PGA Championship: When it starts, how to watch, what’s at stake, betting odds for golf’s next major

• May 12, 2025

By DOUG FERGUSON | AP Golf Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The PGA Championship is the second major of the year and occasionally gets overlooked between the Masters and the U.S. Open. That’s not the case this year when the 107th edition returns to Quail Hollow Club.

Rory McIlroy is the toast of golf after he won the Masters green jacket on his 17th try and became only the sixth player with the career Grand Slam. That last happened 25 years ago, and there’s a chance it could happen again in 35 days if Jordan Spieth were to win.

Remember Scottie Scheffler? The world’s No. 1 player had been slow to hit his stride after a freak hand injury he got while making ravioli. He comes into the PGA Championship off an eight-shot victory in which he tied the PGA Tour’s record score for 72 holes.

Here is a look at what you need to know leading up to the PGA Championship.

When is the PGA Championship?

The first round begins Thursday at about 7 a.m. (Eastern Time) and players in groups of three go off and on both nines, morning and afternoon. The PGA Championship typically puts one of the 20 club professionals in the first group. The biggest names will start on No. 10 in the morning or No. 1 in the afternoon for television purposes.

The top 70 players and tie make the 36-hole cut Friday and advance to the weekend.

How can I watch the PGA Championship?

There is wall-to-wall coverage of the PGA Championship. It starts Thursday and Friday at 7 a.m. (Eastern Time) on ESPN+ until noon, and then it switches to ESPN until 7 p.m. On the weekend, coverage goes from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on ESPN+, then moves to ESPN until 1 p.m. CBS (and Paramount+) take over from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Who are the betting favorites?

Scheffler is a slight favorite by BetMGM Sportsbook at +450, followed by McIlroy at +500. Bryson DeChambeau is next at +1100 and defending champion Xander Schauffele, who hasn’t won this year after a rib injury kept him out for two months, is at +1600.

Spieth, who needs to win the PGA Championship for the career Grand Slam, is at +4000. Compare that with McIlroy at +8000 to sweep all the majors this year.

What’s at stake?

The winner gets the Wanamaker Trophy, which at 27 pounds is the heaviest of the four major championship trophies.

McIlroy will try to become the fifth player since 1960 to win the first two majors of the year. Spieth will try to become the seventh player with the career Grand Slam.

Schauffele is trying to become only the third player to win the PGA Championship in consecutive years at stroke play. And if Justin Thomas were to win, he would join Tiger Woods as the only players to win the PGA Championship twice on the same course.

Who are the players to watch?

McIlroy not only is the Masters champion and a three-time winner this year, he has won four times at Quail Hollow when it hosts a PGA Tour event. He has won more at Quail Hollow than any other golf course in America.

Schauffele, the defending PGA champion, has been runner-up at Quail Hollow each of the last two years.

Thomas won the PGA Championship the last time at Quail Hollow in 2017 and ended a three-year drought by winning the RBC Heritage last month. Scheffler also comes to the PGA Championship fresh off a victory.

Americans have won the last nine times at the PGA Championship dating to Jason Day of Australia winning in 2015.

What about LIV?

There are 16 players from LIV Golf in the field at the PGA Championship, the same number as last year. That includes John Catlin, a regular reserve for the Saudi-funded league.

The one to watch is DeChambeau. Not only was he runner-up at the PGA last year, he won the U.S. Open the following month and played in the final group with McIlroy — even led briefly — at the Masters.

What’s the forecast?

Rain and thunderstorms are likely for practice rounds on Monday and Tuesday that could soften the course. For the tournament days, the forecast is for a mixture of sun and clouds with the possibility of afternoon showers. Sunday’s final round is expected to be warm and dry.

What happened last year?

Schauffele won the PGA Championship last year at Valhalla for his first major, making a 6-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a one-shot victory over DeChambeau. That’s what happened inside the ropes.

