NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Goldberg brings a stack of newspapers to the office every day. The CEO of a Florida public relations firm scours stories for developments relevant to her clients while relishing holding the pages in her hand. “I want to touch it, feel it, turn the page and see the photos,” Goldberg said.

Generation Z employees at O’Connell & Goldberg don’t get her devotion to newsprint when so much information is available online and constantly updated, she said. They came of age with smartphones in hand. And they spot trends on TikTok or Instagram that baby boomers like Goldberg might miss, she said.

The staff’s disparate media consumption habits become clear at a weekly Monday staff meeting. It was originally intended to discuss how the news of the day might impact the firm’s clients, Goldberg said. But instead of news stories, the conversation often turns to the latest slang, digital tools and memes.

The first time it happened, she listened without judgment, and thought, “Shoot, this is actually really insightful. I need to know the trending audio and I need to know these influencers.” Of her younger colleagues, she said, “they know the cultural conversation that I wasn’t thinking about.”

With at least five generations participating in the U.S. workforce, co-workers can at times feel like they speak different languages. The ways people born decades apart approach tasks may create misunderstandings. But some workplaces are turning the natural divides between age groups into a competitive advantage through reverse mentoring programs that recognize the strengths each generation brings to work and uses them to build mutual skills and respect.

Unlike traditional mentorships that involve an older person sharing wisdom with a younger colleague, reverse mentoring affords less experienced staff members the opportunity to teach seasoned colleagues about new trends and technologies.

“The generational differences, to me, are something to leverage. It’s like a superpower,” Goldberg said. “It’s where the magic happens.”

Here are some ways to make the most of a multigenerational workplace.

Mentoring up

Beauty product company Estée Lauder began a reverse mentoring program globally a decade ago when its managers realized consumers were rapidly getting beauty tips from social media influencers instead of department stores, said Peri Izzo, an executive director who oversaw the initiative.

The voluntary program now has roughly 1,200 participants. The mentors are millennials, born 1981 to 1986, and Gen Zers, born starting in 1997. They’re paired with mentees who are part of the U.S. baby boom of 1946 to 1964, and members of Generation X, born 1965 to 1980, according to the generational definitions of the Pew Research Center.

At the start of a new mentoring relationship, participants do icebreaker activities like a Gen Z vocabulary quiz. The young mentors take phrases they use with friends in group chats and quiz older colleagues about what they mean, said Izzo, who at age 33 qualifies as a young millennial. For example, if a Gen Zer says something is “living rent-free in your head,” it refers to someone or something that constantly occupies your thoughts.

“Most of the mentees knew what it was, but then one mentee’s reaction was, ‘Oh I get it, my son lives rent-free in my house,’ and everyone thought it was so funny because they were like, ‘You really don’t understand the context that it’s being used on TikTok and amongst millennial and Gen Z,’” Izzo said.

Madison Reynolds, 26, a product manager on the technology team at Estée Lauder, is a Gen Zer and serves as a reverse mentor in the program. She and her contemporaries teach their older colleagues phrases such as “You ate it up,” which means you did a good job. When her manager tries out Gen Z phrases, Reynolds offers feedback, saying, “No, that’s not right,” or “You got it.”

Give and take

When 81-year-old hotelier Bruce Haines brought in athletes from Lehigh University’s wrestling team to participate in a mentorship program at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, he taught them about entrepreneurship by having the students shadow managers in various departments. He also gained valuable marketing insights from the students, which he hadn’t anticipated.

“It’s been energizing for me. It’s almost reinvigorating,” Haines, the hotel’s managing partner, said. “We tended to be Facebook-focused. We’re a luxury destination hotel, so we tend to be an older crowd that we’re reaching. They enhanced our marketing by alerting us that we need to be on Instagram and YouTube and get out there and reach the younger people.”

The students also suggested offering prepackaged pints of ice cream to the hotel’s in-house parlor because their contemporaries didn’t want to wait around for cones. “We were really missing out, and it’s truly increased our ice cream sales and our profitability,” Haines said.

Old-fashioned people skills

Carson Celio, 26, is an account supervisor at the PR firm Goldberg leads. She’s part of the cohort that advises the CEO about what’s trending on TikTok and what’s over with. She says Goldberg has taught her how to successfully work a room and spark conversations that feel natural and organic.

