl said.

“There shouldn’t be enough liquid to seep through cracks in the shell, and their residue typically evaporates faster than just using soap and water,” he said.

For laptop screens or external monitors, use a dry microfiber cloth to gently wipe away fingerprint smudges.

If there are more stubborn spots — like food stains or sneezy spatters — dampen the cloth with distilled water or a 50/50 solution of distilled water and vinegar.

Computer maker Lenovo says the “gentle acidity of vinegar can help break down oils and fingerprints.” Avoid using household glass cleaners, which can contain ammonia that could damage the screen. The same goes for paper towels, which can scratch the screen. HP also warns against using rubbing alcohol.

AirPods and earphones

A lot of people listen to music or podcasts through their earbuds, but that also means they’ll need regular cleaning to remove any earwax, natural skin oils or other grungy buildup.

If the earbuds have silicon tips, remove them. Cleaning procedures vary depending on your brand and model. Logitech and Bose recommend using soapy water. But Sony warns against water or wet wipes because they can speed deterioration, and, instead, advises using a dry cloth.

Use a cotton swab to wipe the earbud nozzles clean.

Owners of Apple AirPods need to follow a much more elaborate procedure to clean the mesh. You’ll need a child’s toothbrush, two small cups, a paper towel, distilled water, as well as micellar water — typically used as a facial cleanser.

Pour some micellar water into a cup, dip the toothbrush, brush the AirPod’s various mesh parts, and then blot them dry with the paper. Repeat twice. Then repeat that procedure but using the distilled water to rinse off the micellar water. Finally, let the AirPods dry for at least two hours.

To clean the rest of the AirPod’s body, use a damp cloth. And don’t forget about the charging case. Apple recommends brushing out any debris and then wiping with a dry cloth. If needed, dampen it with isopropyl alcohol.

What about over-the-ear headphones? Bose says you should wipe them down at least once a week, especially after working out, to remove any dirt and bacteria hiding in the nooks and crannies. Remove the pads and use a cloth dampened with soapy water to clean them.

Smartphones

Apple has issued specific instructions on its website for cleaning various iPhone models. Samsung has posted similar guidelines for its Galaxy lineup.

They both advise using a soft, lint-free cloth, such as a lens cleaning cloth, to gently wipe the outside of the phone. Apple warns against using any cleaning products, which could erode the oil-repellent coating that most iPhones come with.

Both companies say it’s OK to use disinfectants such as rubbing alcohol to gently clean the exterior, but avoid bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

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Before the mayor of San Jose, California, arrives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, his aides ask ChatGPT to help draft some talking points.

“Elected officials do a tremendous amount of public speaking,” said Mayor Matt Mahan, whose recent itinerary has taken him from new restaurant and semiconductor startup openings to a festival of lowriding car culture.

Other politicians might be skittish admitting a chatbot co-wrote their speech or that it helped draft a $5.6 billion budget for the new fiscal year, but Mahan is trying to lead by example, pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley’s biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology.

Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1 million residents.

He’s hardly the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes.

“The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,” Mahan said in an interview. “It’s always bumpy with new technologies.”

By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15%, of its workers trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes.

One of San Jose’s early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city’s transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12 million grant for electric vehicle chargers.

Arjona Amador set up a customized “AI agent” to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document.

So far, San Jose has spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses — at $400 per account — for city workers to use.

“The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,” she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government.

Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings.

With close relationships to some of the tech industry’s biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area’s biggest cities are helping to promote the type of AI adoption that the tech industry is striving for, while also promising guidelines and standards to avoid the technology’s harms.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT. San Francisco’s plan says it comes with “robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances — not replaces — human judgment.”

San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn’t yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology’s propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations.

ChatGPT’s digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission.

In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document.

While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches.

“Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,” he said. “You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.”

He added, however, that “you still need a human being in the loop. You can’t just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.”

Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person’s behalf. Developing and selling such “AI agents” is now a key focus for the tech industry.

More than an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent.

Perhaps the parks and recreation department could let an AI agent help residents book a public park or swimming pool for a birthday party. Or residents could find out how crowded the pool was before packing their swim clothes.

Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn’t buy a full license for the technology due to the cost.

The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40% of “agentic AI” projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, “due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.”

San Jose’s mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers “in the bowels of bureaucracy” to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork.

“There’s just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,” Mahan said. “Whether it’s finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 (to) 50% more productive — quickly.”

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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in three months, a sign that the U.S. labor market remains sturdy despite fears over the impact of widespread U.S. tariffs.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims for the week ending July 12 fell by 7,000 to 221,000, the fifth straight weekly decline and the fewest since mid-April. Last week’s number was also lower than the 232,000 that analysts forecast. Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as representative of layoffs.

Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added a surprising 147,000 jobs in June, adding to evidence that the American labor market continues to show resilience despite uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s economic policies. The job gains were much bigger than expected and the unemployment rate ticked down 4.1% from 4.2% in May. Analysts were expecting the unemployment to rise to 4.3%.

Though the job market is broadly healthy by historical standards, some weakness has surfaced as employers contend with fallout from Trump’s policies, especially his aggressive tariffs, which raise prices for businesses and consumers. Most economists believe the import duties make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters and potentially driving businesses to freeze hiring or cut staff.

The deadline on most of Trump’s stiff proposed taxes on imports were extended again until Aug. 1. Unless Trump reaches deals with other countries to lower the tariffs, economists fear they could act as a drag on the economy and trigger another bout of inflation.

Companies that have announced job cuts this year include Procter & Gamble, Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Google and Facebook parent company Meta.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday said that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the weekly ups and downs, fell by 6,250 to 229,500.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the week of July 5 remained stable, ticking up by just 2,000 to 1.96 million.