By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, Associated Press Retail Sales

NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers pulled back the pace of their spending in December from November, closing out the holiday shopping season and the year on a lackluster tone.

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The report, issued by the Commerce Department on Tuesday, raised questions about shoppers’ ability to spend this year as they worry about a slowing job market and uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s tariffs and their impact on prices.

Retail sales were flat in December from November, when business was up 0.6%, according to the Commerce Department. Economists were expecting a 0.4% increase for December.

The report delayed more than a month because of the 43-day government shutdown.

Sales in October fell 0.1%, rose 0.1% in September, but jumped 0.6% in July and August and 1% in June, according to the Commerce Department.

The retail sales figures, which are not adjusted for inflation, showed that many types of businesses including furniture and home furnishings stores as well as electronics and appliance retailers posted declines.

Among the few bright spots: building materials and garden stores, which had a small sales increase.

The snapshot offers only a partial look at consumer spending and doesn’t include many services, including travel and hotel lodges. But the lone services category – restaurants – registered a dip of 0.1%.

Economists will be closely monitoring a slew of economic reports on jobs and prices due out later this week.

But the economy is in a confusing place.

Growth is robust: Gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — advanced from July through September at the fastest pace in two years. But the job market is lackluster: Employers have added just 28,000 jobs a month since December.

In the 2021-2023 hiring boom that followed COVID-19 lockdowns, by contrast, they were creating 400,000 jobs a month.

When the agency releases hiring and unemployment numbers for January on Wednesday, they are expected to show that businesses, government agencies and nonprofits added about 80,000 jobs last month — modest but up from 50,000 in December.

Analysts will also be studying consumer price report, to be released Friday. In December, consumer prices matched the 0.3% increase in November. If inflation cools in the coming months, it could increase the likelihood the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate later this year, economists say.

Against this backdrop, some chains like Walmart, whose everyday low prices have pulled in shoppers from rivals, are thriving but others struggle.

A growing number of retailers are closing stores as companies reorganize under bankruptcy protection or pare down their operations to focus on profitable operations.

On Monday, the operator of roughly 180 Eddie Bauer stores across the U.S. and Canada has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, blaming declining sales and a litany of other industry headwinds.

Last month, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue that it was seeking bankruptcy protection, buffeted by rising competition and the massive debt it took on to buy its rival in the luxury sector, Neiman Marcus, just over a year ago. A few days later, the parent company said it was closing most of its Saks Off 5th stores.

Amazon said earlier this month that it was closing almost all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations within days as it narrows its focus on food delivery and its grocery chain, Whole Foods Market.

By ANDREW DAMPF, Associated Press Sports Writer

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria won gold in the new team combined event at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Tuesday when Mikaela Shiffrin surprisingly crossed fourth after wasting a first-run lead by teammate Breezy Johnson.

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Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup racer of all time with a record 108 victories — 71 of them in slalom, also a record — has now gone seven straight Olympic races without a medal.

After taking two golds and silver from her first two Olympics, Shiffrin also didn’t win a medal in any of her six races at the Beijing Games four years ago.

Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher of Germany earned silver and Paula Moltzan and Jacqueline Wiles of the U.S. took bronze.

Shiffrin lost time to the leaders at every checkpoint and crossed 0.31 seconds behind — missing a medal by finishing 0.06 behind the other American team. In the finish area, Johnson — who was coming off a gold in the individual downhill — embraced Shiffrin, while the Austrians and other podium finishers began celebrating.

The team combined consists of one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with the times from the two added together to determine the results.

Shiffrin still has her individual events of giant slalom and slalom to come.

By KAITLYN HUAMANI and BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press Technology Writers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Comparing social media platforms to casinos and addictive drugs, lawyer Mark Lanier delivered opening statements Monday in a landmark trial in Los Angeles that seeks to hold Instagram owner Meta and Google’s YouTube responsible for harms to children who use their products.

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Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube face claims that their platforms addict children through deliberate design choices that keep kids glued to their screens. TikTok and Snap, which were originally named in the lawsuit, settled for undisclosed sums.

Jurors got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining defendants.

Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt spoke of the disagreement within the scientific community over social media addiction, with some researchers believing it doesn’t exist, or that addiction is not the most appropriate way to describe heavy social media use.

Lawyers representing YouTube will begin their opening statement on Tuesday.

‘Addicting the brains of children’

Lanier, the plaintiff’s lawyer, delivered lively first remarks where he said the case will be as “easy as ABC” — which stands for “addicting the brains of children.” He said Meta and Google, “two of the richest corporations in history,” have “engineered addiction in children’s brains.”

He presented jurors with a slew of internal emails, documents and studies conducted by Meta and YouTube, as well as YouTube’s parent company, Google. He emphasized the findings of a study Meta conducted called “Project Myst” in which they surveyed 1,000 teens and their parents about their social media use. The two major findings, Lanier said, were that Meta knew children who experienced “adverse events” like trauma and stress were particularly vulnerable for addiction; and that parental supervision and controls made little impact.

