‘A huge loss.’ In remote Nagasaki islands, a rare version of Christianity heads toward extinction

• June 4, 2025

By FOSTER KLUG, MARI YAMAGUCHI and MAYUKO ONO

IKITSUKI, Japan (AP) — On this small island in rural Nagasaki, Japan ’s Hidden Christians gather to worship what they call the Closet God.

In a special room about the size of a tatami mat is a scroll painting of a kimono-clad Asian woman. She looks like a Buddhist Bodhisattva holding a baby, but for the faithful, this is a concealed version of Mary and the baby Jesus. Another scroll shows a man wearing a kimono covered with camellias, an allusion to John the Baptist’s beheading and martyrdom.

There are other objects of worship from the days when Japan’s Christians had to hide from vicious persecution, including a ceramic bottle of holy water from Nakaenoshima, an island where Hidden Christians were martyred in the 1620s.

Little about the icons in the tiny, easy-to-miss room can be linked directly to Christianity — and that’s the point.

After emerging from cloistered isolation in 1865, following more than 200 years of violent harassment by Japan’s insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism.

Some, however, continued to practice not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they’d nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime.

On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to these disguised objects. They still chant in a Latin that hasn’t been widely used in centuries. And they still cherish a religion that directly links them to a time of samurai, shoguns and martyred missionaries and believers.

Now, though, the Hidden Christians are dying out, and there is growing certainty that their unique version of Christianity will die with them. Almost all are now elderly, and as the young move away to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean.

“At this point, I’m afraid we are going to be the last ones,” said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can still recite the Latin chants that his ancestors learned 400 years ago. “It is sad to see this tradition end with our generation.”

Hidden Christians cling to a unique version of the religion

Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests had spectacular success converting warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion.

That changed after the shoguns began to see Christianity as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce, with thousands killed and the remaining believers chased underground.

As Japan opened up to foreign influence, a dozen Hidden Christians clad in kimono cautiously declared their faith, and their remarkable perseverance, to a French Catholic priest in March 1865 in Nagasaki city.

Many became Catholics after Japan formally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873.

But others chose to stay Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), continuing to practice what their ancestors preserved during their days underground.

Their rituals provide a direct link to a vanished Japan

In interviews with The Associated Press, Hidden Christians spoke of a deep communal bond stemming from a time when a lapse could doom a practitioner or their neighbors.

Hidden Christians were forced to hide all visible signs of their religion after the 1614 ban on Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries. Households took turns hiding precious ritual objects and hosting the secret services that celebrated both faith and persistence.

This still happens today, with the observance of rituals unchanged since the 16th century.

The group leader in the Ikitsuki area is called Oji, which means father or elderly man in Japanese. Members take turns in the role, presiding over baptisms, funerals and ceremonies for New Year, Christmas and local festivals.

Different communities worship different icons and have different ways of performing the rituals.

In Sotome, for instance, people prayed to a statue of what they called Maria Kannon, a genderless Bodhisattva of mercy, as a substitute for Mary.

In Ibaragi, where about 18,000 residents embraced Christianity in the 1580s, a lacquer bowl with a cross painted on it, a statue of the crucified Christ and an ivory statue of Mary were found hidden in what was called “a box not to be opened.”

Their worship revolves around reverence for ancestors

Many Hidden Christians rejected Catholicism after the persecution ended because Catholic priests refused to recognize them as real Christians unless they agreed to be rebaptized and abandon the Buddhist altars that their ancestors used.

“They are very proud of what they and their ancestors have believed in” for hundreds of years, even at the risk of their lives, said Emi Mase-Hasegawa, a religion studies professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo.

Tanimoto believes his ancestors continued the Hidden Christian traditions because becoming Catholic meant rejecting the Buddhism and Shintoism that had become a strong part of their daily lives underground.

“I’m not a Christian,” Tanimoto said. Even though some of their Latin chants focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, their prayers are also meant to “ask our ancestors to protect us, to protect our daily lives,” he said. “We are not doing this to worship Jesus or Mary. … Our responsibility is to faithfully carry on the way our ancestors had practiced.”

Archaic Latin chants are an important part of the religion

Hidden Christians’ ceremonies often include the recitation of Latin chants, called Orasho.

The Orasho comes from the original Latin or Portuguese prayers brought to Japan by 16th century missionaries.

Recently on Ikitsuki, three men performed a rare Orasho. All wore dark formal kimonos and solemnly made the sign of the cross in front of their faces before starting their prayers — a mix of archaic Japanese and Latin.

