Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Category: Associated Press

  • Trump and Mamdani go from adversaries to allies after White House meeting

    Trump and Mamdani go from adversaries to allies after White House meeting

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday met the man who had proudly proclaimed himself “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” but he seemed to find the opposite.

    The Republican president and New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani were warm and friendly, speaking repeatedly of their shared goals to help Trump’s hometown rather than their combustible differences.

    Trump, who had in the past called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job,” spoke openly of how impressed he was with the man who had called his administration “authoritarian.”

    Zohran Mamdani reached out to Josh Shapiro. They had a ‘healthy dialogue’ about Israel, the Pa. governor said.

    “I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually,” Trump said of the democratic socialist as Mamdani stood next to him in the Oval Office.

    The meeting offered political opportunities for both men. For Mamdani, a sit-down offered the state lawmaker — who until recently was relatively unknown — the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.

    For Trump, it was a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.

    Until now, the men have been political foils who galvanized their supporters by taking on each other, and it’s unclear how those backers will react to their genial get-together and complimentary words.

    “We’re going to be helping him, to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York,” the president said.

    “What I really appreciate about the president is that the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.

    Zohran Mamdani’s branding went viral for standing out — two Philly creatives are responsible

    ‘I’ll stick up for you’

    Mamdani and Trump said they discussed housing affordability and the cost of groceries and utilities, as Mamdani successfully used frustration over inflation to get elected, just as the president did in the 2024 election.

    “Some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have,” the president said of Mamdani about inflationary issues.

    The president brushed aside Mamdani’s criticisms of him over his administration’s deportation raids and claims that Trump was behaving like a despot. Instead, Trump said the responsibility of holding an executive position in the government causes a person to change, saying that had been the case for him.

    He seemed at times even protective of Mamdani, jumping in on his behalf at several points. For example, when reporters asked Mamdani to clarify his past statements indicating that he thought the president was acting like a fascist, Trump said, “I’ve been called much worse than a despot.”

    When a reporter asked if Mamdani stood by his comments that Trump is a fascist, Trump interjected before the mayor-elect could fully answer the question.

    “That’s OK. You can just say yes. OK?” Trump said. “It’s easier. It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”

    Trump stepped in again when a reporter asked Mamdani why he flew to Washington instead of taking transportation that used less fossil fuels.

    “I’ll stick up for you,” Trump said.

    Opinion | What Zohran Mamdani’s win in NYC means for us in Philly

    All about affordability

    Mamdani, who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. Trump has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from the city.

    But Trump on Friday didn’t sling that at the mayor. He acknowledged that he had said he had been prepared to cut off funding or make it harder for New York City to access federal resources if the two had failed to “get along,” only to pull back from those threats during the meeting.

    “We don’t want that to happen,” Trump said. ”I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

    Afterward, Mamdani’s former campaign manager and incoming chief of staff Elle Bisgaard-Church told NY1 that the pair clearly disagreed on some issues but were able to find common ground on things like reducing crime.

    “We discussed that we share a mutual goal of having a safe city where everyone can move around in comfort and ease,” she said, before later adding, “We know that there have been labels thrown all around that are just simply not fair and we kept it, again, at where we could find agreement on making the city affordable.”

    Trump loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, he endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.

    Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and promised to be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”

    The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, Trump repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.

    Some had expected fireworks in the Oval Office meeting

    The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, Trump dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.

    A senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Trump had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said Trump’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.

    Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”

    Instead, both men avoided a public confrontation in a remarkably calm and cordial series of comments in front of news reporters.

    Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump was raised — has shown a cutthroat streak just as Trump has as a candidate. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.

    But the tensions were subdued Friday as Trump seemed sympathetic to Mamdani’s policies to want to build more housing.

    “People would be shocked, but I want to see the same thing,” the president said.

  • Former Temple guard Hysier Miller bet on his team to lose multiple times, NCAA says

    Former Temple guard Hysier Miller bet on his team to lose multiple times, NCAA says

    INDIANAPOLIS — Former Temple guard Hysier Miller placed dozens of bets on Owls games, including some against his team, the NCAA announced Friday.

    The NCAA deemed Miller, a graduate of Neumann Goretti, permanently ineligible after finding he placed 42 parlay bets totaling $473 on Temple games during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons. Three of those bets were against his team, the NCAA said.

    Miller started every game for the Owls during those seasons. The NCAA found he used sportsbook accounts belonging to other people to bet.

