By TERRY TANG and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, even at a moment when economic stress is widespread, according to a new poll.

Related Articles

Prices ticked up in November as Americans keep spending a key inflation measure shows

4 in 5 small businesses had cyberattacks last year and almost half of those were AI powered

US applications for jobless benefits inch up last week to a still-low 200,000

Consumer spending pushes US economy up 4.4% in third quarter, fastest in two years

US stocks climb some more after Trump calls off his tariffs for Greenland

About half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing the high cost of living and inflation, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted in early December. In comparison, a December AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of U.S. adults overall rated inflation and financial worries as the most pressing problems.

The findings indicate that this small but fast-growing group is not persuaded by President Donald Trump’s attempts to tamp down worries about inflation and defend his tariffs. Even when considering partisanship, AAPI Democrats and Independents — and even AAPI Republicans — are at least slightly more likely than those groups overall to mention inflation and costs. Concern about costs has risen among AAPI adults since last year, when about 4 in 10 AAPI adults said they wanted the government to focus on this issue.

Like Americans overall, AAPI adults have also become more focused on health care issues over the past year.

The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.

Jayakumar Natarajan, a 56-year-old manager for a major tech company living in the San Francisco Bay Area, is rethinking his goal of retiring at 60 because of climbing costs in basic goods and health care. He can afford to live the way he wants for now, but is considering delaying retirement or moving outside the U.S., where prices are lower.

The cost of health care is very much on his mind. “I think it will really make a big difference in the way I think about retirement planning,” he said.

AAPI adults are worried about rising costs

Inflation and affordability loom large for AAPI adults, even compared to other economic concerns, the survey found. About 2 in 10 AAPI adults mentioned housing costs or jobs and unemployment as priorities for the government to work on in the coming year, which was generally in line with Americans overall.

Balancing financial obligations has become especially challenging for people living in high-cost areas, where a steady salary may not cover a growing family. Kevin Tu, 32, and his wife recently reached two milestones — buying a new home outside of Seattle in Lynnwood, Washington, and expecting their first child. The couple works full time and Tu also has a math tutoring business, but he is still nervous about what will happen after the baby arrives.

“I’m trying to figure out how to balance possible part-time day care with our mortgage, with cost of living,” said Tu, who is Taiwanese American.

Black, Hispanic and AAPI adults were more apt than white adults to bring up unemployment, jobs and housing costs as priorities, the surveys found.

Part of what may explain AAPI adults’ increasing worry about everyday costs is the largest AAPI adult populations reside in states and major metropolitan cities with higher costs of living and higher rent, such as California and New York.

While tariffs have impacted American consumers across the board, they have a particularly strong effect on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who prefer certain imported goods such as food and clothing. Karthick Ramakrishnan, AAPI Data executive director and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls how last year, some AAPI shoppers were going to ethnic grocery stores and “stockpiling” ahead of tariffs kicking in.

“When it comes to costs for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it’s just not cost of general market groceries but ethnic market groceries,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s something visible to them and potentially causing anxiety and worry.”

Health care is also a priority for AAPI adults

Some 44% of AAPI adult also want the government to prioritize health care in the coming year. That’s not meaningfully different from among U.S. adults overall, emphasizing Americans’ renewed focus on the issue after a year of health care cuts.

Srilasya Volam, a 25-year-old business consultant in Atlanta said that some of her family members have embarked on “ medical tourism ” trips as a result of high U.S. health care costs, a practice of traveling to other countries for more cost-effective medical procedures.

“It’s cheaper for us to get a flight ticket and go to India and have a medical procedure and come back than it is to have that done here,” she said. “When I was younger, we would just go to India and we’d be like, now that we’re here, let’s do everything: the dental checkups, every checkup. It’s a lot more cost effective.”

The poll found that about 6 in 10 AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health care costs increasing in 2026, which is roughly in line with U.S. adults overall.

Falling confidence in the government’s ability to make progress

The survey found that AAPI adults are less confident in the government’s ability to make progress on the important issues facing the country than they were just after the 2024 election.

About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say they are “not at all” or just “slightly confident” that the government will make progress on key issues, up from 60% at the end of 2024.

Dissatisfaction with the Trump administration may be a factor. And while the economy is top of mind, other factors could be feeding the fear that the government won’t change things for the better this year.

Ernie Roaza, a 66-year-old retired geologist in Tallahassee, Florida, is a first generation immigrant to the U.S. from South Korea, where he grew up under a dictatorship. He worries that Trump is doing “everything that dictators do,” adding, “I’ve seen it before. It’s almost laughable, but it’s scary at the same time.”

He remains optimistic that the country will get through it.

“This administration will make things worse,” Roaza said. “But in every administration we’ve had, there are hills and valleys. We’re in the valleys right now.”

