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  • Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center has closed, governor says


    The Florida Everglades immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” has served its purpose, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday, closing the makeshift facility heralded by the Trump administration and denounced as inhumane by civil rights groups.

    DeSantis said the center, which opened in July 2025, was always meant to be only temporary until more permanent detention centers could be secured and federal officials now have that capacity.

    “We stepped up because there was a gap, but my hope is that they’ll be able to handle that,” the Republican governor said at a news conference at the facility.

    Officials announced a temporary closure of the facility earlier in June and sent all of the detainees to other facilities, saying hurricane season made it unsafe to keep them in the Everglades.

    Immigration advocates said the center’s tents were never safe or humane for holding people. Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers and described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that didn’t flush, floors flooded with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.

    They described large white tents with rows of and rows of bunk beds surrounded by chain-link cages. The air conditioning could shut off abruptly in the sweltering Florida heat. Detainees could go days without showering or getting prescription medicine.

    Advocates for immigrants said the closure of “Alligator Alcatraz” does nothing to stop the harm to people who spend months in custody as their families suffer. The Florida Immigrant Coalition said the only winners were corporations and contractors who profited millions of dollars as Republicans pushed an immigration emergency that does not exist.

    The detention center of tents and trailers was built by DeSantis’ administration in a matter of days. The governor and President Donald Trump said the center was critical to Republican efforts to return people in the country illegally back to their home countries.

    “There is no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer,” said DeSantis, noting that 21,000 people were deported through the facility.

    Even with the closure of the facility, Florida continues to play a key role with other detention centers and an increased role in helping with immigration enforcement, White House border czar Tom Homan said at Thursday’s news conference.

    “Gov. DeSantis did a good job, and he’s going to continue doing what he’s doing to help us make this country safe again,” Homan said. “This isn’t the end of relationship. This is a continuation.”

    Lawyers for the immigrants at the facility said their clients suddenly started leaving for other facilities in South Florida, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Texas earlier this month, disappearing for about a week before their attorneys and families were told where they were sent.

    DeSantis said the Everglades airstrip the facility was built around will continue to be used.

    Environmental groups sued over the detention center, saying Florida officials never got the proper permits or did required reviews on its impact.

    The state and federal governments built the site with no oversight and closed it with no input, but they will still be held responsible even with the site is closed, said Paul J. Schwiep, an attorney for Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.

    “The administration believes it can quietly walk away and leave its mess for others to clean up. The law will not allow them to escape accountability. We will ask the courts to ensure that the environmental damage is fully addressed,” Schwiep said in a statement Thursday.


  • Detroit Lions player Terrion Arnold is charged with directing attack against 3 people in Florida


    DETROIT (AP) — NFL player Terrion Arnold of the Detroit Lions was charged Thursday in Florida with leading a plot to detain and pistol-whip three people whom he believed had stolen luxury goods and $100,000 in cash from him.

    It turned out that the three, including Arnold’s personal driver, had nothing to do with the theft in February, investigators said.

    Two people charged alongside Arnold have pleaded guilty in the attack and agreed to cooperate with Tampa-area authorities, court records show.

    “Fame doesn’t get you out of criminal charges or our pursuit of justice and holding criminals accountable,” Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said.

    Three men in their late teens were held at gunpoint, battered, pistol-whipped and robbed in a Tampa apartment on Feb. 4, police said. It was three days after Louis Vuitton bags and shoes, Rolex watches, a Bible, cash and more were reported stolen from Arnold at an Airbnb rental in Largo, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) west.

    Arnold, 23, was the “primary conspirator” in the attack, police said.

    “He’s absolutely denying these allegations,” defense attorney R. Timothy Jansen said in Hillsborough County court.

    Arnold briefly appeared in court by video as a judge announced charges of kidnapping, armed robbery and conspiracy, crimes that carry a sentence of up to life in prison. He surrendered to authorities Wednesday and will remain in jail at least until a detention hearing Monday.

    Denise White, the CEO of EAG Sports Management, an agency that represents Arnold, said there’s “no credible evidence” against him, only accounts from others who may have an incentive to get a lighter sentence.

