President Donald Trump’s administration returned to the Supreme Court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the SNAP federal food aid program frozen while the government is shut down, even as some families struggled to put food on the table.
The request is the latest in a flurry of legal activity over how the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries should proceed during the historic U.S. government shutdown. Lower courts have ruled that the government must keep full payments flowing, but the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to keep them frozen for now.
The high court is expected to rule Tuesday.
The seesawing rulings so far have created a situation where beneficiaries in some states, including Hawaii and New Jersey, have received their full monthly allocations and those in others, such as Nebraska and West Virginia, have seen nothing.
Brandi Johnson, 48, of St. Louis, said she’s struggling to make the $20 she has left in her SNAP account stretch. Johnson said she has been skipping meals the past two weeks to make sure her three teenage children have something to eat. She is also helping care for her infant granddaughter, who has food allergies, and her 80-year-old mother.
She said food pantries have offered little help in recent days. Many require patrons to live in a certain ZIP code or are dedicated to helping the elderly first.
“I think about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, literally,” Johnson said. “Because you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to eat.”
Millions receive aid while others wait
The Trump administration argued that lower court orders requiring the full funding of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program wrongly affect ongoing negotiations in Congress about ending the shutdown. Supreme Court Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the funding lapse tragic, but said judges shouldn’t be deciding how to handle it.
The Senate Monday passed a compromise funding package that would end the government shutdown and refill SNAP funds. It now goes to the House for consideration.
Trump’s administration initially said SNAP benefits would not be available in November because of the shutdown. After some states and nonprofit groups sued, judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely.
The administration then said it would use an emergency reserve fund to provide 65% of the maximum monthly benefit. On Thursday, Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered full funding for SNAP benefits by Friday.
Some states acted quickly to direct their EBT vendors to disburse full monthly benefits to SNAP recipients. Millions of people in at least a dozen states — all with Democratic governors — received the full amount to buy groceries before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put McConnell’s order on hold Friday night, pending further deliberation by an appeals court.
Delays cause complications for some beneficiaries
Millions more people still have not received SNAP payments for November, because their states were waiting on guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP. Several states have made partial payments, including Texas, where officials said money was going on cards for some beneficiaries Monday.
“Continued delays deepen suffering for children, seniors, and working families, and force nonprofits to shoulder an even heavier burden,” Diane Yentel, President and CEO, National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement Monday. “If basic decency and humanity don’t compel the administration to assure food security for all Americans, then multiple federal court judges finding its actions unlawful must.”
Trump’s administration has argued that the judicial order to provide full benefits violates the Constitution by infringing on the spending power of the legislative and executive branches.
Wisconsin, which was among the first to load full benefits after McConnell’s order, had its federal reimbursement frozen. The state’s SNAP account could be depleted as soon as Monday, leaving no money to reimburse stores that sell food to SNAP recipients, according to a court filing.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said Monday that some cardholders have been turned away by stores concerned that they won’t be reimbursed — something she called to stop.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said Trump was fighting “for the right to starve Americans.”
“It’s the most heinous thing I’ve ever seen in public life,” he said.
The latest rulings keep payments on hold, at least for now
States administering SNAP payments continue to face uncertainty over whether they can — and should — provide full monthly benefits during the ongoing legal battles.
The Trump administration over the weekend demanded that states “undo” full benefits that were paid during a one-day window after a federal judge ordered full funding and before a Supreme Court justice paused that order.
A federal appeals court in Boston left the full benefits order in place late Sunday, though the Supreme Court order ensures the government won’t have to pay out for at least 48 hours.
“The record here shows that the government sat on its hands for nearly a month, unprepared to make partial payments, while people who rely on SNAP received no benefits a week into November and counting,” Judge Julie Rikleman of the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, presiding over a case filed in Boston by Democratic state officials, on Monday paused the USDA’s request from Saturday that states “immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits.”
In a hearing later that Monday, Talwani said that communication to states was confusing, especially because the threat came just a day after USDA sent letters to states saying SNAP would be paid in full.
Federal government lawyer Tyler Becker said the order was only intended for states to receive the full amount of SNAP benefits, and “had nothing to do with beneficiaries.”
Talwani said she would issue a full order soon.
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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Stephen Groves and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
If you have upcoming travel plans anytime soon, you might notice fewer options on the airport’s departure board.
Airlines are scaling back flights at dozens of major U.S. airports to ease the pressure on air traffic controllers, who have been working unpaid and under intense strain during the ongoing government shutdown.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the decision is necessary to keep travelers safe. Many controllers have been putting in long hours and mandatory overtime while lawmakers are at a standstill over how to reopen the government.
Major hubs like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are among those affected, and the ripple effects could mean more cancellations, longer delays and fuller flights for travelers across the country. The cutbacks will impact hundreds if not thousands of flights daily.
Here’s what to know about the FAA’s order — and what you can do if your plans are disrupted:
Is my airport on the list?
There’s a good chance it is. The list spans more than two dozen states.
It includes the country’s busiest airport — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia — and the main airports in Boston, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco and Salt Lake City.
Multiple airports will be impacted in some metropolitan hubs, including New York, Houston, Chicago and Washington.
How long will this go on?
It’s hard to say. Even if the shutdown ends soon, the FAA has said it would not lift the flight restrictions until staffing at airport towers and regional air traffic centers makes it safe to do so.
“It’s going to take time to work through this,” said Michael Johnson, president of Ensemble Travel, an association of travel agencies in the U.S. and Canada.
That’s why, he said, it’s important to plan ahead — whether you’ve already booked flights or you’re just starting to make holiday travel plans.
Know before you go
Airlines say they will let their customers know if their flight is called off.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to check your airline’s app or a flight-tracking site for updates before you leave for the airport. It’s better to be stuck at home or in a hotel than stranded in a terminal.
My flight was canceled. Now what?
“Take a deep breath. Don’t panic,” Johnson said. “There are options available. They may not be ideal, and they may be inconvenient, but you have options.”
If you’re already at the airport, it’s time to get in line to speak to a customer service representative. While you’re waiting, you can call or go online to connect to the airline’s reservations staff. It can also help to reach out on the social platform X because airlines might respond quickly there.
Now might also be the time to consider if it makes sense to travel by train, car or bus instead.
Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, said the shutdown is different from when a single airline is having problems and travelers can just pick another carrier.
“The longer the shutdown drags on, it’s unlikely that there will be one airline running on time if the rest of the them are failing,” Potter said.
Can I get a refund or compensation?
The airlines will be required to issue full refunds, according to the FAA. However, they aren’t required to cover extra costs like meals or hotel stays — unless the delay or cancellation was within their control, according to the Department of Transportation.
You can also check the DOT website to see what your airline promises for refunds or other costs if your flight is disrupted.
Should I just stay home for the holidays?
Not necessarily. You might just need a little more planning and flexibility than usual.
A travel adviser can help take some stress off your plate, and travel insurance may give you an extra safety net.
Johnson also warned that flights could sell out fast once the shutdown ends.
“There will be a flurry of booking activity,” he said. “So try to get ahead of it and make sure that you’re protected.”
Booking an early flight can also help, says Tyler Hosford, security director at risk mitigation company International SOS. If it gets canceled, you still “have the whole day” to sort things out.
Other tips
Travel light. Limiting baggage to a carry-on means one less airport line to deal with, and if your plans change unexpectedly, you’ll already have everything with you.
Give yourself extra time at the airport, especially if you’re an anxious flyer or traveling with young children or anyone who needs extra help getting around.
And be nice. Airline agents are likely helping other frustrated travelers, too, and yelling won’t make them more willing to help. Remember, the cancellations aren’t their fault.
“An extra ounce of kindness to yourself and to others at this time of year, with all of the disruptions, will go a long way,” Johnson said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will be rendered “defenseless’’ and possibly “reduced to almost Third World status” if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs he imposed this year on nearly every country on earth.
The justices sounded skeptical during oral arguments Wednesday of his sweeping claims of authority to impose tariffs as he sees fit.
The truth, though, is that Trump will still have plenty of options to keep taxing imports aggressively even if the court rules against him. He can re-use tariff powers he deployed in his first term and can reach for others, including one that dates back to the Great Depression.
“It’s hard to see any pathway here where tariffs end,” said Georgetown trade law professor Kathleen Claussen. “I am pretty convinced he could rebuild the tariff landscape he has now using other authorities.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, in fact, lawyer Neal Katyal, representing small businesses suing to get the tariffs struck down, argued that Trump didn’t need the boundless authority he’s claimed to impose tariffs under 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). That is because Congress delegated tariff power to the White House in several other statutes — though it carefully limited the ways the president could use the authority.
“Congress knows exactly how to delegate its tariff powers,” Katyal said.
Tariffs have become a cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy in his second term, with double-digit “reciprocal” tariffs imposed on most countries, which he has justified by declaring America’s longstanding trade deficits a national emergency.
The average U.S. tariff has gone from 2.5% when Trump returned to the White House in January to 17.9%, the highest since 1934, according to calculations by Yale University’s Budget Lab.
Still, Trump “will have other tools that can cause pain,’’ said Stratos Pahis of Brooklyn Law School. Here’s a look at some of his options:
Countering unfair trade practices
The United States has long had a handy cudgel to wallop countries it accuses of engaging in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. That is Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
And Trump has made aggressive use of it himself — especially against China. In his first term, he cited Section 301 to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports in a dispute over the sharp-elbowed tactics that Beijing was using to challenge America’s technological dominance. The U.S. is also using 301 powers to counter what it calls unfair Chinese practices in the shipbuilding industry.
“You’ve had Section 301 tariffs in place against China for years,” said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a trade official in Trump’s first administration and in Biden’s.
There are no limits on the size of Section 301 tariffs. They expire after four years but can be extended.
But the administration’s trade representative must conduct an investigation and typically hold a public hearing before imposing 301 tariffs.
John Veroneau, general counsel for the U.S. trade representative in the George W. Bush administration, said Section 301 is useful in taking on China. But it has drawbacks when it comes to dealing with the smaller countries that Trump has hammered with reciprocal tariffs.
“Undertaking dozens and dozens of 301 investigations of all of those countries is a laborious process,” Veroneau said.
Targeting trade deficits
In striking down Trump’s reciprocal tariffs in May, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that the president couldn’t use emergency powers to combat trade deficits.
That is partly because Congress had specifically given the White House limited authority to address the problem in another statute: Section 122, also of the Trade Act of 1974. That allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days in response to unbalanced trade. The administration doesn’t even have to conduct an investigation beforehand.
But Section 122 authority has never been used to apply tariffs, and there is some uncertainty about how it would work.
