By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS

NEW YORK (AP) — More and more celebrities are looking to attach their names to your phone. Or rather, wireless services that could power it.

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From cosmetics to snacks and signature spirits, brands launched or co-owned by high-profile figures are just about everywhere you look today. But several big names are also venturing into the market for mobile virtual network operators — or MVNOs, an industry term for businesses that provide cell coverage by leasing infrastructure from bigger, more established carriers.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s family was the most recent to join the list with the launch of Trump Mobile this week. Here’s what to know.

Which big names have entered the phone business?

On Monday, The Trump Organization (currently run by the president’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.) unveiled Trump Mobile. The company says this new business will offer cell service, through an apparent licensing deal with “all three major cellular carriers” in the U.S., and sell gold phones by August.

Trump Mobile marks the latest in a string of new Trump-branded offerings — which already span from golden sneakers to “God Bless the USA” bibles — despite mounting ethical concerns that the president is profiting off his position and could distort public policy for personal gain.

“This raises a real question about a conflict of interest,” said Ben Bentzin, an associate professor of instruction at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. As the sitting president, Trump appoints leadership for the Federal Communications Commission — and the family’s new phone venture exists under this regulatory authority.

All of this sets Trump Mobile apart from other big names that have recently ventured into the wireless business. Still, its launch arrives as a growing number of celebrities tap into this space.

Just last week, actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett launched SmartLess Mobile, a name that mirrors the trio’s “SmartLess” podcast. Now live across the contiguous U.S. and Puerto Rico, SmartLess Mobile runs on T-Mobile’s 5G Network.

Another wireless provider with ties to fame is Mint Mobile. While not launched by celebrities, Ryan Reynolds purchased an ownership stake in Mint in 2019. Mint’s parent, the Ka’ena Corporation, was later acquired by T-Mobile in a deal worth up to $1.35 billion.

Beyond names of famous people, well-known brands that weren’t traditionally in the phone business have also got in on the action over the years — particuarly outside of the U.S., Forrester Research senior analyst Octavio Garcia Granados notes. He points to Walmart’s “Bait” mobile plan in Mexico, for example, as well as Italian soccer club AC Milan launching its own mobile SIM cards for fans.

“The MVNO market is not new,” said Garcia Granados. “What’s new is the development on how it’s consumed and the (ease) for brands to launch such plans.”

MVNOs have also emerged outside of high-profile brands or launch teams. Bentzin points to Straight Talk and Cricket — which are now owned by Verizon and AT&T, respectively. Still, traditional celebrity endorsements are common across the board. And in recent years, “influencer marketing” has been “the fastest growing area of advertising and promotion,” he notes.

What are these cell services offering? Why were they launched?

For Trump Mobile, the pitch seems to be all about having an “all-American service” while also tapping into the fan base of the president.

Eric Trump, Don Hendrickson, Eric Thomas, Patrick O’Brien and Donald Trump Jr., left to right, participate in the announcement of Trump Mobile, in New York’s Trump Tower, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The company noted Monday that it chose to unveil Trump Mobile on the 10th anniversary of Trump launching “his historic presidential campaign.” The name given to its flagship offer, The 47 Plan, and the $47.45 monthly fee make reference to the president’s two terms. And a mock-up of the planned gold phone on the company’s website shows Trump’s “Make America Great” slogan on the front screen.

According to the company, Trump Mobile’s 47 Plan will include unlimited calls, texts and data through partner carriers, as well as free roadside assistance and telehealth services. It also says the new phone, called the “T1 Phone,” will be available for $499 in August — but notes that this device won’t be designed or made by Trump Mobile. Still, the company emphasized that these phones will be built in the U.S.

Experts have since shared skepticism about that being possible in two months. And beyond the future T1 Phone, others stress that a monthly cell service fee of just under $50 is pricey compared to other MVNO options today.

“It’s not actual lower pricing. It’s really trading on the fan base, if you will, of Trump,” said Bentzin.

SmartLess Mobile and Mint Mobile, of course, don’t carry these same political ties. And the wireless plans offered by both boast less expensive offerings.

