(File Photo: Source for Photo: President Donald Trump arrives at the White House after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s fifth week in office included a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Russia, firing the country’s senior military officer, sitting for a chummy interview alongside bureaucracy-buster Elon Musk and seeking greater authority over independent regulatory agencies.

Trump also said “inflation is back,” but said his short time back in the White House meant he had “nothing to do” with prices remaining high. That deflection can only work for so long, unless the economic outlook changes. Consumer sentiment suggests that isn’t happening.

A look at where things stand after the first month of Trump’s second term:

Russian policy shift

Trump dispatched top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, a matter that has increased tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump.

For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under the Democratic Biden administration, held to the basic tenet of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” The new Republican administration has dispensed with that notion as Trump has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.

Zelenskyy said Trump was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely suggested that Ukraine started the war, though on Friday he acknowledged that Moscow had attacked its neighbor.

Trump has said he hopes to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon — preparations are underway, a Kremlin official said Saturday — and has said the war has cost too many, in lives lost and U.S. money spent equipping Ukraine.

“I’m not trying to make Putin nicer or better,” Trump said during a Fox News Radio interview. “I’m just telling you the fact that war should have never happened” if Trump had been reelected president in 2020.

Trump’s comments have alarmed European leaders and could make for some awkward moments when French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visit the White House in the week ahead.

Pentagon shakeup as DOGE remains undaunted

In an extraordinary move, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The dismissal of the history-making fighter pilot and respected officer was part of a push to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.

In an online post announcing the move, the president called Brown, only the second Black general to serve in that post, “a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader.” But his ouster sent shockwaves through the Pentagon and was part of a larger wave of dismissals at the Defense Department.

Meanwhile, federal firings continued to accumulate as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team pursued more spending cuts. On Saturday, Musk gave hundreds of thousands of federal workers a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST to explain what they accomplished over the past week. In an X post, he said failure to respond to an email going out to employees with that request “will be taken as a resignation.”

DOGE had some wins in court and posted a savings tracker meant to show taxpayer money being recovered by canceled contracts and other cuts.

The amounts listed were sometimes misattributed or erroneous, however, and the totals often didn’t add up.

Trump nonetheless floated the idea of returning as much as 20% of any savings produced by DOGE to taxpayers. Musk suggested $5,000 rebate checks might be in the offing, even though generating that much money might require cuts to big-ticket government items such as Social Security.

Trump and Musk gushed with mutual admiration during a joint, nationally televised interview. Musk also used an appearance at conference of conservatives to wave around a chainsaw meant highlight his leading role in cost-cutting efforts. Yet the White House suggested in a court filing that Musk wasn’t heading DOGE, a notion undercut by Trump himself, who said he had “put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”

On Saturday, the president posted on his social media site, “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”

Americans aren’t feeling great about the economy

Trump signed an executive order seeking to give the White House control of independent regulatory agencies created by Congress, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

He and his aides say the economy is ready to roar. But the public is increasingly pessimistic. Trump’s constant tariff threats, mass federal layoffs and broader uncertainty about spending cuts and taxes have spooked many consumers.

The University of Michigan said its consumer index in February dropped roughly 10% on a monthly basis. Predictably, Republicans feel better about the economy than Democrats. But even Republicans’ index reading of 86.7 points was lower than it was in June 2016 when Democrat Barack Obama was president, and Trump built momentum for his election win on economic discontent.

In recent days, Walmart’s stock has fallen nearly 10% as its latest earnings report suggested slower growth ahead due to possible tariffs.

“There’s clearly something that’s still nagging consumers,” economist Ryan Cummings said in an email. “Whether that’s elevated price levels, uncertainty surrounding policy, or consumers projecting their feelings about the direction of the country (and world) onto the economy itself.”

It’s hard to tell what will pique the president’s interest next

He’s already suggested invading Panama and Greenland, making Canada the 51st state and reinventing Gaza as a “Riviera” resort.

But there’s more.

Last week, the president ordered his administration to take a closer look at Fort Knox, the United States Bullion Depository, “to make sure the gold is there.” That directive came after Musk posted about the site, which has stored precious metal bullion reserves for the U.S. since 1937, potentially having been emptied of gold.

