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An Afghan national has been accused of shooting two West Virginia National Guard members just blocks from the White House in a brazen act of violence. The guard members had deployed to the nation’s capital and were shot Wednesday afternoon.…
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By BEN FINLEY, ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER – Associated Press
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SEATTLE (AP) — People who work with refugees are worried that those who fled dangerous situations to start again in America will face backlash after authorities say an Afghan national shot two National Guard soldiers this week.
Many Afghans living in the U.S. are afraid to leave their houses, fearing they’ll be swept up by immigration officials or attacked with hate speech, said Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based group #AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war.
“They’re terrified. It’s insane,” VanDiver told The Associated Press Thursday. “People are acting xenophobic because of one deranged man. He doesn’t represent all Afghans. He represents himself.”
Officials say Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, drove from his home in Bellingham, Washington, to the nation’s capital where he shot two West Virginia National Guard members deployed in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained hospitalized in critical condition.
Lakanwal had worked in a special CIA-backed Afghan Army unit before emigrating from Afghanistan, according to #AfghanEvac and two sources who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
He applied for asylum during the Biden administration and his asylum was approved this year after undergoing a thorough vetting, the group said.
After the shooting, President Donald Trump said his administration would review everyone who entered from the country under former President Joe Biden — a measure his administration had been planning even before the shooting.
Refugee groups fear they’ll now be considered guilty by association.
Ambassador Ashraf Haidari, founder and president of Displaced International, which provides resources, advocacy and support to displaced people worldwide, said there must be a thorough investigation and justice for those who were harmed, “but even as we pursue accountability, one individual’s alleged actions cannot be allowed to define, burden, or endanger entire communities who had no part in this tragedy.”
Matthew Soerens, a vice president with World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps settle refugees, including Afghan nationals in Whatcom County, Washington, said the person responsible for the shooting should face justice under the law.
“Regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s nationality, religion or specific legal status, though,” he said, “we urge our country to recognize these evil actions as those of one person, not to unfairly judge others who happen to share those same characteristics.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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MANILA, Philippines — Shares in Europe are mixed following gains in most Asian markets.
The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were nearly unchanged ahead of Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday.
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX climbed 0.2% to 23,781.53. Britain’s FTSE 100 slid 0.2% to 9,677.14, while the CAC 40 in Paris was down less than 0.1% at 8,096.41.
Most Asian markets advanced. Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 1.2% to 50,167.10 as investors bet that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its Dec. 10 meeting.
The Japanese government reportedly plans to issue 11 trillion yen ($70.5 billion) in new bonds to fund its economic package. Tech-related stocks advanced, with SoftBank Group jumping 3.6% and Kioxia Holdings up 7.9% following a nearly 15% rout the day before.
In Chinese markets, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index picked up nearly 0.1% to 25,945.93, while the Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.3% to 3,875.26.
Gains were tempered by data that showed profits for the first ten months of 2025 at major Chinese industrial firms rose a lackluster 1.9% year-on-year, down from 3.2% growth in the previous period.
In South Korea, the Kospi added 0.7% to 3,986.91. The Bank of Korea kept its policy rate unchanged at 2.5%, supporting financial stability amid a weakened currency and market concerns on rising housing prices.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.1% to 8,617.30 while Taiwan’s tech-heavy Taiex index added 0.5%. India’s BSE Sensex was up 0.3%.
On Wednesday, U.S. stocks closed broadly higher, with the S&P 500 gaining 0.7% and the Dow up 0.7%. The Nasdaq composite added 0.8%.
Stocks have been rallying as comments from Federal Reserve officials have given traders more confidence the central bank will again cut interest rates at its meeting in December. Traders are betting on a nearly 83% probability that the Fed will cut next month, according to data from CME Group.
Solid gains for technology companies led the rally, though most sectors in the benchmark S&P 500 index finished higher. Gainers also outnumbered decliners by more than 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange.
U.S. markets have a shortened trading week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, closing on Thursday and opening for shorter hours on Friday.
The market’s recent rebound, fueled by investor hopes for another Federal Reserve interest rate cut in December, has helped erase most of the major indexes’ losses following a bout of selling earlier this month.
In other dealings early Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude added 6 cents to $58.71 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, was flat at $62.54 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar slipped to 156.29 Japanese yen from 156.47. The euro slid to $1.1585 from $1.1595.
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WASHINGTON — The brazen daytime shooting of two National Guard members in the nation’s capital by a man authorities said is an Afghan national has raised multiple questions.
That includes the condition of the wounded troops and details about the suspect and his motive for the attack a day before Thanksgiving.
Here’s what we know so far, and what we don’t know:
FBI Director Kash Patel and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said the two Guard members were hospitalized in critical condition.
They belong to the West Virginia National Guard, which deployed hundreds of troops to the nation’s capital as part of President Donald Trump’s crime-fighting mission that involved taking over the local police department.
There were nearly 2,200 Guard members in D.C. for the mission.
Unknown so far are the names and more details about the two troops who were wounded.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey initially posted on social media that two of his state’s Guard members were killed. He later walked that back, saying his office was “receiving conflicting reports” about their condition. Morrisey has not elaborated.
Bowser called the attack a “targeted shooting.”
Jeffery Carroll, an executive assistant D.C. police chief, said video reviewed by investigators showed the assailant “came around the corner” and immediately started firing at the troops. The suspect opened fire with a revolver, according to a law enforcement official.
At least one Guard member exchanged gunfire with the shooter, another law enforcement official said. Both were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Troops ran over and held down the shooter, Carroll said, and he was taken into custody. Authorities believe he was the only gunman.
Carroll said that it was not clear whether one of the Guard members or a law enforcement officer shot the suspect and that investigators so far had no information on a motive.
The suspect’s wounds were not believed to be life-threatening, one of the officials said.
The suspect is believed to be a 29-year-old Afghan national who entered the U.S. in September 2021 and has been living in Washington state, two law enforcement officials and a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
He came to the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said.
Law enforcement identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, but authorities were still working to fully confirm his background, they said. The people could not discuss details of an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Lakamal arrived in Bellingham, Washington, about four years ago with his wife and five children, according to his former landlord Kristina Widman.
They were among about 800 Afghan refugees that settled in Washington state under Operation Allies Welcome with the financial support of the U.S. government. Among those that partnered with federal agencies to sponsor the Afghan families was World Relief, a faith-based group that helped the refugees with finding housing, employment training and language classes as they settled in the Seattle area.