Celio was a sophomore in college when COVID-19 hit, which pushed most of her classes online, including a public speaking course. “We have spent so much time online and conducting meetings over Zoom or Teams.” As a result, in-person networking can feel overwhelming to her generation, she said. “Learning the value of actually being face to face with people and building those connections — Barbara has helped me a lot with that.”

A text or a tome

At Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians, a medical group that employs 2,400 doctors in eastern Massachusetts, Dr. Alexa B. Kimball adapts her communication style to a range of age groups. Some mature clinicians send very long emails, which can be unproductive.

“When you have an email conversation that’s in its 15th response, that tells you you should pick up the phone,” Kimball, the group’s CEO, said. On the other extreme, some of the youngest trainees communicate with six-word texts, she said.

A reverse mentoring program that teachers doctors about different communication styles helped when the practice launched a new medical records system that required 14 hours of training. Following the training, Kimball paired workers with more tech-savvy colleagues, who tended to be younger, to provide support.

Phased retirement

Robert Poole, 62, is the only person at health care technology company Abbott who manages the laser used to create nearly microscopic components of a cardiovascular device. Since he’s approaching retirement, Abbott hired Shahad Almahania, 33, an equipment engineer, to work alongside him and absorb some of his decades of knowledge.

“The equipment is all custom, so it takes a long time to learn how to run it and keep it running,” Poole said.

Poole, who began working in the 1980s, said he also learns from Almahania. When Abbott removed landline telephones five years ago, he migrated to group chats like Slack, asking her for help deciphering the meaning of emojis.

“When you strip away all the generational stereotypes, … every age group, every person, is looking for some of the same things,” said Leena Rinne, vice president at online learning platform Skillsoft. “They want supportive leadership. They want the opportunity to grow and to contribute in their workplace. They want respect and clarity.”

Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Savannah Guthrie told the potential kidnappers of her mother Nancy Guthrie on Saturday that the family is prepared to pay for her safe return, as the frantic search for the 84-year-old Arizona resident has entered a seventh day.

“We received your message, and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her,” she said in a video posted on social media, flanked by her siblings. “This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”

The “Today” show host was referencing a message that was sent to the Tucson-based television station KOLD on Friday afternoon, according to Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for the FBI office in Phoenix.

KOLD said it received an email related to the Guthrie case on social media that day but declined to share specific details about its contents as the FBI conducted its review.

The station was one of multiple press outlets that received alleged ransom letters during the week. At least one letter made monetary demands and established Thursday evening and the following Monday evening as deadlines.

In a news conference Thursday, law enforcement officials declined to affirm that the letters were credible but said all tips were being investigated seriously. They also said one letter referenced Nancy Guthrie’s Apple watch and a specific feature of her property.

The video released Saturday was the third this week that pleaded with potential kidnappers.

No suspects identified

Investigators think Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson last weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out.

The sheriff said Friday that he was frustrated that a camera at Nancy Guthrie’s home was not able to capture images of anyone the day she went missing.

Investigators have found that the home’s doorbell camera was disconnected early Sunday and that software data recorded movement at the home minutes later. But Nancy Guthrie did not have an active subscription, so none of the images were able to be recovered.

“It is concerning, it’s actually almost disappointing, because you’ve got your hopes up,” Nanos told The Associated Press in an interview. “OK, they got an image. ‘Well, we do, but we don’t.’”

President Donald Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Friday, said the investigation was going “very well.”

“We have some clues that I think are very strong,” Trump said, while en route to his Florida estate. “We have some things that may be coming out reasonably soon.”

Investigators return to scene

They were back in Nancy Guthrie’s neighborhood on Friday.

The sheriff’s department posted on social media to say access was restricted to the road in front of the home to give investigators space. Journalists staked out there were directed to move.

The Catalina Foothills Association, a neighborhood group, told residents in a letter that authorities were resuming searches in the area immediately.

“I know we all stand together in our collective disbelief and sadness and greatly appreciate your willingness to speak with law enforcement, share camera images and allow searches of your properties,” the association president said in the letter.

The sheriff said Thursday that investigators have not given up on trying to retrieve camera recordings.

“I wish technology was as easy as we believe it is, that here’s a picture, here’s your bad guy. But it’s not,” Nanos told the AP. “There are pieces of information that come to us from these tech groups that say ‘this is what we have and we can’t get anymore.’”

The sheriff also said he had no new information about the note to the TV station or other purported ransom letters sent to some media outlets, saying the FBI is handling that side of the investigation.

