By ISABELLA VOLMERT, Associated Press

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — A procession of mothers wearing red sashes, pushing strollers and tending to toddlers made their way Friday to a little festival in Flint, Michigan, where families received diapers and kids played.

It was called a “baby parade.”

The sashes indicated the women were participants of a growing program in Michigan that helps pregnant women and new moms by giving them cash over the first year of their children’s lives. Launched in 2024, the program comes at a time when many voters worry over high child care costs and President Donald Trump’s administration floats policy to reverse the declining birth rate.

Backed by a mix of state, local and philanthropic money, Rx Kids gives mothers of newborns up to $7,500, with no income requirements and no rules for how the money is spent. Supporters believe the program could be a model for mitigating the high cost of having children in the U.S.

“There’s all kinds of reasons, no matter what your political affiliation or ideology is, to support this,” said state Sen. John Damoose, a Republican and ardent supporter of the program.

Dr. Mona Hanna, creator of the Flint Rx Kids program, at the Hurley’s Children Clinic ahead of the Flint Rx Kids Baby Parade on July 25, 2025 in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Emily Elconin)

How the program works

To qualify, women need to prove they live in a participating location and that they are pregnant, but don’t have to share details about their income.

It’s designed to be simple.

Pregnant women receive $1,500 before delivery and $500 every month for the first six to 12 months of their babies’ lives, depending on the program location.

Dr. Mona Hanna, a pediatrician, associate dean for public health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and the program’s founding director, said that window is a time of great economic vulnerability for new parents — and a critical developmental period for babies.

Most participants need diapers, formula, breast feeding supplies and baby clothes but every family’s needs are different. The monthly payment can also help buy food and cover rent, utilities and transportation.

For some moms, the extra cash allows them to afford child care and return to work. For others, it allows them to stay home longer.

The program so far is available in Flint, Pontiac, Kalamazoo and five counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. By fall, it will expand to a rural central Michigan county and several cities near Detroit.

Hanna said the main piece of feedback she hears is that the program should be bigger. She’s heard from lawmakers and others hoping to start similar programs in other states.

What’s the impact

Hanna said the program’s data shows nearly all pregnant women in Flint have signed up since it became available.

The locations were designed to target low-income families, though there is no income requirement. Luke Shaefer, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan and a co-founder of Rx Kids, said they wanted to eliminate any stigma or barriers that discourage people from signing up.

The founders also want mothers to feel celebrated, hence the parade Friday.

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“For so long moms have been vilified and not supported,” Hanna said.

Friends told Angela Sintery, 44, about Rx Kids when she found out she was pregnant with her second child. She’s a preschool teacher who spread the word to other parents.

Sintery had her first daughter 19 years before her second and had to buy all new baby supplies.

She said the cash provided by Rx Kids would have been helpful when she had her first child at age 24, before she went to college.

“So this time around, I didn’t have to stress about anything. I just had to worry about my baby,” she said.

Celeste Lord-Timlin, a Flint resident and program participant, attended the baby parade with her husband and 13-month-old daughter by her side. She said the deposits helped her pay for graduate school while she was pregnant.

“It allowed us to really enjoy being new parents,” she said.

Changing the conversation

The program relies heavily on philanthropic donations but Hanna’s long-term goal is for the government to be the main provider.

“I see philanthropy as the doula of this program, they are helping birth it,” she said. “They are helping us prove that this is possible.”

Democrats in Michigan’s state Senate introduced legislation in February that would make the program available to any pregnant woman in the state and it has bipartisan support. But with a divided Legislature only able to pass six bills total this year, it’s unlikely the program will yet expand statewide soon.

Even Damoose, among the program’s top backers, said he doesn’t think Michigan can afford statewide expansion yet. But the lawmaker who represents parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan does want to keep growing it.

For fellow Republicans who oppose abortion as he does, the approach is a “no brainer” way to help pregnant women, Damoose said.

“We’ve been accused for years and years, and not without cause, of being pro-birth, but not pro-life,” he said. “And this is a way for us to put our money where our mouth is.”

The cost of kids

A new movement of pro-natalist political figures, including Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk and other members of Trump’s periphery, have harped on the country’s declining birth rate.

But a recent Associated Press-NORC poll found that most Americans want the government to focus on the high costs of child care — not just the number of babies being born here.

Under Trump’s tax and spending bill that Congress passed in July, the child tax credit is boosted from $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200. But millions of families at lower income levels will not get the full credit.

The bill will also create a new children’s saving program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.