Protecting national security
In both of his terms, Trump has made aggressive use of his power — under Section 232 of Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — to impose tariffs on imports that he deems a threat to national security.
In 2018, he slapped tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, levies he’s expanded since returning to the White House. He also plastered Section 232 tariffs on autos, auto parts, copper, lumber.
In September, the president even levied Section 232 tariffs on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered furniture. “Even though people might roll their eyes” at the notion that imported furniture poses a threat to national security, Veroneau said, “it’s difficult to get courts to second-guess a determination by a president on a national security matter.”
Section 232 tariffs are not limited by law but do require an investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department. It’s the administration itself that does the investigating – also true for Section 301 cases — “so they have a lot of control over the outcome,” Veroneau said.
Reviving Depression-era tariffs
Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1930, imposing hefty taxes on imports. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (for their congressional sponsors), these levies have been widely condemned by economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse. They also got a memorable pop culture shoutout in the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Section 338 of the law authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required, and there’s no limit on how long the tariffs can stay in place.
Those tariffs have never been imposed — U.S. trade negotiators traditionally have favored Section 301 sanctions instead — though the United States used the threat of them as a bargaining chip in trade talks in the 1930s.
In September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters that the administration was considering Section 338 as a Plan B if the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s use of emergency powers tariffs.
The Smoot-Hawley legislation has a bad reputation, Veroneau said, but Trump might find it appealing. “To be the first president to ever use it could have some cache.”
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Associated Press Staff Writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unveiled a deal Thursday with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to expand coverage and reduce prices for the popular obesity treatments Zepbound and Wegovy.
Known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, the drugs have soared in popularity in recent years, but patient access has been a consistent problem because of their cost — around $500 a month for higher doses — and insurance coverage has been spotty. More than 100 million American adults are obese, according to federal estimates.
Coverage of the drugs for obesity will expand to Medicare patients starting next year, according to the administration, which said some lower prices also will be phased in for patients without coverage. Starting doses of new, pill versions of the treatments also will cost $149 a month if they are approved.
“(It) will save lives, improve the health of millions and millions of Americans,” said Trump, in an Oval Office announcement in which he referred to GLP-1s as a “fat drug.”
Thursday’s announcement is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to rein in soaring drug prices in its efforts to address cost-of-living concerns among voters. Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid after an executive order in May set a deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices or face new limits on what the government will pay.
As with the other deals, it’s not clear how much the price drop will be felt by consumers. Drug prices can vary based on the competition for treatments and insurance coverage.
Obesity drugs are popular, but costly
The obesity drugs work by targeting hormones in the gut and brain that affect appetite and feelings of fullness. In clinical trials, they helped people shed 15% to 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases.
Patients usually start on smaller doses and then work up to larger amounts, depending on their needs. They need to stay on the the treatments indefinitely or risk regaining weight, experts say.
The medications have proven especially lucrative for Lilly and Novo. Lilly said recently that sales of Zepbound have tripled so far this year to more than $9 billion.
But for many Americans, their cost has made them out of reach.
Medicare, the federally funded coverage program mainly for people ages 65 and over, now covers the cost of the drugs for conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but not for weight loss alone. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, proposed a rule last November that would have changed that, but the Trump administration nixed it.
Few state and federally funded Medicaid programs, for people with low incomes, offer coverage. And employers and insurers that provide commercial coverage are wary of paying for these drugs in part because so many people might use them.
The $500 monthly price for higher doses of the treatments also makes them unaffordable for those without insurance, doctors say.
Trump tries to show he is in touch with cost-of-living concerns
Thursday’s announcement comes as the White House is looking to demonstrate that Trump is in touch with Americans’ frustrations with rising costs for food, housing, health care and other necessities.
“Trump is the friend of the forgotten American,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at Thursday’s announcement. “Obesity is a disease of poverty. And overwhelmingly, these drugs have only been available for people who have wealth.”
(Obesity rates actually are slightly higher for middle-income Americans than they are for those with the lowest and highest incomes, according to 2017-2020 data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Kennedy had previously expressed skepticism about GLP-1s, but he was full of praise for Trump for pushing to help a broader segment of Americans have access to the drug.
Trump, who has a history of commenting on people’s appearance, asked the officials who joined him in the Oval Office whether they had used the weight-loss medications.
“Do you take any of this stuff, Howard?” Trump asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Not yet,” Lutnick replied. “He’s taking it,” the president said of Steven Cheung, who is the White House director of communications.
The drug-pricing announcement came days after Democrats swept elections in races across the country. Economic worries were the dominant concern for those casting their ballots, according to findings from the AP voter poll.
Plan calls for phased-in price reductions
The White House sought to diminish price-reduction efforts by the previous Democratic administration as a gift to the pharmaceutical industry.
Trump, instead, consummated a deal that ensures Americans aren’t unfairly financing the pharmaceutical industry’s innovation, claimed a senior administration official, who briefed reporters ahead of Thursday’s Oval Office announcement.
Another senior administration official said coverage of the drugs will expand to Medicare patients starting next year. The program will start covering the treatments for people who have severe obesity and others who are overweight or obese and have serious health problems, the official said. Those who qualify will pay $50 copays for the medicine.
Lower prices also will be phased in for people without coverage through the administration’s TrumpRx program, which will allow people to buy drugs directly from manufacturers, starting in January.
Administration officials said the average price of the drugs sold on TrumpRx will start at around $350 and then drop to $245 over the next two years.
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson declined to provide details on their pricing changes.
Lilly said it will sell a starter dose of Zepbound for $299 a month and additional doses at up to $449. Both represent $50 reductions from current prices for doses it sells directly to patients.
Administration officials said lower prices also will be provided for state and federally funded Medicaid programs. And starting doses of new, pill versions of the obesity treatments will cost $149 a month if they are approved.
U.S. health regulators on Thursday separately agreed to dramatically expedite review of Lilly’s obesity pill, orforglipron. An FDA decision on Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill is expected later this year.
Doctors who treat patients for obesity say help is needed to improve access. Dr. Leslie Golden says she has roughly 600 patients taking one of these treatments, and at least 75% struggle to afford them. Even with coverage, some face $150 copayments for refills.
“Every visit it’s, ‘How long can we continue to do this? What’s the plan if I can’t continue?’” said Golden, an obesity medicine specialist in Watertown, Wisconsin. “Some of them are working additional jobs or delaying retirement so they can continue to pay for it.”
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AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
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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.
Denmark’s government on Friday announced an agreement to ban access to social media for anyone under 15, ratcheting up pressure on Big Tech platforms as concerns grow that kids are getting too swept up in a digitized world of harmful content and commercial interests.
The move would give some parents — after a specific assessment — the right to let their children access social media from age 13. It wasn’t immediately clear how such a ban would be enforced: Many tech platforms already restrict pre-teens from signing up. Officials and experts say such restrictions don’t always work.
Such a measure would be among the most sweeping steps yet by a European Union government to limit use of social media among teens and younger children, which has drawn concerns in many parts of an increasingly online world.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Caroline Stage, Denmark’s minister for digital affairs, said 94% of Danish children under age 13 have profiles on at least one social media platform, and more than half of those under 10 do.
“The amount of time they spend online — the amount of violence, self-harm that they are exposed to online — is simply too great a risk for our children,” she said, while praising tech giants as “the greatest companies that we have. They have an absurd amount of money available, but they’re simply not willing to invest in the safety of our children, invest in the safety of all of us.”
No rush to legislation, no loopholes for tech giants
Stage said a ban won’t take effect immediately. Allied lawmakers on the issue from across the political spectrum who make up a majority in parliament will likely take months to pass relevant legislation.
“I can assure you that Denmark will hurry, but we won’t do it too quickly because we need to make sure that the regulation is right and that there is no loopholes for the tech giants to go through,” Stage said. Her ministry said pressure from tech giants’ business models was “too massive.”
That made platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram subject to fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.
Officials in Denmark didn’t say how such a ban would be enforced in a world where millions of children have easy access to screens. But Stage noted that Denmark has a national electronic ID system — nearly all Danish citizens over age 13 have such an ID — and plans to set up an age-verification app. Several other EU countries are testing such apps.
“We cannot force the tech giants to use our app, but what we can do is force the tech giants to make proper age verification, and if they don’t, we will be able to enforce through the EU commission and make sure that they will be fined up to 6% of their global income.”
Aiming to shield kids from harmful content online
Many governments have been grappling with ways of limiting harmful fallout from online technologies, without overly squelching their promise. Stage said Denmark’s legislative push was “not about excluding children from everything digital” — but keeping them away from harmful content.
China — which manufacturers many of the world’s digital devices — has set limits on online game time and smart-phone time for kids.
“Children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration, and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present,” the Danish ministry said. “This is a development that no parent, teacher or educator can stop alone.”
The EU’s Digital Services Act, which took effect two years ago, forbids children younger than 13 to hold accounts on social media like TikTok and Instagram, video sharing platforms like YouTube and Twitch, and sites like Reddit and Discord, as well as AI companions.
Many social media platforms have for years banned anyone 13 or under from signing up for their services. TikTok users can verify their ages by submitting a selfie that will be analyzed to estimate their age. Meta Platforms, parent of Instagram and Facebook, says it uses a similar system for video selfies and AI to help figure out a user’s age.
TikTok said in an email that it recognizes the importance of Denmark’s initiative.
“At TikTok, we have steadfastly created a robust trust and safety track record, with more than 50 preset safety features for teen accounts, as well as age appropriate experiences and tools for guardians such as Family Pairing,” a tool allowing parents, guardians, and teens to customize safety settings.
We look forward to working constructively on solutions that apply consistently across the industry,” it added.
Meta didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment from the AP.
“We’ve given the tech giants so many chances to stand up and to do something about what is happening on their platforms. They haven’t done it,” said Stage, the Danish minister. “So now we will take over the steering wheel and make sure that our children’s futures are safe.”
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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
The lawsuits filed Thursday in California state courts allege wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter and negligence. Filed on behalf of six adults and one teenager by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project, the lawsuits claim that OpenAI knowingly released GPT-4o prematurely, despite internal warnings that it was dangerously sycophantic and psychologically manipulative. Four of the victims died by suicide.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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The teenager, 17-year-old Amaurie Lacey, began using ChatGPT for help, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court. But instead of helping, “the defective and inherently dangerous ChatGPT product caused addiction, depression, and, eventually, counseled him on the most effective way to tie a noose and how long he would be able to “live without breathing.’”
