Category: National News Feed

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump sent the U.S. stock market on a jagged round trip Wednesday after saying he had “talked about the concept of firing” the head of the Federal Reserve. Such a move could help Wall Street get the lower interest rates it loves but would also risk a weakened Fed unable to make the unpopular moves needed to keep inflation under control.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3% after whipping through an earlier drop and subsequent recovery.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 231 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its record set the day before.

Stocks had been rising modestly in the morning, before news reports saying that Trump was likely to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell quickly sent the S&P 500 down by 0.7%.

When later asked directly if he was planning to fire Powell, Trump said, “I don’t rule out anything, but I think it’s highly unlikely.” That helped calm the market, and stocks erased their losses, though Trump added that he could still fire Powell if “he has to leave for fraud.” Trump has been criticizing a $2.5 billion renovation project underway of the Fed’s headquarters.

Trump’s main problem with Powell has been how the Fed has not cut interest rates this year, a move that would have made it easier for U.S. households and businesses to get loans to buy houses, build factories and otherwise boost the economy. Lower interest rates could also help the U.S. government, which is set to borrow and add a lot more to its debt after approving a wide range of tax cuts.

Powell, meanwhile, has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s stiff proposed tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move.

The Fed has two main jobs: keeping the job market strong while keeping inflation under control. Lowering interest rates would help boost the economy but would also give inflation more fuel when tariffs may be set to push prices for U.S. households higher.

A report on Wednesday said inflation at the wholesale level slowed to 2.3% last month, which was better than economists expected. It’s an encouraging signal, but it came a day after another report suggested that Trump’s tariffs are pushing up the prices U.S. shoppers are paying for toys, apparel and other imported products.

Trump’s tariffs are making their weight felt across financial markets. ASML, the world’s leading supplier of chipmaking gear, warned that it can’t guarantee growth next year, after delivering an expected 15% growth in sales for 2025.

Conditions still look strong for ASML’s customers in the artificial-intelligence business, but CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a video that “the level of uncertainty is increasing, mostly due to macroeconomic and geopolitical consideration. And that includes, of course, tariffs.”

Shares that trade in the United States of ASML, which is based in the Netherlands, fell 8.3%.

Stocks of several U.S. companies reporting stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected helped offset that.

Johnson & Johnson jumped 6.2% after the drug and medical device giant beat analysts’ sales and profit targets and raised its full-year forecasts for both. CEO Joaquin Duato said it expects “game-changing approvals and submissions” in the second half of 2025 on an array of products, including for lung and bladder cancer.

PNC Financial Services Group added 0.9% following its better-than-expected quarterly report, thanks in part to loan growth despite what CEO Bill Demchak called “an uncertain macro environment.”

GrabAGun, an online retailer of firearms and ammunition, swung sharply after combining with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II and taking its spot on the stock market under the ticker symbol “PEW.” Donald Trump Jr., the son of President Trump, is joining the company’s board.

The stock quickly went from an early gain of 19% to a drop of 31% before finishing with a loss of 23.9%, with several halts in trading along the way.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 19.94 points to 6,263.70. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 231.49 to 44,254.78, and the Nasdaq composite gained 52.69 to 20,730.49.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell to 4.45% from 4.50% late Tuesday. It had been as low as 4.44% earlier in the day, but it climbed following the reports that Trump was likely to fire Powell.

A new Fed chair friendlier to Trump could mean lower short-term interest rates but also the opposite effect on longer-term yields. That’s because a less independent Fed would raise worries that it may also let inflation run higher in the future by being slow to raise interest rates.

In stock markets abroad, indexes mostly fell amid relatively modest movements.

Stocks rose 0.7% in Jakarta after Trump said Tuesday that he plans to charge imports from Indonesia a tariff of 19%, instead of the 32% that he had threatened earlier, after reaching a trade deal.

Indonesia’s central bank also cut its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, to 5.25%.

“We have calculated everything and discussed everything. The most important thing for me is my people, as I must protect the interests of our workers,” Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto told reporters, adding that “this is our offer, and we are not able to give more (to the United States).”

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Kelvin Chan and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

Twenty-one children are in the custody of a California child-welfare agency while authorities investigate a Los Angeles-area couple and whether they misled surrogate mothers around the country.

Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia after an abuse allegation in May, and another six living elsewhere were also located, Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo said. They range in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3.

“We believe one or two were born biologically to the mother,” he said. “There are some surrogates who have come forward and said they were surrogates for the children.”

Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, are believed to be the legal parents, Cieadlo said.

They were arrested in May after a hospital reported that their 2-month-old infant had a traumatic head injury, the result of a nanny at the home violently shaking the baby, Arcadia police said. The child was not taken to the hospital for another two days.

Cieadlo said neglect charges were not formally pursued in order for an investigation to continue. The couple told police that they “wanted a large family,” the lieutenant said.

Zhang produced what appeared to be legitimate birth certificates, including some from outside California, that list her as the mother of the children, Cieadlo said.

He said the FBI is also part of the investigation. A spokesperson declined to comment when reached Wednesday by The Associated Press.

“I’m not familiar with how the surrogacy laws work,” Cieadlo said. “We need to do a much deeper dive.”

TV stations in Los Angeles quoted women who said they were surrogate mothers for the couple but that they didn’t realize so many other surrogates were also involved.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Zhang and Xuan had a lawyer who could speak on their behalf. Zhang did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Business records with the California Secretary of State show a company called Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC was previously registered at the couple’s address. The most recent filing shows the business license was terminated in June.

Kallie Fell, director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, which believes surrogacy exploits women, posted a recent YouTube video of her interview with a Texas woman who gave birth last spring.

“She was lied to. She was told this couple had one other child and they wanted one more child to complete a family,” Fell told The Associated Press. “She didn’t know they were the owners of the surrogacy agency. They operate with zero oversight.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which removed the couple’s children, said it could not talk about its actions in a specific case.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was “highly unlikely” to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a public statement made less than 24 hours after suggesting in a private meeting that he was leaning in favor of dismissing the head of the nation’s central bank.

Trump confirmed that in a White House meeting Tuesday night with about a dozen House Republicans he had discussed the “concept” of dismissing Powell, long a target because of his refusal to lower interest rates as Trump wants.

“Almost every one of them said I should,” Trump said about the lawmakers who had come to talk to him about crypto legislation.

He indicated he was leaning in that direction, according to a White House official. During that session, Trump waved a letter about firing Powell, but a person familiar with the matter said it was essentially a prop drafted by someone else and that the Republican president has not drafted such a letter.

Neither source was authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and they spoke only on condition on anonymity.

Trump made his comment about being “highly unlikely” to dismiss Powell — ”unless he has to leave for fraud” — during an Oval Office meeting with Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain.

In recent days, White House and administration officials have accused Powell of mismanaging a $2.5 billion renovation project at the Fed, adding to months of efforts by Trump try to rid himself of the politically independent central banker.

U.S. stocks were shaky as Trump spoke about Powell on Wednesday. The S&P 500’s modest gain in the morning became a drop of 0.7% after initial reports that the president may fire the Fed chair. Stocks then trimmed their losses after Trump’s later comment.

Treasury yields also swiveled in the bond market but remained mostly calm.

Those at the White House meeting were among the more far-right lawmakers, including members of the House Freedom Cause whose views are not always shared by other Republicans. In the Senate, Republicans have taken a more guarded approach. Some have backed Powell’s performance at the Fed as they await an inspector general’s review of the construction project.

In a speech Wednesday, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said if Powell is dismissed, “you are going to see a pretty immediate response”

“If anybody thinks it would be a good idea for the Fed to become another agency in the government subject to the president, they’re making a huge mistake,” said Tillis, who has announced that he is not running for reelection.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said this week that Powell “has done a decent job.”

“I don’t think he’s been perfect,” he said, adding that there have been times they disagreed, but “I do believe that the chairman is calling them like he sees them.”

Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee had been scheduled to meet with Powell on Wednesday evening in a gathering set months ago, but it was abruptly canceled due to votes in the House, according to a committee aide granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York, AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million.

The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million.

The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official bid price was about $5.3 million.

Two advance bids of $1.9 million and $2 million were submitted. The live bidding went slower than for many other objects that were sold, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the $200,000 to $300,000 bid intervals to $100,000 after the proposals hit $4 million.

