CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Michael Jordan and NASCAR chairman Jim France stood side-by-side on the steps of a federal courthouse as if they were old friends following a stunning settlement Thursday of a bruising antitrust case in which the Basketball Hall of Famer was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the top racing series in the United States of being a monopolistic bully.
The duo was flanked by three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk, the co-owners of 23XI Racing with Jordan, Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins and over a dozen lawyers as they celebrated the end to an eight-day trial that ultimately led NASCAR to cave and grant all its teams the permanent charters they wanted.
“Like two competitors, obviously we tried to get as much done in each other’s favor,” Jordan said, towering over the 81-year-old France. “I’ve said this from Day 1: The only way this sport is going to grow is we have to find some synergy between the two entities. I think we’ve gotten to that point, unfortunately it took 16 months to get here, but I think level heads have gotten us to this point where we can actually work together and grow this sport. I am very proud about that and I think Jim feels the same.”
France concurred.
“I do feel the same and we can get back to focusing on what we really love, and that’s racing, and we spent a lot of time not really focused on that so much as we needed to be,” France said. “I feel like we made a very good decision here together and we have a big opportunity to continue growing the sport.”
A charter is the equivalent of the franchise model used in other sports and in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams a spot in every top-level Cup Series race and a fixed portion of the revenue stream. The system was implemented in 2016 and teams have argued for over two years that the charters needed to be made permanent — they had been revokable by NASCAR — and the revenue sharing had to change.
NASCAR, founded and privately owned by the Florida-based France family, never considered making the charters permanent. Instead, after two-plus years of bitter negotiations, NASCAR in September 2024 presented a “take-it-or leave-it” final offer that gave teams until end of that day to sign the 112-page document.
23XI and Front Row refused and sued, while 13 other organizations signed but testimony in court revealed many did so “with a gun to our head” because the threat of losing the charters would have put them out of business.
Jordan testified early in the trial that as a new team owner to NASCAR — 23XI launched in 2021 — he felt he had the strength to challenge NASCAR. Eight days of testimony went badly for NASCAR, which when it began to present its case seemed focused more on mitigating damages than it did on proving it did not violate antitrust laws.
Although terms of the settlement were not released — NASCAR was in the process of scheduling a Thursday afternoon call with all teams to discuss the revenue-sharing model moving forward — both Jordan and NASCAR said that charters will now be permanent for all teams. 23XI and Front Row will receive their combined six charters back for 2026.
“Today’s a good day,” Jordan said from the front-row seat he’s occupied since the trial began Dec. 1 as he waited for the settlement announcement.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who had presided over two days of failed settlement talks before the trial began, echoed the sentiment. Bell told the jury that sometimes parties at trial have to see how the evidence unfolds to come to the wisdom of a settlement.
“I wish we could’ve done this a few months ago,” Bell said in court. “I believe this is great for NASCAR. Great for the future of NASCAR. Great for the entity of NASCAR. Great for the teams and ultimately great for the fans.”
The settlement came after two days of testimony by France and the Wednesday night public release of a letter from Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris calling for NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps to be removed.
The discovery process revealed internal NASCAR communications in which Phelps called Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress a “redneck” and other derogatory names; Bass Pro sponsors Childress’ teams, as well as some others, and Morris is an ardent NASCAR supporter.
Childress gave fiery testimony earlier this week over his reluctance to sign the charter agreement because it was unfair to the teams, which have been bleeding money and begged NASCAR for concessions. Letters from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske were introduced in which they pleaded with France for charters to become permanent; France testified he was not moved by the men he considers good friends.
Hendrick and Penske, who were both scheduled to testify Friday, expressed gratitude that a settlement had been reached. Penske called it “tremendous news” and said it cleared the way to continue growing the series.
“Millions of loyal NASCAR fans and thousands of hardworking people rely on our industry, and today’s resolution allows all of us to focus on what truly matters — the future of our sport,” Hendrick said. “This moment presents an important opportunity to strengthen our relationships and recommit ourselves to building a collaborative and prosperous future for all stakeholders. I’m incredibly optimistic about what’s ahead.”
The settlement came abruptly on the ninth day of the trial. Bell opened expecting to hear motions but both sides asked for a private conference in chambers. When they emerged, Bell ordered an hourlong break for the two sides to confer. That turned into two hours, all parties returned to the courtroom and Kessler announced an agreement had been reached.
“What all parties have always agreed on is a deep love for the sport and a desire to see it fulfill its full potential,” NASCAR and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This is a landmark moment, one that ensures NASCAR’s foundation is stronger, its future is brighter and its possibilities are greater.”
Fuzzy Zoeller, a two-time major champion and one of golf’s most gregarious characters whose career was tainted by a racially insensitive joke about Tiger Woods, has died, according to a longtime colleague. He was 74.
A cause of death was not immediately available. Brian Naugle, the tournament director of the Insperity Invitational in Houston, said Zoeller’s daughter called him Thursday with the news.
Zoeller was the last player to win the Masters on his first attempt, a three-man playoff in 1979. He famously waved a white towel at Winged Foot in 1984 when he thought Greg Norman had beat him, only to defeat Norman in an 18-hole playoff the next day.
But it was the 1997 Masters that changed his popularity.
Woods was on his way to a watershed moment in golf with the most dominant victory in Augusta National history. Zoeller had finished his round and had a drink in hand under the oak tree by the clubhouse when he was stopped by CNN and asked for his thoughts on the 21-year-old Woods on his way to the most dominant win ever at Augusta National.
“That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it?,” Zoeller said.
He smiled and snapped his fingers, and as he was walking away he turned and said, “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”
That moment haunted him the rest of his career.
Zoeller apologized. Woods was traveling and it took two weeks for him to comment as the controversy festered. Zoeller later said he received death threats for years after that moment.
Writing for Golf Digest in 2008, he said it was “the worst thing I’ve gone through in my entire life.”
“If people wanted me to feel the same hurt I projected on others, I’m here to tell you they got their way,” Zoeller wrote. “I’ve cried many times. I’ve apologized countless times for words said in jest that just aren’t a reflection of who I am. I have hundreds of friends, including people of color, who will attest to that.
“Still, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this incident will never, ever go away.”
It marred a career filled with two famous major titles, eight other PGA Tour titles and a Senior PGA Championship among his two PGA Tour Champions titles.
More than winning was how he went about it. Zoeller played fast and still had an easygoing nature to the way he approach the game, often whistling between shots.
He made his Masters debut in 1979 and got into a three-way playoff when Ed Sneed bogeyed the last three holes. Zoeller defeated Sneed and Tom Watson with a birdie on the second playoff hole, flinging his putter high in the air.
“I’ve never been to heaven, and thinking back on my life, I probably won’t get a chance to go,” Zoeller once said. “I guess winning the Masters is as close as I’m going to get.”
Zoeller was locked in a duel with Norman at Winged Foot in the 1984, playing in the group behind and watching Norman make putt after putt. So when he saw Norman make a 40-footer on the 18th, he assumed it was for birdie and began waving a white towel in a moment of sportsmanship.
Only later did he realize it was for par, and Zoeller made par to force a playoff. Zoeller beat him by eight shots in the 18-hole playoff (67-75). Zoeller’s lone regret was giving the towel to a kid after he finished in regulation.
“If you happen to see a grungy white towel hanging around, get it for me, will you?” he once said.
He was born Frank Urban Zoeller Jr. in New Albany, Indiana. Zoeller said his father was known only as “Fuzzy” and he was given the same name. He played at a junior college in Florida before joining the powerful Houston golf team before turning pro.
His wife, Diane, died in 2021. Zoeller has three children, including daughter Gretchen, with whom he used to play in the PNC Championship. Zoeller was awarded the Bob Jones Award by the USGA in 1985, the organization’s highest honor given for distinguished sportsmanship.
The College Football Playoff rankings placed the spotlight on, where else this year, “6-7″ — flip-flopping Oregon and Ole Miss in those spots while keeping their top five teams the same in Tuesday night’s reveal.
Oregon’s impressive victory over Southern California in one of last week’s few games between ranked teams accounted for the biggest change, moving the Ducks ahead of Mississippi, which didn’t play.
The other meaningful shift was Miami’s move to No. 12, in a switch with Utah after the Utes gave up 472 yards rushing in a tight win over Kansas State.
There are two more rankings to be revealed — next Tuesday, then Dec. 7 when the final top 25 will set the bracket for the 12-team playoff to start Dec. 19,
Pitt’s return to the rankings — at No. 22 — after falling out for a week impacts the meaning of its key Atlantic Coast Conference game this week against the Hurricanes, who need a win and some help to make the conference title game but still have hopes of grabbing one of the playoff’s seven at-large berths.
“Miami is a team that it really appears is starting to look like the Miami team that started 5-0,” said Hunter Yurachek, the chair of the selection committee.
Following the Buckeyes for the fourth time in four rankings were fellow undefeated teams Indiana and Texas A&M. Georgia stayed at No. 4, followed by Texas Tech. After Oregon and Mississippi came Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Alabama and BYU at No. 11 and first team out on this week’s proverbial bubble.
Ohio State and Indiana will play in what should be a 1 vs. 2 Big Ten title game if both win rivalry showdowns on the road over Thanksgiving weekend. Ohio State’s task is more difficult — against Michigan, which moved up three spots to No. 15. Indiana plays Purdue.