T-Mobile-owned Mint advertises “flexible, buy-in-bulk” plans that range from $15 to $30 a month. Each option includes unlimited talk and text nationwide, but vary depending on plan length and data amount. Mint, founded in 2016, says it started “because we’d had enough of the wireless industry’s games” — and promises to help consumers avoid hidden fees.

SmartLess Mobile’s plans also start at $15 a month. Depending on the data amount purchased, that base fee can rise to $30 — but all of its plans similarly offer unlimited talk and text using T-Mobile’s network. When launching last week, SmartLess underlined that its goal is to help people stop paying for the data they don’t use, noting that the majority of data used by consumers today happens over Wi-Fi.

“Seriously, if your phone bill knew how often you’re on Wi-Fi, it would be embarrassed,” Hayes said in a statement for SmartLess Mobile’s June 10 launch.

What’s the demand?

MVNOs have proven to be attractive acquisitions to big wireless carriers over the years. But whether or not the star factor promises significant demand has yet to be seen for the market’s most recent entrants.

FILE – Ryan Reynolds arrives at the 36th annual American Cinematheque Awards, Nov. 17, 2022, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

For the more established Mint Mobile, Reynolds’ investment is a success story. The 25% stake that the actor reportedly owned in 2023, when the company announced that it would be acquired by T-Mobile, was estimated to give him a personal windfall of over $300 million in cash and stock. And since that deal closed, Reynolds has remained in his creative role for Mint and as the face of many campaigns — helping the brand continue to attract new customers.

It’s no surprise that the potential of such business returns might attract other celebrities to make similar investments, Bentzin notes. Still, newer ventures are untested. And “as the market becomes more crowded, it could be harder and harder to pick off individual consumers,” he added.

Beyond a high-profile name, quality of service and what consumers can afford is also critical.

“The competition battleground here is brand and price,” Bentzin said.

Still, if the marketing is right and product meets consumer needs, experts like Garcia Granados note that MVNOs can be a profitable business, for both the brands that start them and the telecommunications giants — like T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T — offering this “wholesale” access to their infrastructure.

As a result, he said, such high-profile ventures become “a catalyst for others to follow.”

AP Business Writer Bernard Condon contributed to this report from New York.

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish court on Thursday rejected an appeal by Airbnb and left in place an order to block almost 66,000 rental listings that the government said violated local rules.

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The government has said the platform’s short-term rentals exacerbate Spain’s housing crunch while the country welcomes record numbers of tourists.

Last month, Spain’s government ordered Airbnb to block 65,935 listings in the country after the Consumer Rights Ministry flagged them for violations. It said Airbnb had to immediately take down 5,800.

An Airbnb spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment on the Madrid’s High Court’s decision.

The ministry has said the listings it flagged did not include their license number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company. It said others listed numbers that didn’t match what authorities had.

Last month, Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy told The Associated Press that the tourism sector could not “jeopardize the constitutional rights of the Spanish people,” including their right to housing and well-being.

Carlos Cuerpo, the economy minister, said in a separate interview that the government had to tackle the unwanted side effects of mass tourism.

By ELÉONORE HUGHES

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian Catholic worshippers laid down an eco-friendly carpet in front of the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday and called for the protection of the environment ahead of UN climate talks in the Amazon.

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Tapestries are a fixture of the Corpus Christi religious feast when Catholics celebrate what they believe is the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

This year, the colorful carpet was made from approximately 1,014 pounds of recycled plastic caps. Over the past few years the Christ the Redeemer sanctuary has increasingly used the attention the iconic statue generates to spotlight environmental concerns.

“These caps could be polluting the environment. Today they’re here as a carpet,” said Marcos Martins, environmental manager and educator at the sanctuary. “It’s the circular economy: we take the material, we’re reusing it here and then we’re going to reuse it again with an exhibition.”

People pray before the start of a Mass celebrating the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi a tthe Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Thursday, June 19, 2025 (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Just after day break and before the first flock of tourists arrived Thursday, Cardinal Orani João Tempesta led celebrations at the site overlooking Guanabara Bay and Rio’s famed Sugarloaf mountain.

The caps are “a good reminder of our co-responsibility with ecology, of our concern for the environment, which are very characteristic of Christ the Redeemer,” Rio’s archbishop told journalists.

