Brad Reed, Common Dreams

A landmark study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operations are actually costing Americans jobs, contrary to the White House’s frequent claims that its anti-immigration agenda is helping US workers.

The NBER study, which was published last month and reported on by The New York Times Tuesday, claims to provide “the first national, causal empirical evidence on the labor market impacts of immigration enforcement in the second Trump administration,” and finds that mass deportations have not resulted in more job offers for native-born Americans.

In fact, the study identifies “a negative and significant impact on employment of US-born male workers with at most a high-school education” who are working in industries that employ the most undocumented immigrants, including construction, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The study finds that instead of hiring more US-born workers in the absence of available undocumented workers—who may have been deported, left the country to avoid deportation, or have stayed home out of fear of immigration raids—employers are more likely to simply slow down economic activity altogether, which has a cascading impact on related industries.

“We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract US-born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement,” the researchers explain. “Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs more often taken by US-born workers.”

The NBER researchers also say that undocumented workers are more often than not complements to US workers, as they “are more likely than US-born individuals to work in jobs that are less desirable due to lower pay, on the job hazards, and irregular schedules.”

University of Colorado, Boulder economist Chloe East, who co-authored the NBER study, told the New York Times on Tuesday that construction firms “view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for US-born workers.”

East said that this would likely hurt efforts to build more housing in the US, telling the Times that “I assume we’re going to see... a long-term shock to the construction sector” due to Trump’s mass deportations.

Anirban Basu, chief economist at the Associated Builders and Contractors national trade organization, told the Times that he wasn’t surprised by the finding that aggressive immigration raids shut down projects rather than open up new work for native-born Americans.

“Given high interest rates, given rising material prices and fewer people available to provide roofing, tiling, carpeting, and other flooring services,” Basu said, “it renders fewer projects financially viable.”

NPER’s study echoes an analysis released last month by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which found that unemployment for US-born workers has increased since the start of Trump’s second term, as the federal government has carried out its draconian deportation operations.

“Claims that mass deportations have helped US-born workers are simply inconsistent with the data,” EPI wrote. “This is no surprise, given that economic research has repeatedly shown that increased immigration enforcement harms everyone in the labor market, including US-born workers.”

One of Wall Street’s most recognizable gurus, Jim Cramer, became notably tongue-tied on Monday after President Donald Trump’s recent stock-trading spree entered into a televised conversation with his colleagues on CNBC.

Disclosures published by the US Office of Government Ethics last week revealed that Trump, in the first quarter of 2026, carried out over 3,700 stock transactions, including over 30 stock purchases worth $1 million or more.

As noted by The Financial Times, Trump’s investments included transactions involving Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm, and GE Aerospace, whose executives all accompanied the president on his trip to China last week.

When CNBC co-host Carl Quintanilla brought up these trades during Monday’s edition of “Squawk on the Street,” Cramer spent 10 straight seconds mumbling incoherently.

This promoted co-host David Faber to reassure viewers that “we’re not having technical difficulties here,” even as Cramer appeared to short-circuit.

Journalist Ryan Grim said that Cramer’s reaction to mention of Trump’s trades was understandable given that some of the companies whose stocks he traded have been direct beneficiaries of the president’s illegal war with Iran and other policies.

“Cramer here is having what should be the normal reaction to Trump actively insider trading on his own decisions,” remarked Grim. “Just sputtering speechlessness.”

Journalist Judd Legum on Monday published an analysis of the Trump stock trades in which he identified multiple instances where the president purchased stocks of companies shortly before—or in some cases, on the exact same day—that he publicly singled them out for praise.

Specifically, Legum found that Trump bought tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in biotech firm Thermo Fisher Scientific on the same day he took a tour of one of its manufacturing facilities, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in Apple on the same day he delivered a speech calling it “a great company,” while saying then-CEO Tim Cook has “done a good job.”

Trump also bought up shares in Micron Technology and then described it as “one of the hottest companies” during an interview with Fox News just one day later.

And nine days after buying millions of dollars’ worth of shares in Dell, Trump delivered a speech in Georgia where he told his audience to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”

In analyzing the trades, Legum explained how Trump has destroyed any remaining guardrails preventing US presidents from using their office to personally enrich themsleves.

“If Trump wanted to legally remove himself from investment decisions he could do so by creating a qualified blind trust,” Legum wrote. “Instead, before returning to the White House, Trump transferred his assets in a trust that is managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr. There are no legal or practical barriers preventing Trump from being involved in the management of his assets.”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) warned Trump that details of his assorted stock trades would eventually come to light.

“This smells like blatant and criminal insider trading,” Goldman wrote in a social media post. “Even worse, Trump is personally profiting off of his illegal deportation dragnet. Since we know congressional Republicans will pretend like they never saw this and won’t do a thing, anyone involved in these trades should preserve their records for my investigation in January 2027.”

With no end in sight to the Strait of Hormuz crisis caused by President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, the head of the International Energy Agency warned Monday that global energy supplies are running dangerously low.

IEA executive director Faith Birol told reporters in Paris that the world only has weeks’ worth of oil reserves left, raising the likelihood that energy prices will soar even higher in the near future.

Birol said that oil inventories are “declining rapidly” and added that there was “a perception gap in the markets between the physical markets and the financial markets,” as the price of oil in futures markets has not yet risen to a level that accurately reflects the coming supply crunch.

In his remarks to the press, given on the sidelines of a G7 gathering taking place this week in France, Birol warned that it’s only a matter of time before the supply shortage of fertilizer, which was also caused by the Iran War, leads to a surge in food prices that “might give a big push to inflation numbers.”

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that energy markets are approaching a “tipping point” where prices could see another upward surge that would throw the global economy into a recession.

Paul Diggle, chief economist at fund manager Aberdeen, told The Financial Times that he has been modeling the economic impact of oil hitting $180 per barrel, which he said would set off a global inflation crisis.

“We are taking that outcome very seriously,” Diggle said. “We are living on borrowed time.”

Oil prices briefly fell last month after the US and Iran announced a ceasefire agreement. However, the Strait of Hormuz has remained closed throughout that period, and Trump is reportedly preparing to restart attacks on Iran in the near future if no deal to reopen the strait is reached.

In a Sunday Truth Social post, Trump again threatened Iran with destruction unless it agrees to his demands.

“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” the president wrote. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Tens of thousands of Argentines took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against cuts to public universities championed by right-wing President Javier Milei.

As reported by The Associated Press, demonstrators in Buenos Aires marched on the Plaza de Mayo toward the Casa Rosada to demand the government implement funding for public universities that was passed by Congress last year but that Milei’s administration is challenging in court.

The AP reported that university professors’ salaries have declined by roughly one-third since Milei came to power in 2023 due to the rising cost of living in the country, and education unions have rejected the government’s proposals for marginal funding increases as woefully insufficient.

A report from DW noted that “public university budgets been slashed by 40% since 2023 when Milei took power.”

Sol Muñíz, a law student at the University of Buenos Aires, told the AP that Milei’s cuts to the education system aren’t about saving the government money, but are part of a broader ideological project.

“It’s very clear this government is determined to defund public education,” said Muñíz. “University is a source of pride for us. It is the best thing we have.”

Student Renata López said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that Milei’s attacks on education reminded her of the society depicted in Ray Bradbury’s classic book Fahrenheit 451, in which government agents systematically burned their citizens’ books.

“Defunding education isn’t something alien, it isn’t dystopian,” said López. “It’s something that’s happening.”

A demonstrator identified only as Marcelo, a student at the University of Quilmes, told El País that he was demonstrating to “defend our public university, which isn’t a privilege but a right of all Argentinians.”

According to a report from Bloomberg earlier this month, Milei’s popularity in Argentina has been sinking in recent months, as his government has been beset by corruption scandals and economic setbacks that have harmed the image he has tried to cultivate as an anti-establishment reformer.

Even as President Donald Trump’s war with Iran and tariffs on foreign goods are hammering working-class Americans, a new report shows that members of the US elite have never had it better.

As The Financial Times reported on Thursday, attendees at the annual Milken Institute conference in Beverly Hills this week were living in “blissful ignorance” of the economic pain hitting workers in the US and around the world.

“People are glossing over the war with Iran,” an anonymous private credit firm executive told The Financial Times. “They’ve become desensitized to it. For some reason, people are saying, ‘Yeah, so what?’”

The Financial Times also quoted one person described as a “high-powered banker” who asked, “Does anyone really care if the Strait of Hormuz is open?”

