ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — When Idalia Bisbal moved to this Pennsylvania city synonymous with America’s working class, she hoped for a cheaper, easier life than the one she was leaving behind in her hometown of New York City.

About three years later, she is deeply disappointed.

“It’s worse than ever,” the 67-year-old retiree, who relies on Social Security, said when asked about the economy. “The prices are high. Everything is going up. You can’t afford food because you can’t afford rent. Utilities are too high. Gas is too expensive. Everything is too expensive.”

Bisbal was sipping an afternoon coffee at the Hamilton Family Restaurant not long after Vice President JD Vance rallied Republicans in a nearby suburb. In the Trump administration’s second high-profile trip to Pennsylvania in a week, Vance acknowledged the affordability crisisblamed it on the Biden administration and insisted better times were ahead. He later served food to men experiencing homelessness in Allentown.

The visit, on top of several recent speeches from President Donald Trumpreflects an increasingly urgent White House effort to respond to the economic anxiety that is gripping both parties. Those worries are a vulnerability for Republicans in competitive congressional districts like the one that includes Allentown, which could decide control of the U.S. House in next year’s midterms.

But in confronting the challenge, there are risks of appearing out of touch.

Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, down from 40% in March, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Yet Trump has called affordability concerns a “ hoax ” and gave the economy under his administration a grade of “A+++++.” Vance reiterated that assessment during his rally, prompting Bisbal to scoff.

“In his world,” Bisbal, a self-described “straight-up Democrat,” responded. “In the rich man’s world. In our world, trust me, it’s not an ‘A.’ To me, it’s an ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F.’”

Agreement that prices are too high

With a population of roughly 125,000 people, Allentown anchors the Lehigh Valley, which is Pennsylvania’s third-largest metro area. In a dozen interviews this week with local officials, business leaders and residents of both parties, there was agreement on one thing: Prices are too high. Some pointed to gas prices while others said they felt the shock more at the grocery store or in their cost of health care or housing.

Few shared Trump’s unbridled boosterism about the economy.

Tony Iannelli, the president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, called Trump’s grade a “stretch,” saying “we have a strong economy but I think it’s not yet gone to the next stage of what I would call robust.”

Tom Groves, who started a health and benefits consulting firm more than two decades ago, said the economy was at a “B+” as he blamed the Affordable Care Act, widely known as “Obamacare,” for contributing to higher health costs and he noted stock and labor market volatility. Joe Vichot, the chairman of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, referred to Trump’s grade as a “colloquialism.”

Far removed from Washington’s political theater, there was little consensus on who was responsible for the high prices or what should be done about it. There was, however, an acute sense of exhaustion at the seemingly endless political combat.

Pat Gallagher was finishing lunch a few booths down from Bisbal as she recalled meeting her late husband when they both worked at Bethlehem Steel, the manufacturing giant that closed in 2003. Now retired, she, too, relies on Social Security benefits and lives with her daughter, which helps keep costs down. She said she noticed the rising price of groceries and was becoming exasperated with the political climate.

“I get so frustrated with hearing about the politics,” she said.

Allentown has a front-row seat to politics

That feeling is understandable in a place that often gets a front-row seat to the national debate, whether it wants the view or not. Singer Billy Joel’s 1982 song “Allentown” helped elevate the city into the national consciousness, articulating simultaneous feelings of disillusionment and hope as factories shuttered.

In the decades since, Pennsylvania has become a must-win state in presidential politics and the backdrop for innumerable visits from candidates and the media. Trump and his Democratic rival in 2024, Kamala Harrismade several campaign swings through Allentown, with the then-vice president visiting the city on the eve of the election.

“Every race here, all the time,” Allentown’s mayor, Democrat Matt Tuerk, recalled of the frenzied race last year.

The pace of those visits — and the attention they garnered — has not faded from many minds. Some businesses and residents declined to talk this week when approached with questions about the economy or politics, recalling blowback from speaking in the past.

But as attention shifts to next year’s midterms, Allentown cannot escape its place as a political battleground.

Trump’s win last year helped lift other Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, to victory. Mackenzie, who unseated a three-term Democrat, is now one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress. To win again, he must turn out the Republicans who voted in 2024 — many of whom were likely more energized by Trump’s candidacy — while appealing to independents.

Mackenzie’s balancing act was on display when he spoke to the party faithful on Tuesday, bemoaning the “failures of Bidenomics” before Vance took the stage at the rally. A day later, the congressman was back in Washington, where he joined three other House Republicans to rebel against the party’s leadership and force a vote on extending health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year.

Vichot, the local GOP chairman, called Mackenzie an “underdog” in his reelection bid and said the health care move was a signal to voters that he is “compassionate for the people who need those services.”