FILE – The YouTube app is displayed on an iPad in Baltimore on March 20, 2018. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

He also highlighted internal Google documents that likened some company products to a casino, and internal communication between Meta employees in which one person said Instagram is “like a drug” and they are “basically pushers.”

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Plaintiff grew up using YouTube, Instagram

KGM made a brief appearance after a break during Lanier’s statement and she will return to testify later in the trial. Lanier spent time describing KGM’s childhood, focusing particularly on what her personality was like before she began using social media. She started using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, Lanier said. Before she graduated elementary school, she had posted 284 videos on YouTube.

The outcome of the trial could have profound effects on the companies’ businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms.

FILE – Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Lanier said the companies’ lawyers will “try to blame the little girl and her parents for the trap they built,” referencing the plaintiff. She was a minor when she said she became addicted to social media, which she claims had a detrimental impact on her mental health.

Lanier said that despite the public position of Meta and YouTube being that they work to protect children, their internal documents show an entirely different position, with explicit references to young children being listed as their target audiences.

The attorney also drew comparisons between the social media companies and tobacco firms, citing internal communication between Meta employees who were concerned about the company’s lack of proactive action about the potential harm their platforms can have on children and teens.

“For a teenager, social validation is survival,” Lanier said. The defendants “engineered a feature that caters to a minor’s craving for social validation,” he added, speaking about “like” buttons and similar features.

Meta pushes back

In his opening statement representing Meta, Schmidt said the core question in the case is whether the platforms were a substantial factor in KGM’s mental health struggles. He spent much of his time going through the plaintiff’s health records, emphasizing that she had experienced many difficult circumstances in her childhood, including emotional abuse, body image issues and bullying.

Schmidt presented a clip from a video deposition from one of KGM‘s mental health providers, Dr. Thomas Suberman, who said social media was “not the through-line of what I recall being her main issues,” adding that her struggles seemed to largely stem from interpersonal conflicts and relationships. He painted a picture — with KGM’s own text messages and testimony pointing to a volatile home life — of a particularly troubled relationship with her mother.

Schmidt acknowledged that many mental health professionals do believe social media addiction can exist, but said three of KGM’s providers — all of whom believe in the form of addiction — have never diagnosed her with it, or treated her for it.

Schmidt emphasized to the jurors that the case is not about whether social media is a good thing or whether teens spend too much time on their phones or whether the jurors like or dislike Meta, but whether social media was a substantial factor in KGM’s mental health struggles.

A reckoning for social media and youth harms

A slew of trials beginning this year seek to hold social media companies responsible for harming children’s mental well-being. Executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the Los Angeles trial, which will last six to eight weeks. Experts have drawn similarities to the Big Tobacco trials that led to a 1998 settlement requiring cigarette companies to pay billions in health care costs and restrict marketing targeting minors.

A separate trial in New Mexico, meanwhile, also kicked off with opening statements on Monday. In that trial, Meta is accused of failing to protect young users from sexual exploitation, following an undercover online investigation. Attorney General Raúl Torrez in late 2023 sued Meta and Zuckerberg, who was later dropped from the suit.

A federal bellwether trial beginning in June in Oakland, California, will be the first to represent school districts that have sued social media platforms over harms to children.

In addition, more than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it is harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. The majority of cases filed their lawsuits in federal court, but some sued in their respective states.

TikTok also faces similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states.

Ortutay reported from Oakland, California. Associated Press Writer Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this story.

By MATTHEW DALY and SEUNG MIN KIM, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is expected this week to revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, according to a White House official.

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The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to confirm the details ahead of an official announcement, confirmed the plans, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“This week at the White House, President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and drive down costs,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement.

The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet. It is used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards, intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.

Legal challenges would be certain for any action that effectively would repeal those regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal efforts to address climate change.

An EPA spokesperson did not address when the finding would be revoked but reiterated that the agency is finalizing a new rule on it.

Brigit Hirsch said via email that the Obama-era rule was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said EPA “is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people.”

President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed EPA to submit a report “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” in an effort to combat climate change.

Democrats “created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence … segments of our economy,″ Zeldin said in announcing the proposed rule last year. ”And it cost Americans a lot of money.”

Peter Zalzal, a lawyer and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the EPA will be encouraging more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths.

Zeldin’s push “is cynical and deeply damaging, given the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the finding, the devastating climate harms Americans are experiencing right now and EPA’s clear obligation to protect Americans’ health and welfare,” he said.

Zalzal and other critics noted that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said a rollback would cement the latest form of Republican climate denial.

“They can no longer deny climate change is happening, so instead they’re pretending it’s not a threat, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that it is, perhaps the greatest threat that we face today,” Mann said.

Associated Press reporter Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.