By MIKE CATALINI, Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday denied Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver’s motions to toss out a prosecution against her stemming from a visit to an immigration detention center this year.

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U.S. District Judge Jamel Semper also said he would reserve judgment on one of the New Jersey congresswoman’s motions to toss the case brought by acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, who was President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.

McIver sought to dismiss the case against her on the grounds that her visit to Newark’s Delaney Hall immigration detention center in May was protected on the grounds of constitutional legislative immunity as well as selective and vindictive prosecution.

Semper wrote that the congresswoman failed to show the prosecution was vindictive and that her actions were “wholly disconnected” from the oversight she was conducting as a member of Congress.

The case is a high-profile clash between Trump’s second administration and a Democratic lawmaker who has been sharply critical of the president’s policies. McIver has pleaded not guilty and vowed to continue her work as a lawmaker.

McIver as charged by Habba, a Republican, after the May 9 visit to Delaney Hall. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses the privately owned, 1,000-bed facility as a detention center.

She was indicted in June on three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials. Two of the counts carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The third is a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of one year in prison.

Habba’s tenure as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey is being challenged in court, with appellate judges having heard arguments in that case and a decision pending.

A nearly 2-minute video clip released by the Department of Homeland Security shows McIver at the facility inside a chain-link fence just before Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s arrest on the other side of the barrier, where other people were protesting. McIver and uniformed officials go through the gate, and she joins others shouting that they should circle the mayor.

The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people including officers. At one point her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police.”

It is not clear from police body camera video if the contact was intentional, incidental or the result of jostling in the chaotic scene. The judge’s opinion on Wednesday cites video footage and says McIver pushed and was pushed during the incident.

The government’s complaint alleges that she “slammed” her forearm into an agent and then tried to restrain the agent by grabbing him.

The indictment also says she placed her arms around the mayor to try to stop his arrest and says again that she slammed her forearm into and grabbed an agent.

A trespassing charge against the mayor was later dropped.

Members of Congress are legally authorized to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill spelling out that authority.

McIver first came to Congress in September in a special election after the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. left a vacancy in the 10th District. She was then elected to a full term in November.

WEATHERFORD, Okla. (AP) — A leaking tanker truck in a small Oklahoma city spewed a hazardous gas in a hotel parking lot, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate and hospitalizing several dozen people, authorities said Thursday.

The anhydrous ammonia gas release happened shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday. People in the immediate area were in respiratory distress, city officials in Weatherford said at a news conference. Most patients were taken to a nearby hospital, but some, including four in critical condition, were taken to other hospitals for further treatment, Police Chief Angelo Orefice said.

At least 500 to 600 people were in a shelter early Thursday, but others were told to shelter in place, authorities said. That order was lifted later Thursday morning. Several nursing homes were evacuated and schools were closed for the day.

The truck’s driver had parked it behind the Holiday Inn to get a room there for the evening, the police chief said, adding that the cleanup could take several days.

“We pretty much got a lot of of this stuff diluted right now,” and were working with environmental officials, he said.

Krystal Blackwell, who was evacuated, said emergency officials were wearing gas masks and knocking on doors.

“It was a little crazy to wake up to,” Blackwell told KWTV-TV. “I really thought it was a kind of dream.” She said she was sitting in her car, still wearing her pajamas.

Authorities said the air quality was being monitored and that the tanker truck was no longer spewing gas. A number of agencies were on hand to assist, including hazmat crews and an Oklahoma National Guard unit that supports first responders during emergencies.

Right now, the cause of the leak seems to be a mechanical failure on a valve or a faulty seal, Orefice said.

Industrial gas distributor Airgas said it was working with local authorities to respond to the chemical spill.

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“Anhydrous ammonia warrants cautious handling and management,” the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based company said in a statement, urging people in Weatherford to follow instructions from authorities in the area.

Anhydrous ammonia is used as a fertilizer to help provide nitrogen for corn and wheat plants. If a person touches it when it is in gas or liquid form, they could be burned. Last week, an anhydrous ammonia leak caused by an explosion at a plant north of Yazoo City, Mississippi, prompted evacuations for nearby residents and sent a plume of yellowish smoke rising above the facility.

Weatherford is home to about 12,000 people and is about 70 miles west of Oklahoma City.

By Omar El Chmouri, Bloomberg News

They may be more than 8,000 miles apart, but Dubai and Las Vegas are becoming oddly alike, particularly where tourism is concerned. For one thing, both are doubling down on large-scale events and good winter weather as reasons to visit. The emirate’s first casino licenses are on the horizon. And now, Dubai has beat Las Vegas at one of its own games. According to new data pulled for Bloomberg by real estate analyst CoStar Group, the Middle Eastern city now has more hotel rooms than America’s resort capital.