The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby’s says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).

It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in an interview before the auction. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”

It’s not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars, but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby’s says.

Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.

The examination found that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says.

It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn’t just some big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.

Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6 million, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs. The original estimate was $4 million to $6 million.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It’s more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long.

Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it’s ready to exhibit, Sotheby’s says.

The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby’s says.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.

The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Federal authorities have charged three current or former Louisiana police chiefs with taking bribes in exchange for filing false police reports that would allow noncitizens to seek a visa that lets certain crime victims stay in the U.S.

The false police reports would indicate that the immigrant was a victim of a crime that would qualify them to apply for a so-called U visa, U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook said Wednesday at a news conference in Lafayette. He said the police officials were paid $5,000 for each name they provided falsified reports for, and that there were hundreds of names.

There had been “an unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana,” Van Hook said, noting that two other people were also charged in the alleged scheme.

“In fact, the armed robberies never took place,” he said.

Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a 62 count indictment charging the five defendants with crimes including conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud, bribery, mail fraud and money laundering, Van Hook said.

Those charged are Oakdale Police Chief Chad Doyle, Forest Hill Police Chief Glynn Dixon, former Glenmora Police Chief Tebo Onishea, Michael “Freck” Slaney, a marshal in Oakdale, and Chandrakant “Lala” Patel, an Oakdale businessman.

If convicted, the defendants could face years or even decades of jail time. Court and jail records don’t list attorneys for any of them.

According to investigators, people seeking special visas would reach out to Patel, who would contact the lawmen and offer them a payment in exchange for falsified police reports that named the migrants as victims of armed robberies that never occurred.

The scheme went on for nearly a decade, Van Hook said.

Asked what might happen to the people who allegedly paid bribes, including whether they might be charged or their immigration status might be changed, Van Hook said he couldn’t say yet but that the investigation is ongoing.

Getting a U visa can give some crime victims and their families a pathway to U.S. citizenship. About 10,000 people got them in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2022, which was the most recent period for which the Homeland Security Department has published data.

These special visas, which were created by Congress in 2000, are specifically for victims of certain crimes “who have suffered mental or physical abuse” and are “helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,” based on a description of the program published by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“These visas are designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors prosecute crimes where you need the victim or the witness there, ” Van Hook said. “U visas serve a valuable purpose, and this is a case where they were abused.”

When asked about the extent of the fraud, Van Hook said there are “hundreds of names” —- specifically for visas that were approved.

At least two of the police chiefs had been arrested as of the Wednesday morning news conference, authorities said.

Lester Duhé, a spokesperson for the Louisiana attorney general’s office, said that office was assisting federal agents with “court-authorized activities” when asked about its role in the case.

The current or former police chiefs are from small central Louisiana municipalities that are near each other. They’re in a part of the state that is home to multiple immigration detention facilities. Although Louisiana doesn’t share a border with a foreign country, there are nine ICE detention facilities in the state — holding nearly 7,000 people.

Local news outlets reported seeing ICE and FBI agents entering the homes of two of the chiefs. Van Hook said authorities searched multiple police departments and a Subway sandwich shop that Patel operated.

Van Hook and others said at the news conference that the arrests do not mean the indicted chiefs’ departments are corrupt.

In 2021, the USCIS warned that the U visa program was susceptible to fraud after an audit from the Office of Inspector General found that administrators hadn’t addressed deficiencies in their process.

The audit found that USCIS approved a handful of suspicious law enforcement signatures that were not cross-referenced with a database of authorized signatures, according to the OIG report. They were also not closely tracking fraud case outcomes, the total number of U visas granted per year, and were not effectively managing the backlog, which led to crime victims waiting for nearly 10 years before receiving a U visa.

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This story was updated to correct that the news conference took place in Lafayette, not Baton Rouge.

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Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press writer Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed.

Pop Mart has struck it rich. The Chinese company that caters to toy connoisseurs and influencers said this week that it expects profit for the first six months of this year to jump by at least 350% compared with the prior-year period, largely because of its smash hit plush toy, the Labubu. Pop Mart joins a small list of companies that have tapped into the zeitgeist, drawing in millions of buyers who, for one reason or another, simply must get their hands on a toy or gadget of the moment.