    At least six other people face charges, including two women who pleaded guilty Wednesday and are cooperating. Jasmine Randazzo, 19, was immediately sentenced to four years in prison for kidnapping, conspiracy and robbery with a gun, records show.

    The victims told police that Arnold’s friends lured them to an apartment, held them at gunpoint and hit them, all the while streaming the attack to Arnold. Police said he was giving orders in a group chat and later arrived at the apartment.

    “No one has the right to take the law into their own hands. A dispute over missing property does not justify kidnapping, violence or retaliation,” State Attorney Suzy Lopez said.

    Arnold, a cornerback on Detroit’s defense, was a first-round pick in the 2024 draft after playing at the University of Alabama. He had 31 tackles and an interception last season for the Lions. The Lions and the NFL said they were aware of the arrest but declined to comment.

    Police in Largo spent weeks investigating the thefts from Arnold’s Airbnb stay. One neighbor said there were “pretty wild parties” there that seemed to last until dawn, with multiple people coming and going, according to a report released to The Associated Press. The Airbnb host told police that 20 bags of trash were removed.

    Police said they declared the investigation inactive on March 25 because Arnold and others whose property was also reported stolen did not want to pursue it.


  • Get a load of this: Humans and great apes share similar giggles


    NEW YORK (AP) — Humans and great apes have been giggling in similar ways since branching off the evolutionary tree, a new study suggests.

    How do we know this? Researchers tickled 13 captive apes — including gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos — and recorded the results. The new research reexamined those decades-old recordings and compared them with the newly captured giggles of four young children while they were being tickled and playing at home.

    It turns out that the chuckles of humans and great apes follow similar rhythms, with regular timing between their laughs, a uniting thread that likely reflects their ties to a common ancestor, researchers said.

    “In a way, we are very similar to other great apes because we’ve been laughing in a similar way for 15 million years,” said study author Chiara De Gregorio, a primatologist at the University of Warwick in England.

    Laughter communicates a playful, happy feeling without using words. Many animals can laugh too, but the giggles don’t follow human patterns as closely. When researchers tickle rats, for example, they respond with ultrasonic squeaks.

    Scientists trying to uncover how laughter evolved have picked apart animals’ facial expressions, but less work has been done on how laughs sound. And compared with apes, human laughter has become faster and more complex. For one, our laughs sound different based on context — from a polite chuckle among colleagues to a full-bodied guffaw with close friends.

    “We are like the masters of laughter, I would say,” said De Gregorio, whose findings were published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.

    These giggles evolved to best suit animals’ different social lives, said Brittany Florkiewicz, who studies animal communication at Lyon College and had no role in the new research. She said the study’s findings make sense, and point to a need for more investigation.

    Florkiewicz said she’d like to hear comparable recordings of other animals with playful facial expressions, like dogs, horses and cats. That could tell us more about how laughter evolved, so we can “understand what makes us uniquely human, but also what is similar between humans and other animals.”

    Studying the origins of laughter may seem corny, but it’s one aspect of human communication that can help us understand others — including how we learned to speak. Because sounds don’t fossilize, scientists are using the evidence we do have to trace things back, one chuckle at a time.

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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.


  • Key inflation gauge jumps to 3-year high in latest sign of affordability challenges


    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge rose to a new three-year high in May as gas prices peaked, a sign rising costs could pose political problems for President Donald Trump and his political party as midterm elections near.

    Consumer prices rose 4.1% in May from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said Thursday, the largest annual increase since April 2023. On a monthly basis, inflation was 0.4% last month, matching April’s increase and down from 0.7% in March.

    The increase was largely driven by more expensive gas, as well as pricier semiconductors and other computer equipment that are in high demand for the AI buildout. Rising prices have caused the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve to keep their key rate unchanged this year, a reversal from January when they had penciled in two cuts. Some economists forecast the central bank could lift rates this year instead.

