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WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans say immigration should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2025, as the country heads toward a new Republican administration in which President-elect Donald Trump has promised the mass deportations of migrants and an end to birthright citizenship.

About half of U.S. adults named immigration and border topics in an open-ended question that asked respondents to share up to five issues they want the government to work on this year, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from about one-third who mentioned the topic as a government priority in an AP-NORC poll conducted the previous year.

The issue of immigration has risen in salience across the board — among Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and adults both young and old. But Republicans, in particular, have converged around this issue in recent years. About 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or a U.S.-Mexico border wall should be a top focus, up from 45% just two years ago.

This means that Trump will return to the White House with his base, and much of the country, interested in his signature issue. That’s a marked contrast to when he left Washington four years ago with his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, offering a more welcoming posture toward migrants.

But even with the widespread uptick in concern about immigration, that issue is still overshadowed by economic worries. About three-quarters of Americans want the government to focus on addressing broad economic concerns, similar to the past few years. There’s a range of economic issues Americans want addressed — about 3 in 10 referenced general economic issues, a similar share pointed to inflation, and roughly 1 in 10 mentioned either unemployment or taxes.

About one-third of Americans identify foreign policy as an important issue, with health care issues and politics — both identified broadly — close behind.

Republicans are especially likely to want government action on immigration

Trump won back the White House with immigration playing a key role in his campaign, often disparaging migrants to the U.S. and claiming that they commit violent crimes, though studies have shown no link between immigration and crime.

Some of his immigration reforms are likely to face legal challenges as Trump seeks to sharply limit the number of immigrants welcome in the U.S. But addressing those issues remains paramount for Americans as he prepares to take office.

About 8 in 10 Republicans want the government to prioritize economic issues, while about 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or the border wall should be a top priority.

Most Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on the economy, but they don’t have a clear second priority. Instead, about 4 in 10 name health care and health issues, a small uptick from a year earlier. About one-third of Democrats mention political issues, the environment or climate change, or immigration.

But even Democrats are more likely to want the government to make progress on immigration than they were the year before, when only about 2 in 10 Democrats considered it something that should be a primary focus for the federal government.

That doesn’t mean, though, that they align with Trump’s hard-line approach. One Democrat said the government should focus on “border control, not mass deportation,” while another said “better pathways to citizenship” should be the goal. In their responses to the poll, Republicans tended to mention “illegal immigration” and “a stronger border” as an important focus. One Republican supported “closing the border, deporting illegal immigrants, starting with criminals first.”

The focus among Republicans on immigration and the economy dovetails with two of the biggest challenges Biden confronted during his tenure, which saw both high inflation and sharp growth in migration.

Illegal border crossings reached a record level in 2023, adding fuel to Trump’s relentless focus on border security and his promise to deport migrants en masse. The numbers fell during 2024 after Biden announced a crackdown on asylum claims, but Trump argued those moves were too little, too late.

Americans under 30 really want the government to prioritize inflation

The youngest adults are particularly likely to want the government to work on economic issues.

Americans under 30 are significantly more likely than older adults to mention economic issues, inflation and personal financial topics as a vital focus for government in 2025. About 4 in 10 young adults name inflation, compared with roughly one-quarter of older adults. And about one-quarter of young adults say they want the government focused on housing costs, whereas only about 1 in 10 adults ages 60 or older say the same.

Trump made gains among young adults in 2024 compared with his performance four years earlier, but his youngest voters were much more motivated by the economy than by immigration, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters.

The same sentiment prevails as Trump prepares to take office. Compared with 2023, the December poll found, Americans under 30 are more likely to highlight general economic issues and immigration as things they want government to focus on — but they are much less focused on immigration than older adults. Only about one-third of adults under 30 said immigration should be a focus, compared with about 6 in 10 adults 60 or older.

Older Americans are also broadly focused on the economy, but their priorities are a little different — for instance, about 1 in 10 Americans over 60 want the government focused on Social Security in the coming year. Very few Americans under 30 mentioned Social Security as a concern.

NEW YORK (AP) —Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The next round of bitter cold was set to envelop the southern U.S. on Tuesday, after the first significant winter storm of the year blasted a huge swath of the country with ice, snow and wind.

The immense storm system brought disruption even to areas of the country that usually escape winter’s wrath, downing trees in some Southern states, threatening a freeze in Florida and causing people in Dallas to dig deep into their wardrobes for hats and gloves.

On Tuesday morning, the wind chill temperature was 16 (minus 9 degrees C) at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. A low-pressure system was expected to form as soon as Wednesday near south Texas, bringing the potential of snow to parts of the state that include Dallas, as well as to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

“As we go through the next few days, we’re still going to be seeing those colder-than-normal temperatures,” said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather service in College Park, Maryland. “We’re going to see areas of snow and ice start to take shape across northern Texas, southern Oklahoma as we get into Thursday morning.”

Snow and ice are expected to make their way farther south into the lower Mississippi Valley, some of it “pretty disruptive,” he said.

Lingering snow and ice in the central Plains through the Ohio Valley into the Atlantic is likely to stick around for a few days, Mullinax said. That will create opportunities for constant re-freezing, and black ice, which may create treacherous travel conditions in some areas for the next few days.

The polar vortex that dipped south over the weekend kept much of the country east of the Rockies in its frigid grip Monday, making many roads treacherous, forcing school closures, and causing widespread power outages and flight cancellations. Some experts say such cold air outbreaks are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.

Ice and snow blanketed major roads in Kansas, western Nebraska and parts of Indiana, where the National Guard was activated to help stranded motorists. The weather service issued winter storm warnings for Kansas and Missouri, where blizzard conditions brought wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 kph). The warnings extended to New Jersey into early Tuesday.

A Kentucky truck stop was jammed with big rigs forced off an icy and snow-covered Interstate 75 on Monday just outside Cincinnati. A long haul driver from Los Angeles carrying a load of rugs to Georgia, Michael Taylor said he saw numerous cars and trucks stuck in ditches and was dealing with icy windshield wipers before he pulled off the interstate.

“It was too dangerous. I didn’t want to kill myself or anyone else,” he said.

The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes plunges south into the U.S., Europe and Asia. Studies show that a fast-warming Arctic is partly to blame for the increasing frequency of the polar vortex extending its grip.

Temperatures plunge across the country

The eastern two-thirds of the U.S. dealt with bone-chilling cold and wind chills Monday, with temperatures in some areas far below normal.

A cold weather advisory will take effect early Tuesday across the Gulf Coast. In Texas’ capital of Austin and surrounding cities, wind chills could drop as low as 15 degrees (minus 9.4 C).

The Northeast was expected to get several cold days.

Transportation has been tricky

Hundreds of car accidents were reported in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky, where a state trooper was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after his patrol car was hit.

Virginia State Police responded to at least 430 crashes Sunday and Monday, including one that was fatal. Police said other weather-related fatal accidents occurred Sunday near Charleston, West Virginia, and Monday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Kansas saw two deadly crashes over the weekend.

More than 2,300 flights were canceled and at least 9,100 more were delayed nationwide as of Monday night, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport reported that about 58% of arrivals and 70% of departures had been canceled. The airport announced early Tuesday that it had reopened all runways after closing them Monday evening so airport crews could focus on snow removal and prevent refreezing on the airfield.

A record 8 inches (more than 20 centimeters) of snow fell Sunday at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, leading to dozens of flight cancellations that lingered into Monday. About 4 inches (about 10 centimeters) fell Monday across the Cincinnati area, where car and truck crashes shut at least two major routes leading into downtown.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of Donald Trump’s second administration.

At a press conference, McElroy said he prayed the incoming administration would work to make America a better place. But he also identified Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants as a point of potential conflict, saying such policies were “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

McElroy, 70, replaces the retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who steps down after having navigated the archdiocese through the fallout of the 2018 eruption of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The Vatican announced McElroy’s new job on Monday, the Catholic feast of the Epiphany, in a bulletin that flagged another important appointment in Francis’ reform agenda. The pope named Italian Sister Simona Brambilla the first-ever woman to head a Vatican dicastery, in this case the one responsible for religious orders.

Francis, who was elected pope on a mandate of reform, has long had his eye on McElroy, making him bishop of San Diego in 2015 and then elevating him as a cardinal in 2022.

McElroy has been one of a minority of U.S. bishops to harshly criticize the campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion, a campaign Francis has publicly criticized by insisting that bishops must be pastors, not politicians.

He has also questioned why the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has leaned conservative in its leadership, consistently insists on identifying abortion as its “preeminent” priority. McElroy has questioned why greater prominence is not given to issues such as racism, poverty, immigration and climate change.

He has also expressed support for LGBTQ+ youth and denounced the bullying often directed at them, further aligning himself with Francis’ priorities as pope.

“McElroy is competent, kind, empathetic, and willing to fight on the side of the vulnerable,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chairperson of the religion and philosophy department at Manhattan University. She said his nomination was particularly timely given the polarization in the U.S.

“McElroy has experience leading a diocese marked by diversity and challenges, and I can’t think of a bigger challenge than to be so close to the seat of the U.S. government in 2025,” she said in an email.

McElroy, a graduate of Harvard University with a master’s in history from Stanford University, is a native of San Francisco and had ministered there until Francis moved him to San Diego.

Vincent Miller, professor of theology at the University of Dayton, pointed to McElroy’s writings on Christian nationalism and patriotism — in which he argued for a “morally sound and unitive” patriotism as opposed to an isolationist one — as particularly relevant today.

“McElroy is uniquely prepared for this moment,” Miller said in a social media post. “At a moment when constitutional democracy is in crisis in the US, on the anniversary of an insurrection that sought to undermine it, Francis has moved one of his most capable and uniquely qualified bishops into position to respond to the needs of this moment.”

McElroy’s appointment to Washington comes just a few weeks after Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, nominated Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Burch, president and co-founder of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has criticized Francis and some of his policies, including his emphasis on “synodality” or making the church a more inclusive place.

McElroy, who was a papal nominee to the Vatican’s big synod process, made clear Monday that he was fully on board with Francis’ vision of a church that doesn’t discriminate. Speaking in Spanish to address Washington’s sizeable Latino community, McElroy cited Francis’ famous line “todos, todos, todos,” to emphasize that everyone is welcome in the church, no one excluded.

He did, though, acknowledge likely points of disagreement with the incoming Trump administration. Climate change, he said, was “one of the greatest challenges” facing the world, while immigration would likely be a source of conflict if the administration fulfills its threat of mass deportations of migrants.

“The Catholic Church teaches that a country has the right to control the borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort,” he said. “At the same time, we are called always to have the sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus plans which have been talked about on some level of having a wider indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

The Archdiocese of Washington includes the District of Columbia and the Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George’s, St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles. It has a total population of 3,050,847, of whom 671,187 are Catholic.

Its outgoing archbishop, Gregory, took over in 2019 at a time of turmoil for one of the nation’s most important archdioceses. Its two previous leaders, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, were caught up in a new wave of the long-running clerical sexual abuse scandal.

Wuerl stepped down after he lost the trust of his priests, and McCarrick was defrocked after a Vatican investigation found he abused adults as well as minors.

Francis not only tapped Gregory to lead but then made him a prince of the church in 2020, making him the first Black American cardinal in the process.

McElroy was indirectly tainted by the McCarrick scandal after revelations that a whistleblower had told him in 2016 that McCarrick slept with seminarians. McElroy acknowledged having received the report but said the whistleblower refused to provide him with corroborating evidence.

Bishop Joseph Strickland, an arch-conservative whom Francis ousted as bishop of Tyler, Texas last year, cited the McCarrick connection in strongly criticizing Monday’s appointment.

“The blatant corruption of Pope Francis and the US Cardinals is on full display with the appointment of a McCarrick clone to the same archdiocese where his evil reigned twenty years ago,” Strickland tweeted.

The Archdiocese of Washington is home to The Catholic University of America, which is run by the church and is viewed as more conservative than many other Catholic universities in the U.S. run by the Jesuits.

The dean of CUA’s school of theology and religious studies, Professor Joseph Capizzi, said he looked forward to working with McElroy.

“I hope he becomes engaged,” Capizzi said. “I hope we can influence him and he can influence us.”

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

After walking for a couple weeks through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to Acapulco with the idea they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck on Monday.

Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place.

The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the center of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and last year succeeded in significantly reducing the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.

Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give them some defense from Trump’s pressures, said Guillen, who left the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.

Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.

On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the final hours of their holiday beach vacations while migrants slept in the street or tried to find ways to resume their journeys north.

“Immigration (officials) told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets, they won’t sell us anything.”

Castañeda, like thousands of other migrants, had left the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than a half dozen caravans of about 1,500 migrants each have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them made it very far.

Authorities let them walk for days until they’re exhausted and then offer to bus them to various cities where they say their immigration status will be reviewed, which could mean any number of things.

Some have landed in Acapulco, where about a dozen sleep at a Catholic church near the immigration agency offices.

Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday looking for information, but no one would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was desperate to leave, picked a van driver he judged to be the most trustworthy among various offering rides for up to five times the normal price for a bus ticket to Mexico City

Some migrants have discovered the permits authorities give them allow them to travel only within the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Other migrants have better luck.

On Sunday, the latest migrant caravan broke up after hundreds received free transit permits to go anywhere in Mexico for a specified number of days.

Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband were among them.

“We’re a little scared by the lack of safety getting on buses, that they’re going to stop us,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels frequently target migrants for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort them too.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus, and has allowed more migrants to leave southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates note that migrants are being taken to violent areas.

It’s a concern shared by the Rev. Leopoldo Morales, the priest at the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration agency office.

He said that in November two or three immigration agency buses arrived with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend, two more arrived carrying all adults.

Even though Acapulco isn’t on the usual migration route and was unprepared to receive migrants, several priests have coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they’re going through a very difficult time, with a lot of needs, they arrive without money,” Morales said.

Migrants quickly realize that finding work in Acapulco is difficult. After Otis’ destruction, the federal government sent hundreds of soldiers and National Guard troops to provide security and start reconstruction. Last year, another storm, John, brought widespread flooding.

But violence in Acapulco hasn’t relented.

Acapulco has one of Mexico’s highest rates of homicides. Cab drivers and small business owners complain – anonymously – of rising extortion. Large companies have balked at rebuilding under the current circumstances.

Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have escaped the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.

“To an extent they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to (Mexico City) for work” or other places like Monterrey, an industrial city in the north with more work opportunities.

Now he doesn’t know what to do.

___

Associated Press writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee law requiring pornographic websites to verify their visitors’ age was largely blocked in court before it was to take effect Jan. 1, even as similar laws kicked in for Florida and South Carolina and remained in effect for more than a dozen other states.

On Dec. 30, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman in Memphis ruled that Tennessee’s law would likely suppress the First Amendment free speech rights of adults without actually preventing children from accessing the harmful material in question. The state attorney general’s office is appealing the decision.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment trade group, is suing over Tennessee’s law and those in a half-dozen other states. The coalition lists some 19 states that have passed similar laws. One prominent adult website has cut off access in several states due to their laws.

The issue will hit the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments regarding Texas’ law next week.
Tennessee’s law

No one voted against Tennessee’s law last year when it passed the Republican-supermajority legislature, and GOP Gov. Bill Lee signed off on it.

The law would require porn websites to verify visitors are at least 18 years old, threatening felony penalties and civil liability possible for violators running the sites. They could match a photo to someone’s ID, or use certain “public or private transactional data” to prove someone’s age. Website leaders could not retain personally identifying information and would have to keep anonymized data.

The Free Speech Coalition and other plaintiffs sued, winning a preliminary injunction that blocks the attorney general from enforcement while court proceedings continue. However, the coalition expressed concern that private lawsuits or actions by individual district attorneys could be possible.

In her ruling, Judge Lipman wrote that parental controls on minors’ devices are more effective and less restrictive.

She wrote that under Tennessee’s law, minors still could access adult sites using VPNs, or virtual private networks, that mask a user’s location. Or, they could view pornographic material on social media sites, which are unlikely to reach the law’s threshold of one-third of its content considered harmful to minors.

The judge also said the impact could be overly broad, potentially affecting other plaintiffs such as an online educational platform focused on sexual wellness.

She noted that Tennessee’s definition of “content harmful to minors” extends to include text. She specifically mentioned that the phrase “the human nipple,” or crude combinations of keyboard characters, would be considered harmful as long as they lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”
The state and the adult industry respond

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office is asking the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let the law take effect as the lawsuit proceeds. Skrmetti noted that other appeals courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, allowed similar laws to take effect.

“The Protect Tennessee Minors Act institutes common sense age verification to stop kids from accessing explicit obscene content while protecting the privacy of adults who choose to do so,” Skrmetti said.

The Free Speech Coalition has argued the law would be ineffective, unconstitutional and force people to transfer sensitive information.

“This is a deeply flawed law that put website operators at risk of criminal prosecution for something as trivial as a mention of the human nipple,” said Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden.
Site shuts off in some states; SCOTUS hearing looms

As verification laws took effect in Florida and South Carolina last week, website Pornhub cut off access there and posted a message encouraging people to contact political decision-makers. Its parent company, Aylo, says the site has blocked access in 16 states with verification requirements it called “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous” and not properly enforced. The company is advocating for age verification on individual devices.

Judges had paused the laws in Indiana and Texas. But circuit appeals courts stepped in to allow enforcement.

The Supreme Court declined to halt Texas’ law in April while the court action continues. The next step is Supreme Court oral arguments on Jan. 15.

Another age verification law is set to begin in July in Georgia.

———

This story has been corrected to show that Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti made a statement about the Protect Tennessee Minors Act, not his spokesperson.