DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a funeral in the Gaza Strip on Friday killed at least seven people and wounded another 22, according to a local hospital.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp confirmed the number of casualties, saying people were struck at the funeral for a Palestinian killed in a strike earlier on Friday.
Israel and the Hamas militant group agreed to a ceasefire deal in October aimed at halting a two-year-long war.
The heaviest fighting has subsided but at least 1,123 people have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, which has been part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.
Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.
The war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,264 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
China on Friday rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that it had meddled in U.S. elections as baseless. But its response was relatively restrained, a sign that Beijing did not want to let the accusation derail a thaw in relations that both sides have spent months trying to preserve.
Trump had said in a speech that China had carried out “the largest compromise of election data in history” starting with the 2020 cycle, one of several claims he made that was either overstated or untethered from reality.
In Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said China had “no interest in interfering in the U.S. elections and has never done so,” adding that the claims “are aimed at vilifying China.” It leveled a vague accusation back at Washington for “wantonly” interfering in other countries.
The response was firm but made no demands for retractions or threats of punishment. On China’s social media, commentators who are usually stridently nationalist were mostly quiet.
China experts said this showed that Beijing saw Trump’s speech as an attempt at playing to American voters before midterm elections, rather than a broadside directed at China.
It also underscored a desire on Beijing’s part to maintain a truce that was struck in May during a summit between Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
Trump’s rhetoric on China during his address was “definitely harsh,” said Sun Yun, a scholar of China at the Stimson Center, a research group in Washington. But Trump had built up so much goodwill in China in recent months, she added, “there is some resilience in the relationship.”
Playing the China card
From Beijing’s perspective, Trump was taking aim at China for domestic political reasons, experts said. Officials in China understand that the Republicans are under pressure as midterm elections approach.
Chinese state media commentaries have argued that Trump has lost some of the support of his political base following his military intervention in Venezuela and the war in Iran. They have noted that he has failed to keep factory jobs at home, while consumers “bear higher fuel costs and inflation.”
Viewed through this lens, Trump’s speech was an attempt at mobilizing voters by fanning the idea of foreign intervention, said Wu Xinbo, an American studies scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“Trump played this card mainly for domestic politics; it was not aimed at China-U.S. relations,” Wu said, adding that this was something Chinese officials would likely not respond to if it was a one-off.
Documents released by the White House that Trump said bolstered his claims suggest there is evidence of a pro-China influence effort and that Beijing was skeptical of Trump. But that was a minority perspective inside the intelligence agencies, and the intelligence officers who held that view said they had only low or medium confidence in their assessments.
China wants to preserve the stability
The U.S.-China relationship steadied in October after Beijing agreed to suspend its limits on exports of rare earth metals, and Washington halved tariffs on China related to fentanyl. “We’re not going to hurt China,” Trump said at the time.
After Trump met with Xi in Beijing, China said both sides had agreed that U.S. tariffs would not rise further. They agreed on a relationship based on “constructive strategic stability,” a vague term meant to signal that both sides would limit hostilities.
During his trip, Trump invited Xi to the White House on Sept. 24, a meeting that officials are now working toward. Beijing expects the upcoming visit to help improve trade ties.
Any disruption to the fragile detente will hinge on whether Trump decides to take additional action on his claims of election meddling.
If Trump were to take fresh actions against China, like putting new tariffs on Chinese goods, Wu said, “China would certainly retaliate.”
Chinese economy needs the U.S.
China may also be tempering its response because it wants to make nice with the United States on trade disputes as its own economy stumbles and as its companies face pushback from foreign governments.
This week, China reported that its economy grew at the slowest pace in three years. It is also facing increased scrutiny in other parts of the world as its exports surge, raising alarm among politicians in Europe and Southeast Asia. Chinese shipments overseas climbed 27% over the month of June, and its trade surplus with the world climbed to more than $125 billion, its second largest on record.
At home, Chinese families are feeling poorer, consuming less, and seeing fewer job prospects. That means that China needs markets overseas to keep its factories churning, grow its economy, and create new jobs, said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.
“Having more access to the U.S. market could also take some of the pressure off China’s economic relationships with a bunch of other countries from Europe to Africa and Asia,” he said.
ATLANTA — Federal health officials have identified lettuce from Mexico served at Taco Bell locations across five U.S. states as a source of a widespread outbreak of diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday warned consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. A record number of cyclospora cases have been reported in more than 30 states, and experts have said not every recent U.S. illness might be caused by a single source.
A Food and Drug Administration investigation so far has identified a single supplier of the lettuce. The federal warnings to consumers did not identify the company, but Taylor Fresh Foods, of Salinas, Calif., said FDA testing indicated it was “a specific independent farm” affiliated with the company.
The FDA was working with the supplier “to determine if potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce remains on the market,” including in other states, the CDC said. “Taco Bell has committed to stop using any lettuce from the supplier identified by FDA’s traceback investigation.”
Taylor Farms has been tied to foodborne outbreaks in the past. The company said in a statement Friday afternoon that it was voluntarily removing all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico from the U.S. market.
“As a family owned and operated company, we are deeply concerned for those who became ill, their families, and the many Americans whose trust in the safety of their fresh produce has been shaken,” the statement said.
The illness is not usually life threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.
On Thursday, ahead of the federal government’s confirmation, Taco Bell issued a statement saying that it had taken “immediate action to voluntarily remove potentially impacted lettuce from a supplier in select states. The affected ingredient from our supplier is being indefinitely removed from our supply chain nationwide and will be replaced within 24 hours in select states.”
It’s possible other businesses could be linked to outbreak
In a statement, federal health officials stressed that other “brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels” could be tied to the outbreak as the investigation continues.
Michigan investigators are trying to figure out if the lettuce went to other restaurants or stores because many of the ill people said they didn’t eat at Taco Bell, state health officials said Friday.
There is no evidence the outbreak “is related to poor food handling or preparation at any single restaurant or fast-food chain,” Michigan health officials said in a statement.
For that reason, they continue to recommend that consumers purchase whole heads of lettuce instead of pre-washed, bagged lettuce or premixed salad kits. Taylor Fresh Foods said in its statement that no Taylor Farms-branded salad kits contain iceberg lettuce.
Some past outbreaks linked to the company involved products sold under different brand names.
North Carolina health officials on Friday reported their count has now surpassed 300 cases, but said the recent illnesses there are not considered to be linked to the outbreak in and around Michigan. They said the most commonly reported foods include parsley, cilantro, and lettuce, but it’s not clear if those ingredients were the source of the infections, they said.
Cyclospora cases have been rising for years
Cyclospora is a microscopic, spherical parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the CDC. Outbreaks tend to occur most often in the late spring and summer.
The heat-loving parasite infects the bowels and spreads through feces. In the past, people have been infected by consuming fruits or vegetables that were exposed to feces-contaminated irrigation water.
The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli. Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source and, for years, few U.S. cyclospora outbreaks were reported. But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2018 and 2019.
Previously, 2019 saw the most reported U.S. cyclosporiasis cases, with about 4,700. The current surge has far surpassed that. Michigan — the apparent epicenter of the current outbreak — is reporting more than 5,000 cases, and more than 2,000 additional probable and suspected cases have been reported in other states.
No deaths have been reported. But Michigan officials say more than 100 people in that state have been hospitalized, and health officials say dozens more have been hospitalized in other states.
Experts attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection. They also say it’s likely that cyclospora cases historically were underreported, for several reasons.
Some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora. Technicians aren’t able to grow the parasite in labs, making it hard to draw evidence from contaminated produce. And it can be hard to figure out what food sick people had in common because sometimes it’s a single ingredient that might be common in multiple recipes — like basil or cilantro.
Taco Bell, Taylor Farms have been tied to past outbreaks
The FDA’s traceback investigation identified a single supplier of iceberg lettuce from Mexico used by the Taco Bell locations where people who got sick ate, federal officials said.
The Mexican food chain is among the restaurants linked to foodborne illness outbreaks in the past.
VENICE, Italy — The billionaire U.S. ambassador to Italy faced protests when he arrived in Venice on Friday aboard his luxury yacht as part of a coastal diplomacy tour marking the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Activists described hospitality mogul Tilman Fertitta’s arrival as an unwelcome display of American wealth and influence for many Italians at a time when they see the Trump administration as upending the post-World War II international order.
The so-called Coastal Diplomacy 250 tour of 13 Italian coastal regions on a super yacht is intended to celebrate “our shared history, our economic partnership, and the cultural bonds that make the U.S.-Italy relationship so special,” Fertitta said in a social media post.
In Venice, many of the same groups that protested the wedding last year of Jeff Bezos to Lauren Sanchez are mobilizing against Fertitta’s arrival aboard the 384-foot luxury yacht, Boardwalk, which features two helipads, a pair of swimming pools, and a fully equipped spa and gym.
On July 4, protest organizers unfurled a banner reading “Venezia non si USA,” which is a play on words combining the Italian phrase “Venice is not to be used” with the acronym USA. The banner was as long as Fertitta’s yacht to illustrate what the protesters called “the dimensions of his arrogance.”
“It’s arrogant to think he can do what he wants in a city that is ever more sold to the single culture of tourism,’’ organizer Stella Morion told the Associated Press. She said protesters are also opposed to President Donald Trump’s international politics, including U.S. strikes on Iran, which she said have prompted a spike in energy prices.
“It is the umpteenth slap in the face of a city and all of the people in Venice who struggle to reach the end of the month due to an increase in prices caused by Trump’s war,” she said.
Fertitta has declined a request for an interview to discuss the tour and the planned protest.
The billionaire owner of Fertitta Entertainment was sworn in as ambassador to Italy in 2025. He made his fortune in the hospitality industry, including restaurants, hotels, and casinos. He also owns the NBA’s Houston Rockets. His official biography puts his net worth at $11.3 billion, while Forbes ranks him among the 100 wealthiest Americans.