Meanwhile concern about Nancy Guthrie’s health condition has grown, because authorities say she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.

“Her conditions, I would imagine, are worsening day by day,” Nanos said. “She requires medication. And I have no way of knowing whether they’re getting that medication to her.”

The kidnapping has captured the attention of Americans, including Trump, who said he was directing federal authorities to help investigate.

___ Weber reported from Los Angeles.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — For days, Luis Ramirez had an uneasy feeling about the men dressed as utility workers he’d seen outside his family’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Minneapolis.

They wore high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, he noticed, even while parked in their vehicle. His search for the Wisconsin-based electrician advertised on the car’s doors returned no results.

On Tuesday, when their Nissan returned to the lot outside his restaurant, Ramirez, 31, filmed his confrontation with the two men, who hide their faces as he approaches and appear to be wearing heavy tactical gear beneath their yellow vests.

“This is what our taxpayer money goes to: renting these vehicles with fake tags to come sit here and watch my business,” Ramirez shouts in the video.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to inquiries about whether the men were federal immigration officers. But encounters like Ramirez’s have become increasingly common.

As the sweeping immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents impersonating construction workers, delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ICE activists.

Not all of those incidents have been verified, but they have heightened fears in a state already on edge, adding to legal groups’ concerns about the Trump administration’s dramatic reshaping of immigration enforcement tactics nationwide.

“If you have people afraid that the electrical worker outside their house might be ICE, you’re inviting public distrust and confusion on a much more dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is what you do if you’re trying to control a populace, not trying to do routine, professional law enforcement.”

A ‘more extreme degree’ of deception

In the past, immigration authorities have sometimes used disguises and other deceptions, which they call ruses, to gain entry into homes without a warrant.

The tactics became more common during President Donald Trump’s first term, attorneys said, prompting an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration agents of violating the U.S. Constitution by posing as local law enforcement during home raids. A recent settlement restricted the practice in Los Angeles. But ICE deceptions remain legal elsewhere in the country.

Still, the undercover operations reported in Minnesota would appear to be a “more extreme degree than we’ve seen in the past,” said Shah, in part because they seem to be happening in plain sight.

Where past ruses were aimed at deceiving immigration targets, the current tactics may also be a response to the Minnesota’s sprawling networks of citizen observers that have sought to call attention to federal agents before they make arrests.

At the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, the city’s central hub of ICE activity, activists told The Associated Press they had seen agents leaving in vehicles with stuffed animals on their dashboards or Mexican flag decals on their bumpers. Pickups with lumber or tools in their beds were also frequently spotted.

In recent weeks, federal agents have repeatedly shown up to construction sites dressed as workers, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer for the local immigrant rights group, Unidos MN.

“We’ve seen an increase in the cowboy tactics,” he said, though he noted the raids had not resulted in arrests. “Construction workers are good at identifying who is a real construction worker and who is dressing up as one.”

Using vintage plates

Since the start of the operation in Minnesota, local officials, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, have said ICE agents had been seen swapping license plates or using bogus ones, a violation of state law.

Candice Metrailer, an antiques dealer in south Minneapolis, believes she witnessed such an attempt firsthand.

On Jan. 13, she received a call from a man who identified himself as a collector, asking if her store sold license plates. She said it did. A few minutes later, two men in street clothes entered the shop and began looking through her collection of vintage plates.

“One of them says, ‘Hey, do you have any recent ones?’” Metrailer recalled. “Immediately, an alarm bell went off in my head.”

Metrailer stepped outside while the men continued browsing. A few doors down from the shop, she saw an idling Ford Explorer with blacked out windows. She memorized its license plate, then quickly plugged it into a crowdsourced database used by local activists to track vehicles linked to immigration enforcement.

The database shows an identical Ford with the same plates had been photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks earlier.

When one of the men approached the register holding a white Minnesota plate, Metrailer said she told him that the store had a new policy against selling the items.

Metrailer said she had reported the incident to Minnesota’s attorney general. A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

A response to obstruction

Supporters of the immigration crackdown say the volunteer army of ICE-tracking activists in Minneapolis has forced federal agents to adopt new methods of avoiding detection.

“Of course agents are adapting their tactics so that they’re a step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, former deputy director of ICE enforcement and operations in New York City. “We’ve never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”

In nearly three decades in immigration enforcement, Mechkowski said he also hadn’t seen ICE agent disguising themselves as uniformed workers in the course of making arrests.

Earlier this summer, a spokesperson for DHS confirmed a man wearing a high-visibility construction vest was an ICE agent conducting surveillance. In Oregon, a natural gas company published guidance last month on how customers could identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.

In the days since his encounter, Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he has been on high alert for undercover agents. He recently stopped a locksmith who he feared might be a federal agent, before quickly realizing he was a local resident.

“Everybody is on edge about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “It feels like they’re everywhere.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wants to keep home prices high, bypassing calls to ramp up construction so people can afford what has been a ticket to the middle class.

Trump has instead argued for protecting existing owners who have watched the values of their homes climb. It’s a position that flies in the face of what many economists, the real estate industry, local officials and apartment dwellers say is needed to fix a big chunk of America’s affordability problem.

“I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured that’s what’s going to happen,” Trump told his Cabinet on Jan. 29.

That approach could bolster the Republican president’s standing with older voters, a group that over time has been more likely to vote in midterm elections. Those races in November will determine whether Trump’s party can retain control of the House and Senate.

“You have a lot of people that have become wealthy in the last year because their house value has gone up,” Trump said. “And you know, when you get the housing — when you make it too easy and too cheap to buy houses — those values come down.”

But by catering to older baby boomers on housing, Trump risks alienating the younger voters who expanded his coalition in 2024 and helped him win a second term, and he could wade into a “generational war” in the midterms, said Brent Buchanan, whose polling firm Cygnal advises Republicans.

“The under-40 group is the most important right now — they are the ones who put Trump in the White House,” Buchanan said. “Their desire to show up in an election or not is going to make the difference in this election. If they feel that Donald Trump is taking care of the boomers at their expense, that is going to hurt Republicans.”

The logic in appealing to older voters

In the 2024 presidential election, 81% of Trump’s voters were homeowners, according to AP VoteCast data. This means many of his supporters already have mortgages with low rates or own their homes outright, possibly blunting the importance of housing as an issue.

Older voters tend to show up to vote more than do younger people, said Oscar Pocasangre, a senior data analyst at liberal think tank New America who has studied the age divide in U.S. politics. “However, appealing to older voters may prove to be a misguided policy if what’s needed to win is to expand the voting base,” Pocasangre said.

Before the 2026 elections, voters have consistently rated affordability as a top concern, and that is especially true for younger voters with regard to housing.

Booker Lightman, 30, a software engineer in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, who identifies politically as a libertarian Republican, said the shortage of housing has been a leading problem in his state.

Lightman just closed on a home last month, and while he and his wife, Alice, were able to manage the cost, he said that the lack of construction is pushing people out of Colorado. “There’s just not enough housing supply,” he said.

Shay Hata, a real estate agent in the Chicago and Denver areas, said she handles about 100 to 150 transactions a year. But she sees the potential for a lot more. “We have a lack of inventory to the point where most properties, particularly in the suburbs, are getting between five and 20 offers,” she said, describing what she sees in the Chicago area.

New construction could help more people afford homes because in some cases, buyers qualify for discounted mortgage rates from the builders’ preferred lenders, Hata said. She called the current situation “very discouraging for buyers because they’re getting priced out of the market.”

But pending construction has fallen under Trump. Permits to build single-family homes have plunged 9.4% over the past 12 months in October, the most recent month available, to an annual rate of 876,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Trump’s other ideas to help people buy houses

Trump has not always been against increasing housing supply.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump’s team said he would create tax breaks for homebuyers, trim regulations on construction, open up federal land for housing developments and make monthly payments more manageable by cutting mortgage rates. Advisers also claimed that housing stock would open up because of Trump’s push for mass deportations of people who were in the United States illegally.

As recently as October, Trump urged builders to ramp up construction. “They’re sitting on 2 Million empty lots, A RECORD. I’m asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get Big Homebuilders going and, by so doing, help restore the American Dream!” Trump posted on social media, referring to the government-backed lenders.

But more recently, he has been unequivocal on not wanting to pursue policies that would boost supply and lower prices.

In office, Trump has so far focused his housing policy on lobbying the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rates. He believes that would make mortgages more affordable, although critics say it could spur higher inflation. Trump announced that the two mortgage companies, which are under government conservatorship, would buy at least $200 billion in home loan securities in a bid to reduce rates.

Trump also wants Congress to ban large financial institutions from buying homes. But he has rejected suggestions for expanding rules to let buyers use 401(k) retirement accounts for down payments, telling reporters that he did not want people to take their money out of the stock market because it was doing so well.

There are signs that lawmakers in both parties see the benefits of taking steps to add houses before this year’s elections. There are efforts in the Senate and House to jump-start construction through the use of incentives to change zoning restrictions, among other policies.

One of the underlying challenges on affordability is that home prices have been generally rising faster than incomes for several years.

This makes it harder to save for down payments or upgrade to a nicer home. It also means that the places where people live increasingly double as their key financial asset, one that leaves many families looking moneyed on paper even if they are struggling with monthly bills.

There is another risk for Trump. If the economy grows this year, as he has promised, that could push up demand for houses — as well as their prices — making the affordability problem more pronounced, said Edward Pinto, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.

Pinto said construction of single-family homes would have to rise by 50% to 100% during the next three years for average home price gains to be flat — a sign, he said, that Trump’s fears about falling home prices were probably unwarranted.

“It’s very hard to crater home prices,” Pinto said.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A judge says the federal government must return three families hurt by the first Trump administration’s policy of separating parents from the children at the border, saying their deportations in recent months relied on “lies, deception and coercion.”

The order, issued Thursday, found the deported families should have been allowed to remain in the United States under terms of a legal settlement over the Trump administration’s separation of about 6,000 children from their parents at the border in 2018. Each mother had permission to remain in the U.S. until 2027 under humanitarian parole.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego said the administration also had to pay for their return travel costs.

One woman and her three children, including a 6-year-old U.S. citizen, were deported to Honduras in July after being ordered to check in with ICE at least 11 times over two months, which, she said, caused her to lose her job.

Sabraw rejected the government’s argument that the family left the U.S. voluntarily. The woman said ICE officers visited her home and asked her sign a document agreeing to leave but she refused.

“This did not make any difference to these officers. They took me and my children to a motel and removed my ankle monitor. They detained us for three days and then removed us to Honduras,” the woman said in court documents.

The other two families, identified only by their initials, bore similarities.

“Each of the removals was unlawful, and absent the removals, these families would still be in the United States and have access to the benefits and resources they are entitled to,” wrote Sabraw, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the families, welcomed the decision.

“The Trump administration has never acknowledged the illegality or gratuitous cruelty of the initial family separation policy and now has started re-deporting and re-separating these same families. The Court put its foot down and not only ordered the families return but did so at government expense,” he said.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Friday.

Under a “zero-tolerance” policy, parents were separated from their children to be criminally prosecuted when crossing the border illegally. Sabraw ordered an end to the separations in June 2018, days after Trump halted them on his own amid intense international backlash. The settlement prohibits such a policy until 2031.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Justice will allow members of Congress to review unredacted files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein starting on Monday, according to a letter that was sent to lawmakers.

The letter obtained by The Associated Press says that lawmakers will be able to review unredacted versions of the more than 3 million files that the Justice Department has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.

To access the files, lawmakers will need to give the Justice Department 24 hours’ notice. They will be able to review the files on computers at the Department of Justice. Only lawmakers, not their staff, will have access to the files, and they will be permitted to take notes, but not make electronic copies.

The arrangement, first reported by NBC News, showed the continued demand for information on Epstein and his crimes by lawmakers, even after the Justice Department devoted large numbers of its staff to comply with the law passed by Congress last year. The Justice Department has come under criticism for delays in the release of information, failing to redact the personal information and photos of victims and not releasing the entire 6 million documents collected in relation to Epstein.

Still, lawmakers central to the push for transparency, described the concession by the Justice Department as a victory.

“When Congress pushes back, Congress can prevail,” Rep. Ro Khanna, who sponsored what’s known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act, posted on social media.

Khanna has pointed to several emails between Epstein and individuals whose information was redacted that appeared to refer to the sexual abuse of underage girls. The release of the case files has prompted inquiries around the world about men who cavorted with the well-connected financier. Still, lawmakers are pressing for a further reckoning over anyone who may have had knowledge of Epstein’s abuse or could have helped facilitate it.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while he faced charges that he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of underage girls. The case was brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of nearly identical allegations. Epstein was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them.

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must keep funds flowing to child care subsidies and other social service programs in five Democratic-controlled states — at least for now.

U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick in New York, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, granted the states’ request for a preliminary injunction and a stay against the administration to bar it from withholding the money while a lawsuit works its way through the courts.

The states affected include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The five states said they receive a total of more than $10 billion a year from the programs.

Attorneys representing the federal government in the case did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday night. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

Two temporary rulings had been issued in January that blocked the federal government from holding back the funding, with the latest set to expire on Friday.

The programs in question are the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for 1.3 million children from low-income families nationally; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance and job training; and the Social Services Block Grant, a smaller fund that provides money for a variety of programs.

“Every day, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rely on these funds to pay for necessities and provide their children a safe place to learn,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This illegal funding freeze would have caused severe chaos in the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in our state. I am proud to have secured another victory in this case to put a stop to it.”

The government’s explanation of its actions has shifted.

When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was withholding the money, it said there was “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally. It did not initially explain where the information came from. But in a court hearing, a federal government lawyer said it was largely in reaction to news reports about possible fraud.

And while the government’s initial news release said it “froze” access to money, federal lawyers told the judge that wasn’t what was happening. Rather, they said, the Trump administration was requiring more information from those states.

The government says it wants more records from the group of states, including names and Social Security numbers for beneficiaries of some of the programs.

Advocates warn that cutting off the child care subsidies could have deep impacts. Day cares that accept the subsidies could face the risk of layoffs or closures. And that would affect both the lower-income families who receive the subsidies and families who don’t. And for many families, losing child care can make it hard or impossible to work.

The Trump administration has targeted multiple programs in Minnesota due to previous fraud cases and new allegations, mostly involving members of the state’s Somali community.

Besides the heightened requirements for the four other Democratic-led states, the administration also has required all states to submit more information about how they’re using money in the child care program before they can draw down the funds.

Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona must stop enforcing abortion restrictions that predate and contradict a 2024 voter-approved constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights, a judge ordered in a ruling released Friday.

Maricopa Superior Court Judge Greg Como found that the older laws present unnecessary obstacles to getting an abortion, including barring one if a woman was seeking it because the fetus had a non-fatal genetic abnormality, and requiring patients to see a doctor twice, at least 24 hours apart, before obtaining one.

He also took issue with the laws because they required abortion seekers to undergo ultrasounds and Rh blood testing, and barred doctors from prescribing abortion pills by telehealth and mailing them to patients. Pills are the most common way abortion is obtained.

“Each of these laws infringe on a woman’s ‘autonomous decision making’ by mandating medical procedures and disclosure of information regardless of the patient’s needs and wishes,” Como wrote.

Kris Mayes, the state’s Democratic attorney general, supported the plaintiffs.

Two of Arizona’s top legislative Republicans — House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen — intervened in the lawsuit in support of the restrictions, arguing that abortion rights advocates wanted to sweep away health and safety regulations in the name of the constitutional amendment.

Peterson’s office said the ruling will be appealed.

In Arizona and many other states, abortion law has been in flux since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and cleared the way for states to ban abortion. Even after voters approved the abortion rights amendment, throwing out a 2022 law that banned abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation, some older restrictions remained on the books.

Two obstetricians and the Arizona Medical Association sued last year over the continued enforcement of the old laws. They said the voter-backed constitutional amendment guaranteed the “fundamental right to abortion” and specifically barred the state from enacting, adopting or enforcing a law that “denies, restricts or interferes with that right before fetal viability.”

“My patients will no longer be forced to make additional unnecessary visits for care, nor will I be required to give them disinformation that stigmatizes abortion.” Dr. Laura Mercer, an OB-GYN and member of the board at the Arizona Medical Association, said in a statement Friday.

Ingrid Duran, the National Right to Life Committee’s state legislative director, told The Associated Press on Friday that she’s disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. She said the group intends to work on educating people in Arizona about its position to “expand our base into more pro-lifers who believe that the unborn child deserves protection.” But she said the group doesn’t expect the ruling to be overturned.

Since Roe was overturned, voters in several states have passed laws allowing abortion, while voters in others have rejected such measures. Missouri voters will decide this year whether to overturn a voter-backed amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.

Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey.

President Donald Trump’s racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.

The Republican president’s Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.

The post was part of a flurry of social media activity on Trump’s Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term finding no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.

Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority Black countries.

The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a Trump proclamation that cited “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness and their enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”

An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.

‘An internet meme’

Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as the 2020 presidential votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on them.

Those frames were taken from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said by text.

