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On April 3, 2026, President Trump released his proposed Fiscal 2027 Budget. It was two months late. Strikingly, Trump proposed to increase defense spending by over 40% and cut non-defense discretionary spending by about 10%. Yet, even after slashing everything from environmental protection and scientific research to housing and small-business support, government spending will surge, the deficit will balloon, and the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP will climb to peacetime highs and remain above 100%.

Overall, the Trump administration’s proposed budget is an extension of what has become, particularly during the last three administrations, fiscal folly. Indeed, tax policy has become shambolic and spending discipline is non-existent. The numbers make clear that no relief is in sight.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects where we are and where we are likely to be headed, with government metrics expressed as percentages of the total value of goods and services produced (GDP).

Before viewing the CBO’s metrics, it is worth stressing that we don’t want to engage in quibbles about the veracity of the CBO’s metrics and forecasts. As it turns out, the CBO’s macro forecasts tend to be more accurate than the Administration’s budget forecasts and the private Blue-Chip consensus, and at least as accurate as the Survey of Professional Forecasters. 

The metrics shed light on what is Uncle Sam’s fiscal folly:

• Economic growth is projected to slow and to fall well below its 1976–2025 average.
• The federal government is expected to continue growing more rapidly than the private sector.
• Current federal revenues are about the same as they have been during the past 50 years, and are projected to grow only moderately.
• Federal deficits are significantly higher than during the past 50 years, and are projected to increase significantly in the future.
• Mandatory spending has grown dramatically, from 6% of GDP in 1946, to 13.7% today, and is projected to increase significantly in the future.
• Discretionary spending has declined significantly, from 18.2% of GDP in 1946, to 6.2% today, and is expected to continue to decline. Notably, all of the express and enumerated federal government responsibilities envisioned by our nation’s founders fall into the discretionary spending category.
• Defense spending has declined from a 1976–2025 average of 4.1% of GDP to 2.9% today, and is expected to continue to decline over time. The trajectory of defense spending will no doubt be amended, at least in the short-term, to reflect Trump’s proposal for a dramatic increase in defense expenditures.
• Social Security spending has increased from its average over the past 50 years, and is expected to continue to increase.
• Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care spending has increased dramatically from its average during the past 50 years, and is expected to increase significantly in the future.
• Net interest has increased significantly over the past 50 years, and is expected to increase dramatically in the future. Interestingly, interest expense is the federal government’s fastest growing expense and one for which taxpayers receive nothing.

While all the trends that accompany the fiscal folly are edifying, there is one underlying feature that stands out: the yawning gap between government spending and revenues and the resulting fiscal deficits. Deficit finance, which is nothing more than a Houdini-esque act, creates a “fiscal illusion” that obscures the true cost and consequences of the government’s propensity to spend. Those deficits exist because they are a politician’s dream of spending now and taxing later.

A significant chunk of today’s government expenditures are financed by putting future generations in bondage and saddling them with the costs. This is irresponsible, inequitable, and immoral. Fiscal deficits are nothing more than deferred taxes that will be paid by those who aren’t even voting today, as well as many who are yet to be born.

It’s time to put an end to the fiscal folly by amending the U.S. Constitution to include a fiscal responsibility requirement. The American Republic was initially informed by Adam Smith’s principle of fiscal responsibility: Government should not spend without imposing taxes. Let’s put that principle in writing.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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When Jerome Powell leaves the meetings that set the U.S. Federal Reserve’s base rate to go talk to the press, analysts and investors are on the edge of their seats. His nominated replacement, Kevin Warsh, wants their butts firmly and comfortably planted—preferably on a deep, over-stuffed couch. “The central bank should find new comfort in working without applause and without the audience at the edge of its seats,” he told an International Monetary Fund lecture last year.

For many years, Warsh has advocated for a “backseat Fed.” He has been critical of the central bank’s perceived over-communication, which he says leads to market expectations and potentially broken promises. Wall Street, in the early days, will likely be uncomfortable with the change.

Investors and analysts have grown accustomed to a level of transparency from the Fed. Powell helpfully sharing his views on the economy in monthly press briefings, and there are updates from regional bank presidents on how they see the path of monetary policy shaping up. During the recent period of heightened economic uncertainty, such signals have been all the more welcome.

Until yesterday, many might have hoped that Warsh’s criticism of forward guidance was an ideal rather than an actionable opinion. They were wrong.