Ted Koenig, chief executive of Monroe Capital, told The Financial Times that, while people at the conference were vaguely aware of the suffering of middle-class and working-class Americans, “at the end of the day, everyone’s focused on their own investment portfolios, especially here.”

While the mood at the Milken conference may have been buoyant thanks to the record-setting stock market, fresh data released Friday showed Main Street America is feeling the exact opposite.

The University of Michigan’s latest Surveys of Consumers found that consumer sentiment has hit another all-time low, driven in large part by anxiety over price increases caused by the Iran war.

“Taken together, consumers continue to feel buffeted by cost pressures, led by soaring prices at the pump,” explained Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers. “Middle East developments are unlikely to meaningfully boost sentiment until supply disruptions have been fully resolved and energy prices fall.”

Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, noted 30% of respondents in the latest Surveys of Consumers said that Trump’s tariffs were driving up their expenses.

“It would do well for Dems to continue to shout that gas prices are high and tariffs are raising your costs!” Hoops wrote.

While consumer spending has for months held up in the wake of low confidence, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said this week that signs of real strain are starting to appear.

As CNBC reported Thursday, Kempczinski described the current economic environment as “challenging,” and warned that “it’s certainly not improving, and it may be getting a little bit worse.”

The fast food CEO pointed to high gas prices as a particular strain on working-class consumers, who are the most regular customers at McDonald’s.

“Clearly, when you have elevated gas prices, which is the core issue that I think we’re all seeing about in the press right now, gas prices, inflation on that, that is going to disproportionately impact low-income consumers,” Kempczinski said. “And so we expect the pressures there are going to continue.”

Kempczinski wasn’t the only CEO to sound alarms about US consumer spending this week.

According to a Thursday report from Market Watch, Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer said during a quarterly earnings call that the appliance industry had seen a 7.4% drop in demand in the first quarter of 2026.

“This level of industry decline is similar to what we have observed during the global financial crisis,” said Bitzer, “and even higher than during other recessionary periods.”

US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday claimed American farmers are heading toward a “golden age,” even as President Donald Trump’s policies are increasingly driving them into financial distress.

During an appearance on Fox Business, Rollins discussed Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk trade between the two countries.

“For our farmers and our ranchers, for farm security, for food security, making sure our farmers can prosper as they move into what will hopefully be a golden age under this president, these trade deals are very important,” Rollins said. “But the president also understands that the over-reliance on a country like China has massive implications from a national security standpoint.”

American farmers took a big financial hit in 2025 after China cut off purchases of US soybeans in retaliation for Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.

The problems facing US farmers have gotten even worse since Trump illegally launched a war with Iran in late February, as the prices of fertilizer and diesel soared after Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

According to a Monday report from Wisconsin Public Radio, there is little immediate relief coming for US farmers even if Trump ends his war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz immediately reopens.

Shawn Arita, associate director of the Agricultural Risk Policy Center, told WPR that price projections show fertilizer prices will likely remain high throughout the rest of the year.

In fact, even if the strait were to reopen soon, the center projects that fertilizer prices will remain 13% higher than they were before the war started through all of next year and into 2028.

“We have seen that even in the most optimistic scenario,” Arita explained, “we’re going to see elevated prices on the nitrogen as well as phosphate side that continues on through the fall and moving into 2027.”

Bill Knudson, agriculture economist at Michigan State University, told WPR that it will also take time to get shipping back to normal should the strait reopen soon because there are still an estimated 2,000 vessels stranded there that will take time to clear out.

“You’re not going to see a return to normal for several months, even if the Strait of Hormuz was opened relatively quickly,” Knudson explained, “because you’ve got to get all those ships out of there.”

The Guardian on Thursday published interviews with US farmers who explained how the combined hit of the president’s trade wars and the Iran war have hurt them financially.

New York-based farmer Blake Gendebien told The Guardian that “these rising costs are hitting us at the wrong time here,” as the price of offroad diesel has nearly doubled since last April.

“It’s a massive cost for farmers that are already barely, barely getting by,” Gendebien explained.

North Carolina-based cotton farmer Julius Tillery told The Guardian that he’s had to overhaul his planting process this year to minimize his use of diesel fuel.

“I’m very careful on my planting dates,” said Tillery, who also revealed he’s been eating more ramen noodles to save money.

“I can’t afford to plant crops in bad climates, so the production window becomes smaller.”

A top United Nations official on Tuesday warned that there is a real risk of a global food crisis if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipments of fertilizer.

Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), said in an interview with UN News that roughly one-third of global fertilizer shipments flow through the Strait of Hormuz, and its closure has caused “a massive disruption in the supply chain of fertilizers,” and “clearly we are seeing a crisis emerging” in the agricultural industry.

The UN official also emphasized the need for a fast resolution to the crisis to prevent catastrophic food shortages as tensions continued to escalate in the strait in recent days, with both the US and Iran seizing vessels in the area.

“We can’t wait until everything is fixed to at least get something fixed in time for the planting season,” he emphasized. “The planting season has already started, and in most countries in Africa it will end in May. So, if we don’t get some solution immediately, the crisis will be very significant and severe, particularly for the poorest countries and for the poorest citizens.”

While poorer nations are most vulnerable to fertilizer supply shocks, wealthy nations like the US are taking a hit as well.

A survey released last week by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) found that 70% of US farmers say the price of fertilizer has grown so high that they will not be able to afford all they need for the 2026 planting season.

Analysis conducted by AFBF found that, since President Donald Trump illegally launched his war with Iran in late February without any congressional approval, “nitrogen fertilizer prices have risen more than 30%, while combined fuel and fertilizer costs have increased roughly 20% to 40%.”

AFBF also found that the cost of widely used urea fertilizers “have increased by 47% since the end of February, marking the largest month-to-month percentage increase” ever.

Zippy Duvall, president of AFBF, warned that “without the necessary fertilizers, we’ll face lower yields and some farmers will reduce acres altogether, which will impact food and feed supplies.”

An analysis published by Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway on Wednesday found that “all the signs are already pointing to higher prices” for food in the coming weeks thanks to Trump’s Iran War.

“Bank of America’s Commodity Inflation Trendspotter for food and beverage companies shows March input costs up a whopping 373 basis points to 7.9% year-on-year,” explained Alloway. “That jump was driven mostly by diesel and heating oil, meaning we haven’t even seen much impact from things like higher plastics prices or fertilizer just yet.”

Alloway pointed to the skyrocketing price of urea as particularly worrisome for food prices, as once Midwestern farmers start paying more for the fertilizer, “you start seeing higher prices for everything from actual grains to beef, chicken, eggs, ethanol,” and more.

The bottom line, Alloway wrote, is “rising fertilizer prices are now hitting farmers, and eventually those will translate into higher wholesale food prices which will (assuming higher costs are passed onto consumers) eventually land at grocery stores too.”

“The inflationary impulse doesn’t arrive all at once,” she added, “it builds.”

Super Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into the Northern Mariana Islands on Tuesday, causing severe damage to the US-controlled territories that are home to roughly 50,000 people.

According to a Tuesday report from The Associated Press, the typhoon that struck the islands of Tinian and Saipan was the strongest storm recorded so far this year, delivering sustained winds of up to 150 miles per hour.

Saipan Mayor Ramon “RB” Jose Blas Camacho told the AP he was concerned about how the storm’s severity was hindering local rescue operations.

“It’s so difficult for us to respond with this heavy rain, heavy wind to rescue people,” he said. “Objects are just flying left and right.”

Marko Korosec, a storm chaser and weather forecaster, analyzed satellite images of the storm and predicted the Northern Mariana Islands would be hit with “violent, destructive winds, catastrophic storm surges, giant waves, and flooding rain.”

“The damage,” he wrote, “will be extreme.”

An analysis of the storm written by hurricane scientist Jeff Masters and published by Yale Climate Connections projected that “damage from Sinlaku will be severe on both islands.”

Masters also said Sinlaku was just the latest in what he described as an “unprecedented” number of Category 4 and Category 5 typhoons over the last decade, which he attributed to “a combination of natural variability and climate change.”

“Beginning in 2017, the US has gotten absolutely hammered by high-intensity Category 4 and 5 hurricanes,” Masters explained. “Seven have hit the continental US, one has hit Puerto Rico, and now two have hit the Northern Mariana Islands. That’s as many US Cat 4 and Cat 5 landfalls as had occurred in the prior 57 years.”

Later in his analysis, Masters pointed out that 10 of the 13 strongest tropical typhoons to make landfall in the last 80 years have occurred since 2006.