A swing to Trump in 2024

Lehigh County, home to Allentown and the most populous county in the congressional district, swung toward Trump last year. Harris’ nearly 2.7 percentage point win in the county was the tightest margin for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2004. But Democrats are feeling confident after a strong performance in this fall’s elections when they handily won a race for county executive.

Retaking the congressional seat is now a top priority for Democrats. Gov. Josh Shapirowho faces reelection next year and is a potential presidential contender in 2028, endorsed firefighter union head Bob Brooks this week for the May primary.

Democrats are just a few seats shy of regaining the House majority and the first midterm after a presidential election historically favors the party that’s out of power. If the focus remains on the economy, Democrats are happy.

The Uline supplies distribution factory where Vance spoke, owned by a family that has made large donations to GOP causes, is a few miles from the Mack Trucks facility where staff was cut by about 200 employees this year. The company said that decision was driven in part by tariffs imposed by Trump. Shapiro eagerly pointed that out in responding to Vance’s visit.

But the image of Allentown as a purely manufacturing town is outdated. The downtown core is dotted by row homes, trendy hotels and a modern arena that is home to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms hockey team and hosts concerts by major artists. In recent years, Latinos have become a majority of the city’s population, driven by gains in the Puerto Rican, Mexican and Dominican communities.

“This is a place of rapid change,” said Tuerk, the city’s first Latino mayor. “It’s constantly changing and I think over the next three years until that next presidential election, we’re going to see a lot more change. It’s going to be an interesting ride.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department released thousands of files Friday about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epsteinbut the incomplete document dump did not break significant ground about the long-running criminal investigations of the financier or his ties to wealthy and powerful individuals.

The files included photographs of famous people who spent time with Epstein in the years before he came under suspicion, including some candid snapshots of Bill Clintonwho flew on Epstein’s jet and invited him to the White House in the years before the financier was accused of wrongdoing. But there was almost no material related to another old Epstein friend, President Donald Trump, aside from a few well-known images, sparing the White House from having to confront fresh questions about a relationship the administration has tried in vain to minimize.

The recordsconsisting largely of pictures but also including call logs, grand jury testimony, interview transcripts and other documents, arrived amid extraordinary anticipation that they might offer the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government scrutiny of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls. Yet the release, replete with redactions, seemed unlikely to satisfy the clamor for information given how many records had yet to be released and because some of the materials had already been made public.

Democrats and some Republicans seized on the limited release to accuse the Justice Department of failing to meet a congressionally set deadline to produce the files, while White House officials on social media gleefully promoted a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a woman with a blacked-out face. The Trump administration touted the release as proof of its commitment to transparency, ignoring that the Justice Department just months ago said no more files would be released. Congress then passed a law mandating it.

In a letter to Congress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that the Justice Department was continuing to review files in its possession, was withholding some documents under exemptions meant to protect victims and expected additional disclosures by the end of the year.

Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out, tried for months to keep the records sealed.

But bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump last month signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law set a deadline for Friday.

Limited details about Trump

Trump is hardly glimpsed in the files, with the small number of photos of him appearing to have been in the public domain for decades. Those include two in which Trump and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump in February 2000 at an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump’s connection to Epstein is well-documented, but he has sought to distance himself from his former friend. He has said he cut off ties with Epstein after the financier hired young female employees from Mar-a-Lago and has repeatedly denied knowledge of his crimes.

The FBI and Justice Department abruptly announced in July that they would not be releasing any additional records, a decision that was supported by Trump. But the president reversed course once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and releasing the records was the best way to move on.

The White House, meanwhile, has moved to shift focus away from Trump’s ties to Epstein, with Attorney General Pam Bondi last month saying that she had ordered a federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s connections to Trump’s political foes, including Clinton.

Neither Trump nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in the files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Among other prominent Epstein contacts is the former Prince Andrew, who appears in a photograph released Friday wearing a tuxedo and lying on the laps of what appear to be several women who are seated, dressed in formalwear. Pop star Michael Jackson also appears in multiple photos, including one showing him standing next to a smiling Epstein.

New photos of Clinton

Unlike Trump, Clinton is featured prominently in the files, though the records included no explanation of how the photographs of the former president related to any investigation or the context surrounding them.

Some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another shows him in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwelland a person whose face was also redacted. He is also seen in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

Senior Trump White House aides took to X to promote the Clinton photos.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote “Oh my!” and added a shocked face emoji in response to a photo of Clinton in the hot tub.

“They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement.

“There are two types of people here,” he said. “The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”

The Epstein investigations

After nearly two decades of court action, a voluminous number of Epstein records had already been public before Friday, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and deposition transcripts.

Besides public curiosity about whether any of Epstein’s associates knew about or participated in the abuse, Epstein’s accusers have also sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.

“Just put out the files,” said Marina Lacerda, who says she survived sexual assault by Epstein. “And stop redacting names that don’t need to be redacted.”

