WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was “highly unlikely” to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a public statement made less than 24 hours after suggesting in a private meeting that he was leaning in favor of dismissing the head of the nation’s central bank.
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Trump confirmed that in a White House meeting Tuesday night with about a dozen House Republicans he had discussed the “concept” of dismissing Powell, long a target because of his refusal to lower interest rates as Trump wants.
“Almost every one of them said I should,” Trump said about the lawmakers who had come to talk to him about crypto legislation.
He indicated he was leaning in that direction, according to a White House official. During that session, Trump waved a letter about firing Powell, but a person familiar with the matter said it was essentially a prop drafted by someone else and that the Republican president has not drafted such a letter.
Neither source was authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and they spoke only on condition on anonymity.
Trump made his comment about being “highly unlikely” to dismiss Powell — ”unless he has to leave for fraud” — during an Oval Office meeting with Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain.
In recent days, White House and administration officials have accused Powell of mismanaging a $2.5 billion renovation project at the Fed, adding to months of efforts by Trump try to rid himself of the politically independent central banker.
U.S. stocks were shaky as Trump spoke about Powell on Wednesday. The S&P 500’s modest gain in the morning became a drop of 0.7% after initial reports that the president may fire the Fed chair. Stocks then trimmed their losses after Trump’s later comment.
Treasury yields also swiveled in the bond market but remained mostly calm.
Those at the White House meeting were among the more far-right lawmakers, including members of the House Freedom Cause whose views are not always shared by other Republicans. In the Senate, Republicans have taken a more guarded approach. Some have backed Powell’s performance at the Fed as they await an inspector general’s review of the construction project.
In a speech Wednesday, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said if Powell is dismissed, “you are going to see a pretty immediate response”
“If anybody thinks it would be a good idea for the Fed to become another agency in the government subject to the president, they’re making a huge mistake,” said Tillis, who has announced that he is not running for reelection.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said this week that Powell “has done a decent job.”
“I don’t think he’s been perfect,” he said, adding that there have been times they disagreed, but “I do believe that the chairman is calling them like he sees them.”
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee had been scheduled to meet with Powell on Wednesday evening in a gathering set months ago, but it was abruptly canceled due to votes in the House, according to a committee aide granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York, AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s request to cancel about $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting spending is nearing passage in the Senate, an action that would have a tiny impact on the nation’s rising debt but could have major ramifications for future spending fights in Congress.
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Spending bills generally need bipartisan support to advance in the Senate. But the legislation before the Senate gives Republicans the opportunity to undo some of the previously approved spending without Democratic support as they follow through on Trump’s efforts to target the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and roll back help for nations suffering from conflict, drought and disease.
The Trump administration is promising more rescission packages to come if the first effort is successful. Democrats say doing so jeopardizes a process that requires lawmakers from both parties to work together to fund the nation’s priorities.
The move to cut a sliver of previously approved spending comes after Republicans muscled Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill to approval in both chambers without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase future federal deficits by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans were using the president’s rescissions request to target “wasteful spending.”
“It’s a small but important step for fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue,” Thune said as the Senate opened on Wednesday.
Lawmakers clash over cuts to public radio and TV stations
In opposing the bill, Democrats said Congress was ceding its spending powers to the executive branch with little idea of how the White House Office of Management and Budget would apply the cuts. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the legislation a “terrible bill that guts local news, defunds rural radio stations and makes America less safe on the world stage.”
The legislation would claw back nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s due to receive during the next two budget years.
The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
The corporation distributes more than 70% of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.
Some Republicans had expressed worries about how local radio and televisions stations would be able to survive without federal assistance. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Department of the Interior would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in more than a dozen states.
Democrats are not assured by the side agreements. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in some rural areas of his state pubic radio is the most reliable ways to get news and emergency alerts during wildfire season.
“These cuts will lead to rural public radio stations laying off staff, reducing programming, or even shutting down entirely,” Kelly said.
Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said the side deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save, while leaving behind all other stations, including many that serve Native populations.”
“Simply providing a one-time payment to Tribal stations will not ensure they can continue their current service or even survive,” Riley said.
Slashing billions of dollars from foreign aid
The legislation would also claw back about $8 billion in foreign aid spending. Among the cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country and $496 million to provide humanitarian assistance such as food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There’s also a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost the economies and democratic institutions in developing and strategically important countries.
Republicans said they winnowed down the president’s request by taking out his proposed $400 million cut to a program known as PEPFAR. That change increased the prospects for the bill’s passage. The politically popular program is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, to combat HIV/AIDS.
Democrats said the changes Republicans made to save PEPFAR funding were not enough. They said that the Trump administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the amount of money it takes to save a starving child or prevent the transmission of disease is miniscule, even as the investments secure cooperation with the U.S. on other issues.
But the cuts being made to foreign aid programs through Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency were having life-and-death consequences around the world, he said.
“People are dying right now, not in spite of us but because of us,” Schatz said. “We are causing death.”
