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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday loosened federal rules requiring grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cooling equipment, a step that President Donald Trump said would help lower grocery costs.

Trump said at a White House ceremony that the action by the Environmental Protection Agency would “substantially lower costs for consumers” by delaying costly restrictions that limit the type of refrigerants U.S. businesses and families can use.

The move to relax the Biden-era rules on harmful pollutants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, emitted by refrigerators and other appliances was the latest attempt by the Republican administration before pivotal elections in November to try to address rising voter concerns over the cost of living.

It is not clear how much or how quickly grocery prices could be impacted. Industry groups said it could even raise prices because manufacturers have already redesigned products, retooled factories and trained workers to build and service next-generation refrigerant equipment.

Inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, amid price spikes caused by the Iran war and Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.

The regulation from the Democratic Biden administration was “unnecessary and costly and actually makes the machinery worse,” Trump said at a ceremony joined by top executives from Kroger, Piggly Wiggly and other grocery chains. He said the EPA action would protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and save Americans more than $2 billion a year.

The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, which represents more than 330 HVAC manufacturers and commercial refrigeration companies, said the change in approach would “inject uncertainty across the market” and could even raise prices.

“This rule works against basic supply and demand,” said Stephen Yurek, the group’s president and CEO. “By extending the compliance deadline” for phasing out HFCs, the administration “is maintaining and even increasing demand in the market for existing refrigerants while supply continues to fall.”

The net result will be “higher service costs and higher costs for consumers,” he said.

Trump once supported limits on refrigerant pollutants

Trump’s action marks a reversal after he signed a law in his first term aimed at reducing harmful, planet-warming pollutants emitted by refrigerators and air conditioners. That bipartisan measure brought environmentalists and major business groups into rare alignment on the contentious issue of climate change and won praise across the political spectrum.

The 2020 law reflected a broad bipartisan consensus on the need to quickly phase out domestic use of HFCs, which are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and are considered a major driver of global warming.

The EPA action highlights the second Trump administration’s drive to roll back regulations perceived as climate-friendly. The plan is among a series of sweeping environmental changes that the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, has said will put a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”

Environmentalists criticized the administration’s actions, saying the new rule would exacerbate climate pollution while disrupting a yearslong industry transition to new coolants as an alternative to HFCs.

The law pushed industry toward less harmful alternatives

The 2020 law signed by Trump, known as the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, phased out HFCs as part of an international agreement on ozone pollution. The law accelerated an industry shift to alternative refrigerants that use less harmful chemicals and are widely available.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Chemistry Council, the top lobbying group for the chemical industry, were among numerous business groups that supported the law and an international deal on pollutants, known as the Kigali Amendment, as victories for jobs and the environment. U.S. companies such as Chemours and Honeywell developed and produce the alternative refrigerants sold in the United States and around the world.

The 2023 rule, now being relaxed, imposed steep restrictions on HFCs starting in 2026. Zeldin said the rule from the Democratic Biden administration did not give companies enough time to comply and that the rapid switch to other refrigerants caused shortages and price increases last year. Some in the industry dispute this.

The Food Industry Association, which represents grocery stores and suppliers, applauded the EPA action.

The earlier rule “imposed significant costs and unrealistic compliance requirements and timelines that threatened to drive up grocery prices and create substantial implementation challenges for food retailers,” said Leslie Sarasin, the group’s president and CEO.

New rule ensures an ‘orderly transition,’ grocer says

Kroger CEO Greg Foran, whose company operates 2,700 U.S. stores, told Trump the EPA action ensures “an orderly transition” that allows the company to update its equipment “in a way which keeps the price of groceries down. And that’s something that we’re desperately focusing on, Mr. President.”

Kevin McDaniel, whose company operates 14 Piggly Wiggly stores in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, said the Biden-era rule would have forced many independent grocers out of business.

“It was thrown together too fast,” he said. “The technology is not there yet. It’s just way too fast. That’s the problem. Good idea, but it’s terrible.”

David Doniger, a senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Trump’s action “a lose-lose for the environment and the economy. It will harm consumers and the climate and reduce American competitiveness in the global markets emerging for environmentally safer refrigerants.”

Rather than address affordability, Trump is imposing “thinly veiled environmental rollbacks that leave the United States stuck with outdated technologies of the past,” Doniger said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington on Thursday without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies, frustrated with the White House and at an impasse over whether to try to block a new $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.

Republicans had already abandoned part of the bill that provided $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party. But the settlement announced by the Justice Department this week prompted even more questions, spurring a push to limit the taxpayer dollars that some feared could go to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

A tense meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday morning to discuss the settlement only heightened the frustration among senators. Soon after it ended, Republican leaders announced that they would not vote on the immigration enforcement measure until they returned from a Memorial Day recess the week of June 1, which was Trump’s self-imposed deadline for them to pass it.

Blanche “had an appreciation for the depth of feeling” among GOP senators, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said afterward as a growing number of them spoke out against the idea.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former GOP leader, called the settlement “utterly stupid, morally wrong.”

“The nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” McConnell said in a statement afterward.

The last-minute scramble on the bill came as Democrats have criticized Republicans for trying to fund Trump’s ballroom when voters are concerned about affordability issues — and as some GOP lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump.

Several GOP senators have spoken out against the Justice Department settlement announced this week, and many were upset by the president’s Tuesday endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in next week’s primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn.

Growing tensions with the White House derail bill

Both sides have acknowledged the tensions. Thune said Thursday that the White House should have consulted Congress before it announced the settlement, which he said made “everything way harder than it should be.” Trump’s endorsement of Cornyn’s opponent also complicated matters, he said.

“I think it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune told reporters. “There is a political component to everything we do around here.”

Trump unloaded on senators in a social media post Wednesday, urging Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who said over the weekend that parts of the $1 billion White House security proposal did not qualify for the ICE and Border Patrol bill. Trump also renewed his long-standing calls for the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would require voters to prove U.S. citizenship, and to end the Senate filibuster.

Republicans need to “get smart and tough,” Trump said, or “you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”

While they have been loyal to Trump on most issues, Senate Republicans have resisted his repeated calls over the years to kill the filibuster, which creates a 60-vote threshold for most bills in the Senate.

Asked Thursday at the White House if he was losing control of the Senate, Trump replied: “I really don’t know. I can tell you — I only do what’s right.”

Hanging over the growing GOP rift is Trump’s surprise endorsement of Paxton. That intervention has Republican senators privately fuming that it could cost them their majority in November as they view the incumbent, Cornyn, as the stronger candidate.

Possible parameters on Trump’s settlement fund

The “anti-weaponization” fund, part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, unexpectedly became one of the main complications in the bill after Democrats announced that they would force votes to block it or place restrictions on it.

Democrats have an opening because Republicans are trying to pass the immigration enforcement bill through a budget process that allows a long series of amendment votes. The Democratic amendments would block the fund outright or ban any payments to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The only way for Republicans to get out of this box is to stop backing the slush fund, stop pushing the ballroom, and as soon as we get back, join Democrats in fighting to lower Americans’ costs on health care, on housing, on power, on so much else,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said after senators left town.

As it became clear that the Democratic amendments could pass, Republicans began discussing their own last-minute additions to head that off — an idea that appeared to have support in the GOP conference but could threaten eventual support of the bill in the House or make a presidential veto more likely.

“I think there’s reasonable limitations that can be put on it,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., one of Trump’s top allies in the Senate.

Secret Service request falters

Under the Secret Service’s request, about $220 million would fund security improvements related to the ballroom. The rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures.

After it became clear that Republicans would abandon that proposal, Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that “I don’t need money for the ballroom,” which he had originally said would be paid for with private funds. Still, if Congress doesn’t approve the request, he said the White House “won’t be a very secure place.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the effort to add the security package to the bill was a “bad idea.” The bill should not have included the other security improvements, he said, “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion-dollar ballroom.’”

Left in the bill is the money for ICE and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Democrats demanded changes for the agencies, but negotiations with the White House yielded little progress. So Republicans are using the complicated budget maneuver called reconciliation — the same process that allowed them to pass Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill last year — to fund the agencies through the end of Trump’s term without any Democratic support.

Still, passage requires sign-off from the parliamentarian and unity from Republicans.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said the Senate’s responsibility should be to focus on funding ICE and Border Patrol.

“When other extraneous things get in the middle of it, it makes it more difficult,” he said.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX got within a half-minute of launching its newest and biggest Starship on a test flight Thursday evening before a cascade of problems halted the countdown.

The 407-foot (124-meter) rocket was poised to begin a space-skimming journey from Texas extending halfway around the world. But issues cropped up with the brand-new pad at Starbase near the Mexican border, and the company ran out of time.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk later said the hydraulic pin holding the launch tower’s arm in place did not retract. If the problem can be fixed quickly, another launch attempt will be made Friday, he noted.

Thursday’s launch attempt came one day after Musk announced that his rocket company would be going public.

Starship holds 20 mock Starlink satellites to be released before the spacecraft’s controlled entry into the Indian Ocean at the end of the hourlong flight. It will be the 12th test flight for a Starship and the first since last fall.

NASA is relying on this latest version of Starship to land astronauts on the moon in a few years.

DRIPPING SPRINGS (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is riding high as he heads into the final days of his Republican primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn, now with the weight of the president’s backing behind him.

“I don’t know if y’all noticed this, but Donald Trump endorsed me,” Paxton told a small rally in a town outside Austin, inciting whoops and applause from the crowd.

Tuesday’s election has drawn national attention and gobs of money. It’s also become the latest contest in which Trump is encouraging voters to boot a politician who have displeased him — in this case, Cornyn — in favor of a challenger more aligned with the president. That effort has been largely successful for Trump. Earlier this week, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Kentucky primary against Ed Gallrein, whom Trump had handpicked and backed. He also has defeated incumbents in Louisiana and Indiana.

Paxton has been turning his focus to the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico. Paxton opened his event Thursday with attacks on Talarico, a sign of his confidence heading into Tuesday.

Paxton then gave a biography of his political life, and tried hammering home the reason he says he should be the Republican nominee: He’s unleashed a barrage of lawsuits defending conservative values for years. It’s the type of resume that endears Paxton to the Make America Great Again faithful, some of his supporters said.

“He’s a fighter, he’s a person of action, he’s proven that as attorney general,” said Jeffrey Sonnier, 72, who attended the rally and echoed what many supporters there voiced.

As for Cornyn, said Sonnier, “he’s inactive for five years and digs out to become a supposed active Republican MAGA person every six years.”

Who is closer to Trump?

Paxton’s campaign said Thursday that it’s pulling negative ads against Cornyn. Instead, starting after Trump’s Tuesday endorsement, the campaign and a super PAC that supports his candidacy began airing separate ads touting Trump’s favor.

Cornyn’s campaign and groups supporting him, however, were outspending the pro-Paxton groups three-to-one, and had reprised an ad they began airing last year noting Cornyn’s support for Trump’s agenda and featuring video clips of Trump praising Cornyn.

“He’s called me a friend, and that’s no surprise because I’ve supported him and his policies, you may have seen a commercial or two to that effect, 99.3% of the time,” said Cornyn in a video posted to X from a recent event.

Cornyn has also long worked to shift the race to focus not on fidelity to the president but on character.

The campaign has leaned heavily into messaging about Paxton’s past, which includes an alleged affair and an impeachment for corruption in which Paxton was acquitted.

If Paxton is the nominee, that will be litigated in a general election against Talarico, where voters will be less “willing to overlook all the corruption, the self-dealing and the scandals,” Cornyn argued at a recent campaign event. “Ken Paxton would hand it to (Democrats) on a silver platter.”

Paxton supporters at his Thursday rally shrugged off the accusations.

“He’s had his flaws, but so have we; we all make mistakes,” said Daniel Vega, 18, adding, “He’s repented, let’s move on.”

A contest where spending reached beyond $100 million

Through this week, Cornyn’s campaign and groups supporting it will have spent roughly $90 million in advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, including more than $20 million since the March 3 primary election.

Paxton’s campaign and the single super PAC have combined to spend roughly $10.5 million on advertising, with roughly $6.1 million since the March 3 primary.

The ads have flooded voters.

“The commercials are leading me against Paxton, that he might be a little crooked,” said Gail Licea, 74, a retired registered nurse, who attended a Cornyn event before Trump’s endorsement. Then again, she said, “I’ve been led to believe that sometimes John Cornyn doesn’t back President Donald Trump, and that concerns me.”

The advertising has been so concentrated, it was unclear how much the late pivot by the groups would affect Tuesday’s outcome, said Wayne Hamilton, former executive director of the Texas Republican Party.

“There is so much noise out there right now,” said Hamilton, who is an adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott and is unaffiliated with either of the Senate candidates. “I don’t know how any one message is going to break through.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged two men with using artificial intelligence to create nude videos and photos of female celebrities under a newly enacted law meant to halt the spread of deepfake pornography.

Cornelius Shannon, 51, and Arturo Hernandez, 20, were both arrested Tuesday for generating sexually explicit AI content that drew millions of views online, according to criminal complaints.

The men — who do not appear to be connected — are among the earliest defendants to face charges under the Take It Down Act, a law signed last year by President Donald Trump that adds stricter penalties for publishing AI-created deepfakes and “revenge porn.” The bill drew bipartisan support, as well as the public backing of first lady Melania Trump.

Under the new law, the men now face up to two years in prison.

Attorneys for Shannon and Hernandez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the men had ”used cutting-edge digital technology to create images that degraded and violated” dozens of women. “This case makes clear that posting deepfake pornography is not a victimless crime,” he added.

Shannon, a resident of New Jersey, published at least 240 albums of AI-generated pornography featuring female politicians, musicians and singers, according to the complaint.

The deepfakes published by Hernandez, of Texas, included both celebrities as well as private women, including recent high school graduates, prosecutors said.

The arrests come as increasingly sophisticated generative AI tools have raised alarm about the online spread of sexually explicit fakes, often depicting minors.

Last month, an Ohio man became the first person convicted under the Take It Down Act after pleading guilty to using AI to generate child sexual abuse material.

In March, two teenage boys received probation for creating explicit AI images of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania.

And in a separate case filed earlier this year, three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images.

The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.