By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumers’ mood improved slightly this month, with worries about inflation easing a bit, but remains gloomy.

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The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday in a preliminary version, rose to 53.3 early this month from a final reading of 51 in November. The index beat the 52 mark that economists had forecast but is down considerably from 71.7 in January.

Consumers’ evaluation of current economic conditions slipped slightly, but their expectations for the future brightened somewhat.

Expectations for year-ahead inflation dipped to 4.1% from 4.5% last month to the lowest level since January when Donald Trump returned to the White House and began imposing sweeping taxes — tariffs — on imports from countries around the world. Economists warn that importers pay the tariffs and then try to pass along the cost to their customers through higher prices.

Trump has reached a series of deals with major U.S. trading partners, including the European Union and Japan, that brought his tariffs down from the punishingly high levels he’d threatened in the spring. Still, the average U.S. tariff rate has climbed from 2.4% in January to 16.8% last month, highest since 1935, according to calculations by the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Joanne Hsu, who directs the Michigan economic surveys, said: “The overall tenor of views is broadly somber, as consumers continue to cite the burden of high prices.″

Inflation has fallen from the highs reached in mid-2022 but remains stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

By MARIA SHERMAN

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press has selected its 10 best albums of the year, presented in no particular order and with a legend describing who might particularly enjoy them, in the vein of our revamped music reviews.

Like our picks and want more? Enjoy bonus recommendations accompanying each entry.

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“Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party,” Hayley Williams

Call her Miss Paramore if you must, but this year, it’s all about Hayley Williams. The fierce frontwoman has detoured on her own before — the explorative interiority of 2020’s “Petals for Armor” and 2021’s “Flowers for Vases / Descansos” — but nothing has come close to “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party,” her greatest solo work to date. It is a triumph in candor told across varied mediums: ’90s alternative (“Brotherly Hate”), college radio indie rock (“Mirtazapine”) and trip-hop-pop (“Ice In My OJ”). It sounds like freedom for a performer long subject to public expectations.

FOR FANS OF: Autonomy, psychic recalibration, Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch”

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Alex G’s “Headlights,” No Joy’s “Bugland,” any of the new Copenhagen school like Smerz’s “Big City Life” and Snuggle’s “Goodbyehouse”

“Addison,” Addison Rae

This cover image released by Columbia Records shows “Addison” by Addison Rae. (Columbia Pictures via AP)

Not so long ago, Addison Rae’s pop ascension would’ve been hard to comprehend. She came from the stiff world of TikTok dance moves and then reinvented herself with the fame it provided, launching an inventive pop career in its wake. Her debut album, “Addison,” is stuffed with sequined pop songs from the pitch-shifted trip-hop “Headphones On” to the Madonna’s “Ray of Light”-channeling “Aquamarine.” At its core is “Fame Is a Gun,” an addictive, early Grimes-ian winner about desire and desperation.

FOR FANS OF: Victoria’s Secret, pouring cherry coke into red wine, the long-tail legacy of Britney Spears

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: PinkPantheress’ “Fancy That,” Perfume Genius’ “Glory,” JADE’s “That’s Showbiz Baby!,” CMAT’s “Euro-Country,” the “KPop Demon Hunters” soundtrack

“Lux,” Rosalía

This image released by Columbia Records shows “LUX” by Rosalía. (Columbia Records via AP)

In the eleventh hour of 2025, Rosalía emerged a savior, offering an album to music’s mainstream that was neither milquetoast nor expected. At the risk of flattening its extravagance: Her fourth studio album, “Lux,” is an offbeat, avant-garde embrace of her classical training. But it is also so much more than that. Across myriad operatic movements — as well as 13 different languages, a phonetic miracle performed by the Catalan singer — “Lux” is an ambitious collection of songs about divinity meant to challenge its audience into active listening. It is refreshing and arduous, a timeless reminder that rules are made to be broken.

FOR FANS OF: Feminine intuition, divine intervention, Hildegard of Bingen

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Los Thuthanaka’s “Los Thuthanaka,” Aya’s “Hexed!”, Water From Your Eyes’ “It’s a Beautiful Place”

“Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny performs during the iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles on March 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is not just an album, but a cultural reset. At his residency in San Juan, it was evident, as Benito alternated between two stages. One, a rural scene with plantain trees and a large flamboyan tree for the folk movements. The other, a traditional casita for the reggaeton and perreo block — where the pari de marquesina, or house party, happens. It is the perfect representation of his album’s celebration of Puerto Rico and its expert melding of its musical styles past and present. For many, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is a revolution committed to wax, a global superstar looking inward to his homeland to see the future. He wields his reggaetón and urbana skillsets — and weaves in salsa, bomba, plena, música jíbara — to find intergenerational pleasures.