It’s unclear how Lakanwal might have traveled to the nation’s capital, which is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away.
Soon after the shooting, Trump said he would send 500 more National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. It’s not clear where the additional troops would come from.
As of early November, the D.C. National Guard had the largest number on the ground with 949. In addition to West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama also had forces in the capital early this month.
A federal judge last week ordered an end to the Guard deployment but also put her order on hold for 21 days to allow the Trump administration time to either remove the troops or appeal.
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Associated Press journalists Alanna Durkin Richer, Eric Tucker, Michael R. Sisak, Mike Balsamo, Michael Biesecker and Jesse Bedayn contributed to this report.
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is barring South Africa from participating in the Group of 20 summit next year at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a U.S. government representative at this year’s global meeting.
Trump chose not to have an American government delegation attend last weekend’s summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because its white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.
The Republican president, in a social media post, said South Africa had refused to hand over its G20 hosting responsibilities to a senior representative of the U.S. Embassy when the summit ended.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” he said, “and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
South Africa said it considered the U.S. decision to appoint a local embassy official for the G20 handover an insult. The ceremony instead happened at its Foreign Ministry building after the summit “as the United States was not present at the summit,” a statement from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said.
The statement said Ramaphosa “noted the regrettable statement by President Donald Trump on South Africa’s participation in the 2026 G20 meetings.”
It also pushed back against Trump’s widely rejected claims that Afrikaner farmers are being killed and having their land taken away, saying that Trump “continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country.”
In some ways, Trump views next year’s G20 summit as personal, given that he announced it will be at his golf club in Doral, Florida.
This year’s summit in Johannesburg, the first held in Africa, was boycotted by the United States, a G20 founding member and the world’s biggest economy. The meeting’s declaration, giving more attention to issues that affect developing countries, went unsigned by Washington, and the Trump administration expressed its opposition to South Africa’s agenda, especially the parts that focus on climate change.
The U.S. has now taken over the rotating presidency of the G20, leaving the long-term impact of the South African declaration unclear.
Trump has claimed that white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being killed and that their land is being seized. The South African government and others, including some Afrikaners themselves, say Trump’s claims are the result of misinformation.
South Africa has been a target for Trump since he returned to office at the start of the year, with his administration casting the country as anti-American because of its diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it would restrict the number of refugees admitted annually to the U.S. to 7,500, with most of the spots reserved for white South Africans. Trump had suspended the refugee program on his first day in office in January. Since then only a trickle have entered the country, mostly white South Africans. In May, the administration welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans as refugees.
Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.
Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-1994, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid.
There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.
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AP writer Gerald Imray in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday’s “heinous assault” on two National Guard members near the White House proves that lax migration policies are “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
“No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” he said.
Trump’s remarks, released in a video on social media, underscores his intention to reshape the country’s immigration system and increase scrutiny of migrants who are already here. With aggressive deportation efforts already underway, his response to the shooting showed that his focus will not waver.
The suspect in the shooting is believed to be an Afghan national, according to Trump and two law enforcement officials. He entered the United States in September 2021, after the chaotic collapse of the government in Kabul, when Americans were frantically evacuating people as the Taliban took control.
The 29-year-old suspect was part of Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden-era program that resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said. The initiative brought roughly 76,000 Afghans to the United States, many of whom had worked alongside American troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators.
It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and his allies, congressional Republicans and some government watchdogs over gaps in the vetting process and the speed of admissions, even as advocates say it offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.
Trump described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on earth,” and he said his administration would review everyone who entered from the country under President Joe Biden — a measure his administration had already been planning before the incident.
During his remarks, Trump also swung his focus to Minnesota, where he complained about “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” who are “ripping apart that once-great state.”
Minnesota has the country’s largest Somali community, roughly 87,000 people. Many came as refugees over the years.
The reference to immigrants with no connection to Wednesday’s developments was a reminder of the scope of Trump’s ambitions to rein in migration.
Administration officials have been ramping up deportations of people in the country illegally, as well as clamping down on refugee admissions. The focus has involved the realignment of resources at federal agencies, stirring concern about potentially undermining other law enforcement priorities.
However, Trump’s remarks were a signal that scrutiny of migrants and the nation’s borders will only increase. He said he wants to remove anyone “who does not belong here or does not add benefit to our country.”
“If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” Trump added.
Afterward, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would indefinitely stop processing all immigration requests for Afghan nationals pending a review of security and vetting protocols.
Supporters of Afghan evacuees said they feared that people who escaped danger from the Taliban would now face renewed suspicion and scrutiny.
“I don’t want people to leverage this tragedy into a political ploy,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac.
He said Wednesday’s shooting should not shed a negative light on the tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who have gone through the various legal pathways to resettling in the U.S. and those who await in the pipeline.
Under Operation Allies Welcome, tens of thousands of Afghans were first brought to U.S. military bases around the country, where they completed immigration processing and medical evaluations before settling into the country. Four years later, there are still scores of Afghans who were evacuated at transit points in the Middle East and Europe as part of the program.
Those in countries like Qatar and Albania, who have undergone the rigorous process, have been left in limbo since Trump entered his second term and paused the program as part of his series of executive actions cracking down on immigration.
Vice President JD Vance, writing on social media, criticized Biden for “opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees,” adding that “they shouldn’t have been in our country.”
“Already some voices in corporate media chirp that our immigration policies are too harsh,” he said. “Tonight is a reminder of why they’re wrong.”
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Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market rallied on Monday, at the start of a week with shortened trading because of the Thanksgiving holiday.
The S&P 500 climbed 1.5% for one of its best days since the summer and added to its jump from Friday, finding some strength following a shaky few weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 202 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.7%.
Stocks got a lift from rising hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate again at its next meeting in December, a move that could boost the economy and investment prices.
The market also benefited from strength for stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence frenzy. Alphabet, which has been getting praise for its newest Gemini AI model, rallied 6.3% and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Nvidia rose 2.1%.
Monday’s gains followed sharp swings in recent weeks, not just day to day but also hour to hour, caused by uncertainty about what the Fed will do with interest rates and whether too much money is pouring into AI and creating a bubble. All the worries are creating the biggest test for investors since an April sell-off, when President Donald Trump shocked the world with his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Despite all the recent fear, the S&P 500 remains within 2.7% of its record set last month.