One of the few revelations in the documents was a copy of the earliest known concern about Epstein’s behavior — a report taken by the FBI of a woman in 1996 who believed photos and negatives she had taken of her 12-year-old and 16-year-old sisters for a personal art project had been stolen by Epstein. The documents don’t show what, if anything, the agency did with that complaint.

Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported being molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation. Authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they’d been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.

Ultimately, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Epstein’s accusers spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with other men, including billionaires, famous academics, politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year.

Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide in April.

Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Maxwell, his longtime confidant, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

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Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press reporters from around the country contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration has awarded a $1.6 million, no-bid contract to a Danish university to study hepatitis B vaccinations on newborns in Africa that is raising ethical concerns.

The unusual contract was awarded to scientists who have been cited by anti-vaccine activists and whose work has been questioned by leading public health experts. Some experts have suggested the research plan is unethical, because it will withhold vaccines that work from newborns at significant risk of infection.

The contract did not undergo a customary ethics review, The Associated Press has learned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the grant to a research team at the University of Southern Denmark that has been lauded by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a federal notice posted this week.

One of the team’s leaders is Christine Stabell Benn, a consultant for a Kennedy-appointed committee that recently voted to stop recommending a dose of hepatitis B vaccine for all U.S. newborns.

The study is to begin early next year in Guinea-Bissau, an impoverished West African nation where hepatitis B infection is common. The researchers are funded for five years to study 14,000 newborns.

It’s to be a randomized controlled trial, with some infants given the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and some not. Children will be tracked for death, illness and long-term developmental outcomes.

Most of the children will be followed for less than two years to look for side effects, but the first 500 enrolled will be followed for five years to look for behavior and brain development problems. There is no placebo involved, according to a copy of the study protocol prepared earlier this year that was obtained by the AP.

Hepatitis B can be passed from an infected mother to a baby. It also can be spread by other infected people a baby comes in contact with.

Research and widespread medical consensus holds that the hepatitis B vaccine protects newborns, so withholding it from some babies — in this case, Black babies — has raised ethical alarms.

Medical evidence is clear that the vaccine protects infants from developing liver disease and an early death. The well-documented infection risk far outweighs hypothetical concerns about side effects, said Dr. Boghuma K. Titanji, an Emory University infectious diseases doctor.

She called the study “unconscionable,” and said it likely will exacerbate existing vaccine hesitancy in Africa and elsewhere.

“There’s so much potential for this to be a harmful study,” said Titanji, who is from Cameroon.

Benn did not respond to an email seeking comment about the proposal. An automatic response said she is out of the office until early January.

But, in a statementthe research team said the study “will be the first and likely the only one of its kind.”

They said it takes advantage of an unusual window of opportunity: Guinea-Bissau doesn’t currently recommended a birth dose of the hep B vaccine, but the nation will be implementing universal vaccination of newborns in 2027.

Vaccine skeptics and opponents have suggested that all the vaccine’s possible side effects were inadequately studied before the CDC began recommending it for newborns in 1991. Public health experts counter that over more than three decades no serious side effect has been documented.

The award is highly unusual. The CDC did not announce a research funding opportunity and invite proposals.

The proposal was unsolicited and the award did not go through customary review, said a CDC official with knowledge of the decision. Department of Health and Human Services officials told CDC officials to approve it and said HHS would provide special funding for it, the CDC official said.

In private communications channels, CDC staffers were expressing outrage about the award, said the official, who is not authorized to talk about it and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some of those CDC scientists have compared the work to the infamous Tuskegee Studywhich the agency oversaw in its later stages. In that decades-long study, health workers withheld treatment from unsuspecting Black men infected with syphilis so doctors could track the horrible ravages of the disease.

Like Tuskegee, this study involves the prospect of researchers watching people grow ill when a medical intervention could have kept them healthy, Titanji echoed.

“It is an apt comparison,” she said.

The new study’s researchers say the trial was approved by a national ethics committee in Guinea-Bissau. But it did not undergo a customary ethics review within the CDC, the agency official told the AP.

In a statement, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said “we will ensure the highest scientific and ethical standards are met.”

Public health scientists noted questions have been raised in the past about research led by Benn and her husband, Peter Aaby, in their Bandim Health Project.

Other Danish researchers who reviewed Aaby and Benn’s work have described questionable research practices. Earlier this year, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote an editorial calling a 2017 study co-authored by Aaby and Benn “fundamentally flawed.”

Several researchers had harsh words about the latest award.

“Aaby and Benn are doing the Guinea-Bissau HBV vaccine depravation trial,” Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington evolutionary biologist, wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Did RFK Jr. just call up the first name in the antivax yellow pages?”

Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the University of Saskatchewan, said Kennedy was giving taxpayers’ money to his “cronies” for a “grossly unethical study that will expose African babies to hep B for no reason.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.