    “Underyling inflation is closer to 3% rather than 2%,” said Mark Vitner, chief economist at Piedmont Crescent Capital. “It does suggest to me that the next Fed move, whenever it comes, is more likely to be a hike than a cut.” The Fed probably won’t raise rates until next year, he added.

    Oil and gas prices have fallen substantially since Trump agreed to a peace deal with Iran earlier this month, but the conflict lifted gas prices to nearly $4.50 a gallon on average nationwide in May. They have since fallen back to $3.92 as of Thursday, according to AAA, but that’s more than 20% above prices at this time last year as the driving season gets underway.

    Declining gas prices will likely pull down headline inflation next month, yet measures of underlying inflation remain stubbornly elevated and will be a concern for the Fed. Excluding the volatile energy and food categories, core prices rose 3.4% in May compared with a year earlier, up from 3.3% in April and the largest increase since October 2023. On a monthly basis, they rose 0.3% from April to May, the same as the previous month.

    Higher gas prices aren’t the only thing worsening inflation. The AI buildout has made computer components more expensive, and Apple announced last week that it would raise prices for its computers and iPads because of the higher costs. Services prices also rose sharply last month, lifted by more expensive restaurant meals, hotel rooms, auto repairs, and health care.

    At the same time, consumers appear willing to keep spending and boost the economy. Adjusted for inflation, spending rose 0.3% from April to May. And inflation-adjusted incomes rose for the first time in four months, picking up 0.3%, which could bolster consumer spending in coming months.

    A separate report Thursday showed that the economy expanded at a 2.1% annual rate in the first three months of the year, an upgrade from a previous estimate of 1.6%. And the number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week, a sign that layoffs remain low.

    New Fed chair Kevin Warsh last week underscored the central bank’s determination to drive inflation back to its 2% target, but he gave no sign of what steps the Fed might take. Some economists, however, now expect the central bank to increase rates this year. Those expectations upended U.S. markets this week, hammering fast-growing sectors like tech.

    Inflation has been above the Fed’s 2% target for more than five years, leaving many Americans more gloomy about the future. Vitner points out that inflation hadn’t topped 2.5% for nearly a decade before the pandemic, likely making the inflation spikes since then even harder to accept for most households.

    Thursday’s report covers the personal consumption expenditures price index, a lesser-known measure compared to the consumer price index, which was released earlier this month and showed a similarly large increase. The Fed prefers the PCE index because it puts less weight on housing and also reflects changes in how Americans shop when prices rise, such as when consumers buy cheaper off-brand items.

    The new inflation data arrives a day after Trump refused to sign housing legislation, approved by Congress, that is intended to spur more construction and lower home prices over time, a response to Americans’ concerns about rising costs.

    Trump responded to the CPI report earlier this month by saying he “loved the inflation.” He has previously dismissed Democrats’ focus on “affordability” as a “hoax.”

    Inflation jumped to 9.1% under former President Joe Biden, but even as it fell back closer to 2% in 2024, voters remained angry about the cumulative rise in the cost of groceries, rent, and other necessities.

    The PCE price index was last below 2.5% in April 2025, when Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Inflation then climbed steadily to 2.9% just before the Iran war.


  • US economy expanded at solid 2.1% pace in January-March, government says, upgrading last estimate


    WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy expanded at a solid and unexpected 2.1% annual pace from January through March, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in its final estimate of first-quarter growth.

    The growth in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — marked a rebound from a sluggish 0.5% in the last three months of 2025 when a 43-day federal government shutdown weighed on the economy. Thursday’s numbers were an upgrade from of Commerce’s previous first-quarter estimate of 1.6% growth.

    Business investment surged, probably reflecting an investment boom in artificial intelligence. But consumer spending, which accounts for around 70% of U.S. economic activity, fell sharply from fourth-quarter 2025 and from Commerce’s previous estimate in a sign that consumers may be cutting back in the face of higher gasoline prices caused by the war with Iran.

    “It was unsettling to see consumer spending revised even lower,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a commentary. “Spending is likely to tick up in (the second quarter), but it’s worth watching carefully… It’s been a tough few months for American consumers, but most have been able to make it through. The question is how much relief is coming” as the U.S. and Iran continue talks toward a resolution of the conflict.