FOR FANS OF: Cuatros, drinking Medalla beer on the beach, Nelson Antonio Denis’ “War Against All Puerto Ricans”

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Karol G’s “Tropicoqueta,” Rauw Alejandro ‘s “Cosa Nuestra: Capítulo 0,” Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso’s “Papota,” Fuerza Regida’s “111xpantia”

“Baby,” Dijon

This album cover image released by R&R/Warner Records shows “Baby” by Dijon. (R&R/Warner Records via AP)

For many listeners, Dijon is closely aligned with his big-name producing credits: on Bon Iver’s “SABLE, fABLE,” and Justin Bieber’s “Swag” series, or in his work with Mk.gee. But there’s a reason he is your favorite artist’s favorite artist. His take on R&B-pop and soul is surrealistic and dreamy; compositions are layered and borderline absurd. “Baby” is like peering into the brain of a great dadaist, if he just really loved Prince and springy electronics.

FOR FANS OF: Grooves, the musician Panda Bear, taking a break from social media

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Nourished by Time’s “The Passionate Ones,” Leon Thomas’ “Mutt Deluxe: Heel,” Justin Bieber’s “Swag” and “Swag II”

“Bleeds,” Wednesday

This cover image released by Dead Oceans shows “Bleeds” by Wednesday. (Dead Oceans via AP)

Let the headline read: Great band gets better. It hasn’t been so long since the AP named Wednesday’s last album, “Rat Saw God,” one of the best of 2023, dubbing the North Carolina alt-country group the most exciting band in contemporary indie rock. Two years later, it appears there are no threats to their title. “Bleeds” is a sharpening of their already present skillsets: folksy and jagged vocals, guitar fuzz, bright and mournful slide guitar. And in singer and songwriter Karly Hartzman, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a keener lyricist.

FOR FANS OF: Urban legends, dive bar regulars, stick and poke tattoos

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Geese’s “Getting Killed,” Daffo’s “Where the Earth Bends,” Sharp Pins’ “Radio DDR,” Algernon Cadwallader’s “Trying Not to Have a Thought”

“Never Enough,” Turnstile

This album cover image released by Roadrunner Records shows “Never Enough” by Turnstile. (Roadrunner Records via AP)

Lo and behold, an eight-time Grammy-nominated hardcore punk band! Baltimore’s Turnstile were underground stalwarts until 2021’s “Glow On” launched them into mainstream consciousness; they cemented their place there with “Never Enough.” They remain true to their punk spirit, but now with certain sonic deviations, like the ’80s radio rock “I Care” and the fleshy reverb of its title track. There are ferocious moments, too: Hit play on “Sunshower,” “Birds” and “Look Out For Me.” But ultimately there’s no need to don a spiky leather jacket to get into these rhythms; it’s hardcore for every listener.

FOR FANS OF: Fugazi, John Waters, Carhartt jackets

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: They Are Gutting a Body of Water’s “Lotto,” Lame’s “Lo Que Extrañas Ya No Existe,” The Tubs’ “Cotton Crown,” Artificial Go’s “Musical Chairs”

“Let God Sort Em Out,” Clipse

This cover image released by Roc Nation shows “Let God Sort Em Out” by Clipse. (Roc Nation via AP)

They didn’t need to do this. And it didn’t need to work so well. It’s been 16 years since brothers Malice and Pusha T teamed up for a Clipse album — 2009’s “Til the Casket Drops” — and a lot has changed. Their approach, too: Clipse’s return is fully produced by the glossy Pharrell Williams and features Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator. But ultimately, “Let God Sort Em Out” excels because the pair’s dexterous flows, sinister and motivational, are weighted and worldly. Where Malice’s voice is throatier now, Pusha T offers some smoothing. The combination of new and old makes for one of the year’s best rap records.

