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ATLANTA (AP) — Florida was the first state to pass a law regulating the use of cellphones in schools in 2023. Just two years later, more than half of all states have laws in place, with more likely to act soon.

Bills have sprinted through legislatures this year in states as varied as New York and Oklahoma, reflecting a broad consensus that phones are bad for kids.

Connecticut state Rep. Jennifer Leeper, a Democrat and co-chair of the General Assembly’s Education Committee, on May 13 called phones “a cancer on our kids” that are “driving isolation, loneliness, decreasing attention and having major impacts both on social-emotional well-being but also learning.”

Republicans express similar sentiments.

“This is a not just an academic bill,” Republican Rep. Scott Hilton said after Georgia’s bill, which only bans phones in grades K-8, passed in March. “This is a mental health bill. It’s a public safety bill.”

So far, 26 states have passed laws, with eight other states and the District of Columbia implementing rules or making recommendations to local districts. Of the states, 17 have acted this year. Just Tuesday, Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed a law banning phones throughout the school day. Earlier Tuesday, Alaska lawmakers required schools to regulate cellphones when they overrode an education package Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy had vetoed for unrelated reasons.

More action is coming as bills await a governor’s signature or veto in Florida, Missouri, Nebraska and New Hampshire.

When Florida first acted, lawmakers ordered schools to ban phones during instructional time while allowing them between classes or at lunch. But now there’s another bill awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ action that goes further. It would ban phones for the entire school day for elementary and middle schools.

Ten states and the District of Columbia have enacted school day bans, most for students in grades K-12, and they now outnumber the seven states with instructional time bans.

North Dakota Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong called the ban throughout the school day that he signed into law “a huge win.”

“Teachers wanted it. Parents wanted it. Principals wanted it. School boards wanted it,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong recently visited a grade school with such a ban in place. He said he saw kids engaging with each other and laughing at tables during lunch.

The “bell-to-bell” bans have been promoted in part by ExcelinEd, the education think tank founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The group’s political affiliate has been active in lobbying for bans.

Nathan Hoffman, ExcelinEd’s senior director of state policy and advocacy, said barring phones throughout the day heads off problems outside of class, like when students set up or record fights in halls.

“That’s often when you get some of your biggest behavioral issues, whether they go viral or not,” Hoffman said.

But other states, particularly where there are strong traditions of local school control, are mandating only that school districts adopt some kind of cellphone policy, believing districts will take the hint and sharply restrict phone access. In Maine, where some lawmakers originally proposed a school day ban, lawmakers are now considering a rewritten bill that would only require a policy.

And there have been a few states where lawmakers failed to act at all. Maybe the most dramatic was in Wyoming, where senators voted down a bill in January, with some opponents saying teachers or parents should set the rules.

Where policymakers have moved ahead, there’s a growing consensus around exceptions. Most states are letting students use electronic devices to monitor medical needs and meet the terms of their special education plans. Some are allowing exceptions for translation devices if English isn’t a student’s first language or when a teacher wants students to use devices for classwork.

There are some unusual exceptions, too. South Carolina’s original policy allowed an exception for students who are volunteer firefighters. West Virginia’s new law allows smartwatches as long as they are not being used for communication.

But by far the most high-profile exception has been allowing cellphone use in case of emergencies. One of the most common parent objections to a ban is that they would not be able to contact their child in a crisis like a school shooting.

“It was only through text messages that parents knew what was happening,” said Tinya Brown, whose daughter is a freshman at Apalachee High School, northeast of Atlanta, where a shooting killed two students and two teachers in September. She spoke against Georgia’s law at a news conference in March.

Some laws call for schools to find other ways for parents to communicate with their children at schools, but most lawmakers say they support giving students access to their cellphones, at least after the immediate danger has passed, during an emergency.

In some states, students have testified in favor of regulations, but it’s also clear that many students, especially in high schools, are chafing under the rules. Kaytlin Villescas, a sophomore at Prairieville High School, in the suburbs of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is one student who took up the fight against bans, starting a petition and telling WBRZ-TV in August that Louisiana’s law requiring a school day ban is misguided. She argued that schools should instead teach responsible use.

“It is our proposition that rather than banning cellphone use entirely, schools should impart guidelines on responsible use, thereby building a culture of respect and self-regulation,” Villescas wrote in an online petition.

A few states have provided money for districts to buy lockable phone storage pouches or other storage solutions. New York, for example, plans to spend $13.5 million. But states have typically provided no cash. New Hampshire lawmakers stripped a proposed $1 million from their bill.

“Providing some specific money for this would kind of ease some of those implementation challenges,” Hoffman said. ”That said, most states have not."

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota; and Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida; contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.

OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.

OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been “quietly” collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.

Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple’s chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm.

In a joint letter posted on OpenAI’s website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it “became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company.”

That’s when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.

OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.” Both OpenAI and Ive’s design firm are based in San Francisco.

Leading the new io division for OpenAI will be longtime executive Peter Welinder, who led robotics research in the startup’s early years and more recently has been vice president of its “new product explorations” team that delves into hardware, robotics and other early stage research.

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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump implored House Republicans at the Capitol to drop their fights over his big tax cuts bill and get it done, using encouraging words but also the hardened language of politics over the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing before planned votes this week.

During the more than hour-long session Tuesday, Trump warned Republicans not to touch Medicaid with cuts, and he told New York lawmakers to end their fight for a bigger local tax deduction, reversing his own campaign promise. The president, heading into the meeting, called himself a “cheerleader” for the Republican Party and praised Speaker Mike Johnson. But he also criticized at least one of the GOP holdouts as a “grandstander” and warned that anyone who doesn’t support the bill would be a “fool.”

“We have unbelievable unity,” Trump said as he exited. “I think we’re going to get everything we want.”

The president arrived at a pivotal moment. Negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority. Lawmakers are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda.

Inside, he spoke privately in what one lawmaker called the president’s “weaving” style and took questions.

The president also made it clear he’s losing patience with the various holdout factions of the House Republicans, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

But Trump himself disputed that notion as well as reports that he used an expletive in warning not to cut Medicaid. Instead, he said afterward, “That was a meeting of love.” He received several standing ovations, Republicans said.

Yet it was not at all clear that Trump, who was brought in to seal the deal, changed minds.

“We’re still a long ways away,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

Conservatives are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states want bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt are stark.

With House Democrats lined up against the package as a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of safety net programs, GOP leaders have almost no votes to spare. A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.

“They literally are trying to take health care away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Trump has been pushing hard for Republicans to unite behind the bill, which has been uniquely shaped in his image as the president’s signature domestic policy initiative in Congress.

Asked about one of the conservative Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Trump lashed out.

“I think he is a grandstander, frankly,” the president continued. “I think he should be voted out of office.”

But Massie, a renegade who often goes it alone and wears a clock lapel pin that tallies the nation’s debt load, said afterward he’s still a no vote.

Also unmoved was Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the New York Republicans leading the fight for a bigger state and local tax deduction, known as SALT: “As it stands right now, I do not support the bill. Period.”

The sprawling 1,116-page package carries Trump’s title, the “ One Big Beautiful Bill Act," as well as his campaign promises to extend the tax breaks approved during his first term while adding new ones, including no taxes on tips, automobile loan interest and Social Security. There’s also a higher standard deduction, of $32,000 for joint filers, and a bigger child tax credit.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Republicans criticizing the measure argued that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded.

In particular, the conservative Republicans are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for able-bodied participants in Medicaid. They had been proposed to start Jan. 1, 2029, but GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on CNBC that work requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries would begin in early 2027.

At least 7.6 million fewer people are expected to have health insurance under the initial Medicaid changes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week.

Republican holdouts are also looking to more quickly halt green energy tax breaks, which had been approved as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, and are now being used for renewable energy projects across the nation.

But for every change Johnson considers to appease the hard-right conservatives, he risks losing support from more traditional and centrist Republicans. Many have signed on to letters protesting deep cuts to Medicaid and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits.

The New Yorkers are fighting for a larger state and local tax deduction beyond the bill’s proposal. As it stands, the bill would triple what’s currently a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, increasing it to $30,000 for joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 a year. They have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

Trump, who had campaigned on fully reinstating the unlimited SALT deduction, now appears to be satisfied with the proposed compromise, arguing it only benefits “all the Democratic” states.

If the bill passes the House this week, it would then move to the Senate, where Republicans are also eyeing changes.

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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Levi Strauss is set to finally part ways with Dockers — inking a deal to sell its brand once credited with propelling the popularity of “Casual Fridays” to Authentic Brands Group.

In an announcement Tuesday, the denim giant said it had agreed to sell Dockers to Authentic for up to $391 million. The transaction will start at an initial value of $311 million, with the potential of adding another $80 million to the price tag based on business performance under the new ownership.

The sale arrives as San Francisco-based Levi Strauss boosts its focus on the chain’s core Levi’s brand — as well as Beyond Yoga, which the company acquired in 2021, as more and more consumers continue to cozy up to athleisure wear.

Selling Dockers “further aligns our portfolio with our strategic priorities,” Levi Strauss CEO Michelle Gass said in a statement, while thanking the Dockers team for their commitment to building the brand, which she said “continues to be the authority on khaki.”

Jamie Salter, founder and CEO of New York-based Authentic, called Dockers a “natural fit” for his company’s model. Dockers “played a key role in shaping casual workwear as we know it today, and we see significant potential to build on that legacy and grow the brand across a variety of categories,” he said.

Levi Strauss launched Dockers back in 1986, and the brand soon became a “Casual Friday” staple. Many office workers turned to Dockers’ khakis and looser button-downs in the place of more traditional business attire. While it was not the sole — or very first — creator of dressed-down office looks, Dockers has been widely-credited as an integral part to “Casual Friday’s” rise, particularly in the 90s.

But the nearly 40-year-old brand has struggled some in recent years — notably since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many shoppers traded their khakis for more comfortable clothes, like yoga pants and other athleisure, as they began working from home. And even with returns to the office, many dress codes remain more relaxed than they were before.

Levi Strauss said it began to “evaluate strategic alternatives” for Dockers in October of last year, citing recent underperformance at the time.

On Tuesday, Levi Strauss said it expected to close Dockers’ sale to Authentic around July 31 for the U.S. and Canada, pending customary closing conditions, and in January 2026 for remaining operations.

In its 2024 fiscal year, Levi Strauss reported profit of $210.6 million and revenue of $6.36 billion.