But what makes the Labubu a must-have, or any toy for that matter, is a decades-old question that toy makers have yet to figure out.

Here’s a look at some of the most popular toys over the years.

Cabbage Patch Kids

Cabbage Patch Kids began as chubby-faced dolls with yarn hair that came with adoption papers. During the 1980s the dolls were so popular that parents waited in long lines at stores trying to get a hold of them. More than 90 million Cabbage Patch Kids were sold worldwide during their heyday.

Cabbage Patch Kids, which were created by Xavier Roberts and initially sold by Coleco, were relaunched in 2004, looking to take part in the successful return of other popular 1980s toys including Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

A Cabbage Patch Kid museum named BabyLand General Hospital still exists in Cleveland, Georgia. The dolls entered the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2023.

Beanie Baby

Beanie Babies captivated consumers in the mid-1990s. The cuddly $5 toys were under-stuffed for maximum hug-ability, stamped with cute names on their Ty Inc. tags, and given limited edition runs.

Many people collected, traded and sold the toys with the hopes that their value would just keep going up at the dawn of the e-commerce age. It made some people money, and the founder, Ty Warner, a billionaire in three years.

In 2014 Warner learned that he would not go to prison for hiding at least $25 million from U.S. tax authorities and instead received two years’ probation. Warner, one of the highest profile figures snared in a federal investigation of Americans using Swiss bank accounts to avoid U.S. taxes, had pleaded guilty to a single count of tax evasion.

Tamagotchi

Looking for a pet without the real-life responsibilities? Well then the Tamagotchi electronic pet from Bandai was for you. Consumers were hooked on the egg-shaped plastic toy that first launched in Japan in 1996 and became a craze worldwide in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Users were tasked with taking care of their virtual pet by pressing buttons that simulate feeding, disciplining and playing with the critter on screen. If a Tamagotchi is neglected, it dies.

In 2013 Tamagotchi was reborn as a mobile app, duplicating the experience of the plastic handheld toy. The toy was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in May.

Fidget Spinner

Fidget spinners — the 3-inch twirling gadgets that took over classrooms and cubicles — were all the rage in 2017. The toy was considered somewhat of an outlier at the time, given that it wasn’t made by a major company, timed for the holiday season, or promoted in TV commercials. Fidget spinners were more easily found at gas stations or 7-Eleven than at big toy chains.

Fidget spinners had been around for years, mostly used by kids with autism or attention disorders to help them concentrate, but they became more popular after being featured on social media.

While hot toys are often made by one company, fidget spinners were made by numerous manufacturers, mostly in China. The toys were marketed as a concentration aid but became so popular among children that many schools started banning them, saying that they were a distraction.

Labubu

The Labubu, by artist and illustrator Kasing Lung, first appeared as monsters with pointed ears and pointy teeth in three picture books inspired by Nordic mythology in 2015.

In 2019 Lung struck a deal with Pop Mart, a company that caters to toy connoisseurs and influencers, to sell Labubu figurines. But it wasn’t until Pop Mart started selling Labubu plush toys on key rings in 2023 that the toothy monsters suddenly seemed to be everywhere, including in the hands of Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and NBA star Dillon Brooks. K-pop singer Lisa of Blackpink began posting images of hers for her more than 100 million followers on Instagram and on TikTok, where Labubu pandemonium has broken out.

Labubu has been a bonanza for Pop Mart. Its revenue more than doubled in 2024 to 13.04 billion yuan ($1.81 billion), thanks in part to its elvish monster. Revenue from Pop Mart’s plush toys soared more than 1,200% in 2024, nearly 22% of its overall revenue, according to the company’s annual report.

HOUSTON (AP) — A judge on Wednesday set a new execution date for Robert Roberson, a Texas man who won a last-minute reprieve last year and could become the first person in the U.S. to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

State district Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set an Oct. 16 execution date for Roberson, who was brought in from death row to attend the hearing in Palestine, Texas. Shackled and wearing a black and white striped prison uniform, Roberson did not speak during the hearing.

As he was led away at the end, someone in the courtroom yelled, “We love you Robert.” Roberson replied, “I love you.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office had requested that the execution date be scheduled. Roberson’s lawyers objected, arguing Roberson still has an appeal pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that his legal team says contains “powerful new evidence of his innocence.” The latest appeal was filed five months ago.

