LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty Boop and “Blondie” are joining Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain.
The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan. 1. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.
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FILE - Irving Berlin, at the piano, and friends celebrate his 25th year since he wrote "Alexander's Rag Time Band" at a banquet in his honor in Hollywood, Ca., Jan. 20, 1936. Standing behind Berlin, at right, is Joseph Schenck, film producer. In front row singing together are two of the Marx Brothers, Chico and Harpo. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Mae Questel, who provided the loopy, child-like voice of cartoon characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl, poses in this 1978 file photo with a poster of Betty Boop. . (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Dean Young, writer of the"Blondie" comic strip, draws in his studio in Clearwater, Fla., July 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Robert Azmitia, File)
FILE - Irving Berlin, at the piano, and friends celebrate his 25th year since he wrote "Alexander's Rag Time Band" at a banquet in his honor in Hollywood, Ca., Jan. 20, 1936. Standing behind Berlin, at right, is Joseph Schenck, film producer. In front row singing together are two of the Marx Brothers, Chico and Harpo. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Betty Boop collapses on Broadway near 49th Street as handlers work to raise the deflated helium balloon during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm, File)
The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn't quite have the sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of Mickey or Winnie. But ever since 2019 — the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions — every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, for whom New Year's Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It's just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.”
Jenkins said that, collectively, this year's work shows “the fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.”
Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday, based on the research of Jenkins and her center.
Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she's already totally recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth. But she's also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.
She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine — and push aside. She's got a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She's not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop.”
Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation in new works, and has a free idea: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog, that’s why she had this weird backstory,” she said with a laugh. “This movie needs to be made.”
The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,” thanks to a hit 1929 song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop's character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings the defense alleged Black singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first.
Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch won't be free. In an important distinction often raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character's trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.
Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic Young's newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still have comics.
The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a woman's life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star — a proto- Adam Driver, if you will, as the breakout actor from “Girls.”
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two years after “Steamboat Willie” made the first version of him public property. He's joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term moniker the following year.)
The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:
— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie's “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.
And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became essential parody fodder for decades, become public via the “Elson Basic Readers” textbooks.
A year after their film debut, “The Cocoanuts,” entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers' beloved “Animal Crackers” joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film finds Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa.
Other movies entering the public domain include:
— “The Blue Angel,” the German film from Josef von Sternberg that emblazoned Marlene Dietrich's top-hatted image into film lore.
— “King of Jazz,” featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.
— A pair of Oscar best picture winners, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award was known as “Outstanding Production” then, and the Academy Awards eligibility period didn't sync with the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the titles due.
As in the last several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public:
— Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Embraceable You,” “I've Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me” and “I Got Rhythm.”
— “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
— “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly in the public domain this week date to 1925. They include Rodgers and Hart's “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen” by Marian Anderson and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong.
FILE - Mae Questel, who provided the loopy, child-like voice of cartoon characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl, poses in this 1978 file photo with a poster of Betty Boop. . (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Dean Young, writer of the"Blondie" comic strip, draws in his studio in Clearwater, Fla., July 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Robert Azmitia, File)
FILE - Irving Berlin, at the piano, and friends celebrate his 25th year since he wrote "Alexander's Rag Time Band" at a banquet in his honor in Hollywood, Ca., Jan. 20, 1936. Standing behind Berlin, at right, is Joseph Schenck, film producer. In front row singing together are two of the Marx Brothers, Chico and Harpo. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Betty Boop collapses on Broadway near 49th Street as handlers work to raise the deflated helium balloon during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm, File)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will face a second day of grilling from Democrats on Capitol Hill, with senators getting their first opportunity on Thursday to confront or praise the Pentagon chief over his handling of the Iran war.
Hegseth battled with Democrats — and some Republicans — a day earlier during a nearly six-hour House Armed Services Committee hearing, where he faced sharp questioning over the war’s costs in dollars, lives and the diminishing stockpiles of critical weapons.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will hear a similar presentation on the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, will again stress the need for more drones, missile defense systems and warships.
Here's the latest:
In opening remarks, GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi outlined threats to the United States he said were a “growing alliance” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, saying the current moment represents “the most dangerous security environment since World War II.”
Saying Chinese President Xi Jinping led a “growing alliance” among the countries, Wicker said they shared a goal ”to oppose America’s interests and the interests of other like minded, democratic countries across the globe.”
“Ties have never been closer among these four dictators,” Wicker said. “Among these four dictatorships, they support each other’s aggressive endeavors.”