Warsh told a Senate Banking Committee hearing: “The Fed tells the whole world what their dots are going to be, what their forecasts are going to be. Well, the Fed’s human then they hold on to those forecasts longer than they should.” Here, Warsh is referring to the dot plot, a chart published by the Fed four times a year that shows where each of its top policymakers expect short-term interest rates to head—it’s one of the most closely watched tools in central banking communications.

“If the Fed were to wait until it gets into a meeting before making a decision, incremental deliberation can keep the central bank from compounding its errors. I think these are big changes that are needed, and if confirmed, I look forward to doing it,” he added.

Wall Street won’t like to lose any insights it can glean into the thinking of the Fed—but neither will it deny that in the long term, it might be what’s best for the central bank.

Wall Street versus reality

“I don’t think the market would like it” if the beloved dot plot and its ilk was removed from the hands of investors, Jack Manley, global strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase told Fortune in an exclusive interview. “I don’t think the market would permanently be in a tizzy about it,” he adds.

“It is an extraordinarily helpful way to at least figure out where multiples should be,” Manley explained. “Having a rough idea of the trajectory of monetary policy helps to feed into how we think about whether something is considered richly valued, or not so richly valued—it would be sorely missed.”

However, as Fortune reported last year, despite criticism from the White House that the base rate is contributing to a housing crisis, the correlation between Powell’s policy stance and mortgage rates is tenuous at best. As Morgan Stanley noted in October, the spread between mortgage rates outstanding and new mortgage rates was over 2%, the highest it had been in 40 years.

“We pay a lot of attention to the federal funds rate even though almost nobody actually experiences it,” Manley added. “Those of us that do experience it—namely the big banks—haven’t really changed their behaviors in any way. It is fascinating and also very sad that the overnight rate in the United States is compressed by 175 basis points since September ’24 [but] a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is now higher than it was back then.”

Moreover, analysis from Cox Automotives last year found that despite the Fed cuts, the average auto loan rate was continuing to increase year on year, while Lending Tree reported that in the final quarter of 2025, monthly auto repayments hit a record average of $767—up 2.8% from Q4 2024.

“The benchmark rates that consumers have paid have been totally disconnected from Fed funds for a very long time,” Manley added. “If you’re thinking about the Fed funds rate as the thing that’s going to dictate the cost of money more broadly across the U.S. economy, and as a result through U.S. capital markets, you’ve been wanting on that for quite some time.”

The argument might sound similar to the likes of J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is backing the Trump administration’s push to scrap quarterly reporting in favour of longer-term thinking: “Why not be structural, strategic stewards of capital as opposed to managing day-to-day like buybacks and dividends or whatever?” Manley added. “It’s a very similar argument, and the market would be fine.”

Question of transparency

A central theme of Warsh’s hearing was the question of sock puppetry: Rather, whether he will defend central bank independence from political pressure from the White House. In any normal hearing, the question would be inevitable (the nomination, after all, is made by the sitting president), but following President Trump’s remarkable attacks on the Fed and its chairman since returning to office, the scrutiny on Warsh is all the keener.

While the former Fed Governor insisted the president had never asked him to commit to a course of action, “markets will need convincing,” UBS’s Paul Donovan noted to clients this morning. “That will come through actions rather than words.”

“Less forward guidance would mean less transparency,” Aditya Bhave, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America, told Fortune this morning. “Warsh has been clear that he views this as a feature rather than a bug. The risk is that market volatility could increase if forward guidance is pared back.”

Markets have come to rely on the dot plot (precisely the behavior Warsh wants to end), but with investors’ hackles already raised over the autonomy of the Fed, a step away from certainty wouldn’t be fatal, but may be unpopular. Bhave adds: “We don’t think there will be any immediate consequences for markets. But volatility could increase at some stage if the Fed decision is a close call and markets are left guessing in the run-up to the meeting.”

Communnication and volatility

On the other hand, some critics of Powell have suggested that the Fed chairman’s current strategy is adding volatility to the market, as investors overreact to any hints from rate-setters. Mohammed El-Erian, the former CEO of PIMCO, argued last year that “the whole point of forward guidance is predictability and stability,” but noted investors were trading rapidly on hints about either a hold or cut.

Bond investors like volatility, pointed out Thierry Wizman, global foreign exchange and rates strategist at Macquarie Group, it opens up pockets of opportunity. The federal government may not be so thrilled, because “the lower the volatility, the lower the risk premium in the yields, and the federal government wants to issue at the cheapest possible. But it’s not clear that too much communication reduces volatility, ultimately.”