Tanimoto, a farmer, is the youngest of only four men who can recite Orasho in his community. As a child, he regularly saw men performing Orasho on tatami mats before an altar when neighbors gathered for funerals and memorials.

About 40 years ago, in his mid-20s, he took Orasho lessons from his uncle so he could pray to the Closet God that his family has kept for generations.

Tanimoto recently showed the AP a weathered copy of a prayer his grandfather wrote with a brush and ink, like the ones his ancestors had diligently copied from older generations.

As he carefully turned the pages of the Orasho book, Tanimoto said he mostly understands the Japanese but not the Latin. It’s difficult, he said, but “we just memorize the whole thing.”

Today, because funerals are no longer held at homes and younger people are leaving the island, Orasho is only performed two or three times a year.

Researchers and believers acknowledge the tradition is dying

There are few studies of Hidden Christians so it’s not clear how many still exist.

There were an estimated 30,000 in Nagasaki, including about 10,000 in Ikitsuki, in the 1940s, according to government figures. But the last confirmed baptism ritual was in 1994, and some estimates say there are less than 100 Hidden Christians left on Ikitsuki.

Hidden Christianity is linked to the communal ties that formed when Japan was a largely agricultural society. Those ties crumbled as the country modernized after WWII, with recent developments revolutionizing people’s lives, even in rural Japan.

The accompanying decline in the population of farmers and young people, along with women increasingly working outside of the home, has made it difficult to maintain the tight networks that nurtured Hidden Christianity.

“In a society of growing individualism, it is difficult to keep Hidden Christianity as it is,” said Shigeo Nakazono, the head of a local folklore museum who has researched and interviewed Hidden Christians for 30 years. Hidden Christianity has a structural weakness, he said, because there are no professional religious leaders tasked with teaching doctrine and adapting the religion to environmental changes.

Nakazono has started collecting artifacts and archiving video interviews he’s done with Hidden Christians since the 1990s, seeking to preserve a record of the endangered religion.

Mase-Hasegawa agreed that Hidden Christianity is on its way to extinction. “As a researcher, it will be a huge loss,” she said.

Masashi Funabara, 63, a retired town hall official, said most of the nearby groups have disbanded over the last two decades. His group, which now has only two families, is the only one left, down from nine in his district. They meet only a few times a year.

“The amount of time we are responsible for these holy icons is only about 20 to 30 years, compared to the long history when our ancestors kept their faith in fear of persecution. When I imagined their suffering, I felt that I should not easily give up,” Funabara said.

Just as his father did when memorizing the Orasho, Funabara has written down passages in notebooks; he hopes his son, who works for the local government, will one day agree to be his successor.

Tanimoto also wants his son to keep the tradition alive. “Hidden Christianity itself will go extinct sooner or later, and that is inevitable, but I hope it will go on at least in my family,” he said. “That’s my tiny glimmer of hope.”

Tokyo photographer Eugene Hoshiko contributed to this story.

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.

​ Orange County Register 

From ‘Tudo bem?’ to ‘Gracias,’ a growing share of US residents speak a language other than English

• June 4, 2025

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

Spanish may be the most spoken language at home behind English, except in three U.S. states, but the second most-popular, non-English languages used in each state show off the diversity of the United States in unexpected places, whether it’s Korean in Alabama or Vietnamese in Kansas.

Almost 22% of U.S. residents age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home, double the share from four decades ago, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, and it varied by state. In California, 44% of residents spoke a language other than English at home, while it was 2.5% in West Virginia.

The United States is a multilingual nation due to immigration, despite recent crackdowns by the Trump administration, said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution.

“This is a big part of who we’ve been over a long period of time,” Frey said.

President Donald Trump earlier this year issued an executive order designating English as the official language in the U.S.

Spanish was spoken at home by 13.2% of speakers, and it was the top non-English language spoken at home in every state but Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. In Maine and Vermont, home to French Canadian communities, French was the most popular non-English language, and in Hawaii, it was Iloko, a Filipino language.

Here’s a look at where languages are spoken in the United States.

Arabic

Outside of English and Spanish, Arabic was the most spoken language at home in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia. The Detroit, Michigan, area has more Arabic speakers than any other metro area.

Central Yup’ik

About 1 out of 7 Alaskans who speak a language other than English at home did so in Central Yup’ik, making the native language the second most common non-English language behind Spanish in Alaska.

Chinese

Chinese was the second-most common non-English language spoken at home in Delaware, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. If all Chinese dialects are combined, it would be the third most spoken language in California behind English and Spanish.

French

Although it was the dominant non-English language in Maine and Vermont, French was the second most-common non-English language in Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

German

German was the most spoken language behind English and Spanish in eight states — Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina and Wyoming. In total, more than 871,000 people over age 5 spoke German at home in 2021, compared to 1.6 million in 1980.

Haitian

Florida had almost a half million Haitian speakers, making it the most common language behind English and Spanish. The Sunshine State has the nation’s largest Haitian population.

Hmong

In Minnesota and Wisconsin, Hmong was the second-most spoken non-English language at home. Many Hmong people settled in the Upper Midwest states after fleeing Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s following the Vietnam War.

Korean

Korean was the most spoken language in Alabama and Virginia behind English and Spanish.

Lakota

In South Dakota, the Lakota dialect of the Sioux people was the most common language spoken behind English and Spanish.

Marshallese

The language of the Marshall Islands was the second-most spoken non-English language in Arkansas, where the community is concentrated in the northwest part of the state.

Navajo

Arizona and New Mexico had the most Navajo speakers in the United States. The Navajo Nation extends into Arizona and New Mexico, where the indigenous language was the second-most popular non-English speech in those two states.

Polish

Despite a nationwide decline in speakers, Polish was Illinois’ second-most common non-English language behind Spanish, primarily due to the Chicago area having one of the nation’s largest Polish communities.

Portuguese

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island have some of the largest concentrations of Portuguese speakers in the U.S., making it the most spoken language in these states behind English and Spanish. It also is the second-most common non-English language in Utah, which is home to missionaries who served in Brazil and explains its popularity, according to the University of Utah.

Tagalog

The Filipino language was prevalent in California, Hawaii and Nevada, where it was the second-most popular non-English tongue.

Vietnamese

In Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas, Vietnamese was the most popular language behind English and Spanish, reflecting that people who speak different languages are no longer concentrated in big cities that serve as entry points for immigrants.

“People of different backgrounds are dispersed to different parts of the country,” Frey said.

​ Orange County Register 

Care during COVID-19 solidified this CSUF nursing grad’s path

• June 4, 2025

A life-threatening experience forever altered Anthony Attalla’s future. A recent graduate of Cal State Fullerton’s School of Nursing, Attalla spent several days in 2021 hospitalized with COVID-19.

“I was so exhausted, I slept throughout the entire day,” he said. “Now that I understand the health aspects of what I went through, it’s really shocking.”

While fighting for his life, struggling to breathe, Attalla formed a deep connection with the nurses who attended to him. “They were always with me, and we had many interesting conversations,” he said. “They cared for me holistically, far beyond just the physical aspect.”

The care Attalla received cultivated a deep sense of altruism. The result: Last month he graduated, summa cum laude, from CSUF’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science Nursing program, with accolades that go beyond his academic achievements. Altruism has been a guiding light throughout his professional development.

“The essential quality of a good nurse is altruism, and Anthony is driven by that,” said Jutara Srivali Teal, associate professor in CSUF’s School of Nursing and the program’s nurse coach. “In my experience as a critical care nurse, when a person isn’t sure if they can continue to breathe, they think deep, philosophical thoughts about life’s purpose. Seeing health care providers caring for Anthony when he was hospitalized with COVID may have sparked a plan to act on the path of caring for others. I suspect his appreciation of nursing came from his reflections while he was a patient and how nurses made him feel.

“Often, the nurse assumes the additional role of surrogate: a surrogate sister, brother, aunt, mother or father – wherever that love and caring energy can come from. And altruism drives many into leadership.”

For Attalla, that leadership came in many forms. In addition to acting as a peer mentor, assisting fellow students, he served as the cohort representative for his class.

“You’re there to advocate for the students,” Attalla said, “but you’re also there to advocate for nursing in general. At the end of the day, I have this responsibility, not only for the students but for the future patients we’ll be caring for.”

For his accomplishments, Attalla was accepted into the exclusive Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, and he presented the commencement speech for his Accelerated Bachelor of Science Nursing cohort at the May 14 graduation ceremony. In addition, he created the School of Nursing’s first-ever Chamomile Award (named after the calming effects of chamomile tea), given by each nursing grad to their faculty member of choice.

“I felt there should be something to recognize the amazing work that the faculty put into educating us,” he said.

While Attalla had many nursing school options, he chose CSUF’s program because of its impressive number of resources, he said. This includes writing coaches and tutors as well as its Nursing Simulation Center and its nurse coach, the first-ever in the U.S. assigned to a nursing school, Srivali Teal.

