WASHINGTON — The outlooks for the U.S. and global economies have significantly worsened in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty they have created, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

The IMF said that the global economy will grow just 2.8% this year, down from its forecast in January of 3.3%, according to its latest World Economic Outlook. And in 2026, global growth will be 3%, the fund predicts, also below its previous 3.3% estimate.

U.S. economic growth will come in at just 1.8% this year, down sharply from its previous forecast of 2.7% and a full percentage point below its 2024 expansion. The IMF doesn’t expect a U.S. recession, though it has raised its odds of one this year from 25% to 37%.

The forecasts are largely in line with many private-sector economists’ expectations, though some do fear a recession is increasingly likely. Economists at JPMorgan say the chances of a U.S. recession are now 60%. The Federal Reserve has also forecast that growth will weaken this year, to 1.7%.

“We are entering a new era,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, said. “This global economic system that has operated for the last eighty years is being reset.”

The IMF is a 191-nation lending organization that works to promote economic growth and financial stability and to reduce global poverty.

Gourinchas said that the heightened uncertainty around the import taxes led the IMF to take the unusual step of preparing several different scenarios for future growth. Its forecasts were finalized April 4, after the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs on nearly 60 countries along with nearly-universal 10% duties.

Those duties were paused April 9 for 90 days. Gourinchas said the pause didn’t substantially change the IMF’s forecasts because the U.S. and China have imposed such steep tariffs on each other since then.

The uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s next moves will also likely weigh heavily on the U.S. and global economies, the IMF said. Companies may pull back on investment and expansion as they wait to see how the trade policies play out, which can slow growth.

China is also forecast to grow more slowly because of U.S. tariffs. The IMF now expects it will expand 4% this year and next, down roughly half a point from its previous forecasts.

While the U.S. economy will likely suffer a “supply shock,” similar to what hampered during the pandemic and which pushed up inflation in 2021 and 2022, Gourinchas said, China is expected to experience reduced demand as U.S. purchases of its exports fall.

Inflation will likely worsen in the United States, rising to about 3% by the end of this year, while it will be little changed in China, the IMF forecast.

The European Union is forecast to grow more slowly, but the hit from tariffs is not as large, in part because it is facing lower U.S. duties than China. In addition, some of the hit from tariffs will be offset by stronger government spending by Germany.

The economies of the 27 countries that use the euro are forecast to expand 0.8% this year and 1.2% next year, down just 0.2% in both years from the IMF’s January forecast.

Japan’s growth forecast has been marked down to 0.6% this year and next, 0.5% and 0.2% lower than in January, respectively.

BEIJING — China on Monday warned other countries against making trade deals with the United States to China’s detriment.

Governments including those of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have begun negotiations with Washington after President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs against almost all of America’s trading partners on April 2. The import taxes were quickly paused against most countries after markets panicked, but he increased his already steep tariffs against China.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement. “If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures in a reciprocal manner. China is determined and capable of safeguarding its own rights and interests.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month the countries currently negotiating trade deals with the U.S. should “approach China as a group” together with Washington.

The U.S. tariffs against other countries are economic bullying, the ministry said in the statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson.

“Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise cannot win respect,” it added. “For one’s own temporary selfish interests, sacrificing the interests of others in exchange for so-called exemptions is like seeking the skin from a tiger. It will ultimately only fail on both ends and harm others without benefiting themselves.”

China said it’s open to talks with Washington but no meetings have been announced.

Trump made China the target of his steepest tariffs, imposing several rounds of tariffs totaling 145% duties on Chinese imports. Beijing has retaliated with tariffs of 125% on U.S. imports.

The tariffs have spooked exporters and stalled shipments, while threatening to drag on the global economy.

Moments after Daniris Espinal walked into her new apartment in Brooklyn, she prayed. In ensuing nights, she would awaken and touch the walls for reassurance — finding in them a relief that turned to tears over her morning coffee.

Those walls were possible through a federal program that pays rent for some 60,000 families and individuals fleeing homelessness or domestic violence. Espinal was fleeing both.

But the program, Emergency Housing Vouchers, is running out of money — and quickly.

Funding is expected to be used up by the end of next year, according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and obtained by The Associated Press. That would leave tens of thousands across the country scrambling to pay their rent.

It would be among the largest one-time losses of rental assistance in the U.S., analysts say, and the ensuing evictions could churn these people — after several years of rebuilding their lives — back onto the street or back into abusive relationships.

“To have it stop would completely upend all the progress that they’ve made,” said Sonya Acosta, policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which researches housing assistance.

“And then you multiply that by 59,000 households,” she said.

The program, launched in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden as part of the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, was allocated $5 billion to help pull people out of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking.

People from San Francisco to Dallas to Tallahassee, Florida, were enrolled — among them children, seniors and veterans — with the expectation that funding would last until the end of the decade.

But with the ballooning cost of rent, that $5 billion will end far faster.

Last month, HUD sent letters to groups dispersing the money, advising them to “manage your EHV program with the expectation that no additional funding from HUD will be forthcoming.”

The program’s future rests with Congress, which could decide to add money as it crafts the federal budget. But it’s a relatively expensive prospect at a time when Republicans, who control Congress, are dead set on cutting federal spending to afford tax cuts.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who championed the program four years ago, is pushing for another $8 billion infusion.

But the organizations lobbying Republican and Democratic lawmakers to reup the funding told the AP they aren’t optimistic. Four GOP lawmakers who oversee the budget negotiations did not respond to AP requests for comment.

“We’ve been told it’s very much going to be an uphill fight,” said Kim Johnson, the public policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Espinal and her two daughters, aged 4 and 19, are living on one of those vouchers in a three-bedroom apartment with an over $3,000 monthly rent — an amount extremely difficult to cover without the voucher.

Four years ago, Espinal fought her way out of a marriage where her husband controlled her decisions, from seeing her family and friends to leaving the apartment to go shopping.

When she spoke up, her husband said she was wrong, or in the wrong or crazy.

Isolated and in the haze of postpartum depression, she didn’t know what to believe. “Every day, little by little, I started to feel not like myself,” she said. “It felt like my mind wasn’t mine.”

When notices arrived in March 2021 seeking about $12,000 in back rent, it was a shock. Espinal had quit her job at her husband’s urging and he had promised to cover family expenses.

Police reports documenting her husband’s bursts of anger were enough for a judge to give her custody of their daughter in 2022, Espinal said.

But her future was precarious: She was alone, owed thousands of dollars in back rent and had no income to pay it or support her newborn and teenage daughters.

Financial aid to prevent evictions during the pandemic kept Espinal afloat, paying her back rent and keeping the family out of shelters. But it had an expiration date.

Around that time, the Emergency Housing Vouchers program was rolled out, targeting people in Espinal’s situation.

A “leading cause of family homelessness is domestic violence” in New York City, said Gina Cappuccitti, director of housing access and stability services at New Destiny Housing, a nonprofit that has connected 700 domestic violence survivors to the voucher program.

Espinal was one of those 700, and moved into her Brooklyn apartment in 2023.

The relief went beyond finding a secure place to live, she said. “I gained my worth, my sense of peace, and I was able to rebuild my identity.”

Now, she said, she’s putting aside money in case of the worst. Because, “that’s my fear, losing control of everything that I’ve worked so hard for.”

NEW DELHI — U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in India on Monday for a four-day visit as New Delhi looks to avoid U.S. tariffs, negotiate a bilateral trade deal with Washington and strengthen ties with the Trump administration.

Vance will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the first day of his largely personal visit. The two leaders are expected to hold discussions on bilateral ties outlined in February when Modi met President Donald Trump in Washington.

The U.S. is India’s largest trading partner and the two countries are now holding negotiations aiming to seal a bilateral trade agreement this year.

They have set an ambitious target of more than doubling their bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. If achieved, the trade deal could significantly enhance economic ties between the two countries and potentially strengthen diplomatic ties as well.

Vance’s first visit to New Delhi comes amid the backdrop of Trump’s now-paused tariff program against most countries, including India. It also coincides with a rapidly intensifying trade war between Washington and Beijing, which is New Delhi’s main rival in the region.

Modi and Vance are expected to “review the progress in bilateral relations” and “exchange views on regional and global developments of mutual interest,” India’s Foreign Ministry said last week.

“We are very positive that the visit will give a further boost to our bilateral ties,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

Vance was greeted with an Indian classical dance performance after he arrived at New Delhi’s Palam airport on Monday, following his visit to Rome, where he met Pope Francis on Easter Sunday. He is accompanied by his wife, Usha Vance, a practicing Hindu whose parents are from India, along with their children and officials from the U.S. administration.

The couple and their three young children visited the Akshardham Hindu temple in New Delhi after their arrival and are expected to tour the iconic Taj Mahal monument and the 12th-century Amer Fort — a UNESCO world heritage site — during their trip.

India is a close partner of the U.S. and an important strategic ally in combating the rising influence of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

It is also part of the Quad, which is comprised of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia and is seen as a counterbalance to China’s expansion in the region. Trump is expected to attend a summit of Quad leaders in India later this year.

Modi established a good working relationship with Trump during his first term in office and the two leaders are likely to further boost cooperation between their countries.

He was among the first leaders to visit the U.S. and hold talks with Trump after he returned to the White House. During his visit, Modi hailed a “mega partnership” with the U.S., and kickstarted a negotiation process to minimize the possible fallout of Trump’s tariffs.

The two leaders also said they planned to grow their defense partnership, with India signaling compliance with the Trump administration’s demands, saying it will purchase more oil, energy and defense equipment from the U.S.

Regardless, Trump targeted India with a 26% levy, part of which has since been paused. However, he has continued to call India a “tariff abuser” and “tariff king.”

The trade negotiations are especially urgent for New Delhi as it could be hit hard by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, particularly in the agriculture, processed food, auto components, high-end machinery, medical equipment and jewelry sectors.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In her 28 years working for the federal government, Shea Giagnorio provided day care for the children of U.S. soldiers, training for employees and oversight for safety net programs.

Public service took her from Germany to Alaska to Kansas City, Missouri, where she moved last year for a long-sought promotion.

But when she reported to a downtown federal building for work one day last month, her access card did not work. After a co-worker let her into the building, she checked her email: Her entire office had been let go in the latest mass firing ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The 46-year-old single mom has canceled her apartment lease, is selling her new furniture and may have to pull her daughter of college. She wonders what will happen to the at-risk populations her team helped serve at the Administration for Children and Families, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Not only me, but all these peoples’ lives are turned upside down,” Giagnorio said.

The impact of the cuts by Trump appointees and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can be found everywhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area, which has long been a major hub for federal agencies about 1,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. Money once promised to the region for public health, environmental, diversity, food aid and an array of other programs has been axed, and thousands of local jobs are in jeopardy.

With nearly 30,000 workers, the federal government is the largest employer in the region. One longtime Kansas City economic researcher said he believes the region could lose 6,000 good-paying federal jobs, which in turn would wipe out thousands of others in service industries.

An IRS worker said thousands of her coworkers fear they will lose their jobs, even as they put in overtime processing tax refunds in a building so crowded that they struggle to find desks. Under pressure, hundreds more agreed this week to retire early or take a buyout.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant revocation disrupted a historically Black neighborhood’s plan to expand its program growing fresh produce in a food desert. A nearby pantry reduced its monthly grocery allotment for those in need after federal cuts left food banks shorthanded.

The withdrawal of federal funding for new lab equipment and vaccines means the city may be less prepared for the next pandemic.

A landlord may have to sell an office building for a loss after his federal tenants were among several that abruptly canceled local leases, adding a glut of real estate to the market.

And the city’s Tesla showroom has become a spot of weekly protest. Activists are seeking to have it closed by pushing a referendum intended to drive Musk’s electric car company out of Missouri.

The nation’s health department is slashing its full-time national workforce from 82,000 to 62,000. Among them were Giagnorio and her colleagues in her agency’s 10 regional offices around the country that helped deliver services through programs such as Head Start and emergency assistance for low-income families.

“The poor will become even more poor now,” Giagnorio said. “If we’re taking away social safety nets, what is the end result? If we’re not helping homeless people anymore, will they freeze to death in the winter? Is that what we want?”

Giagnorio, who spent most of her career as a U.S. Department of Defense civilian employee at bases in Germany and Alaska, is on paid leave until her June 2 termination. She wasted no time looking for another position after being locked out of her office, visiting a job fair hours later that Kansas City hosted for displaced federal workers.

But she doubts she will be able to find a public sector salary anywhere near the $117,000 she made and doesn’t know how her skills translate to the private sector. She worries about losing the health insurance that covers her family and having to pull her daughter out of Maastricht University in the Netherlands after her first year.

For now, she can’t get any answers from the agency to basic questions about her financial future. Does she still qualify for an early retirement buyout offer that had been extended? How much would she receive and when?

The days leading up to the April 15 tax filing deadline were always going to be busy for workers at the IRS processing center near Union Station, but this year, they were particularly stressful.

The IRS is considering a downsizing that could cut as many as 20,000 employees, or 25% of its workforce, in the coming weeks. The roughly 6,000 employees in Kansas City faced agonizing choices: decide whether to accept resignation or early retirement offers by April 14 or risk losing their jobs later.

“It’s a kick in the stomach to people that are doing everything they can to meet what’s required of them,” said Shannon Ellis, a longtime IRS customer service representative and president of the union representing local workers.

By Thursday, at least 238 Kansas City workers had taken the buyout offers and were expected to leave the agency in coming weeks. Ellis noted many of those same workers had been told they were essential and required to work overtime during tax season, some seven days per week.

Their building has been overcrowded since the IRS ordered remote employees back to the office in March. Workers sometimes struggle to find open desks. Some have to bring their own ink pens and share date stamps to perform basic job functions after budget cuts have depleted supplies.

Ellis said IRS workers share the public’s disdain for taxes but understand that collecting them is necessary to support important programs like Social Security. She said she’s decided to take a “roll of the dice” and stay in her job, spurning an early retirement offer.

“I love my job,” she said. “I’m not going to let the bully force me out.”

Urban farmer Rosie Warren grew 2,500 pounds of fruits and vegetables last year in community gardens to help feed the Ivanhoe neighborhood, where many Black families were concentrated under housing segregation policies of much of the 20th century.

Warren harvested greens, potatoes and watermelons as part of an effort to address food insecurity and health concerns in a neighborhood challenged by blight, crime and poverty. She was ecstatic last fall when the USDA awarded the neighborhood council a three-year, $130,000 grant to expand the gardens and farmers’ market serving the area.

Plans called for hiring an assistant to help Warren with growing more food and to add another market day aimed at serving more low-income older adults, mothers and children.

In February, the council received a notice terminating the grant. The USDA had determined the award “no longer effectuates agency priorities regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and activities.”

On a recent morning, Warren took a break from preparing the soil for planting to ponder the USDA’s decision.

“What do you do if you don’t support providing access to food to people who don’t have it? Wouldn’t this make your job easier?” she said. “I think it’s absurd. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Other food aid in the neighborhood has taken a hit at a time when demand is rising.

At the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, hundreds of low-income families are getting fewer groceries in their monthly pickups after USDA halted $500 million worth of deliveries to food banks. That included a planned order for 41,000 cases of meat, dairy and other commodities to a bank serving Kansas City.

“It just means giving families less food,” said pantry director Christopher Lowrance, who said he’s able to provide less chicken and other meat products. “It’s as simple as that.”

The Kansas City Health Department’s laboratory is badly in need of an upgrade, with equipment dating to when the building opened in the 1990s.

One basement space is water damaged and rarely used. Another has equipment that is so inadequate that the city has to ship samples to a state laboratory 150 miles away, causing inefficiencies, agonizing waits for results and delayed response times.

Kansas City’s health director, Dr. Marvia Jones, made it a top priority to modernize the labs this year after studying their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her agency planned to use federal funding to purchase new microscopes and testing equipment.

“That early disease detection allows you to do more rapid intervention, more rapid treatment, more rapid isolation,” she said.

But the funding for lab upgrades was abruptly eliminated last month as part of the Trump administration’s $11.4 billion cancellation of federal grants to states for public health. That news “crushed” the department’s carefully laid plans, Jones said.

Jones said the cuts, $3 million and counting for her department, mean the city will also have fewer vaccines to administer to low-income residents.

“It would be a sad shame for us to be in a worse position than we were before the pandemic,” she said. “We had processed all of our lessons learned, and then now this happens.”

Amir Minoofar was surprised when two federal agencies notified him that they planned to vacate the office building he’s owned for a decade in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City.

Minoofar said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had recently agreed to extend its lease until 2029. The National Labor Relations Board, meanwhile, was paying month to month.

Minoofar said the government initially notified him the agencies would be out of the building in August, part of a DOGE-led blitz of hundreds of lease cancellations that has been marked by errors and subsequent reversals.

In the Kansas City metropolitan area, the government is moving to cancel 10 leases totaling 219,000 square feet that cost more than $4 million in annual rent, according to DOGE’s online “Wall of Receipts.”

Minoofar said he was more recently told the agencies will likely have to stay past August and their departure date is now unclear. He said he may have to sell the building, which has an appraised value of $2.9 million, and take a loss because of the difficult office market.

But he said he understands why the government would unload the space, which he said has often been sparsely used since the rise of telework during the pandemic.

“Businesswise, it makes sense for government to cut costs,” he said. “A lot of people are going to be unhappy but it’s a huge gigantic family and they need to take care of it. You cannot keep everybody happy.”

With liberal anger growing at Musk’s role in the government, protesters have gathered Saturdays outside his Tesla dealership in Kansas City to denounce the cuts.

State records show Tesla sales there have dropped amid calls for a boycott. Now, enough voter anger could even force the business to close.

Organizers of a newly launched “Unplug Musk” initiative are seeking to use democracy to strike at the world’s richest man by changing state law to ban car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers.

They say they plan to soon begin gathering the 111,000 signatures of registered voters that they would need to put the change on the statewide ballot in November 2026. If approved by voters, it would force the closure of the Tesla showrooms in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Missouri’s governor, Republican Mike Kehoe, a former auto dealer himself, sponsored a 2014 bill when he was a state senator aimed at requiring manufacturers like Tesla to sell through local dealers. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House after Tesla lobbied against it. The referendum revives that plan.

“There’s not a soul in this country who’s against trying to weed out government inefficiency but just taking a chain saw to people’s lives and their health care is a ridiculous way to achieve that. And it is going to cause some devastating impacts,” said organizer Brad Ketcher, a prominent Democrat and lawyer who helped draft the state’s 2022 marijuana legalization referendum.

An HHS spokesperson said the agency’s downsizing, including cutting jobs and consolidating divisions, would save money and make the organization more efficient. As for the $11.4 billion in grant funding cuts, the spokesperson said, “HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

The IRS has offered a similar rationale for its downsizing, saying it is making process improvements that will ultimately more efficiently serve the public.

Musk said last year that Trump’s budget cuts would cause a “temporary hardship” that would soon put the economy on stronger footing.

One local economic researcher said it remained unclear just how deep that hardship will be in Kansas City, including whether it will just slow growth or cause population losses.

“It’s a big burden that’s being placed on a narrow group of people,” said Frank Lenk, director of the Office of Economic Development at the Mid-America Regional Council, a nonprofit of city and county governments in the Kansas City region. “It will definitely take some of the steam out of the local economy.”

Trump has credited DOGE with helping end “the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars,” saving billions to help improve the nation’s finances.

The White House didn’t respond to questions about Kansas City. But Trump said recently he would invite the Kansas City Chiefs to the White House to make up for a 2020 Super Bowl victory celebration that was canceled during the pandemic.

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Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. climbed to its highest level in eight weeks, a setback for home shoppers in the midst of the spring homebuying season.

The rate rose to 6.83% from 6.62% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.1%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose. The average rate increased to 6.03% from 5.82% last week. It’s still down from 6.39% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including global demand for U.S. Treasurys, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions and bond market investors’ expectations for future inflation.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage loosely follows moves in the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The yield, which had mostly fallen this year after climbing to around 4.8% in mid-January, spiked last week to 4.5% amid a sell-off in government bonds triggered by investor anxiety over the potential fallout from the Trump administration’s escalating tariff war.

The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.32% in midday trading Thursday.

WASHINGTON — U.S. applications for jobless benefits fell again last week as the labor market continues to hold up despite fears of a tariff-induced recession.

Jobless claim applications fell by 9,000 to 215,000 for the week ending April 12, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s well below the 225,000 new applications analysts forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have mostly stayed between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years.

The four-week average of applications, which can soften some of the week-to-week swings, fell by 2,500 to 220,750.

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of April 5 jumped by 41,000 to 1.89 million.

NEW YORK — Spotify appeared to be experiencing a widespread technical issues Wednesday morning — with tens of thousands of users reporting problems with the popular music and audio streamer.

As of around 10 a.m. ET, Downdetector showed more than 48,000 outage reports for Spotify worldwide. Many of those users reported having problems loading the app or playing songs.

“We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” Spotify’s status account wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Wednesday morning.

The company did not immediately provide further information about what was causing the outage.

Spotify boasts having a total of more than 675 million users today, including 263 million subscribers across over 180 markets worldwide.

WASHINGTON — At first, the bar association for immigration attorneys began receiving inquiries from a couple students a day. These were foreigners studying in the U.S., and they’d discovered in early April their legal status had been terminated with little notice. To their knowledge, none of the students had committed a deportable offense.

In recent days, the calls have begun flooding in. Hundreds of students have been calling to say they have lost legal status, seeking advice on what to do next.

“We thought it was going to be something that was unusual,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration attorney who is getting about six calls a day from panicked international students. “But it seems now like it’s coming pretty fast and furious.”

The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.

At least 600 students at more than 90 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. Advocacy groups collecting reports from colleges say hundreds more students could be caught up in the crackdown.

Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and their ability to pay tuition often factors into whether they will be admitted to American schools. Often, they pay full price.

Many of the students losing their legal status are from India and China, which together account for more than half the international students at American colleges. But the terminations have not been limited to those from any one part of the world, lawyers said.

Four students from two Michigan universities are suing Trump administration officials after their F-1 student status was terminated last week. Their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramis Wadood, said the students never received a clear reason why.

“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” he said.

The students were informed of the terminations by their universities via email, which came as a shock, Wadood said. The reason given was that there was a “criminal records check and/or that their visa was revoked,” Wadood said, but none of them were charged or convicted of crimes. Some had either speeding or parking tickets, but one didn’t have any, he said. Only one of the students had known their entry visa was revoked, Wadood said.

Students have filed similar lawsuits in several other states, arguing they were denied due process.

In New Hampshire, a federal judge last week granted a temporary restraining order to restore the status of a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, Xiaotian Liu, while he challenges the revocation of his visa.

At many colleges, officials learned the legal immigration status of some international students had been terminated when staff checked a database managed by the Department of Homeland Security. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school.

The system to track enrollment and movements of international students came under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after 9/11, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. She said recent developments have left students fearful of how quickly they can be on the wrong side of enforcement.

“You don’t need more than a small number to create fear,” Aw said. “There’s no clarity of what are the reasons and how far the reach of this is.”

Her group says as many as 1,300 students have lost visas or had their status terminated, based on reports from colleges.

The Department of Homeland Security and State Department did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Foreigners who are subject to removal proceedings are usually sent a notice to appear in immigration court on a certain date, but lawyers say affected students have not received any notices, leaving them unsure of next steps to take.

Some schools have told students to leave the country to avoid the risk of being detained or deported. But some students have appealed the terminations and stayed in the United States while those are processed.

Still others caught in legal limbo aren’t students at all. They had remained in the U.S. post-graduation on “optional practical training,” a one-year period — or up to three for science and technology graduates — that allows employment in the U.S. after completing an academic degree. During that time, a graduate works in their field and waits to receive their H-1B or other employment visas if they wish to keep working in the U.S.

Around 242,000 foreigners in the U.S. are employed through this “optional practical training.” About 500,000 are pursuing graduate degrees, and another 342,000 are undergraduate students.

Among the students who have filed lawsuits is a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who is supposed to graduate on May 5, with a job offer to join the faculty. His attorney Charles Kuck said the student was likely targeted for termination because of an unpaid traffic fine from when the student lent his car to a friend. Ultimately, the violation was dismissed.

“We have case after case after case exactly like that, where there is no underlying crime,” said Kuck, who is representing 17 students in the federal lawsuit. He said his law firm has heard from hundreds of students.

“These are kids who now, under the Trump administration, realize their position is fragile,” he said. “They’ve preyed on a very vulnerable population. These kids aren’t hiding. They’re in school.”

Some international students have been adapting their daily routines.

A Ph.D. student from China at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said she has begun carrying around her passport and immigration paperwork at the advice of the university’s international student office. The student, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities, said she has been distressed to see the terminations even for students like her without criminal records.

“That is the most scary part because you don’t know whether you’re going to be the next person,” she said. ___

Seminera reported from Raleigh, N.C., and Keller reported from Albuquerque, N.M.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

JUNEAU, Alaska — After President Donald Trump returned to office, Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy declared “happy days are here again.” He likened Trump’s friendly approach to energy development as “Christmas every day” for a state whose fortunes rise or fall with oil.

But the nearly three months since Trump’s inauguration have been tumultuous, roiling Alaska’s substantial federal workforce and raising questions about the reliability of federal funding.

And his on-again, off-again tariffs, and a related drop in oil prices, have compounded the uncertainty for Alaska lawmakers, who each year must craft a state budget based on volatile oil prices. The legislative session is set to end in mid-May, well before Trump’s recently announced pause on higher tariffs for many countries expires.

The whiplash has worsened long-standing tension over how much money should go toward the yearly oil-wealth fund check most Alaska residents receive as opposed to education or other needs. Lawmakers have shown scant interest in raising taxes and have blown through billions in savings plugging recurring budget deficits dating back more than a decade.

“We’re all in a pickle,” said House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an independent who leads a coalition of Democrats, independents and two Republicans.

Alaska is no stranger to the boom-bust cycle of oil. The government spends more freely on infrastructure and other projects when prices are high and shutters facilities or slashes costs when they are low. Lawmakers base spending off twice-a-year revenue outlooks pegged to oil price and production forecasts.

A year ago, North Slope oil was around $90 a barrel. It settled in the low-to-mid-$70 range beginning last fall and hit as low as $65 this week before Trump announced the 90-day tariff pause.

At current prices, each dollar change in oil equates to about $35 million to $40 million in state revenue, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division. The March revenue forecast was based on $68-a-barrel oil for the upcoming budget year, down $2 from a December forecast.

Oil prices change frequently and plans by OPEC+ members to add more oil to the market could cause a price softening, said Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner, who noted the governor is focused on Trump’s executive order supporting increased oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska, and that it is “great to have an administration that supports Alaska’s responsible resource development.”

Some state political leaders hope Trump’s threatened tariffs could prompt countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to invest in or commit to buying gas from a proposed massive liquefied natural gas project in Alaska. The project, repeatedly touted by Trump, has struggled for years to gain traction amid cost concerns, competition from other projects and questions about its economic feasibility.

Trump carried Alaska in November’s election.

Besides oil, Alaska relies heavily on earnings from its nest-egg oil-wealth investment fund. The fund’s principal is protected, but its earnings can be spent. Lawmakers cap withdrawals based on a percentage of the fund’s average market value over a five-year period. The yearly dividend paid to residents has traditionally come from earnings, but since lawmakers also began using earnings for state services in 2018, there has been friction over how much should go toward each.

Dunleavy proposed a roughly $3,800 dividend per resident, which would cost $2.5 billion — two-thirds of this year’s earnings withdrawal — and result in a deficit he suggested covering by tapping the state’s diminished savings. That amount hews to a formula abandoned years ago by lawmakers as unaffordable.

The proposal is a nonstarter with legislative leaders, who are hearing pleas for more funding for K-12 schools squeezed by years of inflation and energy and health care costs. Education advocates also want the state to tackle a maintenance backlog that they say has created unsafe learning environments for students, including mold and structural issues at some schools.

Last year, residents received $1,702, a combined dividend and energy relief payment. The dividend the past five years has been as low as $992 in 2020 and as high as $3,284, another combined dividend and energy relief check.

House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, a Republican, said politicians should not be “even stoking the fantasy” of a dividend as large as Dunleavy proposed.

“We cannot pay an unsustainable dividend, and that dividend distorts the fiscal reality that we’re facing,” he said. “Do we need new revenue, or do we need to get a handle on the size of the dividend we’re paying and honestly figure out how we’re going to prioritize that?”

Some members of the bipartisan-led Senate have urged changes to oil taxes to raise revenue, but overall support has been limited.