Outside the ropes was an astounding development: Scheffler, the Masters champion and No. 1 player in the world, was arrested by Louisville police Friday morning and taken to jail in handcuffs on charges he did not follow instructions by police investigating a traffic fatality.

Scheffler was released in time to make it back to Valhalla — there was a rain delay — and then shot 66 and was three shots off the lead. It caught up with him the next day (73) and he finished in a tie for eighth.

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The researchers charged with defending the planet against asteroids

• May 12, 2025

In December, astronomers identified that the asteroid YR4 had a small but not insignificant chance of striking Earth in 2032, a scenario that experts postulated could have more explosive potential than 500 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

Researchers reclassified YR4 as a non-threat in February, but the interim period when the asteroid was considered a threat, was the first time that the International Asteroid Warning Network had been activated to respond to a threat since its formation in 2014.

“The fact is that humanity does have a system that has been put in place in the last decade, essentially, and it worked for YR4,” said Danica Remy, president of the Mill Valley-based B612 Foundation, a nonprofit focused on identifying near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to humanity.

The global apparatus of researchers and cosmologists had formed in 2013 in the wake of an exploding meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, that shattered glass for miles around.

“We did not see that one coming,” said Katie Kumamoto, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor. “There was no warning until there was actually a fireball in the sky being caught on all of those dashboard cameras on people’s cars. I think that was a big wake-up call.”

Though astronomers have known about the threat posed by NEOs since the 1970s, efforts to catalogue potentially dangerous asteroids and meteors have only seriously materialized in the past decade, according to researchers from LLNL, the Marin County-based Asteroid Institute and NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

The Planetary Defense Coordination Office has identified 873 NEOs larger than one kilometer, a size that could be “a disaster of the scale of anything we’ve seen,” according to Planetary Defense Officer Emeritus Lindley Johnson, who established the office in 2016. Another 11,266 NEOs have been identified that are large enough to wipe out entire cities if they landed in a metropolitan area, Johnson added. Johnson said NASA’s catalogue has now identified more than 95% of NEOs that pose a threat to Earth.

“Even though we now feel we’ve got a good handle on the population of large near-Earth asteroids, we’re still working on understanding what the smaller population is,” Johnson said. “We now have this tasking from NASA to find everything that’s larger than 140 meters in size.”

The last major asteroid impact on Earth was the Tunguska Event in 1908 in Siberia, where an asteroid, estimated to be between 50-100 meters in diameter, exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere and flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest. Asteroids of that size are estimated to strike Earth once every 200-300 years, while asteroids larger than one kilometer strike Earth once every 500,000 years on average, according to the University of Arizona.

The International Asteroid Warning System’s researchers, recognizing that an asteroid impact is an inevitability rather than a possibility, have worked to develop numerous strategies to deploy against an asteroid whose trajectory is aligned with Earth. Some of these strategies have already been tested.

On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA successfully redirected the asteroid Dimorphos as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) using the strategy of a kinetic impactor — a fancy way of saying scientists crashed into an asteroid and changed its trajectory. The DART mission was a huge step in the planetary defense field, proving that the kinetic impactor could be utilized in the future.

“Just changing the speed at which something is moving in orbit, that changes the orbit forever in the future,” Johnson said. “The orbital shape, size of the orbit, and where it’s going is all determined by the orbital velocity around the sun.”

Like a real-world game of Galaga, the kinetic impactor strategy works for smaller space rocks, however, other larger asteroids require more intense interventions. Asteroid Institute co-founder Ed Lu and astronaut Stanley G. Love invented the “gravity tractor” method, where, if given enough time, a spacecraft could be placed near an asteroid’s gravitational field, “fine-tuning” its orbital trajectory safely away from Earth, Remy said.

But what if the asteroid is too large for a kinetic impactor and scientists are too late to identify an impending impact? At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Kumamoto and other researchers are working on a solution: nuclear deflection. For this strategy, a nuclear explosive device would be triggered near an asteroid, sending it off its orbital path and ablating material from its surface.

