Apple has had few incentives in the past to start making iPhones in US

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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Unhappy that Apple intends to source nearly all of its U.S. iPhones from India, President Donald Trump on Friday threatened a 25% tariff on the popular device unless the tech giant moves production to the United States. But Apple has seen little incentive in the past to manufacture domestically.

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Apple has traditionally produced its devices in China, in massive factories that rely on a vast network of local suppliers. The company’s reliance on this relationship thrust the technology trendsetter into the crosshairs of Trump’s trade war.

In response to the president’s recent exchange with China, Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that most iPhones sold in the U.S. during the current fiscal quarter would come from India. After Trump rolled out tariffs in April, bank analysts estimated that a $1,200 iPhone would, if made in America, jump in price anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500.

The disincentives for Apple shifting its production domestically include a complex supply chain that it began building in China during the 1990s. It would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.S. Combined with current economic forces, the price of an iPhone could triple, threatening to torpedo sales of Apple’s marquee product.

“The concept of making iPhones in the U.S. is a nonstarter,” asserted Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, reflecting a widely held view in the investment community that tracks Apple’s every move. He estimated that the current $1,000 price tag for an iPhone made in China, or India, would soar to more than $3,000 if production shifted to the U.S. And he believes that moving production domestically likely couldn’t be done until, at the earliest, 2028. “Price points would move so dramatically, it’s hard to comprehend.”

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. On a quarterly earnings call earlier in May, Cook told investors that tariffs had a “limited impact” on the company in the March quarter because it was able to optimize its supply chain. But Cook warned that it is “very difficult” to predict beyond June “because I’m not sure what will happen with tariffs.”

Apple is widely expected to eventually raise the prices on iPhones and other popular products because the Silicon Valley’s supply chain is so heavily concentrated in China, India and other overseas markets caught in the crossfire of Trump’s escalating trade war.

The big question is how long Apple might be willing to hold the line on its current prices before the tariffs’ toll on the company’s profit margins become too much to bear and consumers are asked to shoulder some of the burden.

One of the main reasons that Apple has wiggle room to hold the line on its current iPhone pricing is because the company continues to reap huge profit margins from the revenue generated by subscriptions and other services tied to its product, said Forrester Research analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. That division, which collected $96 billion in revenue during Apple’s last fiscal year, remains untouched by Trump’s tariffs.

“Apple can absorb some of the tariff-induced cost increases without significant financial impact, at least in the short term,” Chatterjee said.

Apple tried to appease Trump in February by announcing plans to spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the U.S. through 2028, but none of it was tied to making an iPhone domestically. Instead, Apple pledged to fund a Houston data center for computer servers powering artificial intelligence — a technology the company is expanding into as part of an industrywide craze.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also predicted tariffs would force a manufacturing shift during an April 6 appearance on a CBS News program. “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Lutnick said.

But during a 2017 appearance at a conference in China, Cook expressed doubt about whether the U.S. labor pool had enough workers with the vocational skills required to do the painstaking and tedious work that Lutnick was discussing.

“In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” Cook said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

Trump also tried to pressure Apple, to no avail, into shifting iPhone production to the U.S. during his first term as president. But the administration ultimately exempted the iPhone from the tariffs he imposed on China back then — a period when Apple had announced a commitment to invest $350 billion in the U.S. Trump’s first-term tariffs on China also prompted Apple to begin a process that led to some of its current iPhones being made in India and some of its other products being manufactured in Vietnam.

Cook took the president on a 2019 tour of a Texas plant where Apple had been assembling some of its Mac computers since 2013. Shortly after finishing that tour, Trump took credit for the plant that Apple had opened while Barack Obama was president. “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America,” Trump posted on Nov. 19, 2019.

Black Lives Matter street murals stand as an enduring reminder of protests against racism

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By FERNANDA FIGUEROA

In 2020, after a summer of protests rocked U.S. cities, the words “Black Lives Matter” went from the rallying cry of racial justice demonstrators to words lining the very roads along which they marched.