FOR FANS OF: Louis Vuitton, the wisdom of distance and experience, family reunions

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Earl Sweatshirt’s “Live Laugh Love,” Open Mike Eagle’s “Neighborhood Gods Unlimited,” Billy Woods’ “Golliwog”

“Snipe Hunter,” Tyler Childers

This cover image released by RCA Records shows “Snipe Hunter” by Tyler Childers. (RCA via AP)

Tyler Childers is an outsider in the contemporary country music industry; his idiosyncrasies are a kind of superpower. Lest anyone forget the album preceding this one, 2023’s rowdy “Rustin’ in the Rain,” was conceived of as Childers penning song pitches for Elvis Presley. “Snipe Hunter” continues to keep fans on their toes. It’s a wild ride of rollicking songs, sometimes earnest and sometimes ironic, that at least one time ends with some serious consideration of the Bhagavad Gita. File that next to beer, trucks and church as regular country guy topics.

FOR FANS OF: Wailing, rule breakers, having a sense of humor at the end of the world

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Charley Crockett’s “Lonesome Drifter,” Julien Baker and Torres’ “Send a Prayer My Way”

“The BPM,” Sudan Archives

This cover image released by Stones Throw Records shows “The BPM” by Sudan Archives. (Stones Throw Records via AP)

There is no more appropriately titled album than Sudan Archives’ “The BPM.” The latest release from the violinist and songwriter born Brittney Denise Parks pulls straight from the beat worlds of 1980s Chicago house and ’90s Detroit techno and evolves from there, developing something truly kinetic and unique that spans more genres than possible to list here. But at its core, this is club-pop-soul music, meant to live in the body of its listener.

FOR FANS OF: Karma, being the hottest person at the party, Jersey club music

LIKE THIS? CHECK OUT: Rochelle Jordan’s “Through the Wall,” Amaarae’s “Black Star,” Blood Orange’s “Essex Honey”

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal vaccine advisory committee voted on Friday to end the longstanding recommendation that all U.S. babies get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they’re born.

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A loud chorus of medical and public health leaders decried the actions of the panel, whose current members were all appointed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a leading anti-vaccine activist before this year becoming the nation’s top health official.

“This is the group that can’t shoot straight,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert who for decades has been involved with ACIP and its workgroups.

For decades, the government has advised that all babies be vaccinated against the liver infection right after birth. The shots are widely considered to be a public health success for preventing thousands of illnesses.

But Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided to recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, and in cases where the mom wasn’t tested.

For other babies, it will be up to the parents and their doctors to decide if a birth dose is appropriate. The committee voted to suggest that when a family decides not to get a birth dose, then the vaccination series should begin when the child is 2 months old.

The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jim O’Neill, is expected to decide later whether to accept the committee’s recommendation.

The decision marks a return to a public health strategy that was abandoned more than three decades ago.

Asked why the newly-appointed committee moved quickly to reexamine the recommendation, committee member Vicky Pebsworth on Thursday cited “pressure from stakeholder groups wanting the policy to be revisited.” She did not say who was pressuring the committee, and a spokesman for Kennedy did not respond to a question about it.

Committee members said the risk of infection for most babies is very low and that earlier research that found the shots were safe for infants was inadequate.

They also worried that in many cases, doctors and nurses don’t have full conversations with parents about the pros and cons of the birth-dose vaccination.

The committee members voiced interest in hearing the input from public health and medical professionals, but chose to ignore the experts’ repeated pleas to leave the recommendations alone.

Dr. Peter Hotez of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston declined to present before the group “because ACIP appears to have shifted its mission away from science and evidence-based medicine,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.

The committee gives advice to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how approved vaccines should be used. CDC directors almost always adopted the committee’s recommendations, which were widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs. But the agency currently has no director, leaving acting director O’Neill to decide.

In June, Kennedy fired the entire 17-member panel earlier this year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that, for most people, lasts less than six months. But for some, especially infants and children, it can become a long-lasting problem that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer and scarring called cirrhosis.

In adults, the virus is spread through sex or through sharing needles during injection drug use. But it can also be passed from an infected mother to a baby.

In 1991, the committee recommended an initial dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Experts say quick immunization is crucial to prevent infection from taking root. And, indeed, cases in children have plummeted.

Still, several members of Kennedy’s committee voiced discomfort with vaccinating all newborns. They argued that past safety studies of the vaccine in newborns was limited and it’s possible that larger, long-term studies could uncover a problem with the birth dose.

But two members said they saw no documented evidence of harm from the birth doses and suggested concern was based on speculation.