    Reports: Temple’s connection to a probe into unusual gambling activity may be part of wider ring

    The NCAA’s enforcement staff interviewed Miller on Oct. 10, 2024, and he admitted to placing parlay bets on Temple games but did not remember placing any bets against his team, the NCAA said.

    Additionally, former Temple special assistant coach Camren Wynter and former graduate assistant Jaylen Bond were found to have violated NCAA rules by betting on professional and collegiate sports. The NCAA did not find any bets involving Temple by either Wynter or Bond. Both coaches received one-year, show-cause orders and a suspension of 10% of regular-season contests during their first year of employment.

    The NCAA did not find the three cases to be connected.

    Temple President John Fry and Director of Athletics Arthur Johnson released an announcement Friday, saying the NCAA found no evidence of point shaving or any wrongdoing by the university.

    This is the latest gambling infraction uncovered by the NCAA, which revoked the eligibility of six men’s college basketball players earlier this month as a result of three separate sports-betting cases that involved a power-conference school in Arizona State and allegations of players throwing games to lose by more points than the spread.

    How a Philly ‘betfluencer’ wound up at the center of an NBA gambling scandal

    That followed nearly three dozen people being arrested last month, including an NBA player and coach, for what federal law enforcement officials described as their involvement in various illicit gambling activities. Just this week, UFC President and CEO Dana White said he was in touch with the FBI regarding a match that involved unusual betting patterns.

    For its part, the NCAA said last month it was investigating at least 30 current or former players for gambling allegations. The NCAA also banned three college basketball players in September for betting on their own games at Fresno State and San Jose State.

  • The Supreme Court meets to weigh Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions, which have been blocked by lower courts

    The Supreme Court meets to weigh Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions, which have been blocked by lower courts

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is meeting in private Friday with a key issue on its agenda — President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

    The justices could say as soon as Monday whether they will hear Trump’s appeal of lower court rulings that have uniformly struck down the citizenship restrictions. They have not taken effect anywhere in the United States.

    If the court steps in now, the case would be argued in the spring, with a definitive ruling expected by early summer.

    President Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Here’s why that will be hard to do.

    The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term in the White House, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th century Alien Enemies Act.

    The administration is facing multiple court challenges, and the high court has sent mixed signals in emergency orders it has issued. The justices effectively stopped the use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings, while they allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

    The justices also are weighing the administration’s emergency appeal to be allowed to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has indefinitely prevented the deployment.

    From May: New Jersey leads the arguments on birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court

    Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. Trump’s order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

    In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

    While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.

    But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or most likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

    The administration is appealing two cases.

    From July: Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.

    Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.

    The American Civil Liberties Union, leading the legal team in the New Hampshire case, urged the court to reject the appeal because the administration’s “arguments are so flimsy,” ACLU lawyer Cody Wofsy said. ”But if the court decides to hear the case, we’re more than ready to take Trump on and win.”

    Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.

    The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

    “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in urging the high court’s review. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

  • Advocacy groups urge parents to avoid AI toys this holiday season

    Advocacy groups urge parents to avoid AI toys this holiday season

    They’re cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionship — but artificial-intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to children’s and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season.

    These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2 years old, are generally powered by AI models that have already been shown to harm children and teenagers, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to an advisory published Thursday by the children’s advocacy group Fairplay and signed by more than 150 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators.

    “The serious harms that AI chatbots have inflicted on children are well-documented, including fostering obsessive use, having explicit sexual conversations, and encouraging unsafe behaviors, violence against others, and self-harm,” Fairplay said.

    AI toys, made by companies including Curio Interactive and Keyi Technologies, are often marketed as educational, but Fairplay says they can displace important creative and learning activities. They promise friendship but disrupt children’s relationships and resilience, the group said.

    “What’s different about young children is that their brains are being wired for the first time, and developmentally it is natural for them to be trustful, for them to seek relationships with kind and friendly characters,” said Rachel Franz, director of Fairplay’s Young Children Thrive Offline Program. Because of this, she added, the amount of trust young children are putting in these toys can exacerbate the harms seen with older children.

    Fairplay, a 25-year-old organization formerly known as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has been warning about AI toys for years. They just weren’t as advanced as they are today. A decade ago, during an emerging fad of internet-connected toys and AI speech recognition, the group helped lead a backlash against Mattel’s talking Hello Barbie doll that it said was recording and analyzing children’s conversations.