After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, towns and cities nationwide commissioned artists to paint BLM street murals in solidarity with the reckoning on police brutality and racism prompted by the unprecedented, multiracial mass rallies.

Five years on, many of the murals are still maintained by activists and community groups, while wear and tear, construction and vandalism spelled the end of others. And the mural widely thought to have inspired them all — 35-foot-tall (11-meter-tall) yellow capital letters painted on a street one block from the White House — is gone.

Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., ordered crews to remove the BLM mural in March under pressure from the Republican-led Congress. Bowser noted that the mural — an act of defiance against President Donald Trump’s first administration — “inspired millions of people and helped our city through a painful period.”

Keyonna Jones, one of seven artists who painted Black Lives Matter Plaza, said she understands why Bowser acted and that the mural’s removal doesn’t take away from its historic importance.

“To see it replicated all over the world within 24 hours,” Jones said during the demolition of the plaza. “I think is what really speaks to the power of art and so that is my favorite part about the whole experience.”

According to Urban Art Mapping, a database of public street art, nearly 150 “Black Lives Matter” murals remain.

Lindsey Owen, an art historian in Chicago, said each one represents the shared cultural and political purpose of a community.

“Even as BLM Plaza is dismantled, the reciprocal mirroring of these murals ensures their persistence,” Owen said, “now also reflecting the absence of spaces that have been removed.”

Here are details of some notable BLM murals:

Alabama

In 1899, Hobson City became Alabama’s first self-governed all-Black municipality. In 2020, residents including Mayor Alberta McCrory painted “Black Towns Matter” on its main street, Martin Luther King Boulevard.

In Montgomery, a temporary installation was established around Court Square Fountain, once the site of a slave market. City officials said the mural will be washed away once wear and tear begin to show.

Michelle Browder, the artist, said her design reflects the history of the area, and that the community signaled a readiness to address racial inequity by uniting to complete the mural.

“It gives us a sense of uniqueness and shows that our statement has not only significance but also invites people to look down, read and reflect on what happened in this space,” Browder said.

California

In downtown Oakland, residents and community groups painted “Black Lives Matter” along three blocks of 15th Steet. A month later, another mural was erected by The Queer Healing Arts Center honoring Black Trans and Queer Lives.

The city council in neighboring Berkeley then approved a BLM painting in front of city hall.

A rainbow-colored mural along the center lane of Los Angeles’ Hollywood Boulevard states “All Black Lives Matter” in celebration of the BLM movement and transgender people of color.

Mural designer, Luckie Alexander, said its message resonates stronger than ever today.

“Seeing the BLM Plaza (in Washington) destroyed feels like we are going back in time, when Black folks and LGBTQ+ had to struggle just to exist,” Alexander said. “With the one here in Hollywood still remaining, it gives me hope that California is still a safe place to live.”

Connecticut

In Hartford, a Black Lives Matter mural — each letter painted by a different artist — was created on Trinity Street, just steps from the Capitol. That mural was repainted in 2023 after it was defaced with a swastika.

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Andre Rochester, who painted one of the Ts in 2020 and 2023, said the mural represents the city’s Black and brown population.

“It was placed with intention,” Rochester said, adding: “It makes a loud statement, that the City of Hartford cares.”

Tyrone Motley, who inked the V during the 2023 repainting, said it is important that Hartford continues to protect the mural even as others around the country disappear.

“I feel work like this is ageless,” Motley said. “I’m pretty sure in 10 years people can look at a piece like this and still get the message.”

Florida

A “Black Lives Matter” mural in St. Petersburg mural was repainted in 2023 to read “Black History Matters.”

Illinois

One of the murals that sprung up across Chicago — a 100-foot (30-meter) “Black Lives Matter” display in Oak Park — was vandalized to read “All Lives Matter.” The original message was later restored.

Minnesota

In Minneapolis, where a bystander used her cellphone to record Floyd’s killing at the hands of police, 16 artists participated in the creation of “Black Lives Matter” in 24-foot-high (7-meter-high) letters on the street outside the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum.

Missouri

In Florissant, activists attempted to paint a mural in front of the police department on North Lindberg Avenue but the city kept painting over it.

In Kansas City, six murals were painted across one block, totaling a span of 2,000 feet (610 meters). The murals were enhanced in response to vandalism, but some are now deteriorating.

New Jersey

A block-long mural on Grand Street in Jersey City took two weeks to complete. In East Orange, 100 people participated in the creation of a 9,000 square-foot (840-square-meter) mural.

New York

In New York City, a mural in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan and others in Harlem and Brooklyn were defaced with black paint by anti-abortion protesters.

Texas

Six murals were painted across Dallas in 2020. Abounding Prosperity, Inc., which provides health services to the Black community, secured private funding to ensure they will be maintained for 10 years.

Washington

A permanent mural was installed in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. The city and the Vivid Matter Collective — an artists’ group — repaint and maintain the mural every year. In 2021, a second mural was installed outside Seattle City Hall. The organization will repaint that mural in June.

Suspect in shooting of Israeli Embassy staffers railed against Gaza war in online posts

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By MICHAEL BIESECKER and JIM MUSTIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the years before he was accused of killing two Israeli Embassy employees, the suspect in the fatal shootings was an active participant in Chicago’s left-wing protest scene, speaking out against police violence and a proposed Amazon headquarters. Then the war in Gaza ignited his fury into violence.

Elias Rodriguez, 31, was charged Thursday with the murder of foreign officials and other crimes in connection with the deaths of Israeli citizen Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, an American, as they left an event at a Jewish museum. The couple had plans to become engaged.

He told police after his arrest, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” according to court filings.

Rodriguez lived in a modest 850-square-foot apartment on Chicago’s north side and worked as an administrative assistant at a medical trade group. He had no apparent criminal record.

In his activism, he protested police violence against minorities and the power of corporations. His online posts had recently become fixated on the war in Gaza, calling for retaliation against Israel.

In the window of his apartment hung a photo of Wadee Alfayoumi, a 6-year-old Muslim boy killed in a 2023 stabbing in Chicago shortly after the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian group Hamas that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people in Israel. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

A neighbor, John Wayne Fray, described Rodriguez as “quiet and friendly.”

“He seemed like a normal, friendly guy,” Fry told reporters Thursday, standing near yellow crime-scene tape left by law enforcement officers who searched the suspect’s apartment. He said Rodriguez and a woman who lived with him appeared to be “very sensitive people, especially about the issue of Palestine.”

An October 2017 article in Liberation, the online newspaper for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, quoted Rodriguez as a member of the group participating in a protest outside the Chicago home of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the police shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald and the city’s bid to be the site for a new Amazon headquarters. A photo of a man holding a protest sign published with the article appeared to match photos of Rodriguez posted on social media.

The organization denied Thursday that Rodriguez was an active member, though it acknowledged a “brief association” in the past. The group also scrubbed the 2017 article identifying Rodriguez as a member from its website.

“We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting,” the group said in a statement. “We know of no contact with (Rodriguez) in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”

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As recently as this week, the group’s X feed posted pro-Palestinian statements calling for an end to the war in Gaza and characterizing Israel’s attacks on Palestinians as genocide.

Family members of Rodriguez and his defense attorney, Elizabeth Mullin, did not return messages seeking comment.

The FBI did not respond to questions about whether he was on the bureau’s radar before the shooting.

A GoFundMe page from 2017 sought to raise money to pay Rodriguez’s way to People’s Congress of Resistance, an event in Washington that September to “fight the Trump agenda and the Congress of millionaires!” As part of the appeal, Rodriguez recounted his father’s military service in the Iraq War.

“When my dad came home from Baghdad, he came with souvenirs,” Rodriguez was quoted as saying. “One was a magazine pouch with a warning in Arabic to back away or my dad would shoot and kill you. … He also gave me a patch of Iraq’s national flag, one he ripped off of an Iraqi soldier’s uniform because he could. I don’t want to see another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars with trophies.”

The effort raised $240.

Social media accounts tied to Rodriguez suggest he had become increasingly focused over the last two years on the Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

An account on X that used a variation of a screen name Rodriguez had used on other sites, along with his given name and photo, frequently featured pro-Palestinian posts, including a video from an October 2023 protest in downtown Chicago against U.S. aid to Israel.

Last October, the account also reposted two videos of speeches by Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese cleric and a former leader of Islamic militant group Hezbollah. Nasrallah had been killed two weeks earlier in an Israeli airstrike.

Less than an hour after the shooting in Washington on Thursday night, the X account posted, “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home,” along with screen grabs of a nearly 1,000-word essay signed with Rodriguez’s name. It was not immediately clear whether Rodriguez, who was in police custody at the time, had used a feature on X to schedule the release of the post in advance or if another person might have had access to the account.

In the piece, Rodriguez railed against the mounting death toll in Gaza, saying Israel “had obliterated the capacity to even continue counting the dead, which has served its genocide well.”

About 11 years ago, he wrote, he “personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine.” He sought to justify what he called “the morality of armed demonstration,” adding “those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.”

“The atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification,” he wrote. “We who let this happen will never deserve the Palestinians’ forgiveness.”

Rodriguez also invoked the death last year of Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who he set himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington while declaring that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.”

Bushnell’s sacrifice, he wrote, was “not made in vain.” Court records say Rodriguez made similar remarks about Bushnell after he was taken into custody, describing the man as “courageous” and a “martyr.”

At the end of the screed, Rodrigez expressed his love for his parents, his younger sister and the “rest of my familia.” He signed off with “Free Palestine” and the emoji for the Palestinian flag.

Rodriguez’s employer, the American Osteopathic Information Association, issued a statement Thursday expressing shock and saying it would cooperate with investigators.

“As a physician organization dedicated to protecting the health and sanctity of human life, we believe in the rights of all persons to live safely without fear of violence,” the group said.

Mustian reported from New York.

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

Charges: Hastings man put gun to woman’s head and pulled the trigger, but no bullet fired

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Charges say a Hastings man threatened to kill a woman after an alcohol-fueled argument and put a gun to her head and squeezed the trigger — she heard a click — but no bullet fired.

The woman called 911 around noon Tuesday and reported she had barricaded herself in a second-floor bedroom of a Ravenna Township home to get away from Martin Frederick Branshaw, who was pounding on the door, trying to get inside. When Dakota County sheriff’s deputies arrived, they used a ladder to rescue her through a window.

Branshaw, 51, was still inside the home and yelled that he had a gun and that he would shoot, according to Thursday’s criminal complaint. South Metro SWAT was called and eventually breached the house and found him in a second-floor bedroom with an apparent self-inflicted injury to his neck.

Branshaw was transported to an area hospital for treatment, where he remains in custody and facing second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon charges.

‘I shouldn’t be alive’

The woman told an investigator the two had been drinking alcohol the night before and gotten into an argument. She went upstairs to go to bed, but Branshaw repeatedly screamed at her from the first floor. She eventually fell asleep, but was awakened when Branshaw entered the room.

He unlocked a gun safe next to the bed, grabbed her by the hair and put the barrel of a black pistol to her temple. He pulled the trigger and the she heard a “click,” but it did not fire, the complaint says.

She told the investigator, “I shouldn’t be alive… if he had one in the gun, I’d be dead.”

During the investigation, a .45-caliber pistol was found under a couch cushion. It was loaded with a magazine that contained 10 rounds, however, no bullet was in the chamber.

Branshaw was unable to appear at a first hearing in Dakota County District Court on Thursday due to his hospitalization; it was continued to June 12. Judge Dannia Edwards set his interim bail at $1 million and issued a domestic abuse no-contact order.

Court records show Branshaw completed one year of supervised probation on May 2 as part of a sentence for a DWI conviction out of Goodhue County.

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