“It’s reasonable to expect that stocks will experience periods of pressure from time to time, which, historically, is quite healthy for longer-term strength,” Anthony Saglimbene, Ameriprise chief market strategist, wrote in a note to investors.
Several more tests lie ahead this week for the market, which could create more swings, though none loom quite as large as last week’s profit report from Nvidia or the delayed jobs report from the U.S. government for September.
One of the biggest tests will arrive Tuesday, when the U.S. government will deliver data showing how bad inflation was at the wholesale level in September.
Economists expect it to show a 2.6% rise in prices from a year earlier, the same inflation rate as August. A worse-than-expected reading could deter the Fed from cutting its main interest rate in December for a third time this year, because lower rates can worsen inflation. Some Fed officials have already argued against a December cut in part because inflation has stubbornly remained above their 2% target.
Traders are nevertheless betting on a nearly 85% probability that the Fed will cut rates next month, up from 71% on Friday and from less than a coin flip’s chance seen a week ago, according to data from CME Group.
U.S. markets will be closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday. A day later, it’s on to the rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
On Wall Street, U.S.-listed shares of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk fell 5.6% Monday after it reported that its Alzheimer’s drug failed to slow progression of the disease in a trial.
Grindr dropped 12.1% after saying it’s breaking off talks with a couple of investors who had offered to buy the company, which helps its gay users connect with each other. A special committee of the company’s board of directors said it had questions about the financing for the deal by the investors, who collectively own more than 60% of Grindr’s stock.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 102.13 points to 6,705.12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 202.86 to 46,448.27, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 598.92 to 22,872.01.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, continued it sharp swings. It was sitting around $89,000 after bouncing between $82,000 and $94,000 over the last week. It was near $125,000 last month.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2% for one of the world’s biggest moves. It got a boost from a 4.7% leap for Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.03% from 4.06% late Friday.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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NEW YORK — Pharmaceutical companies have agreed to slash the Medicare prices for 15 prescription drugs after months of negotiations, reductions that are expected to produce billions in savings for taxpayers and older adults, the Trump administration said.
But the net prices it unveiled for a 30-day supply of each drug are not what Medicare recipients will pay at their pharmacy counters, since those final amounts will depend on each individual’s plan and how much they spend on prescriptions in a given year.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the deals as part of the administration’s efforts to address affordability concerns among Americans. The Medicare drug negotiation program that made them possible is mandated by law and began under President Joe Biden’s administration.
“President Trump directed us to stop at nothing to lower health care costs for the American people,” Kennedy said in a statement Tuesday evening. “As we work to Make America Healthy Again, we will use every tool at our disposal to deliver affordable health care to seniors.”
The announcement marks the completion of a second round of negotiations under a 2022 law that allows Medicare to haggle over the price it pays on the most popular and expensive prescription drugs used by older Americans, bringing the total number of negotiated drug prices to 25. The new round of negotiated prices will go into effect in 2027. Reduced prices for the inaugural round of 10 drugs negotiated by the Biden administration last year will go into effect in January.
The latest negotiated prices apply to some of the prescription medications on which Medicare spends the most money, including the massively popular GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes drugs Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy. Some of the other drugs involved in the negotiations include Trelegy Ellipta, which treats asthma; Otezla, a psoriatic arthritis drug; and various drugs that treat diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome and different forms of cancer.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, said the administration delivered “substantially better outcomes for taxpayers and seniors in the Medicare Part D program” than the previous year’s deals.
Under the first round of Medicare price negotiations, the Biden administration said the program would have saved about $6 billion on net covered prescription drug costs, or about 22%, if it had been in effect the previous year. The Trump administration said its latest round would have saved the government about $8.5 billion in net spending, or 36%, if it had been in effect last year.
It’s unclear exactly how much money the newly announced deals could save Medicare beneficiaries when they are buying prescription drugs at the pharmacy because those costs are determined by various individual factors.
A new rule that kicked off this year also caps out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $2,000, giving some relief to older adults affected by high-cost prescriptions. The administration said estimated out-of-pocket savings for Medicare beneficiaries with drug plans is about $685 million.
Spencer Perlman, director of health care research at Veda Partners, said the Trump administration’s improved outcomes probably resulted from the mix of drugs being negotiated and lessons learned from the first year of negotiations.
Net drug prices are proprietary, he said, but “if we take the administration at their word, I think it demonstrates that they have secured meaningful price concessions for seniors, meaning the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program is working as intended.”
The GLP-1 weight-loss drugs that were part of the negotiations have been especially scrutinized for their high out-of-pocket costs. Yet it’s still unclear to what extent Medicare beneficiaries who want to use the drugs to treat obesity will be able to do so.
Medicare has long been prohibited from paying for weight-loss treatments, but a separate deal recently announced between the Trump administration and two pharmaceutical companies included plans for a pilot program that will expand coverage for the drugs to additional high-risk obese and overweight people.
The Trump administration this year has also negotiated several unrelated deals with drug companies to lower the cost of their products for the wider population.
Pharmaceutical companies, meanwhile, have sued over the Medicare drug negotiations enabled by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and remain opposed to them.
“Whether it is the IRA or MFN, government price setting for medicines is the wrong policy for America,” Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, said in a statement. “These flawed policies also threaten future medical innovation by siphoning $300 billion from biopharmaceutical research, undermining the American economy and our ability to compete globally.”
Next year, Medicare will negotiate prices for another round of 15 drugs, including physician-administered drugs for the first time.
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NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are rising as Wall Street looks to build on a three-day winning streak. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% in early trading Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 140 points, or 04%, and the Nasdaq added 0.6%. Dell Technologies rose 4% after saying it has received record orders for its artificial intelligence servers. Urban Outfitters joined other retailers in reporting earnings that exceeded Wall Street forecasts, and its shares jumped 9.6%. Shares of Deere dropped 5% after the farm equipment company issued a downbeat forecast, citing tariffs. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose above 4%.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
BANGKOK (AP) —
Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Wednesday after benchmarks on Wall Street surged on hopes the Federal Reserve will soon opt to cut interest rates.
The future for the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2%.
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX gained 0.2% to 23,500.98, while the CAC 40 in Paris also rose 0.2%, to 9,623.22. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% higher.
In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.9% to 49,559.07 in a broad rally that encompassed major exporters and technology shares. However, shares in Kioxia dropped 14.9% on reports that Bain Capital plans to sell $2.3 billion of the computer memory maker’s shares.
In South Korea, the Kospi gained 2.7%, to 3,960.87, helped by a 3.5% gain for Samsung Electronics, the market’s biggest heavyweight. Computer chip maker SK Hynix climbed 1%.
Taiwan’s Taiex surged 1.9%.
Chinese markets were mixed.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.1% to 25,928.08 and the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.2%, to 3,864.18.
Chinese e-commerce and technology giant Alibaba fell 1.9%. Its U.S.-traded shares fell 2.3% on Tuesday after its profit fell short of forecasts, though it reported stronger revenue than analysts had expected for the latest quarter.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.8% to 8,606.50. In New Zealand, the S&P/NZX 50 added 0.6% after the central bank cut its official cash rate to 2.25% from $2.5%.
U.S. markets will have a shortened trading week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, closing on Thursday and opening for shorter hours on Friday.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose 0.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 1.4%. The Nasdaq composite gained 0.7%.
Easier interest rates can give particularly big boosts to smaller companies, because many of them need to borrow to grow. The Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks jumped 2.1% to lead the market.
Mixed economic data left traders betting on a nearly 83% probability that the Fed will cut in December, according to data from CME Group.
Shoppers bought less at U.S. retailers in September than economists expected, while confidence among U.S. consumers worsened by more in November than expected, signals the economy could use help from lower interest rates.
Easier rates can boost the economy by encouraging households and companies to borrow more and investors to pay higher prices for investments than they would otherwise.
Another report said U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was a touch worse in September than expected, but a closely tracked underlying trend was slightly better. Lower interest rates can worsen inflation, and higher prices are the main reason the Fed has been holding back on rate cuts.
Later Wednesday, the U.S. was due to release more data that had been delayed by the six-week long government shutdown.
The Fed has already cut rates twice this year in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market.
In other dealings early Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 5 cents to $58.00 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up 8 cents to $61.88 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 156.46 Japanese yen from 156.06 yen. The euro rose to $1.1575 from $1.1569.
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President Donald Trump is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future.
Trump unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place.
It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including streamlining the nation’s electric grid, according to White House officials who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the order before it was signed. Officials made no specific mention of seeking medical advances as part of the project.
“The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization,” the executive order says.
The administration portrayed the effort as the government’s most ambitious marshaling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo space missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, even as it had cut billions of dollars in federal funding for scientific research and thousands of scientists had lost their jobs and funding.
Trump is increasingly counting on the tech sector and the development of AI to power the U.S. economy, made clear last week as he hosted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The monarch has committed to investing $1 trillion, largely from the Arab nation’s oil and natural gas reserves, to pivot his nation into becoming an AI data hub.
For the U.S.’s part, funding was appropriated to the Energy Department as part of the massive tax-break and spending bill signed into law by Trump in July, White House officials said.
As AI raises concerns that its heavy use of electricity may be contributing to higher utility rates in the nearer term, which is a political risk for Trump, administration officials argued that rates will come down as the technology develops. They said the increased demand will build capacity in existing transmission lines and bring down costs per unit of electricity.
Data centers needed to fuel AI accounted for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption last year, and those facilities’ energy consumption is predicted to more than double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That increase could lead to burning more fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which release greenhouse gases that contribute to warming temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather.
The project will rely on national labs’ supercomputers but will also use supercomputing capacity being developed in the private sector. The project’s use of public data including national security information along with private sector supercomputers prompted officials to issue assurances that there would be controls to respect protected information.
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The message is hammered over and over, in news conferences, hearings and executive orders: President Donald Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., say they want the government to follow “gold standard” science.
Scientists say the problem is that they are often doing just the opposite by relying on preliminary studies, fringe science or just hunches to make claims, cast doubt on proven treatments or even set policy.
This week, the nation’s top public health agency changed its website to contradict the scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. The move shocked health experts nationwide.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.”
It was the latest example of the Trump administration’s challenge to established science.
In September, the Republican president gave out medical advice based on weak or no evidence. Speaking directly to pregnant women and to parents, he told them not to take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. He repeatedly made the fraudulent and long-disproven link between autism and vaccines, saying his assessment was based on a hunch.
“I have always had very strong feelings about autism and how it happened and where it came from,” he said.
At a two-day meeting this fall, Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisers to the CDC raised questions about vaccinating babies against hepatitis B, an inoculation long shown to reduce disease and death drastically.
“The discussion that has been brought up regarding safety is not based on evidence other than case reports and anecdotes,” said Dr. Flor Munoz, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.
During the country’s worst year for measles in more than three decades, Kennedy cast doubt on the measles vaccine while championing unproven treatments and alleging that the unvaccinated children who died were “already sick.”
Scientists say the process of getting medicines and vaccines to market and recommended in the United States has, until now, typically relied on gold standard science. The process is so rigorous and transparent that much of the rest of the world follows the lead of American regulators, giving the OK to treatments only after U.S. approval.
The gold standard can differ because science and medicine is complicated and everything cannot be tested the same way. That term simply refers to the best possible evidence that can be gathered.
“It completely depends on what question you’re trying to answer,” said Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease physician and Stanford University researcher.
There are many different types of studies. The most rigorous is the randomized clinical trial.
It randomly creates two groups of subjects that are identical in every way except for the drug, treatment or other question being tested. Many are “blinded studies,” meaning neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is in which group. This helps eliminate bias.
It is not always possible or ethical to conduct these tests. This is sometimes the case with vaccine trials, “because we have so much data showing how safe and effective they are, it would be unethical to withhold vaccines from a particular group,” said Jessica Steier, a public health scientist and founder of the Unbiased Science podcast.
Studying the long-term effect of a behavior can be impossible. For example, scientists could not possibly study the long-term benefit of exercise by having one group not exercise for years.
Instead, researchers must conduct observational studies, where they follow participants and track their health and behavior without manipulating any variables. Such studies helped scientists discover that fluoride reduces cavities, and later lab studies showed how fluoride strengthens tooth enamel.
But the studies have limitations because they can often only prove correlation, not causation. For example, some observational studies have raised the possibility of a link between autism risk and using acetaminophen during pregnancy, but more have not found a connection. The big problem is that those kinds of studies cannot determine if the painkiller really made any difference or if it was the fever or other health problem that prompted the need for the pill.
Scientists can learn even more when they see how something affects a large number of people in their daily lives.
That real-world evidence can be valuable to prove how well something works — and when there are rare side effects that could never be detected in trials.
