By JEFFREY COLLINS

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A Japanese company has halted construction on a $1.6 billion factory in South Carolina to help make batteries for electric BMWs, citing “policy and market uncertainty.”

While Automotive Energy Supply Corp. didn’t specify what those problems are, South Carolina’s Republican governor said the company is dealing with the potential loss of federal tax breaks for electric vehicle buyers and incentives for EV businesses as well as tariff uncertainties from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“What we’re doing is urging caution — let things play out because all of the these changes are taking place,” Gov. Henry McMaster said.

AESC announced the suspension in construction of its plant in Florence on Thursday.

“Due to policy and market uncertainty, we are pausing construction at our South Carolina facility at this time,” the company’s statement said.

AESC promised to restart construction, although it didn’t say when, and vowed to meet its commitment to hire 1,600 workers and invest $1.6 billion. The company said it has already invested $1 billion in the Florence plant.

The battery maker based in Japan also has facilities in China, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany. In the U.S., AESC has a plant in Tennessee and is building one in Kentucky. The statement didn’t mention any changes with other plants.

The South Carolina plant is supposed to sell battery cells to BMW, which is building its own battery assembly site near its giant auto plant in Greer. BMW said the construction pause by AESC doesn’t change its plans to open its plant in 2026.

AESC has already rolled back its South Carolina plans. They announced a second factory on the Florence site, but then said earlier this year that their first plant should be able to handle BMW’s demand. That prompted South Carolina officials to withdraw $111 million in help they planned to provide.

The company is still getting $135 million in grants from the South Carolina Department of Commerce and $121 million in bonds and the agency said a construction pause won’t prompt them to claw back that offer.

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South Carolina is investing heavily in electric vehicles. Volkswagen-owned Scout Motors plans to invest $2 billion and hire 4,000 people for a plant to build its new electric SUVs scheduled to open in 2027.

The state has for decades made big bets on foreign manufacturers like BMW, Michelin and Samsung that have paid off with an economic boom this century, but there is uneasiness that Trump’s flirtation with high tariffs might stagger or even ruin those important partnerships.

McMaster told people to relax as state and business leaders are talking to Trump’s administration and things will work out.

“I think the goal of the president and the administration is to have robust economic growth and prosperity and there is no doubt there has to be changes made in our international trade posture and President Trump is addressing that,” McMaster told reporters Thursday.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — As transgender service members face a deadline to leave the U.S. military, hundreds are taking the financial bonus to depart voluntarily. But others say they will stay and fight.

For many, it is a wrenching decision to end a career they love, and leave units they have led or worked with for years. And they are angry they are being forced out by the Trump administration’s renewed ban on transgender troops.

Active duty service members had until Friday to identify themselves and begin to leave the military voluntarily, while the National Guard and Reserve have until July 7. Then the military will begin involuntary separations.

Friday’s deadline comes during Pride Month and as the Trump administration targets diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying it’s aiming to scrub the military of “wokeness” and reestablishing a “warrior ethos.”

“They’re tired of the rollercoaster. They just want to go,” said one transgender service member, who plans to retire. ”It’s exhausting.”

For others, it’s a call to arms.

“I’m choosing to stay in and fight,” a noncommissioned officer in the Air Force said. “My service is based on merit, and I’ve earned that merit.”

The troops, who mainly spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals, said being forced to decide is frustrating. They say it’s a personal choice based on individual and family situations, including whether they would get an infusion of cash or possibly wind up owing the government money.

“I’m very disappointed,” a transgender Marine said. “I’ve outperformed, I have a spotless record. I’m at the top of every fitness report. I’m being pushed out while I know others are barely scraping by.”

Some transgender troops decide to leave based on finances

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said this is President Donald Trump’s directive and what America voted for. The Pentagon, he said, is “leaving wokeness & weakness behind” and that includes “no more dudes in dresses.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a veteran, and 22 other Democratic senators have written to Hegseth urging him to allow transgender troops to keep serving honorably.

Already, more than 1,000 service members have voluntarily identified themselves as transgender and are slated to begin leaving, according to rough Defense Department estimates. Defense officials say there are about 4,240 active duty transgender troops but acknowledge the numbers are fuzzy.

For many, the decision is financial.

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Those who voluntarily leave will get double the amount of separation pay they would normally receive and won’t have to return bonuses or tuition costs. Those who refuse to go could be forced to repay reenlistment or other bonuses as high as $50,000.

That was the tipping point for Roni Ferrell, an Army specialist at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.

Ferrell, 28, lives on base with her wife and two children and had planned to stay in the Army for at least another decade. But she said she felt “backed into a corner” to sign the voluntary separation agreement, fearing she would have to repay an $18,500 reenlistment bonus.

“My commander basically said it was my only option in order to make sure my kids are taken care of,” Ferrell said.

The Marine, who has served for more than 25 years, said she had planned to stay and fight, but changed her mind. Lawyers, she said, told her an involuntary separation would put a code in her record saying she was forced to leave “in the interests of national security.”

