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NEW YORK (AP) — Another climb for oil prices sent the U.S. stock market sharply lower, as hopes collapsed for a possible cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 fell 1.5% Friday to close its fourth straight losing week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2%. The losses deepened after oil prices erased an early loss and accelerated in the afternoon. Treasury yields jumped as traders speculated the Fed won’t be able to cut rates this year because of how high oil prices have climbed.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.NEW YORK (AP) — Another rise for oil prices shook stock markets on Friday, as hopes withered on Wall Street for a possible cut to interest rates this year by the Federal Reserve because of the war with Iran.The S&P 500 fell 1.5% and is heading for a fourth straight losing week, its longest such streak in a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 470 points, or 1%, with an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 2% lower.The market's losses deepened after oil prices shook off an early dip and accelerated higher in the afternoon. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.3% to settle at $112.19 per barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude gained 2.3% to $98.32 per barrel.Stocks also bent under the weight of leaping yields in the bond market. Higher yields will make mortgage rates and other borrowing more expensive for U.S. households and companies, slowing the economy, and grind down on prices for all kinds of investments. Treasury yields have been jumping since the war began because it could cause a long-term spike in oil and natural gas prices that drives up inflation.Worries have gotten so high that traders have canceled nearly all their bets that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates this year, according to data from CME Group. Some even think the Fed could raise rates in 2026, which was a nearly unthinkable scenario before the war began.“I think it would be market shaking,” Ann Miletti, head of equity investments at Allspring Global Investments, said about a rate hike. But she also said that if oil prices stay high for a long time, they would likely drag so much on the economy that the Fed would not consider raising rates.Lower interest rates would give the economy and investment prices a boost, and they're something President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for. Before the war, traders were betting heavily that the Fed would cut rates at least twice this year.But lower rates risk worsening inflation. And investors now see little room for central banks worldwide to cut interest rates to help their economies. Besides the Federal Reserve, central banks in Europe, Japan and the United Kingdom also held their interest rates steady this past week.The price of Brent crude has zigzagged sharply on its way from roughly $70 per barrel before the war began to as high as $119.50 this week. Big swings have struck hour to hour as financial markets try to handicap how long the war will last and how much damage it will do to oil and gas production in the Persian Gulf.The U.S. stock market has a history of bouncing back relatively quickly from past conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, as long as oil prices don't stay too high for too long. Oil prices aren't at a red-flag point yet, Miletti said, but “we're getting close if the duration is long enough.”“If three months from now, we're in a similar situation, not only myself but a lot of other investors will be much more cautious,” she said. While companies can adjust to gradual rises in oil prices, Miletti said they're less able to quickly change their business models after a sudden spike becomes a new normal.On Wall Street, Super Micro Computer sank 31.6% and helped drag the U.S. stock market lower. The U.S. government accused a senior vice president of the company and two others affiliated with it of conspiring to smuggle billions of dollars of computer servers containing advanced Nvidia chips to China.The company said it has been cooperating with the investigation and is not a defendant in the indictment. It placed its two accused employees on administrative leave and terminated its relationship with an accused contractor.Roughly four out every five stocks in the S&P 500 fell in a broad wipeout. Stocks of smaller companies, which can feel the pinch of higher interest rates more than their bigger rivals, led the way lower. The Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks fell a market-leading 2.5%.Among the few winners was FedEx, which rose 1.1% after delivering a much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped to 4.39% from 4.25% late Thursday and from just 3.97% before the war started. That's a significant move for the bond market.The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do, leaped to 3.89% from 3.79% late Thursday and is near its highest level since the summer.Outside of Wall Street, indexes fell sharply in Europe following their wipeouts on Thursday. Indexes also sank in China, though South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3%.___AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been designated a “priority target” by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as federal prosecutors in New York probe his alleged ties to drug traffickers, according to people familiar with the matter and records seen by The Associated Press.DEA records show Petro has surfaced in multiple investigations dating to 2022, many based on interviews with confidential informants. The alleged crimes the DEA has investigated include his possible dealings with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and a scheme to leverage his “total peace” plan to benefit prominent traffickers who contributed to his presidential campaign. The records also suggest the use of law enforcement to smuggle cocaine and fentanyl through Colombian ports.The “priority target” label is reserved for suspects DEA deems to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade.Petro denied all ties to drug traffickers and maintained he never accepted their funds during his campaign. Writing on X Friday, he argued that U.S. legal proceedings would ultimately dismantle accusations from the Colombian far right, a group he claims is actually the one involved with traffickers.Colombia’s Embassy in Washington downplayed what it called “unverified” and anonymous reports of preliminary law enforcement investigations against Petro.“The reported insinuations have no legal or factual basis,” the embassy said in a statement.The inquiryIn recent months, prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan have been questioning drug traffickers about their ties to Petro and specifically about allegations the Colombian president’s representatives solicited bribes to block their extradition to the United States, according to a person who wasn't authorized to discuss the ongoing inquiry and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.The person said it wasn’t clear whether federal prosecutors have implicated Petro in any crime.The investigation is focusing at least in part on allegations that representatives of Petro solicited bribes from drug traffickers at the Colombian jail La Picota in exchange for a promise that they not be extradited to the U.S., one of the people said.Petro has consistently denied allegations of drug trafficking, particularly after Trump labeled him an “illegal drug leader” and the Treasury Department sanctioned him in late 2025 for alleged ties to the trade without offering evidence.U.S. federal prosecutors declined to comment. The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The federal inquiry was reported earlier Friday by The New York Times.Petro came under scrutiny through the course of drug trafficking investigations by New York authorities that led them to identify him as a subject, according to another person familiar with the matter.The inquiries into Petro are in the early stages, and it is not clear whether they will result in charges, this person said, adding the White House has had no role in the investigations.Family members under scrutinyPetro, a former rebel leader, soared into office promising to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels and reallocate state resources to addressing entrenched poverty.A leftist politician known for winding sometimes incoherent speeches, he has regularly criticized the Trump administration over its support for Israel, bombing of drug boats in the Caribbean and likened the White House migration crackdown to “Nazi” tactics.After one such outburst, at a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters in New York, Trump retaliated by revoking Petro’s U.S. visa. He also briefly slapped high tariffs on Colombia over Petro’s refusal to accept deportation flights from the United States.But more recently the two have shown signs of getting along. After a meeting at the White House in February, Trump described Petro as “terrific.”Colombian authorities have for years been investigating members of Petro’s family for possible criminal acts.His son, Nicolás Petro, was charged in 2023 with soliciting illegal campaign contributions from a convicted drug trafficker to fund a lavish lifestyle of expensive cars and homes. The younger Petro has pleaded not guilty and his father has said none of the money was used to fund his campaign.The president’s brother, Juan Fernando Petro, has also been implicated in secret negotiations that allegedly took place with imprisoned drug traffickers to shield them from extradition to the U.S. in exchange for their disarmament.Politics and cocainePolitics in Colombia have long been tainted by cocaine, of which it is the world’s largest supplier. In the 1980s, drug lord Pablo Escobar was elected to the country’s Congress with the support of one of Colombia’s most traditional parties. A decade later, his rivals from the Cali cartel flooded the presidential campaign of Ernesto Samper with illegal donations.The now defunct urban guerrilla group Petro belonged to, the 19th of April Movement, has long been suspected of taking money from Escobar’s Medellin cartels as part of its deadly siege of the Supreme Court in 1985. Petro did not participate in the attack, which left several guerrillas and around half the high court’s magistrates dead. Leaders of the group have always denied any links to the cartel.___Goodman reported from Miami. Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Mike Sisak contributed from New York and Astrid Suárez from Bogotá, Colombia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds.Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S.“This is what climate change looks like in real time: extremes pushing beyond the bounds we once thought possible,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. “What used to be unprecedented events are now recurring features of a warming world.”March's heat would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, according to a report Friday by World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists who study the causes of extreme weather events.More than a dozen scientists, meteorologists and disaster experts queried by The Associated Press put the March heat wave in a kind of ultra-extreme classification with such events as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2022 Pakistan floods and killer hurricanes Helene, Harvey and Sandy.The area of the U.S. being hit by extreme weather in the past five years has doubled from 20 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Extremes Index, which includes various types of wild weather, such as heat and cold waves, downpours and drought.The United States is breaking 77% more hot weather records now than in the 1970s and 19% more than the 2010s, according to an AP analysis of NOAA records. In the United States, the number and average cost of inflation-adjusted billion-dollar weather disasters in the last couple years is twice as high as just 10 years ago and nearly four times higher than 30 years ago, according to records kept by NOAA and Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and communicators who research and report on climate change.Trying to keep up with extremes and failing“It’s really hard to even keep up with how extreme our extremes are becoming,” said Climate Central Chief Meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky. “It’s changing our risk, it’s change our relationship with weather, it’s putting more people in risky situations and at times we’re not used to. So yes, we are pushing extremes to new levels across all different types of weather.”For government officials who have to deal with disaster it's been a huge problem.Craig Fugate, who directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2017, said he saw extremes increasing.“We were operating outside the historical playbook more and more. Flood maps, surge models, heat records — events kept showing up outside the envelope we built systems around. That’s just what we saw,” Fugate said via email.He added: “We built communities on about 100 years of past weather and assumed that was a good guide going forward. That assumption is starting to break. And the clearest signal isn’t the science debate. It’s insurers walking away.”‘Virtually impossible’ without climate changeClimate scientists at World Weather Attribution did a flash analysis — which is not peer-reviewed yet — of whether climate change was a factor in this Southwest heat wave. They compared this week's expected temperatures to what's been observed in the area in March since 1900 and computer models of a world with climate change. They found that “events as warm as in March 2026 would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.”That warming, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, added between 4.7 degrees to 7.2 degrees F (2.6 to 4 degrees C) to the temperatures being felt, the report found.“What we can very confidently say is that human-caused warming has increased the temperatures that we’re seeing as a result of this heat dome, and it’s going to be pushing those temperatures from what would have been very uncomfortable into potentially dangerous,” said report co-author Clair Barnes, an Imperial College of London attribution scientist.Examples abound of high heat and extreme weatherThe Southwest heat wave is solidly in the category of “giant events,” with temperatures up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (16.7 degrees Celsius) above normal, said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field.He listed five others in the last six years: a 2020 Siberia heat wave, the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave that had British Columbia warmer than Death Valley, the summer of 2022 in North America, China and Europe, a 2023 western Mediterranean heat wave and a 2023 South Asian heat wave with high humidity.And that doesn't include the East Antarctica heat wave of 2022 when temperatures were 81 degrees (45 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal. That's the biggest anomaly recorded, said weather historian Chris Burt, author of the book “Extreme Weather.”Worsening wild weather influenced by climate change isn't just superhot days, but includes deadly hurricanes, droughts and downpours, scientists told AP.Devastating floods hit West Africa in 2022 and again in 2024. Iran is in the midst of a six-year drought. And the deadly Typhoon Haiyan hitting the Philippines in 2013 shocked the world.Superstorm Sandy, which in 2012 flooded New York City and neighbors, had tropical storm-force winds that covered an area nearly one-fifth the area of the contiguous United States. It spawned 12-foot seas over 1.4 million square miles, about half the size of the U.S., with energy equivalent to five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, said Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters.And don't forget wildfires that are worsened by heat and drought, so recent extremes should include 2025's Palisades and Eaton wildfires, which were the costliest weather disaster in the United States last year, said Climate Central meteorologist and economist Adam Smith.“This is due to climate change, that we see more extreme events, and more intense ones and have so many records being broken,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College of London climate scientist who coordinates World Weather Attribution.___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.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — ABC has scrubbed the upcoming season of “The Bachelorette,” starring Taylor Frankie Paul, three days before its planned premiere, citing a newly released video from 2023 in which she appears to punch, kick and throw chairs at her former partner as her young daughter watched and cried.Thursday's cancellation of the already filmed 22nd season of the reality show is unprecedented. While ABC parent company Disney cited the older video, the move comes amid a current domestic violence investigation involving Paul and Dakota Mortensen, father to a son who is the youngest of her three children.“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” a statement from Disney Entertainment Television said.A Paul representative responded that she has been abused for years while remaining silent about it.Before her “Bachelorette” casting, Paul had already become a reality star through “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” whose production is paused.In 2023 video published by TMZ Thursday, Mortensen is apparently trying to stave off Paul with one hand while he shoots phone video. She is shown punching him, kicking him then throwing three chairs at him while repeatedly screaming “You did this!"“The only thing you know how to do is hurt me,” Mortensen says, while repeatedly pleading with Paul and reminding her that her daughter was watching. A child can be heard sobbing, screaming and shouting “mommy!” Paul's daughter would have been about 5 at the time.The video was consistent with Paul's arrest in 2023, when she was charged with aggravated assault and other offenses, including domestic violence in the presence of a child. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge; the other counts were dismissed.A spokesman for Paul said in a statement Thursday that she is “very grateful for ABC’s support as she prioritizes her family’s safety and security. After years of silently suffering extensive mental and physical abuse as well as threats of retaliation, Taylor is finally gaining the strength to face her accuser and taking steps to ensure that she and her children are protected from any further harm.”The statement said “Taylor has remained silent out of fear of further abuse, retaliation, and public shaming” and that she is now “exploring all of her options, seeking support, and preparing to own and share her story.”Mortensen denied wrongdoing.“As anyone who has seen the video will understand, this is a deeply upsetting situation. I am, unfortunately, used to these baseless claims about me and our relationship, which I categorically deny. I am focusing on our son and his safety, and hope that Taylor will do the same,” his statement said.A police spokesperson in Draper City, Utah, told People magazine earlier this week that there was an open domestic violence investigation of Paul and Mortensen, and that both have made allegations.Mortensen's representatives didn't immediately answer requests for comment.ABC will air an “American Idol” rerun Sunday instead.Paul was promoting “The Bachelorette” as recently as Wednesday on “Good Morning America” and on the red carpet before Sunday’s Oscars.She was an unusual choice to helm “The Bachelorette,” the reality TV institution that started in 2003. Most leads are cast from previous runners-up from “The Bachelor.”Her selection instead offered synergy with “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” on Hulu, also owned by Disney. In a statement confirming her “Bachelorette” casting in October, ABC credited Paul with “igniting ‘MomTok’ and going viral for pulling back the curtain on Salt Lake’s soft-swinging scene.”Paul became known as an influencer in the #MomTok community, a group of women from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sharing their lives on TikTok. She made news when she announced, in 2022, that she had “stepped out” of an agreement with her husband on relationships with other couples and they were getting divorced.Season 4 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” was released last week. Filming of Season 5 has been put on pause.“It was a decision that all of us girls came up with,” Paul’s co-star Mikayla Matthews said Wednesday on Instagram. “We didn’t feel comfortable filming with everything that was happening.”Paul posted on Instagram in December that filming had wrapped on “The Bachelorette."Her casting was essentially an experiment gone wrong, said Kate Casey, a former crisis communications specialist who has covered unscripted television in more than 1,500 episodes of her podcast “Reality Life with Kate Casey.”“I think they were trying to shake things up, and it makes sense because the ecosystem is saturated with dating shows like ‘F-Boy Island’ and ‘Love Island’ that push the boundaries and ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ historically have been saccharine,” said Casey.Casey says network executives probably believed casting Paul would also tap into her 6.1 million-strong TikTok following.“The thinking was probably, ‘We’re going to get a new audience’ and the new audience is really the most coveted in all of entertainment,” she said.___Rancilio reported from Detroit.

Within hours of explosive sexual abuse allegations against labor leader César Chavez, officials at a California university took swift action: First, a black cloth over a campus statue of Chavez, followed by a plywood box hiding it from public view. Soon, officials said, it will be taken down.The statue at California State University, Fresno, is one of scores of monuments, city streets and elementary schools across the nation that honor Chavez 's name and his labor movement legacy. The Associated Press identified more than 130 locations or objects in at least 19 states named after Chavez, including libraries, boulevards, community centers and public parks.Overnight, the name has become more of a stain. Some of the institutions and local governments overseeing sites bearing Chavez's name have already started the process of erasing it. In Denver, city workers took down a bronze bust of Chavez in a park named after him. The city's mayor said the park would be renamed.Officials there and elsewhere also moved to rename César Chavez Day, a federally proclaimed holiday on March 31, his birthday. Many planned celebrations this month have been canceled.The allegations that Chavez sexually abused girls and women, including fellow movement leader Dolores Huerta, “call for our full attention and moral reckoning by removing his statue from our campus," said Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, president of California State University, Fresno. It's not clear how long that will take.It’s also not clear what will happen to the César E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, California. It’s where Chavez and his wife, Helen, are buried. It includes the office where some of the reported abuse took place.Brian Hughes, of Vancouver, Canada, was among the monument’s visitors Thursday morning. The stop was planned for the trip weeks ago.“Now it’s difficult reconciling the inspirational side of his life and the stories with these revelations,” Hughes said.A push for honoring Huerta insteadAt the Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University on Thursday, student Luca Broggi Hendryx recalled hearing stories as a child about Chavez and idolizing him. Now he says the school needs to separate itself from Chavez by changing the student center’s name.“When I first started coming here it made total sense: He was seen as an icon for the Latino civil rights movement,” Hendryx said. “So it was almost a proud thing to have a building named after Cesar Chavez. But now it feels the opposite.”In cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Portland, and Albuquerque officials said they would look at renaming landmarks such as buildings, streets and schools.“We have a duty to honor the dignity of the survivors and move forward in a way that reflects our values,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement. She urged renaming César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day.Denver for now will celebrate the holiday as Sí, Se Puede Day, which translates into the farmworkers movement rallying cry — Yes We Can.Mayor Mike Johnston said Denver would "not let the sins of one man set back the commitment of a community who has fought for decades to deliver on the fundamental belief that everyone is entitled to justice.”Some called for Chavez’s namesake places to be renamed for Huerta. The sign at Denver's Cesar Chavez park was covered with a tarp Thursday, and someone had placed a handmade sign over it that said, “Dolores Huerta Park”.The New York Times first reported Wednesday that it found credible evidence that Chavez groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the movement. One of his victims, in fact, partly felt compelled to come forward after a recent proposal to name a street near her home for Chavez.Huerta, who was a labor legend in her own right and co-founded in 1962 with Chavez the National Farm Workers Association — which became the United Farm Workers of America — revealed to the newspaper that she was a victim of abuse by him in her 30s.When it comes to changing names of sites or events honoring Chavez, Teresa Romero, United Farm Workers president, said, “Everybody’s going to have to make their own decisions. I respect the victims, I respect the thousands of people who worked with the union throughout the years as volunteers, and that is not going to change.”Dozens of schools and a Navy cargo shipAmong the locations and objects bearing Chavez’s name is a U.S. Navy cargo ship commemorating his service during World War II and the national monument established in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama on a 187-acre site in Central California where Chavez once lived and worked.Most of the locations are in California but they include sites in at least 19 states, from New York and Maryland to Oklahoma, the Great Lakes Region and Washington state.About half are schools, primarily in California. In Pueblo, Colorado, Chavez shares the name of a school with Huerta.Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee on Thursday said he would ask the Pentagon to remove Chavez’s name from the Navy ship. “We are on it, Congressman” Pentagon spokesperson Sam Parnell said in a social media post.Altering a national monument, such as changing a name, needs an act of Congress or action by the president.There have been previous efforts to change names for government sites and institutions on a broad scale.During the civil rights backlash that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Congress ordered a nationwide review of military assets named after Confederate leaders. Nine Army bases were renamed, only to have the original names restored under President Donald Trump’s administration last year after the army found other people with the same names to honor.Under former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland federal officials renamed hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical features with racist and misogynistic terms. It capped a yearlong process to remove the offensive word “squaw” from geographic names across the country.Artist Paula Castillo, who created a sculpture in Albuquerque in 2010 as a tribute to Chavez, questioned whether people should think more about monuments to shared values.“The public work in Albuquerque is intended to make collective labor and lived experience visible in civic space, rather than isolate a single figure,” she said. “This allows it to continue holding meaning for communities even as new information forces a more honest reckoning with the past.”___Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Tang reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Terry Chea in San Francisco, Haven Daley in Keene, California, Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles, and Thomas Peipert and Colleen Slevin in Denver also contributed to this story.

Federal judges read profane death threats and praised U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ comments condemning personal criticism of judges during an unusual forum on Thursday to highlight rising attacks on the judiciary.None of the four judges singled out President Donald Trump or members of his administration, who have railed against judges that have ruled against them. One of the judges on the panel, U.S. District Judge Mark Norris in Tennessee, was appointed by the president.He recalled receiving pizza deliveries at his rural home one night for Daniel Anderl, the slain son of a federal judge in New Jersey. Dozens of judges have had unsolicited pizzas delivered to their homes, often in Anderl’s name.Norris said such threats have become routine against judges.Thursday’s event was sponsored by Speak up for Justice, a nonpartisan group supporting an independent judiciary. The group held a similar event last year — both of them unusual because judges mostly limit their comments to the courtroom and written decisions. But more judges have recently begun talking about personal threats and attacks.The U.S. Marshals Service, responsible for protecting judges, reported 564 threats in the government fiscal year that ended in September, up from the year before. On Tuesday, Roberts warned that personal criticism of federal judges is dangerous and “it’s got to stop.”On Thursday, Norris and the other panelists pushed back on criticism that their rulings reflect the political affiliations of the presidents who appointed them.“I sit with four other judges who were appointed by President Trump, and they are phenomenal judges,” said U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who sits in Washington.She would trust them to handle any case, she added, though they wouldn’t always reach the same decision.Last month, Reyes used part of a court hearing to read email and social media death threats she received following her ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending temporary immigration protections for Haitians living in the United States. She read the threats again during the forum.U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee read messages that threatened to kill her at home. One of the messages led to an indictment, she said.“I think everybody needs to speak up,” she said. “It’s not just the judges who need to speak up.”Roberts’ comments came two days after Trump called a federal judge who ruled against the administration “wacky, nasty, crooked and totally out of control.” But the chief justice, too, did not single out the president.U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court said Roberts had helped open up a discussion about the threats. Court recalled a threat against her children years ago that led her and her husband to inform their school.She said she’s also seen a rise in “veiled threats” in court filings by attorneys.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It was Dolores Huerta who coined the slogan “Sí, se puede” in 1972 when bringing together farmworkers in Arizona to fight a law that prohibited boycotts and strikes.Told it would be impossible to organize in the Southwestern state, her three-word Spanish-language response — which translates as “Yes, it can be done” — was simple, defiant and emblematic. Huerta's resolve cemented her place in history as one of the nation's most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists.Former President Barack Obama would later credit her for the phrase that was a rallying cry in his 2008 campaign in a slightly modified translation, “Yes, we can.”As co-founder of what eventually became the United Farm Workers union, Huerta has been the face of a movement that for decades aimed to empower the lives of workers through higher wages, health benefits, pensions and improved safety.At nearly 96, she still uses her platform to advocate for marginalized groups and fight discrimination.So it shocked the world Wednesday when Huerta revealed that she was sexually abused by the movement's co-founder, César Chavez, leading to the birth of two children, a secret she kept for 60 years.Now some are calling for Huerta's name to replace Chavez's on the plethora of government buildings, schools, monuments and streets that bear his name across the country.Activist rootsThe details of Huerta's life and rise to activism have been told again and again over the decades through interviews and documentaries, during award ceremonies and on historic markers in her honor.She was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner, union activist and state lawmaker. After her parents divorced, her mother took Huerta and her two brothers to California.The farm-rich San Joaquin Valley where Huerta grew up was a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese and Chinese working families. Her mother encouraged the cultural diversity, while her independence, entrepreneurial spirit and activism further helped form Huerta's own aspirations.Huerta was a young, energetic elementary school teacher when she decided to answer a calling that would set her on an incredible path. Frustrated by her students' poor living conditions, she thought she could do more by organizing farmworkers than trying to teach their hungry children.She met Chavez in the 1950s through her early work with a Latino civil rights group in Stockton, south of Sacramento. Wanting to focus more on the plight of farmworkers, in 1962 they started the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers a few years later. She was a key leader and negotiator for the union.Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, acknowledging her commitment to the cause and toughness when it came to negotiations.Huerta reaffirmed that commitment in a statement Wednesday, saying she told no one about Chavez's abuse for decades in order to protect the movement she had dedicated her life to.“I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farm workers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights,” she said.A long legacyHuerta has never been afraid of going toe-to-toe with lobbyists or growers. Nor was she afraid of law enforcement — she was jailed more than 20 times for demonstrating and was even seriously injured while protesting in 1988.After a long recovery, Huerta shifted focus and hit the road to campaign for women's rights and encourage Latinas to run for office.She continues marching and speaking in cities across the country on race, poverty and women’s issues on behalf of her California-based Dolores Huerta Foundation. She campaigned for Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he considers her a close friend.Huerta’s work over the decades earned her a number of accolades including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. When Obama presented the award in 2012, he praised her as a tenacious leader and joked that he had stolen her slogan for his campaign.Huerta also has a spot in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, having been the first Latina to be inducted, and has received nine honorary doctorates from U.S. universities.Schools are named in her honor in California, Texas and Colorado. Her image graces many murals, and there are also Dolores Huerta streets — including an avenue in Albuquerque where part is named for her and part for Chavez.People on social media already are calling for the entire road to be named for Huerta, as members of Congress and state officials commend her and the other women for coming forward. They say no one should have to suffer in silence to protect a man or a movement.“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering they’ve endured over decades,” said U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico. “Thank you for showing us what real strength is.”

BEIRUT (AP) — Normally, Lilian Jamaan would have been shopping for clothes for her daughter and buying meat and sweets in preparation for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan.But now, “there’s no joy for Eid or for Ramadan or for anything,” Jamaan said by phone from a school-turned-shelter in the Lebanese city of Sidon, where she’s been displaced with her family.“Everything is difficult,” she said.As the Islamic holy month of Ramadan draws to an end and Muslims worldwide prepare for the typically joyous holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Lebanon has crossed a grim milestone. Israel’s strikes have displaced more than 1 million people in the country, according to the Lebanese government.Lebanon’s health ministry said 968 people were killed by the Israeli strikes in the country since the renewal of hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.The Iran-backed Hezbollah entered the wider Iran war by firing rockets at Israel. That led to the heavy Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, driving many from their homes.Children wishing to spend Eid at home“A lot of the kids that I at least spoke to, their biggest wish was to just spend Eid at home,” said Basma Alloush, a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee. “Eid is a time where all families come together, people celebrate with their relatives, and it usually brings a lot of peace and joy to families. ... It could be that many of them just spend Eid in shelters, in displacement.”The suffering has played out during Ramadan with scenes of people forced to flee their homes, reduced to sleeping in tents on the streets or in their cars. Some secured coveted spots in schools and other locations turned into shelters or stayed with relatives; many others scrambled to find makeshift arrangements. Only about 130,000 are in shelters.For Jamaan, the harsh conditions in displacement meant she could no longer observe many aspects of Ramadan — a time for fasting, increased worship and usually festive communal gatherings with loved ones.At home, she said she would fast, pray and read the Quran, the Muslim holy book.Now, she said, she's stopped her fast and would make up for missed days when she returns home. “Some people fast and some are unable to fast; there’s psychological stress and we’re not sleeping well. ... Food is the last thing on my mind, but the circumstances are difficult."She said she and her daughter sleep with others in the school while her husband sleeps in the car. “There’s no stability."She misses her loved ones and her Ramadan routine. “We would break our fast, pray, make and drink coffee and I would go to the neighbors or they would come over after iftar,” the fast-breaking meal, she recalled.Asmahan Taleb, who's also displaced in Sidon, said the run-up to Eid has been marred by hardship.“How can we celebrate Eid when we’re displaced from our homes and our land? Where is the Eid? Where is the happiness?" she said. "It will be Eid when we can return to our homes.”Humanitarian fallout and enduring one crisis after anotherLike many others, this is not Jamaan’s first displacement. Her daughter, she said, was born during an earlier wave of displacement from a round of fighting that was halted with a tenuous ceasefire in November 2024. Israel continued to launch near-daily strikes in Lebanon after the ceasefire that it said aimed to stop Hezbollah from rebuilding.“Lebanon for us is really now the epicenter of the more immediate humanitarian fallout of this broader regional crisis,” said Carl Skau, deputy executive director and chief operating officer of the U.N. World Food Program. “People here have endured crisis after crisis. They’ve been displaced before. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”He said people he met were exhausted and hadn't yet recovered from the last time.“There was this real sense of uncertainty this time. How is this gonna end? When is it gonna end?”And that’s not all that’s different now.“My concern is that the funding is not coming forward like it did last time,” he told The Associated Press. “We know there is less money available. We know there is also competing priorities. ... We will need to make an effort that really donors step up.”As part of its response, WFP has provided more than half million hot meals to displaced people in shelters across Lebanon since March 2.Response efforts and varied needsOnline, many volunteers, organizations and businesses have been sharing various initiatives to make, package and distribute hot meals for iftar and donate essentials from blankets and clothes to formula milk and medications.The needs are varied and ample.“There is a dire need for shelter,” Alloush said. “There was a massive thunderstorm. We’re just thinking about the people that were sleeping outside, sleeping in tents that are not waterproof, sleeping on the mud.”She said IRC has been distributing mattresses, pillows and blankets as well as coloring books.“People don’t have enough clothes. Children fled with no toys or no activities to kind of get their minds off of the war.”Eman Abo Khadra, a hair salon owner in Sidon, said she tried to bring a bit of Eid cheer to some displaced children the way she knows best: giving them haircuts as a gift.“It’s a morale thing. What does a child know about war or no war. … It’s just about planting some joy in their hearts.”But despite her gesture, she felt the toll the tensions are taking on the young.“I was telling them, ‘Come on, clap; be happy; laugh,’ but ... tensions are high,” she said. “People are tired.”Sheltering in Sidon, Alia Ismail said it’s hard to properly observe Ramadan or tap into the Eid joy.“We no longer can fast or buy anything for Ramadan," she said.For Eid, her children tell her “We want clothes; we want to go out; we want sweets,” she said. “I tell them, ‘I can’t get you that. There’s no money.’"In normal times, she said, she would have been cleaning her home, buying clothes, meat and sweets for Eid.“Can you imagine that we are staying in a school corridor?” she said by phone, adding she puts clothes under her head when she sleeps as she has no pillows.Striving to recapture a taste of Ramadan and EidIn a Beirut school sheltering hundreds of people, some tried to recapture a taste of Ramadan's traditions and the lives they left behind. Hallways between classrooms were adorned with decorations. One family placed a small gas burner and some meal packages from charities on a few desks lined up together.At the school, Shaker Araqa lamented how his extended family has been dispersed. “We used to gather. We were in one building. Now, everyone is at a different place."Nabila Hijazi said her children wonder about Eid, adding she'll buy them clothes.“They want to live their lives," she said. “We tell them ‘God Willing, Eid comes and we return to our homes.’”She said she’s been able to observe Ramadan normally at the school and is conscious of how much better her situation is than many others.Back in Sidon, Jamaan said she prays “for God to stop the war, for us to return to our homes and for there to be peace.”___Fam reported from Cairo. Associated Press journalist Mohammed Zaatari in Sidon, Lebanon, contributed to this report___Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Dolores Huerta and the late César Chavez are both labor rights icons credited with leading a movement that pushed growers to negotiate for better wages and working conditions for farmworkers.Their legacies are getting new attention after allegations emerged that Chavez, who died in 1993, sexually abused Huerta and other women and girls. Several celebrations honoring Chavez planned around the country for later this month have been canceled.Chavez and Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which became the United Farm Workers of America a few years later when it merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.The rise of the movement is one of the most important events in U.S. history and is the most important event in U.S. Latino history, said Paul Ortiz, a Cornell University labor history professor. United Farm Workers made the most important sustained changes in the working conditions of agricultural workers in the nation's history, he said.Agricultural workers "from Hawaii to Florida to New York to Southern California had tried to organize to improve their wages and working conditions, literally for centuries, going back to slavery times,” Ortiz said. “And almost every effort failed, some catastrophically.”Chavez and Huerta are credited with efforts that prompted California to pass the first state law recognizing farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining.Both have streets and schools named after them. Several states have designated March 31, Chavez's birthday, as a day to commemorate him, and former President Barack Obama declared it a federal commemorative holiday in 2014.Here's a look at their lives and legacies:César ChavezChavez is known for his early organizing in the fields, a hunger strike, a grape boycott and eventual victory in getting growers to negotiate with farmworkers for better wages and working conditions.Born in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez grew up in a Mexican American family that traveled around California picking lettuce, grapes, cotton and other seasonal crops.Chavez protested poor pay and often-miserable working conditions. There were no toilets in the fields for workers and they had to weed fields with short-handled hoes that forced them to bend over for hours at a time.The farmworker movement lifted worker wages, banned short-handed hoes and established state-mandated clean drinking water and restrooms in the fields, according to a National Park Service document supporting the creation of a national monument in Chavez's honor.In 1966, he led a march that started with a few activists in Delano, California, and ended in Sacramento with 10,000 people, according to Obama's 2014 proclamation. Some 17 million people joined a boycott of grapes, which forced growers to accept some of the first farmworker contracts in history, the proclamation said.Chavez began the first credit union for farmworkers, health clinics, daycare centers and job-training programs, the Cesar Chavez Foundation said on its website.“He was, for his own people, a Moses figure,” then-President Bill Clinton said in 1994 when posthumously awarding Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Chavez died the year before in California at age 66.Dolores HuertaThe labor and civil rights leader secured higher wages, health benefits, pensions and pesticide protections for farmworkers during her decades of organizing and advocacy on their behalf.Now 95, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead negotiator in the workers contract that followed, according to the National Women’s History Museum.A single mother, Huerta gave up a stable teaching career to organize. She was jailed over 20 times for protests and seriously injured in 1988 while demonstrating. She later championed women’s rights, encouraged Latinas to run for office and founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation to combat discrimination, poverty and inequality.She coined the iconic slogan “Sí, se puede” — meaning “Yes, we can” -- in 1972 while rallying Arizona farmworkers against a law banning boycotts and strikes. She defied claims it was impossible to organize there.Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and in 1993 became the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.___Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan and Fernanda Figueroa contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government's top intelligence official told lawmakers Wednesday that Iran's regime "appears to be intact but largely degraded” yet repeatedly dodged questions about whether President Donald Trump had been warned about the fallout from the weeks-old war, including Iran's attacks on Gulf nations and its effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz.Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, also stated in prepared remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee that U.S. attacks on Iran last year had “obliterated” Iran's nuclear program and that there had been no effort since then to rebuild that capability.The statement was notable given Trump's repeated assertions that a war with Iran was necessary to head off what he said was an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic. Gabbard pointedly said that conclusion was the president's alone to draw as she declined to directly answer whether the intelligence community had likewise assessed that Iran's nuclear system presented an imminent risk to the United States.“It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said at one point.Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia shot back: “It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.”The testimony came at the first of two congressional hearings held each year to offer the public a glimpse into the largely secret operations of the government's intelligence agencies and the threats they confront.The hearings this week take place at a time of scrutiny over the war with Iran and heightened concerns about terrorism at home after recent attacks at a Michigan synagogue and a Virginia university. Wednesday's hearing also came a day after the resignation of Joe Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent said he could not “in good conscience” back the war and did not agree that Iran posed an imminent threat.But the hours-long hearing offered few revelations from Gabbard, who repeatedly declined to discuss conversations with Trump, or other senior intelligence officials who testified.“I am very disappointed,” said an exasperated Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It's the only one time of year the public gets to hear from you guys in this kind of setting.”Gabbard deflected questions about intelligence given to TrumpA frequent line of questioning for Democrats: What intelligence, if any, had been given to Trump about the war's potential consequences? Trump, for instance, has said he was surprised that Iran responded to strikes from the United States by attacking Arab nations and has been contending with the economic impact of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a body of water connecting the Persian Gulf to the world’s oceans and a vital passageway for oil and gas.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that Trump was “fully briefed” on the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and that the Pentagon has been planning for the possibility of Iran closing it “for DECADES.”But Trump’s plan to secure the waterway is unclear, especially after he said this week that NATO and most other allies had rejected his calls to help secure it. Iran has said the strait is open except to the U.S. and its allies.Democrats got few direct answers when they pressed administration officials on what Trump understood about that possibility, with Gabbard saying she would not divulge her conversations with him and CIA Director John Ratcliffe observing that he had been in countless briefings with the president.“We’re trying to figure out if the president knew what the downside was of the Strait of Hormuz being closed,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat. “Did he know this was going to happen or did he just disregard it?”Gabbard appeared to try to thread a needle between emphasizing the intelligence community's views of Iran's risks — she said, for instance, that internal tensions would continue to increase even if the regime's leadership remained intact — and not completely echoing the president's arguments of an imminent threat.At one point, Warner noted that Gabbard, in her prepared written statement submitted to the committee, said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program had been obliterated in strikes last year, but her opening remarks on Wednesday did not use that language.He asked whether she had omitted that reference to conform to Trump's claims of an imminent threat. Gabbard insisted that she had skipped some of her written statement in the interest of time.Trump has sought to distance himself from Kent. Ratcliffe tried to do the same Wednesday when he was asked whether intelligence supported Kent’s assessment that Iran was not an imminent threat. “The intelligence reflects the contrary,” Ratcliffe said.Questions about other attacks and Gabbard's presence at an FBI searchGabbard and Ratcliffe fielded the majority of questions, but other witnesses included the heads of the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel, who was pressed about the terrorism threat amid a spate of attacks this month. Those include a man with a past terrorism conviction who opened fire inside an Old Dominion University classroom in Virginia and a Lebanese-born man in Michigan who drove his car into a synagogue.One subject that did not receive attention: a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran, which people familiar with the matter have said the U.S. likely carried out as a result of outdated intelligence.Apart from Iran, Gabbard was pressed on her presence at an FBI search in January of the main election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized voter data related to the 2020 presidential election. Her appearance at a domestic law enforcement operation raised eyebrows given that Gabbard's office is meant to focus squarely on foreign threats.Warner described her appearance there as part of an “organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and potentially provide a pretext for the president’s unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming elections.”Gabbard responded that she was present for the search at the request of the president but did not participate, though she later said she helped to oversee it.The House Intelligence Committee will hold its own threats hearing on Thursday._____Associated Press writers Mike Catalini, Ben Finley and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.