Disney’s 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.

“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.

By noon, the post had been taken down with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.

The White House explanation raised additional questions about the control of Trump’s social media account, which has also been used to levy import taxes, threaten military action, make domestic policy announcements and intimidate political rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy announcements.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about its process for vetting posts and how it guarantees that the public knows when Trump himself is posting.

Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said Friday afternoon on X that he had spoken “directly” with Trump about the post. He recommended to Trump that he fire the staffer who posted the video and publicly condemn what happened.

“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.

Condemnation across the political spectrum

Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.

Yet while it was still up, Trump’s post drew condemnation from across the political and ideological spectrum — and demands for an apology that had not come by the early afternoon.The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father’s words: “Yes. I’m Black. I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.” She praised Black Americans as “diverse, innovative, industrious, inventive” and added, “We are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”

The U.S. Senate’s lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign arm, said on social media.

Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.

Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns, as well, feeding an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for a president who often has enjoyed a strangle-hold over fellow Republicans who stayed silent over some of Trump’s previous controversial statements or fear a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson pointed to Trump’s wider political concerns, asserting that Trump is trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case files.

“Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” Johnson said in a statement. “You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he continued. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”

A long history of racism

There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false and racist ways. The practice dates back to 18th century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories in which white people drew connections between Africans and monkeys to justify the enslavement of Black people in Europe and North America, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as an uncivilized threat to white people.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s, once argued that white parents were concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primate on T-shirts and other merchandise.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler said to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.During his first White House term, Trump referred to a swath of developing nations that are majority Black as “shithole countries.” He initially denied using the slur but admitted in December 2025 that he did say it.

When Obama was in the White House, Trump advanced the false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and was constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to many conservative voters, repeatedly demanded that Obama produce birth records and prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.

Obama eventually released his Hawaii records. Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii.

But he immediately said, falsely, that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started those birtherism attacks on Obama

Also in the spotlight will be U.S. figure skating star Ilia Malinin as well as Jessie Diggins, America’s most decorated cross-country skier.

Here is a guide of what to look out for:

Men’s downhill is wide open

Swiss teammates Marco Odermatt and world champion Franjo von Allmen are among the favorites, though there’s a long list of contenders for the podium at Stelvio Ski Center in Bormio.

The home crowd will be rooting for Dominik Paris, who in his fifth Games is still looking for his first Olympic medal. The 36-year-old Italian is a Bormio specialist, having won a record six World Cup downhills there. There’s also young Italian Giovanni Franzoni.

U.S. skier Ryan Cochran-Siegle was fastest in the opening downhill training session Wednesday. It is Cochran-Siegle’s third Winter Olympics. He won silver in the super-G at the Beijing Games four years ago.

The event is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. local time (0930 GMT, 4:30 a.m. ET), weather permitting.

Ilia Malinin performs in figure skating team event

Two-time reigning world champion Ilia Malinin, the overwhelming favorite to win Olympic figure skating gold, performs his short program as part of the team event. The defending champion U.S. leads Japan and Italy going into Day 2 of the three-day competition. It’s scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m. local time (1745 GMT, 12:45 p.m. ET) in Milan.

In the free dance, the U.S. team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates is expected back on the ice. The three-time defending world champions won the rhythm dance portion of the team competition Friday.

Jessie Diggins competes in her 4th Olympics

Diggins, a 34-year-old Minnesota native, is trying to add to her Olympic haul before she retires at the end of the season. She already has a gold, silver, and bronze medal from three earlier Olympics. She will compete Saturday in the 20 kilometer skiathlon. The event is scheduled to begin at noon local time (1100 GMT and 6 a.m. ET). Cross-country skiing is held in Val di Fiemme, a valley in the heart of the Dolomites. It’s possible medals could be awarded before the men’s downhill medals.

There are also medal events in ski jumping (women’s normal hill individual), snowboard (men’s snowboard big air) and speedskating (women’s 3000 meters).

US faces Finland in women’s hockey

Women’s hockey is among the handful of disciplines that have already begun preliminary rounds. The U.S. team opened its campaign with a 5-1 victory over Czechia on Thursday.

Next up for the Americans is Finland. The game is scheduled to begin at 3:40 p.m. local time (1440 GMT, 9:40 a.m. ET) in Milan. The other games Saturday: Switzerland-Canada; Sweden-Italy; and Germany-Japan.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics