Stories by Associated Press

U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship.

It’s a contradiction of numbers that reveals a deep cultural divide: Transgender people make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, but they have become a major piece on the political chess board — particularly Trump’s.

The S&P 500 dropped 2% for one of its worst days in the last two years. It thudded to its fifth losing week in the last six after wiping out what had been a big gain to start the week.

The emergency appeal to the high court follows a rejection of the Republican administration’s plea to the federal appeals court in Washington. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of appellate judges left in place an order temporarily prohibiting deportations of the migrants under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act

Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois halted the Labor Department from requiring federal contractors or grant recipients from certifying that they don’t operate any programs in violation of Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

The beloved actor of “The Golden Girls” fame was celebrated with a new U.S. Postal Service stamp at a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Los Angeles Zoo on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge James Bredar said he had “great reluctance” to issue a sweeping national preliminary injunction in the case, where 19 states and the District of Columbia contend they have been harmed by a large-scale reduction in the federal workforce without warning as required by law.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the committee, and Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat, signed onto a letter to the acting inspector general at the Department of Defense for an inquiry into the potential “use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” in a video announcing the restructuring Thursday. He faulted the department’s 82,000 workers for a decline in Americans’ health.

Sales of the homemade firearms known as ghost guns grew exponentially after kits came onto the market that let people easily build them at home, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “Some home hobbyists enjoy assembling them. But criminals also find them attractive,” he said.

The disclosure follows two intense days during which leaders of President Donald Trump’s intelligence and defense agencies have struggled to explain how details that current and former U.S. officials have said would have been classified wound up on an unclassified Signal chat that included Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg,

A magazine journalist’s account of being added to a group chat of U.S. national security officials coordinating plans for airstrikes has raised questions about how highly sensitive information is supposed to be handled.

Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health.

It is the lowest reading in 12 years and well below the threshold of 80, which the Conference Board says can signal a potential recession in the near future. However, the proportion of consumers anticipating a recession in the next year held steady at a nine-month high, the board reported.

The department has been largely responsible for oversight, enforcing discrimination laws and distributing aid money for schools with low-income students and students with disabilities. Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets, roughly 14%.

Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic.

Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.

For weeks, Democratic lawmakers have met with and mimicked figures they believe may offer them a path back to power in Washington: online influencers and content creators.

The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization.

The arrests allegedly violate a 2022 agreement between Chicago groups and the federal government detailing how U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers can make “collateral arrests,” where agents detain others besides those being targeted.

President Donald Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.

Earlier this year, the IRS announced that it’s distributing about $2.4 billion to taxpayers who didn’t receive their COVID stimulus payments.

Native American women have the highest rate of ovarian cancer. Black women with ovarian cancer have lower rates of survival compared to white women. Finding ovarian cancer early can lead to better chances of survival.

Finland is the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday. Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

The items, which were stolen between 2009 and 2022, included such historic memorabilia as tickets to Masters tournaments in the 1930s, as well as T-shirts, mugs and chairs, according to prosecutors. Among the stolen legendary green jackets were those won by Palmer, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.

The images and other information released Wednesday by the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory includes a preview of three cosmic areas that the mission will spy in finer detail, mapping the shapes and locations of galaxies billions of light years away.