That’s not available until children grow up and is more focused on building wealth rather than immediate relief, Hanna said.

“We don’t have that social infrastructure to invest in our families,” Hanna said. “No wonder people aren’t having children and our birth rates are going down.”

The Trump administration has also toyed with the idea of giving families one-time $5,000 “baby bonuses,” a policy similar to Rx Kids.

Critics have rightly pointed out that doesn’t come close to covering the cost of child care or other expenses. Defenders of a cash-in-hand approach, though, say any amount can help in those critical early months.

“I think it’s part of a new narrative or the rekindling of an old narrative where we start to celebrate children and families,” said Damoose.

Associated Press writer Mike Householder contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage eased to where it was three weeks ago, modest relief for prospective homebuyers challenged by rising home prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs.

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The long-term rate slipped to 6.72% from 6.74% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.73%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also eased. The average rate dropped to 5.85% from 5.87% last week. A year ago, it was 5.99%, Freddie Mac said.

Elevated mortgage rates continue to weigh on the U.S. housing market, which has been in a sales slump going back to 2022, when rates started to climb from the rock-bottom lows they reached during the pandemic.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation.

The main barometer is the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans. The yield was at 4.34% at midday Thursday, down from 4.37% late Wednesday.

Yields moved higher most of July as traders bet that the Fed would keep its key short-term interest rate unchanged at its meeting this month.

On Wednesday, the central bank’s policymaking committee voted to hold its main interest rate steady. And Fed Chair Jerome Powell pushed back on expectations that the Fed could cut rates at its next meeting in September, pointing to how inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target, while the job market still looks to be “in balance.”

A cut in rates would give the job market and overall economy a boost, but it could also fuel inflation just as the Trump administration’s tariffs risk raising prices for U.S. consumers.

“If a September rate cut starts to be more likely, it is possible that we could see mortgage rates edge downward at the end of the summer, similar to what we saw last year at this time,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. “If inflation expectations continue to be high, mortgage rates could also remain higher.”

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In a period when retail beef prices are at an all-time high and consumers are still willing to pay, South Dakota rancher Calli Williams would love to cash in. But it’s not so simple.

Williams and her husband, Tate, raise about 70 cow-calf pairs near Letcher in southeastern South Dakota, roughly 18 miles (29 kilometers) north of Mitchell. They own about 80 acres (32 hectares) and rent additional pasture.

Between the drought that hit cattle country hard over the last few years, still being maxed out on the grass available to feed their animals, and with land prices rising, she said, they simply can’t yet make the financial investments that they’d need to raise production.

“It is a goal of ours to expand,” she said. “I’m just not sure if that will be in the 10-year plan or even longer.”

U.S. prices for steak and ground beef have hit record highs. (AP Digital Embed)

Biology is a barrier to expansion

Farmers and ranchers across the U.S. would love to take greater advantage of the high prices, but with the U.S. herd at record lows, they can’t meet the demand quickly. It’s basic biology.

“It takes three years to get more cows — between making a decision, having that gestation period, having the calf born, raising the calf until it, too, can have a calf,” said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist for the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute in Minneapolis.

Drought has eased but the impacts persist

The Williamses’ county was hard hit by drought over the previous few seasons. Because of the lack of their grass and uneconomically high hay prices, they had to sell all their young females last year that could have produced more calves for them this year, she said.

Their area has caught some rain lately, though. It has improved to just “abnormally dry” in recent U.S. Drought Monitor reports. But Williams said they’re simply playing catch-up.

Swanson said some of the main cattle areas in North America — from Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada down to Texas in the U.S. — are just naturally prone to drought. It’s often boom or bust.

Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said a lot of cattle country has had good rain this summer, but it’s a cyclical business.

“Sometimes we have good times, and sometimes we don’t,” Woodall said. “And we are just coming off what was a pretty significant negative hit to the cattle industry in ’19, ’20 and ’21, with the height of the pandemic. So we have a lot of producers who are still trying to pay off bills from those times.”

Bulls stare into the camera in Canton, Miss., Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)

Fear of future drought is also a factor

And Woodall said his members are still leery. They’re asking how long the better weather will last.

“We’re getting some good moisture now. But will it be that way in the fall? Will it be that way next year?” he said. “Because the last thing you want to do is pay to rebuild your herd and then just have to liquidate them again in six months to a year.”

Although it’s difficult to attribute any single weather event, such as a drought, directly to climate change, scientists say that rising temperatures stoked by climate change are increasing the odds of both severe droughts and heavier precipitation, which wreak havoc on people and the environment.