The panel was to vote Thursday, but voted to postpone after some members said they had just received the densely-worded vote proposals and wanted clarification and more time to consider it.

Three panel members asked about the scientific basis for saying that the first dose should be delayed for two months for many babies.

“This is unconscionable,” said committee member Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, who repeatedly voiced opposition to the proposal during the sometimes-heated two-day meeting.

The committee’s chair, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, said two months was chosen as a point where infants had matured beyond the neonatal stage. Hibbeln countered that there was no data presented that two months is an appropriate cut-off.

Some observers criticized the meeting, noting recent changes in how they are conducted. CDC scientists no longer present vaccine safety and effectiveness data to the committee. Instead, people who have been prominent voices in anti-vaccine circles were given those slots.

The committee “is no longer a legitimate scientific body,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, a member of Defend Public Health, an advocacy group of researchers and others that has opposed Trump administration health policies.

In a statement, she described the meeting this week as “an epidemiological crime scene” — a slaughter of how disease control professionals usually examine and act on evidence.

AP writer Laura Ungar in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

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

In a pre-dawn raid in November 1990, feds armed with warrants, padlocks, and chains seized everything Willie Nelson owned—his golf course, ranches, studio, all of it. Only one thing slipped through the IRS perimeter: Willie’s guitar, “Trigger.” Thirty-five years later, Willie still has Trigger. Oh, and he eventually got back the ranches, studio, and golf course. These days, Willie Nelson’s nine-hole course—nicknamed Cut ‘N Putt—dances like an old brown shoe through loblolly pines in the Austin hills. The parking lot is guarded by what folks in the music business call “a silver firecracker”—a big Airstream bus that Willie and friends call Honeysuckle Rose. (Willie’s been travelling again, headlining Farm Aid 40 at the age 92 and announcing another, and perhaps final, tour.)

Golf pro Fran Szal, 75 years young, greets all comers with a wry smile. For pilgrims like my wife and I, who have come from afar, he slips into stories as if they’re on his lips at all times.

“They took everything,” Szal recalled on our visit last year, adding with a chuckle. “But not … Trigger. Yeah, we managed to hide that.” We met him near Cut ‘N Putt’s rustic pro shop, which could pass for a set for the 1960s sit-com The Beverly Hillbillies. In a world forever in need of magic, Trigger appears to have its own powers. Rumor has it that Willie’s daughter aided its escape. But when pressed, Szal says only: “The family likes to keep some things to themselves.”

The fact remains: On the day the feds came to shut Willie down, Trigger somehow slipped out of bed, made it to the golf course, travelled by mail to Hawaii, and hid out until Willie got his house and taxes back in order. (Willie’s daughter Lana may have something to do with getting the postage right.) Of all the blessings in the world, the fact that the federales missed Trigger seems to be a story that is winning the fight with infinity.

Trigger (Shutterstock)

Trigger had accompanied Willie’s soft twang on “Stardust,” the now triple-platinum 1978 album that brought the mainstream to country. Can you look at the endless sky in these hills and not hear Willie’s voice singing Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies”? Willie wrestled that immortal song into our mortal world, his fingers caressing Trigger, the very instrument that birthed so many iconic tunes: “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” (1980) ; “Always On My Mind” (1982) ; “On the Road Again” (1988).

My wife Monica and I had different reasons for journeying to Pedernales. She’s a fan. But our visit to Willie’s golf course was partly for my research on a book on Native-owned golf courses. (Formally, the course is called Pedernales, but its nickname is Cut ‘N Putt.) 

It’s a little-known history I was working to unearth. The Osage built a course in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, during the oil boom, which no longer exists. The Mescalero Apache’s course at The Inn of the Mountain Gods in New Mexico, built in 1975, remains a cherished masterpiece. With the advent of gaming, in 1988, more than 60 tribes, bands, and nations built courses.

Some, including me, count Cut ‘N Putt, purchased in 1979, as yet another early Native-owned course. Willie Nelson, after all, was twice named Outstanding Indian of The Year by the American Indian Exposition. In 2014, he and Neil Young were presented with buffalo robes for their work with Farm Aid and the Keystone Pipeline protests by the Oceti Sakowin, Ponca, and Omaha nations. 

But, as it is for others who believe they have Native roots in Arkansas and Texas (the states where Willie’s family lived), proof can be elusive. Nelson is on record saying his mother—Myrle Marie Greenhaw Harvey Nelson—was three-quarters Cherokee. In the Story of Texas, the Bullock Texas State History Museum reports this as fact. 