    Excluding housing, private investment jumped 10.6%, up from 2.4% in fourth-quarter 2025. In a sign of the AI boom, investment in information-processing equipment jumped at a 39.9% pace as companies scrambled to outfit their data centers. But Michael Reid, head of U.S. economics at RBC Capital Markets, said before Thursday’s report came out that “unfortunately, it’s not a sustainable path.’’ He expects data center investment to lose momentum going forward.

    Residential investment, weighed down by high interest rates, dropped 7.8% from January through March, biggest fall since late 2022 and the fifth straight quarterly decline.

    The federal government’s spending and investment rose at a 9.4% clip in the first quarter after dropping 16.6% in October-December 2025 largely because of the government shutdown.

    Imports, which are subtracted from GDP, grew at a slower pace than last estimated from January through March. They still subtracted 1.49 percentage points from first-quarter growth, but that was down from a 2.59 percentage-point hit in the previous estimate and was a major factor in Thursday’s upgrade.

    The U.S. economy — the world’s biggest — has continued to chug along despite the Iran energy shock. The American job market has proven especially resilient. Employers added an average 188,000 jobs a month from March through May after adding fewer than 10,000 a month in 2025 amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade and immigration policies.

    Thursday’s report was the Commerce Department’s third and final estimate of first-quarter GDP growth. The first look at second-quarter economic growth is due July 30.


  • A rifle-toting war reporter died with Custer at Little Bighorn 150 years ago


    They’ve died from artillery fire, aircraft crashes, gunfire, disease — even by execution — in conflict zones and elsewhere around the world.

    Over the 180-year history of The Associated Press, 38 journalists have fallen on the job while working for the independent not-for-profit news organization.

    Thursday marks the 150th anniversary of the very first: Mark Kellogg, one of five civilians killed alongside Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his men at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

    Kellogg, 43, was embedded with Custer’s troops. He was reporting for The Bismarck Tribune and New York Herald — the AP circulated his reports across the country — when Custer underestimated the size of a Sioux village that he attacked.

    Custer and his outnumbered men made a last stand on a hill. There, they were annihilated by Native American defenders. Kellogg’s scalped body was found not far away.

    His last published dispatch read in part: “I go with Custer and will be at the death.”

    It was more of an attempt at poetry than prophecy. “At the death” is a foxhunting term for the end of the hunt, suggesting Kellogg expected Custer to prevail.

    Still, Kellogg’s final words and fate circulated far and wide through his employers and the AP. It gave the obscure, part-time journalist — a widower who worked a variety of jobs to support his two daughters — fame in death.

    He got to know Custer. He covered the campaign. He mingled with the soldiers and interviewed them at their camps, historian Sandy Barnard said.

    Yet in other ways, Kellogg was much different from modern journalists. He carried a rifle into action, Barnard pointed out. And he made no attempt to avoid not just bias but racism against Native Americans, whom he called “red devils.”

    “During the last stages of the campaign, Kellogg was probably more of a soldier than he was a newspaper man,” said Barnard, author of a Kellogg biography and other books on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

    The State Historical Society of North Dakota preserves Kellogg’s diary and various belongings, including eyeglasses, tobacco, clothing and a mosquito head net. The fragile diary, now digitized online, documents weather, distances covered, who was riding in front and in back, how many antelope they saw and other day-to-day operations, Deputy State Archivist Lindsay Meidinger said. The diary ends before the battle.

    “It’s a primary source of the historical event,” Barnard said, “that not many other primary sources remain from that time period related to the Seventh Cavalry and Custer.”

    “While his record as a journalist might be very small compared to modern reporters who go into combat, he certainly was doing exactly what they are doing,” she said.

    Others who have perished while reporting for AP in war zones include:

    — Mariam Dagga, a freelance visual journalist who was killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip last August;

    — Anja Niedringhaus, a photographer shot by a police officer as she sat in her car in Afghanistan in 2014;

    — Myles Tierney, a videojournalist killed while traveling in a convoy that came under fire in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1999;

    — Joseph Morton, a war correspondent who was the only U.S. reporter known to have been executed by the Nazis following his capture alongside Slovakian partisans in 1944.