Trump also mused about the federal government taking back control of the nation’s capital, which would reverse more than 50 years of home rule in the District of Columbia.

And he renewed his ideas about the U.S. sending humans to Mars, suggesting that task could fall to Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.

Trump’s agenda begins advancing in Congress

The president has long advocating for one “big, beautiful bill” allowing Congress to address his budget priorities, from funding for the U.S.-Mexico border to extending tax cuts approved during his first term.

But there are signs he may be wavering.

“As long as we get to the same point, you know, two bills,” Trump told Fox News Radio. “I guess you could make the case you could do three. You could do 10.”

That came after Senate Republicans made the first tangible progress on Trump’s funding goals, advancing a budget blueprint that would provide $342 billion for border security and defense. It’s an approach that would leave the president’s prized tax cuts to be dealt with later.

House Republicans, however, aren’t onboard. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is trying to generate support for a more ambitious plan that would also extend the tax cuts.

But doing so would increase federal deficits by more than $4.5 trillion over the next decade. Trump’s desire to add new tax breaks by exempting tips, Social Security benefits and overtime from income taxes only boosts the price tag.

That’s creating a difficult balancing act. Johnson has almost no votes to spare with a narrow 218-215 majority for Republicans in the House. Budget hawks back the more than $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years that are in the blueprint.

But lawmakers from more divided congressional districts worry their constituents will be harmed in the tradeoff. First-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania posted on X that if a bill is put in front of him that “guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

If the House plan falters, then pressure will build to give Trump an early win and take up the Senate approach.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Leah Fauth places flowers in front of the West York Police Department after a police officer was killed responding to a shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, Pa. on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

(AP) A man who took hostages in a Pennsylvania hospital during a shooting that killed a police officer and wounded five other people highlights the rising violence against U.S. healthcare workers and the challenge of protecting them.

Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49, carried a pistol and zip ties into the intensive care unit at UPMC Memorial Hospital in southern Pennsylvania’s York County and took staff members hostage Saturday before he was killed in a shootout with police, officials said. The attack also left a doctor, nurse, custodian and two other officers wounded.

Officers opened fire as Archangel-Ortiz held at gunpoint a female staff member whose hands had been zip-tied, police said.

The man apparently intentionally targeted the hospital after he was in contact with the intensive care unit earlier in the week for medical care involving someone else, according to the York County district attorney.

Such violence at hospitals is on the rise, often in emergency departments but also maternity wards and intensive care units, hospital security consultant Dick Sem said.

“Many people are more confrontational, quicker to become angry, quicker to become threatening,” Sem said. “I interview thousands of nurses and hear all the time about how they’re being abused every day.”

Archangel-Ortiz’s motives remained unclear but nurses report increasing harassment from the public, especially following the coronavirus pandemic, said Sem, former director of security and crisis management for Waste Management and vice president at Pinkerton/Securitas.

In hospital attacks, unlike random mass shootings elsewhere, the shooter is often targeting somebody, sometimes resentful about the care given a relative who died, Sem noted.

“It tends to be someone who’s mad at somebody,” Sem said. “It might be a domestic violence situation or employees, ex-employees. There’s all kinds of variables.”

At WellSpan Health, a nearby hospital where some of the victims were taken, Megan Foltz said she has been worried about violence since she began working as a nurse nearly 20 years ago.

“In the critical care environment, of course there’s going to be heightened emotions. People are losing loved ones. There can be gang violence, domestic violence. Inebriated individuals,” Foltz said.

Besides the fear of being hurt themselves, nurses fear leaving their patients unguarded.

“If you step away from a bedside to run, to hide, to keep safe, you’re leaving your patient vulnerable,” she said.

Healthcare and social assistance employees suffered almost three-quarters of nonfatal attacks on workers in the private sector in 2021 and 2022 for a rate more than five times the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Other recent attacks on U.S. healthcare workers include:

— Last year, a man shot two corrections officers in the ambulance bay of an Idaho hospital while freeing a white supremacist gang member before he could be returned to prison. They were caught less than two days later.

