The lawsuit, filed in San Miguel County District Court on Feb. 24 by lawyers for TSG Ski and Golf LLC, accuses former Mountain Village mayor Martinique Prohaska, former Telluride Town Council member Meehan Fee, and Mountain Village town manager Paul Wisor of using their positions to try to “harass and pressure” the resort into selling a majority share. It also alleges the three officials did so while offering incentives to resort ownership worth “millions of dollars of economic value,” thereby violating municipal ethics codes.

As a result of these actions, the lawsuit alleges Telluride Ski and Golf, known locally as Telski, has suffered damages “reasonably estimated at several million dollars.” Resort spokesperson Nancy Clark declined to comment Friday due to the ongoing litigation.

Reached by phone, Prohaska and Fee declined to comment. Wisor was not immediately available.

The allegations in question date back to December, when the Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association walked off the job after months of negotiations with Telski over a new union contract. The strike started Dec. 27, during the height of holiday tourism, and lasted 13 days.

Telluride Ski Resort closed for the majority of that time, as it was not able to operate without patrollers who perform avalanche mitigation and other duties to ensure the safety of the mountain, as well as respond to emergencies involving skiers.

In an interview earlier this year, Prohaska told The Denver Post that she and Fee traveled to California on Dec. 27 to meet with Horning and discuss the patroller strike in hopes of finding a resolution not just immediately, but also long-term. The women spoke with Horning and some of his associates face-to-face about the resort, its challenges and alternative ownership models for the ski area, Prohaska, then mayor of Mountain Village, said in an interview on Jan. 14.

On Dec. 29, Prohaska and Fee presented a purchase offer intended to transfer a 51% stake of the resort into the hands of an entity called the Telluride Ski Resort Fund. The purchase price was listed at $127.5 million.

In her interview, Prohaska said she and Fee were acting on their own accord as private citizens — not elected officials. However, the offer suggests that if a sale were finalized, the buyer would direct both towns “to take commercially reasonable efforts to broker a cessation to the ski patrol strike,” in addition to addressing municipal projects such as workforce housing, future water needs, infrastructure upgrades and generating more tourism to the area, according to documents reviewed by The Post.

In its lawsuit, Telski alleges that Prohaska and Fee “represented that they had the power to control a labor strike, and other resources, that prevented the resort from being open and operational from December 27, 2025, through January 7, 2026.” It also alleges Wisor was instrumental in coordinating the deal and drafting the contract.

Prohaska resigned in mid-January, and the towns of Mountain Village and Telluride are now investigating the matter. Fee originally said she would temporarily step back from her duties as an elected official during the investigation, but has since announced she will resign after the inquiry is concluded.

Wisor is currently on paid administrative leave after disclosing that he connected the women with prospective investors who were interested in buying into the resort. (Wisor made that disclosure during an executive session of the Mountain Village Town Council, a recording of which was made public after the council didn’t cut the YouTube streaming feed.)

In addition to claims for civil conspiracy and tortious interference with prospective business relations related to the strike, Telski alleges the defendants engaged in intentional interference with a contract when they suggested, in their purchase offer, that the towns would not increase the price of water that the resort uses to make snow should a sale go through.

Telski’s lawsuit is the latest conflict to come from years-long tension between resort owner Horning and the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village. In recent years, the parties have sparred over land usage for a summer concert series in Mountain Village, how to pay for upgrades to the area’s signature gondola transportation system, and affordable housing projects.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — American employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs last month, a sign that the labor market remains under strain. The unemployment rate blipped up to 4.4%.

Hiring deteriorated from January, when companies, nonprofits and government agencies added a healthy 126,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. Economists had expected 60,000 new jobs in February.

Revisions also cut 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls.

The surprisingly weak employment picture in February adds to the economic uncertainty over the war with Iran, which has caused oil prices to surge and saddled business and consumers with unforeseen costs.

“The job market is struggling in the face of so many headwinds,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “Companies are going to be even more reluctant to hire this spring until the war ends and they can see consumers still spending. It’s a tense time for the U.S. economy.”

The job market had been expected to rebound this year from a lackluster 2025 when it was buffeted by President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates. In 2025, employers added just 15,000 jobs a month. Hopes for a 2026 rebound rose after January hiring came in above expectations.

“Just when it looked like the labor market was stabilizing, this report delivers a knock-down blow to that view,” said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economics at Fitch Ratings. ”It’s bad news whichever way you look at it.”

The job losses were widespread.

Construction companies cut 11,000 jobs last month, which likely reflects frigid weather. And healthcare firms shed 28,000 jobs after a four-week strike by more than 30,000 nurses and other front-line workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii. Health care has been one of the job market’s strong points.