The poll of 1,029 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from Dec. 2-8, 2025, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Tang reported from Phoenix.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and JULIE CARR SMYTH

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance, speaking in his home state of Ohio before visiting Minnesota on Thursday, blamed the “far left” for turmoil surrounding the White House’s deportation campaign.

“If you want to turn down the chaos in Minneapolis, stop fighting immigration enforcement and accept that we have to have a border in this country,” Vance said in Toledo. “It’s not that hard.”

Vance plans to meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, which has been a focal point for protests since an agent fatally shot Renee Good, a mother of three, during a confrontation this month. The Republican vice president has played a leading role in defending that agent and said Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.”

He also praised the arrest of protesters who disrupted a church service in Minnesota on Sunday and said he expects more prosecutions to come. The protesters entered the church chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”

“They’re scaring little kids who are there to worship God on a Sunday morning,” Vance said. “Those people are going to be sent to prison so long as we have the power to do so.”

He added: “Just as you have the right to protest, they have a right to worship God as they choose. And when you interrupt that, that is a violation of the law.”

Vance’s appearance was primarily focused on bolstering the Trump administration’s positive economic message on the heels of Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The vice president also took the opportunity to boost some of Republicans’ important statewide candidates in this fall’s midterm elections, including gubernatorial contender Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Sen. Jon Husted.

Convincing voters that the nation is in rosy financial shape has been a persistent challenge for Trump during the first year of his second term. Polling has shown that the public is unconvinced that the economy is in good condition and majorities disapprove of how Trump’s handling of foreign policy.

Vance urged voters to be patient on the economy, saying Trump had inherited a bad situation from Democratic President Joe Biden.

“You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight,” Vance said. “It takes time to fix what is broken.”

___

Carr Smyth reported from Columbus.

Related Articles

Texas leads the nation in supplying new residents to other states

Federal officers detain a 5-year-old boy who school official says was used as ‘bait’

Activist Nekima Levy Armstrong arrested following St. Paul church protest

Army orders military police to get ready for a possible Minneapolis deployment, AP source says

Autopsy finds Cuban immigrant in ICE custody died of homicide due to asphyxia

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Texas supplied the most new residents of any U.S. state for nine other states, despite having the biggest population growth this decade, according to figures released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Related Articles

Prices ticked up in November as Americans keep spending a key inflation measure shows

Homicide rate declines sharply in dozens of US cities, a new report shows

US applications for jobless benefits inch up last week to a still-low 200,000

Consumer spending pushes US economy up 4.4% in third quarter, fastest in two years

US stocks climb again after Trump calls off his tariffs for Greenland

Texas was the top source of new residents for Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma, according to the 2024 state-to-state migration flows, which track where someone lived in the previous year and where they currently live.

With 31 million residents, Texas ranks second in population among U.S. states. Between 2020 and 2024, Texas gained 2.1 million people.

“The obvious and primary answer is size,” said Dudley Poston, professor emeritus of sociology at Texas A&M University. “There’s got to be more people leaving Texas than leaving other states because of the population size of Texas.”

Other large producers of residents who moved to other states included the nation’s other most populous states: California, Florida and New York.

California, the most populous U.S. state with 39 million residents, supplied the most new residents to the western states of Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington. But it also was the top supplier of domestic residents to Tennessee, home to Nashville, which has established a pipeline to Southern California’s entertainment industry.

Florida, the third most populous U.S. state with 23 million residents, dominated the number of new residents in the southeast states of Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina but also Ohio. Florida has gained 1.8 million residents this decade, the second most of any state.

Although the Sunshine State’s size played a primary role, other factors may be involved too, such as Florida’s escalating real estate and homeowners’ insurance prices and the more plentiful job opportunities for recent college graduates in cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, according to Richard Doty, a research demographer at the University of Florida.

“It is no longer as affordable a relocation/ retirement option as it once was,” Doty said in an email.

New York was the top source of new residents in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey, while Illinois provided the most new residents for Midwestern neighbors Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

“The states with the largest out-migration numbers — California, Florida, Texas, and New York — are also the states with the largest populations. That’s not a coincidence,” said Helen You, interim director of the Texas Demographic Center. “Large populations naturally generate large volumes of both in-and-out migrants.”

Some migration patterns were no real surprises, such as former Massachusetts residents being the biggest source of new Mainers, New Hampshirites, Rhode Islanders and Vermonters. Former Wisconsinites made up the largest number of new Minnesotans, and former North Carolinians were the biggest source of new South Carolina residents.

In most states in 2024, before the immigration crackdown of the second Trump administration, people arriving from a foreign country were the top source of new residents. Among the exceptions, where international migration wasn’t large compared to people moving from individual U.S. states, were Idaho, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The Census Bureau is releasing new population estimates next week that will show how the U.S. changed in 2025.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — For days it seemed there was no way out of the latest standoff between Europe and the United States: U.S. President Donald Trump insisted he must have Greenland — and would settle for nothing short of total ownership.