— In 2023, a gunman killed a security guard and wounded a hospital worker in a Portland, Oregon, hospital’s maternity unit before being killed by police in a confrontation elsewhere. Also in 2023, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four.

— In 2022, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation. Later that year, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats.

With rising violence, more hospitals are using metal detectors and screening visitors for threats at hospital entrances including emergency departments.

Many hospital workers say after an attack that they never expected to be targeted.

Sem said training can be critical in helping medical staff identify those who might become violent.

“More than half of these incidents I’m aware of showed some early warning signs from early indicators that this person is problematic. They’re threatening, they’re angry. And so that needs to be reported. That needs to be managed,” he said.

“If nobody reports it, then you don’t know until the gun appears.”

(File Photo)

Pittsburgh, PA – PennDOT District 11 is announcing lane restrictions in the Fort Pitt Tunnel (I-376) in the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, will begin Sunday, February 23 weather permitting.

Single-lane restrictions will occur in each direction of the Fort Pitt Tunnel from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night through Thursday, February 27. PennDOT crews will conduct lighting repair work within the tunnel according to the following schedule:

• Sunday night, February 23 – Outbound (westbound)
• Monday night, February 24 – Outbound (westbound)
• Tuesday night, February 25 – Inbound (eastbound)
• Wednesday night, February 26 – Inbound (eastbound)

Motorists can check conditions on major roadways by visiting www.511PA.com. 511PA, which is free and available 24 hours a day, provides traffic delay warnings, weather forecasts, traffic speed information and access to more than 1,000 traffic cameras. 511PA is also available through a smartphone application for iPhone and Android devices, by calling 5-1-1, or by following regional X alerts.

Subscribe to PennDOT news and traffic alerts in Allegheny, Beaver, Lawrence counties at www.penndot.pa.gov/District11.

Information about infrastructure in District 11, including completed work and significant projects, is available at www.penndot.pa.gov/D11Results. Find PennDOT’s planned and active construction projects at www.projects.penndot.gov.

Find PennDOT news on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

(File Photo)

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – A resident of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced in federal court to 27 months of incarceration, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,073,185 on his conviction of mail fraud, Acting United States Attorney Troy Rivetti announced today. United States District Judge Cathy Bissoon imposed the sentence on Michael Dominick, 44, who pleaded guilty to the mail fraud charge on October 8, 2024 (read the plea news release here). According to information presented to the Court, Dominick was a former manager at the Ambridge Water Authority (AWA), where, during the period of January 2020 through August 2022, Dominick defrauded AWA of money and property totaling approximately $1,073,185. As manager of AWA, Dominick was responsible for overseeing all daily business and financial activity and had access to AWA’s bank accounts as well as cash and check payments made to AWA for water and related services. Dominick secretly diverted AWA’s money into his own personal bank accounts by writing checks to himself, depositing cash and checks issued to AWA into his personal bank accounts, using the AWA debit card to make purchases of personal items, and adjusting or failing to report the true location of AWA’s funds on critical financial records. As part of his sentencing, Dominick was ordered to pay restitution to the AWA and one of its insurers in the full amount stolen. Prior to imposing sentence, Judge Bissoon stated that the sentence imposed would reflect Dominick’s significant abuse of public trust in perpetrating the fraud. Assistant United States Attorney Carolyn J. Bloch prosecuted this case on behalf of the government. Acting United States Attorney Rivetti commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and investigators with the Beaver County District Attorney’s Office for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Dominick

(File Photo of the Aliquippa School Board Logo)

(Reported by Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano)

(Aliquippa, PA) The Aliquippa School Board approved a five-year tax abatement for the “Legacy Bricks” and other items on Wednesday. Aaron Donald was the developer  at last week’s work session. Affordable housing will also be built in the “BRICKS” area at Oliver Street and Temple Street. The original “Bricks” were built in the early 1900’s and were demolished as part of revitalization efforts by the city of Aliquippa in an effort to have housing available. The board also approved coaches’ salaries for both the winter season and for sports. A collective bargaining agreement for maintenance staff, custodians and facilities was also approved.

File Photo: Source for Photo: President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)