Factories cut 12,000 jobs and have now lost jobs for 14 of the last 15 months. Restaurants and bars lost nearly 30,000 jobs. Administrative and support services firms cut nearly 19,000 jobs and courier and messenger services almost 17,000.

Financial firms added 10,000 jobs, though job cuts continue to hit that sector as well this year.

Average hourly wages rose 0.4% from January and 3.8% from a year earlier.

The outlook for the job market – and the entire economy – is clouded by the war with Iran.

The combination of weak hiring and increasing inflationary pressures arising from the war creates a nightmare for the Federal Reserve, which must decide whether to cut interest rates to help the job market or hold off to help keep a lid on prices. “This is probably the worst scenario for monetary policy,″ said Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James.

Employers were reluctant to hire last year because of uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs – and the unpredictable way he rolled them out.

The impact of Trump’s aggressive trade policies may recede in 2026. His import taxes became smaller and less erratic after he reached a trade truce last year with China and deals with leading U.S. trade partners such as Japan and the European Union. A lot of businesses have also learned how to offset the costs of the tariffs, often by passing them along to customers via higher prices.

Brian Bethune, an economist at Boston College, said that Trump’s 2025 tariffs were a shock to companies’ business plans. Now, just as they’ve adjusted to them, “Guess what! All of a sudden their 2026 business plans are upended by an increase in fuel costs’’ caused by the war with Iran.

Jay Foreman, CEO of the toy company Basic Fun, expects to get some relief from Trump’s tariffs after the Supreme Court last month struck down the biggest ones and potentially created a path for importers to get refunds for the levies they paid. The refunds would allow Foreman to invest more in his Boca Raton, Florida, company, which makes Lincoln Logs and Care Bears. He can also hand out more generous raises to employees and hire new people.

“We are expecting a record year,’’ he said.

Yet under new tariffs sought by Trump, Foreman estimates that Basic Fun’s tariff bill will more than double this year to $15 million. That is partly because the firm will be paying for a full year of Trump tariffs in 2026. Tariffs last year were not rolled out until spring or later.

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Anne D’Innocenzio reported from New York.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has formally nominated Kevin Warsh, a former top Federal Reserve official, to be the next Fed chair when Jerome Powell’s term ends in two months.

Warsh’s nomination, which was initially announced Jan. 30, was forwarded to the Senate Wednesday, where it will be taken up by the Senate Banking Committee.

Yet the nomination could stall there. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the committee, has said he will oppose confirming Warsh until a criminal investigation into Powell is resolved. Powell revealed Jan. 11 that the Justice Department had subpoenaed the Fed over Powell’s Senate testimony last June about the central bank’s $2.5 billion building renovation project.

Tillis said last month that the committee could hold a hearing about Warsh’s nomination, but he would vote to block confirmation. If all Democrats on the committee voted against Warsh as well, the nomination wouldn’t pass out of the committee to the full Senate.

Warsh has harshly criticized the Fed’s policies in recent years, including its low interest rate policies coming out of the pandemic, which he says contributed to the United States’ largest inflation spike in four decades in 2021-2022.

Yet Warsh now has echoed President Donald Trump’s demands for lower rates. Warsh says that productivity gains from artificial intelligence will help the economy grow more quickly without spurring inflation, enabling the Fed to reduce borrowing costs. Many Fed officials, however, disagree that AI’s development will support rate cuts.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Iran war has effectively halted oil tanker movement in the key Strait of Hormuz. But it’s also disrupting the wider global supply chain beyond oil, affecting everything from pharmaceuticals from India, semiconductors from Asia and oil-derived products like fertilizers that come from the Middle East.

Cargo ships are stuck in the Gulf or making a much longer detour around the southern tip of Africa. Planes carrying air cargo out of the Middle East are grounded. And the longer the war drags on, the more likely that there will be shortages and price increases on a wide range of goods.

“This is really causing some major impacts within the global supply chain,” said Patrick Penfield, professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University. “As this conflict keeps progressing, you’ll start to see some shortages, you’ll see some major price increases.”

Stalled at sea

Clarksons Research, which tracks shipping data, estimates that about 3,200 ships, or about 4% of global ship tonnage, are idle inside the Persian Gulf, but that includes about 1,231 that likely only operate within the Gulf. About 500 ships, or 1% of global tonnage, are currently “waiting” outside the Gulf in ports off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the firm.

While those may seem like small percentages, they have a domino effect that will lead to congestion elsewhere, said Michael Goldman, general manager North America of CARU Containers.

“The supply chain is kind of like a long train with many cars and each car represents, let’s say, a port in the world. Well, if one car gets derailed, it can very often have a domino effect to many other cars behind it or in front of it,” he said. “So although we only have a small number of ports affected by this military action, it can really have a big effect on the total supply chain.”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump pitched a plan aimed at getting oil and trade moving again through the Strait.

Trump said on social media he ordered the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. to provide political risk insurance for tankers carrying oil and other goods through the Persian Gulf “at a very reasonable price.”

Political risk insurance is a type of coverage intended to protect firms against financial losses caused by unstable political conditions, government actions, or violence. Marine insurers had been canceling or raising rates for insurance in the region.

He said that, if necessary, the U.S. Navy would escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy has at least eight destroyers and three, smaller, littoral combat ships in the region. These ships have previously been used to escort merchant shipping in the region and in the Red Sea.

Computer chips, pharmaceuticals and other goods face delays

A wide range of products are shipped through the Mideast region. Along with about 20% of the worlds oil that comes from the region, products made with natural gas such as petrochemical feedstock — used to make plastic and rubber — and nitrogen fertilizer come from the Middle East. Pharmaceuticals exported from India and semiconductors and batteries exported from Asia to the rest of the world are all shipped through the region and could face delays.

Limited routes, higher costs

In addition to constraints on the Strait of Hormuz, the instability has put a damper on transit in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which had just begun to see more transit after years of instability due to Houthi attacks on ships in the region. Shipping company Maersk had resumed transit in the Suez Canal and Red Sea but said Sunday it was rerouting that traffic around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, a move other companies have been making to avoid the volatile region.

That journey adds 10 to 14 days to the trip and about $1 million extra in fuel per ship, Syracuse’ Penfield estimates.

With higher fuel prices, longer routes and higher risk in the region, shippers have begun adding fuel and “war risk” or “emergency conflict” surcharges to what they’re charging clients, leading to higher costs all around, he said.

Air cargo under pressure

Air cargo has also been constrained. Closed airspace and airports in countries including UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have stranded tens of thousands of people – and cargo.

Each of the three major Middle Eastern airlines — Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways — operate fleets of cargo aircraft, and the airlines also transport goods in the belly of their passenger planes.

The amount of goods that travels through the air typically accounts for less than 1% of all freight moving globally, but the products that do travel by air tend to be perishable or high-value goods like pharmaceuticals, electronics and produce that together account for about 35% of the world trade value, Boeing estimated in its World Air Cargo Forecast.

The longer these airports in the Middle East remain closed the greater the potential disruption to the economy if these sensitive shipments don’t arrive or have to be rerouted around the conflict. Even before the war in Iran began over the weekend, air freight and airlines were already contending with closed airspace over Ukraine and Russia.

Flights through these Middle Eastern airport hubs are a key route for passengers and cargo from India. Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, said it’s going to be hard to get to India now, and passengers may have to switch to different routes that fly west across Asia. Airlines may have to resort to longer flights, and in some case even add fuel stops on some routes.

“Remember, there’s a lot of pharmaceutical products that are made in India and then exported to different countries around the world. If that’s disrupted, that has a huge, huge, huge impact,” Harteveldt said.

Air cargo costs are expected to rise due to reduced capacity, increased demand, and surcharges.

Maersk said in an operational update Tuesday that it expects air freight rates to rise due to capacity constraints.

“Airlines are also introducing or reviewing the possibility of introducing war risk surcharges on shipments routed through or near the impacted regions,” Maersk said in a statement. “There may also be added costs linked to jet fuel which in turn can push up costs.”

An industry that ‘runs on disruption’

Despite the supply chain upheaval, however, Michael Goldman, general manager North America of CARU Containers, said the industry will adjust. Over the past few years it has faced other major disruptions like COVID supply shortages and other recent Mideast conflicts and has become more nimble.

“The specific situation that’s happening is pretty unprecedented, so it’s very unique from that perspective,” he said. “(But) for the last few years the industry just kind of runs on disruption. So in terms of our industry having disruption, that is nothing new. That’s more of the same.”

Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska and Fatima Hussein and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

That was the year the Thornton Shopping Center first sprouted on a 15-acre parcel at the corner of East 88th Avenue and Washington Street. It was a marvel of post-war suburban America — complete with a Woolworth’s and Miller’s Market.

But time took its toll, rendering the strip mall a crumbling, blighted mess as the city exploded from fewer than 10,000 people then to nearly 150,000 today. The city acquired the property through eminent domain two years ago and tore it down to its asphalt origins.

Now Thornton wants to bring the site back to its former glory — but with a decidedly non-1950s twist.