When extreme weather collides with tight margins, farmers and ranchers feel the squeeze.

The economics: Prices have soared to record highs

Retail beef prices have hit record highs with no relief for consumers in sight. Ground beef rose to an average of $6.12 per pound in June, up nearly 12% from 2024. The average price of all steaks rose 8% to $11.49 per pound.

And the average prices that producers receive for cattle and calves have increased from $1.51 per pound in May 2020 to $4.05 in May of this year.

Several pounds of short ribs show the price per pound at Deep Cuts Dallas Butcher Shop, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

But herds have still shrunk

The total U.S. cattle herd is the smallest it has been at midyear since the government began keeping those figures in 1973, and probably since the 1950s. There were few signs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture data released last Friday that producers have begun rebuilding herds.

As of July 1, the U.S. had 94.2 million cattle and calves, down from the last midyear peak in 2019 of nearly 103 million. Critical for the future supply, 2025 calf production is projected at 33.1 million head, down 1% from last year.

Derrell Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, said if producers were planning to grow their herds, the USDA reports would have shown them keeping heifers — female cows that haven’t given birth yet.

Yet consumer demand remains high

While retail prices are high, consumers so far have been willing to pay them.

Glynn Tonsor, who leads the Meat Demand Monitor at Kansas State University, said taste is the most important consideration when shoppers choose proteins — and beef remains the favorite.

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The late June report found that consumers were willing to fork out $17.62 a pound for rib-eye steaks and $8.82 for a pound of ground beef. That’s more than the $7.13 they’d pay for pork chops, $6.19 for bacon, or $8.55 for chicken breasts.

A major reason, Woodall offered, is that the beef industry has focused on the eating experience.

“The kind of beef that we are producing today is some of the highest quality, best tasting beef that we’ve ever produced in history here in the United States,” he said. “So, things such as USDA prime graded steaks that at one point in time you could only get in a restaurant, you can now get that in a grocery store.”

For consumers who balk at costs, the marketing specialist Peel said, pork and poultry are “abundant and quite favorably priced.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

The Williamses, who are both 34, built their TW Angus business from scratch. Tate Williams started buying cattle when he was in high school, and they bought their land in 2015. They sell bulls in the spring and keep heifers when they can. They also raise steers in their own feedlot and sell the meat directly to consumers.

“We would really like to expand our operation,” Calli Williams said. “We have a goal of being able to pass this on to the next generation,” Williams said, meaning their sons Jack, 7, and Tommy, nearly 4.

But recalling a friend’s words, she said ranchers are a resilient bunch.

“We’re optimistic that if Mother Nature — she wreaked havoc on us, whether that was a drought or a flood — that next year she’ll be kinder to us, “ she said. ”Or, if the markets weren’t on our side, we’re optimistic that the markets will be on our side next time.”

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday plans to reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test for American schoolchildren.

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The program, which was created in 1966, had children run and perform situps, pullups or pushups and a sit-and-reach test. It changed in 2012 during the Obama administration to focus more on individual health than athletic feats.

The president “wants to ensure America’s future generations are strong, healthy, and successful,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, and that all young Americans “have the opportunity to emphasize healthy, active lifestyles — creating a culture of strength and excellence for years to come.”

In a late afternoon ceremony at the White House, Trump intends to sign an order that reestablishes the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, as well as the fitness test, to be administered by his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The council also will develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award.

In 2012, the assessment evolved into the Youth Fitness Program, which the government said “moved away from recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on student’s health.”

The Youth Fitness Test, according to a Health and Human Services Department website last updated in 2023 but still online Thursday, “minimizes comparisons between children and instead supports students as they pursue personal fitness goals for lifelong health.”

Expected to join Trump at the event are a number of prominent athletes, including some who have faced controversy.

They include pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau, a Trump friend; kicker Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs; Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam; WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the son-in-law of Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon; and former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, a registered sex offender.

The NFL distanced itself from comments Butker made last year during a commencement address at a Kansas college, when he said most of the women receiving degrees were probably more excited about getting married and having children than entering the workforce and that some Catholic leaders were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” Butker also assailed Pride month and railed against Democratic President Joe Biden’s stance on abortion.

Butker later formed a political action committee designed to encourage Christians to vote for what the PAC describes as “traditional values.”

Sorenstam faced backlash for accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after rioters spurred by Trump’s false claims about his election loss to Biden stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Taylor, who has appeared on stage with Trump at campaign rallies, pleaded guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct.