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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The grandfather of a man who was shot and killed by the Tennessee National Guard in Memphis over the weekend says he wants answers from law enforcement.

Evaniel Johnson said he is waiting to see if video footage supports the police narrative that his 20-year-old grandson, Tyrin Johnson, turned toward U.S. guard members with a gun while running from them early Sunday. Memphis police say the guard members were responding to a report of gunfire.

The National Guard members had been assigned to a crime-fighting patrol in Memphis created last year by President Donald Trump, who has sent troops and federal agents to Democratic-run cities he described as crime-ridden.

“Show me the video,” Evaniel Johnson told The Associated Press. “Please show me that — and then I’m OK. Until you show me that, I’m gonna fight and advocate for my grandson until there’s no breath in me.”

Johnson, a former correctional officer with the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in Nashville, disputes that his grandson would have tried to fire a gun at U.S. guard members and that deadly force would be needed if he was running away. His grandson, he said, was “no hoodlum.”

According to his grandfather, Tyrin Johnson carried a gun for protection after being “jumped” recently in Nashville and was likely wary about being attacked again over a murky social media feud.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says it is reviewing the shooting and that two guard members fired their weapons. Johnson’s family says they were told by the TBI that he was shot twice in the chest. The Memphis Police Department declined to comment on what footage existed and when it would be released.

The National Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the two members involved in the shooting had been placed on leave.

Democrats call for a transparent investigation

Tennessee Senate Democratic Leader Raumesh Akbari and Chairwoman London Lamar, both of Memphis, issued joint statement expressing their sympathy and emphasizing the need for transparency during the investigation. They asked the TBI to release any available video as soon as it is possible to do so without jeopardizing the investigation.

“Transparency serves everyone — the Johnson family, the members of the National Guard involved, and a community that deserves confidence in the outcome, whatever the facts ultimately show,” they wrote.

State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat running for the U.S. House, echoed the call for a transparent investigation and demanded the disbanding of the federal task force.

“Memphis does not need armed soldiers in our streets terrifying our people,” he said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee also called for the task force to be shut down. “We demand a transparent investigation, not a closed-door ruse that leaves our community in the dark,” the ACLU said in a statement.

Trump’s decision to send Tennessee National Guard troops to Memphis to combat crime was met with a mixed response from residents and was the subject of a lawsuit. However, it was never the subject of widespread protests.

TBI data shows that at least three people have died in four shootings by officers tied to the federal task force.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee embraced federal intervention, while Democratic Memphis Mayor Paul Young took a pragmatic approach. Young said he never asked for National Guard troops but recognized they were coming regardless of his opinion.

Evaniel Johnson wishes his grandson stayed home that weekend

Tyrin Johnson did not appear to have a criminal history besides a handful of traffic violations, according to a review of online federal and state court records and Memphis and Nashville courts. In May, he was arrested for failing to appear at a 2025 hearing for driving without a license in Wilson County, just outside Nashville. He bonded out, records show.

He was enrolled in Tennessee State University from August 2023 to May 2024, according to university spokesperson Angel Higgins.

Evaniel Johnson said he had hoped his grandson would return to university and he was training him to take on a bigger role in the family’s real estate development business, including lining up a project for him in Nashville to oversee in the coming weeks.

On the Fourth of July, Evaniel Johnson said his family had gathered on his back porch in Nashville to play cards. He wished his grandson had stayed with them. Instead, Tyrin Johnson ended up in Memphis.

“He was down there like all the rest of the people trying to enjoy the Fourth of July,” Johnson said. “His future was buying homes, living life, taking care of his little baby. He had a future. It’s gone now.”

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Brook reported from New Orleans.

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

President Donald Trump is responding to global outrage over his intervention with FIFA during the World Cup. The president said he didn’t initially know what a red card was or what its consequences were, but when he learned it could keep star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun out of Monday’s knockout match against Belgium, he felt compelled to call FIFA president Gianni Infantino asking for a review.

