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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ownership announces it’s shutting down paper in May
PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s owners announced Wednesday the paper will be shutting down in a few months, citing financial losses.
Block Communications Inc. announced it will cease publication on May 3. The paper is printed on Thursdays and Sundays and says on its website the average paid circulation is 83,000.
A couple dozen union members returned to work at the Post-Gazette in November after a three-year strike.
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More than five years ago, the newspaper declared it had reached a bargaining impasse with the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and unilaterally imposed terms and conditions of employment on those workers. The paper was later found to have bargained in bad faith by making offers that were not intended to help reach a deal and by declaring an impasse prematurely.
The announcement that Block was shutting it down came on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court declined the PG Publishing Co. Inc.’s emergency appeal to halt an National Labor Relations Board order that forced it to abide by health care coverage policies in an expired union contract.
Andrew Goldstein, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, said the paper’s journalists have a long history of award-winning work.
“Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,” Goldstein said. The union said employees were notified in a video on Zoom in which company officials did not speak live.
The Post-Gazette said Block Communications has lost hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades in operating the paper, and the company said it deemed “continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable.”
The Block family said in a statement it was “proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh for nearly a century.”
A phone message seeking comment was left Wednesday at Block Communications headquarters in Toledo, Ohio.
The paper traces its roots to 1786, when the Pittsburgh Gazette began as a four-page weekly, and became a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. It went through a series of mastheads and owners before 1927, when Paul Block obtained the paper and named it the Post-Gazette.
Trump seeks $6.2 million in legal fees from Fani Willis’ office over election interference case
By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump is seeking more than $6.2 million in attorney fees and costs from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office after the election interference case brought against him and others was recently dismissed.
Georgia state legislators last year passed a law that says that if a prosecutor is disqualified from a case because of their own improper conduct and the case is then dismissed, anyone charged in that case is entitled to request “all reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred” in their defense. The judge overseeing the case then is responsible for reviewing the request and awarding the fees and costs, which are to be paid from the budget of the prosecutor’s office.
Trump is seeking a total of $6,261,613.08 in a motion filed Wednesday.
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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office were removed from the case over an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship she had with the special prosecutor she chose to lead the case. The prosecutor who took over the case late last year dismissed it in November.
Willis obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others from a grand jury in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden. Four people pleaded guilty in the months following the indictment.
“In accordance with Georgia law, President Trump has moved the Court to award reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred in his defense of the politically motivated, and now rightfully dismissed, case brought by disqualified DA Fani Willis,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment on Trump’s filing. But last month, when another person charged in the case made a similar filing, her office filed a motion asking to be heard on the matter of any claims for fees and costs filed in the case.
Willis’ motion raises concerns about the law passed last year that allowed Trump and others to seek to have their expenses paid.
“The statute raises grave separation-of-powers concerns by purporting to impose financial liability on a constitutional officer, twice elected by the citizens of Fulton County, for the lawful exercise of her core duties under the Georgia Constitution,” her motion says.
Her motion also says the law violates due process by “retroactively imposing a novel fee-shifting scheme” that creates a substantial burden for the county’s taxpayers without any recourse.
Her motion contends that the prosecution “was neither arbitrary nor political” and was based on an “exhaustive investigation spanning years.” It notes that a special grand jury that reviewed evidence and testimony recommended charges and a regular grand jury issued the indictment.
Defense attorneys sought Willis’ removal after one of them revealed in January 2024 that Willis had engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case. The defense attorneys said the relationship created a conflict of interest, alleging that Willis personally profited from the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for vacations the pair took.
During an extraordinary hearing the following month, Willis and Wade both testified about the intimate details of their personal relationship. They maintained that their romance didn’t begin until after Wade was hired and said that they split the costs for vacations and other outings.
The trial judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, rebuked Willis, saying in an order in March 2024 that her actions showed a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” But he said he did not find a conflict of interest that would disqualify Willis. He ultimately ruled that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which the special prosecutor did hours later.
Defense attorneys appealed that ruling, and the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Willis from the case in December, citing an “appearance of impropriety.” The Georgia Supreme Court in September declined to hear Willis’ appeal.
It then fell to the nonpartisan Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council to find a new prosecutor. The agency’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, ended up taking on the case himself and dismissed it less than two weeks later.
House takes step toward extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, overpowering GOP leadership
By KEVIN FREKING and LISA MASCARO, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Overpowering Speaker Mike Johnson, a bipartisan coalition in the House voted Wednesday to push forward a measure that would revive an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowered health insurance costs for roughly 22 million people, but that had expired last month.
The tally of 221-205 was a key test before passage of the bill, which is expected Thursday. And it came about because four GOP centrist lawmakers joined with Democrats in signing a so-called discharge petition to force the vote. After last year’s government shutdown failed to resolve the issue, they said doing nothing was not an option as many of their constituents faced soaring health insurance premiums beginning this month.
Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, one of the Republicans who crossed party lines to back the Democratic proposal, portrayed it as a vehicle senators could use to reach a compromise.
“No matter the issue, if the House puts forward relatively strong, bipartisan support, it makes it easier for the senators to get there,” Lawler said.
In the end, nine Republicans joined Democrats to advance the measure.
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If ultimately successful in the House this week, the voting would show there is bipartisan support for a proposed three-year extension of the tax credits that are available for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The action forcing a vote has been an affront to Johnson and GOP leaders who essentially lost control of their House majority as the renegade lawmakers joined Democrats for the workaround.
But the Senate is under no requirement to take up the bill.
Instead, a small group of members from both parties are working on an alternative plan that could find support in both chambers and become law. One proposal would be to shorten the extension of the subsidy to two years and make changes to the program.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said any plan passing muster in the Senate will need to have income limits to ensure that it’s focused on those who most need the help and that beneficiaries would have to at least pay a nominal amount for their coverage.
That way, he said, “insurance companies can’t game the system and auto-enroll people.” Finally, Thune said there would need to be some expansion of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money and withdraw it tax-free as long as the money is spent on qualified medical expenses.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.) Democrats are pressing the issueIt’s unclear the negotiations will yield a bill that the Senate will take up. Democrats are making clear that the higher health insurance costs many Americans are facing will be a political centerpiece of their efforts to retake the majority in the House and Senate in the fall elections.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who led his party’s effort to push the health care issue forward, particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join if they really wanted to prevent steep premium increases for their constituents. Before Wednesday’s vote, he called on colleagues to “address the health care crisis in this country and make sure that tens of millions of people have the ability to go see a doctor when they need one.”
Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Lawler signed the Democrats’ petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 needed to force a House vote. All four represent key swing districts whose races will help determine which party takes charge of the House next year.
Johnson, R-La., had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party’s conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed program.
Lawmakers turn to discharge petitions to show support for an action and potentially force a vote on the House floor, but they are rarely successful. This session of Congress has proven an exception.
A vote requiring the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, for instance, occurred after Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a petition on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The signature effort was backed by all House Democrats and four Republicans.
California loses $160M for delaying revocation of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants
By JOSH FUNK, Associated Press
California will lose $160 million for delaying the revocations of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants, federal transportation officials announced Wednesday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy already withheld $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn’t enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers.
The state notified these drivers in the fall that they would lose their licenses after a federal audit found problems that included licenses for truckers and bus drivers that remained valid long after an immigrant’s visa expired. Some licenses were also given to citizens of Mexico and Canada who don’t qualify. More than one-quarter of the small sample of California licenses that investigators reviewed were unlawful.
But then last week California said it would delay those revocations until March after immigrant groups sued the state because of concerns that some groups were being unfairly targeted. Duffy said the state was supposed to revoke those licenses by Monday.
Duffy is pressuring California and other states to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses.
“Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again,” Duffy said in a written statement. “(Gov.) Gavin Newsom has failed to do so — putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.”
Newsom’s office did not immediately respond after the action was announced Wednesday afternoon.
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The federal government began cracking down during the summer. The issue became prominent after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August.
Duffy previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington after audits found significant problems under the existing rules, including commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. He had dropped the threat to withhold nearly $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs said California failed to live up to the promise it made in November to revoke all the flawed licenses by Jan. 5. The agency said the state also unilaterally decide to delay until March the cancellations of roughly 4,700 additional unlawful licenses that were discovered after the initial ones were found.
“We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations,” Barrs said.
Industry praises the enforcementTrucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can’t speak English off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools.
“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association.
The spotlight has been on Sikh truckers because the driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in October are both Sikhs. So the Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being unfairly targeted.
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.
US will exit 66 international organizations as it further retreats from global cooperation
By MATTHEW LEE and FARNOUSH AMIRI, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will withdraw from dozens of international organizations, including the U.N.’s population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations, as the U.S. further retreats from global cooperation.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 organizations, agencies and commissions following his instructions for his administration to review participation in and funding for all international organizations, including those affiliated with the United Nations, according to a White House statement on social media.
Most of the targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor and other issues that the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and “woke” initiatives, according to a partial list obtained by The Associated Press.
“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” the State Department said in a statement.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from organizations that foster cooperation among nations to address global challenges comes as his administration has launched military efforts or issued threats that have rattled allies and adversaries alike, including capturing autocratic Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and indicating an intention to take over Greenland.
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The administration previously suspended support from agencies like the World Health Organization, the U.N. for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as it has taken a larger, a-la-carte approach to paying its dues to the world body, picking which operations and agencies they believe align with Trump’s agenda and those which no longer serve U.S. interests.
“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the U.S. approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,’” said Daniel Forti, head of U.N. affairs at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms.”
It has marked a major shift from how previous administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have dealt with the U.N., and it has forced the world body, already undergoing its own internal reckoning, to respond with a series of staffing and program cuts.
Many independent nongovernmental agencies — some that work with the United Nations — have cited many project closures because of the U.S. administration’s decision last year to slash foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
Despite the massive shift, the U.S. officials, including Trump himself, say they have seen the potential of the U.N. and want to instead focus taxpayer money on expanding American influence in many of the standard-setting U.N. initiatives where there is competition with China, like the International Telecommunications Union, the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization.
The global organizations from which the US is departingThe withdrawal from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, is the latest effort by Trump and his allies to distance the U.S. from international organizations focused on climate and addressing climate change.
UNFCC, the 1992 agreement between 198 countries to financially support climate change activities in developing countries, is the underlying treaty for the landmark Paris climate agreement. Trump — who calls climate change a hoax — withdrew from that agreement soon after reclaiming the White House.
Gina McCarthy, former White House National Climate Adviser, called the move “shortsighted, embarrassing, and a foolish decision.”
“As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration,” she said in a statement. “This Administration is forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country.”
Mainstream scientists say climate change is behind increasing instances of deadly and costly extreme weather, including flooding, droughts, wildfires, intense rainfall events and dangerous heat.
The U.S. withdrawal could hinder global efforts to curb greenhouse gases because it “gives other nations the excuse to delay their own actions and commitments,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ carbon dioxide emissions.
It also will be difficult to achieve meaningful progress on climate change without cooperation from the U.S., one of the world’s largest emitters and economies, experts said.
The U.N.’s population agency, which provides sexual and reproductive health across the world, has long been a lightning rod for Republican opposition and Trump himself cut funding for the agency during his first term in office. He and other GOP officials have accused the agency of participating in “coercive abortion practices” in countries like China.
When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he restored funding for the agency. A State Department review conducted the following year found no evidence to support these claims.
Other organizations and agencies that the U.S. will quit include the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
The State Department said additional reviews are ongoing.
Amiri reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writer Tammy Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct Daniel Forti’s title at the International Crisis Group; It is head of U.N. affairs, not senior U.N. analyst.
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