“Amaurie’s death was neither an accident nor a coincidence but rather the foreseeable consequence of OpenAI and Samuel Altman’s intentional decision to curtail safety testing and rush ChatGPT onto the market,” the lawsuit says.
OpenAI called the situations “incredibly heartbreaking” and said it was reviewing the court filings to understand the details.
Another lawsuit, filed by Alan Brooks, a 48-year-old in Ontario, Canada, claims that for more than two years ChatGPT worked as a “resource tool” for Brooks. Then, without warning, it changed, preying on his vulnerabilities and “manipulating, and inducing him to experience delusions. As a result, Allan, who had no prior mental health illness, was pulled into a mental health crisis that resulted in devastating financial, reputational, and emotional harm.”
“These lawsuits are about accountability for a product that was designed to blur the line between tool and companion all in the name of increasing user engagement and market share,” said Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, in a statement.
OpenAI, he added, “designed GPT-4o to emotionally entangle users, regardless of age, gender, or background, and released it without the safeguards needed to protect them.” By rushing its product to market without adequate safeguards in order to dominate the market and boost engagement, he said, OpenAI compromised safety and prioritized “emotional manipulation over ethical design.”
In August, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.
“The lawsuits filed against OpenAI reveal what happens when tech companies rush products to market without proper safeguards for young people,” said Daniel Weiss, chief advocacy officer at Common Sense Media, which was not part of the complaints. “These tragic cases show real people whose lives were upended or lost when they used technology designed to keep them engaged rather than keep them safe.”
If you believe artificial intelligence poses grave risks to humanity, then a professor at Carnegie Mellon University has one of the most important roles in the tech industry right now.
Zico Kolter leads a 4-person panel at OpenAI that has the authority to halt the ChatGPT maker’s release of new AI systems if it finds them unsafe. That could be technology so powerful that an evildoer could use it to make weapons of mass destruction. It could also be a new chatbot so poorly designed that it will hurt people’s mental health.
“Very much we’re not just talking about existential concerns here,” Kolter said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re talking about the entire swath of safety and security issues and critical topics that come up when we start talking about these very widely used AI systems.”
OpenAI tapped the computer scientist to be chair of its Safety and Security Committee more than a year ago, but the position took on heightened significance last week when California and Delaware regulators made Kolter’s oversight a key part of their agreements to allow OpenAI to form a new business structure to more easily raise capital and make a profit.
Safety has been central to OpenAI’s mission since it was founded as a nonprofit research laboratory a decade ago with a goal of building better-than-human AI that benefits humanity. But after its release of ChatGPT sparked a global AI commercial boom, the company has been accused of rushing products to market before they were fully safe in order to stay at the front of the race. Internal divisions that led to the temporary ouster of CEO Sam Altman in 2023 brought those concerns that it had strayed from its mission to a wider audience.
The San Francisco-based organization faced pushback — including a lawsuit from co-founder Elon Musk — when it began steps to convert itself into a more traditional for-profit company to continue advancing its technology.
Agreements announced last week by OpenAI along with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings aimed to assuage some of those concerns.
At the heart of the formal commitments is a promise that decisions about safety and security must come before financial considerations as OpenAI forms a new public benefit corporation that is technically under the control of its nonprofit OpenAI Foundation.
Kolter will be a member of the nonprofit’s board but not on the for-profit board. But he will have “full observation rights” to attend all for-profit board meetings and have access to information it gets about AI safety decisions, according to Bonta’s memorandum of understanding with OpenAI. Kolter is the only person, besides Bonta, named in the lengthy document.
Kolter said the agreements largely confirm that his safety committee, formed last year, will retain the authorities it already had. The other three members also sit on the OpenAI board — one of them is former U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone, who was commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. Altman stepped down from the safety panel last year in a move seen as giving it more independence.
“We have the ability to do things like request delays of model releases until certain mitigations are met,” Kolter said. He declined to say if the safety panel has ever had to halt or mitigate a release, citing the confidentiality of its proceedings.
Kolter said there will be a variety of concerns about AI agents to consider in the coming months and years, from cybersecurity – “Could an agent that encounters some malicious text on the internet accidentally exfiltrate data?” – to security concerns surrounding AI model weights, which are numerical values that influence how an AI system performs.
“But there’s also topics that are either emerging or really specific to this new class of AI model that have no real analogues in traditional security,” he said. “Do models enable malicious users to have much higher capabilities when it comes to things like designing bioweapons or performing malicious cyberattacks?”
“And then finally, there’s just the impact of AI models on people,” he said. “The impact to people’s mental health, the effects of people interacting with these models and what that can cause. All of these things, I think, need to be addressed from a safety standpoint.”
OpenAI has already faced criticism this year about the behavior of its flagship chatbot, including a wrongful-death lawsuit from California parents whose teenage son killed himself in April after lengthy interactions with ChatGPT.
Kolter, director of Carnegie Mellon’s machine learning department, began studying AI as a Georgetown University freshman in the early 2000s, long before it was fashionable.
“When I started working in machine learning, this was an esoteric, niche area,” he said. “We called it machine learning because no one wanted to use the term AI because AI was this old-time field that had overpromised and underdelivered.”
Kolter, 42, has been following OpenAI for years and was close enough to its founders that he attended its launch party at an AI conference in 2015. Still, he didn’t expect how rapidly AI would advance.
“I think very few people, even people working in machine learning deeply, really anticipated the current state we are in, the explosion of capabilities, the explosion of risks that are emerging right now,” he said.
AI safety advocates will be closely watching OpenAI’s restructuring and Kolter’s work. One of the company’s sharpest critics says he’s “cautiously optimistic,” particularly if Kolter’s group “is actually able to hire staff and play a robust role.”
“I think he has the sort of background that makes sense for this role. He seems like a good choice to be running this,” said Nathan Calvin, general counsel at the small AI policy nonprofit Encode. Calvin, who OpenAI targeted with a subpoena at his home as part of its fact-finding to defend against the Musk lawsuit, said he wants OpenAI to stay true to its original mission.
“Some of these commitments could be a really big deal if the board members take them seriously,” Calvin said. “They also could just be the words on paper and pretty divorced from anything that actually happens. I think we don’t know which one of those we’re in yet.”
Travel delays were adding up at airports across the U.S. on Friday as the government shutdown drags on, putting even more pressure on air traffic controllers who have been working without pay for a month.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been warning that travelers will start to see more flight disruptions the longer controllers go without a paycheck.
“Every day there’s going to be more challenges,” Duffy told reporters Thursday outside the White House after a closed-door meeting with Vice President JD Vance and aviation industry leaders to talk about the shutdown’s impact on U.S. travel.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday reported staffing shortages that were causing flight delays at a number of airports, including in Boston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Nashville, Houston, Dallas and the Washington, D.C. area. Airports serving the New York City area — John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport — were also experiencing delays averaging around two hours, according to the FAA.
“Currently nearly 50 percent of major air traffic control facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 90 percent of air traffic controllers are out at New York–area facilities,” the FAA said in a statement posted on X on Friday evening.
Staffing shortages can occur both in regional control centers that manage multiple airports and in individual airport towers, but they don’t always lead to flight disruptions. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, flight data showed strong on-time performance at most major U.S. airports for the month of October despite isolated staffing problems that surfaced throughout the month.
But Cirium said the data also showed a “broader slowdown” Thursday across the nation’s aviation system for the first time since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, suggesting staffing-related disruptions may be spreading.
According to Cirium, many major U.S. airports on Thursday saw below-average on-time performance, with fewer flights departing within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure times. Staffing-related delays at Orlando’s airport on Thursday, for example, averaged nearly four and a half hours for some time. The data does not distinguish between the different causes of delays, such as staffing shortages or bad weather.
Last weekend, a shortage of controllers also led to the FAA issuing a brief ground stop at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest in the world. Flights were held at their originating airports for about two hours Sunday until the FAA lifted the ground stop.
Most controllers are continuing to work mandatory overtime six days a week during the shutdown, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said. That leaves little time for a side job to help cover bills, mortgage payments and other expenses unless controllers call out.
Duffy said controllers are also struggling to get to work because they can’t afford to fill up their cars with gas. Controllers missed their first full paychecks on Tuesday.
“For this nation’s air traffic controllers, missing just one paycheck can be a significant hardship, as it is for all working Americans. Asking them to go without a full month’s pay or more is simply not sustainable,” Nick Daniels, president of NATCA, said Friday in a statement.
Some U.S. airports have stepped in to provide food donations and other support for federal aviation employees working without pay, including controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents.
Before the shutdown, the FAA was already dealing with a long-standing shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers.
President Donald Trump’s meeting Thursday with China’s top leader Xi Jinping produced a raft of decisions to help dial back trade tensions, but no agreement on TikTok’s ownership.
“China will work with the U.S. to properly resolve issues related to TikTok,” China’s Commerce Ministry said after the meeting.
It gave no details on any progress toward ending uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the U.S.
The Trump administration had been signaling that it may have finally reached a deal with Beijing to keep TikTok running in the U.S.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the two leaders will “consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea.”
Wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner to replace China’s ByteDance. The platform went dark briefly on a January deadline but on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.
Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, extended deadlines for a TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership. That fell apart when China backed out after Trump announced sharply higher tariffs on Chinese products. Deadlines in June and September passed, with Trump saying he would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.
Trump’s order was meant to enable an American-led group of investors to buy the app from China’s ByteDance, though the deal also requires China’s approval.
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However, TikTok deal is “not really a big thing for Xi Jinping,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, during a media briefing Tuesday. “(China is) happy to let (Trump) declare that they have finally kept a deal. Whether or not that deal will protect the data of Americans is a big question going forward.”
“A big question mark for the United States, of course, is whether this is consistent with U.S. law since there was a law passed by Congress,” Glaser said.
About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published in September.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.
The security debate centers on the TikTok recommendation algorithm — which has steered millions of users into an endless stream of video shorts. China has said the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But a U.S. regulation that Congress passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok would require the platform to cut ties with ByteDance.
American officials have warned the algorithm — a complex system of rules and calculations that platforms use to deliver personalized content — is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, but no evidence has been presented by U.S. officials proving that China has attempted to do so.
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Associated Press Writer Fu Ting contributed to this story from Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring, even as inflation stays elevated.
But Fed Chair Jerome Powell also cautioned that further rate cuts weren’t guaranteed, citing the government shutdown’s interruption of economic reports and sharp divisions among 19 Fed officials who participate in the central bank’s interest-rate deliberations.
Speaking to reporters after the Fed announced its rate decision, Powell said there were “strongly differing views about how to proceed in December” at its next meeting and a further reduction in the benchmark rate is not “a foregone conclusion — far from it.”