“Nurse coaches are really unique and innovative,” Attalla said. “They help take care of the ‘whole you’ during the challenging times as a nursing student. … And once you walk into the Simulation Center, it literally feels like you’re in an emergency room. The nursing faculty here at Fullerton give the students every opportunity to practice in a real-world setting.”

Attalla stressed the critical role of student-faculty communication. “Nursing faculty really care about student feedback and how they can continually improve the experience for future cohorts,” he said. “The way they interact with you is far beyond just as a student. Once we graduate, we’re responsible for the lives of others. So they treat us as professionals and see nursing students as their future colleagues.”

Leaning toward working in a cardiac- or intensive-care unit, Attalla admits that he prefers a fast-paced environment.

“I don’t enjoy sitting down for long,” he said. “Every time I sit, I feel as though there’s something else I should be doing. Even in a chaotic setting, you have to stay calm, since critical thinking and precision are necessary.”

Attalla is also drawn toward a future in teaching. “I saw how amazing the professors and faculty are at Fullerton, touching our lives in so many ways,” he said. “They’re making a difference, not just in an individual’s life, but in the whole profession.”

Teal is certain Attalla will be successful in whatever direction he chooses. “He’s very thoughtful and embodies brilliance and humility at the same time, which is refreshing,” she said. “Many of our great graduates maintain high GPAs, but the intangible qualities are the ones that make a student like Anthony exceptional.”

“I feel indebted to nursing,” Attalla said, “and I want to give it everything I have.”

​ Orange County Register 

Texas hospital that discharged woman with doomed pregnancy violated the law, a federal inquiry finds

• June 4, 2025

By AMANDA SEITZ

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Texas hospital that repeatedly sent a woman who was bleeding and in pain home without ending her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy violated the law, according to a newly released federal investigation.

The government’s findings, which have not been previously reported, were a small victory for 36-year-old Kyleigh Thurman, who ultimately lost part of her reproductive system after being discharged without any help from her hometown emergency room for her dangerous ectopic pregnancy.

But a new policy the Trump administration announced on Tuesday has thrown into doubt the federal government’s oversight of hospitals that deny women emergency abortions, even when they are at risk for serious infection, organ loss or severe hemorrhaging.

Thurman had hoped the federal government’s investigation, which issued a report in April after concluding its inquiry last year, would send a clear message to hospitals in Texas, which has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans.

“I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through this,” Thurman said in an interview with the Associated Press from her Texas home this week. “I put a lot of the responsibility on the state of Texas and policy makers and the legislators that set this chain of events off.”

Uncertainty regarding emergency abortion access

Women around the country have been denied emergency abortions for their life-threatening pregnancies after states swiftly enacted abortion restrictions in response to a 2022 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three appointees of President Donald Trump.

The guidance issued by the Biden administration in 2022 was an effort to preserve access to emergency abortions for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies. It directed hospitals — even ones in states with severe restrictions — to provide abortions in those emergency cases. If hospitals did not comply, they would be in violation of a federal law and risk losing some federal funds.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the law and inspecting hospitals, announced it would revoke the Biden-era guidance.

The Biden policy requiring doctors to provide emergency abortions was one of the few ways that Thurman was able to hold her local emergency room after she didn’t receive any help from staff at Ascension Seton Williamson in Round Rock, Texas in February of 2023, a few months after Texas enacted its strict abortion ban.

An ectopic pregnancy left untreated

Emergency room staff observed that Thurman’s hormone levels had dropped, a pregnancy was not visible in her uterus and a structure was blocking her fallopian tube — all telltale signs of an ectopic pregnancy, when a fetus implants outside of the uterus and has no room to grow. If left untreated, ectopic pregnancies can rupture, causing organ damage, hemorrhage or even death.

Thurman, however, was sent home and given a pamphlet on miscarriage. She returned three days later, still bleeding, and was given an injected drug intended to end the pregnancy, but it was too late. Days later, she showed up again at the emergency room, bleeding out because the fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it. She underwent an emergency surgery that removed part of her reproductive system.

CMS launched its investigation of how Ascension Seton Williamson handled Thurman’s case late last year, shortly after she filed a complaint. Investigators concluded the hospital failed to give her a proper medical screening exam, including an evaluation with an OB-GYN. The hospital violated the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients. Thurman was “at risk for deterioration of her health and wellbeing as a result of an untreated medical condition,” the investigation said in its report, which was publicly released last month.

Ascension, a vast hospital system that has facilities across multiple states, did not respond to questions about Thurman’s case, saying only that it is “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

Penalties for doctors, hospital staff

Doctors and legal experts have warned abortion restrictions like the one Texas enacted have discouraged emergency room staff from aborting dangerous and nonviable pregnancies, even when a woman’s life is imperiled. The stakes are especially high in Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years in prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion. Lawmakers in the state are weighing a law that would remove criminal penalties for doctors who provide abortions in certain medical emergencies.

“We see patients with miscarriages being denied care, bleeding out in parking lots. We see patients with nonviable pregnancies being told to continue those to term,” said Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights that represented Thurman. “This is not, maybe, what some people thought abortion bans would look like, but this is the reality.”

The Biden administration routinely warned hospitals that they need to provide abortions when a woman’s health was in jeopardy, even suing Idaho over its state law that initially prohibited nearly all abortions, unless a woman’s life was on the line.

Questions remain about hospital investigations

But CMS’ announcement on Tuesday raises questions about whether such investigations will continue if hospitals do not provide abortions for women in medical emergencies.

The agency said it will still enforce the law, “including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.”

While states like Texas have clarified that ectopic pregnancies can legally be treated with abortions, the laws do not provide for every complication that might arise during a pregnancy. Several women in Texas have sued the state for its law, which has prevented women from terminating pregnancies in cases where their fetuses had deadly fetal anomalies or they went into labor too early for the fetus to survive.

Thurman worries pregnant patients with serious complications still won’t be able to get the help they may need in Texas emergency rooms.

“You cannot predict the ways a pregnancy can go,” Thurman said. “It can happen to anyone, still. There’s still so many ways in which pregnancies that aren’t ectopic can be deadly.”

​ Orange County Register 

Wall Street drifts following some discouraging updates on the economy

• June 4, 2025

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting on Wednesday following some potentially discouraging updates on the U.S. economy.

The S&P 500 was edging up by 0.1% in midday trading, as momentum slowed following a big rally that had brought it back within 2.8% of its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 28 points, or 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.

The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields fell following a pair of weaker-than-expected reports on the economy. One said that activity contracted for U.S. retailers, finance companies and other businesses in the services industries last month, when economists were expecting to see growth. Businesses told the Institute for Supply Management in its survey that all the uncertainty created by tariffs is making it difficult for them to forecast and plan.

A second report suggested U.S. employers outside of the government hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. The report from ADP said private employers hired just 37,000 more workers than they fired, down from the prior month’s 60,000.

That could bode ill for Friday’s more comprehensive jobs report coming from the U.S. Labor Department, which is one of Wall Street’s most anticipated data releases each month. So far, the U.S. job market has remained remarkably resilient despite years of high inflation and now the threat of President Donald Trump’s high tariffs. But weakness there could undermine the rest of the economy.

To be sure, ADP’s report historically has not been a perfect predictor of what the U.S. Labor Department’s report will say.

“Whether this report is accurate or not, traders and investors will read today’s number as a dark result for trading today,” according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “This may be the tip of an iceberg, but it also could be a false start.”

Following the reports, traders built up expectations that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year in order to prop up the economy, which in turn caused the fall for Treasury yields. The weaker-than-expected ADP report also pushed Trump to call on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to deliver cuts to rates more quickly.

“‘Too Late’ Powell must now LOWER THE RATE,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!”

The Fed has yet to cut interest rates this year after slashing them through the end of last year. Part of the reason is that the Fed wants to see how much Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation. While lower interest rates could boost the economy, they could also give inflation more fuel.

Longer-term Treasury yields have also been rising in recent weeks because of reasons outside the Fed’s control. Investors have been demanding the U.S. government pay more in interest to borrow because of worries about whether it’s set to add trillions of dollars to its debt through tax cuts under discussion on Capitol Hill.

On Wall Street, Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose 1% after delivering a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Wells Fargo rose 0.8% after the Federal Reserve on Tuesday lifted restrictions placed on the bank in 2018 for having a toxic sales and banking culture. Wells Fargo has spent the better part of a decade trying to restore its image with the public and convince policymakers that it had changed its ways.

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that Delta Air Lines has sued for a technology outage last summer, fell 4.4% despite reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell just short of Wall Street’s target, as did its forecast for revenue in the current quarter.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia as the wait continued for more updates on trade talks that could convince Trump to lower his tariffs. Hopes for such deals have been a big reason U.S. stocks have roared back after falling roughly 20% below their record two months ago.

But nothing is assured, and Trump early Wednesday said of China’s leader Xi Jinping, “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”

The European Union’s top trade negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, met Wednesday with his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.37% from 4.46% late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks traders’ expectations for what the Fed will do with overnight interest rates, eased to 3.88% from 3.96%.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

​ Orange County Register 

Elon Musk and Rand Paul are right. The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is just a bloated mess.

• June 4, 2025

President Donald Trump’s signature legislative package is reportedly in jeopardy, with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky making a strong push against the tax and spend bill.

On May 22, the legislative package narrowly passed the House of Representatives on a mostly party-line vote, with Republicans Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio opposing the bill.

The legislation, dubbed by the president as a “big, beautiful bill,” seeks to ram through as many of Trump’s legislative priorities in one bill as possible. This includes extending his 2017 tax cuts, ramping up military spending, temporarily cutting taxes on tips, proposing reforms to Medicaid and rescinding green energy tax credits, among many other things.

While many provisions are reasonable and welcome, at the end of the day the proposal would blow up the national debt by trillions of dollars above current baseline projections. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the bill would grow the 2027 budget deficit by over a third.

Blowing up the national debt after all the hype behind the Department of Government Efficiency and Trump’s own vow to “to do what has not been done in 24 years — balance the federal budget” shows the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are completely unserious about fiscal responsibility.

“All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing — and the tax bill codifies that,” Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Associated Press. “There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier.”

This is so obvious that many who have been allied with the president are willing to speak out about this.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk told it like it is, writing on X, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

Likewise, Sen. Paul of Kentucky has ramped up his criticism of the bill. Over the weekend, while on “Face the Nation,” he condemned the budget-busting deficits created by it but also said “a vehicle for increasing spending for the military and for the border,” and “a bill by the military-industrial complex advocates who are padding the military budget.”

One particular example of waste he points to is border wall funding in the bill. Paul argued that while 1,000 miles of border wall would cost $6.5 billion, the bill would budget $46 billion for border wall construction.

In response, the president attacked Paul as having “very little understanding” of the bill, calling the bill “a big WINNER!!!”

While the Democratic Party continues to work through its post-election identity crisis, we can only hope more Republicans begin rediscovering fiscal responsibility and fiscal conservatism.

​ Orange County Register 

Ford recalls nearly half a million 2016-17 Explorers due to door trim that can detach while driving

• June 4, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ford is recalling nearly half a million older Explorer models because part of the door trim can detach while driving and cause a dangerous road hazard, U.S. auto safety regulators said Wednesday.

A notice posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the recall covers 492,145 Ford Explorers, model years 2016-2017. The vehicles were produced between June 11, 2015 and April 19, 2017.

Ford Motor Co. first recognized the problem as far back as 2019, but did not consider it an “unreasonable risk to safety,” the NHTSA report said. In March of this year, the NHTSA shared with Ford dozens of vehicle owner reports of the problem, leading Ford to further investigate it, eventually leading to the recall.

Ford concluded that lack of proper adhesion was causing the trim to loosen, adding that it is unaware of accidents or injuries related to the defect.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker expects to start sending notification letters to owners on June 9.

When a remedy to fix the faulty part has been determined, owners will be notified by mail and instructed to take their vehicles into a Ford or Lincoln dealership to have the trim fixed at no cost.

The NHTSA recall number is 25V347. The manufacturer’s recall number is 25S53.

​ Orange County Register 

Ground beef sold at Whole Foods may be tainted with E. coli, USDA says

• June 4, 2025

U.S. agriculture officials are warning that ground beef sold at Whole Foods markets nationwide may be contaminated with potentially dangerous E. coli bacteria.

Officials issued a public health alert for 1-pound, vacuum-packed packages of Organic Rancher beef, produced on May 22 and May 23, by NPC Processing Inc., of Shelburne, Vermont. The products have use-by dates of June 19 and June 20.

The U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service did not request a recall because the products are no longer available for purchase. However, they may still be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers.

The meat was produced in Australia or Uruguay and processed in the U.S. It was sent to distributors in Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois and Maryland and then to Whole Foods stores nationwide. The problem was discovered when company officials notified FSIS that they had shipped beef products that tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, a type of bacteria that can cause serious illness.

To date, no illnesses linked to the product have been reported, officials said. Consumers who have the product should throw it away or return it to the store.

E. coli bacteria can cause infections with symptoms that include dehydration, diarrhea and cramps. Most people recover within a week, but some people can become severely ill and develop a dangerous kidney condition. Children under age 5 and older adults are most at risk.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

​ Orange County Register