By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Someone tucked a heart-shaped note of encouragement into socks packed for Luigi Mangione to wear to court recently in the case surrounding the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, prosecutors said in a court document released on Wednesday.

A court officer intercepted the note, which urged the accused killer to “know there are thousands of people wishing you luck,” Manhattan prosecutors wrote in responding to recent requests from Mangione’s lawyers. They include a bid for him to get a laptop to review legal material in his cell while he awaits trial in the December shooting of Brian Thompson. Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty.

FILE – Luigi Mangione, accused of fatally shooting Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, is escorted to Manhattan state court in New York, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah, File)

A message seeking comment on prosecutors’ filing was sent to Mangione’s attorneys.

Objecting to the proposed laptop as a request for unmerited special treatment, prosecutor Joel Seidemann wrote “special treatment to the defendant’s benefit was violated when (prosecutors) made accommodations for defendant’s fashion needs during the last court appearance.”

Most jailed defendants wear jail uniforms at routine court dates like the Feb. 21 date, the prosecutor explained. Mangione, however, was allowed to change into clothes brought by his legal team.

The note — plus another heart-shaped message addressed to someone called “Joan” — was hidden in a piece of cardboard at the center of a new pair of Argyle socks, Seidemann wrote. It’s not clear who wrote the note or slipped it into the socks.

Mangione donned the socks but later took them off “because he felt that ‘they did not look good,’” according to Seidemann.

Mangione appeared in court in loafers without socks, his feet shackled at the ankles.

Thompson, 50, was shot in December outside a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealthcare was about to hold an investor conference.

In addition to the Manhattan case, Mangione faces federal charges in Thompson’s killing and state-level gun possession and other charges in Pennsylvania. He hasn’t entered any pleas in those cases.

Mangione’s writings and words on bullets recovered from the scene reflected animus toward health insurers and corporate America, authorities have said. The case has made him something of a cult celebrity to people frustrated with corporate health insurers. Others, including elected officials, decry what they see as glorifying violence and vigilantism.

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press

TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war is hurting Americans, noting that American consumer confidence is at a multi-year low.

Carney also said the kinship that exists between U.S. and Canada is under more strain than at any point in the two countries storied histories.

“His trade war is hurting American consumers and workers and it will hurt more. I see that American consumer confidence is at a multi-year low,” Carney said while campaigning in Windsor, Ontario ahead of Canada’s April 28 election.

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks in front of Irving Shipyard workers during a campaign stop in Halifax, NS on Tuesday March 25, 2025. (Frank Gunn /The Canadian Press via AP)

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its U.S consumer confidence index fell 7.2 points in March to 92.9, the fourth straight monthly decline and its lowest reading since January of 2021. Trump has plunged the U.S. into a global trade war — all while on-again, off-again new levies continue to escalate uncertainty.

Trump put 25% tariffs on Canada’s steel and aluminum and is threatening sweeping tariffs on all Canadian products — as well as all of America’s trading partners — on April 2.

“He wants to break us so America can own us,” Carney said. “And it will never ever happen because we just don’t look out for ourselves we look out for each other.”

Carney, former two-time central banker, made the comments while campaigning near the Ambassador Bridge, which is considered the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing, carrying 25% of all trade between the two countries. It plays an especially important role in auto manufacturing.

Carney said the bridge carries $98 billion in goods every year and $281 million per day.

“Now those numbers and the jobs and the paychecks that depend on that are in question,” Carney said. “The relationship between Canada and the United States has changed. We did not change it.”

Carney announced Wednesday a $1.4 billion “strategic response fund” that will protect Canadian auto jobs affected by Trump’s tariffs.

The Liberal Party leader noted the bridge is especially important to Canada’s auto sector, the country’s second largest export. He said Canada’s auto sector employs 125,000 jobs directly and almost another 500,000 jobs in related industries, many of them union jobs.

“Canada will be there for auto workers,” Carney said.

Earlier this month, Trump granted a one-month exemption on his stiff new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada for U.S. automakers, as worries persist the newly launched trade war could crush domestic manufacturing.

In the auto sector, parts can go back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border several times before being fully assembled in Ontario or Michigan.

Trump has declared a trade war on his northern neighbor and continues to call for Canada to become the 51st state, a position that has infuriated Canadians. The American president has threatened economic coercion in his annexation threats and suggested the border is a fictional line.