On Monday afternoon, a FIFA appeals judge dismissed Belgium’s legal challenge fewer than eight hours before kickoff. The Belgian soccer body “is not a party to the proceedings and, as such, has no standing to appeal the decision,” FIFA said in a statement.

Trump rang a ceremonial bell Monday as the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq opened, reflecting how much he’s counting on the stock market as he promoted the launch of Trump Accounts for children, which Republicans created in their 2025 tax and spending cuts bill.

And Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday at the NATO summit in Turkey, as Kyiv tries to refocus his attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.

The Latest:

Collins calls allegations against her opponent ‘appalling’

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent in the Maine Senate race, reacted to the latest allegations against her Democratic opponent.

“These allegations are appalling. Nevertheless, it is not up to me to choose the Democratic nominee for Senate,” Collins said.

A woman who previously dated her opponent, Graham Platner, said he drunkenly forced her to have sex after she told him to stop, leading prominent supporters to pull their endorsements and throwing a must-win race for the party into turmoil.

Collins has served in the Senate since 1997. The seat has been a key one for Democrats, who hope to unseat her in their quest to gain the majority in the Senate.

Senate Democrats’ campaign arm says it won’t spend money in Maine if Platner is the nominee

The main campaign arm of Senate Democrats called on Platner to drop out of the Maine Senate race and said it would spend no money in the state if he is the nominee.

“Graham Platner needs to immediately withdraw as the Democratic nominee for Senate and allow Maine Democrats the opportunity to choose a new candidate who can defeat Susan Collins,” Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said in a joint statement.

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Balogun is in starting lineup for World Cup match vs Belgium

Folarin Balogun is in the United States’ starting lineup for Monday’s World Cup round of 16 match against Belgium after his red-card suspension was lifted by FIFA in a decision that sparked an uproar across the sport.

Balogun’s red card was assessed for stepping on an opponent’s ankle last Wednesday during the Americans’ 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.

Following a phone call from Trump to FIFA’s president, FIFA’s disciplinary committee suspended the discipline for a year, prompting the European governing body UEFA to call the decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.”

Belgium’s attempt to have FIFA reinstate the suspension was denied by FIFA’s appeals committee, which said the Belgian federation lacked standing.

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Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 rioters don’t apply to DC pipe bomb suspect, judge rules

Trump’s mass pardons for supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol don’t apply to a Virginia man charged with planting pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali refused to dismiss the case against Brian J. Cole Jr., concluding that Trump’s blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters explicitly applied only to people who were convicted of crimes related to the attack on the Capitol.

Cole was arrested nearly a year after Trump’s pardons. He is accused of placing two pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The devices didn’t detonate before law enforcement officers discovered them.

Prosecutors have said that Cole gave a confession after his arrest, telling FBI agents that he felt “bewildered” by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election and “something just snapped.”

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Democrats begin pulling Platner endorsements after Maine candidate faces sexual assault allegation

Democrats began pulling their endorsements for Graham Platner after an allegation surfaced that he had forced an on-again-off-again girlfriend to have sex.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who had stood by Platner even as the Senate candidate was hit with prior allegations, said: “I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement.”

Also dropping their endorsements were Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego and the Democratic-leaning political group End Citizens United.

Top leaders inside the Maine Democratic Party also called on Platner to drop out of the race, a seat considered key to Democrats’ efforts to try to secure a majority in the Senate.

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Red card furor puts Trump and Infantino’s relationship under the spotlight again

The relationship between Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, long in the making, is now at the center of one of the great World Cup controversies, sparking anger, disbelief and questions about the integrity of global sport’s biggest tournament.

Trump’s intervention in the lifting of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun’s one-match suspension has shone the spotlight on his close ties with Infantino. It has led to furor from Belgium — the U.S. team’s opponent in the round of 16 match on Monday — as European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, accused FIFA of crossing a “red line.”

