AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

Using U.S. forces to take control of a merchant ship is incredibly unusual and marks the Trump administration’s latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The campaign is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding that "it was seized for a very good reason.”

Trump did not offer additional details. When asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The seizure was led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that it was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.

Zelenskyy will hold urgent talks with 30 countries as Trump pushes for swift peace deal with Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold urgent talks Thursday with leaders and officials from about 30 countries that are supporting Kyiv’s effort to obtain fair terms for an end to the war with Russia.

The leaders of Germany, Britain and France were among those expected to take part in the meeting of Ukraine's allies, dubbed the Coalition of the Willing, via video link.

Zelenskyy indicated the talks were hastily arranged as Kyiv officials scramble to avoid getting boxed in by U.S. President Donald Trump's demands for a swift settlement. European governments are trying to help steer the peace negotiations because they say their own security is at stake.

Trump said Wednesday that he and European leaders discussed proposals by phone in “pretty strong terms,” adding that Zelenskyy “has to be realistic” about his country’s position on a peace plan that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia. He didn't elaborate.

Trump’s latest effort to broker a settlement is taking longer than he wanted. He initially set a hard deadline for Kyiv to accept his peace plan before Thanksgiving. Previous Washington deadlines for reaching a peace deal have also passed without making a breakthrough.

Senate poised to reject extension of health care subsidies as costs rise for many

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is poised on Thursday to reject legislation to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits for millions of Americans, a potentially unceremonious end to a monthslong Democratic effort to prevent the COVID-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1.

Despite a bipartisan desire to continue the credits, Republicans and Democrats have never engaged in meaningful or high-level negotiations on a solution. Instead, the Senate is expected to vote on two partisan bills and defeat them both — essentially guaranteeing that many who buy their health insurance on the ACA marketplaces see a steep rise in costs at the beginning of the year.

“It’s too complicated and too difficult to get done in the limited time that we have left,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has unsuccessfully pushed his Republican colleagues to extend the tax credits for a short time so they can find agreement on the issue next year.

Neither side has seemed interested in compromise.

Democrats who forced a government shutdown for 43 days on the issue have so far not wavered from their proposal to extend the subsidies for three years with none of the new limits that Republicans have suggested. Republicans are offering their own bill that would let the subsidies expire, even as some in the GOP conference, like Tillis, have said they would support an extension. The GOP proposal would create new health savings accounts to replace the tax credits, an idea that Democrats called “dead on arrival.”

Federal Reserve cuts key rate, sees healthier economy next year

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve reduced its key interest rate by a quarter-point for the third time in a row Wednesday but signaled that it may leave rates unchanged in the coming months.

The cut decreased the Fed's rate to about 3.6%, the lowest it has been in nearly three years. Lower rates from the Fed can bring down borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards over time, though market forces can also affect those rates.

Chair Jerome Powell suggested at a news conference that after six rate cuts in the past two years, the central bank can step back and see how hiring and inflation develop. In a set of quarterly economic projections, Fed officials signaled they expect to lower rates just once next year.

Fed officials “will carefully evaluate the incoming data," Powell said, adding that the Fed is “well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.”

The chair also said that the Fed’s key rate was close to a level that neither restricts nor stimulates the economy, a significant shift from earlier this year, when he described the rate as high enough to slow the economy and quell inflation. With rates closer to a more neutral level, the bar for further rate cuts is likely higher that it was this fall.

Justice Department can unseal records from Epstein's 2019 sex trafficking case, judge says

NEW YORK (AP) — Secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case can be made public, a judge ruled on Wednesday, joining two other judges in granting the Justice Department’s requests to unseal material from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge previously cautioned that the 70 or so pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory and “merely a hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s conduct.

On Tuesday, another Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case. Last week, a judge in Florida approved the unsealing of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.

The Justice Department asked the judges to lift secrecy orders in the cases after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last month, created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential. The law requires that the Justice Department disclose Epstein-related material to the public by Dec. 19.

The court records cleared for release are just a sliver of the government’s trove — a collection of potentially tens of thousands of pages of documents, including FBI notes and reports; transcripts of witness interviews, photographs, videos and other evidence; Epstein’s autopsy report; flight logs and travel records.