In an interview reported in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas, however, Nelson’s mother’s sister, Sybil Greenhaw Young (1923–1999), claimed it was her mother, Bertha Greenhaw (Willie’s grandmother), who was three-quarters Cherokee. In the same interview, Young also said her grandmother (Willie’s great-grandmother) was “full-blooded Cherokee” and that Willie’s great-grandfather was “half Cherokee and half Irish.” The encyclopedia separately reports that while Cherokees were known to live in that same area, Willie’s maternal grandparents were listed in U.S. Census records as white. 

None of these ancestors appear in the Dawes Rolls, a historic federal record from 1909 to 1914 that documented the enrollment of members of five tribes including Cherokees, and neither they nor Willie have ever been a citizen of the federally recognized Cherokee Nation, which enjoys tribal sovereignty and determines its own membership. Willie himself was born the year before the The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the New Deal act (written by John Collier) that led most tribal constitutions in ensuing decades to develop a criteria for claiming Native heritage.

Given this history, and considering the social milieu that Willie came out of, it is perhaps not surprising that the Greenhaws and Nelsons did not formally demonstrate descent from an enrolled ancestor. Nevertheless, as late as a 2024 interview with Robert Sheer, Nelson again recounted the family stories that establish, for him, his mother’s Cherokee ancestry. Given this, the accolades from the tribes themselves, and Willie’s embrace of Native causes, I include Cut ‘N Putt as an early Native-owned golf course and one worth our pilgrimage. 

Regarding Willie’s ancestry, something firmly established is that he comes from a long line of musicians. And that was the other reason for our visit: my wife’s love of his music. In the rustic clubhouse, my bride, Monica, took out her phone and showed Szal the snapshot she keeps of her and Willie. They met at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohassett, Massachusetts, in 1992. “Back when he was younger,” she said.

Szal smiled. In the photo her beautiful face is tucked into Willie’s shoulder. He is wearing a red bandanna. Her smile is as wide as Texas. “I asked him who was the first one to sign his guitar,” she told Szal. He raised an eyebrow. “Leon Russell,“ she said excitedly. Szal nodded then and gave her a golf shirt. The logo? Trigger, of course.

Willie has said that the tone of Trigger is “beyond explanation.” After his Baldwin acoustic was damaged—in 1969, in circumstances that may have involved Merle Haggard and drinks—Willie bought the nylon string Martin N-20 from a luthier in Nashville named Shot Jackson. He had Jackson take the electronics from his busted Baldwin and install them in the Martin, and Trigger was born as what musicians call a Frankenstein, an instrument made of different, divergent parts.

Szal waved us out the door into a brilliant, winter sun. When asked if Willie is any good at the maddeningly difficult game of golf, he said diplomatically: “Willie plays ‘Feel Golf.’” Then he pointed past an unkempt fairway to where Willie built a studio, the very studio the Feds seized and had to return. Szal explained how Nelson’s working method became “cut and putt.” Cut a track, then play nine while the mixers mixed. Cut a track, then putt. Then do it all again. The first work produced in this golfing method of making music? Tougher than Leather, the 1983 album anchored by the hit “Pancho and Lefty.”

I asked Szal to clarify what he meant by “Feel Golf.” After showing another group of pilgrims to the first tee, Szal directed us to Willie’s rules, hand painted on some burlwood. Among them:

Par is what you set it at.
No more than 12 in your 4-some.
Missing balls are considered stolen. (No penalty.)
Bikinis Ok.

Szal, my wife, and I stood there laughing in the clear light. 

Willie and Trigger slowly won their battle with the IRS: He paid off back taxes, partly by releasing more songs under the title Who Will Buy My Memories? And Willie’s stuff came back to him—the Austin ranch. The Utah ranch. This studio and golf course, where Trigger would do its best work.

Given the seemingly supernatural powers of that six-string, I asked Szal how many years before Feel Golf would become the standard of play, when bikinis are ok and all lost balls would be considered stolen?

He wouldn’t venture a guess, but I came away convinced. In the end, we’d all be better off playing by Willie’s rules.

The post A Trip Through Willie Nelson’s Golf Course, His Unorthodox Rules, and His Uncertain Tribal Identity appeared first on The Texas Observer.