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President Donald Trump may want lower interest rates, but the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its two-day policy meeting that ends Wednesday.It is likely to be a quiet start to an eventful year for the central bank. Trump said last week in Davos, Switzerland, that he would bring down energy prices, then “demand” that the Fed lower borrowing costs.Later, when asked by reporters if he expected the Fed to listen to him, he said, “yes.” Presidents in recent decades have avoided publicly pressuring the Fed out of deference to its political independence.Outside of a U.S. President bending norms, the Fed also faces challenges in achieving its economic objectives. Inflation remains above its 2% target: Its preferred measure is at 2.4%, though core pricesconsidered a better gauge of where inflation is headedrose 2.8% in November from a year ago.Fed officials, led by Chair Jerome Powell, want to thread a moving needle: By keeping borrowing costs higher, the Fed hopes to slow borrowing and spending enough to reduce inflation, but without causing a painful recession.Powell said in December that the central bank has entered a “new phase,” in which it expects to move more deliberately after cutting its key rate to 4.3%, from 5.3% in the final three meetings of 2024. In December, Fed officials signaled they may reduce their rate just twice more this year. Goldman Sachs economists believes those cuts won’t happen until June and December.A cut in March is still possible, though financial markets’ futures pricing puts the odds of that happening at just one-third.As a result, American households and businesses are unlikely to see much relief from high borrowing costs anytime soon. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage slipped to just below 7% last week after rising for five straight weeks. The costs of borrowing money have remained high economy-wide even after the Fed reduced its benchmark rate.That is because investors expect healthy economic growth and stubborn inflation will forestall future rate cuts. They recently bid up the 10-year Treasury above 4.80%, its highest level since 2023.Another reason for caution among Fed policymakers this year is that they will want to evaluate any changes in economic policy by the Trump administration. Trump has said he could slap tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico as early as February 1. During his presidential campaign he threatened to impose taxes on all imports.The Trump administration has also said it will carry out mass deportations of migrants, which could push up inflation by reducing the economy’s ability to produce goods and services. At the same time, some economists say Trump’s promises to deregulate the economy could lower prices over time.When Trump imposed tariffs on a limited number of imports in 2018 and 2019, Fed economists expected the biggest impact to fall on economic growth, with the inflationary impact being relatively minor. As a result, when growth did slow, the Fed ended up cutting its key rate in 2019, rather than raising it to fight off any inflationary impact.On Wednesday, Fed officials could also change the statement that they release after each meeting to upgrade their assessment of the labor market, a signal that rate cuts may be delayed.In December, the statement included a mildly pessimistic take: “Labor market conditions have generally eased, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low.” In the summer and fall, employers slowed their hiring. The rise in the unemployment rate had unnerved Fed officials and was a big reason they reduced their key rate by an unusually large half-percentage point in September.Earlier this month, Fed governor Chris Waller cited weaker hiring as evidence that the Fed’s key rate is “restrictive,” meaning it is acting as a brake on the economy and should bring down inflation over time. If rates are restrictive, that means the Fed would have more room to cut them if inflation were to decline further.Yet this month, just a few days after Waller’s remarks, the December jobs report showed that hiring accelerated and the unemployment rate slipped to a low 4.1% from 4.2%.The healthier employment numbers suggested that hiring has at least levelled off. If it stays as strong as last month, the improved job gains would suggest the Fed’s rate isn’t restrictive at all, and few, if any, rate cuts are needed. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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When disaster strikes, government emergency alert systems offer a simple promise: Residents will get information about nearby dangers and instructions to help them stay safe.As the deadly L.A. wildfires and other major emergencies have shown, alerts rely on a complicated chain of communication between first responders, government administrators, third-party companies, and the public.Sometimes, the chain breaks.After the wind-driven wildfires broke out in Southern California on January 7, evacuation orders for some neighborhoodsincluding the part of Altadena where the majority of deaths occurredcame long after houses were reported on fire. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County officials approved an outside review of how alerts functioned in the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire in response to residents’ demands. City officials declined to answer AP’s questions about a lag in some Palisades Fire alerts, though Fire Capt. Branden Silverman said responding to a fire and determining evacuation needs can take some time.It’s an increasingly common issue: After-action reports and investigations revealed issues with alert systems in other California blazes: in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people in Santa Rosa; the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people in Paradise; the Woolsey fire, which started the same day and killed three in Malibu; as well as in Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes outside Denver; and in Hawaii’s 2023 Lahaina Fire, which decimated that historic town and killed 102.It could take months to know why some evacuation orders lagged in the Los Angeles fires.Several residents who lost homes in the Eaton Fire told the Associated Press they received no notifications about their neighborhoods. For others, the first warning was an urgent text message in the middle of the night.Susan Lee Streets, who signed up for the alert app Nixle, did not get any alerts specific to her west Altadena neighborhood before she and her family left of their own accord around 10 p.m. after losing power and cell reception.“If we had even been informed that houses and other structures were burning down, we would have known better what was happening,” she said. “We almost went to sleep that night with two kids and a dog and two cats in the house.”Only after 3 a.m. did an alert hit her phone. Destroyed along with the house are the Christmas ornaments she saved for her children, and countless other family keepsakes.“We lost everything, everything,” Streets said, breaking into tears.Tricia Wachtendorf, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, said alerts have to be specific and clear. Research has shown that for them to be effective, people have to hear, understand, believe, personalize, and confirm them before they react.“Just because you send the message at 3 a.m. doesn’t mean someone is hearing it,” Wachtendorf said.The hours between midnight and 3:30 a.m. appear to have been particularly challenging for first responders in Los Angeles County, based on an AP review of scanner traffic recordings and data from CalFire, the state’s chief fire agency; the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA; and the Watch Duty app.Resources were stretched thin, and hurricane-force winds had grounded air support, limiting authorities’ ability to get a top-down perspective on the flames.Calls reporting burning homes were flooding in as embers blew onto roofs and yards. During one half-hour period, 17 new addresses were relayed to firefighters, even as some crews ran low on fuel.By 12:07 a.m., CalFire records show, dozens of neighborhoods had been ordered to evacuate because of the Eaton Fire, all of them east of Altadena’s North Lake Avenue. None of the neighborhoods to the westwhere all of the 17 confirmed fatalities occurred, as first reported by the Los Angeles Timeshad received evacuation warnings or orders, despite house fires being reported there more than an hour earlier.Over the next three hours, fire crews would go from begging for resources on the eastern flank of the blaze to radioing the command center to make sure it knew the fire was spreading west along the foothills near Sunset Ridge.Just before 3:30 a.m., evacuation orders expanded significantly, with residents in 12 areas of Altadena and elsewhere told to “leave now.”Jodi and Jeff Moreno first heard about the fire from a neighborhood app. But the first official warning only came around 2:30 a.m., when authorities yelled through a bullhorn to evacuate. The couple grabbed their three daughters, their dog, and some important papers, and fled.There were no text alerts until after they were gone.“On the neighborhood apps, some people were going, some people were staying. It was a wide variety of responses. We were navigating it on our own,” Jodi Moreno said. “It’s hard for us to gauge where exactly is that fire, where are the embers blowing. . . . Those are things I would rely on people who are monitoring it” for information.Desperate for more information, both the Morenos and Streets downloaded the Watch Duty app, which maps evacuation zones and consolidates information from multiple sources into a single stream. Launched in 2021 and today covering 22 states, it became a lifeline for them.“The ideal system for warning people is informing them, right?” said Nick Russell, vice president for operations at Watch Duty.“There’s certainly diligence necessary in the execution of official evacuation warning and orders or shelter in place, whatever the condition might be,” he said. “But telling people why that discussion is taking place between law enforcement and fire is important. And that’s what we’re doing.”The process of issuing evacuation notices starts with firefighters or other personnel on the ground recommending action, Russell said. It then moves up the chain of command to sheriffs, who ultimately put out any order.During major emergencies that communication can be hampered by issues such as limited radio connectivity, wind noise, or other technical problems. Incident command stations may have trouble synthesizing the large amounts of information they are getting from different agencies, something that is critical for understanding the scope of an emergency like a fire.In Los Angeles County, residents who sign up for emergency notifications through the AlertLACounty website are then directed to a list of 57 links to other specific neighborhood or city alert system signups, as well as a general one covering 19 other cities. The city of Los Angeles and the Sheriff’s Department also have alert systems.It is not clear how the overlapping systems, which use different software programs, work together, or whether officials coordinate.A 2024 Hazard Mitigation plan directed the city’s Emergency Management Department to assess gaps in alert and warning systems in areas with poor cellphone connectivity and then implement a solution to ensure alerts reach people. But that goal was given a “medium” priority level and a long-term timeline, with completion expected sometime in the next 10 years.Meanwhile the county’s Hazard Mitigation Plan, last updated in 2020, did not include a fous on emergency alerts or public notifications. Instead its high-priority goals had to do with educating people about wind’s impact on wildfire risk and with community wildfire protection.Officials at the County’s Coordinated Joint Information Center declined to comment other than to say that an independent review of evacuations and emergency notifications is planned and the Office of Emergency Management, County Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department plan to fully engage with it. Christopher L. Keller, Claudia Lauer, Amy Taxin and Rebecca Boone, Associated Press
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday will sign the Laken Riley Act into law as his administration’s first piece of legislation. It mandates the detention and potential deportation of people in the U.S. illegally who are accused of theft and violent crimes before they’ve actually been convicted.The measure swiftly passed the Republican-controlled Congress with some Democratic support, despite immigrants rights advocates decrying it as extreme enough to possibly trigger mass roundups of people for offenses as minor as shoplifting.Trump has made a promised crackdown on illegal immigration unprecedented in the nation’s history a centerpiece of his political career, however, and is now suggesting the law might only be the beginning.“This shows the potential for additional enforcement bills that will help us crack down on criminal aliens and totally restore the rule of law in our country,” the president said at a conference of House Republicans held at his Doral golf club in Florida.The law is named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who went out for a run in February 2024 and was killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national in the U.S. illegally. Ibarra was found guilty in November and sentenced to life without parole.“To have a bill of such importance named after her is a great, a great tribute,” Trump said. “This new form of crime, criminal, illegal aliens, it’sit’s massive, the numbers are massive and you add that to the crime we already had.”The speed at which the act cleared Congressand the fact that Trump is preparing to triumphantly sign it at the White House surrounded by lawmakers and other supportive, invited guests just nine days after taking officeadds to its potent political symbolism for conservatives. Critics say the measure is using a tragedy to effectively unleash chaos and cruelty while doing little to fight crime or fix an antiquated federal immigration system that hasn’t been overhauled in decades.Under the Laken Riley Act, federal officials are required to detain any immigrant arrested or charged with crimes like theft or assaulting a police officer, or offenses that injure or kill someone. It further gives legal standing to state attorneys general to sue the U.S. government for harm caused by federal immigration decisionspotentially allowing the leaders of conservative states to help dictate immigration policy set by Washington.Ibarra had been arrested for illegal entry in September 2022 near El Paso, Texas, amid an unprecedented surge in migration, and released to pursue his case in immigration court. Federal officials say he was arrested by New York police in August 2023 for child endangerment and released. Police say he was also suspected of theft in Georgia in October 2023all of which occurred before Riley’s killing.“This is the right thing to do,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after the act cleared the House. “It’s always good when the right thing is also the popular thing.”Some Democrats, however, have questioned the act’s constitutionality. Immigrant advocates are bracing for mass detentions that they say will trigger subsequent, costly construction of immigration lockup facilities to house the people arrested.“They don’t just get to celebrate. They get to use this for their mass deportation agenda,” Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs in the equality division of the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the act’s supporters.The ALCU says the act can allow people to be “mandatorily locked uppotentially for yearsbecause at some point in their lives, perhaps decades ago, they were accused of nonviolent offenses.”Hannah Flamm, interim senior director of policy at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said the law violates immigrants’ basic rights by allowing for detaining people who haven’t been charged with, much less convicted of, wrongdoing. Still, she said, “The latent fear from the election cycle of looking soft on crime snowballed into aiding and abetting Trump’s total conflation of immigration with crime.”Flamm said the act is likely to be challenged in court on its parameters directing mandatory detentions, as well as its granting legal standing to state attorneys general in immigration cases and policy. But she also predicted that a need to pay for more immigration detention centers will give advocates a chance to challenge how federal funds are appropriated to cover those costs.“I think it is pivotal to understand: This bill, framed as connected to a tragic death, is pretext to fortify a mass deportation system,” Flamm said.The signing of the Laken Riley Act follows a flurry of first-week executive orders by Trump that are designed to better seal off the U.S.-Mexico border and eventually move to deport millions of immigrants without permanent U.S. legal status. The new administration has also canceled refugee resettlement and says it may attempt to prosecute local law enforcement officials who do not enforce his new immigration policies.“We’re tracking down the illegal alien criminals and we’re detaining them and we’re throwing them the hell out of our country,” Trump said. “We have no apologies, and we’re moving forward very fast.” Will Weissert, Associated Press
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