The highly contentious call comes on the back of Infantino’s campaign to strengthen relations with Trump, the leader of the co-host of the biggest World Cup ever.

FIFA lifts suspension of US star Balogun

FIFA’s stunning decision to lift the suspension of a star U.S. player has riled the host country’s next World Cup opponent, Belgium, and sent soccer fans — and political leaders — into a frenzy over the influence President Donald Trump may have had over the extremely rare ruling.

Hours before kickoff, FIFA dismissed Belgium’s challenge to the most-debated political intervention in a World Cup in decades. That means forward Folarin Balogun is eligible to play on Monday night in Seattle. A win would send the U.S. to the quarterfinals, which would be the best U.S. result at a men’s World Cup since 2002.

Balogun had faced a mandatory ban from Monday’s match after receiving a red card last week. But FIFA lifted his suspension on Sunday following a call Trump made to the global soccer organization’s president, Gianni Infantino.

FIFA president says disciplinary committee acted with independence

In its decision to let Balogun play against Belgium, FIFA cited article 27 of its disciplinary code, which says a “judicial body” can “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure.” Balogun could yet get that one-game suspension on top of any future punishment if he commits a similar offense again in the next year.

While FIFA didn’t elaborate on how it reached its decision, the global soccer organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, insisted in a social media post that FIFA’s disciplinary committee acted with independence and judged cases such as Balogun’s on “applicable regulations and the specific facts.” Article 27 doesn’t lay out any requirements for which cases are eligible under the rarely used rule.

Trump says he’s building a White House helipad for a new, more powerful Marine One

President Donald Trump said Monday that he’s building a granite helipad on the White House lawn, insisting that the landing area is needed to accommodate new, more powerful presidential choppers.

Confirmation of the project came as construction crews had already begun working on the helipad on the South Lawn, where the president had UFC build a temporary arena for a cage fight celebrating his 80th birthday. He said the project would be privately funded and estimated its cost at up to $6 million.

“It’s got the seal of the White House on it in granite, in carved granite,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s really a beautiful thing.”

The president did not offer details on how long the work would take. It is the latest major construction project he has overseen in an effort to increasingly mold the White House in his own image.

Trump tells lunch guests they won’t have to talk to each other while music plays

Trump offered his playlist as he wrapped more than 40 minutes of remarks in Washington, D.C.’s heat that was held shortly after an earlier, lengthy press event in the Oval Office.

“Should we put on a little music, yes?,” he asked. “This way you don’t have to talk to each other. You just have to listen to music.”

“So we’re going to put on a little music, the Trump playlist, OK, and we’ll have a little fun,” Trump said.

“YMCA” began to play as the White House press pool was escorted back indoors.

Rapper Nicki Minaj returns to White House for launch of Trump accounts

Minaj got a shoutout from Trump as he spoke at a Rose Garden luncheon after an earlier event to highlight the accounts.

The musical artist had joined Trump in January for an earlier announcement about the “Trump Accounts” for children born during his second term.

Trump said Monday that Minaj is “great” and “so respected.”

Minaj has described herself as Trump’s “number one fan.”

Rubio also wades into the red card controversy

In rare comments during a photo op ahead of his meeting with Chile’s foreign minister, Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump by saying “it was the right decision to reverse” Balogun’s penalty.

Rubio acknowledged that “there’s a lot of drama around” the decision. But he mused about why Belgium would want to possibly win a match “if everyone will argue you didn’t really win it because their best, or their leading scorer was not on the pitch.”

Rubio joked that maybe it was “turning into an international incident” ahead of the NATO leaders summit in Turkey this week.

“Maybe we’ll bring it up at NATO tomorrow or with the Belgians and everybody else,” Rubio told reporters Monday, laughing. “I just hope the match will go on, everyone will be at full strength and the winner will be the winner.”

Trump says Cruz only SCOTUS appointee who would get 100 Senate votes

Calling Sen. Ted Cruz “a friend of mine,” in the Oval Office earlier on Monday, Trump said the Texas Republican was the only potential Supreme Court nominee who could get unanimous approval for the post from the Senate.

