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Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday restored rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had been rolled back back under former President Donald Trump.

Among the changes announced, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened.

The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species law under Trump that were encouraged by industry. Those changes came as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.

Under the new rules, officials also will not consider economic impacts when deciding if animals and plants need protection. And the rules from the wildlife service and National Marine Fisheries Service make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations.

Details on the proposed rules, which could take a year to finalize, were obtained by The Associated Press in advance of their public release.

Among the species that could benefit from the rules are imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, officials have said.

Environmentalists had expressed frustration that it’s taken years for Biden to act on some of the Trump-era rollbacks. Stoking their urgency is the prospect of a new Republican administration following the 2024 election that could yet again ease protections.

The proposal of the rules last year faced strong pushback from Republican lawmakers, who said President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration has hampered oil, gas and coal development, and favors conservation over development.

Industry groups have long viewed the 1973 Endangered Species Act as an impediment. Under Trump, they successfully lobbied to weaken the law’s regulations as part of a broad dismantling of environmental safeguards. Trump officials rolled back endangered species rules and protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species.


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Federal EV charging stations are key to Biden’s climate agenda, yet only 4 states have them

LONDON, Ohio (AP) — Within 24 hours of buying his red Ford Mustang Mach-E, Liam Sawyer set off on a camping trip.

Sawyer, who bought the electric SUV “because I think the technology is cool and the range is just long enough,” searched ahead of time for convenient charging stations between his home in Indianapolis and Allegheny National Forest in western Pennsylvania.

About 175 miles (282 kilometers) into his journey, he stopped at a new public charging station at the Pilot Travel Center along Interstate 70 outside Columbus, Ohio. The station, which opened in London, Ohio, in December with four chargers, can power an EV in about half an hour while drivers buy food and drinks and use amenities.

That first charge cost Sawyer, a 32-year-old civil engineer, about $20.

The Ohio charging station was created from the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed into law in November 2021. More than two years later, only four states — Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Hawaii — have opened stations funded by the program.

Biden, a Democrat, has set a goal of creating a national network of 500,000 publicly available chargers by 2030. Easily accessible charging ports are a key part of his effort to encourage drivers to move away from gasoline-powered cars and trucks that contribute to global warming.

That effort took on greater urgency this month as the Biden administration announced new automobile emissions standards that officials called the most ambitious plan ever to cut planet-warming pollution from passenger vehicles. Meeting those standards would require a huge increase in sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids.

EVs hit a record 1.19 million in sales in the U.S. last year and accounted for 7.6% of the total U.S. vehicle market, up from 5.8% in 2022.

Transportation emissions are the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases.

The Biden administration says the federal charging program is on track. Several states, including Maine, Vermont and Colorado, are expected to open public charging stations later this year, while more than a dozen others have awarded contracts for projects or broken ground.

“We are building this national framework from scratch, partnering with states to set plans, and we want to make sure we are taking appropriate care to set this program up correctly,″ Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt said in an interview.

“The first two years were about getting the rules right, getting the plans in place,” Bhatt said. “And now what you’re going to see is this year being about the chargers coming online.”

As part of the national charging station rollout, the Biden administration awarded $623 million in grants to states, local governments and tribes in January. The grants will fund 47 EV charging stations and related projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico, including 7,500 charging ports.

Separately, Walmart and other private companies have pledged to build a network of affordable fast-charging stations for EVs. The federal program is also expected to serve as a catalyst for other projects.

“We’re committed to making sure that all Americans can charge (their EVs) where they live, work, shop, play, pray,″ said Gabe Klein, director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which runs the federal charging program.

But even some of the government’s own experts say 500,000 public chargers won’t be enough to meet Biden’s ambitious climate goals. The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated last year that the U.S. will need 1.2 million public chargers by 2030, a huge jump from the 175,00 public charging ports now available, as measured by the Alternative Fuels Data Center, a division of the Energy Department.

The availability of charging stations is key to persuading Americans to buy EVs.

Driving range anxiety is still an impediment, along with cost. About 80% of respondents cited concerns about a lack of charging stations as a reason not to buy an electric vehicle, according to a 2023 survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

Seven in 10 said they would not buy an EV because it takes too long to charge and the battery technology isn’t ready.

In some parts of the country — especially rural areas far from major cities — “there are definitely corridors where you have worries about range anxiety,” Bhatt said. “It is going to take longer to get to them, just like it took longer to get cellphone coverage in those places.”

But he said the administration’s goal is to have chargers every 50 miles (80 kilometers) along U.S. interstates. Other major charging networks offered by Tesla, EVgo and Electrify America prioritize shopping centers, gas stations and grocery stores, but long-distance travel is where many Americans perceive the biggest gap.

As Biden doubles down on clean energy as part of his reelection campaign, it’s notable that Ohio, a swing state led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, was one of the first movers in the federal charging endeavor.

“Electric vehicles are the future of transportation, and we want drivers in Ohio to have access to this technology today,” said DeWine, who appeared at the Ohio station’s grand opening in December.

A state Department of Transportation program, DriveOhio, served as the charging station’s organizational structure. A public-private partnership authority helped supply money needed for the project after the federal program contributed 80% of the estimated $500,000 to $750,000 cost, including buildout, operation and maintenance for five years.

“I actually don’t think these are moving very slow. I think they’re going really quickly given that they’re tiny construction projects that we’re deploying at a pretty significant scale,” said Preeti Choudhary, DriveOhio’s executive director. “Getting them in the ground quickly is important because we do have this growing contingency of EV drivers out there and they need to be supported when they’re driving across our state or across the country.”

Meeting federal requirements and operating standards is a challenge for states with little experience rolling out this type of infrastructure, according to Loren McDonald, an independent analyst tracking the buildout.

“The states are moving at very different speeds,” he said. “It might take a good 18 months on average for a lot of these stations to come online.”

Projects can be held up for months to years by delays with permitting, approvals, electrical upgrades and equipment. The latter can be costly. In California, the state with the most electric cars, its Public Utilities Commission could spend $50 billion through 2035 just to meet demand there.

Sawyer, who was charging his Mustang as semi-trucks lined up at rows of gas pumps nearby, said he intends to mostly charge his car at home overnight, but he appreciates the public stations for his occasional road trips. He doesn’t mind the half-hour charging time.

“Having the 20 minutes to 30 minutes to kind of rest your feet, get lunch isn’t that bad if you’re not in a rush,” he said. “If you have the luxury of time, it’s worth it.”

“I definitely think the infrastructure needs to get up there more, right?” he said. “And faster charging will come.”

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Daly reported from Washington. St. John reported from Detroit.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


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Barges are bringing cranes to Baltimore to help remove bridge wreckage and open shipping route

BALTIMORE (AP) — Massive barges carrying cranes streamed toward Baltimore on Thursday to begin the challenging work of removing twisted metal and concrete in an attempt to open a key shipping route blocked by the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said Wednesday night that the barges were on their way to the spot where the bridge crossed the Patapsco River, but it was not clear when they would arrive.

The devastation at the site of the collapse, which happened when a powerless cargo ship rammed it early Tuesday, is extensive. Divers reached the bodies of two men in a pickup truck near the bridge’s middle span on Wednesday, but officials said they would need to start clearing away the twisted wreckage before anyone could reach the bodies of four other missing workers. Divers are to resume searching once the debris is cleared.

“We’re now moving from a recovery mode to a salvage operation. Because of the superstructure surrounding what we believe are the vehicles and the amount of concrete and debris, divers are no longer able to safely navigate or operate around that,” Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of Maryland State Police, said at a news conference Wednesday.

“We have exhausted all search efforts in the areas around this wreckage, and based on sonar scans, we firmly believe that the vehicles are encased in the superstructure and concrete that we tragically saw come down,” Butler said.

Butler said his agency would support the unified command during the salvage assessment phase, but he asked for patience, warning that “there’s no definitive timeline.”

National Transportation Safety Board officials boarded the ship, the Dali, to recover information from its electronics and paperwork and to interview the captain and other crew members. Investigators shared a preliminary timeline of events before the crash, which federal and state officials have said appeared to be an accident.

Of the 21 crew members on the ship, 20 are from India, Randhir Jaiswal, the nation’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told reporters Thursday. One was slightly injured and needed stitches, but “all are in good shape and good health,” Jaiswal said.

The victims, who were part of a construction crew fixing potholes on the bridge, were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Butler said. At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued Tuesday, officials said.

The crash caused the bridge to break and fall into the water within seconds. Authorities had just enough time to stop vehicle traffic, but didn’t get a chance to alert the construction crew.

The Dali, which is managed by Synergy Marine Group, was headed from Baltimore to Sri Lanka. It is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and Danish shipping giant Maersk said it had chartered it.

Synergy expressed its regret and extended sympathies to the families of those lost in a statement early Thursday.

“We deeply regret this incident and the problems it has caused for the people of Baltimore and the region’s economy that relies on this vitally important port,” Synergy said, noting they would continue to cooperate with investigators.

The sudden loss of a highway that carries 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

The governors of New York and New Jersey have offered to take on cargo shipments that have been disrupted. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement Thursday that ports in their states can handle additional shipments in an attempt to minimize supply chain disruptions.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said the Biden administration was focused on reopening the port and rebuilding the bridge, but he did not put a timeline on those efforts. Buttigieg planned to meet Thursday with supply chain officials.

From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, according to the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.

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Witte reported from Dundalk, Maryland. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Washington and Krutika Pathi in New Delhi.


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A mail carrier was among 4 people killed in stabbings in a northern Illinois city

CHICAGO (AP) — A postal carrier was among four people killed when a man went on a stabbing rampage in a northern Illinois city, authorities said Thursday.

The attacks in Rockford on Wednesday also left seven people injured, and a 22-year-old suspect is in custody.

A 15-year-old girl, a 63-year-old woman, a 49-year-old man and a 22-year-old man were killed. Police said three of them died where they were attacked and a fourth died at a hospital. Authorities have not released the victims’ names, but the United States Postal Inspection Service, a division of the United States Postal Service, confirmed Thursday that a letter carrier was among the dead.

“Postal inspectors are working with the Rockford Police Department in this investigation,” agency spokesperson Michael Martel said in an email.

Authorities have released little information about the suspect, who was arrested Wednesday by a Winnebago County sheriff’s deputy responding to a reported home invasion. A woman who identified herself as the suspect’s sister declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Resident Vanessa Hy, told WREX-TV in Rockford that she witnessed the arrest.

“All of the sudden, we heard police run up on both sides of the house screaming, ‘Stop! Get down!’” Hy told the TV station. “Then they ran into the backyard and after a few minutes we saw them bringing the suspect down the driveway in handcuffs and he was very bloody.”

Rockford Police Chief Carla Redd said the suspect likely acted alone.

“We don’t believe there’s any other suspects that are on the run or at large at this particular time,” Redd said Wednesday. “Right now, we don’t have a clear motive as to what caused this individual to commit such a heinous crime.”

She said residents were being asked to review home surveillance footage for anything related to the attacks.

Redd said Rockford police received a medical call at 1:14 p.m. Wednesday followed by additional calls for police and paramedics. She said not all of the victims found at multiple addresses in the city had stab wounds and none was shot.

Rockford resident Cassandra Hernandez said her friend was among the victims, and that she mourns the loss of the mail carrier who neighbors believe was hit by a vehicle and stabbed.

“You never expect this here,” Hernandez told the Rockford Register Star. “Just to think that it happened here, and we have such great neighbors and the mailman.”

Redd said Wednesday that one of the injured was in critical condition. The Rockford Police Department and the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office have not responded to messages left Thursday seeking updates on the surviving victims’ conditions.

Sheriff Gary Caruana said Wednesday that the suspect was with a woman when he was arrested, and that the suspect had attacked her and a bystander.

“The young lady ran from him,” Caruana said. “She got some stab wounds in her hands and her face. She is in serious condition. One of the good Samaritans stopped to help her out. He did get some stab wounds. He is being checked out.”

Rockford, home to about 150,000 people, is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Chicago. Its economy was decimated by industrial change in the 1980s and now largely depends on manufacturing and healthcare.

Some residents bristle at the mention of a 2013 Forbes article classifying it as one of the country’s “most miserable cities,” that pointedly noted Rockford’s double-digit unemployment rate. Forbes and other media outlets have been more complimentary in recent years, noting the city’s affordable cost of living and efforts to support local restaurants and entertainment venues.

But Rockford’s police force, like many across the U.S., has reported increases in violent crime since the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s violent crimes totals did drop by about 19%, according to the department’s annual report, but there were 20 murders compared to 15 in 2022.

The stabbings Wednesday came just days after a teenage employee was stabbed and killed inside a Walmart in the city.