Such evidence on vaccines has proved useful in both ways. Scientists now know there can be rare side effects with some vaccines and can alert doctors to be on the lookout. The data has proved that vaccines provide extraordinary protection from disease. For example, measles was eliminated in the U.S. but it still pops up among unvaccinated groups.
That same data proves vaccines are safe.
“If vaccines caused a wave of chronic disease, our safety systems — which can detect 1-in-a-million events — would have seen it. They haven’t,” Scott told a U.S. Senate subcommittee in September.
Simply publishing a paper online is not enough to call it open and transparent. Specific things to look for include:
— Researchers set their hypothesis before they start the study and do not change it.
— The authors disclose their conflicts of interest and their funding sources.
— The research has gone through peer review by subject-matter experts who have nothing to do with that particular study.
— The authors show their work, publishing and explaining the data underlying their analyses.
— They cite reliable sources.
This transparency allows science to check itself. Dr. Steven Woloshin, a Dartmouth College professor, has spent much of his career challenging scientific conclusions underlying health policy.
“I’m only able to do that because they’re transparent about what they did, what the underlying source resources were, so that you can come to your own conclusion,” he said. “That’s how science works.”
Anecdotes may be powerful. They are not data.
Case studies might even be published in top journals, to help doctors or other professionals learn from a particular situation. But they are not used to making decisions about how to treat large numbers of patients because every situation is unique.
Even single studies should be considered in the context of previous research. A new one-off blockbuster study that seems to answer every question definitively or reaches a conclusion that runs counter to other well-conducted studies needs a very careful look.
Uncertainty is baked into science.
“Science isn’t about reaching certainty,” Woloshin said. “It’s about trying to reduce uncertainty to the point where you can say, ‘I have good confidence that if we do X, we’ll see result Y.’ But there’s no guarantee.”
If you come across a research paper online, in a news story or cited by officials to change your mind about something, here are some questions to ask:
— Who did the research? What is their expertise? Do they disclose conflicts of interest?
— Who paid for this research? Who might benefit from it?
— Is it published in a reputable journal? Did it go through peer review?
— What question are the researchers asking? Who or what are they studying? Are they making even comparisons between groups?
— Is there a “limitations” section where the authors point out what their research cannot prove, other factors that could influence their results, or other potential blind spots? What does it say?
— Does it make bold, definitive claims? Does it fit into the scientific consensus or challenge it? Is it too good or bad to be true?
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AP Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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In addition to pardoning two North Carolina turkeys at the annual White House ceremony Tuesday, President Donald Trump discussed his crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., claiming that it’s been months since the city has seen a murder.
But Metropolitan Police Department statistics say otherwise.
Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington in August in an effort to curb violent crime even though it had already reached its lowest levels in decades.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “We haven’t had a murder in six months.”
THE FACTS: That’s false. There have been 62 homicides in Washington since May 25, including one last week, according to the MPD. The city has seen 123 homicides so far in 2025. Since National Guard troops were deployed to Washington on Aug. 11, there have been 24. In some data, only 61 homicides were reported in the last six months, and only 23 since Aug. 11, because of a technical error, the MPD said.
Asked for comment on Trump’s claim, the department said that the statistics speak for themselves.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers stressed Trump’s transformation of Washington “from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city” when asked about the discrepancy between his claim and city data. She did not address the discrepancy directly.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to end its monthslong deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb found that Trump’s military takeover illegally intrudes on local officials’ authority to direct law enforcement in the district. The order is on hold for 21 days to allow for appeal.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb in September sued to challenge the Guard deployments. He asked the judge to bar the White House from deploying Guard troops without the mayor’s consent while the lawsuit plays out.
During the turkey pardoning, Trump said Washington “is now considered a safe zone,” making the erroneous claim that “we haven’t seen a murder in six months.”
A Department of Justice report from January showed that total violent crime in 2024 was at the lowest it had been in more than 30 years, including a 32% drop in homicides from 2023, when it experienced a post-pandemic peak.
Homicides in the past six months are down 46% from the same period last year, while homicides since the August deployment are down 38% from the previous period, MPD data shows. There has been a 29% decrease in homicides in 2025 to date compared to 2024.
Violent crime during the National Guard’s initial one-month surge in Washington was down 39% from the same period last year, including a 53% drop in homicides, with seven during the surge, compared to 15 during the same timespan in 2024.
Arson is the only type of crime that has not seen a decrease, with a 0% change from last year to this year.
The city’s statistics came into question, however, after federal authorities opened an investigation into allegations that officials altered some of the data to make it look better. The investigation is ongoing.
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Associated Press writers Gary Fields and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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WASHINGTON — Hackers working for Russian intelligence attacked an American engineering company this fall, investigators at a U.S. cybersecurity company said Tuesday — seemingly because that firm had worked for a U.S. municipality with a sister city in Ukraine.
The findings reflect the evolving tools and tactics of Russia’s cyber war and demonstrate Moscow’s willingness to attack a growing list of targets, including governments, organizations and private companies that have supported Ukraine, even in a tenuous way.
Arctic Wolf, the U.S. cybersecurity firm that identified the Russian campaign, wouldn’t identify its customer or the city it worked with to protect their security, but said the company had no direct connection to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, the group behind the attack, known to cybersecurity experts as RomCom, has consistently targeted groups with links to Ukraine and its defense against Russia.
“They routinely go after organizations that support Ukrainian institutions directly, provide services to Ukrainian municipalities, and assist organizations tied to Ukrainian civil society, defense, or government functions,” said Ismael Valenzuela, Arctic Wolf’s vice president of labs, threat research and intelligence.
The attack on the engineering firm was identified by Arctic Wolf in September before it could disrupt the engineering company’s operations or spread further.
A message left with officials at the Russian Embassy in Washington seeking comment was not immediately returned.
Many towns and cities around the world enjoy sister-city relationships with other communities, using the program to offer social and economic exchanges. Several U.S. cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, Albany, N.Y. and Cincinnati, have sister-city relationships with communities in Ukraine.
The campaign in September came just a few weeks after the FBI warned that hackers linked to Russia were seeking to break into U.S. networks as a way to burrow into important systems or disrupt critical infrastructure. According to the latest bulletin from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Russia-aligned hackers have multiple motives: disrupting aid and military supplies to Ukraine, punishing businesses with ties to Ukraine, or stealing military or technical secrets.
Last month, the Digital Security Lab of Ukraine and investigators at SentinelOne, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, exposed a speedy and sprawling cyberattack on relief groups supporting Ukraine, including the International Red Cross and UNICEF. That hacking campaign used fake emails impersonating Ukrainian officials that sought to fool users into infecting their own computers by clicking on malicious links.
The investigators at SentinelOne stopped short of attributing the attack to the Russian government but noted that the operation targeted groups working on Ukrainian assistance and required six months to plan. The “highly capable adversary” behind the campaign, the investigators determined, is “an operator well-versed in both offensive tradecraft and defensive detection evasion.”
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to bestow ceremonial pardons on two turkeys and fly to his private Florida resort on Tuesday to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday interlude during what has been a turbulent and uncertain chapter of his second term.
Waddle and Gobble, the two birds that will be spared from the dinner table, enjoyed luxury hotel accommodations ahead of their White House visit. The turkey pardon is a presidential tradition dating back years.
However, Thanksgiving may not provide Trump with much political respite after Democrats won sweeping victories in New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere earlier this month. Some research indicates that holiday meals could cost more this year, despite the president’s insistence otherwise, a reminder of persistent frustration with elevated prices.
Meanwhile, Trump is struggling to advance a plan to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine after an earlier version faced swift criticism from European allies and even some Republicans. The U.S. military is also poised to target Venezuela with military strikes, part of an anti-drug operation that could ultimately destabilize the country’s leadership.
In Washington, Trump faces the possibility of a splintering Republican coalition ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. Some members of his party already took the rare step of crossing the president by successfully pushing legislation to force the Justice Department to release more documents about the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Trump faced a setback in court this week when a federal judge tossed cases against James Comey and Letitia James, two targets of the president’s retribution campaign.
Comey, a former FBI director whom Trump fired during his first term, was charged with making a false statement and obstructing Congress. James, the New York attorney general who investigated the president between his two terms, was charged with mortgage fraud.
Both pleaded not guilty and said the prosecutions were politically motivated, pointing to Trump’s public demands for the Justice Department to punish his enemies.
The judge said the interim U.S. attorney, a former member of Trump’s personal legal team, who obtained the indictments was illegally appointed. However, the decision was made without prejudice, so the Justice Department could try again to charge Comey and James.
All of the latest developments contribute to a moment of frenetic activity for the White House, which would normally be settling in for a quiet and festive holiday season.
However, despite the traditional arrival of a Christmas tree on Monday, the presidential residence will be much different this year. Although holiday tours are expected to continue, Trump’s decision to demolish the building’s East Wing to make room for a new ballroom has turned part of the White House grounds into a construction site.
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BANGKOK — World shares and U.S. futures were mixed on Monday after Wall Street was buoyed by revived hopes for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged.
Germany’s DAX gained 0.5% to 23,201.85, while the CAC 40 edged less than 0.1% lower to 7,978.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1% to 9,547.77.
Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday.
Hong Kong’s benchmark, the Hang Seng, rose 2% to 25,716.50. It got a boost from a 4.7% gain for e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday.
The Shanghai Composite index rose less than 0.1% to 3,836.77.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.3% to 8,525.10.
In South Korea, the Kospi reversed early gains, falling 0.2% to 3,846.06 on heavy selling of automakers.
Taiwan’s Taiex added 0.3% and the Sensex in India shed 0.4%.
This week, U.S. markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, which will be followed by the Black Friday and Cyber Monday retail rushes.
After last week’s ups and downs over AI and Nvidia, traders will focus more on “the backbone of U.S. growth, the consumer, whose spending still drives two-thirds of GDP,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
Data on the U.S. economy was scarce during the 6-week U.S. government shutdown, leaving investors struggling to parse trends in the economy.
“This makes any sniff of holiday activity — foot traffic, discount depth, card authorizations — disproportionately important. In a data desert, even a puddle looks like a lake,” he said.
On Friday, the S&P 500 gained 1% and the Dow climbed 1.1%. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.9%. Nearly 90% of stocks in the S&P 500 advanced.
It was a fitting finish for a week that left the S&P 500 just 4.2% below its record but also forced investors to stomach the sharpest hour-to-hour swings since a sell-off in April. The jarring moves are testing investors following a monthslong and remarkably smooth surge for stocks, and they come down to two basic as-yet unanswered questions.
Have prices for Nvidia, bitcoin and other stars of Wall Street shot too high? And is the Federal Reserve done with its cuts to interest rates, which would boost the economy and prices for investments?
Markets took heart from a speech by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, John Williams, who told a conference in Chile that he sees “room for a further adjustment” to interest rates.
Other Fed officials have argued against a December cut, saying inflation is still too high.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased Friday on hopes for cuts from the Fed. Traders are now betting on a nearly 72% probability of a December cut, up sharply from 39% a day before, according to data from CME Group. That helped send the yield on the 10-year Treasury to 4.06% from 4.10% late Thursday.
In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 43 cents to $57.63 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 38 cents to $61.56 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 156.75 Japanese yen from 156.47 yen. The euro climbed to $1.1537 from $1.1516.
Bitcoin was up 1.6%, near $86,000. On Friday, it briefly plunged below $81,000 before pulling back toward $85,000. That’s down from nearly $125,000 last month and brought it back to where it was in April, when markets were shaking because of President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs.
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LONDON — Pressure is increasing for the former Prince Andrew to give evidence to a U.S. congressional committee investigating the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after Britain’s prime minister suggested he should testify.
Keir Starmer declined to comment directly about King Charles III’s disgraced younger brother, but told reporters traveling with him for the Group of 20 summit in Johannesburg that as a “general principle” people should provide evidence to investigators.
“I don’t comment on his particular case,’’ Starmer said. “But as a general principle I’ve held for a very long time is that anybody who has got relevant information in relation to these kind of cases should give that evidence to those that need it.’’
The former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has so far ignored a request from members of the House Oversight Committee for a “transcribed interview” about his “long-standing friendship” with Epstein. Andrew was stripped of his royal titles and honors last month as the royal family tried to insulate itself from criticism about his relationship with Epstein.
Starmer’s comments came after Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat from Virginia, said Andrew “continues to hide” from serious questions.
“Our work will move forward with or without him, and we will hold anyone who was involved in these crimes accountable, no matter their wealth, status or political party,” they said in a statement released on Friday. “We will get justice for the survivors.”