Roberson, 58, was convicted of the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued he violently shook his daughter back and forth, causing severe head trauma in what’s called shaken baby syndrome. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.

Jackson said the lack of a ruling by the appeals court was a sign it needed more time to review the case. But he also said that he had to strike a balance between the efforts by Roberson’s legal team and a “justice system that doesn’t move, never reaches finality.”

“At some point we have to say the date needs to be set,” Jackson said.

Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s attorneys, argued there was no legal reason to set the execution date but that “perhaps there is a political reason.”

“Right now it makes no practical sense and it makes no moral sense,” Sween said.

A lawyer with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which took over the case from the Anderson County District Attorney’s Office, told the judge that with the execution still 90 days away, the appeals court has time to issue its decision.

After the hearing, Sween told reporters she planned to seek a stay and would ask that the execution date be withdrawn.

“We’re not going to stop fighting for Robert. He cannot give up hope,” Sween said.

In its latest appeal filed in February, Roberson’s legal team said that based on new evidence “no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder; and unreliable and outdated scientific and medical evidence was material to his conviction.” The new evidence includes statements from pathologists that state the girl’s death was not a homicide and who question the reliability of conclusions by the medical examiner on the cause of death.

Roberson received a last-minute stay last year after a flurry of legal challenges that were prompted by an unprecedented maneuver from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.

Roberson was in a holding cell on Oct. 17, 2024, a few feet away from America’s busiest death chamber in Huntsville, waiting to receive a lethal injection when he was granted the stay after a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for him to testify before a House committee several days after he was scheduled to die.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled in November that although the subpoena was valid, it could not be used to circumvent a scheduled execution.

Roberson never testified before the House committee as Paxton’s office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are shaky on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said he had “talked about the concept of firing” the head of the Federal Reserve. Such a move could help Wall Street get the lower interest rates that it loves but would also risk a weakened Fed unable to make the unpopular moves needed to keep inflation under control.

The S&P 500 was edging down by 0.1% in midday trading, but only after suffering a jagged drop lower and a subsequent recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 4 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 12:15 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.1% from its own record set the day before.

Stocks had been rising modestly in the morning following a better-than-expected update on inflation across the country. But midmorning news reports that Trump was likely to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell quickly sent the the S&P 500 down as much as 0.7%. When later asked directly if he was planning to fire Powell, Trump said, “I don’t rule out anything, but I think it’s highly unlikely, unless he has to leave for fraud.”

Trump has been angry with Powell for not cutting interest rates this year, a move that would make it easier for U.S. households and businesses to get loans to buy houses, build factories and otherwise boost the economy. Lower interest rates could also help the U.S. government, which is set to borrow and add a lot more to its debt after approving a wide range of tax cuts.

But Powell has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before making the Fed’s next move. While lower interest rates can help boost prices for investments, they can also give inflation more fuel. And the economy only recently came out of the post-pandemic shock that sent inflation over 9%.

A report on Wednesday said that inflation slowed by more last month at the wholesale level than economists expected, down to 2.3%. It’s an encouraging signal, but just a day before, another report suggested that Trump’s tariffs are indeed pushing up the prices U.S. shoppers are paying for toys, apparel and other imported products.

Trump’s tariffs are making their weight felt across financial markets. ASML, the world’s leading supplier of chipmaking gear, warned that it can’t guarantee any growth next year, after delivering an expected 15% growth in sales for 2025.

Conditions still look strong for ASML’s customers in the artificial-intelligence business, but CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a video that “the level of uncertainty is increasing, mostly due to macroeconomic and geopolitical consideration. And that includes, of course, tariffs.”

Shares of ASML, which is based in the Netherlands, that trade in the United States fell 9.1%.

Stocks of several U.S. companies reporting stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected helped to offset that.

Johnson & Johnson jumped 6.5% after the drug and medical device giant beat analysts’ sales and profit targets and raised its full-year forecasts for both. CEO Joaquin Duato said it expects “game-changing approvals and submissions” in the second half of 2025 on an array of products, including for lung and bladder cancer.