Wizman is of the opinion that the Fed operated well before the dot plot was invented in 2012, adding: “It’s very possible that with less communication or more coherent communication … you might get a more transparent, clearer, Fed, a more transparent and clearer outlook on the economy and what the Fed is thinking.” 

His concern would intensify if Warsh were to scrap planning at the more “extreme” end. Warsh indicated that central bankers may speak too frequently to the press, but Wizman is focussed on policy targeting rather than the qualms of economic journalists.

In Warsh’s shoes, “I’m inclined to get rid of the dot plot, I’m inclined to get rid of the long term forecast,” Wizman tells Fortune, “I’m not inclined to get rid of the inflation target, as long as it’s construed to be a long-term inflation target or an average inflation target over the course of the next, say, 10 years. 

“From time to time it behooves the Fed to try to produce inflation above the target, and sometimes it might actually behoove the Fed in the short term to try to produce inflation below the target. I don’t want to be held to a target that the market assumes I’m going to shoot for in any given six month period. That’s not good monetary policy actually, because monetary policy needs to be more flexible than that.”

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on the unlikely CEO trying to reform the U.S.’s corporate capital.
• The big leadership story: Blackstone’s COO-turned-‘accidental influencer’ 
• The markets: Mixed globally after Trump extended the Iran ceasefire.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. What’s next for Delaware, home to 1 million people and about 2.2 million businesses? Remember when Elon Musk told peers to flee America’s corporate capital, moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas after a court tried to overturn his trillion-dollar pay package? Several companies heeded his call—TripAdvisor, Roblox, Dropbox, Affirm, Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, even Trump Media & Technology Group—sparking talk of “DExit.”

But Delaware is hard to quit. While states like Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming are becoming more popular places to incorporate, Delaware is still home to more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies and most recent IPOs. Its Supreme Court recently upheld Senate Bill 21, a 2025 overhaul dubbed the “billionaires’ bill” as it limits shareholder suits. And the spirit of Musk still looms large: his team recently accused a Delaware judge of bias over her “heart” on a LinkedIn post, so she used Scrabble tiles to reassign some cases to colleagues, one of whom ruled this month that Tesla could move three shareholder suits to Texas. Barring some appeals, Musk’s days in Delaware may finally be over.

But one CEO is still invested in the future of the state despite moving his company elsewhere.

TransPerfect CEO Phil Shawe understands Delaware courts like few others. In 2014, his co-founder and former fiancé petitioned the court to seize control of the profitable company, forcing Shawe to buy her stake at auction in 2018, a process that he says was opaque, unfair and cost him $250 million in legal fees. Shaw moved TransPerfect to Nevada, growing revenues from $600 million then to $1.3 billion today. 

Unlike Musk, Shawe stuck around, financing a $2 million anti-Delaware ad campaign during Musk’s battles, helping elect Gov. Matt Meyer in 2024, and lobbying for changes such as mandatory audio in the courtroom, stricter conflict-of-interest rules, and financial disclosure requirements for judges. “I happen to have a lot of hard-earned knowledge that not a lot of people have, and thankfully, the means to do something with it,” says Shawe. He acknowledges Delaware’s continued popularity and argues he isn’t trying to kill it. “What we’ve been trying to do for the past couple years is not tell people to leave Delaware but actually help Delaware reform its courts.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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Boards are clear. The C-suite is running AI. 

In a new Pearl Meyer survey of 108 executives and board members released on Wednesday, 90% of board members said responsibility for leading artificial intelligence effectively belongs with the C-suite and their direct reports—essentially all the most-senior executives within a company. 

Inside the C-suite itself? Executives are pointing in four different directions.

Corporate leaders surveyed in February and March by Pearl Meyer, an executive compensation and leadership advisory firm, splintered into different camps on the question of who among them actually owns AI. The results showed 32% said the C-suite as a group is accountable for AI strategy; 22% pointed to the group one level below the C-suite; 27% pointed to individual business leaders; and 17% said AI sits with functional heads like HR, finance, and legal. 

As companies move from piloting AI toward enterprise-level rollouts, this divergence of views raises an important question with real-world consequences: If something goes wrong, who is responsible for catching it before it goes public?

Pearl Meyer’s data also points to a broader problem underneath the AI governance gap. Boards and executives don’t agree on how cohesive their leadership teams actually are, on whether strategic priorities are traveling down the organization, or even on which factors matter most to scaling AI in the first place. For most companies, those gaps existed before AI exploded as a usable workplace tool. What’s changed now is that AI is the most visible live wire running through them—and the most likely to result in a public gaffe if it’s managed badly. 