No. 10 Alabama plays at Auburn with a spot in the Southeastern Conference title game on the line. The Tide’s opponent would be Texas A&M if the Aggies win at No. 16 Texas.
Notre Dame and Miami were compared this week
After some confusion last week about the weight given to Miami’s opening-week win over Notre Dame, Yurachek said those teams were, indeed, close enough in the rankings this week to be compared head-to-head. But still, that victory was not enough to push the Hurricanes past Notre Dame.
“We compare a number of things when looking at teams closely ranked together,” Yurachek said. “We’ve got some teams ranked between Miami and Notre Dame, such as Alabama and BYU, who we’re also comparing Miami to.”
Could Kiffin’s job status impact Ole Miss?
Among the factors the committee can consider is the availability of players and coaches, which has potential to bring Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s job status into play.
Word from Oxford is that a decision will come on Kiffin’s potential move to LSU or Florida after this week’s game against Mississippi State. An Ole Miss team without one of the most sought-after coaches in the game wouldn’t seem as good as one with him.
Still, Yurachek wouldn’t tip his hand on how that evaluation might go.
“We’ll take care of that when it happens,” Yurachek said. “We don’t look ahead. The loss of player, loss of a key coach, is in the principles of how we rank teams, but we don’t have a data point for how we look at Ole Miss without their coach.”
Ducks move to ‘where they need to be’
After Oregon’s 42-27 win over USC, coach Dan Lanning said his team deserves credit for the schedule it plays — which included a tough conference game during a week in which many in the SEC were going against non-ranked, double-digit underdogs.
The committee agreed.
“We’ve been waiting for them to have that signature win to really put them where they need to be,” Yurachek said.
Conference watch
ACC — No. 18 Virginia and No. 21 SMU are the favorites to reach the title game, which means one of them has an inside edge to be in the playoff. The Hurricanes are likely in an at-large showdown with the likes of BYU, Vanderbilt and maybe Alabama.
Big 12 — BYU is angling for another crack at Texas Tech in the title game. Hard to see the Cougars getting there, losing to the Red Raiders again and still making the playoff.
Big Ten — Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon are locks. Michigan’s move up three to No. 15 gives the Wolverines a chance at an at-large bid (or maybe the conference title) with a win this week over the Buckeyes.
SEC — Texas A&M, Georgia, Mississippi and Oklahoma should all be in. Alabama can’t really afford a third loss, but what if that loss comes in the SEC title game? The Tide makes it by beating Auburn. Vanderbilt would strengthen its case with a win at No. 19 Tennessee this week.
Group of 5 — No. 24 Tulane of the American is still the only team from a non-power conference in the rankings. One problem. BetMGM Sportsbook has North Texas as the favorite to win the league title. That, in turn, could bring someone like James Madison back into the conversation.
Projected first-round playoff matchups
No. 12 Tulane at No. 5 Texas Tech: Could the Red Raiders, a deep-pocketed disruptor in the college football space, also turn into one of the sport’s powerhouses?
No. 11 Miami at No. 6 Oregon: The Mario Cristobal Bowl — Hurricanes coach left Ducks suddenly in 2021 to return home.
No. 10 Alabama at No. 7 Mississippi: Kiffin, the old offensive coordinator at Alabama, is 0-4 vs. Tide with Ole Miss.
No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 8 Oklahoma: Notre Dame’s first televised game was a 27-21 win over OU in 1952.
ATLANTA (AP) — When families are evicted, it can lead to major disruptions to their children’s schooling.
Federal law includes provisions to help homeless and evicted kids stay at their schools, but families don’t always know about them — and schools don’t always share the information. Beyond the instability that comes with losing their home, relocating also can deprive kids of networks they rely on for support.
AP followed the year-long quest of one Atlanta mother, Sechita McNair, to find new housing after an eviction. The out-of-work film industry veteran drove extra hours for Uber and borrowed money, eventually securing a lease in the right neighborhood so her eldest son could stay at his high school. At $2,200 a month, it was the only “semi-affordable” apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward that would rent to a single mom with a fresh eviction on her record.
Even so, her son was not thriving. McNair considered a homeschooling program before re-enrolling him at the coveted high school. Despite continuing challenges, McNair is determined to provide her three children with better educational opportunities.
Evictions often lead families to schools with fewer resources
Like many evicted families, McNair and her kids went from living in a school district that spends more money on students to one that spends less.
Atlanta spends nearly $20,000 per student a year, $7,000 more than the suburban district the family moved to after they were evicted from their apartment last year. More money in schools means smaller classrooms and more psychologists, guidance counselors and other support.
Thanks to federal laws protecting homeless and evicted students, McNair’s kids were able to keep attending their Atlanta schools, even though the only housing available to them was in another county 40 minutes away. They also had the right to free transportation to those schools, but McNair says the district didn’t tell her about that until the school year ended. Once they found new housing, their eligibility to remain in those schools expired at the end of last school year.
Support systems matter, too
The suburban neighborhood where the family landed after the eviction is filled with brick colonials and manicured lawns. McNair knows it’s the dream for some families, but not hers. “It’s a support desert,” she said.
McNair, who grew up in New Jersey near New York City, sees opportunities in the wider city of Atlanta. She wants to use its libraries, e-scooters, bike paths, hospitals, rental assistance agencies, Buy Nothing groups and food pantries.
“These are all resources that make it possible to raise a family when you don’t have support,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone want that?”
It’s tough to find safe, affordable housing after an eviction
It took months for McNair to scrape together funds and find a landlord in her gentrifying neighborhood who would rent to her in spite of her recent eviction.
On Zillow, the second-floor apartment, built in 2005, looked like a middle-class dream with its granite countertops, crown molding and polished wood floors. But up close, the apartment looked abused. Her tour of the apartment was rushed, and the lease was full of errors. She signed anyway.
Shortly after — while she was still waiting for the landlord to install more smoke detectors and fix the oven and fridge — McNair’s keys stopped working. The apartment had been sold in a short sale.
The new owners wanted McNair to leave, but she consulted with attorneys, who reassured her she could stay. Eventually, she even moved some of the family’s belongings to the apartment.
But a new apartment in their preferred neighborhood doesn’t solve everything. At night, McNair’s 15-year-old son, Elias, has been responsible for his younger brothers while she heads out to drive for Uber. That’s what is necessary to pay $450 a week to rent the car and earn enough to pay her rent and bills.
While McNair is out, she can’t monitor Elias. And a few days after he started school, Elias’s all-night gaming habit had already drawn teachers’ attention. As she drove for Uber one night, she couldn’t stop thinking about emails from his teachers. “I should be home making sure Elias gets to bed on time,” she says, crying. “But I have to work. I’m the only one paying the bills.”
Consistency is important for a teen’s learning
McNair attributed some of Elias’s lack of motivation at school to personal trauma. His father died after a heart attack in 2023, on the sidelines of Elias’s basketball practice. Wounded by that loss and multiple housing displacements, Elias failed two classes last year, his freshman year. His mother feared switching schools would jeopardize any chance he had of recovering his academic life.
But after Elias started skipping school this fall, McNair filed papers declaring her intention to homeschool him.
It quickly proved challenging. Elias wouldn’t do any schoolwork when he was home alone. And when the homeschooling group met twice a week, McNair discovered, they required parents to pick up their children afterward instead of allowing them to take public transit or e-scooters. That was untenable.
McNair considered enrolling her son in the suburban school district, but an Atlanta schools official advised against transferring if possible. He needs to be in school — preferably the Atlanta school he has attended — studying for midterms, the official said.
Now, with Elias back in school every day, McNair can deliver food through Uber Eats without worrying about a police officer asking why her kid isn’t in school. If only she had pushed harder, sooner, for help with Elias, she thought.
But it was easy for her to explain why she hadn’t. “I was running around doing so many other things just so we have a place to live, or taking care of my uncle, that I didn’t put enough of my energy there.”
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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.
ATLANTA (AP) — As an education reporter, I’ve heard teachers worry that the most pernicious challenges their students face, like poverty or housing insecurity, are beyond the realm of what schools can fix.
I wanted to understand better how the rising cost of housing and the prevalence of eviction could undermine a young person’s ability to thrive in school and in life.
Research shows schoolchildren threatened with eviction are more likely to transfer to another school, often one with less funding, more poverty and lower test scores. They’re more likely to miss school, and those who end up transferring are suspended more often.
I’ve seen this firsthand through my own reporting. A few years ago, when I was writing about students who missed school for months or longer, many of them said a housing disruption had first kept them out of class. They lost their home, ended up staying with a relative, and didn’t get back in school for weeks or longer.
So I called up a parent organizer in Atlanta who had introduced me to other families struggling with that city’s rapid gentrification.
McNair was one of the easiest people I’ve ever written about because she was a film-industry veteran. She understood my desire to document or understand every step in the process of getting evicted or advocating for her children. I never had to explain why I was asking a question, why I wanted so much detail about where she was when she received a certain phone call, or why I wanted her to send me emails or documents. She’s an open book and sincerely thought others might benefit from reading about her perseverance and resourcefulness.
She also was challenging to write about because her life was extremely complicated. McNair has immense family responsibilities, without support from other relatives, yet she holds a deep belief that things will work out if she just keeps moving. Her situation and plans would change rapidly. Sometimes I struggled to keep up.
