By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER

WASHINGTON (AP) — One major question will be front and center for Federal Reserve policymakers as they prepare for an annual conference in Jackson, Wyoming next week and a crucial policy meeting in September: Which is a bigger problem for the economy right now, stubborn inflation or slower hiring?

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Weak job gains since April have pushed some officials toward supporting a cut in the Fed’s key rate as soon as next month, but speeches and comments by other Fed policymakers show that inflation is still a concern.

That could make the Fed’s ultimate move at its September 16-17 meeting a close call. There will be another jobs report and another inflation report before then, and both will likely heavily influence the decision of whether to cut or not. The uncertainty also means that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech next Friday in Jackson will be closely watched for any clues about next steps.

If Fed officials worry more that unemployment will start to rise and the economy falter, they are more likely to reduce their rate in order lower borrowing costs and spur borrowing and spending. Yet if their concerns grow that inflation will stay high or worsen as tariffs ripple across global supply chains, they will lean more towards keeping borrowing costs high to cool the economy and lower prices. The rate currently stands at 4.3%.

Wall Street investors are pretty certain — for now — that the central bank will reduce rates in September, with futures prices putting the odds of a cut at 93%, according to CME Fedwatch.

Those odds jumped after the monthly jobs report Aug. 1 showed that hiring was sluggish in July and was much lower than previously estimated in May and June. Average job gains over those three months fell to just 35,000, down from 123,000 a year ago.

And Tuesday’s inflation report, which showed only a mild pickup in inflation at the consumer level and limited signs that tariffs were pushing goods prices higher, underscored the view of some officials that they could put inflation concerns aside and focus on shoring up the job market instead.

“With underlying inflation on a sustained trajectory toward 2%, softness in aggregate demand, and signs of fragility in the labor market, I think that we should focus on risks to our employment mandate,” Michelle Bowman, a member of the Fed’s governing board, said last week.

FILE – Michelle Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, takes a seat for an open meeting of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, in Washington, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Yet Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve’s Chicago branch, downplayed the weakness in hiring in remarks to reporters Wednesday. The slowdown in job gains could partly reflect the drop in immigration stemming from President Donald Trump’s border crackdown, Goolsbee said, rather than a weaker economy. He also pointed to the still-low unemployment rate of 4.2% as evidence that the job market is solid.

This week’s inflation report included some warning signs, Goolsbee added: Prices of many services that aren’t affected by tariffs, such as dental care and air fares, jumped, a sign that inflation may not be in check.

“That was the most concerning thing in the inflation report, and if that persisted, we would have a hard time getting back to 2%,” Goolsbee said, referring to the central bank’s inflation goal. “I am still hopeful that will not be a lasting problem.”

Fed officials also disagree on how tariffs will affect inflation going forward. Many increasingly believe the duties will result in simply a one-time boost to prices that will quickly fade and not lead to ongoing inflation.

“Tariffs will boost inflation in the near term, but likely not in a persistent way” that would require the Fed to keep rates elevated, Mary Daly, president of the Fed’s San Francisco branch, said in a recent speech.

Daly also said the labor market has “softened” and suggested the Fed “will likely need to adjust policy in the coming months.”

However, Raphael Bostic, president of the Fed’s Atlanta branch, said Wednesday that the tariffs could lead to longer-term inflation if they cause more manufacturers to shift output from lower-cost locations overseas back to the United States, or to other countries with higher wages. Such a change would be more than just a one-time shift.

“You’re going to see fundamental structural changes if this is successful,” Bostic said in remarks in Red Bay, Alabama. “It is actually a different economy.”

In that scenario, Bostic said, he would prefer to wait “until we have a little more clarity.” And he added that with unemployment low, “we have the luxury to do that.”

Thursday’s July wholesale price report, which showed a sharp jump in goods and services prices before they reach the consumer, did make one move less likely: A half-point cut in September, as suggested by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Alberto Musalem, president of the Fed’s St. Louis branch, who votes on Fed policy this year, said that a reduction of that size is “unsupported by the current state of the economy, and the outlook for the economy,” in an interview on CNBC.

Tim Duy, an economist at SGH Macro, said Thursday that the Fed may have to raise its inflation forecast at its September meeting when it provides its latest set of quarterly economic projections. The central bank’s policymakers currently expect inflation, excluding volatile food and energy, to reach 3.1% by the end of this year, yet inflation is already near that level.

Cutting rates at the September meeting would be hard for the Fed if it is also forecasting higher inflation, Duy said.

“There are things that could happen that would push the Fed off the path” toward a rate cut, he said. “We’re not paying adequate attention to those risks.”

A man who allegedly pointed a gun at a customer inside the Cub Foods in St. Anthony and then fired a shot into the ceiling of the store late Sunday has been arrested and charged in connection with the incident.

Police arrested Ethan Daniel Frank Marks, 24, of Minneapolis, on Tuesday after employees from the Target store in Northeast Minneapolis reported that Marks, who was with a woman, shoplifted from the store on Monday, according to felony charges filed Thursday.

A man at Cub Foods in St. Anthony who police say pointed a handgun and shot a round into the ceiling. (Courtesy of the St. Anthony Police Department)

Officers were called to the Cub on Silver Lake Road about 11:30 p.m. Sunday after reports of a shot fired with no one injured.