According to Brad Jayne, a principal at Pearl Meyer and one of the survey report’s authors, AI itself isn’t creating new problems. The ownership split is the symptom of a problem that’s been hidden inside C-suites for years. 

“Your leaders don’t know how to be a team,” said Jayne. “C-suite teams, they can all perform on their own, but collaborating and actually figuring out how to work effectively as a team isn’t there. So when you see these big changes externally that they have to react to—I think AI just shines a light on something that was already there.”

The rest of the survey showed similar disconnects between boards and different groups of executives. 

Pearl Meyer found 100% of the directors in the survey believe their senior team is a cohesive enterprise unit. Only 66% of C-suite executives agreed, while 34% said they didn’t believe their team worked well together. 

A similar pattern held on how decisions cascade down. On communication priorities, 100% of board members said decisions made by the senior leadership team translated into clear priorities, versus 78% of C-suite respondents. When Pearl Meyer narrowed the question further and asked whether leaders two levels below the C-suite can clearly and consistently explain the company’s top strategic priorities, only 54% of C-suite executives said yes. 

That means that even among executives who think the strategy is clear at their own level, nearly half aren’t confident it has accurately traveled down to executives who do the nitty-gritty work that would be part of an AI rollout. 

Jayne said boards tend to get sold the top-line AI story and don’t press far enough on the operating reality beneath it. 

“The board can swoop in, hear the story, invest in AI, support that, but then maybe they don’t spend enough time fully understanding where that might impact the organization,” he said. “The storyline hits the top level, but then they’re just not really sure how they’re going to go about it.”

In other words, the C-suite might be telling the board, “We’ve got this,” said Jayne. “Then internally the C-suite says, ‘We have no idea how we’re going to do this?’”

‘Just Start Using It’

Looking at the way AI has been piloted and positioned inside companies shows that it has been somewhat laissez faire. Once the basic guardrails are in place, Jayne said, the message from senior leaders on AI tends to be a single command: Go. 

“The message from leadership is often, ‘Just start using it,’” he said. “And they miss the rest of the story, which is, ‘We’re not exactly sure where to use it.’” Whether employees are using AI and how effective they are is also unclear, as is whether they are actually more efficient, he added. 

The data supports him. When Pearl Meyer asked respondents to name the most important factors impacting their company’s AI preparedness, boards and executives chose almost entirely different responses. 

Board members focused on ownership with 45% saying clear executive ownership and decision rights was a top-three factor in being ready to deploy AI. Only 22% of C-suite respondents agreed. Other executives zeroed in on the workings underneath with 49% pointing to data quality, infrastructure, and security as a top factor, compared to only 18% of board members. 

Peter Thies, a managing director at Pearl Meyer and co-author on the survey report, said each side’s answer reveals how they see the business. 

“The C-suite’s not that concerned about who owns [AI] because a lot of people actually have something to do with it,” said Thies. Inside companies, AI might touch almost every function including tech, HR, finance, legal, and individual business units. Distributed responsibility seems less like a governance gap than a description of how AI is working. But for board members who see the organization from the outside looking in and hear about it straight from the CEO and top executives, that reads as nobody is in charge. 

When it comes to data quality on the other hand, the split runs in the opposite direction, the survey showed. 

“C-suite, they’re all over that one,” said Thies. “And yet the board doesn’t see how important [data quality] is to the company.”

Industries that will struggle the most with discrepancies at the top around who owns AI and how it is being deployed operationally are likely in sectors where leadership tenure is the longest and where culture changes are hardest, said Jayne. 

“Finance or banks, maybe insurance companies, places where people can often have a very long tenure—it’s difficult to move the needle,” said Jayne. Financial services was the largest industry represented in the Pearl Meyer sample, at 34% of respondents. 

Some 71% of executives told Pearl Meyer that success over the next 12 to 18 months will depend on fixing internal processes and cross-functional coordination—not on AI itself. 

“Leadership systems are not evolving fast enough to support either strategy or AI,” the report concludes.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Companies including Block, Meta, and Oracle have announced AI efficiency gains as the reason for workforce cuts, and the stock market rewarded them. 

That reaction creates pressure on every other CEO to deliver the same story, whether the AI is actually doing the work or not.

“At times I see AI being used as the reason for things that may have come about anyway,” said Jayne. And the more pressure there is to use AI as a justification for efficiency gains, the more pressure builds to show real results in terms of key performance indicators that make sense to internal employees and external shareholders, he said. 