The rate cut — a quarter of a point — brings the Fed’s key rate down to about 3.9%, from about 4.1%. The central bank had cranked its rate to roughly 5.3% in 2023 and 2024 to combat the biggest inflation spike in four decades before implementing three cuts last year. Lower rates could, over time, reduce borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards, as well as for business loans.
The move comes amid a fraught time for the central bank, with hiring sluggish and yet inflation stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. Compounding its challenges, the central bank is navigating without the economic signposts it typically relies on from the government, including monthly reports on jobs, inflation, and consumer spending, which have been suspended because of the government shutdown.
Financial markets largely expected another rate reduction in December, and stock prices dropped after Powell’s comments, with the S&P 500 nearly unchanged and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing slightly lower.
“Powell poured cold water on the idea that the Fed was on autopilot for a December cut,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities. “Instead, they’ll have to wait for economic data to confirm that a rate cut is actually needed.”
Powell was asked about the impact of the government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1 and has interrupted the distribution of economic data. Powell said the Fed does have access to some data that give it “a picture of what’s going on.” He added that, “If there were a significant or material change in the economy, one way or another, I think we’d pick that up through this.”
But the Fed chair did acknowledge that the limited data could cause officials to proceed more cautiously heading into its next meeting in mid-December.
“There’s a possibility that it would make sense to be more cautious about moving (on rates). I’m not committing to that, I’m just saying it’s certainly a possibility that you would say ‘we really can’t see, so let’s slow down.’”
The Fed typically raises its short term rate to combat inflation, while it cuts rates to encourage borrowing and spending and shore up hiring. Right now it sees risks of both slowing hiring and rising inflation, so it is reducing borrowing costs to support the job market, while still keeping rates high enough to avoid stimulating the economy so much that it worsens inflation.
Yet Powell suggested the Fed increasingly sees inflation as less of a threat. He noted that excluding the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, inflation is “not so far from our 2% goal.” Inflation has slowed in apartment rents and for many services, such as car insurance. A report released last week showed that inflation remains elevated but isn’t accelerating.
The government recalled employees to produce the report, despite the shutdown, because it was used to calculate the cost of living adjustment for Social Security.
At the same time, the economy could be rebounding from a sluggish first half, which could improve job growth in the coming months, Powell said. That would make rate cuts less necessary.
“For some part of the committee, it’s time to maybe take a step back and see if whether there really are downside risks to the labor market,” Powell said. “Or see whether in fact that the stronger growth that we’re seeing is real.”
Two of the 12 officials who vote on the Fed’s rate decisions dissented Wednesday, but in different directions. Jeffrey Schmid, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, voted against the move because he preferred no change to the Fed’s rate. Schmid has previously expressed concern that inflation remains too high.
Fed governor Stephen Miran dissented for the second straight meeting in favor of a half-point cut. Miran was appointed by President Donald Trump just before the central bank’s last meeting in September.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for not reducing borrowing costs more quickly. In South Korea early Wednesday he repeated his criticisms of the Fed chair.
“He’s out of there in another couple of months,” Trump said. Powell’s term ends in May. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the administration is considering five people to replace Powell, and will decide by the end of this year.
The Fed also said Wednesday that it would stop reducing the size of its massive securities holdings, which it accumulated during the pandemic and after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. The change, to take effect Dec. 1, could over time slightly reduce longer-term interest rates on things like mortgages but won’t have much overall impact on consumer borrowing costs.
Without government data, the economy is harder to track, Powell said. September’s jobs report, scheduled to be released three weeks ago, is still postponed. This month’s hiring figures, to be released Nov. 7, will likely be delayed and may be less comprehensive when finally released. And the White House said last week that October’s inflation report may never be issued at all.
Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months, according to the Labor Department’s data. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.
More recently, several large corporations have announced sweeping layoffs, including UPS, Amazon, and Target, which threatens to boost the unemployment rate if it continues. Powell said the Fed is watching the layoff announcements “very carefully.”
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Associated Press Writer Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while cutting costs elsewhere.
Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday. Most workers will be given 90 days to look for a new position internally, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Those who can’t find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional support including severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.
Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million. The cuts announced Tuesday amount to about a 4% reduction in its corporate workforce.
In June CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.
Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure was a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.
Amazon has announced plans to invest $10 billion building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it builds up its infrastructure to try to keep up with other tech giants making leaps in AI. Amazon is competing with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and others. In a conference call with industry analysts in May, Jassy said that the potential for growth in the company’s AWS business is massive.
“If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day, and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing. You can see that in the 1,000-plus AI applications we’re building across Amazon. You can see that with our next generation of Alexa, named Alexa+,” he said.
Amazon’s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending. In the following years, big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line.
The cuts announced Tuesday suggests Amazon is still trying to get the size of its workforce right and it may not be over. It was the biggest culling at Amazon since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs. Those cuts came in waves, with 9,000 jobs trimmed in March of that year, and another 18,000 employees two months later. Amazon has not said if more job cuts are on the way.
Yet the jobs market which has for years been a pillar in the U.S. economy, is showing signs of weakening. Layoffs have been limited, but the same can be said for hiring.
Government hiring data is on hold during the government shut down, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed a surprising loss of 32,000 jobs losses in the private sector in September.
Many retailers are pulling back on seasonal hiring this year due to uncertainty over the U.S. economy and tariffs. Amazon Inc. said this month, however, that it would hire 250,000 seasonal workers, the same as last year’s holiday season.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a statement that the layoffs “represent a deep cleaning of Amazon’s corporate workforce.”
“Unlike the Target layoffs, Amazon is operating from a position of strength,” he said. “The company has been producing good growth, and it still has a lot of headroom for further expansion in both the U.S. and overseas.”
But Saunders noted that Amazon is not immune to outside factors, as global markets tighten and underlying costs climb.
“It needs to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom-line performance. This is especially so given the amount of investment the company is making in areas like logistics and AI. In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure,” he said.
Amazon will post quarterly financial results on Thursday. During its most recent quarter, the company reported 17.5% growth for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The stakes. The famous faces. The posh private rooms. The clever cheating schemes.
The federal indictment of a big-money poker ring involving NBA figures on Thursday, in which unsuspecting rich players were allegedly enticed to join then cheated of their money, echoed decades of movies and television, and not just because of the alleged Mafia involvement.
Fictional and actual poker have long been in sort of a pop-cultural feedback loop. When authorities described the supposed circumstances of the games, they might’ve evoked a run of screen moments from recent decades.
Poker in ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Molly’s Game’ and ‘The Sopranos’
A 2004 episode of “ The Sopranos ” showed a very similar mix of celebrities and mobsters in a New York game whose players included Van Halen singer David Lee Roth and football Hall-of-Famer Lawrence Taylor, both playing themselves.
In 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” George Clooney finds his old heist buddy Brad Pitt running a poker game for “Teen Beat” cover boys including Topher Grace and Joshua Jackson, also playing themselves. Clooney spontaneously teams with Pitt to con them. And the plot of the 2007 sequel “Ocean’s Thirteen” centers on the high-tech rigging of casino games.
Asked about the relevance of the films to the NBA scandal, which came soon after a story out of Paris that could’ve come straight out of “Ocean’s Twelve,” Clooney told The Associated Press with a laugh that “we get blamed for everything now.”
“‘Cause we also got compared to the Louvre heist. Which, I think, you gotta CGI me into that basket coming out of the Louvre,” Clooney said Thursday night at the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, “Jay Kelly.” He was referring to thieves using a basket lift to steal priceless Napoleonic jewels from the museum.
2017’s “Molly’s Game,” and the real-life memoir from Molly Bloom that it was based on, could almost serve as manuals for how to build a poker game’s allure for desirable “fish” in the same ways and with the same terminology that the organizers indicted Thursday allegedly used.
The draw of Bloom’s games at hip Los Angeles club The Viper Room were not NBA players, but Hollywood players like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and “The Hangover” director Todd Phillips. (None of them were accused of any wrongdoing.)
In the movie written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Bloom, played by Jessica Chastain, describes the way a famous actor acts as an attractor for other players, the same way officials said Thursday that NBA “face cards” did for the newly indicted organizers.
The unnamed actor, played by Michael Cera, was at least partly based on the “Spider-Man” star Maguire.
“People wanted to say they played with him,” Chastain says. “The same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish.”
In her book, Bloom described the allure for the players she drew.
“The formula of keeping pros out, inviting in celebrities and other interesting and important people, and even the mystique of playing in the private room of the Viper Room added up to one of the most coveted invitations in town,” she writes, later adding that “I just needed to continue feeding it new, rich blood; and to be strategic about how to fill those ten precious seats.”
Bloom would get caught up in a broad 2013 nationwide crackdown on high-stakes private poker games, probably the highest profile poker bust in years before this week. She got a year’s probation, a $1,000 fine, and community service.
There were no accusations of rigging at her game, but that didn’t make it legal.
The legality of private-space poker games has been disputed for decades and widely varies among U.S. states. But in general, they tend to bring attention and prosecution when the host is profiting the way that a casino would.
A brief history of movies making poker cool
Poker — and cheating at it — has run through movies, especially Westerns, from their silent beginnings.
Prominent poker scenes feature in 1944’s “Tall in the Saddle” with John Wayne and 1950’s “The Gunfighter” with Gregory Peck.
“The Cincinnati Kid” in 1965 was dedicated entirely to poker — with Steve McQueen bringing his unmatched cool to the title character.
A pair of movies co-starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman really raised the game’s profile, though.
In the opening scene of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ a hyper-cool Redford is playing poker and refuses to leave until another player takes back a cheating accusation.
In 1973’s Best Picture Oscar winner “The Sting,” 1930s con-men Newman and Redford seek revenge against a big fish and run a series of increasingly bold gambling scams that could’ve come from Thursday’s indictments. Newman out-cheats the man at poker to set him up for the big con, a phony radio horse race.
The 1980s saw a dip in screen poker, with the subject largely relegated to the TV “Gambler” movies, starring Kenny Rogers, based on his hit song.
But the end of the decade brought a poker boomlet from the increased legalization of commercial games.
Then, at possibly the perfect moment, came “Rounders.” The 1998 Matt Damon film did for Texas Hold ’em what “Sideways” did for pinot noir and “Pitch Perfect” did for a cappella: it took an old and popular phenomenon and made them widespread crazes.
Soon after came explosive growth in online poker, whose players often sought out big face-to-face games. And the development of cameras that showed players’ cards — very similar to the tech allegedly used to cheat players, according to the new indictments — made poker a TV spectator sport.