That designation, she said, could mean those involuntarily separated could lose their security clearances, hurting future job prospects.

In a statement Friday, a defense official said the code “is not intended” to trigger clearance revocations and that gender dysphoria is not a security reporting requirement, according to the director of national intelligence. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver, senior director of litigation for Human Rights Campaign, said it’s important for troops to talk with judge advocates general in their services to ensure they understand the different procedures being implemented.

Other transgender troops plan to stay despite the ban

The Air Force service member and a transgender officer in the Army National Guard both said they plan to stay and fight. Lawsuits over the ban continue and could change or block the policy.

For troops involved in the court battles as plaintiffs, leaving voluntarily now would likely hurt their standing in the case. For others, it’s simply dedication to their career.

“I’ve really embraced military culture, and it’s embraced me,” the Air Force member said. “It’s not about money. It’s the career that I love.”

The Guard soldier echoed that sentiment, saying he will stay on “because it is important to me to serve. Frankly, I’m good at it, I’m well trained so I want to continue.”

Others without bonuses to repay or who have been in the military only a short while and won’t get much in separation bonus pay may opt to stay and see what happens.

National Guard troops face a particular problem

National Guard members who are heading to their monthly drill weekend or annual two-week drill in June could be required to go but serve as the gender they were assigned at birth.

That means they would have to wear uniforms and haircuts of that gender, use that bathroom and be referred to as “sir” or “ma’am” based on that gender.

For many, that could be close to impossible and create uncomfortable situations.

“If I were to show up to drill this weekend, I’d be expected to use all female facilities, I would be expected to wear a woman’s uniform,” said the Army Guard officer, who transitioned to male about five years ago and says others in his unit know him as a man. “I don’t look like a woman. I don’t feel like a woman. It would be disruptive to good order and discipline for me to show up and to tell my soldiers, you have to call me ‘ma’am’ now.”

It’s not clear if Guard units are handling it all the same way, and it could be up to individual states or commanders. Some may allow troops to postpone the drill or go on administrative leave.

What happens next for transgender troops?

The service members interviewed by The Associated Press said they don’t know what will happen once the deadline passes to leave voluntarily.

Some believe that unit commanders will quickly single people out and start involuntary separations. Others say the process is vague, may involve medical review boards and could take months.

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The defense official said Friday that as the Pentagon takes these steps, it “will treat our service members with dignity and respect.”

Under Hegseth’s directive, military commanders will be told to identify troops with gender dysphoria — when a person’s biological sex does not match their gender identity — and send them to get medical checks to force them out of the service, defense officials have said. The order relies on routine annual health checks — so it could be months before that evaluation is scheduled.

“My real big sticking point is that this administration’s whole push is to reform this country based around merit, and that gender, race, etc., should have no factor in hiring,” the Air Force service member said. “If that’s true, I’m solely being removed for my gender, and merit is no longer a factor.”

Associated Press writer R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed to this report.

By MELINA WALLING, SETH BORENSTEIN, JOSHUA A. BICKEL and M.K. WILDEMAN

LEOPOLD, Ind. (AP) — On the ceiling of Abbie Brockman’s middle school English classroom in Perry County, the fluorescent lights are covered with images of a bright blue sky, a few clouds floating by.

Outside, the real sky isn’t always blue. Sometimes it’s hazy, with pollution drifting from coal-fired power plants in this part of southwest Indiana. Knowing exactly how much, and what it may be doing to the people who live there, is why Brockman got involved with a local environmental organization that’s installing air and water quality monitors in her community.

“Industry and government is very, very, very powerful. It’s more powerful than me. I’m just an English teacher,” Brockman said. But she wants to feel she can make a difference.

In a way, Brockman’s monitoring echoes the reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency began requiring from large polluters more than a decade ago. Emissions from four coal-fired plants in southwest Indiana have dropped 60% since 2010, when the rule took effect.

That rule is now on the chopping block, one of many that President Donald Trump’s EPA argues is costly and burdensome for industry.

But experts say dropping the requirement risks a big increase in emissions if companies are no longer publicly accountable for what they put in the air. And they say losing the data — at the same time the EPA is cutting air quality monitoring elsewhere — would make it tougher to fight climate change.

Rule required big polluters to say how much they are emitting

At stake is the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program, a 2009 rule from President Barack Obama’s administration that affects large carbon polluters like refineries, power plants, wells and landfills. In the years since, they’ve collectively reported a 20% drop in emissions, mostly driven by the closure of coal plants.

And what happens at these big emitters makes a difference. Their declining emissions account for more than three-quarters of the overall, if modest, decline in all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 2010.

The registry includes places not usually thought of as big polluters but that have notable greenhouse gas emissions, such as college campuses, breweries and cereal factories. Even Walt Disney World in Florida, where pollution dropped 62% since 2010, has to report along with nearly 10,600 other places.

“We can’t solve climate change without knowing how much pollution major facilities are emitting and how that’s changing over time,” said Jeremy Symons, a former EPA senior climate adviser now at Environmental Protection Network, an organization of ex-EPA officials that monitors environmental policies. The group provided calculations as a part of The Associated Press’ analysis of impacts from proposed rule rollbacks.

Symons said some companies would welcome the end of the registry because it would make it easier to pollute.

Experts see a role for registry in cutting emissions

It’s not clear how much the registry itself has contributed to declining emissions. More targeted regulations on smokestack emissions, as well as coal being crowded out by cheaper and less polluting natural gas, are bigger factors.

But the registry “does put pressure on companies to … document what they’ve done or at least to provide a baseline for what they’ve done,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who heads Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tally national carbon emissions yearly.

Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under Obama, said the registry makes clear how power plants are doing against each other, and that’s an inducement to lower emissions.

“It is money for those companies. It’s costs. It’s reputation. It’s been, I think, a wonderful success story and I hope it continues.”

The potential end of the reporting requirement comes as experts say much of the country’s air goes unmonitored. Nelson Arley Roque, a Penn State professor who co-authored a study in April on these “monitoring deserts,” said about 40% of U.S. lands are unmonitored. That often includes poor and rural neighborhoods.

“The air matters to all of us, but apparently 50 million people can’t know or will never know” how bad the air is, Roque said.

EPA seeks to cancel money to fund some air monitoring

The EPA is also trying to claw back money that had been earmarked for air monitoring, part of the termination of grants that it has labeled as targeting diversity, equity and inclusion. That includes $500,000 that would have funded 40 air monitors in a low-income and minority community in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area.

CleaneAIRE NC, a nonprofit that works to improve air quality across the state that was awarded the grant, is suing.

“It’s not diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s human rights,” said Daisha Wall, the group’s community science program manager. “We all deserve a right to clean air.”

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Research strongly links poor air quality to diseases like asthma and heart disease, with a slightly less established link to cancer. Near polluting industries, experts say what’s often lacking is either enough data in specific locations or the will to investigate the health toll.

Indiana says it “maintains a robust statewide monitoring and assessment program for air, land and water,” but Brockman and others in this part of the state aren’t satisfied. They’re installing their own air and water quality monitors. It’s a full-time job to keep the network of monitors up and running, fighting spotty Wi-Fi and connectivity issues.

Fighting industry is a sensitive subject, Brockman added. Many families depend on jobs at coal-fired power plants, and poverty is real. She keeps snacks in her desk for the kids who haven’t eaten breakfast.

“But you also don’t want to hear of another student that has a rare cancer,” she said.

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed from Washington.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. 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 SEUNG MIN KIM and CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Republican Party braces for aftershocks from President Donald Trump’s spectacular clash with Elon Musk, lawmakers and conservative figures are urging détente, fearful of the potential consequences from a prolonged feud.

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At a minimum, the explosion of animosity between the two powerful men could complicate the path forward for Republicans’ massive tax and border spending legislation that has been promoted by Trump but assailed by Musk.

“I hope it doesn’t distract us from getting the job done that we need to,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state. “I think that it will boil over and they’ll mend fences”

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, was similarly optimistic.

“I hope that both of them come back together because when the two of them are working together, we’ll get a lot more done for America than when they’re at cross purposes,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, sounded almost pained on social media as Trump and Musk volleyed insults at each other, sharing a photo composite of the two men and writing, “But … I really like both of them.”

“Who else really wants @elonmusk and @realDonaldTrump to reconcile?” Lee posted, later adding: “Repost if you agree that the world is a better place with the Trump-Musk bromance fully intact.”

So far, the feud between Trump and Musk is probably best described as a moving target, with plenty of opportunities for escalation or detente.

One person familiar with the president’s thinking said Musk wants to speak with Trump, but that the president doesn’t want to do it – or at least do it on Friday. The person requested anonymity to disclose private matters.

In a series of conversations with television anchors Friday morning, Trump showed no interest in burying the hatchet. Asked on ABC News about reports of a potential call between him and Musk, the president responded: “You mean the man who has lost his mind?”

Trump added in the ABC interview that he was “not particularly” interested in talking to Musk at the moment.

Still, others remained hopeful that it all would blow over.

“I grew up playing hockey and there wasn’t a single day that we played hockey or basketball or football or baseball, whatever we were playing, where we didn’t fight. And then we’d fight, then we’d become friends again,” Hannity said on his show Thursday night.

Acknowledging that it “got personal very quick,” Hannity nonetheless added that the rift was “just a major policy difference.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., flanked by Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., left, and Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Ind., talks with reporters to discuss work on President Donald Trump’s bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Speaker Mike Johnson projected confidence that the dispute would not affect prospects for the tax and border bill.

“Members are not shaken at all,” the Louisiana Republican said. “We’re going to pass this legislation on our deadline.”

He added that he hopes Musk and Trump reconcile, saying “I believe in redemption” and “it’s good for the party and the country if all that’s worked out.”

But he also had something of a warning for the billionaire entrepreneur.

“I’ll tell you what, do not doubt and do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump,” Johnson said. “He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of this generation and probably the modern era.”

Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.