“The overwhelming consensus in the community is that we need to have a gathering space,” said Thornton City Councilman Justin Martinez, who represents a southern chunk of the city where the former shopping center sits. “It’s an opportunity to create a core development that can live for 100 years, or longer.”

Thornton is not the first metro Denver city to face the challenge of injecting life into a commercial area long past its due date. Lakewood did it 25 years ago, when it replaced the dying Villa Italia mall with the Belmar Shopping District, and Centennial followed suit nearly a decade later when it redeveloped the enclosed Southglenn Mall into the open-air Streets at Southglenn.

Neighboring Westminster continues to build out its downtown project — with new shops, eateries and apartments on a 102-acre site that was once home to the Westminster Mall, which was demolished in 2011.

Thornton’s project has far less room in which to operate compared to those other cities, but neighbors have already weighed in on what they’d like to see — and not see: No car washes, gas stations, fast-food joints, sprawling parking lots or big box retailers.

Instead, residents and city officials envision smaller shops, sit-down restaurants or a food hall. A community garden, plazas and rooftop seating are also among the redevelopment options being pitched. New housing will likely be a major component of the revamped site.

“Retail has changed since the 1950s, so creating a sense of place is the main point,” said Adam Krueger, Thornton’s economic development director. “We want to work with residents hand-in-hand to see what their vision is for that site.”

To that end, the city organized a community meeting last month where residents were asked for overhaul ideas. The feedback included requests for a post office (to replace one that was there), a place to host outdoor movie nights and even an endpoint for a high school marching band parade.

The city solicited potential names for the project, which it will hand over to the council to make a final choice. It plans to issue a formal solicitation this year to test the appetite among developers to take on the challenge of breathing new life into the defunct shopping center.

“We want to get a developer to take this site and build the whole thing out according to their vision and our vision,” Krueger said. “It’s not about getting a big box retailer — there is a better fit with smaller-scale retail and that mixed-use product.”

Examples of successful metro Denver redevelopments Thornton is eyeing as inspiration include Belmar in Lakewood, Olde Town Arvada, Stanley Marketplace in Aurora and McGregor Square near Coors Field.

Krueger hopes to see construction at the site starting sometime in early 2028. But first, there is the small matter of clean-up at the site.

Workers last month began the process of digging up soils contaminated with spilled dry-cleaning chemicals — namely perchloroethylene — that have migrated over the decades into groundwater, posing potential health problems for adjacent neighborhoods. The state health department long ago ordered their cleanup.

“A lot of the soil in there is hazardous, and it’s gotta go,” Chad Howell, the redevelopment administrator for Thornton, told community members at last month’s meeting.

The city expects to complete the remediation work by the summer.

Kate Lucas, a planner with the EPA’s Technical Assistance to Brownfields initiative, has been helping the city with the Thornton Shopping Center redevelopment effort.

“A brownfield is any property with the presence, or perceived presence, of contamination that prevents it from being used for its maximum potential — or used at all,” she said. “I think that this site has been emotionally challenging to the community for the past 20 years.”

The TAB program uses federal grants to help communities tackle the challenge of assessing, cleaning up and preparing brownfield sites for redevelopment. And the former Thornton Shopping Center needed a lift following more than two decades of code violations, health orders, lawsuits and neighbor complaints.

The city finally forced the former owner’s hand by condemning the property and acquiring it under court order in 2024 for about $3.3 million.

Because the Thornton Shopping Center property is in the middle of a long-established neighborhood with plenty of potential customers, Lucas said it has a good chance to thrive in its new incarnation if done thoughtfully.

“There’s a lot of potential on this site,” she said.

There is enough potential that the site was chosen for the 2025 Rocky Mountain Real Estate Challenge, which featured graduate students from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder who were tasked with coming up with ideas for how to revive the troubled site.

DU’s students won the contest, with plans for 238 multifamily residential units in a “thoughtful site layout that prioritized walkability, activation and multimodal transportation.” The team identified an anchor grocer and a food incubator, brewpub and coffee roaster as potential elements of the new community.

It pegged the total cost of the overhaul at $96.8 million.

Krueger, the city’s economic development director, said the final cost will depend on the details of the project. But Thornton, he said, will look at tweaking the zoning at the site to “allow for more flexibility for a developer.”

“We’re trying to remove the barriers to the things we’d like to see at this site,” he said.

The southern portion of Thornton is less affluent than the north, which has “higher levels of household income as well as new homes and higher median home values,” according to a 2024 Thornton Housing Needs Assessment.

Martinez, the councilman, said he’s heard some concerns from residents living in “Original Thornton” — the area surrounding the shopping site — about the project gentrifying the neighborhood and pushing longtime residents out.

Martinez said the council will be vigilant about addressing those market pressures. Ultimately, he hopes the project has the opposite effect.

“We want to see the project spill over into the neighboring community,” he said. “I want to see this development as a catalyst to further improvements to the area.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sought in his first State of the Union address to sell Americans on the idea of a booming economy, falling prices, and soaring jobs, yet he faces a skeptical public with a much gloomier view.

Barely 12 hours before his speech, in fact, The Conference Board, a business research group, released its latest consumer confidence report. It showed that overall confidence in the economy remains historically low, and is barely above the level it plunged to in the depths of the COVID recession.

In February, its index ticked up to 91.2, which is noticeably below a four-year peak reached in November 2024 of 112.8. Americans remain dejected by high prices and see few jobs available, the survey found.

Other polling has yielded similar results: Only 39% of Americans approve of Trump’s economic leadership, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. And the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey remains mired at recessionary levels.

Trump sought to overcome that gloom by pointing to economic data that paints a brighter picture, a tactic that President Joe Biden tried with little success. But on Tuesday night there were gaps between the president’s claims and the economic reality many Americans are facing.

“Inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” Trump said.

The economy grew last year, but more slowly

To begin with, the economy is growing but it is hardly “roaring.”

It expanded 2.2% last year, down from 2.8% in Biden’s last year and 2.9% in 2023. To be sure, most Americans were deeply dissatisfied with the price spikes under Biden that pushed inflation to a peak of 9.1% in 2022, a four-decade high.

A roaring U.S. economy typically looks more like the late 1990s, when growth topped 4% for four years in a row, or in the 1980s, when it rose by 3.5% or higher for six years in a row.

Consumers are still struggling with high prices

Inflation has slowed in the past year, but many Americans still cite high prices in surveys as a key reason they are unhappy with the economy.

Trump correctly noted that core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, fell to a five-year low in January. Yet other price measures show that inflation remains stubbornly elevated: A gauge of core prices closely monitored by the Federal Reserve was 3% higher in December than a year earlier, above the Fed’s 2% target. It places less weight on housing costs, which have cooled, than the measure Trump cited.

Nearly half of the people responding to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey in February “spontaneously mentioned high prices eroding their personal finances,” Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.

Trump noted that the price of eggs has fallen sharply from its peak, which is true, but most necessities Americans rely on — groceries, rent, electricity — remain much more expensive than they were five years ago. And electricity prices rose another 6.3% just in the past 12 months.

Trump’s tariffs have also pushed up the cost of many imported items, including furniture, auto parts, tools, and clothes. And groceries such as ground beef, coffee, and bananas have risen sharply in the past year. Ground beef prices, for example, are up 17%.

Hiring ground nearly to a halt last year

One reason for the consumer gloom is likely the sharp slowdown in hiring last year. Employers added just 181,000 jobs in 2025 — or 15,000 a month – making it the worst year for job growth outside of a recession since 2002.

And despite Trump’s pledge to revive American manufacturing, factories lost 108,000 jobs in 2025 on top of the 202,000 lost in the last two years of the Biden administration. Auto and auto parts plants have cut nearly 74,000 jobs the past two years.

Trump’s tariffs are partially to blame because they force many factories to pay more for imported raw materials and parts. But high interest rates have also hurt manufacturers over the past couple of years. And many of them hired aggressively — perhaps too much — in 2021 and 2022 when the U.S. economy was roaring back from pandemic lockdowns. Automation also means that many factories need fewer workers.

Hiring did come in unexpectedly strong in January at 130,000 new jobs, and factories added jobs for the first month in more than a year.

Benefits of tariffs remain unclear

Trump suggested his tariffs have directly contributed to an economic boom for the U.S., but most Americans have likely seen little benefit.

“Moving forward, factories, jobs, investment and trillions and trillions of dollars will continue pouring into the United States of America,” Trump said.

Trump once again made his tariffs sound painless, insisting that they are paid by foreign countries. In fact, they are paid by U.S. importers who often try to pass the burden along to their customers through higher prices. Foreign companies might take a hit if they have to cut prices to maintain sales in the United States. But import prices haven’t fallen significantly, suggesting that overseas exporters aren’t feeling much pain.

A study by Harvard University economist Alberto Cavallo and two colleagues found that U.S. consumers were eating 43% of the higher tariff costs and that U.S. companies were absorbing most of the rest.

And so far Trump’s sweeping import taxes haven’t delivered much progress toward his goal of reducing the vast and longstanding U.S. trade deficit — the gap between what America sells to foreign countries and what it buys from them.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods such as automobiles and appliances — the focus of Trump’s protectionist policies — actually hit a record $1.24 trillion last year, increasing 2% from 2024.