“Because there’s just so much energy in a nuclear explosive device, we would be able to apply a much bigger push to the asteroid than we could get from a kinetic impactor,” Kumamoto said about the “nuclear option” of planetary defense. “We don’t understand that one as well as we understand option number one and option number two.”

Part of the reason for Kumamoto and other LLNL researchers’ limited understanding of nuclear deflection is that international law prevents them. The Outer Space Treaty, approved by the United Nations in 1967, prohibits nuclear weapons in space and limits nations from testing military weapons on any celestial body. Space might be the final frontier, but no nation holds claim to it.

In 2014, in the wake of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the United Nations brought greater focus to asteroid threats and planetary defense by sanctioning “International Asteroid Day” on June 30, a commemoration of the Tunguska Event in 1908. Originally founded by Remy’s B612 Foundation, along with physicist Stephen Hawking, astronaut Rusty Schweickart and Queen guitarist Brian May in 2014, Asteroid Day is a call to action to keep humanity safe from what lies beyond our atmosphere — because in a world of natural disasters, one of the most devastating phenomena comes from space.

“Unlike a hurricane or a tsunami or an earthquake or super volcano, there’s really absolutely nothing we can do about those right now,” Remy said. “Whereas with an asteroid impact, there are deflection options, and the work that we’re doing is really important because warning time is everything.”

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What is the Emoluments Clause? And how might it apply to Qatar giving Trump a plane?

• May 12, 2025

By MEG KINNARD

President Donald Trump ‘s readiness to accept a luxury jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar for conversion into a presidential aircraft has revived the conversations around emoluments and the notion of a president otherwise allegedly profiting off of the office.

“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” he told reporters on Monday, after being asked if Qatar was getting anything in return for the plane. “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘no, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

But there are constitutional prohibitions against the president receiving gifts from foreign entities or even domestic ones. It’s a conversation over emoluments, territory that Trump has been forced to navigate, and litigate, in the past.

What is an emolument?

Simply, an emolument is compensation for services, from employment or holding office, that can take the form of a salary, fee or profit.

What is the Emoluments Clause?

There are separate emoluments delineations in the U.S. Constitution. Both are aimed at preserving the independence of the president from influence from outside entities, including Congress, states and foreign governments.

Article I bars anyone holding government office from accepting any present, emolument, office or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State,” without congressional consent.

Article II deals with domestic emoluments, noting that Congress can’t increase or decrease the president’s compensation during his term in office, and prohibits the president from receiving any emolument from the states.

Why is the Emoluments Clause coming up now?

Trump has reportedly been offered a Boeing 747-8 by Qatar in an arrangement that could be formalized as he travels to the Middle East this week. The Qatari government has said a final decision hasn’t been made. But Trump has defended the idea as a fiscally smart move for the country, even as critics argue it would amount to a president accepting an astonishingly valuable gift from a foreign government.

“If we can get a 747 as a contribution to our Defense Department to use during a couple of years while they’re building the other ones, I think that was a very nice gesture,” Trump said Monday at the White House.

The luxury 747 — currently parked at Palm Beach International Airport, close to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort — would be donated to a future presidential library. Trump has said that he wouldn’t use it for personal travel after leaving office, suggesting that it would be decommissioned like the Boeing 707 that Ronald Reagan flew on in the 1980s, and which is currently on display at Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, California.

There are other Trump-related deals with Qatar. Last month, the Trump family company struck a deal to build a luxury golf resort there, in a sign it has no plans to hold back from foreign dealmaking during a second Trump administration.

The project, which features Trump-branded beachside villas and an 18-hole golf course to be built by a Saudi Arabian company, marked the first foreign deal by the Trump Organization since Trump resumed office.

Has Trump dealt with debate over emoluments before?

In his first term, Trump faced lawsuits from Maryland and the District of Columbia, as well as high-end restaurants and hotels in New York and Washington, D.C., that accused him of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel.