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    Associated Press corporate archivist Sarit Hand in New York and Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.


  • US Senator warns of administration plan to hastily remove over 500 unaccompanied migrant children


    WASHINGTON (AP) — A Democratic U.S. senator warns the Trump administration is getting ready to round up 500 immigrant children in a hasty effort to remove them from the country, bypassing legal protections. It would be their second attempt after a federal court intervened last year in an overnight plan to fly out hundreds of children on Labor Day weekend.

    Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter Wednesday to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that he had “credible information” that the Trump administration had a list of more than 500 migrant children it was targeting for a fast-track removal process and that the department was racing to act in days. He warned that the administration was abdicating “core humanitarian and child welfare mandates” and demanded an immediate halt to any plans to remove the children.

    Wyden, who is the ranking member and senior Democrat of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Office of Refugee Resettlement, did not detail how he came by his information. His office declined to provide further details. The ORR, which oversees the care of unaccompanied migrant children, falls under the Department of Health and Human Services.

    An HHS spokesperson denied any such plans.

    “The new information I obtained leads me to believe that the Department is laying the groundwork for another lawless deportation effort, this time on a greater scale, across more countries of origin,” Wyden wrote.

    “You have been entrusted with the care and safety of the children placed within the ORR network. Proceeding with this plan knowingly endangers their lives and violates your duty to these vulnerable children.”

    Trump administration made a similar attempt in 2025

    Wyden also issued an early warning last August ahead of what eventually became a chaotic weekend of efforts by the Trump administration to remove Guatemalan children in its care and send them home.

    HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in “there are no plans to target these children,” calling Wyden’s claims ”irresponsible fearmongering.”

    “The Trump Administration is working to identify the parents or legal guardians of unaccompanied alien children in our care because ensuring every child is placed with a properly vetted sponsor is our top priority,” she said.

    Over the Labor Day weekend, dozens of migrant children either staying in government-supervised shelters or with foster families were taken from their homes and bused to airfields in Texas bound for Guatemala. A federal judge woken up in the middle of the night eventually stopped the planes. Lawyers for the children — many who had fled violence at home to come to the U.S. — later described how traumatic the middle-of-the-night removal effort was for them.

    The administration insisted it was reuniting the Guatemalan children — at the Central American nation’s request — with parents or guardians who sought their return. Lawyers for at least some of the children said that wasn’t true and argued that in any event, authorities still would have to follow a legal process that they did not.

    Some of the children in the plane last year were represented by the American Bar Association’s ProBar project. Lauren Fisher Flores, the legal director, said children that day were seen “crying, praying, vomiting” and some entered into a catatonic state. The effects were long-lasting.

    “One child was hospitalized for several days due to nerves. For months, one young client refused to board buses for medical appointments or court hearings. All the rules and laws that exist to protect these children were unable to prevent them from experiencing something deeply traumatic,” Fisher Flores added.

    Congress established legal protections for migrant children

    Migrant children traveling alone are usually entrusted to U.S. government care, and there are various legal protections designed to protect them once they’re in the U.S. and navigating the immigration system.

    The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 is one of the key pieces of legislation designed to protect them. With some limited exceptions, it requires that children be placed in the “least restrictive setting possible,” which generally means that they can be released to a sponsor such as a relative in the U.S. while their immigration proceedings play out.

    The children can apply for a specially protected status if they can’t return to their home country because of abuse or neglect and they can also apply for asylum.

    The Trump administration has made it increasingly difficult for those children to be released to sponsors though. The administration says that they are doing due diligence to make sure that sponsors are thoroughly vetted and that in the past, children were released into dangerous situations.

    But advocates say that the result has been children lingering for months in government shelters.

    This time, Wyden said the children at risk of being removed come from various countries, potentially including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Afghanistan, and have been in U.S. custody — mainly in foster care — for at least 180 days. He said they were described as not having any “viable sponsor” who could come forward and take care of them in the U.S.