Open AI, Microsoft face lawsuit over ChatGPT's alleged role in Connecticut murder-suicide

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son's “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her.

Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The lawsuit filed by Adams' estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.” It is one of a growing number of wrongful death legal actions against AI chatbot makers across the country.

“Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself," the lawsuit says. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.’”

OpenAI did not address the merits of the allegations in a statement issued by a spokesperson.

Botulism outbreak sickens more than 50 babies and expands to all ByHeart products

Federal health officials on Wednesday expanded an outbreak of infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula to include all illnesses reported since the company began production in March 2022.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said investigators “cannot rule out the possibility that contamination might have affected all ByHeart formula products” ever made.

The outbreak now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states. The new case definition includes “any infant with botulism who was exposed to ByHeart formula at any time since the product's release,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent illness was reported on Dec. 1.

No deaths have been reported in the outbreak, which was announced Nov. 8.

Previously, health officials had said the outbreak included 39 suspected or confirmed cases of infant botulism reported in 18 states since August. That's when officials at California's Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reported a rise in treatment of infants who had consumed ByHeart formula. Another 12 cases were identified with the expanded definition, including two that occurred in the original timeline and 10 that occurred from December 2023 through July 2025.

Trump administration separates thousands of migrant families in the US

MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy split more than 5,000 children from their families at the Mexico border during his first term.

Border crossings sit at a record low nearly a year into his second administration and a new wave of immigration enforcement is dividing families inside the U.S.

Federal officials and their local law enforcement partners are detaining tens of thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants. Detainees are moved repeatedly, then deported, or held in poor conditions for weeks or months before asking to go home.

The federal government was holding an average of more than 66,000 people in November, the highest on record.

During the first Trump administration, families were forcibly separated at the border and authorities struggled to find children in a vast shelter system because government computer systems weren't linked. Now parents inside the United States are being arrested by immigration authorities and separated from their families during prolonged detention. Or, they choose to have their children remain in the U.S. after an adult is deported, many after years or decades here.

Tens of thousands in Washington state could face evacuations as rain continues to pound the region

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) — Tens of thousands of residents in western Washington could face evacuation orders when another round of heavy rain drops on the region Thursday, threatening to bring catastrophic flooding as rivers near historic levels.

Days of seemingly unrelenting heavy rain had already triggered rescues and road closures, and by Wednesday, Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency, warning that "lives will be at stake in the coming days.” Some residents have already been ordered to higher ground, with Skagit County, a major agricultural region north of Seattle, ordering those within the Skagit River’s floodplain to evacuate.

“Catastrophic flooding is likely” in many areas and the state is requesting water rescue teams and boats, Ferguson said on the social media platform X on Wednesday night

Hundreds of Guard members will be sent to help communities, said Gent Welsh, adjutant general of the Washington National Guard.

In a valley leading out to the foothills of Mount Rainier southeast of Seattle, Pierce County sheriff’s deputies on Wednesday rescued people at an RV park in Orting, including helping one man in a Santa hat wade through waist-deep water. Part of the town was ordered to evacuate over concerns about the Puyallup River’s extremely high levels and upstream levees.

What to know as trial nears for the Wisconsin judge accused of helping an immigrant dodge agents

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Defense attorneys and prosecutors were set Thursday to choose the jurors who will decide whether a Wisconsin judge accused of helping a Mexican immigrant dodge federal officers committed a crime.

Federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan this spring with obstruction and concealing an individual to prevent arrest. They allege she showed 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz out of her courtroom through a back door when she learned federal authorities were in the courthouse looking to arrest him.

Dugan is set to stand trial beginning Monday in the latest show of force in the Trump administration's sweeping immigration crackdown. She faces up to six years in prison if convicted on both counts.

Here's what to know about the case, jury selection and the trial:

According to an FBI affidavit, Flores-Ruiz illegally reentered the United States from Mexico in 2013. Agents learned that he had been charged in state court with battery in March and was scheduled to appear in front of Dugan on April 18.