The city of Rockford planned to hold a vigil for the victims Thursday afternoon hosted by local faith leaders.

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Callahan reported from Indianapolis and Williams reported from Detroit. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.


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Republican-passed bill removes role of Democratic governor if Senate vacancy occurs in Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to a bill stripping the state’s Democratic governor of any role in picking someone to occupy a U.S. Senate seat if a vacancy occurred in the home state of 82-year-old Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The legislation calls for a special election to fill any Senate vacancy from the Bluegrass State. The special election winner would hold the seat for the remainder of the unexpired term.

“So it would be a direct voice of the people determining how the vacancy is filled,” Republican Senate President Robert Stivers said while presenting the bill to his colleagues.

The state Senate voted 34-3 after a brief discussion to send the bill to Gov. Andy Beshear. The governor has denounced the measure as driven by partisanship, but the GOP supermajority legislature could override a veto when lawmakers reconvene for the final two days of this year’s session in mid-April.

The bill’s lead sponsor is Republican House Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy. He has said the measure has nothing to do with McConnell, but instead reflected his long-running policy stance on how an empty Senate seat should be filled.

Rudy refers to McConnell as a “great friend and a political mentor,” and credits the state’s senior senator for playing an important role in the GOP’s rise to dominance in the Kentucky legislature.

Rudy has said his bill would treat a Senate vacancy like that of a vacancy for a congressional or legislative seat in Kentucky — by holding a special election to fill the seat. The bill includes an emergency clause, meaning it would take effect immediately if enacted into law.

Rudy introduced the bill in February and it cleared a House committee a day after McConnell’s announcement that he will step down from his longtime Senate leadership position in November. The decision set off a wave of speculation back home in Kentucky about the future of his seat.

In his speech from the Senate floor, McConnell left open the possibility that he might seek another term in 2026, declaring at one point: “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Aides said McConnell’s announcement was unrelated to his health. The senator had a concussion from a fall last year and two public episodes where his face briefly froze while he was speaking.

Rudy has said he’s talked about changing the way a Senate vacancy is filled for more than a decade, since the conviction of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for crimes that included seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. Rudy’s district in far western Kentucky borders Illinois.

Beshear — who won a convincing reelection victory last November over a McConnell protege — had already seen his influence over selecting a senator greatly diminished by GOP lawmakers.

In 2021, the legislature removed the governor’s independent power to temporarily fill a Senate seat. That measure limits a governor to choosing from a three-name list provided by party leaders from the same party as the senator who formerly held the seat. Both of Kentucky’s U.S. senators are Republicans. The measure became law after GOP lawmakers overrode Beshear’s veto.


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Baltimore bridge collapse highlights need to protect critical foundations

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – The collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge has highlighted what engineers say is an urgent need to better protect the piers holding up spans over shipping channels as the size of cargo ships has grown in recent decades.

Federal authorities continue an investigation into why a massive cargo ship lost power and crashed into a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday, bringing down the structure and killing six workers who had been filling potholes atop it.

The Maryland Transportation Authority did not respond to questions about what, if any, protections were in place for the Key Bridge’s foundation piers — which bore the weight of the structure and all the vehicles on it — and whether updates might have been needed.

“The construction code has got to do better,” said Erin Bell, chair of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of New Hampshire and an expert on bridge engineering. “Our job as engineers and our duty to society is that we learn from these failures.”

Bridges such as the one in Baltimore are classified as “fracture critical” by the federal government – meaning that if one portion of the bridge collapses, it’s likely to take down the rest of the structure with it. According to the Federal Highway Administration, there are more than 16,800 such spans in the U.S.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday that the Key Bridge “was simply not made to withstand a direct impact on a critical support pier from a vessel that weighs about 200 million pounds.”

Bell and other engineers said that while that is correct, it doesn’t address the serious questions about what safety measures could have prevented the cargo ship from running into the pier, or absorbed the crush of the impact to keep the foundation intact.

Bell pointed out that the Key Bridge was opened in 1977 – three years before a similar vessel collision of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay, Florida, killed 35 people, and prompted bridge designers to implement better protections for foundation piers.

Some of those measures include beefy fenders that push errant ships away from the piers, groups of pilings called “dolphins” that act as safety rings around foundations, or even just mounds of rock and earth.

“Why wasn’t there a retrofit for the Key Bridge? Especially when you see that the nearby Delaware Memorial Bridge is undergoing a vessel collision protection upgrade right now?” Bell said. “There should have been planning for this, given the size of vessels that were going by.”

Donald Dusenberry, a Massachusetts-based longtime forensic structural engineer who has focused on preventing bridge collapses, said from photos he’s seen of the Key Bridge, it did not appear to have much of a defensive system around its piers.

“It looks like there was some cushioning in the form of wooden or some other kind of barrier, but it pretty much looks like it was attached to the pile cap at the bottom of the piers,” he said. “And that doesn’t absorb much energy.”

Dusenberry, like Bell, said that until the National Transportation Safety Board finalizes its investigation into the disaster, it’s impossible to say with any certainty what may have lessened the impact of the ship. But in general, he said, a strong protective structure built far enough around the foundation pier to prevent a ship’s bow from striking the bridge was needed.

Rachel Sangree, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said she understood both why many people were stunned at video of the Key Bridge’s collapse, and why the focus on what went wrong is on protecting the bridge’s foundation piers.

But she underscored that the collapse was the result of an as-yet understood power failure on the cargo ship that sent it off course just as it approached the foundation of the bridge.

“I mean, that’s just terrible, terrible timing,” Sangree said. “It’s a horrible accident.”

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington. Editing by Donna Bryson and Alistair Bell)


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Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil isn’t ‘Made in USA,’ lawsuit claims

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The maker of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil is being sued in a proposed class action claiming it misleads consumers by saying the foil is “Made in USA” though much of the raw material and manufacturing comes from elsewhere.

According to a complaint on Wednesday night, substantially all bauxite that Reynolds Consumer Products uses in its foil comes from outside the United States, which accounts for only a small percentage of global production of the ore.

The complaint filed in Manhattan federal court also says a substantial amount of the bauxite is transformed into alumina and then into aluminum outside the United States.

This makes Reynolds’ “Foil Made in USA” claim on its packaging false and misleading to reasonable consumers, because they “value buying products which are made in America” and therefore would pay more, the complaint said.

Reynolds, based in Lake Forest, Illinois, declined to comment, saying it does not discuss pending litigation.

The lawsuit is led by Anaya Washington of Bronx, New York, and seeks at least $5 million of damages for New Yorkers who bought Reynolds Wrap foil in the last three years.

Washington said she bought her foil at a Target because she trusted the Reynolds Wrap brand, calling it as familiar as Kleenex and Vaseline, and likes to “buy American.” She said she wouldn’t have done so had she known where her foil came from.

The lawsuit is one of hundreds accusing companies of using insufficiently precise labeling that induces shoppers to pay more, including through appeals to their patriotism.

In 2021, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission adopted a “Made in USA Labeling Rule,” which the complaint cites, to protect businesses and consumers from being misled over product origins.

The case is Washington v Reynolds Consumer Products LLC, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 24-02327.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)


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US changes how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. It’s the first revision in 27 years

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity, an effort that federal officials believe will more accurately count residents who identify as Hispanic and of Middle Eastern and North African heritage.

The revisions to the minimum categories on race and ethnicity, announced Thursday by the Office of Management and Budget, are the latest effort to label and define the people of the United States. This evolving process often reflects changes in social attitudes and immigration, as well as a wish for people in an increasingly diverse society to see themselves in the numbers produced by the federal government.

“You can’t underestimate the emotional impact this has on people,” said Meeta Anand, senior director for Census & Data Equity at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “It’s how we conceive ourselves as a society. … You are seeing a desire for people to want to self-identify and be reflected in data so they can tell their own stories.”

Under the revisions, questions about race and ethnicity that previously were asked separately on forms will be combined into a single question. That will give respondents the option to pick multiple categories at the same time, such as “Black,” “American Indian” and “Hispanic.” Research has shown that large numbers of Hispanic people aren’t sure how to answer the race question when that question is asked separately because they understand race and ethnicity to be similar and they often pick “some other race” or do not answer the question.

A Middle Eastern and North African category will be added to the choices available for questions about race and ethnicity. People descended from places such as Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and Syria had been encouraged to identify as white, but now will have the option of identifying themselves in the new group. Results from the 2020 census, which asked respondents to elaborate on their backgrounds, suggest that 3.5 million residents identify as Middle Eastern and North African.

“It feels good to be seen,” said Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando whose parents are from Iran. “Growing up, my family would check the ‘white’ box because we didn’t know what other box reflected our family. Having representation like that, it feels meaningful.”

The changes also strike from federal forms the words “Negro” and “Far East,” now widely regarded as pejorative, as well as the terms “majority” and “minority,” because they fail to reflect the nation’s complex racial and ethnic diversity, some officials say. The revisions also encourage the collection of detailed race and ethnicity data beyond the minimum standards, such as “Haitian” or “Jamaican” for someone who checks “Black.”

The changes to the standards were hammered out over two years by a group of federal statisticians and bureaucrats who prefer to stay above the political fray. But the revisions have long-term implications for legislative redistricting, civil rights laws, health statistics, and possibly even politics as the number of people categorized as white is reduced.

Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, recently alluded to arguments made by people who allege Democrats are promoting illegal immigration to weaken the power of white people. As president, Trump unsuccessfully tried to disqualify people who were in the United States illegally from being included in the 2020 census.

Momentum for changing the race and ethnicity categories grew during the Obama administration in the mid-2010s, but was halted after Trump became president in 2017. It was revived after Democratic President Joe Biden took office in 2021.

The changes will be reflected in data collection, forms, surveys and the once-a-decade census questionnaires put out by the federal government, as well as in state governments and the private sector because businesses, universities and other groups usually follow Washington’s lead. Federal agencies have 18 months to submit a plan on how they will put the changes in place.

The first federal standards on race and ethnicity were produced in 1977 to provide consistent data across agencies and come up with figures that could help enforce civil rights laws. They were last updated in 1997 when five minimum race categories were delineated — American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander and white; respondents could pick more than one race. The minimum ethnic categories were grouped separately as not Hispanic or Hispanic or Latino.

The interagency group that worked on the latest revisions noted that categories are sociopolitical constructs, and race and ethnicity are not defined biologically or genetically.

Racial and ethnic categories used by the U.S. government reflect their times.

In 1820, the category “Free Colored People” was added to the decennial census to reflect the increase in free Black people. In 1850, the term “Mulatto” was added to the census to capture people of mixed heritage. American Indians were not explicitly counted in the census until 1860. Following years of immigration from China, “Chinese” was included in the 1870 census. There was not a formal question about Hispanic origin until the 1980 census.

Not everyone is on board with the latest revisions.

Some Afro Latinos feel that combining the race and ethnicity question will reduce their numbers and representation in the data, though previous research by the U.S. Census Bureau did not find significant differences among Afro Latino responses when the questions were asked separately or together.

Mozelle Ortiz, for instance, is of mixed Afro Puerto Rican descent. She feels the changes could eliminate that identity, even though people can choose more than one answer once the race and ethnicity questions are combined.

“My entire lineage, that of my Black Puerto Rican grandmother’s and all other non-white Spanish speaking peoples, will be erased,” Ortiz wrote the interagency group.

Others are unhappy about how some groups of people such as Armenians or Arabs from Sudan and Somalia were not included in the examples used to define people of Middle Eastern or North African background.

Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, said that while she was “incredibly happy” with the new category, that enthusiasm was tempered by the omissions.

“It is not reflective of the racial diversity of our community,” Berry said. “And it’s wrong.”

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Follow Mike Schneider on X, formerly known as Twitter: @MikeSchneiderAP


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US economic growth for last quarter is revised up slightly to a healthy 3.4% annual rate

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew at a solid 3.4% annual pace from October through December, the government said Thursday in an upgrade from its previous estimate. The government had previously estimated that the economy expanded at a 3.2% rate last quarter.

The Commerce Department’s revised measure of the nation’s gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — confirmed that the economy decelerated from its sizzling 4.9% rate of expansion in the July-September quarter.

But last quarter’s growth was still a solid performance, coming in the face of higher interest rates and powered by growing consumer spending, exports and business investment in buildings and software. It marked the sixth straight quarter in which the economy has grown at an annual rate above 2%.

For all of 2023, the U.S. economy — the world’s biggest — grew 2.5%, up from 1.9% in 2022. In the current January-March quarter, the economy is believed to be growing at a slower but still decent 2.1% annual rate, according to a forecasting model issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Thursday’s GDP report also suggested that inflation pressures were continuing to ease. The Federal Reserve’s favored measure of prices — called the personal consumption expenditures price index — rose at a 1.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter. That was down from 2.6% in the third quarter, and it was the smallest rise since 2020, when COVID-19 triggered a recession and sent prices falling.

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation amounted to 2% from October through December, unchanged from the third quarter.

The economy’s resilience over the past two years has repeatedly defied predictions that the ever-higher borrowing rates the Fed engineered to fight inflation would lead to waves of layoffs and probably a recession. Beginning in March 2022, the Fed jacked up its benchmark rate 11 times, to a 23-year high, making borrowing much more expensive for businesses and households.

Yet the economy has kept growing, and employers have kept hiring — at a robust average of 251,000 added jobs a month last year and 265,000 a month from December through February.

At the same time, inflation has steadily cooled: After peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, it has dropped to 3.2%, though it remains above the Fed’s 2% target. The combination of sturdy growth and easing inflation has raised hopes that the Fed can manage to achieve a “soft landing” by fully conquering inflation without triggering a recession.

Thursday’s report was the Commerce Department’s third and final estimate of fourth-quarter GDP growth. It will release its first estimate of January-March growth on April 25.


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Biden fundraiser with Obama and Clinton nets a record high $25 million, the campaign says

WASHINGTON (AP) — A fundraiser for President Joe Biden on Thursday in New York City that also stars Barack Obama and Bill Clinton is raising a whopping $25 million, setting a record for the biggest haul for a political event, his campaign said.

The eye-popping amount was a major show of Democratic support for Biden at a time of persistently low poll numbers. The president will test the power of the campaign cash as he faces off with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has already proved with his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton that he didn’t need to raise the most money to seize the presidency.

The Radio City Music Hall event will be a gilded exclamation mark on a recent burst of presidential campaign travel. Biden has visited several political battlegrounds in the three weeks since his State of the Union address served as a rallying cry for his reelection bid. The event also brings together more than three decades of Democratic leadership.

The hourslong event has different tiers of access depending on donors’ generosity. The centerpiece is an onstage conversation with the three presidents, moderated by late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert. There’s also a lineup of musical performers — Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Lea Michele — that will be hosted by actress Mindy Kaling. Thousands are expected, and tickets are as low as $225.

More money gets donors more intimate time with the presidents. A photo with all three is $100,000. A donation of $250,000 earns donors access to one reception, and $500,000 gets them into an even more exclusive gathering.

“But the party doesn’t stop there,” according to the campaign. First lady Jill Biden and DJ D-Nice are hosting an after-party at Radio City Music Hall with 500 guests.

Obama and Clinton are helping Biden expand his already significant cash advantage over Trump. Biden had $155 million in cash on hand through the end of February, compared with $37 million for Trump and his Save America political action committee.

The $25 million tally for the New York City event Thursday includes money from supporters who handed over cash in the weeks ahead of the fundraiser for a chance to attend. It’s raising $5 million more than Trump raised during February.

“This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built,” said campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Unlike our opponent, every dollar we’re raising is going to reach the voters who will decide this election — communicating the president’s historic record, his vision for the future and laying plain the stakes of this election.”

Trump has kept a low profile in recent weeks, partially because of courtroom appearances for various legal cases, the bills for which he’s paying with funds from donors. He is also expected to be in the area on Thursday, attending the Long Island wake of a New York City police officer who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Queens.

His next political rally is scheduled for Tuesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Some Republican leaders have become concerned that his campaign doesn’t have the infrastructure ready for a general election battle with Biden.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, dismissed the import of Biden’s Thursday fundraiser.

“Crooked Joe is so mentally deficient that he needs to trot out some retreads like Clinton and Obama,” he said.

Leon Panetta, who served in top positions under Clinton and Obama, described the fundraiser as an important moment for Biden’s campaign.

“What it does, first and foremost, is to broaden and reinforce the support of all Democrats,” he said.

Panetta said Clinton and Obama, both known as effective political communicators, could help Biden develop a better pitch for his reelection.

“I can’t think of two people who would be better at putting together that kind of message,” he said.

Obama’s attendance on Thursday is a reminder of his role in boosting Biden’s reelection. A joint fundraiser with Biden and Obama raised nearly $3 million in December. And people who served in the Obama administration are also raising money for Biden, scheduling their own event on April 11.

“Consider what you’ll donate this cycle and do it now,” said an email that went out to a network of people. “Early money is far more valuable to the campaign.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.


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