A customer said he saw a man and woman who appeared to be shoplifting, the charges say. The customer said that he and the man yelled at one another, even as the man began to leave the store.

While they were in the exit lobby, the man pointed a handgun at the customer, then fired a shot at the ceiling and ran, the charges say.

Officers recovered a 9 mm shell casing, and a store employee and video surveillance corroborated what the customer told police.

St. Anthony police released photos of the man and woman on Monday, asking the public’s help in identifying them.

Surveillance video from the Target captured the license plate of the car the alleged shoplifter and woman left in on Monday. Officers went to the 600 block of Adams Street Northeast and arrested Marks, who was walking a small dog.

Marks ran, but was arrested. He was wearing a satchel that included a .380 Ruger with a round in the chamber and more than 40 grams of methamphetamine, the charges say.

Marks was charged with one count each of second-degree assault, threats of violence and reckless discharge of a firearm.

Marks is under investigation for second-degree assault, reckless discharge of a firearm and drug possession for an incident in St. Paul on July 1, the charges say.

The recovery of the gun and drugs in Minneapolis will be presented to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office for possible charges.

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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge has struck down key parts of a Florida law that helped parents get books they found objectionable removed from public school libraries and classrooms. It is a victory for publishers and authors who had sued after their books were removed.

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U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza in Orlando said in Wednesday’s ruling that the statute’s prohibition on material that described sexual conduct was overbroad.

Mendoza, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also said that the state’s interpretation of the 2023 law was unconstitutional.

Among the books that had been removed from central Florida schools were classics like Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Richard Wright’s “Native Son” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

“Historically, librarians curate their collections based on their sound discretion not based on decrees from on high,” the judge said. “There is also evidence that the statute has swept up more non-obscene books than just the ones referenced here.”

After the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed the law, school officials worried that any sexual content was questionable, a belief that was enforced by new state training that urged librarians to err on the side of caution. Last year, Florida led the nation with 4,500 removals of school books.

Under the judge’s ruling, schools should revert back to a U.S. Supreme Court precedent in which the test is whether an average person would find the work prurient as a whole; whether it depicts sexual content in an offensive way; and whether the work lacks literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The lawsuit was brought by some of the nation’s largest book publishers and some of the authors whose books had been removed from central Florida school libraries, as well as the parents of schoolchildren who tried to access books that were removed.

The author plaintiffs included Angie Thomas, author of “The Hate U Give”; Jodi Picoult, author of “My Sister’s Keeper”; John Green, author of ”The Fault in Our Stars”; and Julia Alvarez, author of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.” The publisher plaintiffs included Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing and Simon and Schuster.

By PETER SMITH, DANIEL KOZIN and MARK THIESSEN

ANCHORAGE (AP) — Orthodox Christians across Alaska have been taking part in three days of prayer for peace ahead of Friday’s summit there between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which will focus on the war in Ukraine.

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Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both Russia and Ukraine, although the religion has also been a source of controversy. The Russian church’s leadership has strongly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the war has aggravated a schism among Ukraine’s Orthodox.

“With the leaders coming to Alaska, what is the one thing that the church can offer? That is prayers for peace,” said Archbishop Alexei of the Diocese of Sitka and Alaska in the Orthodox Church of America.

The OCA is the now-independent offspring of Russian Orthodox missionaries who planted the faith in Alaska when it was a czarist territory in the 18th and 19th centuries. The church has about 80 parishes statewide and hundreds more across North America.

Mark Kalashnikov, a native of Russia living in the United States, poses for a photo outside St. Innocent Orthodox Cathedral on Aug. 12, 2025, in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

The first prayers held Tuesday sought the help of St. Olga of Kwethluk — an Alaska Native woman who was canonized in June as the first Orthodox woman saint in North America.

“She was known to be really a healer in families,” said Alexei, who led prayers dedicated to her on Tuesday at St. Innocent Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage. “And because of the great pain and hardship that is experienced by families in the Ukraine and also in Russia, it felt good to start there.”

Wednesday’s services sought the intercession of St. Herman, an early monk and missionary “known for standing up against Russian authorities when they were doing what was wrong to the people,” Alexei said.

FILE – This image provided by the Diocese of Sitka and Alaska in June 2025 shows a detail of the official icon of St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska. (Diocese of Sitka and Alaska via AP, file)

On Thursday, the prayers focused on a historic icon of the Mother of God at the cathedral in Sitka, which was the capital of Alaska under Russian rule. Alexei said he hopes the prayers “will touch the hearts of our leaders.”

Lorinda Fortuin, one of the worshippers at Tuesday’s service at the Anchorage cathedral, echoed the thought.

“My heart breaks for my Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox brothers that are killing each other, over what?” she said. “It’s just a shame, and I want to just do what I can to bring peace to this world, and I believe my prayers can play a part in that.”

Mark Kalashnikov, another worshipper and a native of Russia living in the United States, said many people he knows have suffered in the war.

Two parishioners pray at St. Tikhon Orthodox Church in Anchorage during an Akathist service dedicated to peace in Ukraine on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/ Daniel Kozin)

“It is reassuring to see there is at least some communication happening,” he said of the summit. “We are trying to do what is asked of us, to come together as a community locally and to pray.”

Smith reported from Pittsburgh.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.