Trump talked at length about how the two were “great friends” before they duked it out for the GOP nomination during the 2016 presidential campaign, “but then it came together better than ever before.”

Cruz has been laying the groundwork for a possible run at the presidency again, stumping for Republican candidates in early-voting states including South Carolina. Frequently floated by Trump for a post on the high court, Cruz has said he would decline it, preferring to stay in politics and policy.

Trump says he’s putting ‘a lot of love’ back into the White House

Trump reviewed several of his White House renovation projects at a lunch on the Rose Garden patio for his investment accounts that bear his name for children born during his second term.

He referenced work being done to the columns on the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the mansion and said he was having layers and layers of paint removed.

Trump also talked about the ballroom he’s building and his decision to replace the lawn in the Rose Garden with patio stone.

“We’re putting a lot of love back into the White House,” he said.

Nonprofits and brands navigate this partisan 250th in search of a unifying tone

The United States’ 250th birthday carries ambitions to galvanize Americans behind nationwide community-service drives and patriotic brand launches. Well-known U.S. nonprofits hope to inspire a record-setting level of volunteerism, while major companies such as Walmart and Coca-Cola are sponsoring tributes and selling limited-edition merchandise.

But the private sector’s unifying ambitions have been met with a mixed response, complicated by an uneasy national mood. Fewer Americans see their country as exceptional compared to 10 years ago, according to a recent survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, part of a broad decline in patriotic sentiment. Views of the American flag — a prominent feature of semiquincentennial celebrations — are divided by politics, age and race.

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Hamas dissolves Gaza government, plans power transfer to UN-backed committee

The Hamas militant group said Monday it had dissolved its government in Gaza and is preparing to transfer power to a technical committee backed by the United Nations as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal.

Hamas did not say whether it planned to take the crucial step of disarming or handing over security to an international force, but described its decision as evidence of its commitment to Gaza’s reconstruction after years of war.

It was unclear if the move, announced by a lower-level official, would lead to any meaningful change on the ground.

The Board of Peace, led by Trump with the mandate of governing and rebuilding Gaza, said it would assess the impact of the Hamas announcement based on “actions, not promises” and stressed in a statement on X that the technocratic committee must control all weapons in Gaza, as laid out in the ceasefire agreement.

Netanyahu urges US not to sell F-35s to Turkey

Speaking Monday on the morning show “Fox & Friends,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “calls openly for the annihilation of Israel.”

Turkey and Israel have acrimonious relations. Erdogan frequently accuses Israel of committing genocide in its war in Gaza, triggered by the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Turkey was barred from the F-35 program in 2019, after it purchased Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems. However, Trump, who has warm relations with Erdogan, has hinted ahead of his planned visit to Ankara for the NATO summit that the sales could soon resume.

Netanyahu said selling Turkey F-35s would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and also, I think, by America’s posture in the Middle East.”

Israel’s Air Force depends on hundreds of U.S. fighter jets, including F-35s, F-16s and F-15s.

Trump points to George Washington to justify enriching his family

The president has drawn sharp criticism after financial disclosures showed his family made more than $1 billion in crypto last year.

He says his sons are running the family business, the Trump Organization, while he’s president.

“I don’t talk to them,” Trump said, adding, “I’m allowed to, I think.”

But he also said he doesn’t bother because being president is more important: “This office is a much higher calling.”

Trump also offered a dubious history lesson, suggesting that, as president, George Washington had two desks — one for business matters and another for the presidency.

“He had two desks in the same room,” Trump said. “And so, you’re allowed to. But I choose not to. I don’t talk to my kids about, you know, this stuff.”

“The hardest thing to get is a helipad,” Trump said. “There’s no harder zoning thing to get.”

He added “we’re building a helipad” that will feature the presidential seal and be made of granite.

The plan marks yet another building project for Trump, who has shaped the White House and its grounds in his own image in myriad ways.

Trump questions dangers of TikTok because he’s No. 1 on it

Asked whether SpaceX shares would be donated for use in Trump Accounts, the president instead talked about how TikTok helped him become president again.

Citing a news segment about the social media app’s purported dangers, Trump said he had seen that he is “No. 1 on it,” then questioned how dangerous it could actually be.

“I think it helped me win the election in a landslide, if you want to know the truth,” he said.

As for SpaceX, Trump said he’s “a cheerleader for geniuses” and speaks to many of them, including Elon Musk, who founded the rocketmaking company.

Trump says he called FIFA president to review red card, called it a ‘horrible’ call

Asked about his role in getting Balogun’s red-card penalty suspended, Trump acknowledged calling Infantino and asking that FIFA take a second look.

The president said he didn’t initially know what a red card was or what its consequences were. When he found out that it could keep Balogun out of Monday’s match against Belgium, Trump said he felt compelled to intervene.

“All I did was ask for a review,” Trump said to press at the White House. “I didn’t think it was a foul,” he added. “I thought it was two great athletes that crashed each other and got entangled.”

He said the red card was a “horrible” call, arguing that the slowed-down video review made it look worse than it was.

“That’s very unfair,” he said. “How do you penalize them for a game that hasn’t been played?

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Democratic commissioner of one of the country’s top civil rights agencies dropped a lawsuit Monday challenging her dismissal by President Donald Trump, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling that dramatically enhanced the president’s power over independent agencies.

Trump’s unprecedented dismissal of Jocelyn Samuels and another Democrat from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cleared the way for his shake-up of civil rights enforcement, which has prioritized rooting out diversity and inclusion practices, weakening protections for transgender workers and championing discrimination claims against white workers and U.S.-born workers.

The EEOC moved forward with aspects of that plan Monday, releasing a regulatory agenda that includes proposals to end its annual collection of workplace demographic data and rescind longstanding guidance warning it may be discriminatory to require workers to exclusively use English on the job, among other changes.

One of Trump’s first acts as president was demolishing the Democratic majority on the normally five-member EEOC, sweeping away what would have been a major obstacle to his civil rights agenda. His dismissal of Samuels and Charlotte Burrows before the end of their five-year terms was unprecedented in the history of the EEOC, which was created by Congress through the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The EEOC commission now consists of two Republicans and one Democrat. Trump has yet to nominate candidates to fill two open seats on the commission.

In her lawsuit, Samuels had argued that Congress established that the EEOC commissioners, who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, would serve staggered terms to ensure “continuity, stability and insulation from political pressure.”

But in a statement Monday, Samuels said she was dismissing her lawsuit because the Supreme Court’s ruling in a separate case “leaves me without a viable path forward to continue contesting my termination.”

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s firing of the heads of independent agencies, with the exception of the Federal Reserve, jettisoning a 91-year-old decision that had limited when presidents can fire board members of independent agencies.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling in a LinkedIn post last week, saying that it reinforced that the “EEOC is an executive branch agency.”

In a statement Monday about the new regulatory agenda, an EEOC spokesperson said the agency is “committed to implementing President Trump’s landmark civil rights agenda, dedicated to evenhanded enforcement of federal civil rights laws.”

The EEOC’s sole Democratic commissioner, Kalpana Kotagal, voted against the agenda, saying in a statement that “the proposed changes weaken civil rights protections for workers and undermine the agency’s investigative and enforcement efforts.”

The regulatory agenda includes a proposal to end a 40-year requirement for companies with 100 or more employees, or federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit workforce demographic data to the EEOC.

Lucas has publicly warned companies not to use such demographic data to justify what she describes as potentially discriminatory practices to bolster the diversity for their workforce. In its proposed rescission, the EEOC said requirements impose “significant financial and administrative burdens on the nation’s employers.” The rescission will almost certainly be approved by the EEOC commission but it will then be subject to a public commentary period before final passage.

Conservative critics have said demographic data encourages the EEOC to assume that discrimination is behind any gender or racial imbalance in a company’s workforce. Supporters say the EEOC has used the annual surveys to help identify discriminatory patterns, guide its priorities and help track how women and minorities have fared since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

“The EEOC has collected this data from employers for six decades. It’s difficult to understand why the agency would kneecap its ability to investigate discrimination, particularly at a time when the EEOC is chronically understaffed and underfunded,” Kotagal said.

The EEOC also announced its intent to rescind 1980 guidelines defining national origin-based discrimination, which warns employers that any requirement for workers to exclusively speak English may “create an atmosphere of inferiority, isolation and intimidation based on national origin which could result in a discriminatory working environment.” The EEOC argued that the guidelines are outdated and incorrectly established a “presumption that English-only rules violate Title VII in some circumstances.”

Last week, the EEOC voted to toss out longstanding guidelines on what sort of voluntary affirmative action employers can take to improve job opportunities for women and minorities without violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from making employment decisions based on race, color, national origin, sex and religion. The EEOC reversed its stance that employers could pursue some programs, such as training for women and minorities or steps to expand recruitment pools, without running afoul of Title VII.

Also on the EEOC’s agenda is revising regulations for enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a law that entitles women to seek workplace accommodations for pregnancy and related medical conditions. Lucas opposed the Biden-era regulations for including abortion as a circumstance allowing accommodations, such as time off for medical appointments.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday sought to take credit for recent price cuts by Walmart, but a statement by the retailer made no mention of the administration’s involvement in its decision.

The president has faced public backlash over inflation rising during his watch, as prices climbed initially in the aftermath of his tariffs and later with the start of the Iran war in late February. Trump described a recent bipartisan measure to trim housing costs as “a yawn” and tried to blame the Democrats for inflation staying elevated.

Going into the November midterm elections for control of Congress, Trump has sought to deride Democrats as communists who would have the government interfere with private companies. But in his social media post about Walmart, he said the business had trimmed prices at the specific request of his administration.

“I have just been informed that one of the biggest, best, and smartest Retailers in America, Walmart, will be lowering prices, by a lot, at my Administration’s request to celebrate our great Country’s 250th birthday,” Trump said. “Walmart will, in particular, be dropping the price for a pound of ground beef by almost 15%, among many other products.”

Walmart has benefited in part from higher inflation under Trump, as consumers have turned to its stores and website in search of lower prices, according to its quarterly earnings released in May.

The company, in a statement issued Monday after the president’s post, said its price rollbacks at Walmart and Sam’s Club “are designed to help customers and members make the most” of the summer season. There was no mention of any interaction with the administration and the company did not publicly comment on Trump’s claims.

The statement noted price cuts for ground beef, corn, red cherries, ice cream, potato chips and Coca-Cola and Pepsi products.

Inflation for consumer prices has climbed 4.2% over the past 12 months, meaningfully higher than the 3% rate Trump inherited, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some inflationary pressures may ease as the interim ceasefire deal with Iran has led to lower oil prices as more tankers can travel through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has famously used Walmart as a barometer of the American consumer, telling the company in May 2025 that it needed to “eat” the cost of tariffs that he had unilaterally imposed.

“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump posted a little over a year ago. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

Heat wave-breaking rain caused part of the roof of a New Jersey warehouse store to collapse Monday, sending a shopper, a cart and tables of baked goods skidding through rushing water.

Two people were briefly trapped in debris at the BJ’s Wholesale Club in Ocean Township but managed to escape, and no injuries were reported, according to the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office.

Flooding rains were reported in parts of New York City, Philadelphia and New Jersey as rounds of storms moved through the area Monday, breaking a heat wave that gripped much of the area last week.

On Sunday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned about heatstroke and shared locations of pools and cooling centers. By Monday, he was urging people to leave basement apartments immediately if they saw water rising in their homes.