Pearl Meyer’s data shows 40% of companies are still piloting AI, and 31% are experimenting or using it on an ad-hoc basis, not because it isn’t useful, but likely because the leadership teams needed to deploy it at scale aren’t in agreement on how to do it and what matters most. 

“Maybe wheels are spinning a little bit,” Jayne said. “Are we about to shoot off down the road? I don’t know. But it’s a little slower to get going than I thought it would be.” 

Pearl Meyer surveyed 108 respondents from 40 public companies, 58 private companies, and 12 nonprofits/government entities.

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Christian Weedbrook, a film school dropout turned CEO of Xanadu Quantum Technologies, was minted a billionaire in a matter of days thanks to Nvidia endorsing quantum computing as the future of AI.

Last week, Nvidia announced Ising, a family of open-source quantum AI models promising to address major bottlenecks in quantum computing, particularly in calibration and error correction. By addressing barriers to growing quantum processing as part of AI infrastructure expansion, Nvidia gave credibility to quantum computing as the future of AI expansion.

Following the announcement, Xanadu’s stock rallied about 250% to a peak of $32.67 per share. With a 15.6% stake in the company, Weedbrook’s net worth skyrocketed to $1.5 billion within five days of the announcement, according to Bloomberg which cited market data and regulatory filings. Xanadu’s share price has since come back to Earth, but remains more than double its original valuation prior to the announcement.

How Xanadu became a quantum computing giant

Founded in 2016 by Weedbrook, Xanadu is working to build the first quantum data center by 2030, using light in photonic quantum computers to be able to perform computations at room temperature. The company went public in March after merging with publicly traded blank-check firm Crane Harbor Acquisition Corp. and IPO’d. 

While traditional computing uses binary bits like 0 or 1 to represent data, quantum computing uses qubits, which can exist as both 0 and 1 simultaneously, exponentially increasing computational power and providing a powerful tool for increasing the speed at which AI is trained. Currently valued at about a $1 billion industry, quantum computing has the potential to become a $198 billion market by 2040, according to Jefferies analyst Kevin Garrigan.

While other public quantum computing companies such as IonQ and Rigetti benefitted from Nvidia’s open-sourcing announcement, Xanadu’s surge, topping a $16 billion valuation, made it one of Canada’s most valuable publicly traded tech companies.

Xanadu did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Who is Christian Weedbrook?

Before Weedbrook saw his net worth jump to 10 digits, he was a math nerd who, at 23, was working part-time at a video store and filming television commercials (as well as short films posted to YouTube) in between early morning shifts stocking groceries. The Australian native flunked out of his first year of film school not once, but twice, and took four years of odd jobs before ultimately deciding to return to university to study math.

“I’d exhausted every other option,” Weedbrook told The Globe and Mail. “I thought ‘I’ll just go back to something I was okay in–math. I don’t know where this will head, I’ll just see.’”

Weedbrook would go on to earn his quantum information theory PhD at the University of Queensland and study as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. In 2014, Weedbrook went from physicist to entrepreneur, founding Cipher Q, a quantum security company. But after investors told him they’d rather invest in quantum computing than security, Weedbrook went on to launch Xanadu two years later in Toronto.

While Weedbrook sought early backing for the company, his first chip failed, and he faced eviction three times. 

His luck changed when he  secured assistance from University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab, an incubator, in Xanadu’s early days. The company built momentum and demonstrated “quantum advantage” by performing a task in milliseconds compared to a supercomputer (which would have taken 9,000 years to perform the same task). Released in 2018, Xanadu’s open-source software library PennyLane, named after Weedbrook’s affinity for the Beatles, reached 35,000 active users as of March filings. Prior to its IPO last month, Xanadu secured $287 million in government financial aid for its data center plans.

“You can guarantee we’re working the hardest” out of all quantum computer developers, Weedbrook said in The Globe and Mail interview. “It’s all about getting to this vision.”

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The new leadership of the AI power startup Fermi is feuding with its fired CEO and top shareholder over a potential sale of the company.

The struggling Texas company, which went public last year at a nearly $20 billion market cap, aspires to build the largest data center campus in the world, called Project Matador, in the Texas Panhandle, but it has struggled to nail down anchor tenants. Fermi is now advising against recommendations from its fired co-founder and CEO to sell the company.

The company’s market cap has plunged to less than $3.2 billion as of April 21.