A Washington Post analysis of the typhoon published Tuesday noted that it’s “unusually early” for a superstorm of this caliber to form in the Pacific, warning it “may be a sign of what’s to come” this season.

“The season is expected to be anomalously active because of a burgeoning El Niño, which induces a warming of water temperatures,” explained the Post. “That helps air to rise, generating more, and stronger, storms.”

The Post added that Sinlaku is “the last in rare set of triplet cyclones that formed this month,” which it said is an “unusual pattern” that is “also contributing to a burst of winds that is expected to greatly boost the odds of a super El Niño later this year, pushing warm water west-to-east across the Pacific.”

On the same day that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that inflation spiked at its fastest monthly rate in four years, the Trump administration unveiled renderings of President Donald Trump’s proposed gold-covered 250-foot-tall arch to be built at Memorial Circle in Washington, DC.

The renderings, which were produced by architecture firm Harrison Design and posted on social media by the White House’s rapid response account, show a gigantic arch that would be flanked on its corners by four gold lions and topped by a 60-foot-tall gold statue of what appears to be an angel.

According to a Friday report in The Washington Post, some preservationists have expressed concerns that the arch, which would be more than twice the height of the Lincoln Monument, would disproportionately tower over the DC skyline, and would block views of Arlington National Cemetery.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) slammed the president for pushing construction of a gaudy gold-covered arch at a time when Americans are struggling due to the cost-of-living crisis worsened by his war in Iran.

“While Americans worry about skyrocketing costs and another endless war,” he wrote in a social media post, “President Trump is focused on a taxpayer-funded vanity project that would choke traffic, block our skyline, and tower over sacred ground where those who served our nation are buried, including my own parents and sister.”

Beyer added that the arch is “about Donald Trump’s ego,” and vowed, “we’re going to stop it.”

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) responded to the renderings by reminding the White House that “Americans can’t afford groceries.”

Progressive activist Nina Turner had a similar reaction to Clark, posting that “people can’t afford rent” in response to the renderings.

Podcaster Brian Taylor Cohen contrasted the renderings of the arch with a statement Trump made earlier this month when he said “it’s not possible” for the federal government “to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” because it needs to fund wars instead.

University of Missouri English professor Karen Piper also remarked on the opportunity cost of building the arch, along with other assorted Trump projects.

“This is why they’re going to take away your Social Security, saying we can’t afford it,” she wrote. “Ballrooms, arches, and Don Jr. draining the Treasury.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been named as a contender for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination, responded to the arch renderings by accusing Trump of “doing everything he can to wreck this country—this time with our nation’s capital.”

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) took issue with the decision to inscribe the phrase “one nation under God” at the top of the arch.

“That phrase came from Cold War propaganda, not our Founders,” observed Huffman. “Trump stamping it on his vanity arch tells you everything about what this project is: a Christian nationalist monument, paid for with your tax dollars.”

Two recently released surveys revealed a significant drop in Americans’ self-reported wellbeing as the Trump administration launches illegal and deadly military conflicts and plunges the global economy into chaos.

On Friday, the University of Michigan issued its monthly Survey of Consumers, which showed that consumer sentiment in the US hit an all-time low after dropping by 11% since March, amid President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran.

The drop in consumer sentiment was almost universal, the survey found, as “demographic groups across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall.”

As for the reasons for the decline, the survey found “many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy,” such as a major spike in gas prices, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday increased by more than 20% in the month since the war began.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the latest consumer sentiment data showed Americans are even more sour on the economy now than they were in the summer of 2022, when the economy was dealing with the highest inflation it had seen in decades.

Kendall Witmer, rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee, seized on the consumer sentiment report and accused Trump of having “tanked the economy for working families.”

“Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs,” Witmer added. “It’s no wonder they’re concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet and Trump and [Vice President] JD Vance can’t be bothered to make life more affordable for them.”

The record low in consumer sentiment comes just weeks after Gallup released its annual World Happiness Report, which showed that the US had fallen out of its rankings of the 20 happiest countries in the world.

The report says the decrease in US happiness largely came from “lower life evaluations among young adults,” and points the finger at high social media use as a key factor in making young people miserable.

Specifically, the report finds “there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety)” from social media use, adding that “the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level.”

Social media’s impact on mental health has come into focus in recent weeks with juries in multiple states finding Big Tech companies liable for creating products that harm children.

In March, a New Mexico jury found social media giant Meta liable for harming children’s mental health and safety, ordering the company to pay $375 million. A day later, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to each pay $3 million in civil damages to a now-20-year-old woman who alleged harm and suffering caused by their products when she was an adolescent.

Journalist Derek Thompson took stock of the Gallup survey and the University of Michigan survey, as well as last year’s General Social Survey that also documented a decline in US happiness, and declared, “America is not OK.”

Hours after President Donald Trump pitched an angry tantrum at US allies, he reportedly demanded that they draw up plans to help fix the geopolitical and economic disaster he caused by launching his illegal war with Iran.

In a Wednesday night social media post, Trump posted an all-caps tirade against members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who refused to commit forces to fight in a war he started without their approval or even consultation.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump wrote. “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

As Trump was attacking longtime allies, he was simultaneously demanding their help.

According to a Thursday report from Bloomberg, the US has been seeking “specific commitments from European allies on their pledge to help secure the Strait of Hormuz after the fighting in Iran stops,” going so far as to request that they “present concrete plans to ensure navigation through the waterway within days.”

Trump last month tried strong-arming allies into sending their navies into the strait to help secure safe passage of commercial vessels, but all of them refused.

Even as Trump is berating allies, he still hasn’t achieved the primary goal of the ceasefire he announced on Tuesday: The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has kept shut down since the start of the war more than a month ago.

As Bloomberg reported on Thursday, ship traffic through the strait has “remained blocked,” being “limited to a handful of Iran-linked ships, another sign that a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran has yet to improve flows through the world’s key energy chokepoint.”

As the strait has remained shut, the price of Brent crude petroleum futures, which initially crashed upon news of the ceasefire deal, have been slowly climbing back up to the $100 mark.

Given Trump’s failure to achieve even the most basic tenet of his own ceasefire deal, many critics questioned why US allies should commit to helping him clean up his own disaster.

Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor at Sky News, noted that “neither a military escort nor military force can reopen the Strait short of a full scale occupation of southern Iran and even then insurgents could keep it closed with the threat of action.”

Journalist Marcy Wheeler observed that Trump’s demands show he “is utterly helpless to fix the disaster he personally caused,” and is now “trying to blame others for his own incompetence.”

Economist Dean Baker encouraged US allies to remain completely defiant of the president.

“The European countries should specifically commit to pay the toll Iran is requesting,” Baker wrote.

HuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte summarized Trump’s geopolitical strategy as follows: “I broke it, someone else can fix it.”

New data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Tuesday continued to show weakness in the American jobs market.

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) shows that the number of new hires in February decreased to 4.8 million, which was roughly 400,000 fewer hires than were recorded in February 2025.

The report also shows that the US hiring rate in February fell to just 3.1%, which is the lowest rate since April 2020, when the economy was shut down due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The good news in the report is that the number of quits and layoffs remained relatively steady, meaning that people who already have jobs are retaining them at a healthy clip.

But Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that these bad hiring numbers came before President Donald Trump launched an illegal war with Iran, which has since destabilized global energy markets and raised prices for oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel.

“This is a hiring recession,” Long wrote in a social media post. “And Americans are feeling it. There were notable hiring pullbacks in February in hospitality and construction. Bottom line: The job market was already frozen before the war in Iran began. It’s worrying that a ‘no hire, no fire’ situation could turn into a ‘no hire, start to fire’ job market quickly if there isn’t a resolution soon.”

Long’s analysis was echoed by Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at hiring site Indeed, who wrote in a research note flagged by Axios that hiring in the US “was stuck in neutral going into this [Iran] conflict,” and “getting it into gear just got harder” thanks to the war.

Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, noted that hiring rates in the US hit 3.1% or lower the last two times the country was in a severe recession.

“3.1% is not only comparable to the Covid low point—it’s also comparable to late 2009 and early 2010, when the unemployment rate was around 10%,” Berger explained. “Hiring was ice cold in February.”

Scott Lincicome, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who has been a harsh critic of Trump’s tariffs, found that the February JOLTS report wiped out an unexpected January increase in manufacturing job openings that the president’s allies attributed to his trade policies.

“Alas, the perils of cherry-picking,” Lincicome commented.

The new data on hiring in the US job market comes weeks after a BLS report estimated that the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. On the whole, the American economy has posted a net loss of jobs since Trump announced his “liberation day” global tariffs in April 2025.

While turnout numbers have not yet been confirmed, organizers expected more than 9 million people to attend the events nationwide.

This is the third large-scale No Kings protest. Organizers said the first two events held in June and October of last year drew roughly 5 million and 7 million people, respectively.

Millions of American across all 50 states on Saturday rallied against President Donald Trump and his authoritarian agenda during nationwide No Kings protests.

The flagship No Kings rally in Minneapolis, which organizers Indivisible estimated drew over 200,000 demonstrators, featured speeches from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and actress Jane Fonda, as well as a special performance from rock icon Bruce Springsteen, who performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” a song he wrote in tribute of slain protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

The rally in Minneapolis was one of more than 3,300 No Kings events across the US, and aerial video footage showed massive crowds gathered for demonstrations in cities including Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Diego.

In San Francisco, thousands of anti-Trump activists gathered on a local beach to form a human sign that read, “Trump must go now! No ICE, no wars, no lies, no kings.”

Across the nation, early indications were that 9 million people were expected to attend. That number isn't yet final. Last year's two No Kings protests have 5 million and 7 million, respectively, ABC reported.

No Kings rallies weren’t just held in major US cities. In a series of social media posts, Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg collected photos and videos of No Kings events in communities including Arvada, Colorado, Madison, New Jersey, and St. Augustine, Florida, as well as international No Kings events held in London and Madrid.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said of the protests, “The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them.”

Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, said on Saturday that a nationwide general strike is being planned for May 1 that will be modeled on the day of action residents of Minnesota organized in January against the brutality carried out by federal immigration enforcement officials.

Appearing at the flagship No Kings rally in Minneapolis, Levin praised the strength shown by the Minnesota protesters in the face of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) siege of their city this year, and said his organization wanted to replicate it across the country.

“The next major national action of this movement is not just going to be another protest,” Levin said. “It is a tactical escalation... It is an economic show of force, inspired by Minnesota’s own day of truth and action.”

Levin then outlined what the event would entail.

“On May 1, on May Day, we are saying, ‘No business as usual,’” he said. “No work, no school, no shopping. We’re going to show up and say we’re putting workers over billionaires and kings.”

Levin added that “we are going to build on that courage, that sacrifice” that Minnesota residents showed during their day of action in January, and vowed “to demonstrate that regular people are the greatest threat to fascism in this country.”

In an interview with Payday Report published Saturday, Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg said that the goal of the nationwide strike action would be to send “a clear message: we demand a government that invests in our communities, not one that enriches billionaires, fuels endless war, or deploys masked agents to intimidate our neighbors.”

The No Kings protests against President Donald Trump’s authoritarian government, which Indivisible has been central in organizing, have brought millions of Americans into the streets.

Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris estimated that the previous No Kings event, held in October, drew at least 5 million people nationwide, making it likely “the largest single-day political protest ever.”

A Social Security advocacy organization on Thursday blasted the Trump administration for covering up damaging information contained in an inspector general report released in December.

According to The Washington Post, a report from the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) inspector general (IG) about call wait times for beneficiaries was altered to make it seem as though wait times to speak to representatives had been reduced to under 10 minutes per call.

“An unpublished draft of the report... showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric—called the ‘total wait time’—to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee,” the Post explained. “According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours.”

The Post added that this “information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication.”

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, responded to the report by saying that “now we know why [President Donald] Trump fired the inspector general at Social Security,” noting that the SSA IG was one of several fired across multiple agencies at the start of Trump’s second term.

Altman then argued that the attack on inspectors general was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle government transparency all together.

“Inspectors general are the American peoples’ eyes and ears in these agencies,” said Altman. “The Trump administration is undermining that oversight at every turn. Under this administration, the IG has no ability to conduct independent oversight. There is no meaningful check on the Trump administration’s Social Security sabotage.”

Democratic communications consultant Jesse Lee linked the damage to the SSA documented in the draft IG report to efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which went on a firing spree of federal workers last year.

“So DOGE did a smash and grab at the Social Security Administration, breaking into the most sensitive data, firing phone and in-person case workers,” Lee wrote. “Trump appointee waved around an IG report claiming wait times were fine—after burying the real report saying they were up to two hours.”