Follow live updates.

By Steven Porter, Globe Staff

Environmentalists are voicing outrage over the Trump administration’s move to invoke emergency powers to ramp up timber production from national forests in northern New England and across the country.

The bulk of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and much of the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont were included in US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s announcement earlier this month that an “emergency situation” exists across 112.6 million acres of federally managed land.

READ MORE

By The Associated Press

Japan recorded a trade deficit in its March-April fiscal year but racked up a surplus with the U.S., the Finance Ministry reported Thursday.

Japan’s global trade deficit totaled 5.2 trillion yen ($37 billion) for the fiscal year through March, for the fourth straight year of deficits, according to the provisional statistics.

The surplus with the U.S. ballooned to 9 trillion yen ($63 billion).

Exports to the U.S. are a contentious issue for U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese negotiators are in Washington to argue their case against higher U.S. tariffs. Japan is a key longtime U.S. ally and major investor in the U.S., employing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

READ MORE

By The Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Wednesday inserted himself directly into trade talks with Japanese officials, a sign of the high stakes for the United States after its tariffs rattled the economy and caused the administration to assure the public that it would quickly reach deals.

The Republican president attended the meeting alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, top economic advisers with a central role in his trade and tariff policies.

“Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!” Trump wrote in a social media post ahead of the meeting.

Afterward, he posted: “A Great Honor to have just met with the Japanese Delegation on Trade. Big Progress!”

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters Thursday in Tokyo that his chief trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, told him from Washington that the talks were “very candid and constructive.”

READ MORE

By Gregory Korte, Bloomberg

The Trump administration has sent home staffers at AmeriCorps, the national agency that supports public service and volunteerism, in the latest agency takeover as part of a wide-ranging effort to cut the size of government.

Interim agency head Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi sent a memo to employees Wednesday placing them on administrative leave and banning them from entering AmeriCorps facilities “until otherwise notified.”

That action came a day after hundreds of volunteers for the agency’s National Civilian Conservation Corps had their service cut short, four people familiar with the move said. The program allows 18- to 26-year-olds to earn money for college by spending a year of public service experience working on housing, disaster response and environmental projects.

READ MORE

By The Associated Press

A federal judge says he won’t dismiss a lawsuit from labor unions seeking to block Elon Musk’s team from accessing systems at the Labor Department.

The labor unions say that allowing Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the systems violates the federal Privacy Act because they contain medical and financial records of millions of Americans. They also contend DOGE doesn’t have the legal authority to direct the actions of congressionally created agencies like the Department of Labor.

In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Bates said those claims could move forward in court. But some other, more specific arguments made by the unions — including that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department violated health care privacy laws by allowing DOGE access — were dismissed by the judge.

READ MORE