But unlike an initial version of the law that was made public in December, the county will levy no fines on retailers for failing to do so — instead leaving any decision about punishment to a local court.

The first version of the law called for fines of $50, and all the way up to $1,000, for businesses that failed to report a crime. That caused some unease in the business community that Douglas County was overreaching.

Commissioner Abe Laydon said during the business meeting Tuesday that the ordinance was not meant to punish retailers but to keep the community safe.

“This is the most prosperous county in the state of Colorado — we don’t want us to become a target for organized crime,” he said. “When we tolerate organized retail theft, we normalize lawlessness.”

The latest rendition of the ordinance increased the time — from 24 hours to 96 hours — that businesses will have to report a theft. It also allows a retailer to report a crime via an online form rather than have police called to the scene.

That was enough to allay concerns from Chris Howes, the president of the Colorado Retail Council. In an attempt to make the measure more palatable to local businesses, he said his organization had some “fruitful discussions” with the county after the law was first unveiled.

“We don’t feel it punishes retail,” he said. “The focus on retail crime is overall going to be a benefit to us.”

District Attorney George Brauchler said he wants to get the message across that “we do not tolerate thieves.”

“If you come here to steal from us, plan on staying,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “Business owners and citizens alike should know that we will continue to protect their property rights.”

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly said the ordinance is aimed at combating the recent trend of retail outlets, especially large ones, not reporting crime on their premises. The measure holds employers accountable for policies that discourage the reporting of theft and that might result in retaliation against an employee who does report a crime.

“When corporate policies prevent or discourage the reporting of theft, it limits our ability to investigate, identify patterns and hold offenders accountable,” Weekly said in a statement. “(This ordinance) reinforces the importance of timely reporting and evidence preservation while focusing on corporate entities rather than individual employees.”

The new measure takes effect April 4.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — On inflation, immigration, tariffs and matters of war and peace, President Donald Trump presented a frequently distorted account of the state of the nation Tuesday as he claimed a “turnaround for the ages” and myriad achievements that don’t pass scrutiny.

Trump has spent the last year boasting of his accomplishments while mocking the record of his predecessor, Joe Biden. But much of this bluster has been based on misinformation, which he again fell back on during his State of the Union address.

Here’s a closer look at the facts:

THE ECONOMY

CLAIM: “When I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy.”

THE FACTS: Not quite. Voters were unhappy with high inflation in the 2024 election, but the U.S. economy was far from stagnant. The U.S. gross domestic product rose 2.8% in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. That’s a stronger pace of growth than the 2.2% achieved last year during the start of Trump’s second term.

___

CLAIM: “Incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.”

THE FACTS: Not so. After-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, rose just 0.9% in 2025, down from 2.2% in 2024, Biden’s last year in office. The annual gain in Trump’s first year is the smallest since 2022, when inflation soared and caused Americans’ inflation-adjusted income to drop.

Wages and salaries are the largest component of incomes, and their growth has slowed as companies have sharply slowed hiring. Workers typically command smaller wage gains in such an environment.

INVESTMENT

CLAIM: “I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

JOBS

CLAIM: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”

THE FACTS: Yes, but the number of Americans with jobs always rises as the population grows. The relevant figure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, which has fallen significantly in the last quarter-century, partly because the workforce is aging and more people are retired. The proportion of Americans with jobs peaked at 64.7% in April 2000, and was 59.8% in January.

The unemployment rate is a low 4.3%, but was lower when Biden left office in January 2025, at 4%. During Biden’s presidency, the rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.4%.

FOREIGN WARS

CLAIM: “My first 10 months I ended eight wars.”

THE FACTS: This statistic, which Trump frequently cites, is highly exaggerated.

Although he has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it seem. In at least two instances of peace he claims credit for achieving, there were no wars to end: no fighting between Serbia and Kosovo, and friction rather than fighting between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The other wars Trump counts as those that he has solved were between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand. His influence varied in those conflicts.

TARIFFS

CLAIM: Tariff revenues are “saving our country, the kind of money we’re taking in.”

THE FACTS: Though Trump has imposed massive tax hikes on imports, they’re not sizable enough to make a dent in the government’s annual budget deficits. Nor have the tariffs corresponded with manufacturing job gains.

Before the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs based on an emergency declaration, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that his new taxes would raise $3 trillion over 10 years, or $300 billion annually.

That’s not enough to cover the cost of his $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, including additional interest cuts, that favored companies and the wealthy. Nor is it enough to pay down an annual budget deficit that last year was $1.78 trillion.