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President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that military strikes on suspected drug boats his administration has been carrying out for more than two months in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
He most recently cited these numbers on Monday while answering questions from reporters after announcing a new initiative that will allow foreigners traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup next year to get interviews for visas more quickly.
But experts say that this is a grossly simplistic interpretation of the situation.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”
THE FACTS: The numbers to support Trump’s claim don’t add up, and sometimes don’t exist. For example, people in the U.S. who die from drug overdoses each year are far fewer than the amount Trump suggests have been saved by the boat strikes his administration has carried out since September.
“The statement that each of the administration’s strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats saves 25,000 lives is absurd,” said Carl Latkin, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University who studies substance use. “The evidence is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese. If you look carefully, you will see a resemblance. However, a close analysis of this claim suggests that it lacks all credibility.”
According to the latest preliminary data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 97,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during the 12-month period that ended June 30. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period.
Final CDC data reports 53,336 overdose deaths in 2024 and 75,118 in 2023.
The U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since strikes began on Sept. 2, most recently on Nov. 15. Using Trump’s numbers, that would mean the strikes have prevented 525,000 fatal drug overdoses in the U.S — far more than the number of overdose deaths that have occurred in recent two-month periods. This essentially implies that the administration is saving more lives than would have ever been lost.
Lori Ann Post, the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, explained that “there’s no empirically sound way to say a single strike ‘saves 25,000 lives,’” even if the statement is interpreted more broadly to mean preventing substance use disorders and resulting ripple effects. Among the issues she pointed to are a lack of verifiable cargo data or published models linking such boat strikes to changes in drug use, as well as markets that will adapt to isolated supply losses.
“The math and the data are not there,” said Post, who studies drug overdose deaths and economic drivers of the opioid crisis.
Latkin added that claiming one lethal dose of a drug automatically translates to one death is a “very simple way of looking at it,” as different people have different tolerances.
Trump has justified the attacks by saying the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations that are flooding America’s cities with drugs. Neither Trump nor his administration have publicly confirmed the amount of drugs allegedly destroyed in the strikes.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly reiterated Trump’s numbers when asked for evidence to support his claims about how many lives are being saved. She wrote in an email: “President Trump is right — any boat bringing deadly poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more. The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding in to our country and to bring those responsible for justice.”
Latkin noted that this estimate also ignores the reality that even if the Trump administration manages to shut off one source of illegal drugs with its boat strikes, there will still be others. He offered a comparison to the fast food industry, explaining that getting rid of a couple of restaurants would not greatly improve Americans’ health since there are so many other sources where consumers could get the same or similar products.
“It’s incredibly naive to think that reducing the supply in one place will eradicate the problem because it’s such a massive business,” he said.
Opioids accounted for 73.4% of drug overdose deaths in 2024, according to the CDC. That includes 65.1% from illegally made fentanyls. But while the boat strikes have targeted vessels largely in the Caribbean Sea, fentanyl is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. New numbers from the CDC show that a decline that began in 2023 has continued. Experts aren’t certain about the reasons for the decline, but they cite a combination of possible factors. Among them are the end of the COVID-19 pandemic; years of efforts to increase the availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone and addiction treatments; and changes to the drugs themselves.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck
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MINNEAPOLIS — Since it was created in 2018, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency has helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments, showed officials how to protect polling places from attacks and gamed out how to respond to the unexpected, such as an Election Day bomb threat or sudden disinformation campaign
The agency was largely absent from that space for elections this month in several states, a potential preview for the 2026 midterms. Shifting priorities of the Trump administration, staffing reductions and budget cuts have many election officials concerned about how engaged the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will be next year, when control of Congress will be at stake in those elections.
Some officials say they have begun scrambling to fill the anticipated gaps.
“We do not have a sense of whether we can rely on CISA for these services as we approach a big election year in 2026,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who until recently led the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State.
The association’s leaders sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February asking her to preserve the cybersecurity agency’s core election functions. Noem, whose department oversees the agency, has yet to reply.
“I regret to say that months later, the letter remains very timely and relevant,” Simon said.
CISA, as the agency is known, was formed under the first Trump administration to help safeguard the nation’s critical infrastructure, from dams and power plants to election systems. It has been undergoing a major transformation since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January.
Public records suggest that roughly 1,000 CISA employees have lost their jobs over the past years. The Republican administration in March cut $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.
That was a few weeks after CISA announced it was conducting a review of its election-related work, and more than a dozen staffers who have worked on elections were placed on administrative leave. The FBI also disbanded a task force on foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections.
CISA is still without an official director. Trump’s nomination of Sean Plankey, a cybersecurity expert in the first Trump administration, has stalled in the Senate.
CISA officials did not answer questions seeking specifics about the agency’s role in the recently completed elections, its plans for the 2026 election cycle or staffing levels. They said the agency remains ready to help protect election infrastructure.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, CISA is laser-focused on securing America’s critical infrastructure and strengthening cyber resilience across the government and industry,” said Marci McCarthy, CISA’s director of public affairs.
She said CISA would announce its future organizational plans “at the appropriate time.”
Christine Serrano Glassner, CISA’s chief external affairs officer, said the agency’s experts are ready to provide election guidance if asked.
“In the event of disruptions or threats to critical infrastructure, whether Election Day-related or not, CISA swiftly coordinates with the Office of Emergency Management and the appropriate federal, state and local authorities,” she said in a statement.
California’s top election security agencies said CISA has played a “critical role” since 2018 but provided little, if any, help for the state’s Nov. 4 special election, when voters approved a redrawn congressional redistricting map.
“Over the past year, CISA’s capacity to support elections has been significantly diminished,” the California secretary of state’s office said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The agency has experienced major reductions in staffing, funding, and mission focus — including the elimination of personnel dedicated specifically to election security and foreign influence mitigation.”
“This shift has left election officials nationwide without the critical federal partnership they have relied on for several election cycles,” according to the office.
CISA alerted California officials in September that it would no longer participate in a task force that brought together federal, state and local agencies to support county election offices. California election officials and the governor’s Office of Emergency Services did what they could to fill the gaps and plan for various security scenarios.
In Orange County, California, the registrar of voters, Bob Page, said in an email that the state offices and other county departments “stepped up” to support his office “to fill the void left by CISA’s absence.”
Neighboring Los Angeles County had a different experience. The registrar’s office, which oversees elections, said it continues to get a range of cybersecurity services from CISA, including threat intelligence, network monitoring and security testing of its equipment, although local jurisdictions now have to cover the costs of some services that had been federally funded.