In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court brought an end to the cases, ruling them as moot since Trump was no longer president. The justices threw out Trump’s challenge to lower court rulings that had allowed lawsuits to go forward alleging that he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel and patronize other businesses owned by the former president and his family.

Has Congress weighed in on emoluments?

They’ve tried.

Last year, congressional Democrats introduced legislation that would prohibit U.S. officials from accepting money, payments or gifts from foreign governments without congressional consent. It was their response to a yearslong probe into Trump’s overseas business dealings.

The proposals led by Rep. Jamie Raskin and Sen. Richard Blumenthal would enforce the Constitution’s ban on emoluments, which prohibits the president from accepting foreign gifts and money without Congress’ permission. Democrats have argued that Trump ignored the clause as president.

Both bills did not advance.

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

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India and Pakistan face their latest crisis. Here’s a look at their history of armed conflict

• May 12, 2025

NEW DELHI (AP) — A deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir has plunged relations between India and Pakistan to new lows, with both sides hinting at imminent military action.

India accuses Pakistan of backing the massacre, in which 26 men, mostly Indian Hindus, were killed, a charge Pakistan denies. Both countries have since expelled diplomats and citizens, ordered the border shut and closed their airspace for each other.

Soldiers on each side have exchanged fire along their de facto border, with each blaming the other for shooting first.

Here’s a look at multiple conflicts between the two countries since their bloody partition in 1947:

1947 — Months after British India is partitioned into a predominantly Hindu India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the two young nations fight their first war over control of Muslim-majority Kashmir, then a kingdom ruled by a Hindu monarch. The war killed thousands before ending in 1948.

1949 — A U.N.-brokered ceasefire line leaves Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan, with the promise of a U.N.-sponsored vote that would enable the region’s people to decide whether to be part Pakistan or India. That vote has never been held.

1965 — The rivals fight their second war over Kashmir. Thousands are killed in inconclusive fighting before a ceasefire is brokered by the Soviet Union and the United States. Negotiations in Tashkent run until January 1966, ending in both sides giving back territories they seized during the war and withdrawing their armies.

1971 — India intervenes in a war over the independence of East Pakistan, which ends with the territory breaking away as the new country of Bangladesh. An estimated 3 million people are killed in the conflict.

1972 — India and Pakistan sign a peace accord, renaming the ceasefire line in Kashmir as the Line of Control, a heavily fortified stretch of military outposts that divide the region between them. Both sides deploy more troops along the frontier, turning it into a heavily fortified stretch of military outposts.

1989 — Kashmiri dissidents, with support from Pakistan, launch a bloody rebellion against Indian rule. Indian troops respond with brutal measures, intensifying diplomatic and military skirmishes between New Delhi and Islamabad.

1999 — Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri fighters seize several Himalayan peaks on the Indian side of the territory. India responds with aerial bombardments and artillery. At least 1,000 combatants are killed over 10 weeks and a worried world fears the fighting could escalate to nuclear conflict. The U.S. eventually steps in to mediate, ending the fighting.

2016 — Militants sneak into an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing at least 18 soldiers. India responds by sending special forces inside Pakistani-held territory, later claiming to have killed multiple suspected rebels in “surgical strikes.” Pakistan denies that the strikes take place, but it leads to days of major border skirmishes. Combatants and civilians on both sides are killed.

2019 — The two sides again come close to war after a Kashmiri insurgent rams an explosive-laden car into a bus carrying Indian soldiers, killing 40. India sends carries out air strikes in Pakistani territory, claiming to have struck a militant training facility. Pakistan later shoot down an Indian warplane and captures a pilot. He was later released, deescalating tensions.

2025 — Militants attack Indian tourists in region’s Pahalgam resort town and kill 26 men, most of them Hindus. India blames Pakistan for the attack, something Islamabad denies, and vows revenge on the attackers, sending tensions to their highest point since 2019. Both sides cancel visas of each other’s citizens, recall diplomats, shut their only land border crossing and close their airspace to each other. New Delhi also suspends a crucial water-sharing treaty with Islamabad.