Thursday’s celebration also paid homage to the late Pope Francis and his Laudato Si’, a landmark environmental encyclical in which he cast care for the environment in stark moral terms. In the papal letter Francis called for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he said was a “structurally perverse” economic system in which the rich exploited the poor, turning Earth into a pile of “filth” in the process.

A woman puts the last touches on a rug made from plastic bottle caps for a Mass celebrating the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi near the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Thursday, June 19, 2025 (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

“The COP30 is coming up and we’ve just had the U.N. Ocean Conference. Nothing makes more sense than Christ being a great spokesperson for this issue,” said Carlos Lins, the sanctuary’s marketing director.

Earlier this month, the sanctuary held workshops, discussion groups and actions focusing on environmental preservation. The statue — perched on the Corcovado mountain — is itself located in the Tijuca National Park.

Brazil has been hit by a series of environmental disasters in recent years, including severe droughts in the Amazon, wildfires in the Pantanal and flooding in the south.

Rugs made from plastic bottle caps line the walkway to the Christ the Redeemer statue during a Mass celebrating the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi in Rio de Janeiro, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

This week heavy rains killed at least two people in the southern region Rio Grande do Sul, just over a year after it was hit by the worst flooding on record.

Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently due to human-caused climate change.

The Christ the Redeemer statue stands over Rio de Janeiro before a morning Mass celebrating the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi is held at the statue, Thursday, June 19, 2025 (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

More than 10,000 gleaming street rods, muscle cars and vintage rides will cruise into the Minnesota State Fairgrounds this weekend — and then 130 of them will take off in a hurry for the legendary Hemmings Great Race to South Carolina.

The nine-day, 2,300-mile rally will take the antique, vintage and collector cars to Irmo, S.C., departing Saturday from the 51st annual Back to the ’50s Weekend. The newest cars will be from 1974 and the oldest in this year’s race is a 1913 Chevrolet truck.

Two Minnesotans will compete: Craig Amundson in a 1973 BMW 2002 and Jerome Reinan in a 1918 American LaFrance. The two men say the race is a family event, more of a rolling family reunion about making memories.

Reinan, who grew up outside of Fergus Falls, Minn., and now lives on Lake Lida near Vergas, drove a 1949 Plymouth in high school and since then has always owned at least one older car.

In college, he first heard about the rally and was determined to compete in the race one day. After law school, working on his career and raising a family, he entered his first race in 2013 driving a wood-paneled 1931 Rolls Royce Shooting Brake.

Jerome Reinan, right, and his cousin, Chris Brungardt, with their 1918 LaFrance Speedster at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 2016. The two will drive the car in the 2025 Hemmings Motor News Great Race, a nine-day vintage car rally, that will start from MSRA’s Back to the Fifties rally at the State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights on June 21, 2025. The race, which will finish in Irmo, South Carolina on June 29, is known for its time-speed-distance format, where precise navigation and timing, not speed, are key. (Courtesy of Jerome Reinan)

His team, the Wandering Troubadours of Finland, is named partly for his mother’s Finnish heritage and partly for “a popular acronym that by itself is not family friendly.” They have competed every year since 2013 except one.

The members of the team sometimes change, as well as the cars that race, but normally it consists of Reinan, his two brothers, two cousins, a lawyer friend, his father, his uncle and his brothers-in-law, he said.

“That group of jolly, liver-challenged knuckleheads travels behind the rally in an old tandem diesel school bus that has been converted to an RV,” he said. “Since we have no real fear of winning the race, the race is more of a family gathering than an actual competition. We have also come to see our Great Race competitors as extended family as well.”

He said they most often compete with the 1918 American LaFrance.

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“It usually is the most primitive car on the rally, even if it is not necessarily the oldest,” he said. “It has only rear brakes, which are activated by a handle instead of a foot pedal. It is a dual chain drive, and the chains are about 10 times the size of a normal bicycle chain. It has wood spoked wheels and a huge 9.5 liter, four-cylinder T-head engine.”

For perspective on that engine, the largest V-8s in today’s pickups range from 6.2 to 7.3 liters.

The LaFrance has proven to be very reliable, Reinan said, and he has put more than 30,000 miles on it, “none of them even remotely comfortable.”