Details of who Fertitta will meet while in Venice have not been released, but he was expected to attend the famed Redentore festival on Saturday, which commemorates the end of the plague in 1576 culminating with celebratory fireworks over St. Mark’s Basin.
He has already stopped over in the Sicilian port town of Cefalu, where his family’s roots trace back to 1566, and met with the governor in Palermo. He has also stopped at the Calabrian port of Le Castella and sailed along the coast of Puglia and up the Adriatic coastline to Venice.
Fertitta’s tenure includes navigating a cooling in the once warm relationship between Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Trump, who has made a series of social media attacks against her. Meloni, who was once seen as a close political ally in Europe with similar views on such issues as immigration, did not attend 250th celebrations at the U.S. Embassy.
Federal health officials said Thursday that a multistate outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has sickened thousands of people has been linked to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in five states, confirming key findings first reported by the Washington Post.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said traceback investigators identified a single supplier of iceberg lettuce from Mexico used at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. In updates posted to the CDC webpage and FDA webpage late Thursday, officials urged consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in those states while the investigation continues.
The agencies did not name a supplier. But two individuals familiar with the inquiry said investigators have identified Taylor Farms as the supplier of the shredded iceberg lettuce. The individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the ongoing investigation.
The FDA is working directly with the supplier to determine if contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce went to other places, officials said. More than 1,644 sick people in this outbreak reported eating at Taco Bell locations in the five states, officials said.
“The investigation remains active, and additional states, restaurants, retailers, or products may be identified as more information becomes available,” said Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department.
This summer’s outbreak of cyclosporiasis, among the largest such outbreaks in the United States, has been largely concentrated in southeastern Michigan, where more than 4,300 cases have been reported and at least 100 people have been hospitalized as of Thursday.
“The signal we have gotten is that there is a very high percentage of people who got sick at Taco Bell, and when investigators asked what their menu items were in common, lettuce came up frequently,” said one of the individuals. When the FDA asked the company where it sourced the lettuce from, it was Taylor Farms, not just for the Taco Bell stores in Michigan but also for restaurants in other states, the person said.
Taylor Farms describes itself as one of the leading global producers of salads and healthy fresh foods, with production facilities across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Taco Bell Corp. said:
“Based on ongoing conversations with public health officials, and out of an abundance of caution, Taco Bell has taken immediate action to voluntarily remove potentially impacted lettuce from a supplier in select states. The affected ingredient from our supplier is being indefinitely removed from our supply chain nationwide and will be replaced within 24 hours in select states.”
Taco Bell Corp. added: “While no official advisory has been issued, we believe public health is a shared responsibility among restaurants, their suppliers, and authorities, and we are proud to have consistently acted quickly and proactively to protect our guests. Taco Bell has taken precautionary action, and we encourage all relevant restaurants, retailers, and foodservice operators to do the same.”
Authorities in Michigan, which has been hit the hardest and has reported hundreds of cases daily, have said leafy lettuce is the leading suspected source based on interviews with more than 1,000 patients.
Notices posted at some Detroit-area Taco Bell restaurants this month told customers the chain was “currently unable to sell Lettuce, Cilantro Onion, Pico de Gallo, and Guacamole due to a nationwide recall,” according to media reports.
Cases have been identified in at least 34 states, and confirmed illnesses could continue to increase through the end of August, officials said.
Earlier this week, after Michigan officials warned that lettuce could be a culprit, the International Fresh Produce Association criticized how public health officials were investigating the outbreak.
“Everything pointing to produce is based on recollections of patients, and even those recollections — based on what we hear — explain, at most, only half of the current cases,” said Max Teplitski, the association’s chief science officer.
“We need to be candid about the limits of the data being used here,” he added. “A parasite with a notoriously complex life cycle, Cyclospora can be hard to detect in the environment, and some of the methods for its detection have performed inconsistently.”
Recent college graduates complain they can’t find entry-level jobs because artificial intelligence is taking over.
Yet, tech recruiter Matt Walsh and other experts say the growth of AI and the struggle to find entry-level work mask a bigger problem: The United States is facing what’s projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history.
In sectors such as semiconductor production, the problem isn’t AI or too few jobs, said Walsh, CEO of the Phoenix-based search firm Blue Signal.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “There just aren’t enough people.”
Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech.
It “could hobble the American economy for years to come,” predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it “the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen.” JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from “a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation’s capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests.”
There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction workers, and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can’t do.
“All of these people who keep a society functioning are the very people we’re not going to have enough of,” said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast’s principal economist.
Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in healthcare fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance.
“We have pumped so many young people into business and finance” when what’s really in demand are graduates in other fields, Hetrick said. “It’s like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, ‘We really don’t need them.’ And the factory just keeps pumping them out.”
But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows.
From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor’s degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts.
That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million.
The shortages are already showing up, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported. It said that in many industries, even if every worker now unemployed were plugged into an open job, positions would still be left unfilled.
“We have a crisis in front of us in not preparing people for the world that’s coming,” said Bill Haslam, the Republican former governor of Tennessee and co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on the American Workforce.
The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of childcare, early retirement, incarceration, and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
College and university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Education Department. The low birth rate since 2010 means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13% through 2041.
Fewer than half as many people immigrated to the United States last year as the year before, the Census Bureau says, yet 41% of the home health aides increasingly needed to care for the nation’s aging population have historically come from somewhere else, along with a fifth of nursing assistants, dentists, pharmacists, and registered nurses.
“We’re doing a fantastic job of rolling up the welcome mat and saying, ‘We don’t want you,’” said Brad Hershbein, senior economist and deputy director of research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
The semiconductor industry is among those raising warning flags about the problem of finding workers. It’s projected to grow by nearly 115,000 jobs by 2030, which is 67,000 more than the number of current and projected technicians and engineers, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates.
“The semiconductor industry is not alone here,” however, said Erik Hadland, the association’s director of technology policy. “We’re a small part of a much larger issue.”
State governments have been scrambling to get ahead of the problem. To get college graduates to come or stay and work, some will help them pay off their student loans. A bill under consideration in Minnesota would offer in-state tuition to most public colleges and universities for children of parents who take jobs in that state, waiving the previous requirement that students have graduated from a Minnesota high school after attending for at least three years.
Several states have combined their higher education and workforce development agencies, including Missouri and Colorado. Connecticut has established both an Office of Workforce Strategy and a Career Pathways Commission. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has formed a working group to review that state’s workforce development infrastructure and increase the number of college graduates.
Some states face shortages that appear more severe than others. South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs, for instance, while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.
In Pennsylvania, a study commissioned by the state’s Department of Education has projected that the state needs to increase the number of people with credentials beyond high school by more than 4% to fill a shortage of 218,000 such workers a year by 2032. That will be a significant challenge, considering that college enrollment there has generally been falling.
Industries in which workers don’t require college degrees are also seeing shortages. Fewer than half as many people are entering the construction trades as are needed, for example, according to Branka Minic, CEO of the Building Talent Foundation, which represents 3,600 employers who are trying to fill that gap.
“There’s plenty of jobs” in the skilled trades, she said, some starting at $50 an hour. “Show me what college graduates earn that kind of rate.” As for the prospect that AI can fill those largely physical roles, she recalled seeing a poster plastered on an unfinished building. “Finish this, ChatGPT,” it said, mockingly.
Some savvy workers are figuring it out for themselves.
Seth Russell’s high school counselor nudged him toward college. Instead he learned welding and now works full-time as a fabricator.
“I got hired straight out of high school. I have no debt. I’m just making money, paying bills,” said Russell, now 22, who lives in Torrance, Calif. “There’s so many jobs out there.”
This story about shortages of workers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
American workers’ paychecks are about where they were a year ago, and up 27 cents per hour in today’s dollars since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, because of inflation that has undercut pay increases.
June’s average hourly wage gain of 3.5% from a year earlier just kept up with inflation of 3.5% over that same yearlong period, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday.
Affordability has been playing a big role in how people feel about the economy. When pay doesn’t beat inflation, the political consequences rise.
“President Trump was elected because people were unhappy with the southern border being open and people were unhappy with the inflation that they had to deal with under President Biden,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He said Americans’ experience in the economy “really does affect their opinion of how presidents are doing, kind of fairly or unfairly.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that “President Trump has always been clear about the fact that oil and gas prices — and thus overall inflation — will rapidly drop as soon as the Iran situation is resolved.“ Desai added the administration’s “commonsense agenda of deregulation, tax cuts, and energy abundance” will push wages up.
Americans’ buying power did grow a little in June over May, as falling gas prices pushed the cost of living down slightly, according to Labor Department statistics released this week. Real average hourly earnings for employees increased 0.8%, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year.
But that gain comes as cold comfort to the millions of workers whose wages have failed to match it, with prices for many basics like milk and beef climbing steeply this year. Gas prices are also rising again as the U.S.-Iran conflict resumes after the collapse of the short-lived ceasefire.
“No matter what we see in the averages, there’s going to be a lot of people whose wages are simply not keeping up with inflation,” said Betsey Stevenson, who was the Labor Department’s chief economist from 2010 to 2011 and is now at the University of Michigan. “So they just can’t buy the same bundle of goods that they could have bought a year ago.”
Many workers holding the same job year after year see raises of around 3%. Some get less. Those people fall behind in an economy running at 3.5% inflation.
Others who are switching jobs or in a position to demand more from their current bosses are beating inflation. But few workers are moving into new jobs in the current sluggish labor market — with the share of the workforce quitting at the lowest level since 2020, according to recent Labor Department data.
“What you do get out of that is a lot of people feeling like it’s unfair,” Stevenson said. “And I think that’s coming into an economy where people have been questioning the fairness of the economy for a while.”
Jessica Newell, 45, earns $80,000 a year as a counselor at a Philadelphia public school, but despite annual salary increases, she is barely surviving, she said. After rent on an apartment she shares with a roommate, groceries, and a $440 monthly student loan payment, she has nothing left and sometimes puts bills on her credit card. Newell currently has less than $1,000 in savings, she said.
“A lot of the middle class is getting so crushed, and I don’t think anyone cares,” said Newell, who works a second job in the summers to pay the bills. “We don’t have money to live comfortably between paychecks. And there’s no saving for a rainy day emergency. God forbid anything happens to my car.”
Prices ran low for much of the 2000s and 2010s — increasing about 2% a year or less — so a modest raise kept workers even or a little ahead. That changed after 2021, when inflation spiked to a four-decade high during Biden’s presidency. Inflation cooled by the end of his term, but climbed back up through 2025, reaching 4.2% this May under Trump.
Those who own appreciating assets, like homes or stocks, tend to be better positioned against inflation, because the value of those assets can rise with prices.
“Different people are just having very different experiences,” Stevenson said. “That’s ultimately the real problem with inflation. It redistributes in a way that’s kind of random. Who ends up being able to buy more stuff today and who ends up being able to buy less stuff isn’t really based on who worked harder over the last year.”
Average earnings, measured by what that money can actually buy, are known as “real wages.” They rose slightly during the initial year of Trump’s presidency. Then they dropped this spring as the conflict with Iran drove oil prices higher, nearly erasing the earlier gains. June’s easing of inflation, which stemmed from the ceasefire, allowed real wages to start increasing again. But that upward trajectory could once again reverse depending on how things go with Iran.
Different states are also experiencing different wage environments. Workers’ earnings in some states are slightly beating inflation, while those in others appear to be losing ground on average.
Several of the states where workers are falling behind include congressional districts considered toss-ups in the upcoming midterm elections as Republicans try to defend their majority in the House of Representatives.
In Arizona, for example, Republicans are battling to hold two toss-up seats in a state where many voters feel squeezed by rising costs.
Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona, said it would be a mistake for Republican candidates to overlook Arizonans’ pocketbook pain as November nears. High inflation will be top of mind for voters, he said.
“If gas spikes again, Republicans are in trouble. It’s just that simple,” Marson said. “People are going to think about their economic situation and vote accordingly, probably up and down the ballot.”
He added that many would-be GOP voters could be offended by the president’s dismissive comments about inflation caused by the Iran war.
“The problem with Biden — and now Trump is singing from that same hymn book — is the idea inflation doesn’t matter, [that] ‘you don’t know your finances as well as I know your finances,’” Marson said. “It didn’t work for Biden, and I don’t think it’ll work for Trump or anyone who follows that playbook.”
Dana Angelos, 51, of South Carolina, was making $20 an hour as a medical biller a few years ago, but then the contractor she worked for shut down. This year she’s been earning about $18 an hour for the same work, even as her living expenses have soared. To manage, Angelos moved to her mother’s property in a rural area, where she can live rent free. She also began supplementing her grocery shopping with donations from food pantries.
Angelos said Aldi and Walmart used to be affordable for her.
“But not anymore,” she said. “Everything’s going up but our paychecks.”
AUGUSTA, Maine — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told the Associated Press.
David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.
At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.
DHS, which hasn’t released the name of the officer who killed Durán Guerrero, has said the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
Brouillette didn’t respond to text messages or an email seeking comment. Three relatives who said they had spoken to him since the shooting, including an ex-wife and daughter, said he told them he acted in self-defense.
When reached for comment about Brouillette’s record and his role in Monday’s shooting, ICE spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement, “We will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” and that “The ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training.”
The White House referred all questions about the shooting and Brouillette to ICE.
A new career in ICE
Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn’t believe him. She didn’t realize he’d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.
Ashley Brouillette told the AP that she spoke to her ex-husband in a Facebook audio call, and he acknowledged that he had killed Durán Guerrero. Their 18-year-old daughter, Madison Brouillette, also told the AP that her father called her Wednesday and said that he shot and killed Durán Guerrero.
David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who got married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 because he had become physically violent with her, which began after she got pregnant with their daughter.
According to Ashley Brouillette, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child — an incident her mother Avis Collins also recounted.
The abuse continued after she left him, she said.
Ashley Brouillette said her marriage to David Brouillette ended after he became physically violent.Mike Householder
David Brouillette doesn’t appear to have a criminal record in Maine, as a check with the Maine Department of Public Safety returned no records for him.
But hundreds of family court records obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk’s office detail years of allegations of physical and verbal abuse raised by his second ex-wife on behalf of herself and his daughters.
The ex-wife — whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retaliation — alleged that he had stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter, according to multiple requests for temporary protection orders. Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti in her hair, and during another outburst, he dragged his daughter around the house as she cried, she said.
“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” she wrote in an application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter which a judge granted in 2021.
In court filings, David Brouillette said that his second ex-wife had slandered him.
His oldest daughter, Madison Brouillette, said she also witnessed her dad’s volatility.
“I watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things,” she told the AP. She said she came home from school once and he told her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head.
“If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help,” she said.
An immediate relative of David Brouillette who spoke on the condition that their name not be used said he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child — a diagnosis that Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The immediate relative described him as “extremely mentally ill” and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized multiple times.
The relative said they’ve been estranged for years, after they broke off contact because they feared he would harm them. He did not respond to their outreach this week, the relative added.
A military deployment and law enforcement aspirations
Growing up in Gardiner, a city of about 6,000 people roughly 60 miles northeast of Biddeford, where Monday’s shooting occurred, David Brouillette was enchanted by law enforcement and the military, his relatives said.
High school yearbook photos show he was a member of the school’s Naval Junior ROTC, and he wrote that he planned to go to college and become a police officer.
Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said.
He was eventually able to enlist.
According to U.S. military records, Brouillette enlisted as a chemical equipment repairer in the Maine Army National Guard but then changed jobs to be a medical logistics specialist. He was in the Guard from November 2007 until January 2010, according to records provided by the Pentagon.
A 2009 article in the Kennebec Journal listed Brouillette as a private in the Maine Army National Guard’s 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta.
In January 2010 he joined the regular Army as a human intelligence collector. Brouillette deployed to Afghanistan from May 2012 to February 2013 and eventually left the Army as a sergeant in December 2015.
His immediate relative believes Brouillette’s time abroad worsened his emotional struggles: “Afghanistan destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”
Life after the Army
After his discharge, Brouillette held a hodgepodge of jobs — some in or adjacent to law enforcement — and was injured in an accident while training to become a firefighter, public records and court documents show.
Brouillette worked for the Maine Correctional Center — a medium-security prison — and for the state’s Health and Human Services Department, spending less than a year at each.
In 2019, court documents show, he was a police officer at a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center near the state capital, Augusta. A Veterans Affairs Department spokesperson on Thursday referred questions about Brouillette’s employment to DHS.
But by the end of 2021, he wrote in a text message included in court filings, he was broke, going to school full-time, and making money delivering food for DoorDash.
Brouillette was enrolled in a firefighting program at Southern Maine Community College and was struck in the head by a steel beam while unloading a trailer at a training facility, according to a lawsuit he filed over his injury.
He sustained a concussion and post-concussive syndrome, with symptoms including impaired memory, cognitive deficits, headaches, vertigo, and light sensitivity, and was unable to complete the program, according to the lawsuit, which was settled out of court.
In recent years, court filings show, he was collecting disability pay through the VA. He also drove a truck, but quit in January 2025, citing health issues.
In March 2025, Brouillette passed an exam to become a real estate sales agent. His license was active until December. In a Facebook post, Realty of Maine announced Brouillette would be working in the firm’s Bangor office.
“David lives in Maine after retiring from the United States Army,” said the post, which has since been deleted. Brouillette is no longer listed as an agent on the firm’s website. Messages seeking comment were left for Realty of Maine.
In March, the Maine agency that handles child support matters filed a lien against him, public records show. The filing suggests that Brouillette may have been in line for a permanent impairment or disability settlement.
‘I don’t think he sees himself as a killer’
In late 2025, around the time he joined ICE, his ex-wife Ashley said he left a three-minute voicemail mocking her for taking out a restraining order against him. According to the message she shared with AP, he repeatedly called her “disgusting” and suggested that she and the other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.
“And all of you should have your f — throats cut,” the voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f — throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”
She said she cut off contact with him until Wednesday, when his picture began circulating online.
Ashley Brouillette reached out to his current wife on Facebook and they spoke on the phone for several minutes. Her ex-husband spoke with her, according to cell phone screenshots of the phone exchange she shared with the AP. He acknowledged he had fatally shot Durán Guerrero.
“He was asking if I could tell them that he was a good person and not to talk about the abuse and stuff that I had endured while with him and he said that the most important thing is his character right now,” she said.
She said he told her he is now hiding in protective custody.
“I asked him why he did it,” she said. “He said it was a justified shooting. The guy was trying to run him over with a car.”
His daughter also said he told her it was justified.
“I don’t think he sees himself as a killer,” Madison Brouillette said.
“I think he thinks that he genuinely did the right thing,” she added. “All he said was that he did what he had to do. He said that he had to protect himself.”
UVALDE, Texas — Catastrophic flash floods in Texas have killed two people and forced hundreds of rescues in areas still reeling from devastating floods a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.
Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said.
The governor said the hardest-hit areas are expecting more rain into Friday and are not out of danger yet, with some rivers expected to reach historic levels.
After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a “large and deadly flood wave” barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors were killed at Camp Mystic.
Much like last year, the floods came in the middle of the night. But this time some residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings.
Forecasters urgently warned, “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour, turning them into fast-moving seas of white water. Some spots of the Guadalupe River rose by more than 30 feet.
The governor said more than 1,300 first responders were deployed.
As much as 28 inches of rain fell over the past three days in Uvalde County, which was spared from the worst flooding a year ago, the weather service said Thursday. Other areas saw roughly a foot of rain with more expected going into Friday.
“This is hopefully the last real batch of rain,” said Jason Runyen, a meteorologist with the weather service.
Victim in Texas floods was swept away
While authorities have not released the name of the person who died, Jennie Steward said the body of her husband, 65-year-old John Mark Steward, of Kerrville, was found Thursday.
She was visiting her parents when a neighbor called overnight, saying her husband was missing after water had risen to the door of their mobile home, which stood about 8 feet off the ground.
The entire home was swept off the platform and floated down Goat Creek on the Guadalupe River, she said.
“It’s really hard that I wasn’t there with him,” she said. The two were married three years ago and last spoke by phone Wednesday to celebrate their anniversary.
Hill Country residents say they were better prepared for floods
The unfolding crisis brought back haunting memories of last summer’s unimaginable Hill Country floods that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth holiday.
“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who awoke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.
“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”
The storms and flooding this time threatened multiple counties close to the Mexico border and in the Hill Country near San Antonio. Roughly 6 million residents across Texas were under a flood watch this week, and some were expected to remain in effect through Friday evening.
Several agencies sent rescue helicopters to the flood zone, including Travis County in the state capital of Austin.
“My understanding is people were mostly trapped in trees and on rooftops,” said Travis County Judge Andy Brown, who said one caller warned 10 people were trapped on a barn roof.
Residents rush animals and campers to higher ground
At a wild animal rescue, Katie Buck evacuated several dozen animals to higher ground in the dark Thursday as the normally dry Lazy Creek overflowed. She had to quickly grab a porcupine despite having no gloves.
She got all of the animals to safety, but flooding destroyed several enclosures at the Buck Wild Animal Rescue and Wildlife Rehab near Ingram in Kerr County.
“We were just starting to get back on our feet again,” Buck said. “To have to go through this again is just devastating.”
Residents at an RV park in Comfort moved their trailers as sirens sounded, said manager Duke Earwood.
Water rose over the hoods of vehicles parked near the river at the Comfort RV Resort. Markers showed the flooding already matched last July’s big flood.
“Too familiar for sure, and too soon,” Earwood said.
Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters
Floodwaters also overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off most outside routes. The Leona River, normally dry most of the year, filled streets with water.
“People really can’t get anywhere,” said Carmen Rodriguez, who nervously watched water engulf her neighborhood as a helicopter roared overhead. “We have a place to go, but all the streets are closed.”
Rodriguez said authorities seemed to be well prepared, ordering mandatory evacuations and notifying people directly.
Texas Game Wardens rescued close to 150 people by the afternoon, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson. Video released by the agency showed crews hoisting children from a house surrounded with water into a helicopter.
Flooding hasn’t reached last year’s deadly high
So far, the heavily swollen Guadalupe has remained below the record levels reached in 2025. Gauges showed it rose by more than 30 feet in some spots over just a few hours.
Close to Camp Mystic, which hasn’t reopened since last year’s tragedy, the Guadalupe near Hunt reached about 20.5 feet, which is enough to cause flooding, according to U.S. Geological Survey and National Water Prediction Service data.
In Kerr County, where summer camps dot the river’s shores, the sheriff’s office said all campers were safe. Several camps said the children were staying inside, with one camp reporting normal flooding.
Towns still rebuilding are hit by new floods
While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago in Ingram, Mayor Claud Jordan believes this round of flooding was more widespread in his city. “The rural part of Ingram, all the roads are just trashed,” he said.
“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”
The Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before filling the narrow river basins.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was speaking to reporters this month in New York when one asked whether he was under pressure from the White House to increase immigration arrests. Mullin replied that his department was in lockstep with the president’s team and boasted that arrests and deportations were rising.
“When we go after the worst of the worst, which is exactly what we’re doing, we’re saving lives,” he said.
Just over two weeks later, Mullin is facing his biggest political and managerial crisis since taking office in March as he scrambles to respond to two deadly shootings involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The violence has drawn harsh denunciations from Democrats and immigration advocates, as well as criticism from one prominent Republican senator, and the situation has threatened to reignite the wide public backlash that arose in January when immigration officers killed two U.S. citizens during a surge of operations.
Mullin’s attempt to quell the uproar over the shootings this week — ordering a moratorium on vehicle-stop arrests by ICE officers — has exposed the precarious position he is in while trying to comply with President Donald Trump’s demands. Less than 48 hours after Mullin issued the directive on traffic stops, a White House official confirmed that it had been reversed.
Mullin promised to rebuild public trust in the Department of Homeland Security after replacing Kristi L. Noem, and he has undone some of his predecessor’s moves, taking a quieter approach in an effort to stay out of the headlines.
At the same time, he has doubled down on Trump’s deportation agenda. Data provided to Congress and reviewed by the Washington Post show that under Mullin’s leadership, ICE officers have been making record numbers of arrests. Through July 12, ICE had arrested more than 200,000 people in 2026, a more than 40% increase compared with the same period last year.
Those arrests were largely happening outside public view until last week, when an ICE officer shot and killed a 52-year-old Mexican man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, in Houston. Salgado had been driving to work, and DHS officials said he was not the target of the ICE operation. His family said he had lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant for more than 35 years and had no criminal record. Surveillance footage has raised questions about DHS’s account of the events surrounding the shooting.
Less than a week later, a 25-year-old Colombian man, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine. He was also shot while driving, was the father of a young child and does not appear to have had a criminal record.
Mullin’s apparent predicament illustrates the competing incentives within the Trump administration over immigration enforcement ahead of the midterm elections in November that will determine whether Democrats win back control of Congress and establish a meaningful check on Trump’s power for his final two years.
Trump abruptly undercut Mullin on Wednesday by praising vehicle stops as one of ICE’s most important tools, and Trump’s far-right base revolted over Mullin’s leadership on enforcement, calling him weak and ineffective. After the policy was reversed, Mullin wrote on social media that there was no conflict between himself and the president.
“President Trump and I are on the same page,” he wrote. “We want our @ICEgov officers to have all options available to keep them safe while executing our mission of deporting as many illegal alien criminals from our country as possible.”
Some Republican allies and Trump political advisers are wary about the potential for a broader public backlash to the president’s immigration agenda in an election year. But the administration’s immigration hawks, including White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have continued to push for mass deportations to make good on the president’s campaign promise and appeal to his hard-line base.
“The president’s supporters reacted absolutely as they should have, and I think the president saw that,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, in regards to Mullin’s pause on traffic stops. “Everyone is now seeing another example of the walk-back instinct of DHS leadership.”
ICE earlier this month had topped 2,000 arrests per day several times, a DHS official said, after setting that figure as a daily arrest target. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal information not authorized for release.
In June, ICE arrested and detained more than 39,500 individuals, topping the previous monthly high of 37,800 in December, according to the data reviewed by the Post. DHS is on pace to exceed that number in July.
The agency has added thousands of new officers, as well as surveillance technology and other resources, thanks to more than $170 billion in new immigration enforcement funding approved by congressional Republicans last year.
During his news conference in New York this month, Mullin called that funding “the most consequential bill — definitely of President Trump’s tenure and possibly in recent history.” He accused Democrats, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, of being soft on crime and immigration enforcement, and said DHS “might have to flex a little bit more” to respond to the policies in places such as New York.
Yet Mullin’s pullback on the vehicle stops, which came after he spoke with Sens. Susan Collins (R) and Angus King (Ind.) of Maine, has left him open to criticism from immigration hawks inside and outside the administration.
One former DHS official suggested that Mullin made the policy change amid pressure from Collins, who is facing a difficult reelection campaign, without consulting the White House.
“A cabinet secretary just went 180 degrees from the policy of both Trump administrations,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss his former agency.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan said Mullin had made the decision to pause vehicle stops after consulting with ICE leadership.
“I’m confident that ICE is well trained in vehicle stops,” Homan said. “This is a temporary pause while they look at the incidents.”
Mullin has said little publicly about the shootings. When asked about the Houston incident in a brief phone interview with Atlanta News First, he expressed regret that ICE officers were not wearing body cameras and blamed a 76-day partial shutdown of DHS in the spring as Congress was deadlocked over a funding bill for slowing efforts to distribute more cameras.
Wednesday on X, Mullin reposted Trump’s message in support of ICE and added his own statement, saying DHS is focused on keeping officers safe and removing criminals.
“Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are. If you are here illegally, LEAVE NOW,” Mullin wrote, adding that officers are facing a major increase in attacks by people using vehicles to threaten them. (In fact, federal prosecutors in several cases have dropped charges against people accused of assaulting officers in light of contradictory evidence.)
“We remind illegal aliens attempting to evade arrest is dangerous,” Mullin wrote.
A former ICE official said Mullin was chosen for the role because he would follow White House directives, and had predicted that Mullin would walk back the pause on vehicle stops or water it down if Trump demanded he do so.
“He’s not going to do anything counter to what the president wants,” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a frank assessment of internal deliberations.
Immigrant rights advocates expressed skepticism that Mullin is committed to softening ICE’s image to restore broader public trust in the agency.
Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said the Trump administration “may have moved away from the more theatrical displays of force that characterized operations in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, but the basic objective has not changed: a fixation on increasing detentions and deportations simply for the sake of numbers.”
Gupta said that effort has accelerated as ICE has begun to spend the money from the congressional funding bill, and that it’s leading to more violence by federal officers.
Yet some business leaders who have worked with Mullin, who previously owned a large plumbing company in Oklahoma, say he has taken a measured approach to enforcement and been far more receptive than Noem to hearing their concerns over the impact of mass deportations on their companies, many of which rely on immigrant labor.
To the immigration hard-liners, any sign that Mullin is appeasing more moderate interests reads as a betrayal of the president and his voters.
“Secretary Mullin comes from the Senate, and when it comes to that body, there’s an overeagerness to please other people in that body,” said Howell, of the Heritage Foundation. “So when Senator Collins calls and asks him to do something, then he does it, and it looks bad.”