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Episcopal Church says it won’t help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status in US

• May 12, 2025

By PETER SMITH

The Episcopal Church’s migration service is refusing a directive from the federal government to help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status, citing the church’s longstanding “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe announced the step Monday, one day after 49 South Africans departed their homeland, bound for new homes in the United States. Episcopal Migration Ministries instead will halt its decades-long partnership with the government, Rowe said.

President Donald Trump opened a fast-tracked refugee status to white South Africans, accusing their government of discrimination, even as his administration abruptly shut down the overall U.S. refugee program. The South Africans jumped ahead of thousands of would-be refugees overseas who had been undergoing years of vetting and processing.

Episcopal Migration Ministries has long resettled refugees under federal grants. Rowe said that about two weeks ago, the government contacted it and said it expected the ministry to resettle some of the South Africans under terms of its grant.

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe said. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”

Another faith-based group, Church World Service, said it is open to helping resettle the Afrikaners.

South Africa’s government has vehemently denied allegations of discriminatory treatment of its white minority residents.

“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” Rowe said. “I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.”

He also said many refugees, including Christians, are victims of religious persecution and are now denied entry.

He said the church would find other ways to serve immigrants, such as those already in this country and those stranded overseas.

The move marks the end of a ministry-government partnership that, for nearly four decades, has served nearly 110,000 refugees from countries ranging from Ukraine, Myanmar and Congo, Rowe said.

It’s not the first high-profile friction between the Episcopal Church and the government. Bishop Mariann Budde of Washington drew Trump’s anger in January at an inaugural prayer service in which she urged “mercy” on those fearing his actions, including migrants and LGBTQ+ children.

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa includes churches in South Africa and neighboring countries. It was a potent force in the campaign against apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s, an effort for which the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Another faith-based refugee agency, Church World Service, says it is open to serving the South African arrivals.

“We are concerned that the U.S. Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement,” Rick Santos, CWS president and CEO, said in a statement.

He added that the action proves the government knows how to screen and process refugees quickly.

“Despite the Administration’s actions, CWS remains committed to serving all eligible refugee populations seeking safety in the United States, including Afrikaners who are eligible for services,” he said. “Our faith compels us to serve each person in our care with dignity and compassion.”

The Episcopal ministry and CWS are among 10 national groups, most of them faith-based, that have partnered with the government for refugee resettlement.

Associated Press writer Tiffany Stanley contributed.

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.

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Trump’s anti-DEI battle threatens nonprofits trying to fill critical labor gaps

• May 12, 2025

By CLAIRE SAVAGE and ALEXANDRA OLSON

CHICAGO (AP) — Recruiting women into construction has been a painstaking but broadly popular effort, with growing bipartisan and industry support amid persistent labor shortages. But President Donald Trump’s aim to stamp out diversity and inclusion programs threaten to cripple community-based organizations that have been critical to that goal.

The Trump administration has moved swiftly to cut off federal funding to dozens of community groups that implement programs on the ground, including apprenticeship readiness programs designed for women, anti-harassment training, and child care and transportation support for workers who need them.

The overhaul stems from a pair of anti-DEI executive orders, which direct federal agencies to cancel all “equity-related” grants, and require government contractors and recipients of federal funds to certify, under threat of severe financial penalties, that they do not operate DEI programs that violate anti-discrimination laws.

The orders have set off a scramble among many corporations, universities, law firms and major philanthropies to figure out how to adapt their DEI policies to avoid losing federal funding.

But for nonprofits whose very mission involves providing services to historically marginalized communities, the executive orders pose an existential threat, driving several lawsuits alleging Trump’s orders are impossible to comply with because they are so vague about what constitutes “illegal” DEI.

Stakeholders in the construction industry are closely following a lawsuit filed by Chicago Women in Trades, an organization founded in 1981 to help women enter the skilled trades. Other similar groups said they were considering litigation after the Department of Labor yanked their grants last week.

About 40% of Chicago Women in Trades’ stems from federal funding, according to court filings.

As the lawsuits play out, Chicago Women in Trades Executive Director Jayne Vellinga said hiring and future programming has stalled because the ultimate fate of the organization’s funding is unclear. Current programs are continuing under a cloud of uncertainty.

The sound of whirring drills filled the Ironworkers Local 63 training center just outside Chicago during one exploratory training program that is reliant on state and federal funds. About two dozen women donned hard hats, work gloves and safety glasses to practice assembling windows as an instructor looked on. Two groups raced each other to see how quickly they could perfect each assembly. Another practices caulking nearby.

During the 10-week program, participants spend a week exploring different trades with experienced carpenters, electricians and iron workers. About 70% of the participants successfully move on to apprenticeships.

Sam Barraza, 24, joined the program after struggling with an office job due to ADHD. During a rotation with the Bricklayers Union, Barraza was hired as an apprentice in tuck pointing, a masonry repair process used to restore older buildings.

But Barraza, who is nonbinary, said they would never have understood how to get a foothold in the industry without a program like Chicago Women in Trades.

“There are so many insider things that, if your uncle was in the trades, or your dad did it, whatever, you would know,” Barraza said. “It’s the first time I’ve been excited for a career instead of like, ‘I just have to work to live.’”

Government agencies, construction companies and labor unions have invested billions of dollars to expand apprenticeships and other programs to draw younger generations into the skilled trades, an effort that accelerated as the Biden administration ramped up investment in infrastructure and the semiconductor industry. Part that effort has been programming to make worksites more welcoming to women, racial minorities and LGBTQ people who have long faced bias and harassment in an industry that is majority white and overwhelmingly male.

Progress has been slow but steady. Women, for instance, comprise only 4% of skilled trade workers, but that’s a nearly 30% increase since 2018 and a record high, according to U.S. labor statistics that have been celebrated by both women’s advocacy groups and industry associations. Advocates say recruiting more women and minorities to well-paid skilled jobs helps alleviate pay gaps while addressing labor shortages.

Far from being a target during the first Trump administration, Chicago Women in Trades received two grants in 2019 and 2020 under the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations program, known as WANTO, which dates back to a 1992 Congressional act signed by President George H.W. Bush.

The first Trump administration increased funding for WANTO, providing more than $8.5 million in grants to 17 community organizations that served more than 3,500 women. Funding for WANTO surged under the Biden administration, which awarded nearly $18 million in grants to more than 20 organizations.

But the future of WANTO is in limbo. Last week, the Labor Department sent termination notices to many of the grants recipients, saying their focus on gender equity and diversity no longer aligns with the administration’s priorities, several of the organizations told The Associated Press.

Rhoni Basden, executive director of Vermont Works for Women, said the loss of its $400,000 WANTO grant imperils a new apprenticeship readiness program aimed at building a pipeline of workers in semiconductor manufacturing in the state. The program, using curriculum developed with the industry group Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center, had been scheduled to launch in the spring.

Chicago Women in Trades’ WANTO grant is protected for now under a preliminary injunction issued last month by Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois, who ruled that canceling the grant would violate the separation of powers. However, Kennelly declined to protect the organization’s four other federal grants, or to extend his protective order to other WANTO grantees.

The Labor Department did not reply to multiple emails seeking clarity about its intentions for WANTO or other similar federal initiatives.

In his 2026 fiscal year budget request, Trump pledged to keep investing in the expansion of apprenticeship opportunities while eliminate funding to “progressive non-profits” that focus on DEI. Instead, the administration proposed sending funding to states and localities to decide how to spend them. The Trump administration argues that many DEI policies pressure employers to hire based on race or gender, or unfairly shut out some workers from training and funding opportunities.

Another WANTO grantee, Maryland Center for Construction Education & Education, said the impact of losing its federal funding will force the suspension of programs to help women enter construction and other industries that are “facing a severe labor shortage — tens of thousands of skilled workers are needed across Maryland in the next few years alone.”

“These are not abstract losses. These are missed paychecks, shuttered training programs, and stalled progress for communities that need it most,” the group said in statement, adding that it was exploring “legal and legislative avenues to fight back.”

Construction firms have supported outreach programs to women out of sheer need: The industry is seeking more than 400,000 new workers this year to meet anticipated demand, according to trade group Associated Builders and Contractors.

“We need all of the talent and resources that we can get,” said Vanessa Jester, community and citizenship director for Turner Construction in Columbus, Ohio, where construction worker shortages are especially acute.

The company has partnered with Chicago Women in Trades and other community groups to expose women and girls to the construction industry.

“If these young girls can’t see it, feel it, touch it and see that there’s an opportunity, we’re not going to be able to grow,” Jester added.

Turner Construction is one of 800 firms that have joined the “Culture of Care” program launched in 2019 by the Associated General Contractors of America to address harassment, hazing and bullying that has long plagued in the industry.

The association, which has 27,000 member firms, says on its website that Trump’s executive orders on DEI have prompted a review of its initiative and resources “to ensure continued compliance with the law.”

Brian Turmail, the association’s vice president of Public Affairs & Workforce, said that while the language of some guidance might be changed, the organization plans to double down on “Culture of Care,” saying it’s about preventing discrimination that drives away many women and racial minorities from the field.

“There isn’t any other way for the industry to be viable,” he said.

This story corrects the spelling of Sam Barraza’s last name.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Pope Leo XIV urges release of imprisoned journalists, affirms gift of free speech and press

• May 12, 2025

By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press” in an audience with some of the 6,000 journalists who descended on Rome to cover his election as the first American pontiff.

Leo received a standing ovation as he entered the Vatican auditorium for his first meeting with representatives of the general public.

The 69-year-old Augustinian missionary, elected in a 24-hour conclave last week, called for journalists to use words for peace, to reject war and to give voice to the voiceless.

He expressed solidarity with journalists around the world who have been jailed for trying to seek and report the truth. Drawing applause from the crowd, he asked for their release.

“The church recognises in these witnesses — I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives — the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices,” he said.

“The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.”

Leo opened the meeting with a few words in English, joking that if the crowd was still awake and applauding at the end, it mattered more than the ovation that greeted him.

Turning to Italian, he thanked the journalists for their work covering the papal transition and urged them to use words of peace.

“Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others,” he said. “In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.”

After his brief speech, in which he reflected on the power of words to do good, he greeted some of the journalists in the front rows and then shook hands with the crowd as he exited the audience hall down the central aisle. He signed a few autographs and posed for a few selfies.

Journalists later shared some of the few words they exchanged with him, including hints that Vatican plans are going ahead for Leo to travel to Turkey to commemorate an important event in Catholic-Orthodox relations: the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.

Other tidbits emerged: Journalists offered to play doubles in tennis, or to organize a charity match. Leo, a regular tennis player, seemed game “but we can’t invite Sinner,” he joked, referring to the world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who is playing just up the Tiber at the Italian Open.

It was in the 2013 audience with journalists who covered the election of history’s first Latin American pope that Pope Francis explained his choice of name, after St. Francis of Assisi, and his desire for a “church which is poor and for the poor!”

During his 12-year pontificate, Francis too spoke about the value of journalism and as recently as January, he appealed for the release of imprisoned journalists during a Holy Year event with the media.

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Food security experts warn Gaza is at critical risk of famine if Israel doesn’t end its blockade

• May 12, 2025

By SAM MEDNICK, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Gaza Strip will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign, food security experts said in a stark warning on Monday.

Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living in “catastrophic” levels of hunger, and 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.

The group said “there is a high risk” of outright famine if circumstances don’t change.

Israel has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations. Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel’s 19-month-old military campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food inside the territory.

Desperate scenes as food is running out

Food supplies are emptying out dramatically. Communal kitchens handing out cooked meals are virtually the only remaining source of food for most people in Gaza now, but they too are rapidly shutting down for lack of stocks.

Thousands of Palestinians crowd daily outside the public kitchens, pushing and jostling with their pots to receive lentils or pasta.

“We end up waiting in line for four, five hours, in the sun. It is exhausting,” said Riham Sheikh el-Eid, waiting at a kitchen in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday. “At the end, we walk away with nothing. It is not enough for everybody.”

The lack of a famine declaration doesn’t mean people aren’t already starving, and a declaration shouldn’t be a precondition for ending the suffering, said Chris Newton, an analyst for the International Crisis Group focusing on starvation as a weapon of war.

“The Israeli government is starving Gaza as part of its attempt to destroy Hamas and transform the strip,” he said.

Israel demands a new aid system

The office of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not respond to a request for comment. The army has said that enough assistance entered Gaza during a two-month ceasefire that Israel shattered in mid-March when it relaunched its military campaign.

Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. It says it won’t let aid back in until a new system giving it control over distribution is in place, accusing Hamas of siphoning off supplies. The United States says it is working up a new mechanism that will start deliveries soon, but it has given no timeframe.

The United Nations has so far refused to participate. It denies substantial diversion of aid is taking place and says the new system is unnecessary, will not meet the massive needs of Palestinians and will allow aid to be used as a weapon for political and military goals.

Monday’s report said that any slight gains made during the ceasefire have been reversed. Nearly the entire population of Gaza now faces high levels of hunger, it said, driven by conflict, the collapse of infrastructure, destruction of agriculture, and blockades of aid.

Mahmoud Alsaqqa, food security and livelihoods coordinator for Oxfam, called on governments to press Israel to allow “unimpeded humanitarian access.”

“Silence in the face of this manmade starvation is complicity,” he said.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage, most of whom have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 52,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians or combatants.

Three criteria for declaring famine

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia, groups more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies.

It has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and last year in parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region. Tens of thousands are believed to have died in Somalia and South Sudan.

It rates an area as in famine when at least two of three things occur: 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30% of children six months to five years suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height; and at least two people or four children under five per every 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

The assessment on Monday found that the first threshold was met in Gaza, saying 477,000 people — or 22% of the population — are classified as in “catastrophic” hunger, the highest level, for the period from May 11 to the end of September.

It said more than 1 million people are at “emergency” levels of hunger, the second highest level, meaning they have “very high gaps” in food and high acute malnutrition.

The other thresholds were not met. The data was gathered in April and up to May 6. Food security experts say it takes time for people to start dying from starvation.

The report said if the blockade and military campaign continues, “the vast majority” in Gaza will not have access to food or water, civil unrest will worsen, health services will “fully collapse,” disease will spread, and levels of malnutrition and death will cross the thresholds into famine.

It had also warned of “imminent” famine in northern Gaza in March 2024, but the following month, Israel allowed an influx of aid under U.S. pressure after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

Aid groups now say the situation is the most dire of the entire war. The U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said Friday that the number of children seeking treatment at clinics for malnutrition has doubled since February, even as supplies to treat them are quickly running out.

Aid groups have shut down food distribution for lack of stocks. Many foods have disappeared from the markets and what’s left has spiraled in price and is unaffordable to most. Farmland is mostly destroyed or inaccessible. Water distribution is grinding to a halt, largely because of lack of fuel.

Beth Bechdol, deputy director of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said more than 75% of Gaza’s farmland had been damaged or destroyed, and two-thirds of the wells used for irrigation were no longer operating.

The destruction, she said, is “driving these large numbers of people closer towards the famine numbers that we think are possible.”

AP correspondents Wafaa Shurafa in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register