    Not having an identified sponsor could mean the child’s parents are in their home countries, are deceased or are too afraid to claim their children after ICE started arresting some parents who are not in the country legally during their reunification efforts.


  • Native Americans commemorate victory at Little Bighorn with horse races, dance and song


    LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Mont. (AP) — The quiet, wind-swept hills of the Battle of Greasy Grass, known to many as the Battle of Little Bighorn, are the setting for Native Americans commemorating the battle’s 150th anniversary with horse rides, battle reenactments and a camp of hundreds of people this week.

    The battle, one of the most famous and symbolically charged events in American history, marked its anniversary Thursday. Allied tribes came together on that hot day near the banks of the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana to hand the U.S. Army a rare defeat as they fought to preserve their way of life in the face of westward expansion. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 his troops were killed.

    Reenactments will illustrate the battle. Horse riders from the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and elsewhere traveled hundreds of miles to the Crow Agency area in Montana to mark the occasion. Families were encouraged to share their oral histories. At the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, people planned horse races and traditional songs and dances.

    Gathering at the battlefield area in Montana means “we’re still here,” said William Good Bird, a traditional singer from the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation in North Dakota who woke up the camp where hundreds of people were gathered from numerous tribes with a song and drumming.

    “Today I am celebrating the victory of our people, celebrating my life as a human being and my spot on this earth,” he said.

    Native warriors overpowered divided U.S. Army forces

    The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota by a Custer expedition just years earlier spurred a military campaign against Great Plains tribes that aimed to push them onto reservations, or what were known then as agencies, said historian Dakota Goodhouse.

    There were bigger, longer battles and other Native victories between March 1876 and June 1877, but Goodhouse said only the Battle of Greasy Grass — named by Native Americans for the slick grass along the river — gained national recognition because the commanding officer was killed.

    At the time, the Lakota were one of the largest and most powerful tribal nations, with strong leaders in Sitting Bull and warriors like Crazy Horse. Native warriors quickly overwhelmed Custer’s men as the U.S. forces were spread miles apart over the hilly area.

    News of Custer’s defeat stunned Americans, who were celebrating their country’s centennial.

    The federal government accelerated efforts to subdue resistance, bringing years of hardship and upheaval for Native Americans. Crazy Horse was killed in 1877, and starvation brought about the surrender of others in 1881.

    Sitting Bull didn’t surrender as history books tell it, said Jon Eagle Sr., a former Standing Rock tribal historic preservation officer from the Hunkpapa band of the Oceti Sakowin.

    “Our people say that he looked at his son Crow Foot and said, ‘My boy, if you live, you can never be a man in this world because you can never own a gun or a pony,’” Eagle said. “I think that he understood that things were going to change for his children, his grandchildren and those not yet born.”

    Sitting Bull was killed with about a dozen other people when agency police attempted to arrest him in 1890.

    Custer is remembered as a polarizing figure

    Biographer T.J. Stiles described Custer as one of the most distinguished combat officers in the Army at the end of the Civil War. But he said the “Boy General” with his long hair and flamboyant battlefield wardrobe often bristled at the chain of command and did not take to the management side of leadership.

    “Custer was someone who whenever he got into the frying pan, he immediately started looking for the fire,” he said.

    In 1873, Custer was assigned to lead the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Abraham Lincoln, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. From there, he led military expeditions, including one that confirmed the gold in the Black Hills, a sacred place to the Lakota.

    Seen in the U.S. as a tragic hero and memorialized for his military feats, Custer could also be considered progressive even as the federal government sought to displace Native Americans and stamp out Native languages through boarding schools, Goodhouse said. He learned to speak Arikara and Lakota and became fluent in sign language used by tribes in the region.

    Still, as many Americans are celebrating the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, for many Native Americans it’s not a reason to rejoice.

    “It’s just a mark to me of 250 years of injustice to the Native people,” Crow tribal member and reenactment coordinator Jim Real Bird said.

    Eagle agreed: “That’s one of the things that we always tell our people when we come together, is they failed at their attempts to rub us out. We’re still here as ancient people deeply connected to our environment.”

    Commemoration keeps history alive for future generations

    For more than 30 years, reenactments featuring hundreds of warriors have marked the anniversary near the battlefield. The choreography is based on Northern Cheyenne oral history and highlights horsemanship and language preservation.

    “All the other things that are Native American don’t mean nothing if you don’t know your language,” said Real Bird.

    The atmosphere at the battlefield area was celebratory as hundreds of people from numerous tribes had gathered. Several hundred horse riders charged up a hill and circled at the top as they whooped and yelled. The sun shined on the battlefield area, a wide-open grassland with few trees, mountains in the distance.

    Elders wore headdresses. People sang and played drums as flags flew from various tribal nations. The camp with dozens of tepees stood along the Little Bighorn River, with people there from tribes in the Dakotas and as far away as Washington state.

    “This is our fuel for the year. We come here and this is a renewal for us, too, you know, personally,” said Theresa Long Turkey, of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.

    At Standing Rock, Eagle said the races honor the horse nation that carried their ancestors to victory 150 years ago. The commemoration also includes oskáte, a traditional celebration of oral histories, victory songs and tribal dancing.

    “It’s just an opportunity for us to share with the generations coming behind us that they’re descendants of a very powerful nation and ancient people that are still here despite everything that was done to us,” said Eagle, whose great-great-grandfather, Sunka, fought that day. His father, Charging Thunder, also was there.

    Goodhouse recalled stories his grandfather would tell him of their ancestors who were in the Hunkpapa camp when troops attacked. His grandfather’s great-grandfather, Striped Face, was shot but mounted his horse and joined the fight.

    “There’s this kind of energy there that still lives on because we have this direct narrative that was handed down,” he said.

    ___

    Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.

    ___

    This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.


  • JPMorgan Chase promotes Petno, Rohrbaugh to copresidents, setting up two more successors for Dimon


    NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase promoted investment bankers Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh to copresidents of the bank, elevating two additional potential contenders to succeed Jamie Dimon whenever the longtime CEO step downs from running the nation’s largest bank.

    The bank also announced Thursday that Marianne Lake, who had held several top positions in the company including chief financial officer and CEO of the consumer banking division, will retire at the end of the year. Lake was long thought to be a potential person to take over the company when Dimon retired.

    The promotion of Petno and Rohrbaugh is a sign that JPMorgan’s board is also looking to its commercial and investment banking ranks as it develops the next generation of leadership, even as Rohrbaugh will now move over to run the bank’s giant consumer business. Petno and Rohrbaugh both ascended JPMorgan’s ranks through the company’s investment bank but worked on different sides of the house: much of Petno’s experience has been working with clients and doing advisory work, including natural resources investment banking, while Rohrbaugh came up through the bank’s trading desks, with a background in foreign-exchange derivatives and options trading.

    “The changes announced today mark an important step in our Board’s thoughtful process around succession planning and development of our top leaders,” Dimon said in a statement.

    There are two other potential successors, both women, who remain on JPMorgan’s operating committee, the group of top management at the bank who report to Dimon. Jennifer Piepszak, 55, is JPMorgan’s chief operating officer, while Mary Erdoes, 58, runs its asset and wealth management division. The bank disclosed Thursday that Piepszak and Erdoes each received $20 million equity-based retention awards, underscoring that the board is trying to preserve a broad bench of senior leaders as it plans for Dimon’s eventual succession.

    But even with those retention bonuses for Piepszak and Erdoes, analysts noted that promotion of Petno and Rohrbaugh is a signal that the board is leaning toward them.

    “Given that Lake has been viewed as a front-runner, her retirement reshapes the succession field for Jamie Dimon’s CEO role, while elevating Petno and Rohrbaugh into president-level roles that have historically served as the springboard for the CEO job,” said analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in a note to investors after the announcement.

    Further, the retention bonuses mean that the person who takes over for Dimon will have a full slate of senior executives to help them with the transition, analysts said.

