By CHRIS MEGERIAN and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal employees should expect another email on Saturday requiring them to explain their recent accomplishments, a renewed attempt by President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to demand answers from the government workforce.

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The plan was disclosed by a person with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The first email, which was distributed a week ago, asked employees “what did you do last week?” and prompted them to list five tasks that they completed. Musk, who empowered by Trump is aiming to downsize agencies and eliminate thousands of federal jobs, said anyone who didn’t respond would be fired. Many agencies, meanwhile, told their workforces not to respond or issued conflicting guidance.

The second email will be delivered in a different way, according to the person with knowledge of the situation, potentially making it easier to discipline employees for noncompliance.

Instead of being sent by the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as a human resources agency for the federal government but doesn’t have the power to hire or fire, the email will come from individual agencies that have direct oversight of career officials.

The plan was first reported by The Washington Post.

It’s unclear how national security agencies will handle the second email. After the first one, they directed employees not to write back because much of the agencies’ work is sensitive or classified. Less than half of federal workers responded, according to the White House.

The Office of Personnel Management ultimately told agency leaders shortly before the Monday deadline for responses that the request was optional, although it left the door open for similar demands going forward.

On Wednesday, at Trump’s first Cabinet meeting of his second term, Musk argued that his request was a “pulse check” to ensure that those working for the government have “a pulse and two neurons.”

Both Musk and Trump have claimed that some workers are either dead or fictional, and the president has publicly backed Musk’s approach.

Addressing people who didn’t respond to the first email, Trump said “they are on the bubble,” and he added that he wasn’t “thrilled” about them not responding.

“Now, maybe they don’t exist,” he said without providing evidence. “Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist.”

In addition to recent firings of probationary employees, a memo distributed this week set the stage for large-scale layoffs and consolidation of programs.

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

By DORANY PINEDA and ELLIOT SPAGAT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Just before dawn, 10 people met at a parking lot shared by a laundromat and coffee shop in South Central Los Angeles on what has become a daily mission: Look for immigration officers and warn people of their presence to try to prevent arrests. Bullhorns and sirens are ready for use.

“There’s raza that’s been detained,” Ron Gochez, founder of Union del Barrio’s Los Angeles chapter, said before they split up in five cars. “It seems like there’s more activity now. Let’s keep a close eye out.”

Working with other similar-size groups and using walkie-talkies, the Community Self-Defense Coalition, made up of more than 60 organizations, found nothing Thursday but appeared to have disrupted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations earlier in the week. In Los Angeles and across the country, these tactics have been a thorn in ICE’s side as it tries to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

“Positive spotting right now of ICE agents at the Target in Alhambra,” Lupe Carrasco Cardona said in a live Instagram report Sunday from the Los Angeles suburb over a blaring siren to draw attention. She said at least six government vehicles were identified in the ICE operation.

Counter-ICE operations have had “a huge impact,” said John Fabbricatore, a former head of ICE’s enforcement and removal division in Denver.

“It’s dangerous for the officers because they are trying to get into a situation, maybe undercover, trying to make an arrest without alarming the neighborhood, and then these guys come out here with these bullhorns and they start yelling and screaming,” Fabbricatore said.

Advocates “go right to the edge” of a law against impeding federal law enforcement to avoid criminal prosecution, he said.

Advocates say they are exercising free speech and reminding people of their rights. ICE officers cannot forcibly enter a home without a judicial warrant, which they rarely have. Sophisticated “know-your- rights” campaigns urge people to stay inside and not open the door.

For years, including during Trump’s first administration, ICE has contended with advocates who rely on blast text messages, social media and bullhorns to spread the word.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was visibly angry after joining ICE officers who were met at apartments in the Denver area by activists who insulted them and used bullhorns to alert residents. He insisted word of the operation was leaked.

“The less people know about these operations, the better,” Homan said outside the White House after the Denver operation resulted in fewer arrests than expected.

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ICE referred questions to the Homeland Security Department, which did not respond to questions about the advocates’ tactics and any activities in Los Angeles this week. The agency stopped releasing daily arrest figures, but Homan said last week that it made about 21,000 arrests. That’s an average of more than 600 a day, roughly double what President Joe Biden’s administration did in a 12-month period ending Sept. 30.

In the Los Angeles area, about 150 volunteers fanned out Sunday in response to rumors of ICE operations. Organizers said they spotted ICE in Alhambra and San Fernando, preventing arrests.

Volunteers meet before dawn, as many workers are heading to their jobs and when advocates believe ICE is most likely to move in. They zigzag through quiet residential streets and sleepy intersections, looking for double-parked vehicles, tinted windows and newer cars parked in red zones.

If they spot ICE officers, they hit record on their phones. They blare sirens. And through a megaphone, they announce that ICE is in the neighborhood. “They’re here.”

“We don’t use violence. We don’t break any laws. But we will do anything legally possible to defend our community,” Gochez said.

Back at the parking lot about two hours after Thursday’s mission started, the city was waking up. On the corner, a street vendor had set up her tamales stand.

“We just got a report right now that all of our patrols happening in San Diego, Escondido, California; Los Angeles, California; South Gate and Alhambra, everything is all clear right now,” said Gochez, before heading to his day job as a high school history teacher.

Spagat reported from San Diego.

By TAMMY WEBBER and AMELIA THOMSON-DeVEAUX, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.

To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.

“To me it’s just kind of obvious,” said Ries, a project manager for an environmental company and self-described conservative-leaning independent. “Things are changing pretty drastically; just extreme weather all across the country and the world. … I do think humans are speeding up that process.”

About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have experienced some kind of extreme weather in recent years, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with about half saying they’ve been personally affected by severe cold weather or severe winter storms.

FILE – A pickup truck navigates snow-covered streets following a winter storm, Jan. 6, 2025, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

Among those saying severe cold was among the types of extreme weather they experienced, about three-quarters say climate change is at least a partial cause of those events — suggesting that many understand global warming can create an unstable atmosphere that allows cold air from the Arctic to escape farther south more often.

Midwesterners are most likely to feel the brunt of the cold weather, with about 7 in 10 adults who live in the Midwest experiencing severe cold in the past five years, compared with about half of residents of the South and the Northeast and about one-third of those in the West, the survey found.

“It’s counterintuitive to think, ‘Oh, gee, it’s really cold. That probably has something to do with global warming,’” said Liane Golightly-Kissner, of Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, who believes climate change is influencing many weather extremes.

Golightly-Kissner, 38, said it was so cold this winter that schools were closed and her family let faucets drip to prevent burst pipes. She remembers one extremely cold day when she was a child in Michigan, but she says now it seems to happen more often and over multiple days.

The poll also found that, while only about one-quarter of U.S. adults feel climate change has had a major impact on their lives so far, about 4 in 10 think it will in their lifetimes — including on their health, local air quality and water availability. About half of adults under age 30 believe climate change will impact them personally.

About 7 in 10 U.S. adults believe climate change is occurring, and they are much more likely to think it has had or will have a major impact on them than those who say climate change isn’t happening.

FILE – Water vapor rises above St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River as the Stone Arch Bridge is obscured, seen from the Third Ave. Bridge Jan. 29, 2019, In Minneapolis. (David Joles/Star Tribune via AP)

Americans are catching on, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who credits a combination of media coverage, political leaders speaking up and public concerns that creates a “symbiotic relationship.”

“We have seen growing awareness among the American people that climate change is affecting them here and now,” though many still see it as a distant problem that their grandchildren will have to worry about, he said.

Rosiland Lathan, 60, of Minden, Louisiana, said she’s a believer because it seems that summers are getting hotter and winters colder — including a couple years ago, when snow and ice kept her car stuck at work for several days.

This winter, she said, there was a stretch of temperatures in the teens and 20s, while a couple of summers ago, it got “real, real hot” with highs in the 100s.

“It’s normally hot in Louisiana, but not that hot,” Lathan said.

Hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters, like the devastating Southern California fires, also have many concerned that climate change could lead to higher property insurance premiums and household energy costs.

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about increasing property insurance premiums, and just over half are similarly concerned about climate change’s impact on energy costs, the AP-NORC survey found. About half are “extremely” or “very” concerned that climate change will increase costs for local emergency responders and infrastructure costs for government. Republicans are less worried than Democrats and independents.

The survey also found broad support for a range of measures to help people who live in areas becoming more susceptible to extreme weather and natural disasters, with the exception of restricting new construction in these communities.

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they “somewhat” or “strongly” favor providing money to local residents to help them rebuild in the same community after disasters strike, while similar shares support providing money to make residents’ property more resistant to natural disasters and providing homeowners’ insurance to people who cannot get private insurance. About one-quarter of Americans neither favor nor oppose each of these proposals, while around 1 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.

When it comes to restricting new construction, opinion is more divided. About 4 in 10 “somewhat” or “strongly” favor restricting new construction in areas that are especially vulnerable to natural disasters, about 4 in 10 have a neutral view and about 2 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.

Golightly-Kissner said she believes there should be rebuilding restrictions or tougher building standards in disaster-prone areas.

“These extreme weather conditions, they’re not going anywhere, and it would be hubris for us to continue in the same way,” she said. “I think we we have to change. We have to look toward the future and what’s the best way to keep our lives together when this happens again. Because it’s really not a question of if, it’s when.”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN and JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities investigating the deaths of Oscar-winner Gene Hackman and his wife are waiting for the results of the autopsies, and carbon monoxide and toxicology testing to determine how they died.

Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, apparently had been dead for days or even a couple of weeks when investigators found their bodies while searching the couple’s Santa Fe home on Wednesday. Investigators are trying to figure out the last time anyone saw or spoke to them, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told NBC’s “Today” show on Friday.

“That is a challenge because they were very private individuals,” the sheriff said, noting that the autopsy results could take months.

Law enforcement officials talk outside the home of actor Gene Hackman on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog were found dead in the home a day earlier. (AP Photo/Roberto Rosales)

Hackman, 95, was found Wednesday in an entryway of the home and Arakawa, 65, was found lying on her side in the bathroom. A dead German shepherd was found in a kennel near Arakawa, Mendoza said Thursday.

There was no indication of foul play, according to the sheriff’s office. Detectives wrote in a search warrant affidavit that investigators thought the deaths were “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation.”

No gas leaks were discovered in and around the home, but a detective noted in the affidavit that people exposed to gas leaks or carbon monoxide might not show signs of poisoning.

A space heater was next to Arakawa and may have fallen when she abruptly fell to the floor, according to the affidavit. The sheriff’s office planned a Friday afternoon news conference to provide updates.

A maintenance worker who showed up to do routine work at the house discovered their bodies, investigators said. The worker said he was unable to get inside when a 911 operator asked whether the people in the house were breathing.

“I have no idea,” the subdivision’s caretaker said on the call. “I am not inside the house. It’s closed. It’s locked. I can’t go in. But I can see she’s laying down on the floor from the window.”

He and another worker later told authorities that they rarely saw the homeowners and that their last contact with them had been about two weeks ago.

Mendoza told “Today” there were several conflicting stories about which doors were locked at the house. Several were unlocked and a rear door was open, which allowed two dogs that survived to go in and out. He also said he thought the front door was closed but unlocked.

Hackman was among the most accomplished actors of his generation, appearing as villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.

He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won best actor in a leading role for “The French Connection” in 1972 and best actor in a supporting role for “Unforgiven” two decades later. He also won praise for his role as a coach finding redemption in the sentimental favorite “Hoosiers.”

He met Arakawa, a classically trained pianist, at a California gym in the mid-1980s. They moved to Santa Fe by the end of the decade. Their Pueblo revival home, sits on a hill in a gated community with views of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

In his first couple of decades in New Mexico, Hackman was often seen around the state capital and served on the board of trustees for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum from 1997-2004.

In recent years, he was far less visible. Aside from appearances at awards shows, he was rarely seen in the Hollywood social circuit and retired from acting about 20 years ago.

Hackman had three children from a previous marriage. He and Arakawa had no children but were known for having German shepherds.

Seewer reported from in Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona; Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.