For years, Dubai thrived as a transfer hub — a city people would fly through but not stay in. Hotel infrastructure proves that has changed. Asking visitors to stay in town — rather than transiting through the airport on a layover — requires the matching infrastructure, so the city has doubled the number of available hotel beds over the past decade. Setting aside Chinese cities, which benefit from massive numbers of domestic tourists in the second-most-populous country, Dubai is now a runner-up only to London in number of hotel rooms globally.

The parallels between Dubai and Vegas extend further. Only a few months ago, a Las Vegas expert marveled in a Bloomberg Pursuits city guide that her hometown “was literally built from nothing, in the middle of the desert.” The same could be said of Dubai. And just as Vegas has identified successful culinary concepts from around the world and replicated them in its own hotels and resorts, so has Dubai. (See recent imports such as London-born China Tang, Mumbai’s Bombay Club and Parisian steakhouse Le Relais de l’Entrecôte.) Vegas is doubling down on sports — having acquired teams in the NFL, WNBA and NHL — but so too are the Emirates, with neighboring Abu Dhabi hosting F1 races and NBA preseason games that are easily accessible from Dubai. All of these draws have increased Dubai’s appeal as a leisure destination worth returning to.

As for the hotel boom, it runs the gamut from more affordable stays to decadent five-star resorts. And it shows no signs of stopping: Upcoming openings include Ciel Tower, set to become the world’s tallest hotel when it opens in November, with 1,004 rooms and eight restaurants filling 82 floors at the Dubai Marina. That’s just one of 56 hotels in the city’s construction pipeline as of early this year, according to industry researchers at Lodging Economics; together, those projects represented another 15,000-plus rooms being added to Dubai’s total.

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Restaurants are following a similar trajectory. In 2024 alone, the Emirate issued 1,200 new restaurant licenses, while beach clubs in the Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Marina areas have exploded in popularity. (Think of them as equivalents to Vegas’ pool-party spots.)

But there’s one notable point of distinction between Vegas and Dubai: Business in Dubai is up, while in Vegas it’s lagging. Between January and May, average occupancy rates in the Middle Eastern city’s hotels stood at 83%, up from 81% in the same period last year, according to official data. In Las Vegas, figures from CoStar found that hotels on the Strip have seen occupancy rates dip between 1% and 5% every month since February 2025 when compared to the year prior.

Both cities are contending with complex geopolitics. Vegas’ performance relates at least in part to the broader problems of international tourism to the U.S. lagging in the face of tariffs, along with a sharp shifts in behavior from angry Canadians. Dubai’s successes come in spite of regional instability and the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, which briefly closed airspace in the United Arab Emirates. Resilience in the face of such significant considerations is at least as telling about the cities’ futures as the number of hotel rooms they contain.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is slipping on Thursday as Nvidia and other superstars swept up in the mania around artificial-intelligence technology keep swinging.

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The S&P 500 fell 0.6% in morning trading, pulling a bit further from its all-time high set late last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 106 points, or 0.2%, from its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite was down 1.1%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the market after the chip company lost 2.7%. Other AI darlings also struggled, including drops of 3.4% for Palantir Technologies and 4.2% for Super Micro Computer.

Questions have been rising worldwide about whether such superstar stocks can add more to their already spectacular gains. Palantir earlier this month had a stunning rise of nearly 174% for the year so far, for example.

Such sensational performances have been one of the top reasons the U.S. market has hit records despite a slowing job market and high inflation. AI stock prices have shot so high, though, that they’ve drawn comparisons to the 2000 dot-com bubble which ultimately dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half after bursting.

In the meantime, Wall Street is waiting to see if more news coming about the economy’s health will be good news or bad.

The U.S. government is reopening following a six-week shutdown, its longest in history. The stock market mostly rose through the shutdown, as it has often done historically, but Wall Street is bracing for potential swings as the government gets back to releasing important updates on the job market and other signals about the economy’s strength.

The fear is that the data could persuade the Federal Reserve to halt its cuts to interest rates, which can boost the economy but also worsen inflation. Wall Street has already run to records in part on expectations for more such cuts, and a pullback could hurt the stock market.

The “looming data deluge may spur additional volatility in the coming weeks,” according to Doug Beath, global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Traders have already reduced their bets that the Fed will cut its main interest rate at its next meeting in December, now seeing a 53% of that, down from nearly 70% a week ago, according to data from CME Group.

That helped push yields higher in the bond market, which can weigh on prices for stocks and other investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.10% from 4.08% late Wednesday.

On Wall Street, The Walt Disney Co. helped lead the market lower after falling 8.2%. The entertainment giant reported profit for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations, but its revenue fell short.

That helped offset a jump of 4.3% for Cisco after the tech giant delivered profit and revenue that were bigger than analysts estimated.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following modest gains in Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.4%, even as tech giant SoftBank Group lost another 3.4%. It’s been struggling since it said it had sold all of its investments in Nvidia.

AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.