Even after he dropped the threat of force in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the impasse remained. Enter: Mark Rutte.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The NATO secretary-general may have been instrumental in persuading Trump to scrap the threat of slapping punitive tariffs on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland — a stunning reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title and ownership.”

In a post on his social media site, Trump said he had agreed with Rutte on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security at the World Economic Forum in Davos, potentially defusing tensions that had far-reaching geopolitical implications.

Little is known about what the agreement entails or how crucial Rutte’s intervention was, and Trump could change course again. But for now, Rutte has earned his reputation as a “Trump whisperer.”

That’s only the latest nickname for the man long known as “Teflon Mark” during his domination of Dutch politics for a dozen years.

‘Trump whisperer’

Rutte’s reputation for successfully charming the U.S. president took flight last year when he referred to Donald Trump as “daddy” during an alliance summit in The Hague and sent him a flattering text message.

Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte speaks during an Ukrainian Breakfast alongside the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the dramatic scenes in Davos underscored Rutte’s ability to keep NATO’s most powerful leader on board.

“I think Secretary-General Rutte has emerged as one of Europe’s most effective diplomats and Trump whisperers,” Kroenig said. “He does seem to have a way of speaking to Trump that keeps the United States and the Trump administration engaged in NATO in a constructive way.”

Rutte’s success in dealing with Trump appears to revolve around his willingness to use charm and flattery while revealing little of what the two leaders discuss. It’s a tactic that Rutte used to marshal coalition partners in nearly 13 years as Dutch prime minister.

Trump himself highlighted Rutte’s effusive friendliness before he set off for Davos this week, publishing a text message from the NATO chief on his Truth Social platform. In it, Rutte addresses “Mr. President, dear Donald” and praises Trump for his diplomacy in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine.

“I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you. Yours, Mark,” the message ended.

Teflon Mark

Rutte became a poster boy for Dutch consensus politics while leading four often fractious ruling coalitions on his way to becoming the Netherlands’ longest-serving leader, surviving a number of domestic political scandals over the years and earning the nickname “Teflon Mark” because the fallout never seemed to stick to him for long.

Related Articles

Vance heads to Minneapolis and says ‘far left’ should stop resisting immigration enforcement

US government warns it will take action if Haitian politicians destabilize country

What to know about Greenland’s role in nuclear defense and Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’

House moves to finish government funding as Democrats decry Homeland Security bill

Denmark says its sovereignty is not negotiable after Trump’s Greenland about-turn

The back cover of a 2016 book about Rutte by Dutch journalist Sheila Sitalsing, who followed him when he was prime minister, calls him “a phenomenon.”

“With indestructible cheerfulness he navigates the fragmented political landscape, recklessly forges the most extraordinary alliances and steadily works towards a new Netherlands,” it adds.

Rutte and his government resigned in 2021 to take responsibility for a child care allowance scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud. But he bounced back to win national elections two months later with a slightly larger share of the vote and began his fourth and last term in office.

In another scandal that he survived, Rutte said in an interview that he couldn’t recall being informed about the Dutch bombing of Hawija that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians in 2015. In 2022, he survived a no-confidence motion in parliament in a debate about deleting messages from his old-school Nokia cellphone. Critics accused him of concealing state activity — but he insisted the messages just took up too much space in his phone.

Opposition lawmaker Attje Kuiken quipped: “It appears that the prime minister’s phone memory is used just as selectively as the prime minister’s own memory.”

His winning smile and enduring optimism, along with his habit of riding his bicycle to work while chomping on an apple seemed to help cement his popularity in the Netherlands, where such down-to-earth behavior is prized. When his last coalition collapsed in 2023 in a dispute over reining in migration, Rutte again leaned on that image, driving an old Saab station wagon to a royal palace to hand his resignation to King Willem-Alexander.

From The Hague to Brussels

Just landing the NATO chief’s job showed how adept Rutte is at navigating turbulent geopolitical waters. He managed to convince entrenched doubters, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to back his candidacy.

“It took a very long time. It’s a complicated process, but it’s an honor that it appears to have happened,” Rutte told reporters after securing all the support he needed to become secretary-general.

Rutte’s soft diplomatic skills were seen as a key asset for the leader of the 32-nation alliance as it faced Trump’s repeated criticism while navigating how to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Several hours before Trump made his dramatic reversal on Greenland, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — another European leader credited with having a way with Trump — was asked during a panel discussion on European security in Davos “who or what can diffuse the tensions” over Greenland?

“Oh, Mark Rutte,” Stubb said, to laughter in the audience and among the panel that included the Dutchman himself.

Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Ali Swenson in Washington contributed.