By CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — On Thursday morning, as thousands of federal employees stayed home and faced potential layoffs because of the government shutdown, President Donald Trump got right to work on social media.

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He started by sharing praise from supporters. Then he falsely claimed that “DEMOCRATS WANT TO GIVE YOUR HEALTHCARE MONEY TO ILLEGAL ALIENS.” And then he announced that he would meet with his top budget adviser to figure out where to make permanent cuts to federal programs that “are a political SCAM.”

All that was before 8 a.m., just one flurry in a blizzard of online commentary from the president as the government shutdown entered a second day. Like so many other times when he’s faced complex crises with no easy solutions, Trump seems determined to post his way through it.

The stream of invective and trolling has been remarkable even for a 79-year-old president who is as chronically online as any member of Gen Z. His style is mirrored by the rest of his administration, which so far seems more interested in mocking and pummeling Democrats than negotiating with them.

Government websites feature pop-up messages blaming “the Radical Left” for the shutdown, an unusually political message for ostensibly nonpartisan agencies. When reporters email the White House press office, they receive an automated reply blaming slow answers on “staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown.”

Trump’s White House is accustomed to take-no-prisoners political messaging, continuing its aggressive style from last year’s campaign that critics describe as callous and vindictive. The administration rarely misses an opportunity to get under the skin of its opponents.

The president took a similar online approach to the last government shutdown, which began in December 2018 and lasted until January 2019 during his first term in office. On the 30th day of that shutdown, Politico tallied 40 tweets from Trump, including a complaint that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was acting “so irrationally” and gratitude for federal employees for “working so hard for your Country and not getting paid.”

Back then, Trump took most of the blame, with an Associated Press-NORC poll showing about 7 in 10 Americans saying he had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility. He ultimately backed down from his demand for border wall funding, signed legislation allowing the government to reopen.

It remains to be seen who will face the most blowback this time. Democrats say they won’t vote for any spending legislation unless it extends health care subsidies, used to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act, that are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Republicans accuse them of being obstructionist, insisting that government operations should be funded while other policies are negotiated separately.

A recent New York Times/Siena poll, which was conducted before the shutdown began, found slightly more registered voters would blame Trump and Republicans in Congress than Democrats. About one-third said they’d blame both sides equally.

There was another red flag for Trump in a one-day text message poll conducted Oct. 1 by the Washington Post. The results showed 47% of Americans saying they thought the president and Republicans in Congress are mainly to blame, compared with 30% saying that of Democrats in Congress.

Trump appears determined to move the needle — or at least blow off some steam — with his account on Truth Social, a social media platform founded by Trump after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The presidential trolling began on Monday after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Trump and Republicans at the White House. Trump posted a deepfake video of the lawmakers, with Schumer saying, “nobody likes Democrats anymore.” Jeffries was depicted with a cartoon sombrero and mustache.

“It’s a disgusting video, and we’re going to continue to make clear that bigotry will get you nowhere,” Jeffries said on MSNBC this week.

Trump posted a clip of his appearance, but with a soundtrack of mariachi music. The sombrero and mustache were back, too.

“Every day Democrats keep the government shut down, the sombrero gets 10x bigger,” the White House wrote on social media.

Hours before the shutdown began on Tuesday night, the president posted photos from his meeting with Jeffries and Schumer. The pictures showed red “Trump 2028” hats on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, a nod to his talk of running for an unconstitutional third term.

Trump did not have any public appearances scheduled on Thursday. An event to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month was postponed because of the shutdown.

The White House did not respond to questions about how he was working to resolve the situation. But for at least a few hours, Trump’s social media account went quiet.

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A comet from another star system will swing by Mars on Friday as a fleet of spacecraft trains its sights on the interstellar visitor.

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The comet known as 3I/Atlas will hurtle within 18 million miles (29 million kilometers) of the red planet, its closest approach during its trek through the inner solar system. Its breakneck speed: 193,000 mph (310,000 kph).

Both of the European Space Agency’s satellites around Mars are already aiming their cameras at the comet, which is only the third interstellar object known to have passed our way. NASA’s satellite and rovers at the red planet are also available to assist in the observations.

Discovered in July, the comet poses no threat to Earth or its neighboring planets. It will come closest to the sun at the end of October. Throughout November, ESA’s Juice spacecraft, which is headed to Jupiter and its icy moons, will keep an eye on the comet.

The comet will make its closest approach to Earth in December, passing within 167 million miles (269 million kilometers).

Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope put the comet’s nucleus at no more than 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) across. It could be as small as 1,444 feet (440 meters), according to NASA.

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.

Predictions for this week’s biggest games in the East Metro

East Ridge (3-2) at Forest Lake (5-0), 7 p.m.

The Rangers have allowed a grand total of three points combined over their last three contests. East Ridge has relied heavily on the ground game since losing quarterback Cedric Tomes to injury. But it’s difficult to envision a one-track offensive approach working against this Forest Lake front.

How long can East Ridge’s defense keep the Raptors in the game?

Our pick: Forest Lake 28, East Ridge 6

Mounds View (2-3) at Woodbury (3-2), 7 p.m.

Both of these teams are 1-1 in Metro East subdistrict play, but with the way the section is shaping up, either could be in position to grab a No. 2 seed in the Class 6A playoffs with a win Friday, creating a viable path to state in the process.

Whoever establishes more offensive balance figures to have the edge

Our pick: Mounds View 24, Woodbury 17

White Bear Lake (2-3) at Stillwater (2-3), 7 p.m.

Two major injuries suffered two weeks ago in a big win over Mounds View have altered the Ponies’ season, as quarterback Jack Runk suffered a knee injury and running back Emilio Rosario-Matias also went down.

Can the Ponies find new ways to move the ball on the fly over the back half of the regular season? They figure to lean heavily on running back Chase Edstrom and receiver Carter Zollar.

Stillwater: 22, White Bear Lake 20

Lakeville South (4-1) at Edina (3-2), 7 p.m.

This game carries the distinct look and feel of a second-round playoff game in Class 6A. Chicago Blackhawks first-round pick Mason West has thrown for 10 touchdowns for Edina.

West will need a big game to keep up with a Cougars rushing attack finding its stride.

Our pick: Lakeville South 23, Edina 20

River Falls (5-1) at Rice Lake (6-0), 7 p.m.

Both sides are coming off massive victories — River Falls hung 44 on Hudson, while Rice Lake edged New Richmond — that muddled the Big Rivers Conference title hunt and made this bout a key fixture in that equation.

The Warriors will move the ball. Can they prevent River Falls from doing the same?

Our pick: Rice Lake 27, River Falls 19

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By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found.

A study in the journal Science looks at global wildfires, not by acres burned which is the most common measuring stick, but by the harder to calculate economic and human damage they cause. The study concluded there has been a “climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires.”

A team of Australian, American and German fire scientists calculated the 200 most damaging fires since 1980 based on the percentage of damage to the country’s Gross Domestic Product at the time, taking inflation into account. The frequency of these events has increased about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, said study lead author Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer at the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

“It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do have a major wildfire crisis on our hands,” Cunningham said.

Researchers say damaging wildfires are becoming more frequent worldwide. Studying the time period from 1980 to 2023, the authors found 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years. (AP Digital Embed)

About 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years of the study. In the 1980s, the globe averaged two of these catastrophic fires a year and a few times hit four a year. From 2014 to 2023, the world averaged nearly nine a year, including 13 in 2021. It noted that the count of these devastating infernos sharply increased in 2015, which “coincided with increasingly extreme climatic conditions.” Though the study date ended in 2023, the last two years have been even more extreme, Cunningham said.

Europe and North America lead in the number of these economically damaging fires. It’s especially worse in the Mediterranean around Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal and in the Western United States around California, because of the climate prone to sudden dryness, worsened by global warming, Cunningham said.

The researchers also found a tripling in how often a single fire killed at least 10 people, such as 2018’s Paradise fire, 2023’s Lahaina fire and those in Los Angeles in 2025.

Cunningham said often researchers look at how many acres a fire burns as a measuring stick, but he called that flawed because it really doesn’t show the effect on people, with area not mattering as much as economics and lives. Hawaii’s Lahaina fire wasn’t big, but it burned a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people so it was more meaningful than one in sparsely populated regions, he said.

“We need to be targeting the fires that matter. And those are the fires that cause major ecological destruction because they’re burning too intensely,” Cunningham said.

But economic data is difficult to get with many countries keeping that information private, preventing global trends and totals from being calculated. So Cunningham and colleagues were able to get more than 40 years of global economic date from insurance giant Munich Re and then combine it with the public database from International Disaster Database, which isn’t as complete but is collected by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

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The study looked at “fire weather” which is hot, dry and windy conditions that make extreme fires more likely and more dangerous and found that those conditions are increasing, creating a connection to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

“We’ve firstly got that connection that all the disasters by and large occurred during extreme weather. We’ve also got a strong trend of those conditions becoming more common as a result of climate change. That’s indisputable,” Cunningham said. “So that’s a line of evidence there to say that climate change is having a significant effect on at least creating the conditions that are suitable for a major fire disaster.”

If there was no human-caused climate change, the world would still have devastating fires, but not as many, he said: “We’re loading the dice in a sense by increasing temperatures.”

There are other factors. People are moving closer to fire-prone areas, called the wildland-urban interface, Cunningham said. And society is not getting a handle on dead foliage that becomes fuel, he said. But those factors are harder to quantify compared to climate change, he said.

“This is an innovative study in terms of the data sources employed, and it mostly confirms common sense expectations: fires causing major fatalities and economic damage tend to be those in densely populated areas and to occur during the extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common due to climate change,” said Jacob Bendix, a geography and environment professor at Syracuse University who studies fires, but wasn’t part of this research team.

Not only does the study makes sense, but it’s a bad sign for the future, said Mike Flannigan, a fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Flannigan, who wasn’t part of research, said: “As the frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather and drought increases the likelihood of disastrous fires increases so we need to do more to be better prepared.”

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.