    This time, though AI toys are mostly sold online and are more popular in Asia than elsewhere, Franz said some have started to appear on store shelves in the U.S. and more could be on the way.

    “Everything has been released with no regulation and no research, so it gives us extra pause when all of a sudden we see more and more manufacturers, including Mattel, who recently partnered with OpenAI, potentially putting out these products,” Franz said.

    It’s the second big seasonal warning against AI toys since consumer advocates at U.S. PIRG last week called out the trend in its annual Trouble in Toyland report that typically looks at a range of product hazards, such as high-powered magnets and button-sized batteries that young children can swallow. This year, the organization tested four toys that use AI chatbots.

    “We found some of these toys will talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics, will offer advice on where a child can find matches or knives, act dismayed when you say you have to leave, and have limited or no parental controls,” the report said. One of the toys, a teddy bear made by Singapore-based FoloToy, was later withdrawn, its CEO told CNN this week.

    Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and social scientist who studies early brain development, said young children don’t have the conceptual tools to understand what an AI companion is. While kids have always bonded with toys through imaginative play, when they do this they use their imagination to create both sides of a pretend conversation, “practicing creativity, language, and problem-solving,” she said.

    “An AI toy collapses that work. It answers instantly, smoothly, and often better than a human would. We don’t yet know the developmental consequences of outsourcing that imaginative labor to an artificial agent — but it’s very plausible that it undercuts the kind of creativity and executive function that traditional pretend play builds,” Suskind said.

    Beijing-based Keyi, maker of an AI “petbot” called Loona, didn’t return requests for comment this week, but other AI toymakers sought to highlight their child safety protections.

    California-based Curio Interactive makes stuffed toys, like Gabbo and rocket-shaped Grok, that have been promoted by the pop singer Grimes. The company said it has “meticulously designed” guardrails to protect children, and the company encourages parents to “monitor conversations, track insights, and choose the controls that work best for their family.”

    In response to the earlier PIRG findings, Curio said it is “actively working with our team to address any concerns, while continuously overseeing content and interactions to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for children.”

    Another company, Miko, based in Mumbai, India, said it uses its own conversational AI model rather than relying on general large language model systems such as ChatGPT in order to make its product — an interactive AI robot — safe for children.

    “We are always expanding our internal testing, strengthening our filters, and introducing new capabilities that detect and block sensitive or unexpected topics,” said CEO Sneh Vaswani. “These new features complement our existing controls that allow parents and caregivers to identify specific topics they’d like to restrict from conversation. We will continue to invest in setting the highest standards for safe, secure and responsible AI integration for Miko products.”

    Miko’s products are sold by major retailers such as Walmart and Costco and have been promoted by the families of social media “kidfluencers” whose YouTube videos have millions of views. On its website, it markets its robots as “Artificial Intelligence. Genuine friendship.”

    Ritvik Sharma, the company’s senior vice president of growth, said Miko actually “encourages kids to interact more with their friends, to interact more with the peers, with the family members etc. It’s not made for them to feel attached to the device only.”

    Still, Suskind and children’s advocates say analog toys are a better bet for the holidays.

    “Kids need lots of real human interaction. Play should support that, not take its place. The biggest thing to consider isn’t only what the toy does; it’s what it replaces. A simple block set or a teddy bear that doesn’t talk back forces a child to invent stories, experiment, and work through problems. AI toys often do that thinking for them,” she said. “Here’s the brutal irony: When parents ask me how to prepare their child for an AI world, unlimited AI access is actually the worst preparation possible.”

  • Philly’s Mo’ne Davis selected 10th overall by Los Angeles in first Women’s Pro Baseball League draft

    Philly’s Mo’ne Davis selected 10th overall by Los Angeles in first Women’s Pro Baseball League draft

    Pitcher and outfielder Kelsie Whitmore is returning to familiar surroundings after being selected by San Francisco with the first pick in the inaugural Women’s Pro Baseball League draft on Thursday night.

    Mo’ne Davis, meantime, had to wait until the 10th pick before being selected by Los Angeles. The 24-year-old Davis, who’s from Philadelphia, competed at the 2014 Little League World Series at age 13 and became the first girl to win a game and pitch a shutout.

    Whitmore is from San Diego and made her professional debut in the Bay Area with a coed team, the Sonoma Stompers, in 2016. The 27-year-old has won two silver medals representing the United States at the Women’s Baseball World Cup and won gold at the 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto.