Some other states that held elections this month also said they did not have coordination with CISA.
Mississippi’s secretary of state, who heads the national association that sent the letter to Noem, did not directly respond to a request for comment, but his office confirmed that CISA was not involved in the state’s recent elections.
In Pennsylvania, which held a nationally watched retention election for three state Supreme Court justices, the Department of State said it is also relied more on its own partners to ensure the elections were secure.
In an email, the department said it was “relying much less on CISA than it had in recent years.” Instead, it has begun collaborating with the state police, the state’s own homeland security department, local cybersecurity experts and other agencies.
Simon, the former head of the secretary of state’s association, said state and local election officials need answers about CISA’s plans because officials will have to seek alternatives if the services it had been providing will not be available next year.
In some cases, such as classified intelligence briefings, there are no alternatives to the federal government, he said. But there might be ways to get other services, such as testing of election equipment to see if it can be penetrated from outside.
In past election years, CISA also would conduct tabletop exercises with local agencies and election offices to game out various scenarios that might affecting voting or ballot counting, and how they would react. Simon said that is something CISA was very good at.
“We are starting to assume that some of those services are not going to be available to us, and we are looking elsewhere to fill that void,” Simon said.
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Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is promoting efforts to work with Nigeria’s government to counter violence against Christians, signaling a broader strategy since he ordered preparations for possible military action and warned that the United States could go in “guns-a-blazing” to wipe out Islamic militants.
A State Department official said this past week that plans involve much more than just the potential use of military force, describing an expansive approach that includes diplomatic tools, such as potential sanctions, but also assistance programs and intelligence sharing with the Nigerian government.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also met with Nigeria’s national security adviser to discuss ways to stop the violence, posting photos on social media of the two of them shaking hands and smiling. It contrasted with Trump’s threats this month to stop all assistance to Nigeria if its government “continues to allow the killing of Christians.”
The efforts may support Trump’s pledge to avoid more involvement in foreign conflicts and come as the U.S. security footprint has diminished in Africa, where military partnerships have either been scaled down or canceled. American forces likely would have to be drawn from other parts of the world for any military intervention in Nigeria.
Still, the Republican president has kept up the pressure as Nigeria faced a series of attacks on schools and churches in violence that experts and residents say targets both Christians and Muslims.
“I’m really angry about it,” the president said Friday when asked about the new violence on the “Brian Kilmeade Show” on Fox News Radio. He alleged that Nigeria’s government has “done nothing” and said “what’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace.”
The Nigerian government has rejected his claims.
Following his meeting Thursday with Nigerian national security adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Hegseth on Friday posted on social media that the Pentagon is “working aggressively with Nigeria to end the persecution of Christians by jihadist terrorists.”
“Hegseth emphasized the need for Nigeria to demonstrate commitment and take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians and conveyed the Department’s desire to work by, with, and through Nigeria to deter and degrade terrorists that threaten the United States,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Jonathan Pratt, who leads the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, told lawmakers Thursday that “possible Department of War engagement” is part of the larger plan, while the issue has been discussed by the National Security Council, an arm of the White House that advises the president on national security and foreign policy.
But Pratt described a wide-ranging approach at a congressional hearing about Trump’s recent designation of Nigeria as “a country of particular concern” over religious freedom, which opens the door for sanctions.
“This would span from security to policing to economic,” he said. “We want to look at all of these tools and have a comprehensive strategy to get the best result possible.”
The violence in Nigeria is far more complex than Trump has portrayed, with militant Islamist groups like Boko Haram killing both Christians and Muslims. At the same time, mainly Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers have been fighting over land and water. Armed bandits who are motivated more by money than religion also are carrying out abductions for ransom, with schools being a popular target.
In two mass abductions at schools this past week, students were kidnapped from a Catholic school Friday and others taken days earlier from a school in a Muslim-majority town. In a separate attack, gunmen killed two people at a church and abducted several worshippers.
The situation has drawn increasing global attention. Rapper Nicki Minaj spoke at a U.N. event organized by the U.S., saying “no group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion.”
If the Trump administration did decide to organize an intervention, the departure of U.S. forces from neighboring Niger and their forced eviction from a French base near Chad’s capital last year have left fewer resources in the region.
Options include mobilizing resources from far-flung Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and from smaller, temporary hubs known as cooperative security locations. U.S. forces are operating in those places for specific missions, in conjunction with countries such as Ghana and Senegal, and likely aren’t big enough for an operation in Nigeria.
The region also has become a diplomatic black hole following a series of coups that rocked West Africa, leading military juntas to push out former Western partners. In Mali, senior American officials are now trying to reengage the junta.
Even if the U.S. military redirects forces and assets to strike inside Nigeria, some experts question how effective military action would be.
Judd Devermont, a senior adviser of the Africa program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said if Trump orders a few performative airstrikes, they would likely fail to degrade the Islamic militants who have been killing Christians and Muslims alike.
“Nigeria’s struggles with insecurity are decades in the making,” said Devermont, who was senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council under Democratic President Joe Biden. “It will not be reversed overnight by an influx of U.S. resources.”
Addressing the violence would require programs such as economic and interfaith partnerships as well as more robust policing, Devermont said, adding that U.S. involvement would require Nigeria’s cooperation.
“This is not a policy of neglect by the Nigerian government — it’s a problem of capacity,” Devermont said. “The federal government does not want to see its citizens being killed by Boko Haram and doesn’t want to see sectarian violence spiral out the way it has.”
The Nigerian government rejected unilateral military intervention but said it welcomes help fighting armed groups.
Boko Haram and its splinter group, Islamic State of West Africa Province, have been waging a devastating Islamist insurgency in the northeastern region and the Lake Chad region, Africa’s largest basin. Militants often crisscross the lake on fast-moving boats, spilling the crisis into border countries like Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
U.S. intervention without coordinating with the Nigerian government would carry enormous danger.
“The consequences are that if the U.S deploys troops on the ground without understanding the context they are in, it poses risks to the troops,” said Malik Samuel, a security researcher at Good Governance Africa.
Nigeria’s own aerial assaults on armed groups have routinely resulted in accidental airstrikes that have killed civilians.
To get targeting right, the governments need a clear picture of the overlapping causes of farmer-herder conflict and banditry in border areas. Misreading the situation could send violence spilling over into neighboring countries, Samuel added.
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Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria, and Metz from Rabat, Morocco.
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