    Wall Street loves to speculate who will succeed Dimon, who is 70 years old and has been CEO since 2006. Dimon has had several health scares over his 20 years running the bank, including a throat cancer diagnosis in 2014 and emergency heart surgery in 2020. Still, Dimon has repeatedly said he enjoys being chairman and CEO, and has emphasized that JPMorgan’s board of directors will decide the timing of Dimon’s replacement.

    Whoever replaces Dimon will inherit one of the most prominent roles on Wall Street and, more broadly, in Corporate America. Dimon is among the last of the generation of Wall Street CEOs who steered their firms through the 2008 financial crisis and is widely seen as the banking industry’s elder statesman.

    Before joining JPMorgan Chase in 2004, Dimon’s career was rooted more in consumer finance than trading and investment banking. He held leadership roles at American Express, Citigroup and Bank One. JPMorgan Chase acquired Bank One in 2004 in a deal to expand its consumer banking and credit card businesses. Bank One’s credit card division was considered a strategic asset in that deal.


  • Wall Street drifts to a mixed finish after Micron soars and Apple drops


    NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market meandered to a mixed finish Thursday after several artificial-intelligence stocks veered back up their roller-coaster ride, while Apple dropped after hiking prices on many of its products.

    The S&P 500 finished nearly unchanged with a dip of less than 0.1% after swinging between gains and losses throughout the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 71 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%.

    Micron Technology helped lead the market after jumping 15.7%. The maker of computer memory reported much bigger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it gave a stronger growth forecast for the current quarter than Wall Street expected. That helped allay worries a bit that its stock had grown too expensive after coming into the day with a surge of 267% so far this year.

    Micron and AI stocks broadly have been under pressure recently because of worries that their profits can’t possibly keep pace with the tremendous rallies for their stock prices. But beyond Micron, Qualcomm said late Wednesday that the acceleration of the AI era is forcing it to upgrade forecasts for its own growth in upcoming years. They’re the latest signals of the deluge of dollars heading into AI data centers and other investments.

    Qualcomm said it expects its revenue outside of handsets, including data centers, to hit $40 billion in its fiscal year of 2029, roughly double its prior target. Qualcomm’s stock rose 3.8%.

    But all the strong demand for computer memory and storage that’s driving profits and stock prices higher for producers is also leading to higher costs for customers. Apple on Thursday raised prices for many of its products, including increases of 15% to 20% for Mac computers, according to analysts. Its stock slumped 6.1% and was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500.

    SpaceX, meanwhile, fell 1% to drop below $153 for its lowest finish since its ballyhooed debut on the Nasdaq earlier this month.

    All told, the S&P 500 slipped 0.73 to 7,357.49 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 71.72 to 51,960.62, and the Nasdaq composite fell 118.03 to 25,358.60.

    In the bond market, Treasury yields eased to lessen the pressure on stocks and other investment prices. They regressed after a report showed inflation is behaving pretty much as economists expected.

    The report said that a measure of inflation hitting U.S. consumers accelerated to 4.1% last month from 3.8% in April, but the hope is that inflation is set to ease because of a drop-off in oil prices.

    The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 2.2% to $75.50 Thursday. But it’s still well off its highs above $100 caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz because of the war, which slowed the global flow of oil. Earlier Thursday, it dropped near its roughly $72 price from before the war.

    That helped the yield on the 10-year Treasury slip to 4.39% from 4.41% late Wednesday and from 4.56% earlier this month.

    “As long as gasoline prices trend lower, inflation expectations will likely follow suit,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

    High yields in bond markets worldwide caused by worries about inflation are threatening to slow economies, and they have already sent rates higher for mortgages and other kinds of loans. High yields also hurt prices for investments, particularly those seen as the most expensive. That raises the pressure on AI winners.

    In stock markets abroad, South Korea’s Kospi jumped 5.4% after its own AI winners shot higher, including a 13.1% surge for SK Hynix.

    Other markets also rallied, including gains of 4.6% for Japan’s Nikkei 225 and 0.7% for the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100. A 1.4% drop for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier.

    ___

    AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.