By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers posted 7.6 million job openings in February, a sign that that the job market is slowing but remains healthy. Layoffs of federal workers hit the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the economy in 2020, as Elon Musk’s job cuts start to show up in national jobs data.

Related Articles

Stock market today: Wall Street drifts, and Asia and Europe recover a bit ahead of “Liberation Day’

Hooters restaurant chain, known for skimpy wait-staff outfits, files for bankruptcy protection

Trump welcomes Kid Rock to White House for order targeting ticket scalpers

AI and satellites help aid workers respond to Myanmar earthquake damage

Downtown St. Paul: Alliance Bank Center now vacant

The number of vacancies fell slightly from a revised 7.8 million in January and from a 8.4 million a year earlier, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. Openings have come down more or less steadily since peaking at 12.1 million in March 2022 when the economy was still roaring back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Layoffs rose to 1.8 million in February from 1.7 million in January. Federal agencies laid off 18,000 workers, most since October 2020. Retailers, cautious about the outlook for 2025, laid off 238,000 in February, highest figure since April 2020 in the depths of the COVID-19 recession.

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, showed that the overall number of people quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence they can find better pay or working conditions elsewhere — fell slightly in February.

The American job market has proven surprisingly durable. But it has clearly lost momentum from the frantic hiring days of 2021-2023. And the outlook for hiring is cloudy as President Donald Trump pursues trade wars, purges the federal workforce and promises to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally.

That has begun to have an impact on the optimism that Americans hold about the job market and the economy. Late last month the University of Michigan released its updated consumer sentiment survey for March, which showed a sharp drop in Americans’ outlook for the economy. The survey also found growing anxiety over inflation and jobs.

Economists are worried that Trump’s trade wars – he is expected to announce sweeping tariffs on American trading partners Wednesday – will push up prices and stunt economic growth.

“The jobs market remains the economy’s bulwark, and while it’s eroding slowly, it’s not showing cracks that foreshadow recession,” Robert Frick, economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a commentary on the job openings report. “How it holds up to assaults from tariffs’ effects on consumers and businesses is the crucial question, and one that won’t be answered until later this year.”

On Friday, the Labor Department issues the jobs report for March. According to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet, it is expected to show that employers added 125,000 jobs last month, down from 151,000 in February and an average 168,000 a month in 2024. The unemployment rate is forecast to tick up to a still-low 4.2%.

By DEVNA BOSE and LINDSEY WHITEHURST

A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its decision to cut $11 billion in federal funds that go toward COVID-19 initiatives and various public health projects across the country.

Related Articles

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker launches marathon speech to protest Trump’s agenda

Layoffs begin at US health agencies responsible for research, tracking disease and regulating food

FDA’s top tobacco official is removed from post in latest blow to health agency’s leadership

A Senate vote to reverse Trump’s tariffs on Canada is testing Republican support

Watch: Trump’s pick for Joint Chiefs chairman vows to be apolitical and addresses Signal chat

Attorneys general from 23 states filed the suit in federal court in Rhode Island. They include New York Attorney General Letitia James, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as well as attorneys general in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit argues the cuts are illegal, and that the federal government did not provide “rational basis” or facts to support the cuts. The attorneys general say it will result in “serious harm to public health” and put states “at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services.”

The lawsuit asks the court to immediately stop the Trump administration from rescinding the money, which was allocated by Congress during the pandemic and mostly used for COVID-related efforts such as testing and vaccination. The money also went to addiction and mental health programs.

“Slashing this funding now will reverse our progress on the opioid crisis, throw our mental health systems into chaos, and leave hospitals struggling to care for patients,” James said Tuesday in a news release.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which began serving employees dismissal notices on Tuesday in what’s expected to total 10,000 layoffs, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon pointed to the agency’s statement from last week, when the decision to claw back the money was announced. The HHS said then that it “will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Local and state public health departments are still assessing the impact of the loss of funds, though the lawsuit points to the claw back putting hundreds of jobs at risk and weakening efforts to stem infectious diseases like flu and measles.

Health officials in North Carolina, which joined the lawsuit, estimate the state could lose $230 million, harming dozens of local health departments, hospital systems and universities, and rural health centers. At least 80 government jobs and dozens of contractors would be affected, according to state health officials.

“There are legal ways to improve how tax dollars are used, but this wasn’t one of them,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said. “Immediately halting critical health care programs across the state without legal authority isn’t just wrong — it puts lives at risk.”

Already, more than two dozen COVID-related research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health have been cancelled.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from March shows that COVID-19 killed 411 people each week on average, even though the federal public health emergency has ended.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday she has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel on Dec. 4.

Mangione, 26, faces separate federal and state murder charges for the killing, which rattled the business community while also galvanizing health insurance critics. The federal charges include murder through use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The state charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state charges expected to go to trial first. It wasn’t immediately clear if Bondi’s death penalty announcement will change the order of how the cases are tried.

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement. “After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”

A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for Mangione’s lawyers.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to a state indictment and has not entered a plea to the federal charges.

President Donald Trump, who oversaw an unprecedented run of executions at the end of his first term, signed an executive order on his first day back in office on Jan. 20 that compels the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in federal cases where applicable.

His predecessor, Joe Biden, had issued a moratorium on federal executions.

Thompson, 50, was ambushed and shot on a sidewalk as he walked to an investor conference at a hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Mangione was arrested Dec. 9 while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Police said he was carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID. He also was carrying a notebook expressing hostility toward the health insurance industry and especially wealthy executives, authorities said.

UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the U.S., though the company said Mangione was never a client.

Among the entries in the notebook, prosecutors said, was one from August 2024 that said “the target is insurance” because “it checks every box” and one from October that describes an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO.

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

Jury selection began Tuesday in the retrial of Karen Read, less than a year after a judge declared a mistrial on charges that she was responsible for the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend.

Read, of Mansfield, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm outside of a house party in the town of Canton. Her attorneys have said that O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.

Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and that deliberating further would be futile.

Supporters of Karen Read gather prior to jury selection for the trial of Karen Read outside Norfolk County Superior Court, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.

A rocky relationship turns deadly

Read, who worked as a financial analyst and Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As they did at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple’s relationship had begun to sour before O’Keefe’s death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother’s wife testified that Read told her the couple fought in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense blames a third party for O’Keefe’s death

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found that he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He also is on the prosecution’s witness list.

A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read’s lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O’Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can’t mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert’s nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

The defense’s double jeopardy argument fails

Soon after the mistrial, Read’s lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued that Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed that Read wasn’t guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state’s highest court and a federal court judge. Defense attorneys have since appealed the federal ruling.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

A new prosecutor

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read’s passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented a number of prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.