    Mo’ne Davis will make her return to baseball in a tryout for a women’s pro league launching in 2026: ‘I’m just not done playing at all’

    “You ask a 6-year-old version of me about this opportunity happening right now, she would, one, probably not believe you, but, two, just be so, so, so, so excited for it,” said Whitmore, who in 2022 signed with the Staten Island FerryHawks, becoming the first woman to compete in pro baseball’s Atlantic League. She played for the Savannah Bananas this season.

    Whitmore was among 120 players selected in the six-round draft that also included teams representing New York and Boston.

    Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred opened the draft by congratulating the WPBL for its launch. The league is scheduled to begin play on Aug. 1.

    Each team made five picks per round, with the order of selection determined by a random draw. Teams will cut their 30-player rosters to 15 for the start of the season.

    Mo’ne Davis slides to third base during the first day of tryouts for the Women’s Professional Baseball League on Aug. 25.

    Japan’s Ayami Sato went No. 2 to Los Angeles. The 35-year-old right-hander is a five-time World Cup winner and the only player to earn three tournament MVP honors.

    New York selected U.S. infielder Kylee Lahners with the third pick. Boston chose South Korean catcher Hyeonah Kim at No. 4.

    The startup league had a four-day tryout camp in Washington this summer with more than 600 hopefuls on hand.

    The league is scheduled to play all of its games at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springville, Illinois. Teams will be based there over a seven-week season, split up into a four-week regular season, a week for all-star activities and a two-week playoff.

    The WPBL was co-founded by Justine Siegal, who became the first woman to coach for an MLB team with the Oakland Athletics in 2015. It will be the first pro baseball league for women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — immortalized in the film “A League of Their Own” — dissolved in 1954.

  • Tyrese Maxey scores career-high 54 points as Sixers outlast Bucks 123-114 in overtime

    Tyrese Maxey scores career-high 54 points as Sixers outlast Bucks 123-114 in overtime

    MILWAUKEE — Tyrese Maxey scored a career-high 54 points and tied the game by hitting two free throws with seven seconds left in the fourth quarter of the 76ers’ 123-114 overtime victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday night.

    Maxey’s previous career high was a 52-point performance in a 133-126, double-overtime victory over San Antonio on April 7, 2024. He also had nine assists and played over 46½ minutes.

    Maxey, who entered Thursday averaging a league-high 40.3 minutes, had played 39 minutes one night earlier in a 121-112 home loss to the Toronto Raptors.

    Milwaukee’s Ryan Rollins scored 32 points to match a career high and also had a career-best 14 assists. The Bucks have lost four of their last five games.

    Neither team had its former league MVP available.

    Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, the MVP in 2019 and 2020, got hurt Monday at Cleveland and is expected to miss about two weeks. The Bucks labeled it a left groin strain Monday but have since specified that it’s a left adductor strain.

    Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, who won the award in 2023, missed a sixth straight game due to an issue with his right knee.

    Sixers head coach Nick Nurse watches his team during the first half of their win against the Bucks.

    The Sixers (9-6) scored the first five points in overtime on a three-pointer from Justin Edwards — who scored just two points in regulation — and a basket from Maxey.

    Milwaukee (8-8) got the margin down to 113-112 on a driving layup from Rollins with 1 minute, 43 seconds remaining, but Quentin Grimes hit a three-pointer 20 seconds later and Philadelphia stayed ahead by at least two the rest of the way.

    Milwaukee trailed 94-87 midway through the fourth quarter but rallied to take the lead on Myles Turner’s three-pointer with 14.8 seconds remaining.

    The Sixers tied the game with seven seconds left when Maxey drove into the lane, drew a foul, and hit his free throws. Rollins missed a three-pointer at the buzzer.

    Paul George added 21 points for Philadelphia. Bobby Portis had 19 and Kyle Kuzma 17 for Milwaukee.

    The Sixers return home Sunday to host the Miami Heat (1 p.m., NBCSP) at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

  • U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said in a delayed report

    U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said in a delayed report

    WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown.

    The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast.

    Yet there were some troubling details in the delayed report.

    Philly-area federal workers are finally getting paid again. But they fear another shutdown.

    Labor Department revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August instead of gaining 22,000 as originally reported. Altogether, revisions shaved 33,000 jobs off July and August payrolls. The economy had also shed jobs in June, the first time since the 2020 pandemic that the monthly jobs report has gone negative twice in one year.

    And more than 87% of the September job gains were concentrated in two industries: healthcare and social assistance and leisure and hospitality.

    “We’ve got these strong headline numbers, but when you look underneath that you’ll see that a lot of that is driven by healthcare,’’ said Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. ”At the end of the day, the question is: Can you support an economic expansion on the back of one industry? Anybody would have a hard time arguing everybody should become a nurse.”

    From August: Here’s how Philly-area college grads are navigating a tough job market

    The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The jobless rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the labor market — either working or looking for work — in September and not all of them found jobs right away.

    The data, though late, was welcomed by businesses, investors, policymakers and the Federal Reserve. During the 43-day shutdown, they’d been groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldn’t collect the data.

    The report comes at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high interest rates and uncertainty around Trump’s erratic campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. But economic growth at midyear was resilient.

    Healthcare and social assistance firms added more than 57,000 jobs in September, restaurants and bars 37,000, construction companies 19,000 and retailers almost 14,000. But factories shed 6,000 jobs — the fifth straight monthly drop. The federal government, targeted by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE cost cutters, lost 3,000 jobs, the eighth straight monthly decline..

    Average hourly wages rose just 0.2% from August and 3.8% from a year earlier, edging closer to the 3.5% year-over-year increase that the Federal Reserve’s inflation fighters like to see.

    From September: New data shows the U.S. job market was much weaker than thought in 2024, and this year as well

    The latest reading on jobs Thursday makes a rate cut by the Fed officials at their next meeting in December less likely. Many were already leaning against a cut next month, according to minutes of their October meeting released Wednesday. Steady hiring suggests the economy doesn’t need lower interest rates to expand.

    The September jobs report will be the last one the Fed will see before its Dec. 9-10 meeting. Officials are split between those who see stubbornly high inflation as the main challenge they need to address by keeping rates elevated, and those who are more concerned that hiring is sluggish and needs to be supported by rate reductions.

    Hiring has been strained this year by the lingering effects of high interest rates engineered to fight a 2021-2022 spike in inflation and uncertainty around Trump’s campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and on specific products — from copper to foreign films.

    Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported. Since March, job creation has fallen farther — to an average 59,000 a month.

    With September numbers out, businesses, investors, policymakers and the Fed will have to wait awhile to get another good look at the numbers behind the American labor market.

    The Labor Department said Wednesday that it won’t release a full jobs report for October because it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate during the government shutdown.

    Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data — including the number of jobs that employers created last month — along with the full November jobs report on Dec. 16, a couple of weeks late.

    The 2025 job market has been marked by an awkward pairing: relatively weak hiring but few layoffs, meaning that Americans who have work mostly enjoy job security – but those who don’t often struggle to find employment.

    Megan Fridenmaker, 28, lost her job last month as a writer for a podcast network in Indianapolis. She’s applied for at least 200 jobs and landed just one interview. “I am far from the only unemployed person in my friend group,’’ she said. “Where the job market’s at right now – people will apply for hundreds and hundreds (of jobs) before getting one interview.’’

    “Out of everything I’ve applied for, I get a response from maybe a quarter of them,’’ she said. “And the vast majority of the responses are the automated – ‘Thank you so much, but we’ve gone with another candidate.’ ‘Thank you so much, but we’ve already filled the position.’

    “The whole job-hunting experience has felt so cold and so distant and so removed from who we are as humans.”

  • CDC website changed to contradict scientific conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism

    CDC website changed to contradict scientific conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism

    NEW YORK — A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to contradict the longtime scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism, spurring outrage among a number of public health and autism experts.

    The CDC “vaccine safety” webpage was updated Wednesday, saying “the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.”

    The change is the latest move by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to revisit — and foster uncertainty about — long-held scientific consensus about the safety of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.

    It was immediately decried by scientists and advocates who have long been focused on finding the causes of autism.

    “We are appalled to find that the content on the CDC webpage ‘Autism and Vaccines’ has been changed and distorted, and is now filled with anti-vaccine rhetoric and outright lies about vaccines and autism,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement Thursday.

    Widespread scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism. “The conclusion is clear and unambiguous,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement Thursday.

    “We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations,” she said.

    The CDC has, until now, echoed the absence of a link in promoting Food and Drug Administration-licensed vaccines.

    But anti-vaccines activists — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who this year became secretary of Health and Human Services — have long claimed there is one.

    It’s unclear if anyone at CDC was actually involved in the change, or whether it was done by Kennedy’s HHS, which oversees the CDC.

    Many at CDC were surprised.

    “I spoke with several scientists at CDC yesterday and none were aware of this change in content,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was part of a group of CDC top officials who resigned from the agency in August. “When scientists are cut out of scientific reviews, then inaccurate and ideologic information results.”

    The updated page does not cite any new research. It instead argues that past studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

    “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links. Additionally, we are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science,” said HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon, in an email Thursday.

    A number of former CDC officials have said that what CDC posts about certain subjects — including vaccine safety — can no longer be trusted.

    Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who also resigned from the agency in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.”

    U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, earlier this year played a decisive role in approving Kennedy’s nomination for HHS secretary. Cassidy initially voiced misgivings about Kennedy, but in February said Kennedy had pledged — among other things — not to remove language from the CDC website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.

    The new site continues to have a headline that says “Vaccines do not cause autism,” but HHS officials put an asterisk next to it. A note at the bottom of the page says the phrasing “has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

    Cassidy’s spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • Trump administration threatens to withhold $75 million from Pennsylvania over immigrant truck drivers

    Trump administration threatens to withhold $75 million from Pennsylvania over immigrant truck drivers

    The Trump administration threatened Thursday to withhold nearly $75 million in funding if Pennsylvania does not immediately revoke what the administration claims are illegally issued commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants.

    The move by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to target Pennsylvania follows similar action against California. Both states are run by Democratic governors who have criticized President Donald Trump’s administration and who are viewed as potential top-shelf contenders to be the party’s 2028 presidential nominee.

    Duffy has made it a priority to scrutinize how the licenses are issued since August, when a tractor-trailer driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. That incident thrust the issue into the public’s consciousness.

    In a statement Thursday, DOT spokesperson Danna Almeida said all states were being reviewed.

    It’s unclear how many people would be affected in Pennsylvania. In any case, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ‘s administration said the federal government didn’t identify a single commercial driver’s license issued to someone who wasn’t eligible.

    Still, a letter Thursday from the Republican administration to Shapiro cited an audit that found two out of 150 people whose licenses exceeded their lawful presence in the country.

    In four cases it had reviewed, the federal government said Pennsylvania provided no evidence that it had required noncitizens to provide legitimate proof that they were legally in the country at the time they got the license.

    The Trump administration called on Pennsylvania to stop issuing new, renewed and transferred commercial driver’s licenses and permits, as well as conduct an audit to identify those licenses whose expirations exceed the driver’s lawful stay in the U.S.

    It is also asking the state to void noncompliant licenses and remove those drivers from the road. The administration said approximately 12,400 noncitizen drivers hold an unexpired commercial learner’s permit or commercial driver’s license issued by Pennsylvania.

    The governors of California and Pennsylvania — Gavin Newsom and Shapiro — are tough critics of Trump, and both have been repeated targets of Trump’s administration.

    Shapiro’s administration said the state transportation department ceased issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published a regulation in late September that would severely limit which immigrants can get one.

    A federal court has put the rule on hold for now, but Shapiro’s administration said its transportation department still hasn’t resumed issuing what are called “non-domiciled CDLs.”

    Pennsylvania’s transportation department said Thursday that it follows federal rules for verifying an immigrant applicant’s lawful presence in the country by checking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s database.

    But Shapiro this week suggested that DHS was falling short by failing to properly maintain that database, which states use to check an immigrant’s legal status before issuing a driver’s license to a noncitizen.

    His comments came after DHS said it had arrested an Uzbek national with a commercial driver’s license issued by Pennsylvania. The man, who had a work authorization granted in 2024, was wanted in his home country for belonging to a terrorist organization, the department said.

    But Shapiro said the state transportation department checked the federal database over the summer before issuing a CDL to the man, and he was authorized to get one. The state rechecked the database this week, and it still listed him as qualified to get a CDL, Shapiro said.

    “They clearly are not minding the shop, and they’ve gotta get better, because every single state in the country relies on this database when making a determination as to who qualifies for a CDL. We relied on the feds before issuing this one,” Shapiro said.

    California, which said it would revoke 17,000 licenses, is the only state the administration has acted against because it was the first one where an audit was completed. The government shutdown delayed reviews in other states, but the Transportation Department is urging all of them to tighten their standards. ___ Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey, and Levy from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed.

  • Respect and remembrance for Cheney from Bush, Biden and past vice presidents as Trump is excluded

    Respect and remembrance for Cheney from Bush, Biden and past vice presidents as Trump is excluded

    WASHINGTON — They gathered at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday — former presidents, vice presidents, sworn political foes and newfound friends — in a show of respect and remembrance for Dick Cheney, the consequential and polarizing vice president who became an acidic scold of President Donald Trump.

    Trump, who has been publicly silent about Cheney’s death Nov. 3, was not invited to the memorial service.

    Two ex-presidents came: Republican George W. Bush, who eulogized the man who served him as vice president, and Democrat Joe Biden, who once called Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history” but now honors his commitment to his family and to his values.

    “Solid and rare and reliable,” Bush said at the service of his vice president, praising a man whose “talent and restraint” exceeded his ego. “Smart and polished, without airs.”

    Former President George W. Bush, speaks a tribute during the funeral service for former Vice President Dick Cheney at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.

    Bush and others noted the understated demeanor of a man who nevertheless wielded great influence in government. “Above all,” Bush said, “I wanted someone with the ability to step into the presidency without getting distracted by the ambition to seek it.”

    Among the eulogists, Liz Cheney, the eldest daughter, only obliquely addressed what amounted to a father-daughter feud with the president — a man her dad had called a “coward” for trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

    She spoke of her father’s conviction that when confronted with a choice between defending the country and a political party, the country must come first. “Bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans,” she said.

    Liz Cheney is a former high-ranking House member whose Republican political career was shredded by a MAGA movement angered by her investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Thursday, she chose not to speak directly of Trump.

    She spoke of seeing clouds in the shape of angels just before her father died.

    A Who’s Who of Washington, minus you know who

    Moments before the service began, figures of recent but now receded power mingled: Bush and Biden and their wives sitting in a row together, former Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence chatting side by side in their pew with Al Gore and Dan Quayle together behind them.

    Biden greeted Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate leader, and his wife, former labor and transportation secretary Elaine Chao. Behind them sat Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who spent time talking with another former House speaker, Republican John Boehner. All gathered among the soaring interior columns of the grand cathedral known as “a spiritual home for the nation.”

    Others delivering tributes at Thursday’s funeral were Cheney’s longtime cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner; former NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, who was Cheney’s spokesman at the Pentagon; and several of the former vice president’s grandchildren.

    “I’m happy to report that I haven’t given many eulogies,” Reiner said in his remarks. “Nobody wants a doctor who is great at funerals.”

    Reiner recalled doctors telling Cheney decades ago, after the first of multiple heart attacks, that he should abandon his political ambitions then. Yet he kept winning elections as a Wyoming congressman for years after that.

    Cheney, he said, was always the “calmest person in the room.”

    President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney meet in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12, 2001, with members of the president’s national security team in the Cabinet room.

    Cheney had lived with heart disease for decades and, after the Bush administration, with a heart transplant. He died at age 84 from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said.

    Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, on stage at another event in the morning, was asked about Cheney and said: “Obviously there’s some political disagreements there but he was a guy who served his country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of grieving.”

    Vance was also not invited to the funeral, according to a person familiar with the details who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The White House lowered its flags to half-staff after Cheney’s death, as it said the law calls for, but Trump did not issue the presidential proclamation that often accompanies the death of notable figures, nor has he commented publicly on his passing.

    The deeply conservative Cheney’s influence in the Bush administration was legendary and, to his critics, tragic.

    He advocated for the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of what proved to be faulty intelligence and consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush credited him with helping to keep the country safe and stable in a perilous time.

    Bad blood between the Cheneys and Trump

    After the 2020 election won by Biden, Liz Cheney served as vice chair of the Democratic-led special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. She accused Trump of summoning the violent mob and plunging the nation into “a moment of maximum danger.”

    For that, she was stripped of her Republican leadership position and ultimately defeated in a 2022 Republican primary in Wyoming. In a campaign TV ad made for his daughter, Dick Cheney branded Trump a “coward” who “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.”

    Last year, it did not sit well with Trump when Cheney said he would vote for the Democrat, Harris, in the presidential election.

    Trump told Arab and Muslim voters that Dick Cheney’s support for Harris should give them pause, because he “killed more Arabs than any human being on Earth. He pushed Bush, and they went into the Middle East.”