___

CLAIM: “Tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax.’’

THE FACTS: Not likely. Under Trump, tariff revenues have swelled — to $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 from $77 billion the year before. But the import taxes accounted for less than 4% of federal revenue. Income taxes and payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare account for 84%.

MEDICINE

CLAIM: “I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more.”

THE FACTS: This is impossible. Although the Trump administration has taken steps to lower drug prices, cutting them by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications.

Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center, said in August that this claim is “total fiction” by the president. He agreed that it would amount to drug companies paying customers, rather than the other way around.

CRIME

CLAIM: “Last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline. Think of it in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years.”

THE FACTS: Trump takes credit for a significant decrease in violent crime during 2025, claiming the murder rate in the U.S. dropped to its lowest in 125 years. But this is misleading. Crime had already been trending down in recent years.

A study released in January by the independent Council on Criminal Justice, which collected data from 35 U.S. cities on homicides, showed a 21% decrease in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025.

The report noted that when nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900.

FBI reports for 2023 and 2024 show significant reductions in violent crimes.

Crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. But violent crime dropped to near pre-pandemic levels around 2022 when Biden was president.

IMMIGRATION

CLAIM: “We will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

THE FACTS: Trump has actually taken steps to restrict who can emigrate to the U.S., often in the name of protecting national security.

He suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and in October resumed the program but only in limited numbers for white South Africans.

Trump has also placed restrictions on who can travel or emigrate to the U.S. from nearly 40 countries around the world. Many of those countries are in Africa.

TAXES

CLAIM: “With the great big beautiful bill, we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security.”

THE FACTS: Though the president frequently says his big tax cut bill means no tax on Social Security, that’s not true for everyone. Not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction, which lasts until 2029.

Those who won’t be able to do so include the lowest-income seniors who already don’t pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold. The deductions also phase out as income increases.

ELECTIONS

CLAIM: “I’m asking you to approve the Save America Act to stop illegal aliens and other who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. The cheating is rampant in our elections.”

THE FACTS: He and his allies have never produced evidence of rampant election cheating. Experts say voter fraud is extremely rare, and very few noncitizens ever slip through the cracks.

For example, a recent review in Michigan identified 15 people who appear to be noncitizens who voted in the 2024 general election, out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast in the state. Of those, 13 were referred to the attorney general for potential criminal charges. One involved a voter who has since died, and the final case remains under investigation.

1776

CLAIM: “The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak, Paul Wiseman, Christopher Rugaber, Elliot Spagat and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A trio of Senate Democrats is calling for the government to start refunding roughly $175 billion in tariff revenues that the Supreme Court ruled were collected because of an illegal set of orders by President Donald Trump.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are unveiling a bill on Monday that would require U.S. Customs and Border Protection to issue refunds over the course of 180 days and pay interest on the refunded amount.

The measure would prioritize refunds to small businesses and encourages importers, wholesalers and large companies to pass the refunds on to their customers.

“Trump’s illegal tax scheme has already done lasting damage to American families, small businesses and manufacturers who have been hammered by wave after wave of new Trump tariffs,” said Wyden, stressing that the “crucial first step” to fixing the problem begins with “putting money back in the pockets of small businesses and manufacturers as soon as possible.”

The bill is unlikely to become law, but it reveals how Democrats are starting to apply public pressure on a Trump administration that has shown little interest in trying to return tariff revenues after the Supreme Court announced its 6-3 ruling on Friday.

Because of the ruling, going into November’s midterm elections for control of Congress, Democrats have begun telling the public that Trump illegally raised taxes and now refuses to repay the money back to the American people.

Shaheen said that repairing any of the damage caused by the tariffs in the form of higher prices starts with “President Trump refunding the illegally collected tariff taxes that Americans were forced to pay.” Markey stressed that small business tend to have ”little to no resources” and a “refund process can be extremely difficult and time consuming” for companies.

The Trump administration has asserted that its hands are tied, because any refunds should be the responsibility of further litigation in court.

That message could put Republicans on the defensive as they try to explain why the government isn’t proactively seeking to return the money. GOP lawmakers had planned to try to preserve their House and Senate majorities by running on the income tax cuts that Trump signed into law last year, saying that tax refunds this year would help families.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN on Sunday that it’s “bad framing” to raise the question of refunds because the Supreme Court ruling did not address the issue. The administration’s position is that any refunds will be decided by lawsuits winding their way through the legal system, rather than by a president who has repeatedly stressed to voters that he has the ability to act with speed and resolve.

“It is not up to the administration — it is up to the lower court,” Bessent said, stressing that rather than offer any guidance he would “wait” for a court opinion on refunds.

Trump has defended his use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad tariffs on almost every U.S. trading partner, saying that his ability to levy taxes on imports had helped to end military conflicts, bring in new federal revenues and apply pressure for negotiating trade frameworks.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model released estimates that the refunds would total $175 billion. That’s the equivalent of an average of $1,300 per U.S. household. But determining how to structure reimbursements would be tricky, as the costs of the tariffs flowed through the economy in the form of customers paying the taxes directly as well as importers passing along the cost either indirectly or absorbing them.

The president has previously claimed that refunds would drive up U.S. government debt and hurt the economy. On Friday, he told reporters at a briefing that the refund process could be finished after he leaves the White House.

“I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years,” Trump said, later amending his timeline by saying: “We’ll end up being in court for the next five years.”

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks slumped Monday after President Donald Trump ramped up his newest tariffs, while investors continued to punish companies that could be losers in the artificial-intelligence revolution.

The S&P 500 fell 1% after Trump said on Saturday that he would place temporary 15% tariffs on other countries. That’s up from the 10% rate he announced Friday following a Supreme Court ruling that struck down his sweeping “reciprocal” taxes on imports from around the world.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 821 points, or 1.7%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.1%.

Trump’s quick move toward more aggressive tariffs shows how much uncertainty still hangs over the global economy, even after the Supreme Court said the president lacked the legal authority to institute his sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs.

Beyond a 15% tariff that could last for up to 150 days, unless Congress extends it further, Trump is moving forward on other avenues to place more permanent tariffs on countries and industries. That has trading partners uneasy. South Korea’s trade minister, Kim Jung-kwan, said Monday that uncertainty may worsen if the Trump administration continues imposing new tariffs under alternative laws.

To be sure, Monday’s moves for markets weren’t close to as bad as the panic that swept the world in April, when Trump initially announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. U.S. stocks were modestly higher for a brief moment during the morning.

The U.S. dollar’s value edged lower against other currencies. Bitcoin briefly fell below $64,000 but remained above its low point reached earlier this month. Gold continued to rise thanks to its reputation as something safer to own during uncertain times.

Investors may be sensing it will take a long time, as well as more court battles, before more clarity comes about how global trade will look.

“Stocks got a boost Friday from the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling, but it quickly became clear that the decision was simply going to open a new chapter in the trade saga, not end it,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

On Wall Street, big losses hit companies under suspicion of getting undercut by AI-powered rivals. Investors have been sharply and suddenly punishing stocks of such companies recently.

CrowdStrike fell 9.8% to widen its loss for the young year so far to 25.3%. A new tool from Anthropic that scans codebases for security vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches for human review has been hitting stocks across the cybersecurity industry.

AppLovin sank 9.1% and took its loss for the year to date to 43.5%. It’s among the software companies hurt by worries that AI competition will steal customers and fundamentally reset their industries.

Companies that have lent money to software companies whose revenues may be under threat also continued falling, and Blue Owl Capital fell 3.4% to bring its loss for the year so far to 30.1%.

More big moves may still be ahead for Wall Street this week, particularly with a profit report from Nvidia coming on Wednesday.

Worries are rising that companies like Alphabet and Amazon may be spending so much on Nvidia’s chips that they’ll never be able to recoup their investments through higher productivity and future profits.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, stocks of airlines fell after heavy snow and high winds canceled thousands of flights across the busy Northeast.

United Airlines lost 5.2%, American Airlines fell 4.9% and Delta Air Lines sank 3.7%.

Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States tumbled 16.4% after the Danish drugmaker said a trial for its CagriSema drug showed people lost a smaller percentage of their weight after 84 weeks than with a similar one made by rival Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly rose 4.9%.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 71.76 points to 6,837.75. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 821.91 to 48,804.06, and the Nasdaq composite sank 258.80 to 22,627.27.

In stock markets abroad, indexes mostly fell in Europe. They had risen on Friday after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In Asia, where markets got their first chance to react to the court’s ruling, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.5%, while South Korea’s Kospi rose a more modest 0.6%. Markets in Japan and mainland China were closed for holidays.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.03% from 4.08% late Friday.

A top official at the Federal Reserve said Monday that it’s a “coin flip” on whether the Fed will cut its main interest rate at its next meeting in March or stand pat again.

The comments from Fed. Gov. Christopher Waller were a notable shift from January, when he was one of the two Fed governors to dissent against the central bank’s decision to hold its key rate steady after three rate cuts at the end of last year.

Lower rates would give the economy a boost, and Trump has been lobbying angrily for them. But they also could risk worsening inflation.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.