The “Ocean’s” films and the general mystique they brought piled on too.
Clooney, talking about the broader set of busts Thursday that included alleged gambling on basketball itself, pointed out that his Cincinnati Reds were the beneficiaries of sport’s most infamous gambling scandal, the 1919 “Black Sox” and the fixing of the World Series, “so I have great guilt for that.”
“But you know there — we’ve never had a moment in our history that we didn’t have some dumb scandal or something crazy,” he said. “I feel very bad for the gambling scandal ’cause this was on the night that, you know, we had some amazing basketball happen.”
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Associated Press writer Leslie Ambriz contributed to this report.
WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) — Kate Bulkeley’s pledge to stay off social media in high school worked at first. She watched the benefits pile up: She was getting excellent grades. She read lots of books. The family had lively conversations around the dinner table and gathered for movie nights on weekends.
Then, as sophomore year got underway, the unexpected problems surfaced. She missed a student government meeting arranged on Snapchat. Her Model U.N. team communicates on social media, too, causing her scheduling problems. Even the Bible Study club at her Connecticut high school uses Instagram to communicate with members.
Gabriela Durham, a high school senior in Brooklyn, says navigating high school without social media has made her who she is today. She is a focused, organized, straight-A student with a string of college acceptances — and an accomplished dancer who recently made her Broadway debut. Not having social media has made her an “outsider,” in some ways. That used to hurt; now, she says, it feels like a badge of honor.
With the damaging consequences of social media increasingly well documented, some parents are trying to raise their children with restrictions or blanket bans. Teenagers themselves are aware that too much social media is bad for them, and some are initiating social media “cleanses” because of the toll it takes on mental health and grades.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
But it is hard to be a teenager today without social media. For those trying to stay off social platforms while most of their peers are immersed, the path can be challenging, isolating and at times liberating. It can also be life-changing.
This is a tale of two families, social media and the ever-present challenge of navigating high school. It’s about what kids do when they can’t extend their Snapstreaks or shut their bedroom doors and scroll through TikTok past midnight. It’s about what families discuss when they’re not having screen-time battles. It’s also about persistent social ramifications.
AP AUDIO: Life as a teen without social media isn’t easy. These families are navigating adolescence offline
AP correspondent Jocelyn Gecker reports on the social ramifications some families saw for their teenagers after cutting out social media.
The journeys of both families show the rewards and pitfalls of trying to avoid social media in a world that is saturated by it.
A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE
Concerns about children and phone use are not new. But there is a growing realization among experts that the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed adolescence. As youth coped with isolation and spent excessive time online, the pandemic effectively carved out a much larger space for social media in the lives of American kids.
No longer just a distraction or a way to connect with friends, social media has matured into a physical space and a community that almost all U.S. teenagers belong to. Up to 95% of teenagers say they use social media, with more than one-third saying they are on it “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.
More than ever, teenagers live in a seamless digital and non-digital world in ways that most adults don’t recognize or understand, says Michael Rich, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and head of the nonprofit Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Gionna Durham, 13 , left, holds her phone as she has dinner with her sister Gabriela Durham, 17 years old, unseen, on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gionna Durham, 13 , left, holds her phone as she has dinner with her sister Gabriela Durham, 17 years old, unseen, on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
“Social media is now the air kids breathe,” says Rich, who runs the hospital’s Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders.
For better or worse, social media has become a home-base for socializing. It’s where many kids turn to forge their emerging identities, to seek advice, to unwind and relieve stress. It impacts how kids dress and talk. In this era of parental control apps and location tracking, social media is where this generation is finding freedom.
It is also increasingly clear that the more time youth spend online, the higher the risk of mental health problems.
Kids who use social media for more than three hours a day face double the risk of depression and anxiety, according to studies cited by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who issued an extraordinary public warning last spring about the risks of social media to young people.
Those were the concerns of the Bulkeleys and Gabriela’s mother, Elena Romero. Both set strict rules starting when their kids were young and still in elementary school. They delayed giving phones until middle school and made social media off limits until 18. They educated the girls, and their younger siblings, on the impact of social media on young brains, on online privacy concerns, on the dangers of posting photos or comments that can come back to haunt you.
Cell phones charge on a ledge between the living room and kitchen as Steph Bulkeley helps Kate select school courses, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in Westport, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
Cell phones charge on a ledge between the living room and kitchen as Steph Bulkeley helps Kate select school courses, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in Westport, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
Elena Romero, second from left, and her daughters Gabriela Durham, 17, left, Gionna Durham, 13 second from right, and Grace Durham, 11, have dinner together on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Elena Romero, second from left, and her daughters Gabriela Durham, 17, left, Gionna Durham, 13 second from right, and Grace Durham, 11, have dinner together on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
In the absence of social media, at least in these two homes, there is a noticeable absence of screen time battles. But the kids and parents agree: It’s not always easy.
WHEN IT’S EVERYWHERE, IT’S HARD TO AVOID
At school, on the subway and at dance classes around New York City, Gabriela is surrounded by reminders that social media is everywhere — except on her phone.
Growing up without it has meant missing out on things. Everyone but you gets the same jokes, practices the same TikTok dances, is up on the latest viral trends. When Gabriela was younger, that felt isolating; at times, it still does. But now, she sees not having social media as freeing.
“From my perspective, as an outsider,” she says, “it seems like a lot of kids use social media to promote a facade. And it’s really sad. Because social media is telling them how they should be and how they should look. It’s gotten to a point where everyone wants to look the same instead of being themselves.”
There is also friend drama on social media and a lack of honesty, humility and kindness that she feels lucky to be removed from.
Gabriela is a dance major at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and dances outside of school seven days a week. Senior year got especially intense, with college and scholarship applications capped by an unexpected highlight of getting to perform at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre in March as part of a city showcase of high school musicals.
After a recent Saturday afternoon dance class in a Bronx church basement, the diverging paths between Gabriela and her peers is on full display. The other dancers, aged 11 to 16, sit cross-legged on the linoleum floor talking about social media.
Gabriela Durham, 17, arranges items on her dresser inside her room on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gabriela Durham, 17, arranges items on her dresser inside her room on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
“I am addicted,” says 15-year-old Arielle Williams, who stays up late scrolling through TikTok. “When I feel like I’m getting tired I say, ‘One more video.’ And then I keep saying, ‘One more video.’ And I stay up sometimes until 5 a.m.”
The other dancers gasp. One suggests they all check their phones’ weekly screen time.
“OH. MY,” says Arielle, staring at her screen. “My total was 68 hours last week.” That included 21 hours on TikTok.
Gabriela sits on the sidelines of the conversation, listening silently. But on the No. 2 subway home to Brooklyn, she shares her thoughts. “Those screen-time hours, it’s insane.”
As the train rumbles from the elevated tracks in the Bronx into the underground subway tunnels in Manhattan, Gabriela is on her phone. She texts with friends, listens to music and consults a subway app to count down the stops to her station in Brooklyn. The phone for her is a distraction limited to idle time, which has been strategically limited by Romero.
“My kids’ schedules will make your head spin,” Romero says as the family reconvenes Saturday night in their three-bedroom walkup in Bushwick. On school days, they’re up at 5:30 a.m. and out the door by 7. Romero drives the girls to their three schools scattered around Brooklyn, then takes the subway into Manhattan, where she teaches mass communications at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Grace, 11, is a sixth grade cheerleader active in Girl Scouts, along with Gionna, 13, who sings, does debate team and has daily rehearsals for her middle school theater production.
Grace Durham, 11, checks her wardrobe inside her room on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Grace Durham, 11, checks her wardrobe inside her room on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gionna Durham, 13, reads a book on the sofa on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gionna Durham, 13, reads a book on the sofa on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
“I’m so booked my free time is to sleep,” says Gabriela, who tries to be in bed by 10:30 p.m.
In New York City, it’s common for kids to get phones early in elementary school, but Romero waited until each daughter reached middle school and started taking public transportation home alone. Years ago, she sat them down to watch “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that Gabriela says made her realize how tech companies manipulate their users.
Her mom’s rules are simple: No social media on phones until 18. The girls are allowed to use YouTube on their computers but not post videos. Romero doesn’t set screen-time limits or restrict phone use in bedrooms.
“It’s a struggle, don’t get me wrong,” Romero says. Last year, the two younger girls “slipped.” They secretly downloaded TikTok for a few weeks before getting caught and sternly lectured.
Romero is considering whether to bend her rule for Gionna, an avid reader interested in becoming a Young Adult “Bookstagrammer” — a book reviewer on Instagram. Gionna wants to be a writer when she grows up and loves the idea that reviewers get books for free.
Her mother is torn. Romero’s main concern was social media during middle school, a critical age where kids are forming their identity. She supports the idea of using social media responsibly as a tool to pursue passions.
“When you’re a little older,” she tells her girls, “you’ll realize Mom was not as crazy as you thought.”
STRUGGLING NOT TO MISS OUT
In the upscale suburb of Westport, Connecticut, the Bulkeleys have faced similar questions about bending their rules. But not for the reason they had anticipated.
Kate was perfectly content to not have social media. Her parents had figured at some point she might resist their ban because of peer pressure or fear of missing out. But the 15-year-old sees it as a waste of time. She describes herself as academic, introverted and focused on building up extracurricular activities.
That’s why she needed Instagram.
“I needed it to be co-president of my Bible Study Club,” Kate explains, seated with her family in the living room of their two-story home.
As Kate’s sophomore year started, she told her parents that she was excited to be leading a variety of clubs but needed social media to do her job. They agreed to let her have Instagram for her afterschool activities, which they found ironic and frustrating. “It was the school that really drove the fact that we had to reconsider our rule about no social media,” says Steph Bulkeley, Kate’s mother.
Schools talk the talk about limiting screen time and the dangers of social media, says Kate’s dad, Russ Bulkeley. But technology is rapidly becoming part of the school day. Kate’s high school and their 13-year-old daughter Sutton’s middle school have cell phone bans that aren’t enforced. Teachers will ask students to take out their phones to photograph material during class time.
Kate and Sutton Bulkeley talk in the living room, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in Westport, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
Kate and Sutton Bulkeley talk in the living room, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in Westport, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
The Bulkeleys aren’t on board with that, but feel powerless to change it. When their girls were still in elementary school, the Bulkeleys were inspired by the “Wait Until 8th” pledge, which encourages parents to wait to give children smartphones, and access to social media, until at least 8th grade or about age 13. Some experts say waiting until 16 is better. Others feel banning social media isn’t the answer, and that kids need to learn to live with the technology because it’s not going anywhere.