Republicans are facing a Friday deadline
Republicans providing just enough votes to take up the bill, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a 50-50 tie on Tuesday night. Three Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against advancing the measure. That sets up on Wednesday what’s known as a vote-a-rama, in which lawmakers will vote on scores of proposed amendments to the bill. Once the amendment process is over, the Senate will vote on final passage.
The House has already shown its support for the president’s request with a mostly party line 214-212 vote, but since the Senate is amending the bill, it will have to go back to the House for another vote.
The bill must be signed into law by midnight Friday for the proposed rescissions to kick in. If Congress doesn’t act by then, the spending stands.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) — Near signs that warn of radioactive risk at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a half-dozen workers from the nuclear power company X-energy are making what appear to be gray billiard balls. Inside, they’re packed with thousands of tiny black spheres that each contain a speck of uranium enriched beyond what today’s power plants use.
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The United States is chasing a new age of nuclear power that banks on domestic production of reactor fuel like X-energy is making, and though the work at Oak Ridge is unfolding across just 3,000 square feet, X-energy and others are already revving up for big production.
But just like cars won’t run without gas, those plants won’t run without fuel. To expand nuclear energy long-term, the nation must maximize its nuclear fuel production, according to Trump.
In Oak Ridge, X-energy has broken ground on a massive, nearly $2 billion campus for a new fuel fabrication facility, the first in the United States in over half a century. The nuclear fuel company Standard Nuclear, also in Oak Ridge, aims to produce metric tons of fuel for advanced reactors. A supplier named Orano is likewise looking to build a multibillion-dollar uranium enrichment facility nearby.
“This is a unique time,” said Tyler Gerczak, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s principal investigator for the cooperative with X-energy’s subsidiary TRISO-X. “The momentum is incredible.”
Making the ‘most robust nuclear fuel’
The Associated Press toured the lab where X-energy is making small amounts of fuel for testing. Anyone beyond a magenta-and-yellow chain that warns of radioactivity must wear gowns, two layers of gloves and radiation monitors. When they leave, they’re tested for radioactivity.
X-energy, a Maryland-based company, uses uranium to make so-called TRISO fuel — inside what’s known as “pebbles.” Those are the billiard balls. The Energy Department says it’s the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth because the particles cannot melt in a reactor.
At the lab, the first step is making a uranium cocktail that resembles dark yellow lemonade.
Uranium powder, in the form of triuranium octoxide, gets added to nitric acid, said Dan Brown, vice president of fuel development for TRISO-X. Then carbon and an organic solution are added. They have two glass containers set up — one wears a heated jacket, looking almost like a little sweater, that helps the uranium dissolve into the acid solution. The second cools the acid solution while the carbon source is added, which turns the mix near-black, he said.
At another station, in a long clear tube, the cocktail solidifies into small black spheres with a jellybean-like consistency. Those black balls, about the size of poppyseeds, then travel through machines under temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Celsius to get protective carbon coatings — like candy dipping — that make them look like very tiny BBs.
X-energy uses graphite and other cohesive materials to bind 18,000 kernels together into a larger sphere. That gets coated in a final layer of graphite to seal the final pebble. In the end, it’s strong enough to withstand the weight of an SUV.
The pebbles will eventually give up their energy in the high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactor X-energy is developing, with about 220,000 pebbles per reactor, like gumballs in a gumball machine. When they exit the bottom, if energy remains, the pebbles will return to the top for another pass. Each one could be used about six times. X-energy also plans to make fuel products for other advanced reactor designs.
The national laboratory lends X-energy its expertise, research and high-tech equipment for analysis and will evaluate samples, as will some universities. Other samples are archived. Idaho National Laboratory received a batch for its advanced test reactor, Brown said.
Construction continues at the TRISO-X energy fuel fabrication facility Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Construction continues at the TRISO-X energy fuel fabrication facility Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Taylor Duffin, of TRISO-X, a subsidiary of X-Energy, looks at a sample of TRISO fuel through a microscope Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Uranium kernels wrapped in three alternating layers of pyrolytic carbon and silicon carbide used for the manufacture of TRISO fuel are visible on Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
A TRISO fuel cell is measured Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
A cross section of TRISO fuel is visible Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tyler Gerczak, left, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Dan Brown, right, of TRISO-X a subsidiary of X-Energy, describe the method of manufacturing TRISO fuel in a laboratory Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
The Atlas-1, used for creating TRISO fuel is visible Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Dan Brown, vice president of fuel development for X-energy’s subsidiary TRISO-X, demonstrates how liquid uranium is used to create TRISO fuel, Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
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Construction continues at the TRISO-X energy fuel fabrication facility Friday, June 27, 2025, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Critics of building more nuclear reactors say they’re too expensive and riskier than other low-carbon energy sources.
“Without a substantial decrease in construction costs, it’s not worth the avoided greenhouse gas emissions,” said David Kemp, a Cato Institute policy analyst.
Kemp said Trump’s 25-year quadrupling goal is unrealistic because it would mean building nuclear reactors faster than ever. The United States lacks any next-generation reactors operating commercially and only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in nearly 50 years. Those two, at a Georgia nuclear plant, were completed years late and at least $17 billion over budget.
Working to ‘amp up’ domestic nuclear fuel production
Many next-generation reactors will use high-assay low-enriched uranium. It’s fuel that’s enriched to a higher level than traditional large nuclear reactors use, allowing the newer reactors to run longer and more efficiently, sit on smaller footprints and produce less waste, according to the Department of Energy.
There’s little of it made in the United States right now.
Only Russia and China currently have the infrastructure to make large amounts of high-assay low-enriched uranium. In the United States, Centrus Energy produced the nation’s first 20 kilograms of high-assay low-enriched uranium in more than 70 years in late 2023, to show it can produce limited quantities for commercial reactors.
A big takeaway from Trump’s executive orders is the need to “amp up” domestic production of nuclear fuel to reduce dependence on foreign sources and enable in the long term expansion of American nuclear energy, according to the Energy Department.
At the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association, Benjamin Holtzman, director of new nuclear, said he thinks the fuel will be ready for a new generation of U.S. nuclear reactors needed to meet the growing demand for electricity — if the right actions are taken now.
X-energy CEO J. Clay Sell said he hopes to help solve the fuel problem so it doesn’t hold back new reactor development. The Energy Department has awarded funding to X-energy. Amazon invested in X-energy too, and they’re collaborating to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new U.S. power projects online by 2039.
X-energy is the only one with an application before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license a new fabrication facility to transform enriched uranium into fuel products for nuclear reactors. Another applicant has asked to amend an existing license to make fuel for advanced reactors, according to the NRC. About five additional companies have told the NRC they are interested in making fuel for advanced reactors.
X-energy’s pilot lab at the National Laboratory started in 2016. The company now has 100 acres in Oak Ridge and growing for its nuclear fuel production complex.
The first factory could be operational by late 2027 or early 2028, capable at full operation of assembling enough fuel orbs to power 11 of its new-age reactors; a second by late 2029, with a capacity four times greater, said TRISO-X President Joel Duling.
“I’ve been through two or three ‘nuclear renaissances,’” Duling said. “This isn’t a renaissance. This is a game-changer.”
McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
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.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets forming in the gas around a baby sun-like star, providing a precious peek into the dawn of our own solar system.
It’s an unprecedented snapshot of “time zero,” scientists reported Wednesday, when new worlds begin to gel.
“We’ve captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like Earth are born around young protostars,” said Leiden Observatory’s Melissa McClure from the Netherlands, who led the international research team. “For the first time, we can conclusively say that the first steps of planet formation are happening right now.”
This image provided by the European Southern Observatory on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, shows HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation. (ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al. via AP)
The observations offer a unique glimpse into the inner workings of an emerging planetary system, said the University of Chicago’s Fred Ciesla, who was not involved in the study appearing in the journal Nature.
“This is one of the things we’ve been waiting for. Astronomers have been thinking about how planetary systems form for a long period of time,” Ciesla said. “There’s a rich opportunity here.”
NASA’s Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory in Chile teamed up to unveil these early nuggets of planetary formation around the young star known as HOPS-315. It’s a yellow dwarf in the making like the sun, yet much younger at 100,000 to 200,000 years old and some 1,370 light-years away. A single light-year is 6 trillion miles.
In a cosmic first, McClure and her team stared deep into the gas disk around the baby star and detected solid specks condensing — signs of early planet formation. A gap in the outer part of the disk gave allowed them to gaze inside, thanks to the way the star tilts toward Earth.
They detected silicon monoxide gas as well as crystalline silicate minerals, the ingredients for what’s believed to be the first solid materials to form in our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. The action is unfolding in a location comparable to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter containing the leftover building blocks of our solar system’s planets.
The condensing of hot minerals was never detected before around other young stars, “so we didn’t know if it was a universal feature of planet formation or a weird feature of our solar system,” McClure said in an email. “Our study shows that it could be a common process during the earliest stage of planet formation.”
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While other research has looked at younger gas disks and, more commonly, mature disks with potential planet wannabes, there’s been no specific evidence for the start of planet formation until now, McClure said.
In a stunning picture taken by the ESO’s Alma telescope network, the emerging planetary system resembles a lightning bug glowing against the black void.
It’s impossible to know how many planets might form around HOPS-315. With a gas disk as massive as the sun’s might have been, it could also wind up with eight planets a million or more years from now, according to McClure.
Purdue University’s Merel van ’t Hoff, a co-author, is eager to find more budding planetary systems. By casting a wider net, astronomers can look for similarities and determine which processes might be crucial to forming Earth-like worlds.
“Are there Earth-like planets out there or are we like so special that we might not expect it to occur very often?”
AP video journalist Javier Arciga 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.