I traveled to Atlanta three times over several months to visit McNair, and in between we were in constant touch. I often spoke to her while she drove the kids to and from school or while she picked up orders for Uber Eats. The result is a close-up portrait of life as a single mother trying to swim upstream while carrying three boys on her back.
This is the hardest part: Everything McNair was working toward — getting her kids back into Atlanta — is exactly what researchers would say she should do. She should keep her kids in the same school so they can be in a stable environment.
But so far, it hasn’t been enough.
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Bianca Vázquez Toness covers the intersection of education and children’s well-being. She led the nation in showing how many students were missing school after the pandemic, and her work was honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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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.
ATLANTA (AP) — It was the worst summer in years. Sechita McNair’s family took no vacations. Her younger boys didn’t go to camp. Her van was repossessed, and her family nearly got evicted — again.
But she accomplished the one thing she wanted most. A few weeks before school started, McNair, an out-of-work film industry veteran barely getting by driving for Uber, signed a lease in the right Atlanta neighborhood so her eldest son could stay at his high school.
As she pulled up outside the school on the first day, Elias, 15, stepped onto the curb in his new basketball shoes and cargo pants. She inspected his face, noticed wax in his ears and grabbed a package of baby wipes from her rental car. She wasn’t about to let her eldest, with his young Denzel Washington looks, go to school looking “gross.”
He grimaced and broke away.
“No kiss? No hugs?” she called out.
Elias waved and kept walking. Just ahead of him, at least for the moment, sat something his mother had fought relentlessly for: a better education.
The link between where you live and where you learn
Sechita McNair, center, and sons Derrick McNair-White, left, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, right, walk to catch a city bus in Jonesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair, center, and sons Derrick McNair-White, left, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, right, walk to catch a city bus in Jonesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Last year, McNair and her three kids were evicted from their beloved apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta. Like many evicted families, they went from living in a school district that spends more money on students to one that spends less.
Thanks to federal laws protecting homeless and evicted students, her kids were able to keep attending their Atlanta schools, even though the only housing available to them was in another county 40 minutes away. They also had the right to free transportation to those schools, but McNair says the district didn’t tell her about that until the school year ended. Their eligibility to remain in those schools expired at the end of last school year.
Still wounded by the death of his father and multiple housing displacements, Elias failed two classes last year, his freshman year. Switching schools now, McNair fears, would jeopardize any chance he has of recovering his academic life. “I need this child to be stable,” she says.
Bianca Vázquez Toness covers the intersection of education and children’s well-being. She led the nation in showing how many students were missing school after the pandemic — work that was honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
With just one week before school started, McNair drove extra Uber hours, borrowed money, secured rental assistance and ignored concerns about the apartment to rent a three-bedroom in the Old Fourth Ward. At $2,200 a month, it was the only “semi-affordable” apartment in the rapidly gentrifying ward that would rent to a single mom with a fresh eviction on her record.
On Zillow, the second-floor apartment, built in 2005, looked like a middle-class dream with its granite countertops, crown molding and polished wood floors. But up close, the apartment looked abused and held secrets McNair was only beginning to uncover.
The first sign something was wrong came early. When she first toured the apartment, it felt rushed, like the agent didn’t want her to look too closely. Then, even as they told her she was accepted, the landlord and real estate agent wouldn’t send her a “welcome letter” laying out the agreement, the rent and deposit she would pay. It seemed like they didn’t want to put anything in writing.
When the lease came, it was full of errors. She signed it anyway. “We’re back in the neighborhood!” she said. Elias could return to Midtown High School.
But even in their triumph, no one in the family could relax. Too many things were uncertain. And it fell to McNair — and only McNair — to figure it out.
The first day back
Sechita McNair, left, talks to her oldest son, Elias Washington, before he walks into Midtown High School for the first day of school on Aug. 4 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair, left, talks to her oldest son, Elias Washington, before he walks into Midtown High School for the first day of school on Aug. 4 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Midtown is a high school so coveted that school administrators investigate student residency throughout the year to keep out kids from other parts of Atlanta and beyond. For McNair, the day Elias returned to the high school was a momentous one.
“Freedom!” McNair declared after Elias disappeared into the building. Without child care over the summer, McNair had struggled to find time to work enough to make ends meet. Now that the kids were back in class, McNair could spend school hours making money and resolving some of the unsettled issues with her new apartment.
McNair, the first person in her family to attend college, studied theater management. Her job rigging stage sets was lucrative until the writers’ and actors’ strike and other changes paralyzed the film industry in 2023. The scarcity of work on movie sets, combined with her tendency to take in family and non-family alike, wrecked her home economy.
The family was evicted last fall when McNair fell behind on rent because of funeral expenses for her foster daughter. The teen girl died from an epileptic seizure while McNair and everyone else slept. Elias found her body.
McNair attributes some of Elias’s lack of motivation at school to personal trauma. His father died after a heart attack in 2023, on the sidelines of Elias’s basketball practice.
Elias Washington talks to a friend on the phone as he walks to Midtown High School in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Elias Washington talks to a friend on the phone as he walks to Midtown High School in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
On his first day back at school this August, Elias appeared excited but tentative. He watched as the seniors swanned into school wearing gold cardboard crowns, a Midtown back-to-school tradition, and scanned the sidewalk for anyone familiar.
If Elias had his way, his mom would homeschool him. She’s done it before. But now that he’s a teenager, it’s harder to get Elias to follow her instructions. As the only breadwinner supporting three kids and her disabled uncle, she has to work.
Elias hid from the crowds and called up a friend: “Where you at?” The friend, another sophomore, was still en route. Over the phone, they compared outfits, traded gossip about who got a new hairdo or transferred. When Elias’s friend declared this would be the year he’d get a girlfriend, Elias laughed.
When it was time to go in, Elias drifted toward the door with his head down as other students flooded past.
The after-school pickup
Hours later, he emerged. Despite everything McNair had done to help it go well — securing the apartment, even spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes for him — Elias slumped into the backseat when she picked him up after class.
“School was so boring,” he said.
“What happened?” McNair asked.
“Nothing, bro. That was the problem,” Elias said. “I thought I was going to be happy when school started, since summer was so horrible.”
Of all of the classes he was taking — geometry, gym, French, world history, environmental science — only gym interested him. He wished he could take art classes, he said. Elias has acted in some commercials and television programs, but chose a science and math concentration, hoping to study finance someday.
After dinner at Chick-fil-A, the family visited the city library one block from their new apartment. While McNair spoke to the librarian, the boys explored the children’s section. Malachi, 6, watched a YouTube video on a library computer while Derrick, 7, flipped through a book. Elias sat in a corner, sharing video gaming tips with a stranger he met online.
“Those people are learning Japanese,” said McNair, pointing to a group of adults sitting around a cluster of tables. “And this library lets you check out museum passes. This is why we have to be back in the city. Resources!”
McNair wants her children to go to well-resourced schools. Atlanta spends nearly $20,000 per student a year, $7,000 more than the district they moved to after the eviction. More money in schools means smaller classrooms and more psychologists, guidance counselors and other support.
But McNair, who grew up in New Jersey near New York City, also sees opportunities in the wider city of Atlanta. She wants to use its libraries, e-scooters, bike paths, hospitals, rental assistance agencies, Buy Nothing groups and food pantries.
“These are all resources that make it possible to raise a family when you don’t have support,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone want that?”
Support is hard to come by
Sechita McNair, right, and sons Derrick McNair-White, center, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, left, ride an escalator to take the MARTA train on June 11 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair, right, and sons Derrick McNair-White, center, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, left, ride an escalator to take the MARTA train on June 11 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
On the way home, the little boys fall asleep in the back seat. Elias asks, “So, is homeschooling off the table?”
McNair doesn’t hesitate. “Heck yeah. I’m not homeschooling you,” she says lightly. “Do you see how much of a financial bind I’m in?”’
McNair pulls into the driveway in Jonesboro, the suburb where the family landed after their eviction. Even though the family wants to live in Atlanta, their stuff is still here. It’s a neighborhood of brick colonials and manicured lawns. She realizes it’s the dream for some families, but not hers. “It’s a support desert.”
As they get out of the car, Elias takes over as parent-in-charge. “Get all of your things,” he directs Malachi and Derrick, who scowl as Elias seems to relish bossing them around. “Pick up your car seats, your food, those markers. I don’t want to see anything left behind.” Elias would be responsible for making the boys burritos, showering them and putting them to sleep.
McNair heads out to drive for Uber. That’s what is necessary to pay $450 a week to rent the car and earn enough to pay her rent and bills.
But while McNair is out, she can’t monitor Elias. And a few days after he starts school, Elias’s all-night gaming habit has already drawn teachers’ attention.
“I wanted to check in regarding Elias,” his geometry teacher writes during the first week of school. “He fell asleep multiple times during Geometry class this morning.”
Elias had told the teacher he went to bed around 4 a.m. the night before. “I understand that there may be various reasons for this, and I’d love to work together to support Elias so he can stay focused and successful in class.”
A few days later, McNair gets a similar email from his French teacher.
That night, McNair drives around Atlanta, trying to pick up enough Uber trips to keep her account active. But she can’t stop thinking about the emails. “I should be home making sure Elias gets to bed on time,” she says, crying. “But I have to work. I’m the only one paying the bills.”
Obstacles keep popping up
Sechita McNair arrives at her new Atlanta apartment on Aug. 1 to find a door that she says looks like it was forced open. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair arrives at her new Atlanta apartment on Aug. 1 to find a door that she says looks like it was forced open. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Ever since McNair rented the Atlanta apartment, her bills had doubled. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel safe giving up the house she’d been renting in Clayton County, given the problems with the Atlanta apartment. For starters, she was not even sure it was safe to spend the night there.
A week after school started in August, McNair dropped by the apartment to check whether the landlords had made repairs. At the very least, she wanted more smoke detectors.
She also wanted them to replace the door, which looked like someone had forced it open with a crowbar. She wanted a working fridge and oven. She wanted them to secure the back door to the adjoining empty apartment, which appeared to be open and made her wonder if there were pests or even people squatting there.
But on this day, her keys didn’t work.
She called 911. Had her new landlords deliberately locked her out?
When the police showed up outside the olive-green, Craftsman-style fourplex, McNair scrolled through her phone to find a copy of her lease. Then McNair and the officer eyed a man walking up to the property. “The building was sold in a short sale two weeks ago,” he told McNair. The police officer directed the man to give the new keys to McNair.
The next day, McNair started getting emails from an agent specializing in foreclosures, suggesting the new owners wanted McNair to leave. “The bank owns the property and now you are no longer a tenant of the previous owner,” she wrote. The new owner “might” offer relocation assistance if McNair agreed to leave.
McNair consulted attorneys, who reassured her: It might be uncomfortable, but she could stay. She needed to try to pay rent, even if the new owner didn’t accept it.
So McNair messaged the agent, asking where she should send the rent, and requested the company make necessary repairs. Eventually, the real estate agent stopped responding.
Some problems go away, but others emerge
Finally, McNair moved her kids and a few items from the Jonesboro house to the Atlanta apartment. She didn’t allow Elias to bring his video game console to Atlanta. He started going to bed around 11 p.m. most nights. But even as she solved that problem, others emerged.
It was at Midtown’s back-to-school night in September that McNair learned Elias was behind in most of his classes. Some teachers said maybe Midtown wasn’t the right school for Elias.
Perhaps they were right, McNair thought. She’d heard similar things before.
Sechita McNair, center, rests in the summer heat as she works to repair her family van, while adopted son Derrick McNair-White, 6, right, plays in the driveway of their rented home in Jonesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair, center, rests in the summer heat as she works to repair her family van, while adopted son Derrick McNair-White, 6, right, plays in the driveway of their rented home in Jonesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Elias also didn’t want to go to school. He skipped one day, then another. McNair panicked. In Georgia, parents can be sent to jail for truancy when their kids miss five unexcused days.
McNair started looking into a homeschooling program run by a mother she follows on Facebook. In the meantime, she emailed and called some Midtown staff for advice. She says she didn’t get a response. Finally, seven weeks after the family’s triumphant return to Midtown, McNair filed papers declaring her intention to homeschool Elias.
It quickly proved challenging. Elias wouldn’t do any schoolwork when he was home alone. And when the homeschooling group met twice a week, she discovered, they required parents to pick up their children afterward instead of allowing them to take public transit or e-scooters. That was untenable.
Elias wanted to stay at home and offered to take care of McNair’s uncle, who has dementia. “That was literally killing my soul the most,” said McNair. “That’s not a child’s job.”
Hell, no, she told him — you only get one chance at high school.
Elias Washington watches a video on his phone as he rests on a bed left by a previous tenant in his family’s new apartment in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Elias Washington watches a video on his phone as he rests on a bed left by a previous tenant in his family’s new apartment in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Then, one day, while she was loading the boys’ clothes into the washing machine at the Atlanta apartment, she received a call from an unknown Atlanta number. It was the woman who heads Atlanta Public Schools’ virtual program, telling her the roster was full.
McNair asked the woman for her opinion on Elias’s situation. Maybe she should abandon the Atlanta apartment and enroll him in the Jonesboro high school.
Let me stop you right there, the woman said. Is your son an athlete? If he transfers too many times, it can affect his ability to play basketball. And he’d probably lose credits and take longer to graduate. He needs to be in school — preferably Midtown — studying for midterms, she said. You need to put on your “big mama drawers” and take him back, she told McNair.
The next day, Elias and his mother pulled up to Midtown. Outside the school, Elias asked if he had to go inside. Yes, she told him. This is your fault as much as it’s mine.
Now, with Elias back in school every day, McNair can deliver food through Uber Eats without worrying about a police officer asking why her kid isn’t in school. If only she had pushed harder, sooner, for help with Elias, she thought. “I should have just gone down to the school and sat in their offices until they talked to me.”
Sechita McNair, center, and sons Derrick McNair-White, right, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, left, have breakfast on the steps of Midtown High School in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Sechita McNair, center, and sons Derrick McNair-White, right, and Malachi McNair-Nesbitt, left, have breakfast on the steps of Midtown High School in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
But it was easy for her to explain why she hadn’t. “I was running around doing so many other things just so we have a place to live, or taking care of my uncle, that I didn’t put enough of my energy there.”
She wishes she could pay more attention to Elias. But so many things are pulling at her. And as fall marches toward winter, her struggle continues. After failing to keep up with the Jonesboro rent, she’s preparing to leave that house before the landlord sends people to haul her possessions to the curb.
As an Uber driver, she has picked up a few traumatized mothers with their children after they got evicted. She helped them load the few things they could fit into her van. As they drove off, onlookers scavenged the leftovers.
She has promised herself she’d never let that happen to her kids.
Dotted Line with Center Square
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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.
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new data centers in Texas and New York.
Microsoft also on Wednesday announced a new data center under construction in Atlanta, Georgia, describing it as connected to another in Wisconsin to form a “massive supercomputer” running on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips to power AI technology.
The latest deals show that the tech industry is moving forward on huge spending to build energy-hungry AI infrastructure, despite lingering financial concerns about a bubble, environmental considerations and the political effects of fast-rising electricity bills in the communities where the massive buildings are constructed.
Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, said it is working with London-based Fluidstack to build the new computing facilities to power its AI systems. It didn’t disclose their exact locations or what source of electricity they will need.
Another company, cryptocurrency mining data center developer TeraWulf, has previously revealed it was working with Fluidstack on Google-backed data center projects in Texas and New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario. TeraWulf declined comment Wednesday.
A report last month from TD Cowen said that the leading cloud computing providers leased a “staggering” amount of U.S. data center capacity in the third fiscal quarter of this year, amounting to more than 7.4 gigawatts of energy, more than all of last year combined.
Oracle was securing the most capacity during that time, much of it supporting AI workloads for Anthropic’s chief rival OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. Google was second and Fluidstack came in third, ahead of Meta, Amazon, CoreWeave and Microsoft.
Anthropic said its projects will create about 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs. It said in a statement that the “scale of this investment is necessary to meet the growing demand for Claude from hundreds of thousands of businesses while keeping our research at the frontier.”
Microsoft has branded its two-story Atlanta data center as Fairwater 2 and said it will be connected across a “high-speed network” with the original Fairwater complex being built south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company said the facility’s densely packed Nvidia chips will help power Microsoft’s own AI technology, along with OpenAI’s and other AI developers.
Microsoft was, until earlier this year, OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider before the two companies amended their partnership. OpenAI has since announced more than $1 trillion in infrastructure obligations, much of it tied to its Stargate project with partners Oracle and SoftBank. Microsoft, in turn, spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support its AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips.
The tech industry’s big spending on computing infrastructure for AI startups that aren’t yet profitable has fueled concerns about an AI investment bubble.
Investors have closely watched a series of circular deals over recent months between AI developers and the companies building the costly chips and data centers needed to power their AI products. Anthropic said it will continue to “prioritize cost-effective, capital-efficient approaches” to scaling up its business.
OpenAI had to backtrack last week after its chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, made comments at a tech conference suggesting the U.S. government could help in financing chips needed for data centers. The White House’s top AI official, David Sacks, responded on social media platform X that there “will be no federal bailout for AI” and if one of the leading companies fails, “others will take its place,” though he also added he didn’t think “anyone was actually asking for a bailout.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later confirmed in a lengthy statement that “we do not have or want government guarantees” for the company’s data centers and also sought to address concerns about whether it will be able to pay for all the infrastructure it has signed up for.
“We are looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion over the next 8 years,” Altman wrote. “Obviously this requires continued revenue growth, and each doubling is a lot of work! But we are feeling good about our prospects there.”
Air travelers should expect worsening cancellations and delays this week even if the government shutdown ends, as the Federal Aviation Administration rolls out deeper cuts to flights at 40 major U.S. airports, officials said Monday.
The fourth day of the flight restrictions saw airlines scrap over 2,300 flights Monday and more than 1,000 flights set for takeoff Tuesday. Unpaid for more than a month, some air traffic controllers have begun calling out of work, citing stress and the need to take on second jobs.
President Donald Trump took to social media on Monday to pressure controllers to “get back to work, NOW!!!” He called for a $10,000 bonus for those who’ve stayed on the job and suggested docking pay for those who haven’t.
Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, ranking member of the Senate’s Aviation Subcommittee, condemned the president’s remarks, saying controllers deserve appreciation and support — not attacks.
The head of the controllers union says its members are being used as a “political pawn” in the shutdown fight.
Meanwhile, the Senate passed legislation Monday to reopen the government, though the bill also needs to clear the House and final passage could be days away. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made clear last week that flight cuts will remain in place until the FAA sees staffing levels stabilize at its air traffic control facilities.
And because the flight disruptions are widespread and ongoing, many planes aren’t where they’re supposed to be, which could also slow the airlines’ return to normal operations even after the FAA lifts the order, said Mike Taylor, who leads research on airports and airlines at J.D. Power.
“If you think about it, there’s all these aircraft that didn’t fly where they were supposed to on a normal route,” Taylor said, noting airlines will need to track down all their planes, figure out where each needs to be, and find pilots and cabin crew for those flights.
Since Friday, airlines have canceled about 8,000 flights under orders to drop 4% of flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports. That will rise to 6% on Tuesday and 10% by week’s end, the FAA says.
One in 10 flights nationwide were scratched Sunday — the fourth worst day for cancellations in almost two years, according aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Controller shortages also led to five-hour delays Monday evening at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where wintry weather added to the disruptions earlier in the day, and the FAA warned that staffing at over a dozen towers and control centers could cause delays in cities including Philadelphia, Nashville and Atlanta.
That leaves travelers growing angry.
“All of this has real negative consequences for millions of Americans, and it’s 100% unnecessary and avoidable,” said Todd Walker, who missed his mom’s 80th birthday when his flight was canceled over the weekend.
The FAA also expanded flight restrictions Monday, barring business jets and many private flights from using a dozen airports already under commercial flight limits.
Airports nationwide have seen intermittent delays since the shutdown began because the FAA slows air traffic when it’s short on controllers to ensure flights remain safe.
The shutdown has made controllers’ demanding jobs even more stressful, leading to fatigue and increased risks, said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the number who are retiring or quitting is “growing” by the day.
During the six weekends since the shutdown began, an average of 30 air traffic control facilities had staffing issues. That’s almost four times the number on weekends this year before the shutdown, according to an Associated Press analysis of operations plans sent through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center system.
Tuesday will be the second missed payday for controllers. It’s unclear how quickly they might be paid once the shutdown ends — it took more than two months to receive full back pay after the 35-day shutdown that ended in 2019, Daniels said.
The latest shutdown and money worries have become regular “dinnertime conversations” for Amy Lark and her husband, both Washington, D.C., area air traffic controllers.
“Yesterday, my kids asked me how long we could stay in our house,” Lark said. Still, she said controllers remain “100% committed.”
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Yamat reported from Las Vegas and Funk from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Ken Sweet, Wyatte Grantham-Philips and Michael R. Sisak in New York; Stephen Groves and Kevin Freking in Washington; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.
Not surprisingly, Ohio State stayed at the top of the rankings, and there was a healthy debate about whether last weekend’s action warranted keeping Indiana at No. 2, one spot ahead of Texas A&M.
But while those top three remained the same in the Week 2 rankings released Tuesday, it was a game back in August that led the College Football Playoff selection committee to its biggest shakeup.
The committee vaulted Miami to No. 15, one spot ahead of Georgia Tech, to hand the ‘Canes the Atlantic Coast Conference’s only spot in this week’s projected bracket.
That decision came not so much on the strength of last weekend’s action, — when Miami easily handled Syracuse and Georgia Tech was idle — but rather, thanks to Miami’s season-opening win against Notre Dame.
“Certainly, the win versus Notre Dame was a key factor for placing Miami ahead of Georgia Tech,” committee chair Mack Rhoades explained. “In general, with the ACC, I think their lack of nonconference signature wins other than Miami over Notre Dame” hurts the conference.
Following the trio of undefeateds — Ohio State, Indiana and Texas A&M — were Alabama and Georgia, who rounded out the same top five as in last week’s season-opening rankings.
Texas Tech jumped two spots to No. 6 on the strength of its win over BYU, moving one notch ahead of Mississippi, which dropped to 7 despite a romp over Citadel in a nonconference game.
At No. 8 was Oregon, followed by Notre Dame and Texas.
No. 11 Oklahoma and No. 12 BYU would be the first two teams out in this week’s bracket due to the automatic spots handed to the ACC (Miami) and the highest-ranked league leader out of the Group of 5 conferences, which is now an honor that belongs to South Florida, ranked at No. 24.
“They’ve always been part of (the conversation),” Rhoades said of the Bulls. “South Florida is the most consistent of the Group of 5, to date.”
The final bracket comes out Dec. 7, with the 12-team playoff beginning Dec. 19 and closing a month later with the title game.
Indiana-A&M and Texas Tech-Ole Miss are two toughest calls
Rhoades said the decision to keep Indiana at No. 2 over Texas A&M provoked the committee’s second-longest conversation.
“Certainly, discussion about those two games, but also discussion about body of work,” Rhoades said. “There was conversation about Missouri. Missouri is a really good team but not the team they’ve been,” due to injuries at quarterback.
The longest conversation involved moving Texas Tech a spot past Ole Miss.
“Texas Tech’s win this last weekend — really convincing,” Rhoades said.
Conference watch
ACC: Of the five teams in the conference ranked 15-22, maybe No. 22 Pitt is the team to watch. The Panthers have a 7-2 record with games against Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and Miami the next three weeks. Winning any two of those might give them a chance at somehow getting into the bracket.
Big Ten: Outside of the top three, there are no sure things. No. 18 Michigan would work its way into the conversation with a win over you-know-who at the end of the month, and No. 17 USC has a season-making game at Oregon on Nov. 22.
Big 12: There’s Texas Tech. And then there’s BYU (8-1). And then there’s No. 13 Utah (7-2), the team the Cougars beat last month and seem destined to stay ahead of if they finish with one loss and the Utes finish with two. Only two — and perhaps only one — will make it.
SEC: No wonder the conference wants to do away with automatic qualifiers. A&M, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi feel like locks. Texas, Oklahoma and No. 14 Vanderbilt all control their own destiny. (Especially OU, which is at Alabama this week.)
Group of 5: With early wins over Boise State and Florida, South Florida looked like a good bet to earn that fifth conference-champion slot earlier in the season, and reclaimed the position after Memphis lost to Tulane last week.
The projected first-round matchups
No. 12 South Florida at No. 5 Georgia: How many teams have won at the Swamp and between the hedges in the same year … or ever?
No. 11 Miami at No. 6 Texas Tech: ‘Canes won last meeting 45-10 in 1990, and closed that season with a 46-3 drubbing of Texas in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 10 Texas at No. 7 Ole Miss: They haven’t played since UT joined the SEC last year.
No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 8 Oregon: Unfinished business from their 13-13 tie in 1982, Gerry Faust’s second season with the Irish.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,700 flights on Sunday as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that air traffic across the nation would “slow to a trickle” if the federal government shutdown lingered into the busy Thanksgiving travel holiday season.
The slowdown at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports began to cause more widespread disruptions in its third day. The FAA last week ordered flight cuts at the nation’s busiest airports as some air traffic controllers, who have gone unpaid for nearly a month, have stopped showing up for work.
In addition, nearly 10,000 flight delays were reported on Sunday alone, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks air travel disruptions. More than 1,000 flights were canceled Friday, and more than 1,500 on Saturday.
The FAA reductions started Friday at 4% and were set to increase to 10% by Nov. 14. They are in effect from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time and will impact all commercial airlines.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta stood to have the most cancellations Sunday, followed by Chicago O’Hare International, where wintry weather threatened. In Georgia, weather could also be a factor, with the National Weather Service office in Atlanta warning of widespread freezing conditions through Tuesday.
Traveler Kyra March finally arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson on Sunday after a series of postponements the day before.
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“I was coming from Tampa and that flight got delayed, delayed, delayed. Then it was canceled and then rebooked. And so I had to stay at a hotel and then came back this morning,” she said.
The FAA said staffing shortages at Newark and LaGuardia Airport in New York were leading to average departure delays of about 75 minutes.
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Michigan was mostly empty Sunday morning, with minimal wait times at security checkpoints as delays and cancellations filled the departures and arrivals boards.
Earlier Sunday, Duffy warned that U.S. air traffic could decline significantly if the shutdown persisted. He said additional flight cuts — perhaps up to 20% — might be needed, particularly if controllers receive no pay for a second straight pay period.
“More controllers aren’t coming to work day by day, the further they go without a paycheck,” Duffy told “Fox News Sunday.”
“As I look two weeks out, as we get closer to Thanksgiving travel, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have air travel slow to a trickle as everyone wants to travel to see their families,” Duffy said.
With “very few” controllers working, “you’ll have a few flights taking off and landing” and thousands of cancellations, he said.
“You’re going to have massive disruption. I think a lot of angry Americans. I think we have to be honest about where this is going. It doesn’t get better,” Duffy said. “It gets worse until these air traffic controllers are going to be paid.”
The government has been short of air traffic controllers for years, and multiple presidential administrations have tried to convince retirement-age controllers to remain on the job. Duffy said the shutdown has exacerbated the problem, leading some air traffic controllers to speed up their retirements.
“Up to 15 or 20 a day are retiring,” Duffy said on CNN.
Duffy said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted him with an offer to lend military air traffic controllers, but it’s unclear whether the staff is certified to work on civilian systems.
Duffy denied Democratic charges that the flight cancellations are a political tactic, saying they were necessary due to increasing near-misses from an overtaxed system.
“I needed to take action to keep people safe,” Duffy said. “I’m doing what I can in a mess that Democrats have put in my lap.”
Airlines for America, a trade group representing U.S. carriers, said air traffic control staffing-related delays exceeded 3,000 hours on Saturday, the highest of the shutdown, and that staffing problems contributed to 71% of delay time.
From Oct. 1 to Nov. 7, controller shortages have disrupted more than 4 million passengers on U.S. carriers, according to Airlines for America.
Voter anger over the cost of living is hurtling forward into next year’s midterm elections, when pivotal contests will be decided by communities that are home to fast-rising electric bills or fights over who’s footing the bill to power Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.
Electricity costs were a key issue in this week’s elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, a data center hotspot, and in Georgia, where Democrats ousted two Republican incumbents for seats on the state’s utility regulatory commission.
Voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City all cited economic concerns as the top issue, as Democrats and Republicans gird for a debate over affordability in the intensifying midterm battle to control Congress.
Already, President Donald Trump is signaling that he’ll focus on affordability next year as he and Republicans try to maintain their slim congressional majorities, while Democrats are blaming Trump for rising household costs.
Front and center may be electricity bills, which in many places are increasing at a rate faster than U.S. inflation on average — although not everywhere.
“There’s a lot of pressure on politicians to talk about affordability, and electricity prices are right now the most clear example of problems of affordability,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of politics and government and pollster at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
Rising electric costs aren’t expected to ease and many Americans could see an increase on their monthly bills in the middle of next year’s campaigns.
Higher electric bills on the horizon
Gas and electric utilities are seeking or already secured rate increases of more that $34 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, consumer advocacy organization PowerLines reported. That was more than double the same period last year.
With some 80 million Americans struggling to pay their utility bills, “it’s a life or death and ‘eat or heat’ type decision that people have to make,” said Charles Hua, PowerLines’ founder.
In Georgia, proposals to build data centers have roiled communities, while a victorious Democrat, Peter Hubbard, accused Republicans on the commission of “rubber-stamping” rate increases by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of power giant Southern Co.
Monthly Georgia Power bills have risen six times over the past two years, now averaging $175 a month for a typical residential customer.
Hubbard’s message seemed to resonate with voters. Rebecca Mekonnen, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, said she voted for the Democratic challengers, and wants to see “more affordable pricing. That’s the main thing. It’s running my pocket right now.”
Now, Georgia Power is proposing to spend $15 billion to expand its power generating capacity, primarily to meet demand from data centers, and Hubbard is questioning whether data centers will pay their fair share — or share it with regular ratepayers.
Midterm battlegrounds in hotspots
Midterm elections will see congressional battlegrounds in states where fast-rising electric bills or data center hotspots — or both — are fomenting community uprisings.
Analysts attribute rising electric bills to a combination of forces.
That includes expensive projects to modernize the grid and harden poles, wires and substations against extreme weather and wildfires.
Also playing a role is explosive demand from data centers, bitcoin miners and a drive to revive domestic manufacturing, as well as rising natural gas prices, analysts say.
“The cost of utility service is the new ‘cost of eggs’ concern for a lot of consumers,” said Jennifer Bosco of the National Consumer Law Center.
In some places, data centers are driving a big increase in demand, since a typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 homes, according to the International Energy Agency. Some could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans.
Meanwhile, communities that don’t want to live next to one are pushing back.
It’s on voters’ minds
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from October found that electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults.
Still, the impact is still more uneven than other financial stressors like grocery costs, which just over half of U.S. adults said are a “major” source of stress.
And electric rates vary widely by state or utility.
For instance, federal data shows that for-profit utilities have been raising rates far faster than municipally owned utilities or cooperatives.
In the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid from Illinois to New Jersey, analysts say ratepayers are paying billions of dollars for the cost to power data centers — including data centers not even built yet.
Next June, electric bills across that region will absorb billions more dollars in higher wholesale electricity costs designed to lure new power plants to power data centers.
That’s spurred governors from the region — including Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Illinois’ JB Pritzker and Maryland’s Wes Moore, all Democrats who are running for reelection — to pressure the grid operator PJM Interconnection to contain increases.
High-rate states vs. lower-rate rates
Drew Maloney, the CEO of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of for-profit electric utilities, suggested that only some states are the drivers of higher average electric bills.
“If you set aside a few sates with higher rates, the rest of the country largely follows inflation on electricity rates,” Maloney said.
Examples of states with faster-rising rates are California, where wildfires are driving grid upgrades, and those in New England, where natural gas is expensive because of strained pipeline capacity.
Still, other states are feeling a pinch.
In Indiana, a growing data center hotspot, the consumer advocacy group, Citizens Action Coalition, reported this year that residential customers of the state’s for-profit electric utilities were absorbing the most severe rate increases in at least two decades.
Republican Gov. Mike Braun decried the hikes, saying “we can’t take it anymore.”
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Associated Press reporter Jeff Amy in Atlanta 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.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi adopted a daughter, the first child for the married couple, this summer, they announced Thursday.
“We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy,” the couple wrote in a social media statement. No further details were released.
Brown, 21, and Bongiovi, 23, were married in a private ceremony in May 2024. Representatives for Brown and Bongiovi did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.
Brown gained recognition for her starring role as Eleven in the Duffer brothers’ sci-fi series “Stranger Things.” The fifth and final season will air this November and December, a culmination of nine years of the show’s production. The British actor has pursued other acting and business ventures in that time, including the Netflix original “Enola Holmes” films and a “Godzilla” film. She even released a romance book in 2023.
Bongiovi is the son of Jon Bon Jovi, founder and frontman of the rock band Bon Jovi. Bongiovi debuted his own acting career as the star in “Rockbottom,” which released last year.
“I’m just so lucky that they’re here tonight and it just means so much to me,” Brown told The Associated Press then. “Family is everything and just to have my second family here means everything.”
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.
ATLANTA (AP) — YouTuber-turned-cruiserweight boxer Jake Paul and undefeated WBA lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis have agreed to fight on Nov. 14 at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena.
Paul’s promotional company, Most Valuable Promotions, and Netflix announced the highly unusual matchup Wednesday. Netflix will stream the fight worldwide to its more than 300 million subscribers.
The 30-year-old Davis (30-0-1, 28 KOs), a three-division world champion, would be the first star near his ostensible prime to face Paul (12-1, 7 KOs), the online celebrity who has become one of the world’s highest-paid combat sports athletes despite never fighting an elite boxer.
Netflix and Nakisa Bidarian, Paul’s business partner, did not refer to the fight as an exhibition, but it’s unclear how Georgia officials would allow the matchup to be held as a competitive bout, given the fighters’ dramatic difference in size and experience.
Paul typically weighs more than 200 pounds in the ring, while Davis is a 135-pound champion who has never fought above 140 pounds. The fighters did not announce a contracted weight or the number of rounds in their planned bout.
The fight would mark a return to Netflix for the 28-year-old Paul, whose victory last November over the then-58-year-old Mike Tyson drew an estimated 108 million viewers globally.
Instead of pursuing a cruiserweight belt, Paul recently discussed a fight with two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua — a more logical opponent in terms of size and strength — but shifted his focus to the popular Davis. who has jousted with Paul on social media for years.
Perhaps Paul can look inside his own family for a plan: His older brother, Logan, weighed 189 pounds before fighting Floyd Mayweather at 155 pounds in an eight-round exhibition bout in 2021. Promoters said the spectacle sold more than 1 million pay-per-view buys and made more than $80 million.
Davis has been billed by his promoters as “the modern day Mike Tyson” because of the frequency with which he has won by knockout, but his career and life have been rocky in 2025. He struggled to a shocking draw against Lamont Roach Jr. in his most recent ring outing in March, and he was arrested on a domestic violence charge in Florida last month before the misdemeanor battery case was dropped last week.
Bidarian said Paul and Davis are “favorites of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences,” and that their bout will “determine the true face of boxing’s next generation.”
“This isn’t just a fight, it’s a spectacle that brings together two of the most electrifying figures in boxing today,” Netflix vice president Brandon Riegg said.
ATLANTA (AP) — Scottie Scheffler shies away from comparisons to Tiger Woods even as the numbers are starting to make that inevitable.
Scheffler has been No. 1 in the world longer than anyone since Woods. He is the first player since Woods to have five-plus wins in back-to-back years. He comes into the Tour Championship on a streak of 13 tournaments in the top 10.
“It’s very silly to be compared to Tiger Woods,” Scheffler said. “I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. You’ve grown up watching that guy do what he did week in, week out, it was pretty amazing to see.”
Scheffler was amazed by the only time he played with him in a tournament, a moment nearly five years ago that shaped the way the 29-year-old from Dallas now dominates his sport.
It was the final round of the Masters in November 2020, both of them 11 shots out of the lead with no chance to win. What stands out from that autumn Sunday was Woods making a 10 on the par-3 12th hole and then made birdie on five of his last six holes.
Scheffler remembers the opening hole just as well.
As he looks back to the start of his pro career, Scheffler felt he was guilty of not giving himself enough chances at winning and rarely being in the final group.
“I always found myself just a little bit on the outside looking in, and that’s one of the things I learned from playing with Tiger,” he said.
“We’re in 20th place or whatever going into Sunday at the Masters. Tiger has won five Masters, he’s got no chance of winning the tournament. Then we showed up on the first hole and I was watching him read his putt, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy is in it right now.’
“That was something that I just thought about for a long time,” Scheffler said. “I felt like a change I needed to make was bringing that same intensity to each round and each shot. And I feel like the reason I’ve had success in these tournaments is … just the amount of consistency and the intensity that I bring to each round of golf is not taking shots off, not taking rounds off, not taking tournaments off.
“When I show up at a tournament, I’m here for a purpose and that’s to compete hard, and you compete hard on every shot.”
That’s what golf has witnessed since Scheffler finally broke through at the WM Phoenix Open in 2022, and within two months he was a Masters champion and No. 1 in the world.
It doesn’t mean he wins every week — golf is still golf, an impossible game to master.
This week is an example of that. The change to the format in the Tour Championship put emphasis on getting to East Lake, and now the top 30 players start from scratch for 72 holes to see who wins the FedEx Cup.
Scheffler has no advantage by starting at 10-under par, nor does he have a points advantage. It’s a welcome change for most players because they signed off on it. Rory McIlroy, the Masters champion, says he didn’t mind the starting strokes because great play should get some reward.
“I didn’t hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here,” McIlroy said. “But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year.”
Scheffler started with a two-shot lead each of the last three years and it still took him the third try to win the FedEx Cup. He loves the pressure of competing. And besides, not starting with an advantage is sure to get his attention from the start.
He has his caddie, Ted Scott, back on the bag this week as Scott is dealing with a family emergency. Scheffler is quick to point out how his career took off when he brought in Scott to work with all the preparation he put into his job.
This year has been as good as any considering he started late because of hand surgery, and he added the PGA Championship and British Open to his two previous Masters titles.
But it’s not over yet. Scheffler was reminded of that in 2022 when he lost a six-shot lead in the final round to McIlroy. That was the year he won his first Masters, rose to No. 1 in the world and had four victories.
But when he returned home, he was met with condolences for not winning at East Lake.
“It just irked me so bad finishing off the year where guys were like: ‘Hey, great playing, I’m sorry about how it ended.’ It’s like, ‘You know what, man, I won the Masters this year, won a few other tournaments.’ It was a pretty good year.”
The tournament starts Thursday. It’s already been a good year for Scheffler.
Delivery drones are so fast they can zip a pint of ice cream to a customer’s driveway before it melts.
Yet the long-promised technology has been slow to take off in the United States. More than six years after the Federal Aviation Administration approved commercial home deliveries with drones, the service mostly has been confined to a few suburbs and rural areas.
That could soon change. The FAA proposed a new rule last week that would make it easier for companies to fly drones outside of an operator’s line of sight and therefore over longer distances. A handful of companies do that now, but they had to obtain waivers and certification as an air carrier to deliver packages.
While the rule is intended to streamline the process, authorized retailers and drone companies that have tested fulfilling orders from the sky say they plan to make drone-based deliveries available to millions more U.S. households.
Walmart’s multistate expansion
Walmart and Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, currently provide deliveries from 18 Walmart stores in the Dallas area. By next summer, they expect to expand to 100 Walmart stores in Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston; and Orlando and Tampa, Florida.
After launching its Prime Air delivery service in College Station, Texas, in late 2022, Amazon received FAA permission last year to operate autonomous drones that fly beyond a pilot’s line of sight. The e-commerce company has since expand its drone delivery program to suburban Phoenix and has plans to offer the service in Dallas, San Antonio, Texas, and Kansas City.
The concept of drone delivery has been around for well over a decade. Drone maker Zipline, which works with Walmart in Arkansas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, began making deliveries to hospitals in Rwanda in 2016. Israel-based Flytrex, one of the drone companies DoorDash works with to carry out orders, launched drone delivery to households in Iceland in 2017.
But Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said drone delivery has been in “treading water mode” in the U.S. for years, with service providers afraid to scale up because the regulatory framework wasn’t in place.
“You want to be at the right moment where there’s an overlap between the customer demand, the partner demand, the technical readiness and the regulatory readiness,” Woodworth said. “I think that we’re reaching that planetary alignment right now.”
Flying ice cream and eggs
DoorDash, which works with both Wing and Flytrex, tested drone drop-offs in rural Virginia and greater Dallas before announcing an expansion into Charlotte. Getting takeout food this way may sound futuristic, but it’s starting to feel normal in suburban Brisbane, Australia, where DoorDash has employed delivery drones for several years, said Harrison Shih, who leads the company’s drone program.
“It comes so fast and it’s something flying into your neighborhood, but it really does seem like part of everyday life,” Shih said.
Even though delivery drones are still considered novel, the cargo they carry can be pretty mundane. Walmart said the top items from the more than 150,000 drone deliveries the nation’s largest retailer has completed since 2021 include ice cream, eggs and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Unlike traditional delivery, where one driver may have a truck full of packages, drones generally deliver one small order at a time. Wing’s drones can carry packages weighing up to 2.5 pounds. They can travel up to 12 miles round trip. One pilot can oversee up to 32 drones.
Zipline has a drone that can carry up to 4 pounds and fly 120 miles round trip. Some drones, like Amazon’s, can carry heavier packages.
Once an order is placed, it’s packaged for flight and attached to a drone at a launch site. The drone automatically finds a route that avoids obstacles. A pilot observes as the aircraft flies to its destinations and lowers its cargo to the ground with retractable cords.
Risks and rewards of commercial drones
Shakiba Enayati, an assistant professor of supply chain and analytics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, researches ways that drones could speed the delivery of critical health supplies like donated organs and blood samples. The unmanned aircraft offer some advantages as a transport method, such as reduced emissions and improved access to goods for rural residents, Enayati said.
But she also sees plenty of obstacles. Right now, it costs around $13.50 per delivery to carry a package by drone versus $2 for a traditional vehicle, Enayati said. Drones need well-trained employees to oversee them and can have a hard time in certain weather.
Drones also can have mid-air collisions or tumble from the sky. But people have accepted the risk of road accidents because they know the advantages of driving, Enayati said. She thinks the same thing could happen with drones, especially as improved technology reduces the chance for errors.
Woodworth added that U.S. airspace is tightly controlled, and companies need to demonstrate to the FAA that their drones are safe and reliable before they are cleared to fly. Even under the proposed new rules, the FAA would set detailed requirements for drone operators.
“That’s why it takes so long to build a business in the space. But I think it leads to everybody fundamentally building higher quality things,” Woodworth said.
Others worry that drones may potentially replace human delivery drivers. Shih thinks that’s unlikely. One of DoorDash’s most popular items is 24-packs of water, Shih said, which aren’t realistic for existing drones to ferry.
“I believe that drone delivery can be fairly ubiquitous and can cover a lot of things. We just don’t think its probable today that it’ll carry a 40-pound bag of dog food to you,” Shih said.
The view from the ground in Texas
DoorDash said that in the areas where it offers drone deliveries, orders requiring the services of human delivery drivers also increase.
That’s been the experience of John Kim, the owner of PurePoke restaurant in Frisco, Texas. Kim signed on to offer drone deliveries through DoorDash last year. He doesn’t know what percentage of his DoorDash customers are choosing the service instead of regular delivery, but his overall DoorDash orders are up 15% this year.
Kim said he’s heard no complaints from drone delivery customers.
“It’s very stable, maybe even better than some of the drivers that toss it in the back with all the other orders,” Kim said.
For some, drones can simply be a nuisance. When the FAA asked for public comments on Amazon’s request to expand deliveries in College Station, numerous residents expressed concern that drones with cameras violated their privacy. Amazon says its drones use cameras and sensors to navigate and avoid obstacles but may record overhead videos of people while completing a delivery.
Other residents complained about noise.
“It sounds like a giant nagging mosquito,” one respondent wrote. Amazon has since released a quieter drone.
But others love the service. Janet Toth of Frisco, Texas, said she saw drone deliveries in Korea years ago and wondered why the U.S. didn’t have them. So she was thrilled when DoorDash began providing drone delivery in her neighborhood.
Toth now orders drone delivery a few times a month. Her 9-year-old daughter Julep said friends often come over to watch the drone.
“I love to go outside, wave at the drone, say ‘Thank you’ and get the food,” Julep Toth said.
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AP Video Journalist Kendria LaFleur contributed from Frisco, Texas.
ATLANTA (AP) — Jen Pawol breezed through Sunday’s Marlins-Braves game as if breaking a gender barrier was just another day on the job.
Considering Pawol became the first female umpire to work behind the plate in the majors, making unprecedented history appear to be routine was especially impressive.
“I think Jen did a really nice job,” Miami manager Clayton McCullough said after Atlanta’s 7-1 win over the Marlins.
“I think she’s very composed back there. She handled and managed the game very well. And big day for her. Big day for Major League Baseball. I congratulated her again on that because it’s quite the accomplishment.”
It was an impressive cap to a memorable weekend for Pawol. She made history in Saturday’s doubleheader as the first female umpire to work a regular-season game in the majors. She called the bases in the doubleheader before moving behind the plate on Sunday, placing her in the brightest spotlight for an umpire.
Pawol never showed any indication of being affected by the attention, even while knowing every call would be closely watched. She called balls and strikes with 93% accuracy, according to Ump Scorecards.
“Congrats to Jen, obviously,” said Braves left-hander Joey Wentz, who earned the win by allowing only one run in 5 1/3 innings.
Asked about Pawol’s calls, Wentz said, “I try not to focus on the zone, to be honest with you. … I thought it was good though.”
There were few opportunities for disputes as Wentz and Miami starting pitcher Cal Quantrill combined for only three strikeouts. The first called third strike came in the fifth inning, when Pawol used a fist pump when calling out Miami’s Kyle Stowers on a pitch that was close to the edge of the plate.
McCullough was seen in the Marlins dugout with his palms held up as if asking about the pitch call. He said after the game it’s not unusual to question a close called strike.
“Over the course of the game, there are a number of times that you just are going to be asking for clarity on one, if you aren’t sure,” McCullough said. “So it could have been that.”
The 48-year-old Pawol was called up as a rover umpire, so her next assignment in the majors has not been announced.
“I wish her the best moving forward as she continues to, I’m sure, hopefully one day be up full time, you know, a permanent big league umpire,” McCullough said.
Pawol also received positive reviews from Braves manager Brian Snitker, who on Saturday said, “You can tell she knows what she does.”
Pawol’s work in the minor leagues began in 2016 when she was assigned to the Gulf Coast League. She worked in the Triple-A championship game in 2023 and in spring training games in 2024 and again this year.
“We certainly didn’t call her up from A ball, right?” Quantrill said. “So yeah, I’m sure she was well prepared. And like I said I think, you know, part of the game moving forward is that if this is normal then we’re going to treat it normal, too. So, you know, I thought it was fine. I think she did she did a quality job. … And yeah, I think she’d be very proud of herself. And, you know, it’s kind of a cool little thing to be part of.”
Pawol spoke to reporters on Saturday when she said, “The dream actually came true today. I’m still living in it. I’m so grateful to my family and Major League Baseball for creating such an incredible work environment. … I’m just so thankful.”
Pawol received cheers from fans on both days. On Sunday, some held up “Way to go Jen!” signs.
Four years ago, he lost the state by just under 12,000 votes. He reclaimed it by notching microscopic but difference-making improvements in his vote totals in dozens of deeply red counties, many of them small and rural. It was still enough to put him over the top with 50.8% of the vote when The Associated Press called the state for him at 12:58 a.m. Wednesday.
Though the race is likely to narrow as more ballots are counted, there were not enough votes to be tabulated in Democratic-leaning areas for Vice President Kamala Harris to overtake Trump’s lead, which would have required her to get 56.1% of the remaining vote. She also narrowly underperformed Joe Biden in some population-dense counties in the Atlanta metro area. For example, in Fulton County Biden got 72.59% of the vote in 2020. This year Harris got 71.89% when the race was called.
Those small differences were enough to secure Georgia’s 16 electoral votes for Trump. But they are also another salient data point that suggests Georgia will be a fiercely contested battleground for years to come.
CANDIDATES: President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Chase Oliver (Libertarian) vs. Jill Stein (Green).
WINNER: Trump
POLL CLOSING TIME: 7 p.m. ET.
ABOUT THE RACE:
Georgia was long considered a Republican stronghold. But in 2020, Biden’s squeaker victory made him the first Democratic presidential contender since Bill Clinton in 1992 to carry the state, an emerging political battleground made more competitive by changing demographics and the booming Atlanta metro area.
Still, there was little guarantee 2024 would be a repeat.
Harris aggressively campaigned in the state, but Georgia had appeared to be a bit more of a reach for her than other battlegrounds.
Still, Georgia’s political dynamics are volatile. And the state was still up for grabs going into Election Day because the Republican party’s grip loosened as older, white GOP voters died. They have often been replaced by a younger, more racially diverse cast .
But just because many moving to the booming Atlanta area brought their politics with them didn’t mean the fundamentals dramatically changed. Biden beat Trump by only 11,779 votes in 2020. Trump got all of the state’s 16 electoral votes.
WHY AP CALLED THE RACE: At the time the race was called, Trump was leading by 125,000 votes. Almost all advance votes in Georgia had been reported. His lead was larger than what Harris could be expected to make up from the remaining votes in Democratic strongholds. Trump was slightly ahead of his 2020 performance in enough counties to erase the deficit of less than 12,000 votes by which he lost Georgia four years ago.
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Learn more about how and why the AP declares winners in U.S. elections at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) — Donald Trump repeatedly spread falsehoods Monday about the federal response to Hurricane Helene despite claiming not to be politicizing the disaster as he toured hard-hit areas in south Georgia.
The former president and Republican nominee claimed upon landing in Valdosta that President Joe Biden was “sleeping” and not responding to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who he said was “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get him.” He repeated the claim at an event with reporters after being told Kemp said he had spoken to Biden.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said Monday.
The White House previously announced that Biden spoke by phone Sunday night with Kemp and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, as well as Scott Matheson, mayor of Valdosta, Georgia, and Florida Emergency Management Director John Louk. Kemp confirmed Monday morning that he spoke to Biden the night before.
“The president just called me yesterday afternoon and I missed him and called him right back and he just said ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, we’ve got what we need, we’ll work through the federal process,” Kemp said. “He offered if there are other things we need just to call him directly, which I appreciate that.”
In addition to being humanitarian crises, natural disasters can create political tests for elected officials, particularly in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign in which among the hardest-hit states were North Carolina and Georgia, two battlegrounds. Trump over the last several days has used the damage wrought by Helene to attack Harris, the Democratic nominee, and suggest she and Biden are playing politics with the storm — something he was accused of doing when president.
Biden is defiant about spending time at his beach house
While the White House highlighted Biden’s call to Kemp and others, the president faced questions about his decision to spend the weekend at his beach house in Delaware, rather than the White House, to monitor the storm.
“I was commanding it,” Biden told reporters after delivering remarks at the White House on the federal government’s response. “I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I commanded it. It’s called a telephone.”
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports Donald Trump is touring Hurricane Helene’s damage in Georgia, while blasting the Biden administration’s response to the deadly storm.
Biden received frequent updates on the storm, the White House said, as did Harris aboard Air Force Two as she made a West Coast campaign swing. The vice president cut short her campaign trip Monday to return to Washington for a briefing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Trump, writing on his social media platform Monday, also claimed without evidence that the federal government and North Carolina’s Democratic governor were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” Asheville, which was devastated by the storm, is solidly Democratic, as is much of Buncombe County, which surrounds it.
The death toll from Helene has surpassed 100 people, with some of the worst damage caused by inland flooding in North Carolina.
Biden said he will travel to North Carolina on Wednesday to get a first-hand look at the devastation, but will limit his footprint so as not to distract from the ongoing recovery efforts.
During remarks Monday at FEMA headquarters, Harris said she has received regular briefings on the disaster response, including from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, and has spoken with Kemp and Cooper in the last 24 hours.
What to know about the 2024 election:
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“I have shared with them that we will do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover,” she said. “And I’ve shared with them that I plan to be on the ground as soon as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations.”
When asked if her visit was politicizing the storm, she frowned and shook her head but did not reply.
Trump partnered with a Christian charity to bring supplies
The Trump campaign partnered with the Christian humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse to bring trucks of fuel, food, water and other critical supplies to Georgia, said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary.
Leavitt did not immediately respond to questions about how much had been donated and from which entity. Samaritan’s Purse also declined to address the matter in a statement.
Trump also launched a GoFundMe campaign for supporters to send financial aid to people impacted by the storm. It quickly passed its $1 million goal Monday night.
“Our hearts are with you and we are going to be with you as long as you need it,” Trump said, flanked by a group of elected officials and Republican supporters.
“We’re not talking about politics now,” Trump added.
Trump said he wanted to stop in North Carolina but was holding off because access and communication is limited in hard-hit communities.
When asked by The Associated Press on Monday if he was concerned that his visit to Georgia was taking away law enforcement resources that could be used for disaster response, Trump said, “No.” He said his campaign instead “brought many wagons of resources.”
Katie Watson, who owns with her husband the home design store Trump visited, said she was told the former president picked that location because he saw shots of the business destroyed with the rubble and said, “Find that place and find those people.”
“He didn’t come here for me. He came here to recognize that this town has been destroyed. It’s a big setback,” she said.
“He recognizes that we are hurting and he wants us to know that,” she added. “It was a lifetime opportunity to meet the president. This is not exactly the way I wanted to do it.”
Trump campaign officials have long pointed to his visit to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a toxic trail derailment, as a turning point in the early days of the presidential race when he was struggling to establish his footing as a candidate. They believed his warm welcome by residents frustrated by the federal government’s response helped remind voters why they had been drawn to him years earlier.
Trump fought with Puerto Rico and meteorologists while president
During Trump’s term as president, he visited numerous disaster zones, including the aftermaths of hurricanes, tornadoes and shootings. But the trips sometimes elicited controversy such as when he tossed paper towels to cheering residents in Puerto Rico in 2017 in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
It also took until weeks before the presidential election in 2020 for Trump’s administration to release $13 billion in assistance for the territory. A federal government watchdog found that officials hampered an investigation into delays in aid delivery.
In another 2019 incident, Trump administration officials admonished some meteorologists for tweeting that Alabama was not threatened by Hurricane Dorian, contradicting the then-president. Trump would famously display a map altered with a black Sharpie pen to indicate Alabama could be in the path of the storm.
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Fernando reported from Chicago, and Amy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Chris Megerian and Aamer Madhani in Washington, and Will Weissert in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