Ultimately they gave in to Kate’s plea because they trust her, and because she’s too busy to devote much time to social media.
Both Kate and Sutton wrap up afterschool activities that include theater and dance classes at 8:30 p.m. most weeknights. They get home, finish homework and try to be in bed by 11.
Kate spends an average of two hours a week on her phone. That is significantly less than most, according to a 2023 Gallup poll that found over half of U.S. teens spend an average of five hours each day on social media. She uses her phone mainly to make calls, text friends, check grades and take photos. She doesn’t post or share pictures, one of her parents’ rules. Others: No phones allowed in bedrooms. All devices stay on a ledge between the kitchen and living room. TV isn’t allowed on school nights.
Kate has rejected her parents’ offer to pay her for waiting to use social media. But she is embarking slowly on the apps. She has set a six-minute daily time limit as a reminder not to dawdle on Instagram.
Having the app came in handy earlier this year at a Model UN conference where students from around the world exchanged contact details: “Nobody asked for phone numbers. You gave your Instagram,” Kate says. She is resisting Snapchat, for fear she will find it addictive. She has asked a friend on student government to text her any important student government messages sent on Snapchat.
Sutton feels the weight of not having social media more than her older sister. The eighth grader describes herself as social but not popular.
“There’s a lot of popular girls that do a bunch of TikTok dances. That’s really what determines your popularity: TikTok,” Sutton says.
Kids in her grade are “obsessed with TikTok” and posting videos of themselves that look to her like carbon copies. The girls look the same in short crop tops and jeans and sound the same, speaking with a TikTok dialect that includes a lot of “Hey, guys!” and uptalk, their voices rising in tone at the end of a thought.
She feels left out at times but doesn’t feel the need to have social media, since one of her friends sends her the latest viral videos. She has seen firsthand the problems social media can cause in friend groups. “Two of my friends were having a fight. One thought the other one blocked her on Snapchat.”
There’s a long way to go before these larger questions are resolved, with these two families and across the nation. Schools are trying. Some are banning phones entirely to hold students’ focus and ensure that socializing happens face-to-face. It might, educators say, also help cut back on teen depression and anxiety.
That’s something Sutton can understand at age 13 as she works to navigate the years ahead. From what she has seen, social media has changed in the past few years. It used to be a way for people to connect, to message and to get to know each other.
“It’s kind of just about bragging now,” she says. “People post pictures of their trips to amazing places. Or looking beautiful. And it makes other people feel bad about themself.”
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
When she was in fifth grade, Anna Goddard’s daughter started to worry about getting wrinkles. She used adult skin care products she saw on social media and the harm was more than skin deep.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — When she was in fifth grade, Scarlett Goddard Strahan started to worry about getting wrinkles.
By the time she turned 10, Scarlett and her friends were spending hours on TikTok and YouTube watching influencers tout products for achieving today’s beauty aesthetic: a dewy, “glowy,” flawless complexion. Scarlett developed an elaborate skin care routine with facial cleansers, mists, hydrating masks and moisturizers.
One night, Scarlett’s skin began to burn intensely and erupted in blisters. Heavy use of adult-strength products had wreaked havoc on her skin. Months later, patches of tiny bumps remain on Scarlett’s face, and her cheeks turn red in the sun.
“I didn’t want to get wrinkles and look old,” says Scarlett, who recently turned 11. “If I had known my life would be so affected by this, I never would have put these things on my face.”
Scarlett’s experience has become common, experts say, as preteen girls around the country throng beauty stores to buy high-end skin care products, a trend captured in viral videos with the hashtag #SephoraKids. Girls as young as 8 are turning up at dermatologists’ offices with rashes, chemical burns and other allergic reactions to products not intended for children’s sensitive skin.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
“When kids use anti-aging skin care, they can actually cause premature aging, destroy the skin barrier and lead to permanent scarring,” says Dr. Brooke Jeffy, a Scottsdale, Arizona, dermatologist who has posted her own social media videos rebutting influencers’ advice.
Scarlett Goddard Strahan, 11, poses for a portrait at her home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Scarlett Goddard Strahan, 11, poses for a portrait at her home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
More than the physical harm, parents and child psychologists worry about the trend’s effects on girls’ mental health — for years to come. Extensive data suggests a fixation on appearance can affect self-esteem and body image and fuel anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
The skin care obsession offers a window into the role social media plays in the lives of today’s youth and how it shapes the ideals and insecurities of girls in particular. Girls are experiencing high levels of sadness and hopelessness. Whether social media exposure causes or simply correlates with mental health problems is up for debate. But to older teens and young adults, it’s clear: Extended time on social media has been bad for them, period.
Viral skincare products from Bubble, West & Month, and Bolero sit on 11-year-old Scarlett Goddard Strahan’s dresser at her home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Viral skincare products from Bubble, West & Month, and Bolero sit on 11-year-old Scarlett Goddard Strahan’s dresser at her home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Young girls’ fascination with makeup and cosmetics is not new. Neither are kids who hold themselves to idealized beauty standards. What’s different now is the magnitude, says Kris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens, a nonprofit that studies how digital media impacts child development. In an era of filtered images and artificial intelligence, some of the beautiful faces they encounter aren’t even real.
“Girls are being bombarded with idealized images of beauty that establish a beauty standard that could be very hard — if not impossible — to attain,” Perry says.
Scarlett Goddard Strahan, 11, and her mom Anna Goddard pose for a portrait at their home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Scarlett Goddard Strahan, 11, and her mom Anna Goddard pose for a portrait at their home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Saving allowances for Sephora hauls
The obsession with skin care is about more than the pursuit of perfect skin, explains 14-year-old Mia Hall.
It’s about feeling accepted and belonging to a community that has the lifestyle and look you want, says Mia, a New Yorker from the Bronx.
Skin care was not on Mia’s radar until she started eighth grade last fall. It was a topic of conversation among girls her age — at school and on social media. Girls bonded over their skin care routines.
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park while holding some skin care products she uses regularly on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park while holding some skin care products she uses regularly on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
“Everyone was doing it. I felt like it was the only way I could fit in,” says Mia. She started following beauty influencers like Katie Fang and Gianna Christine, who have millions of young followers on TikTok. Some influencers are paid by brands to promote their products, but they don’t always mention that.
Mia got hooked on “Get Ready With Me” videos, where influencers film themselves getting ready — for school, for a night out with friends, packing for a trip. The hashtag #GRWM has over 150 billion views on TikTok.
“It’s like a trance. You can’t stop watching it,” Mia says. “So when they tell me, ‘Go buy this product’ or, ‘I use this and it’s amazing,’ it feels very personal. Getting what they have makes me feel connected to them.”
Mia started saving her $20 weekly allowance for trips with friends to Sephora. Her daily routine included a face wash, a facial mist, a hydrating serum, a pore-tightening toner, a moisturizer and sunscreen. Most were luxury brands like Glow Recipe, Drunk Elephant or Caudalie, whose moisturizers can run $70.
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, watches Katie Fang GRWM videos on Tik Tok on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, watches Katie Fang GRWM videos on Tik Tok on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
“I get really jealous and insecure a lot when I see other girls my age who look very pretty or have an amazing life,” she says.
The level of detail and information girls are getting from beauty tutorials sends a troubling message at a vulnerable age, as girls are going through puberty and searching for their identities, says Charlotte Markey, a body image expert and Rutgers University psychologist.
“The message to young girls is that, ‘You are a never-ending project to get started on now.’ And essentially: ‘You are not OK the way you are’,”’ says Markey, author of “The Body Image Book for Girls.”
Products promoting youth, purchased by kids
The beauty industry has been cashing in on the trend. Last year, consumers under age 14 drove 49% of drug store skin sales, according to a NielsonIQ report that found households with teens and tweens were outspending the average American household on skin care. And in the first half of 2024, a third of “prestige” beauty sales, at stores like Sephora, were driven by households with tweens and teens, according to market research firm Circana.
Mia Hall, 14, regular skincare products on display on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, regular skincare products on display on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
The cosmetics industry has acknowledged certain products aren’t suitable for children but has done little to stop kids from buying them. Drunk Elephant’s website, for example, recommends kids 12 and under should not use their anti-aging serums, lotions and scrubs “due to their very active nature.” That guidance is on the site’s FAQ page; there are no such warnings on the products themselves.
Sephora declined to comment for this story.
Ingredients like retinol and chemical exfoliants like hydroxy acids are inherently harsh. For aging skin, they are used to stimulate collagen and cell production. Young or sensitive skin can react with redness, peeling and burning that can lead to infections, acne and hypersensitivity if used incorrectly, dermatologists say.
A California bill aimed at banning the sale of anti-aging skin care products to children under age 13 failed this spring, but Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee says he plans to continue pursuing industry accountability. Lee and other critics say popular brands use colorful packaging and product names like “Baby facial” to attract younger buyers in the same way that e-cigarette companies and alcohol brands created fruity flavors that appeal to underage users.
Lee points to Europe as setting the right example. The European Union enacted legislation last year that limits the concentration of retinol in all over-the-counter products. And one of Sweden’s leading pharmacy chains, Apotek Hjartat, said in March it would stop selling anti-aging skin care products to customers under 15 without parental consent. “This is a way to protect children’s skin health, finances and mental well-being,” the company said.
One mother ‘got rid of them all’
Around the country, concerned mothers are visiting dermatologists with their young daughters, carrying bags filled with their child’s skin care products to ask: Are these OK?
“Often the mothers are saying exactly what I am but need their child to hear it from an expert,” says Dr. Dendy Engelman, a Manhattan dermatologist. “They’re like, ‘Maybe she’ll listen to you because she certainly doesn’t listen to me.’”
Mia’s mother, Sandra Gordon, took a different approach. Last spring, she noticed dark patches on Mia’s face and became alarmed. Gordon, a nurse, threw all her daughter’s products into the trash.
“There were Sephora bags on top of bags. Some things were opened, some not opened, some were full. I got rid of them all,” she says.
Mia wasn’t happy. But as she starts high school, she now feels her mother was right. She has switched to a simple routine, using just a face wash and moisturizer, and says her complexion has improved.
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
Mia Hall, 14, poses for a portrait in her neighborhood park on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
In Sacramento, California, Scarlett missed early signs the products were hurting her skin: She developed a rash and felt a stinging sensation, within days of trying out viral skin care products. Scarlett figured she wasn’t using enough, so she layered on more. That’s when her cheeks erupted in blistering pain.
“It was late at night. She came running into my room crying. All of her cheeks had been burned,” recalls Anna Goddard, Scarlett’s mother, who hadn’t realized the extent of Scarlett’s skin care obsession.