The new prime minister, sworn in March 14, still hasn’t had a phone call with Trump. It is unusual for a U.S. president and Canadian prime minister to go so long without talking after a new leader takes office.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Drops for Nvidia, Tesla and other former superstars are dragging Wall Street lower on Wednesday.

The S&P 500 was down 0.8% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost an early gain of 230 points and was down 37, or 0.1%, shortly before noon. The weakness for Big Tech had the Nasdaq composite heading toward a market-leading loss of 1.5%.

The group of dominant stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” has been at the center of the U.S. stock market’s recent sell-off, which earlier this month took the S&P 500 10% below its all-time high for its first “correction” since 2023. Big Tech had rocketed in earlier years amid a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology to prices that critics called overdone, rising even more quickly than their rapidly growing profits.

Nvidia fell 5.2% to bring its loss for the young year so far to 14.8%. It was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500 by far. Other AI-related stocks were also weak, including server-builder Super Micro Computer, which fell 7.3%, and power companies hoping to electrify vast AI data centers.

Tesla has also been contending with additional challenges, including worries that political anger at its CEO, Elon Musk, will hurt the electric-vehicle maker’s sales. Tesla dropped 4.8% to extend its loss for 2025 so far to 32.1%.

The U.S. stock market has steadied somewhat since its drop into a correction, and the S&P 500 is back within 7% of its record. But strategists along Wall Street warn the sharp swings likely aren’t over yet, with a suite of U.S. tariffs scheduled to arrive early next month. Even if those end up less painful for the global economy than feared, all the talk about tariffs has already soured confidence among U.S. consumers and companies.

So far, the economy and job market have appeared to remain solid despite the worsening moods, and economists are looking for signals that the hit to confidence is translating into real pain for the economy. Another report on Wednesday morning offered little clarity.

Orders for machinery, airplanes and other long-lasting manufactured products unexpectedly grew last month, when economists were forecasting a contraction. But a subset of the data that’s seen as an indicator for investment by businesses, which excludes aircraft and defense products, went from growth to contraction. That could be a signal businesses are holding back on spending to see how tariffs play out.

Treasury yields in the bond market, which often move with expectations for the U.S. economy’s strength, swiveled up and down following the report. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was sitting at 4.33%, up from 4.31% late Tuesday.

On Wall Street, GameStop jumped 14.5% after the video-game retailer reported better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it would begin investing part of its treasury in bitcoin.

Dollar Tree rose 4.2% after it said it’s selling Family Dollar to a pair of private equity firms for $1 billion after a decade of trying to make its acquisition of the bargain chain fit. Dollar Tree also reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Cintas climbed 6.9% after the provider of work uniforms, restroom supplies and other equipment reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across much of Europe and Asia. The FTSE 100 rose 0.5% in London after a report said U.K. inflation improved by a touch more than economists expected.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is on track to hit its statutory debt ceiling — the so-called X-date when the country runs short of money to pay its bills— as early as August without a deal between lawmakers and the White House, according to a Congressional Budget Office report Wednesday.

By that time, the government would no longer have enough of a financial cushion to pay all its bills after exhausting its “extraordinary measures” the accounting maneuvers used to stretch existing funds.

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Washington would risk defaulting on its debt unless Congress and Republican President Donald Trump agree to lift the borrowing limit or abolish the debt ceiling concept altogether.

The debt limit was reinstated Jan. 2, following its suspension by Congress in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.

“The Treasury has already reached the current debt limit of $36.1 trillion, so it has no room to borrow under its standard operating procedures,” according to the CBO report.

An analysis released on Monday by the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the U.S. could run out of cash by mid-July if Congress did not raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit.

Trump had previously demanded that a provision raising or suspending the debt limit — something that his own party routinely resists — be included in legislation to avert the last potential government shutdown. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” Trump said in a statement in December. That deal did not address the debt limit.

After the debt limit was reinstated, in one of her last acts as Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen said Treasury would institute “extraordinary measures” intended to prevent the U.S. from reaching the debt ceiling.

Since then, the Treasury Department has stopped paying into certain accounts, including a slew of federal worker pension and disability funds, to make up for the shortfall in money. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has continued to notify Congress about the use of extraordinary measures in an effort to prevent a breach of the debt ceiling.

The CBO estimates that if the debt limit remains unchanged, then “the government’s ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will probably be exhausted in August or September 2025. The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from CBO’s projections.”