For car enthusiasts, the rally is the ultimate gathering, he said.

“You get to see the best part of our beautiful country through the windshield of an old car — provided you have a windshield. You get to use your mechanical skills, your survival skills, your interpersonal skills and your skills as an ambassador for the hobby,” Reinan said.

A ‘young’ 1973 BMW

Craig Amundson, left, and his son-in-law Jeff Mischke with a 1973 BMW 2002 they will drive in the 2025 Hemmings Motor News Great Race, a nine-day vintage car rally that will start from MSRA’s Back to the Fifties rally at the State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights on June 21, 2025. The race, which will finish in Irmo, South Carolina on June 29, is known for its time-speed-distance format, where precise navigation and timing, not speed, are key. (Courtesy of Craig Amundson)

Several years ago, Amundson, of Eden Prairie, put his name on the wait list to compete in the Great Race after hearing about it from an acquaintance. In 2022, he was offered a spot, but didn’t have a car that would qualify so he began to look around.

“My wife, Kris, spotted the 1973 BMW 2002 sitting on the street, with a for-sale sign,” he said.

The car required some work before it was ready to race but had been a competitive vehicle.

The BMW, named Emily Re-Tyred, was initially restored by Paul Wegweiser in Pittsburgh as a 2002ti Alpina tribute car, with European esthetics. Emily has competed in multiple rallies, most associated with the Great Race, he said.

Amundson drives the car while his son-in-law, Jeff Mischke, of Hopkins, navigates.

“It has an interesting history and is a known car within the BMW 2002 world,” he said. “The only drawback is that it is young — 52 years old — and its age does not help in scoring calculations.”

Involvement in the race has been “an exceptional experience,” Amundson said. “For us, it is a family event” as his children and their partners follow along on the race as crew members.

“We try to arrange vacation times to meet at the finish line location for some family time,” he said. “Universally, the people involved in the race are friendly and supportive, even though the race is intense and competitive. Each day of the race includes community-supported lunch stops and end of day celebrations. The crowds are surprisingly large with plenty of old car stories. Almost everyone likes old cars.”

Organizers say the race is a “competitive, controlled-speed endurance road rally on public highways” and is not a test of top speeds but “rather a test of the teams’ and drivers’ ability to follow precise course instructions and … ability to endure on a cross-country trip.”

Enthusiasts gather for a vintage car preview at the MSRA Back to the Fifties Weekend Kickoff Rally at Mancini’s Char House in St. Paul on Thursday, June 19, 2025. The 51st Minnesota Street Rod Association’s “Back to the Fifties Weekend” will bring some 10,000 street rods, custom and classic cars and restored vehicles, all dating from 1964 and earlier, to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights from June 20-22, 2025. (Bennett Moger / Pioneer Press)

Saturday starting ceremony

An 11:45 a.m. Saturday ceremony will precede the noon official start time for the race, which will begin at the Fairgrounds main gate at Dan Patch and Snelling avenues.

The racers make their first stop in Rochester, Minn., for the night and then make 16 more stops in Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The race takes a different route each year and drivers compete for the $160,000 prize, split among five classes. The biggest winner takes home $50,000.

Each stop is open to the public and people can visit with the drivers and have a look at the cars.

“It is common for racers to allow kids to climb in the cars for a first-hand look,” said Houston Gibson, race coordinator for this year’s oldest vehicle, the 1913 Chevrolet truck.

The most popular vehicles in the races tend to be classic 1960s Mustangs, Gibson said.

“When the Great Race pulls into a city it becomes an instant festival,” says Jeff Stumb, director of the race. “Last year, we had several overnight stops with more than 10,000 spectators.”

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The race will end Sunday, June 29, in Irmo, S.C., near Lake Murray.

The Minnesota Street Rod Association’s Back to the ’50s Weekend will feature more than 200 vendors inside and outside at the Fairgrounds. Wally Burchill, a board member, said the association is proud to have been selected for the second time as the location for the start of the Great Race. (The first time was in 2013.)

Admission to the Back to the ’50s Weekend is $15 for those over 15; children 15 and under are free with each paid adult. Advance discount tickets with $2 off are available at participating NAPA auto parts stores.

For more information to go to msrabacktothe50s.com and greatrace.com.