When Goddard read the ingredients in each product, she was shocked to find retinol in products that appeared to be marketed to children — including a facial sheet mask with a cat’s face on the packaging.
What worries her mother most is the psychological consequences. Kids’ comments at school have caused lingering anxiety and self-consciousness.
Goddard hopes to see more protections. “I didn’t know there were harmful ingredients being put in skin care that is marketed to kids,” she says. “There has to be some type of warning.”
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in more than a decade.
The failed sale underscores a continued low appetite for coal among utilities that are turning to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity. Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.
President Donald Trump has made reviving the coal industry a centerpiece of his agenda to increase U.S. energy production. But economists say Trump’s attempts to boost coal are unlikely to reverse its yearslong decline.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The Department of Interior said in a Tuesday statement that last week’s $186,000 bid from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act.
Agency representatives did not provide further details, and it’s unclear if they will attempt to hold the sale again.
The leasing act requires bids to be at or above fair market value. At the last successful government lease sale in the region, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy paid $793 million, or $1.10 per ton, for 721 million tons of coal in Wyoming.
President Joe Biden’s administration sought to end coal sales in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, citing climate change.
A second proposed lease sale under Trump — 440 million tons of coal near an NTEC mine in central Wyoming — was postponed last week following the low bid received in the Montana sale. Interior Department officials have not said when the Wyoming sale will be rescheduled.
NTEC is owned by the Navajo Nation of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
In documents submitted in the run-up to the Montana sale, NTEC indicated the coal had little value because of declining demand for the fuel. The Associated Press emailed a company representative regarding the rejected bid.
Most power plants using fuel from NTEC’s Spring Creek mine in Montana and Antelope mine in Wyoming are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Spring Creek also ships coal overseas to customers in Asia. Increasing those shipments could help it offset lessening domestic demand, but a shortage of port capacity has hobbled prior industry aspirations to boost coal exports.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — President Donald Trump, members of his administration and conservative influencers painted a bleak portrait of Portland, Oregon, at a roundtable event at the White House Wednesday, alleging that the city has been besieged by violence perpetrated by “antifa thugs” and that it is essentially a war zone.
“It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country, radicals associated with the domestic terror group antifa that you’ve heard a lot about lately,” Trump said.
But the reality on the ground in Portland is far from the extremes described at the White House.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
The protests
TRUMP: “In Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs have repeatedly attacked our offices and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law.”
THE FACTS: There have been nightly protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland for months, peaking in June when police declared one demonstration a riot. There have also been smaller clashes since then: On Labor Day, some demonstrators brought a prop guillotine — a display the U.S. Department of Homeland Security blasted as “unhinged behavior.”
The protests at the ICE facility, which is outside downtown, have largely been confined to one city block and have attracted a range of participants. During the day, a handful of immigration and legal advocates mill about and offer copies of “know your rights” flyers. Daytime marches to the building have also included older people and families with young children. At night, other protesters arrive, often using megaphones to shout obscenities at law enforcement.
While the administration claims protesters are antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for decentralized far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
The building was closed for three weeks from mid-June to early July because of damage to windows, security cameras, gates and other parts of the facility, federal officials said in court filings submitted in response to a lawsuit brought by Portland and Oregon seeking to block the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard. The building’s main entrance and ground-floor windows have been boarded up.
Protesters have also sought to block vehicles from entering and leaving the facility. Federal officials argue that this has impeded law enforcement operations and forced more personnel and resources to be sent from other parts of the country.
However, in the weeks leading up to the Trump administration’s move to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard on Sept. 28, most nights drew a couple dozen people, Portland police correspondence submitted to the court shows.
Since June, Portland police have arrested at least 45 people, with the majority of those arrests taking place in June. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have charged at least 31 people with crimes committed at the building, including assaulting federal officers; 22 of those defendants had been charged by early July.
Is Portland on fire?
TRUMP: “The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy. And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal, there’s nothing wrong.”
THE FACTS: Fires outside the building have been seen on a handful of occasions. In June, a man was arrested after he lit a flare and tossed it onto a pile of materials stacked against the vehicle gate, according to federal prosecutors, who said the fire was fully extinguished within minutes.
More recently, social media videos of the Labor Day protest showed a small fire lit on the prop guillotine. And in early October, following the announcement of the National Guard’s mobilization, videos on social media showed a protester holding an American flag on fire — and conservative influencer Nick Sortor stomping the fire out.
There have also been some high-profile confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters. In late September, conservative media figure Katie Daviscourt was hit in the face with a flagpole and suffered a laceration, police logs show. In early October, Sortor, who has more than 1 million followers on X, was arrested along with two other protesters following an altercation. Local prosecutors ultimately declined to charge him after finding that one of the protesters had pushed him and that “any physical contact he had with other persons was defensive in nature.”
While Portland police correspondence submitted to the court notes a few instances of “active” energy and disturbances between protesters and counterprotesters, many entries describe low energy and “no issues” in the weeks leading up to the National Guard’s mobilization.
A new tongue-in-cheek website has also launched in recent days: isportlandburning.com shows multiple live cameras in the city and near-real-time data from the city’s fire department.
Shops and sewers
TRUMP: “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have sewers anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows. But most of the retailers have left.”
THE FACTS: This is false. Portland does have sewers — its sewer and stormwater system “includes more than 2,500 miles of pipes, nearly 100 pump stations, and two treatment plants,” according to the city’s website. The largest sewer pipe is the East Side Big Pipe, which has an inside diameter of 22 feet, while the smallest are only six inches in diameter.
Local and state officials have suggested that many of Trump’s claims appear to rely on images from 2020. Portland famously erupted in more than 100 days of large-scale unrest and violent protests after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police that year. Police were unable to keep ahead of splinter groups of black-clad protesters who broke off and roamed the downtown area, at times breaking windows, spraying graffiti and setting small fires.
But Portland has largely recovered from that time. Under a new mayor and police chief, the city has reduced crime, and the downtown — which has more than 600 retail shops, many with glass storefronts — has seen a decrease in homeless encampments and increased foot traffic. This summer was reportedly the busiest for pedestrian traffic since before the coronavirus pandemic, and a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
Gov. Tina Kotek said she told Trump during a phone call that “we have to be careful not to respond to outdated media coverage or misinformation that is out there.”
Accusation of a cover-up
KRISTI NOEM, Homeland Security Secretary: “I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon, and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”
THE FACTS: Noem did visit Portland on Tuesday and met with Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson. Both officials disagree with Noem’s narrative.
Kotek has repeatedly said that “there is no insurrection in Portland,” including in conversations with Trump and Noem, and that the city does not need “military intervention.” She has also continually called for any protests to be peaceful and said that local law enforcement can “meet the moment.” After Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Portland, Wilson said in a statement that the city has protected freedom of expression while “addressing occasional violence and property destruction.”
Observations on the ground in Portland support Kotek’s statement. While the nightly protests at the ICE facility have been disruptive for nearby residents — a charter school relocated this summer to get away from crowd-control devices — life has continued as normal in the rest of the city. There is no evidence of the protests in other areas of the city, including the downtown area about two miles away.
Portland residents have taken to social media to push back against the Trump administration’s statements about their city with the hashtag #WarRavagedPortland, posting photos and videos that show protesters in inflatable unicorn and frog costumes, along with people walking their dogs, riding their bikes and shopping at farmers markets.
STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening.
Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, is set to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. It would be Florida’s 14th death sentence carried out in 2025, further extending the state record for executions in a single year.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Texas with five.
Smithers was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1999.
His is one of two executions scheduled for Tuesday evening in the U.S. Lance Shockley, 48, is set to be executed in Missouri for fatally shooting a state trooper more than 20 years ago.
According to court records, Smithers met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach on different dates in May 1996 at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex. At the time, he was doing landscape maintenance on a 27-acre (11-hectare) property that included three ponds in rural Plant City, Florida.
On May 28, 1996, the property owner — who had met Smithers in church where he was a Baptist deacon — stopped by to find Smithers cleaning an ax in the carport, which he claimed to be using to trim tree limbs. The property owner noticed a pool of blood in the carport, and Smithers told her that someone must have come by and killed a small animal, according to court records.
The woman contacted law enforcement, and a sheriff’s deputy met her later that day at the property. The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records. That’s where authorities found the bodies of Cowan and Roach. Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die.
The Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal from Smithers last week. His attorneys had argued that his age should make him ineligible for execution under the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Although Smithers would be one of the oldest people ever executed in Florida, the justices ruled that the elderly are not categorically exempt from the death penalty.
An appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court was still pending.
A total of 35 men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least eight other people are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025.
Norman Mearle Grim Jr., 65, is scheduled for Florida’s 15th execution on Oct. 28. He was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, whose body was found by a fisherman near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.
Bryan Fredrick Jennings, 66, is set for Florida’s 16th execution on Nov. 13. He was convicted of raping and killing a 6-year-old girl after abducting her from her central Florida home in 1979.
Florida executions are carried out using a three-drug injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.
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JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday opened the door ever so slightly to lowering a key interest rate in the coming months but gave no hint on the timing of a move and suggested the central bank will proceed cautiously as it continues to evaluate the impact of tariffs and other policies on the economy.
In a high-profile speech closely watched at the White House and on Wall Street, Powell said that there are risks of both rising unemployment and stubbornly higher inflation. Yet he suggested that with hiring sluggish, the job market could weaken further.
“The shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance,” he said, a reference to his concerns about weaker job gains and a more direct sign that the Fed is considering a rate cut than he has made in previous comments.
Still, Powell’s remarks suggest the Fed will proceed carefully in the coming months and will make its rate decisions based on how inflation and unemployment evolve. The Fed has three more meetings this year, including next month, in late October, and in December, and it’s not clear whether the Fed will cut at all those meetings.
AP AUDIO: Powell signals Fed may cut rates soon even as inflation risks remain
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on prospects of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
“The stability of the unemployment rate and other labor market measures allows us to proceed carefully as we consider changes to our policy stance,” Powell said. That suggests the Fed will continue to evaluate jobs and inflation data as it decides whether to cut rates.
The stock market jumped in response to Powell’s remarks, with the broad S&P 500 index rising 1.5% in midday trading.
“We see Powell’s remarks as consistent with our expectation of” a quarter-point cut to the Fed’s short-term rate at its Sept. 16-17 meeting, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients. The Fed’s rate currently stands at 4.3%.
Powell spoke with the Fed under unprecedented public scrutiny from the White House, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted Powell and has urged him to cut rates, arguing there is “no inflation” and saying that a cut would lower the government’s interest payments on its $37 trillion in debt.
Trump also says a cut would boost the moribund housing market. A rate cut by the Fed often leads to lower borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans, and business borrowing, but it doesn’t always.
While Powell spoke, Trump elevated his attacks, telling reporters in Washington, D.C. that he would fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she did not step down over allegations from an administration official that she committed mortgage fraud.
If Cook is removed, that would give Trump an opportunity to put a loyalist on the Fed’s governing board. The Fed has long been considered independent from day-to-day politics. The president can’t fire a Fed governor over disagreements on interest rate policy, but he can do so “for cause,” which is generally seen as malfeasance or neglect of duty.
Later Friday, Trump told reporters, referring to Powell, “We call him too late for a reason. He should have cut them a year ago. He’s too late.”
Powell spoke at the Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a conference with about 100 academics, economists, and central bank officials from around the world. He was given a standing ovation before he spoke.
Cook, who is also attending the conference, declined to comment on the president’s remarks.
In his remarks, the Fed chair underscored that tariffs are lifting inflation and could push it higher in the coming months.
“The effects of tariffs on consumer prices are now clearly visible. We expect those effects to accumulate over coming months, with high uncertainty about timing and amounts,” Powell said.
Inflation has crept higher in recent months though it is down from a peak of 9.1% three years ago. Tariffs have not spurred inflation as much as some economists worried, but they are starting to lift the prices of heavily imported goods such as furniture, toys, and shoes.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in July from a year ago, above the Fed’s target of 2%. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%.
Powell added that higher prices from tariffs could cause a one-time shift to prices, rather than an ongoing bout of inflation. Other Fed officials have said that is the most likely outcome and as a result the central bank can cut rates to boost the job market.
The Fed chair said it is largely up to the central bank to ensure that tariffs don’t lead to sustained inflation.
“Come what may, we will not allow a one-time increase in the price level to become an ongoing inflation problem,” he said, suggesting deep rate cuts, as Trump has demanded, are unlikely.
Regarding the job market, Powell noted that even as hiring has slowed sharply this year, the unemployment rate remains low. He added that with immigration falling sharply, fewer jobs are needed to keep unemployment in check.
Yet with hiring sluggish, the risks of a sharper downturn, with rising layoffs, has risen, Powell said.
Powell also suggested the Fed would continue to set its interest-rate policy free from political pressure.
Fed officials “will make these decisions, based solely on their assessment of the data and its implications for the economic outlook and the balance of risks. We will never deviate from that approach.”
Powell dedicated the second half of his speech to announcing changes to the Fed’s policy framework that was issued in August 2020. The framework, which has been blamed for delaying the Fed’s response to the pandemic inflation spike, provides guidelines on how the Fed would respond to changes in inflation and employment.
In 2020, after a decade of low inflation and low interest rates following the financial crisis and Great Recession in 2008-2009, the Fed changed its framework to allow inflation to top its 2% target temporarily, so that inflation would average 2% over time.
And after unemployment fell to a half-century low in 2018, without pushing up inflation, the 2020 framework said that the Fed would focus only on “shortfalls” in employment, rather than “deviations.” That meant it would cut rates if unemployment rose, but wouldn’t necessarily raise them if it fell.
The Fed reviewed its framework this year and concluded that it was tied too closely to the pre-pandemic economy, which has since shifted. Inflation spiked to a four-decade high in 2022 and the Fed rapidly boosted interest rates afterward.
“A key objective has been to make sure that our framework is suitable across a broad range of economic conditions,” Powell said.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to own a piece of Intel, less than two weeks after demanding the Silicon Valley pioneer dump the CEO that was hired to turn around the slumping chipmaker. If the goal is realized, the investment would deepen the Trump administration’s involvement in the computer industry as the president ramps up the pressure for more U.S. companies to manufacture products domestically instead of relying on overseas suppliers.
What’s happening?
The Trump administration is in talks to secure a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for converting government grants that were pledged to Intel under President Joe Biden. If the deal is completed, the U.S. government would become one of Intel’s largest shareholders and blur the traditional lines separating the public sector and private sector in a country that remains the world’s largest economy.
Why would Trump do this?
In his second term, Trump has been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are helping to power the craze around artificial intelligence, to pay a 15% commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.
Trump’s interest in Intel is also being driven by his desire to boost chip production in the U.S., which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the U.S. will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.
Didn’t Trump want Intel’s CEO to quit?
That’s what the president said August 7 in an unequivocal post calling for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign less than five months after the Santa Clara, California, company hired him. The demand was triggered by reports raising national security concerns about Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies while he was a venture capitalist. But Trump backed off after Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, who applauded the Intel CEO for having an “amazing story.”
Why would Intel do a deal?
The company isn’t commenting about the possibility of the U.S. government becoming a major shareholder, but Intel may have little choice because it is currently dealing from a position of weakness. After enjoying decades of growth while its processors powered the personal computer boom, the company fell into a slump after missing the shift to the mobile computing era unleashed by the iPhone’s 2007 debut.
Intel has fallen even farther behind in recent years during an artificial intelligence craze that has been a boon for Nvidia and AMD. The company lost nearly $19 billion last year and another $3.7 billion in the first six months of this year, prompting Tan to undertake a cost-cutting spree. By the end of this year, Tan expects Intel to have about 75,000 workers, a 25% reduction from the end of last year.
Would this deal be unusual?
Although rare, it’s not unprecedented for the U.S. government to become a significant shareholder in a prominent company. One of the most notable instances occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 when the government injected nearly $50 billion into General Motors in return for a roughly 60% stake in the automaker at a time it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The government ended up with a roughly $10 billion loss after it sold its stock in GM.
Would the government run Intel?
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC during a Tuesday interview that the government has no intention of meddling in Intel’s business, and will have its hands tied by holding non-voting shares in the company. But some analysts wonder if the Trump administration’s financial ties to Intel might prod more companies looking to curry favor with the president to increase their orders for the company’s chips.
What government grants does Intel receive?
Intel was among the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act, but it hasn’t been able to revive its fortunes while falling behind on construction projects spawned by the program.
The company has received about $2.2 billion of the $7.8 billion pledged under the incentives program — money that Lutnick derided as a “giveaway” that would better serve U.S. taxpayers if it’s turned into Intel stock. “We think America should get the benefit of the bargain,” Lutnick told CNBC. “It’s obvious that it’s the right move to make.”
Jamel Bishop is seeing a big change in his classrooms as he begins his senior year at Doss High School in Louisville, Kentucky, where cellphones are now banned during instructional time.
In previous years, students often weren’t paying attention and wasted class time by repeating questions, the teenager said. Now, teachers can provide “more one-on-one time for the students who actually need it.”
Kentucky is one of 17 states and the District of Columbia starting this school year with new restrictions, bringing the total to 35 states with laws or rules limiting phones and other electronic devices in school. This change has come remarkably quickly: Florida became the first state to pass such a law in 2023.
Both Democrats and Republicans have taken up the cause, reflecting a growing consensus that phones are bad for kids’ mental health and take their focus away from learning, even as some researchers say the issue is less clear-cut.
“Anytime you have a bill that’s passed in California and Florida, you know you’re probably onto something that’s pretty popular,” Georgia state Rep. Scott Hilton, a Republican, told a forum on cellphone use last week in Atlanta.
Phones are banned throughout the school day in 18 of the states and the District of Columbia, although Georgia and Florida impose such “bell-to-bell” bans only from kindergarten through eighth grade. Another seven states ban them during class time, but not between classes or during lunch. Still others, particularly those with traditions of local school control, mandate only a cellphone policy, believing districts will take the hint and sharply restrict phone access.
Students see pros and cons
For students, the rules add new school-day rituals, like putting phones in magnetic pouches or special lockers.
Students have been locking up their phones during class at McNair High School in suburban Atlanta since last year. Audreanna Johnson, a junior, said “most of them did not want to turn in their phones” at first, because students would use them to gossip, texting “their other friends in other classes to see what’s the tea and what’s going on around the building.”
That resentment is “starting to ease down” now, she said. “More students are willing to give up their phones and not get distracted.”
But there are drawbacks — like not being able to listen to music when working independently in class. “I’m kind of 50-50 on the situation because me, I use headphones to do my schoolwork. I listen to music to help focus,” she said.
Some parents want constant contact
In a survey of 125 Georgia school districts by Emory University researchers, parental resistance was cited as the top obstacle to regulating student use of social and digital media.
Johnson’s mother, Audrena Johnson, said she worries most about knowing her children are safe from violence at school. School messages about threats can be delayed and incomplete, she said, like when someone who wasn’t a McNair student got into a fight on school property, which she learned about when her daughter texted her during the school day.
“My child having her phone is very important to me, because if something were to happen, I know instantly,” Johnson said.
Many parents echo this — generally supporting restrictions but wanting a say in the policymaking and better communication, particularly about safety — and they have a real need to coordinate schedules with their children and to know about any problems their children may encounter, said Jason Allen, the national director of partnerships for the National Parents Union.
“We just changed the cellphone policy, but aren’t meeting the parents’ needs in regards to safety and really training teachers to work with students on social emotional development,” Allen said.
Research remains in an early stage
Some researchers say it’s not yet clear what types of social media may cause harm, and whether restrictions have benefits, but teachers “love the policy,” according to Julie Gazmararian, a professor of public health at Emory University who does surveys and focus groups to research the effects of a phone ban in middle school grades in the Marietta school district near Atlanta.
“They could focus more on teaching,” Gazmararian said. “There were just not the disruptions.”
Another benefit: More positive interactions among students. “They were saying that kids are talking to each other in the hallways and in the cafeteria,” she said. “And in the classroom, there is a noticeably lower amount of discipline referrals.”
Gazmararian is still compiling numbers on grades and discipline, and cautioned that her work may not be able to answer whether bullying has been reduced or mental health improved.
Social media use clearly correlates with poor mental health, but research can’t yet prove it causes it, according to Munmun De Choudhury, a Georgia Tech professor who studies this issue.
“We need to be able to quantify what types of social media use are causing harm, what types of social media use can be beneficial,” De Choudhury said.
A few states reject rules
Some state legislatures are bucking the momentum.
Wyoming’s Senate in January rejected requiring districts to create some kind of a cellphone policy after opponents argued that teachers and parents need to be responsible.
And in the Michigan House in July, a Republican-sponsored bill directing schools to ban phones bell-to-bell in grades K-8 and during high school instruction time was defeated in July after Democrats insisted on upholding local control. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, among multiple governors who made restricting phones in schools a priority this year, is still calling for a bill to come to her desk.
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Associated Press writers Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed.