By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees while a lawsuit plays out.

The Friday ruling came after the Trump administration asked for an emergency pause on a judge’s order blocking enforcement at roughly three dozen agencies and departments.

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A split three-judge panel in the nation’s capital sided with government lawyers in a lawsuit filed by unions representing federal employees. The majority ruled on technical grounds, finding that the unions don’t have the legal right to sue because the Trump administration has said it won’t end any collective bargaining agreements while the case is being litigated.

Judge Karen Henderson, appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, and Justin Walker, appointed by Trump, sided with the government, while Judge Michelle Childs, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, dissented.

The government says Trump needs the executive order so his administration can cut the federal workforce to ensure strong national security. The law requiring collective bargaining creates exemptions for work related to national security, as in agencies like the FBI.

Union leaders argue the order is designed to facilitate mass firings and exact “political vengeance” against federal unions opposed to Trump’s efforts to dramatically downsize the federal government.

His order seeks to expand that exemption to exclude more workers than any other president has before. That’s according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which is suing to block the order.

The administration has filed in a Kentucky court to terminate the collective bargaining agreement for the International Revenue Service, where many workers are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. They say their IRS members aren’t doing national security work.

Other union employees affected by the order include the Health and Human Services Department, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission.

Nine murals by eight artists will take over walls around South St. Anthony Park this summer as part of this year’s Chroma Zone Mural and Art Festival.

The festival, now in its sixth year, has brought 62 murals by 72 artists to buildings around the Creative Enterprise Zone district since 2019, organizers say.

The monthslong mural festival begins next week when Mariela Ajras, who painted the mother-and-child portrait mural on The Wycliff building during the inaugural 2019 event, will paint two additional related murals at the same site to form a triptych. Other artists will paint on staggered time frames throughout the summer, culminating in a finale weekend in September.

Here are this year’s muralists. The specific dates and locations they’ll be painting are yet to be announced.

This year’s artists

Marlela Ajras: From Argentina — and with a psychology background — her work focuses on gender and memory.

Biafra Inc: This muralist and screen printer from the Twin Cities has been creating personal, political and punk-inspired art since the mid-2000s.

Mike Davis: The co-owner of local studio Burlesque of North America, he helped launch first a mural festival in St. Louis and then, in 2019, the Chroma Zone Mural & Art Festival. (Ever heard of it?)

Xena Goldman: A Minneapolis-based muralist who spent a decade as an educator, she channels experiences with neurodivergence and sensory processing difficulties into murals inspired by comic-art styles.

Cadex Herrera: Originally from Belize and now a fine-art teacher at Creative Arts Secondary School in St. Paul, he teaches a variety of media and himself works on large-scale public art.

Pablo Kalaka: Born in Chile but now based in Minneapolis — by way of Venezuela and Spain — he’s painted murals in nearly a dozen countries over the past two decades, including about 20 in the Twin Cities.

Christina Vang: A Hmong-American illustrator and painter, she pivoted in 2016 from a decade-long career in advertising to focus on creating accessible, cultural public art with a social justice focus.

Anna Charney: Based in her hometown of Denver, she creates contemporary, abstract and colorful paintings and murals inspired by mathematical patterns found in nature.

Event schedule:

• Monday, June 2: Artist talk with Mariela Ajras, focusing on Latin American women muralists. 7 to 8 p.m. at NewStudio Gallery (2303 Wycliff St.). Free; refreshments provided.

• Thursday, Sept. 18: Panel discussion and Q&A with select 2025 muralists. 7 to 8 p.m. at Bang Brewing (2320 Capp Road). Free; food and beverage available for purchase.

• Friday, Sept. 19: Outdoor Art Block Party, with a makers’ market, community meal and a Lego mural activity with Brian Kelley of Young Builders & Designers. 6 to 8 p.m. at the parking lot at 2370 Territorial Road.

• Saturday, Sept. 20: Guided bike and bus tours of the murals. Hourlong bike tour (bring your own bike) begins at 10 a.m. at Raymond and University avenues, but the exact location is TBD. Hourlong bus tours run periodically between 1 and 4 p.m. in both English and Spanish, with pickup/dropoffs at The Dubliner (2162 W. University Ave.), Dual Citizen Brewing Co. (725 Raymond Ave.) & The Wycliff (2327 Wycliff St.); exact timing is TBD.

Find more details online at chromazone.net.

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By PAUL WISEMAN, CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, Associated Press Business Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) — For months, American consumers and businesses have been hearing that President Trump’s massive import taxes – tariffs – would drive up prices and hurt the U.S. economy. But the latest economic reports don’t match the doom and gloom: Inflation actually eased last month, and hiring was solid in April.

For now, the disconnect has businesses and consumers struggling to reconcile what they were told to expect, what the numbers say and what they are seeing on the ground. Trump and his supporters are quick to point out that the trade wars of his first term didn’t translate into higher overall inflation across the economy.

So is it time to breathe easy?

Not yet, economists say. Trump’s tariffs are still huge – the highest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. They’re unpredictable: The president frequently announces tariffs only to suspend them days later and to conjure up new ones. And they are still working their way through the system.

“We had a good jobs report. We had a cool inflation report, and that’s great,” said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at Yale University’s Budget Lab. “But that should not give us comfort about what next month will be, particularly on inflation.’’

FILE – Trader Daniel Kryger works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Walmart, for example, warned its customers last week that prices will be going up for everything from clothing to car seats. Prices for some items like bananas have already increased.

True, the truce with China last Monday dramatically reduced the risks to the U.S. economy, and U.S. and global stock markets rallied last week in relief. The United States dropped the import tax that Trump angrily imposed on China – America’s third-biggest source of imports – from an eye-watering 145% to 30%; Beijing cut its retaliatory tariffs from 125% to 10%. Economists at JPMorgan Chase, who had forecast last month that the China tariffs made a recession likely, don’t expect one now.

Trump’s tariffs are the highest since the Great Depression

But even with the lower levies on China, the Yale Budget Lab reported that the cost of Trump’s trade war will be high. Climbing prices will reduce the purchasing power of the average household by $2,800. Shoe prices will rise 15% and clothing 14%. The tariffs will shave 0.7 percentage points off U.S. economic growth this year and increase the unemployment rate — now a low 4.2% — by nearly 0.4 percentage points.

Trump has plastered 10% taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. He’s also imposed 25% duties on cars, aluminum, steel, and many imports from Canada and Mexico.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates that Trump policies will push the average U.S. tariff rate to 17.8%, highest since 1934 and up from around 2.5% when Trump took office. (Other economists put his tariff rate at 14% to 15%.) During Trump’s first term, the average tariff rose just 1 percentage point despite all the headlines generated by trade policies. Now, according to the budget lab, they are rising 15 percentage points.

And the tariffs have only begun to bite. In April, the import tax revenues collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection came to a tariff rate of just 4.5%, a fraction of what’s coming, Tedeschi said. That’s partly because of delays in rolling out the tariffs, including technical glitches that prevented customs agents from collecting them for a couple of weeks.

The full impact has also been delayed because companies beat the clock by bringing in foreign goods before Trump’s tariffs took effect. Retailers and importers had also largely halted shipments of shoes, clothes, toys, and other items due to new tariffs, but many are resuming imports from China.

Shown are shipping containers at the port of the port of New York & New Jersey in Elizabeth, N.J., Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Tedeschi, who was chief economist at President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, also notes that it just takes time for tariffs to translate into higher prices. During Trump’s first term, his January 2018 levies on foreign washing machines didn’t yield more expensive appliances until April that year. Still, a Federal Reserve study this month found that duties Trump imposed in 2018 and 2019 meant higher prices as soon as two months later, suggesting consumers could start paying more in June.

Consumers are less willing to accept higher prices

Things have changed from the first time Trump was in the White House, when companies essentially passed along the entire cost of his tariffs. Now American consumers, still scarred by the burst of inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, may be more reluctant to accept higher prices.

FILE – People shop at a party supply store in the Toy District of Los Angeles on April 9, 2025, where the majority of items are imported from China. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

“Consumers weren’t inflation exhausted in 2018 the way that they are now,’’ Tedeschi said. Surveys by Federal Reserve banks in Atlanta and Dallas have found that most companies would eat at least some of the tariff costs this time around. And one reason that the Labor Department’s producer price index fell in April was that retailers and wholesalers reported lower profit margins, a sign that they may have been absorbing some of the tariff cost.

Trump, who has long insisted that foreign countries and not U.S. companies or consumers pay his tariffs, on Saturday lashed out at Walmart for saying it would raise prices. On social media, he demanded that the giant retailer “ EAT THE TARIFFS, and do not charge valued customers anything. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!’’

The economic damage doesn’t just come from the cost of tariffs, but from the erratic way the president imposes them. For instance, the 145% China tariffs were just suspended for 90 days. Likewise, Trump has paused high taxes he slapped last month on imports from countries with which the United States runs trade deficits. Could those levies come back?

Consumers are clearly fearful that the duties will boost prices, as consumer confidence surveys have plummeted since Trump began ramping up his tariff threats in February. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index has fallen for five straight months to its lowest level since the depths of the pandemic in May 2020.

Costlier coffee and Christmas wreathes are coming

Snowy Owl Coffee Roasters in Sandwich, Massachusetts, which imports beans from Brazil, Nicaragua, Burundi and other countries, is only now planning to raise its prices this week to cover the cost of the 10% tariffs. It plans to add 25 cents to 35 cents to the price for each cup.

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“Tariffs are increasing costs and they’re adding to a lot of uncertainty around the potential for a downturn,” said Shayna Ferullo, 44, co-owner of Snowy Owl. “We are looking closely at the year ahead with the goal of consolidating and operating really, really tightly.”

Ferullo will also have to pay much more than she budgeted to renovate her shop in Brewster, Massachusetts — one of her three retail locations — because the contractor has raised his estimate, partly due to tariffs on building supplies. She has already elected to not fill one job after an employee left and is looking at ways automation could help reduce her labor costs, though she hasn’t laid off any of her 35 employees.

Jared Hendricks, CEO of Village Lighting Co., last month halted shipments of supplies he gets from China – holiday storage bags, wreathes, holiday lights and garlands. Now that the U.S. and China have reached a truce, he’s trying to get the products to the United States in time for the holidays.

He estimates that it will take 10 to 20 days from China to the West Coast ports via ship and another 20 days to 40 days for the goods to go through U.S. Customs, then travel via Union Pacific Railways to his company in Utah. Given all the expected delays, Hendricks said he’s worried that his holiday décor won’t arrive by Sept. 1 when it should start appearing in stores.

Meanwhile, he’s figuring out how to foot a $1 million bill for the tariffs. He’s hoping he can cover the cost by raising prices 10% to 15%.

In the meantime, he’s trying to secure a loan against his house to pay for the levies.

“We are moving forward,’’ he said, “but at great cost, personal risk, and weariness.”

D’Innocenzio reported from New York.

By MATTHEW PERRONE and LAURAN NEERGAARD, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. clinched the political support needed to become the nation’s top health official by pledging to work within the decades-old federal system for approval and use of vaccines. Yet his regulators are promising big changes that cloud the outlook for what shots might even be available.

The Food and Drug Administration will soon “unleash a massive framework” for how vaccines are tested and approved, according to Commissioner Marty Makary. Details aren’t yet public but the plan is being overseen by the agency’s new vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, an outspoken critic of FDA’s handling of COVID-19 boosters.

Makary and other Trump administration officials already have taken unprecedented steps that raise uncertainty about next fall’s COVID-19 vaccinations, including delaying FDA scientists’full approval of Novavax’s shot — and then restricting its use to people at higher risk from the virus. They’ve also suggested seasonal tweaks to match the latest circulating virus strains are new products requiring extra testing.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Marty Makary speaks during a news conference on the FDA’s intent to phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the nation’s food supply at the Hubert Humphrey Building Auditorium in Washington, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The changes cross multiple health agencies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t yet acted on an influential advisory panel’s recent recommendations on use of a new meningitis shot or broader RSV vaccination. A meeting of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” allies was recently told to expect an end to COVID-19 booster recommendations for children — something that vaccine advisory panel was supposed to debate in June. And researchers around the country lost National Institutes of Health funding to study vaccine hesitancy.

“I think you have to assume that RFK Jr.’s intention is to make it harder for vaccines to come to market,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a vaccine expert at Johns Hopkins University. The changes are “looked at suspiciously because this is someone with a proven track record of evading the value of vaccines.”

Raising doubts about vaccines

In a Senate health committee hearing last week, Kennedy wrongly claimed that the only vaccines tested against a placebo, or dummy shot, were for COVID-19.

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Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the committee, briefly interrupted the hearing to say, “For the record, that’s not true” — pointing to placebo-controlled studies of the rotavirus, measles and HPV vaccines.

Concerned by rhetoric about how vaccines are tested, a group of doctors recently compiled a list of more than 120 vaccine clinical trials spanning decades, most of them placebo-controlled, including for shots against polio, hepatitis B, mumps and tetanus.

“It directly debunks the claim that vaccines were never tested against placebo,” said Dr. Jake Scott, a Stanford University infectious disease physician who’s helping lead the project.

Antivaccine groups argue that some substances scientists call a placebo may not really qualify, although the list shows simple saline shots are common.

Sometimes a vaccine causes enough shot-site pain or swelling that it’s evident who’s getting the vaccine and who’s in the control group — and studies might use another option that slightly irritates the skin to keep the test “blinded,” Scott explained.

And when there’s already a proven vaccine for the same disease, it’s unethical to test a new version against a placebo, he said.

“We can’t always expect placebo-controlled trials,” Scott said. “It’s imperative that be communicated clearly to the public, but it’s challenging especially when there’s so much noise in social media and so much misinformation.”

Trump officials held up vaccine decision

The administration’s promise of a new vaccine framework comes ahead of a Thursday meeting where FDA advisers will discuss updating COVID-19 shots for this fall and winter.

The FDA’s credibility has long rested on the independence of its scientific decisions. While the agency is led by a handful of political appointees, approval decisions are almost always handled by career scientists.

But that standard appears to be shifting. FDA staffers were poised to approve Novavax’s vaccine early last month but the decision was delayed by administration officials, including Makary, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss agency matters. The shot was approved late Friday with unusual restrictions.

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg — a political appointee serving as Makary’s special assistant — was involved in the unprecedented demand that Novavax conduct a new clinical trial of its shot after approval, according to the people. The requirement came shortly after the agency’s longtime vaccine chief, Dr. Peter Marks, was forced to resign.

Hoeg — along with Makary and Prasad — spent much of the COVID-19 pandemic criticizing the FDA’s handling of booster shots, particularly in children and young adults. All three were co-authors of a 2022 paper stating that requiring booster shots in young people would cause more harm than benefit.

Novavax isn’t the only vaccine manufacturer already affected by changing attitudes at FDA. Earlier this month, Moderna pushed back the target date for its new COVID-and-flu combination vaccine to next year after the FDA requested additional effectiveness data.

COVID-19 booster critics are in control

As the FDA’s top official overseeing vaccines, Prasad is now in position to reverse what he recently called “a number of missteps” in how the FDA assessed the benefits and risks of COVID-19 boosters.

He questioned how much benefit yearly vaccinations continue to offer. In a podcast shortly before assuming his FDA job, Prasad suggested companies could study about 20,000 older adults in August or September to show if an updated vaccine prevented COVID-related hospitalizations.

There is “legitimate debate about who should be boosted, how frequently they should be boosted and the value of boosting low-risk individuals,” said Hopkins’ Adalja. But he stressed that CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has the proper expertise to be making those decisions.

And other experts say simply updating the strain that a COVID-19 vaccine targets doesn’t make it a new product — and real-world data shows each fall’s update has offered benefit.

“The data are clear and compelling” that vaccination reduces seniors’ risk of hospitalization and serious illness for four to six months, said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease researcher.

Nor could that kind of study be accomplished quickly enough to get millions of people vaccinated before the yearly winter surge, said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief.

“You’d always be doing clinical trials and you’d never have a vaccine that was up to date,” he said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.