Heavy rain stranded cars on flooded highways across northern New Jersey and sloshed water into businesses and at least one hospital.

“Nothing too serious. They have us running from call to call,” said Lakewood Police Capt. Leroy Marshall.

The rain and storms broke the heat dome that settled over much of the Northeast last week.

LaGuardia Airport in New York set a record high Thursday of 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Low temperatures in many places barely made it below 80 degrees F (26.7 C), preventing people from cooling off even at night.

The temperature at LaGuardia hovered just below 70 degrees F (21.1 C) Monday with the rain.

Officials in New Jersey were investigating at least 29 deaths last week that were possibly heat-related. The people were found dead on the street or in homes without air conditioning. They ranged in ages from their 30s to their 80s, New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Raynard Washington said.

Autopsies and other investigations will be needed before the deaths are officially blamed on the heat, Washington said.

Other states have not announced possible deaths from the heat.

Severe storms moved from Michigan to the East Coast as the heat wave broke over the weekend.

In Michigan, two children, ages 8 and 12, were found dead Saturday in a garage after they were apparently overcome by exhaust from a generator during a storm-related power outage, Sumpter Township police said.

About 370,000 people remained without power across the country, most from the storm damage, according to poweroutage.com.

NEW YORK (AP) — A rebound for AI stocks lifted the U.S. market on Monday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and pulled back within 1% of its all-time high, even though the majority of stocks within the index fell. The strength for companies in the artificial-intelligence technology industry sent the Nasdaq composite 1.1% higher, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 155 points, or 0.3%, to a record.

AI stocks have swung sharply in recent weeks on worries that their prices shot too high. Doubts are rising about whether all the dollars flowing into AI chips and data centers can possibly create enough gains in productivity and profits to make back all the investments.

Broadcom was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500 and rose 3.7% after announcing long-term agreements to provide silicon products to Apple. It was coming off two straight losses of more than 2% on Wednesday and Thursday at the end of last week, before Friday’s holiday in advance of the Fourth of July.

The global appetite for AI from investors will face an additional test later this week when SK Hynix, the South Korean maker of computer memory, plans to raise $28 billion by selling shares of stock that will trade in the United States on the Nasdaq. That would make it one of the biggest U.S. offerings ever, behind SpaceX’s IPO from last month, which raised $75 billion.

SK Hynix’s stock in Seoul has already more than tripled so far this year because of the AI boom, but its day-to-day swings have included sharp losses in recent weeks. It fell 14.6% on Thursday alone, for example.

SpaceX, which owns the xAI business, has seen its stock likewise swing following its ballyhooed initial public offering.

It erased an early gain to fall 1% in the last day of trading before it’s scheduled to join the Nasdaq 100 index of the largest non-financial stocks on the Nasdaq. That inclusion will force funds like the QQQ exchange-traded fund, which mimic the index, to buy SpaceX themselves.

Elsewhere in AI, TeraWulf climbed 4.9% after it said Anthropic agreed to a 20-year deal to use its data center in Kentucky. TeraWulf expects the deal to bring in roughly $19 billion in revenue. TeraWulf is in the midst of transitioning its business away from mining bitcoin and into high-performance computing.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 54.19 points to 7,537.54. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 155.84 to 53,055.91, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 288.49 to 26,121.16.

In the oil market, prices drifted after OPEC+ announced Sunday that seven of its members plan to expand oil production by a combined total of 188,000 barrels per day in August. It was the fifth straight month that OPEC+ members have agreed to raise output, moves that tend to weigh on oil prices.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.2% to $71.99. That’s close to where it was before the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February and sent prices spiking.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.47% from 4.49% late Thursday.

A report showed that growth last month for U.S. recreation, finance and other services businesses was roughly in line with economists’ expectations. The survey by the Institute for Supply Management said that some businesses said they were seeing lower prices for gasoline and diesel, easing inflationary pressures.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell modestly across much of Europe and Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and rose 1.1%.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.