PNC Financial Services Group added 0.4% following its better-than-expected quarterly report, thanks in part to loan growth despite what CEO Bill Demchak called “an uncertain macro environment.”

GrabAGun, an online retailer of firearms and ammunition, swung sharply in its first day of trading after combining with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II and taking its spot on the stock market under the ticker “PEW.” Donald Trump Jr., the son of President Trump, is joining the company’s board.

The stock quickly went from an early gain of 19% to a drop of 31% before moderating its loss to 24.9%, with several halts in trading along the way.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell to 4.47% from 4.50% late Tuesday. It had been lower earlier in the day, but it erased some of its losses following the reports that Trump was likely to fire Powell. While a new Fed chair friendlier to Trump could lower short-term interest rates more quickly, the threat of a less independent Fed would raise worries that it may also let inflation run higher in the future. That, in turn, can push up yields for longer-term bonds.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mostly lower amid relatively modest movements.

Stocks rose 0.7% in Jakarta after Trump said Tuesday that he plans to charge imports from Indonesia a tariff of 19%, instead of the 32% that he had threatened earlier, after reaching a trade deal.

Indonesia’s central bank also cut its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, to 5.25%.

“We have calculated everything and discussed everything. The most important thing for me is my people, as I must protect the interests of our workers,” Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto told reporters, adding that “this is our offer, and we are not able to give more (to the United States).”

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Kelvin Chan and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

The Massachusetts assisted-living facility where a fatal fire killed nine people was caring for dozens of aging residents reliant on wheelchairs and oxygen tanks, but it lacked the safety measures and most of the staffing requirements that are commonplace in nursing homes.

As an assisted-living center, Gabriel House in Fall River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Boston, offered a type of housing for older residents that has expanded nationally in recent decades. But advocates argue that the absence of any federal regulations and spotty state rules mean the sector is largely left to police itself.

“The real issue is that assisted livings operate in an environment like the Wild West,” said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for improved care in nursing and assisted-living facilities. “They can pretty much do what they want with impunity, and that results in a lot of, I would say, mini-catastrophes every day, frankly.”

The fire that tore through the three-story, 100-unit structure late Sunday raised a host of questions about conditions at the dilapidated facility and put the spotlight on the growing number of assisted-living centers in the state and nationwide.

Created in the 1980s, assisted living has been marketed as an option for older adults who need some assistance but not as much help as a nursing home. Advocates argue that regulations for the facilities have not kept up as more locations have opened. They also worry that the outlook could get worse with expected Medicaid cuts and the challenge of finding enough staff during an immigration crackdown.

“Unlike nursing homes, assisted living has no federal state requirements, no requirement for staffing, no requirements for staff training, no requirements for safety protocols, no requirements for inspections,” Mollot said. “That falls to the states, and the states have overall very weak rules.”

Nursing homes are subject to federal regulations

Nursing homes, for example, are governed by federal regulations because they receive Medicare and Medicaid. There are no federal regulations for assisted-living facilities. Nursing homes must have a minimum number of staffers and trained medical professionals such as doctors and nurses, but assisted-living facilities have no such requirements. In Massachusetts, both are required to have emergency plans, but assisted-living facilities are not required to update them annually.

“The regulations are minimal,” said Liane Zeitz, an attorney who is also a member of the state Assisted Living Residences Commission, a body created to make recommendations about the sector. She has advocated for more regulations for assisted-living facilities.

The facilities were lightly regulated because initially they were regarded as residential housing, with lower levels of care and less oversight, she said. But now those facilities are caring for a population “that is much frailer, and the population is growing.”

Not only are the regulations weaker for assisted-living facilities, but advocates argue that the enforcement of the existing rules is often lax.

Paul Lanzikos, a former Massachusetts secretary of elder affairs and co-founder of the advocacy group Dignity Alliance, described a “patchwork” of regulations across the country, with different agencies involved depending on the state.

“Some of the states are much more regulated. Some are regulated as a health care entity. Others, as we do here in Massachusetts, are considered a residential housing model,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has been advocating for increased oversight for years, particularly after the release of reports about health and safety problems in 2018.

“These are serious problems that have been going on for years,” she said at a hearing last year. “But we hear so much less about what’s going in assisted-living facilities than we do in other facilities, like nursing homes.”

Brian Doherty, the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Assisted Living Association, said his organization supports the state ensuring that all facilities “meet the mandate to have adequate staffing at all times to meet the specific needs of its residents, including in emergency scenarios.”

“State regulations require that ALRs develop individualized service plans for each resident that are revised as a resident’s needs evolve over time following regular review,” he said in a statement.

Massachusetts commission weighs reforms

In Massachusetts, lawmakers last year passed a package of bills aimed at improving long-term care and assisted-living facilities. A commission created by the legislation faces an Aug. 1 deadline to recommend policies to ensure facilities meet health and safety needs. But members said Tuesday that they may seek more time given the fire.

“We need to do a deep dive based on the investigation results with this facility, but also the facilities like this one,” said state Rep. Thomas Stanley, who leads the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs.

In an interview, Stanley said he was concerned because Gabriel House was among the only 20 or so facilities serving a mostly low-income population — what he called affordable assisted-living facilities.

Unlike traditional assisted-living facilities that have any array of amenities and mostly rely on residents to pay around $15,000 a month, three-quarters of the residents at Gabriel House were on MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program. They paid $1,850 to $2,400 monthly for a studio apartment in a facility that was a motel decades ago.

“This fire would not have happened in one of the modern facilities,” said Stanley, adding that one option would be to provide state funding to help lower-cost facilities upgrade or to create more housing options for the populations they serve.

Staffing was an issue before fatal fire

At Gabriel House, a former worker said staffing was always an issue, as was the pay that never rose much higher than the state’s minimum wage, even for nursing work, said Wyntter Munroe-Myers, who worked at the home as a certified nursing assistant from 2014 to 2016. At the time, one certified nursing assistant typically handled two of the six wings at the home, with each wing having about 15 residents. Often, there would be three assistants on a shift and a fourth managing them.

“The building is huge. To have four people that are supposed to be managing a whole building is almost irrational,” he said.

Jenn Marley, who worked at Gabriel House as a certified nursing assistant from 2018 to January 2020, said she would often bring in food to supplement what residents were served. She said cockroaches, mice and bedbugs were a problem and that resident bathrooms were often filthy.

“God forbid, if they ran out of toilet paper, the boss would complain that we had to give them a roll,” she said. “They would mark it on the paper who came to ask for toilet paper.”

Jarren Oldrid, whose 67-year-old father, Steven, lived at Gabriel House for three years and is still hospitalized, said he often would not see staff members when he went to visit his father’s third-floor room. He recalled that the building’s elevator was recently out for as long as nine months, a major inconvenience for many residents who, like his father, were not mobile.

“The whole time the elevator was out, he was stuck in his room,” Oldrid said. The only other option was carrying him down the stairs. If he did it himself, he would do it a few steps at a time, and it would take ages. So that never really happened.”

The night of the fire, Oldrid recalled his father saying he never saw a staffer and that the first person he saw was a firefighter when he was rescued.

“The staff never made it upstairs to him from what he told me,” he said. “No one banged on the door. No one said anything.”

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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The trial for the Florida State University student accused of killing two people and wounding six others in a mass shooting on campus in April is set to go to trial this November.

At a case management conference in a Tallahassee courthouse on Wednesday, Second Judicial Circuit Judge Lance Neff set jury selection in the case of 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner to begin the week of Nov. 3.

Ikner’s attorney, public defender Peter Mills, said he needs more time to delve into the case, which involves extensive video surveillance footage and witness testimony.

“I object to that, judge,” Mills said of the trial schedule. “I am still investigating the case. My client’s entitled to effective assistance of counsel.”

Neff indicated he’s open to hearing out Mills’ concerns, saying, “we can talk about what, what you need” in order to investigate the case.

As far as the prosecution, Second Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jack Campbell said, “we’ll be ready.”

So far, the defense has not participated in discovery, the process of exchanging information between the parties about evidence and witnesses. But that is expected to change, Ikner’s attorney said.

Ikner faces two counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted first-degree murder. He is the stepson of a local sheriff’s deputy, and investigators say he used his stepmother’s former service weapon to carry out the shooting.

Prosecutors in the case intend to seek the death penalty.

___ Kate Payne 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.