The Republican Florida governor told reporters Thursday he would not delay signing the new congressional map the GOP-dominated Legislature passed Wednesday at his and President Trump’s urging.
There had been some speculation that DeSantis could hold the bill for as long as possible — as much as two weeks or so depending on when the Legislature adjourns — to delay when the bill’s critics can file lawsuits challenging the measure.
The new map is intended to help Republicans gain as many as four more U.S. House seats in November, making the GOP advantage in Florida up to 24-4.
DeSantis said Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision curtailing the strength of nonwhite voters in redistricting vindicated his decision to call a special session for what he insists is a “race neutral” map.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sitting before senators in what’s expected to be another fiery hearing on the Hill.
The defense secretary’s hearing is ostensibly to discuss the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request to Congress, but it’s the first time that senators will get to publicly question him since the Iran War began nearly two months ago. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, is also seated beside Hegseth.
The defense secretary also appeared for a House hearing Wednesday and he drew a large crowd of anti-war protesters to the hallways of the House office building where the hearing was held.
On Thursday, things feel a bit more low-key in the Senate, although there are a handful of people in the hearing room wearing pink shirts that state “Peace with Iran.”
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Thursday spoke by video with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, China’s state media reported, ahead of a planned state visit by President Trump to Beijing in mid-May.
The two sides had a “candid, in-depth and constructive” exchange, the state broadcaster China Central Television said. The Chinese side lodged “solemn concerns” over recent restrictive trade measures imposed by the U.S. on China, but the statement didn’t specify the measures.
Last week, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a China-based oil refinery and 40 shippers involved in transporting Iranian oil. The U.S. Trade Representative Office this week held a hearing on the use of forced labor in foreign goods.
The president is continuing to pillory German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who’s been increasingly critical of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.
Trump in a social media post said Merz “should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy” and less time concerning himself with the Iran war.
The latest criticism by Trump of Merz came the day after the U.S. president announced he was reviewing the U.S. military presence in Germany, a NATO ally that hosts several American military installations.
U.S. officials are appealing a judge’s order that blocks the government from cutting the number of vaccines recommended for every U.S. child.
Government lawyers on Wednesday filed the one-sentence appeal.
It was a delayed response to a March 16 order by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who blocked an order by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — announced in January — to end broad recommendations for all children to be vaccinated against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV.
Murphy’s order also stopped a meeting of a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory committee. The stay continues while the appeal is considered.
The Trump administration is constrained by the 1973 law, which requires several notification and approval steps meant to keep a commander-in-chief’s military powers in check.
One of its provisions is that military action authorized by the president must end after 60 days unless Congress has explicitly approved it, or has declared war. That 60-day clock runs out Friday.
One White House official said the administration is in “active conversations” with lawmakers on addressing the deadline, but did not elaborate. The official was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The administration can request a 30-day extension by telling Congress in writing that there’s a continued need for military action. The White House, which has long stressed that the president is working toward a diplomatic option in Iran, hasn’t indicated publicly whether Trump will seek that extension.
— Seung Min Kim
Under the plan, the United States would continue its blockade on Iranian ports, while coordinating with allies to impose higher costs on Iran’s attempts to subvert the free flow of energy, according to a senior administration official.
Trump is weighing multiple diplomatic and policy options to push Iran to end its chokehold on the waterway, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
— Aamer Madhani
U.S. jobless aid applications for the week ending April 25 fell by 26,000 by to 189,000, down from the previous week’s 215,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s well below the 214,000 new applications analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting.
Filings for unemployment benefits are considered a proxy for U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
The four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, came in at 207,500, about 3,500 lower than the previous week.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending April 18 fell to 1.79 million, a decrease of 23,000.
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But the outlook is clouded by the Iran war.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — rebounded from a lackluster 0.5% expansion the last three months of 2025. The federal government’s spending and investment grew at a 9.3% annual rate in the first quarter, adding more than half a percentage point to growth after lopping off 1.16 percentage points in fourth-quarter 2025.
Growth in consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity, slowed to 1.6% in the first quarter from 1.9% at the end of 2025. But business investment, likely driven by investments in artificial intelligence, rose at an 8.7% pace.
Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. That has driven energy prices higher, fueling inflation and hurting consumers.
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It’s the latest sign that the Iran war is pushing up the cost of living and delaying any interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
An inflation gauge monitored by the Fed rose 0.7% in March from February, up slightly from the previous month. Compared with a year ago, prices rose 3.5%, the biggest increase in almost three years.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core inflation rose 0.3% in March from February, and it was 3.2% higher than a year earlier. The annual figure is above February’s reading of 3%.
Rising gas prices have caused inflation to move further away from the Fed’s 2% target, which has caused the central bank to keep its key short-term interest rate unchanged after cutting it three times last year. The Fed typically keeps rates elevated — or even raises them — to combat higher inflation.
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President Trump has again threatened that the United States could reduce its military presence in Germany, a key NATO ally and the European Union’s largest economy. Europeans have heard this before.
Trump’s social media post on Wednesday followed comments by Chancellor Friedrich Merz that the U.S. was being “ humiliated ” by Tehran as it slow-walks its diplomacy over the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.
Trump has mused for years about reducing America’s military presence in Germany, and has recently repeatedly railed against NATO for the its refusal to assist the U.S. in its two-month-old war.
U.S. allies at NATO have been waiting for the Trump administration to pull troops out since just after it came to office, warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, and that of Ukraine, in the future.
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A divided federal appeals court said Wednesday it won’t grant a rare meeting of its active judges to hear an appeal of an $83 million verdict against President Donald Trump for defaming a magazine advice columnist over an encounter three decades ago.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to reject a so-called “en banc” hearing comes several months after Trump appealed to the Supreme Court another jury’s decision to grant $5 million the writer, E. Jean Carroll, after concluding he had sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in 1996 and later defamed her. The high court hasn’t yet decided whether to hear the case.
Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that her client was “eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice.”
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Senate Democrats accused the Trump administration of abandoning the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment at a congressional hearing Wednesday, slamming agency leadership over a proposal to cut its budget in half.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s appearance before the Senate environment committee was his last of three budget hearings this week where he argued for sharply reduced funding for the agency, which already has seen its staffing reduced to its lowest level in decades under his leadership. During much of the week, the former Republican congressman from New York took an aggressive approach, responding to Democrats in the House and Senate with his own questions and at times accusing them of being unprepared or failing to care about the EPA’s track record.
Zeldin has eliminated major climate change programs, promoted deregulatory efforts he calls the biggest in American history and canceled billions of dollars in Biden-era environmental justice grants to halt what he calls “EPA’s radical diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.”
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The price of Brent crude oil briefly surged past $126 a barrel early Thursday as stalled U.S.-Iran talks raised doubts over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a permanent end to the Iran war.
Brent crude to be delivered in June jumped 3.3% to $121.90 after briefly soaring past $126 per barrel. Brent to be delivered in July rose 1.4% to $112.02.
Benchmark U.S. crude climbed 1.3% to $108.28 per barrel.
Before the war began in late February, Brent crude was trading around $70 per barrel.
There’s no clear path to an end to the war. The U.S. has continued its blockade of Iranian ports while the Strait of Hormuz is closed, pushing oil prices higher. Reports Thursday suggesting a possible escalation by Trump doused hopes for a quick end to the conflict.
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Jerome Powell said Wednesday he plans to remain on the board of the Federal Reserve after his term as chair ends next month “for a period of time, to be determined,” saying the “unprecedented” legal attacks by the Trump administration have put the independence of the nation’s central bank at risk.
“I worry these attacks are battering this institution and putting at risk the things that really matter to the public,” Powell said in remarks at a news conference after the Fed announced its decision to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged.
Powell’s decision to stay — the first time a Fed chair will remain on the board as a governor since 1948 — denies Trump a chance to fill a seat on the central bank’s seven-member governing board with his own appointee. The Senate Banking Committee earlier approved Powell’s successor as chair, Trump appointee Kevin Warsh, on a party-line vote. Powell will continue as a Fed governor, possibly until January 2028. Warsh, if confirmed, will take a seat currently held by Stephen Miran, a previous Trump appointee, whose term ended in January.
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Hegseth will face a second day of grilling from Democrats on Capitol Hill, with senators getting their first opportunity on Thursday to confront or praise the Pentagon chief over his handling of the Iran war.
Hegseth battled with Democrats — and some Republicans — a day earlier during a nearly six-hour House Armed Services Committee hearing, where he faced sharp questioning over the war’s costs in dollars, lives and the diminishing stockpiles of critical weapons.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will hear a similar presentation on the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, will again stress the need for more drones, missile defense systems and warships.
They are now also likely to face tough questions about American troop levels in Europe after President Donald Trump on Wednesday leveled a new threat against NATO ally Germany, suggesting he could soon reduce the U.S. military presence in the country as he feuds with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war.
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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he meets with NASA's Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears before a House Committee on Armed Services business meeting on the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey Jr.)