The former CEO, Toby Neugebauer, who’s the top Fermi shareholder, said he was fired “without cause” last week and now supports an immediate process to sell the company in order to make “money for all shareholders.” Neugebauer said his family and former executive allies own about 40% of Fermi shares. Neugebauer and former chief financial officer Miles Everson, who abruptly resigned April 20, remain Fermi board members. Also still sitting on the seven-person board is Fermi backer and Neugebauer’s longtime friend, Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and U.S. energy secretary.

Since Neugebauer’s and Everson’s departures were announced, Fermi said April 21 that its “2.0” version “has received significant and positive feedback from multiple potential tenants” and partners. The majority four members of the Fermi board are presumably leading the charge, led by chairman Marius Haas, founding partner of the BayPine private equity firm and a veteran of Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Intel. 

“Given recent changes in leadership, which position the company for its next chapter of growth and evolution from a startup to a scaled enterprise, the company firmly believes a sale is not in the best interest of its continued momentum on Project Matador, ability to serve potential tenants, and long-term value creation for shareholders,” Fermi said in a statement.

Fermi said it will review “all avenues to maximize shareholder value, which include continued execution of its business plan, strategic investments from third parties, joint ventures, or other transactions.”

Fermi’s “Project Matador” plans are to build 11 gigawatts—enough to power 8 million homes—of nuclear, solar, and natural-gas fired power for a “HyperGrid” to support massive data center complexes on over 5,000 acres of land owned mostly by the Texas Tech University System. Much of the land is leased to the U.S. Department of Energy, which has publicly supported Fermi’s development.

Fermi said a new “office of the CEO” will lead the company while search firm Heidrick & Struggles helps identify a new CEO. The firm will work closely with Haas and two other board members—excluding Perry, Neugebauer, and Everson—to pick a CEO.

The interim office of the CEO will be led by Fermi chief operating officer Jacobo Ortiz and Anna Bofa, who is an observer on the board, and has industry experience with Google and Meta.

In December, an unnamed Fermi tenant canceled a $150 million deal for the data center campus. Fermi had planned to secure an anchor tenant by March, which has yet to occur.

The news also follows reporting by Politico in March that Neugebauer and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly clashed at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose.

Neugebauer reportedly complained to Lutnick about plans for U.S. trade deals with South Korea and the blocking—or slow-playing—of direct Korean investments in Fermi’s project. Fermi already is partnered with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility and Hyundai Engineering & Construction on the development of its nuclear reactors.

At the time, Neugebauer denied being “loud and belligerent” and admitted only to having a “direct conversation” with Lutnick about perceived interference in Fermi’s progress, according to Politico.

Unrelated to Fermi, Neugebauer also has an ongoing legal feud with prominent billionaires Peter Thiel and Ken Griffin over his failed “anti-woke” banking business, GloriFi. Citadel’s Griffin, Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and other prominent names were significant financial backers of GloriFi.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that GloriFi suffered from a chaotic work environment, highlighted by allegedly erratic behavior from Neugebauer.

Neugebauer, who is best known for cofounding the energy-focused private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, now Quantum Capital Group, shut GloriFi down in 2022 when it ran out of money. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in early 2023.

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Southeast Asia’s motorists are increasingly feeling the pinch as the Iran energy crisis extends into its eighth week. Fuel prices have soared across the region, and drivers are waiting in long lines outside petrol stations in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, hoping to fill their tanks.

While oil prices have slipped from their highs just a few weeks ago—West Texas Intermediate crude is currently hovering around $90 per barrel—they are still far above pre-war levels. The closed Strait of Hormuz, as well as export bans of refined fuel products from countries like China and South Korea, have cut off petrol supplies in Asia. 

But across the region, drivers may have found an answer: electric vehicles.

Chinese EV giant BYD received the most orders of any automaker at the Bangkok Auto Show in early April, beating Toyota for the first time. Among the top ten brands, seven were Chinese. 

Energy security concerns are shaping EV demand, says Samuel Chng, a research assistant professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). “EVs are increasingly framed not just as a climate solution, but as a way to reduce dependence on imported energy.”

EVs convert roughly 90% of stored energy into movement, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Conventional gasoline engines manage to convert around 25% of the energy from fuel into movement. That makes EVs an attractive and affordable option for consumers during periods of energy scarcity. 

“The energy crunch is doing much more to accelerate the EV transition than any message on climate change,” said Lawrence Loh, who heads the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore (NUS). “Ultimately, it’s about what hits your pocket—and the Iran war hits your pocket right away.”

Globally, 1.75 million EVs were sold in March, a 66% jump from the month before, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Asia’s EV boom

Chinese automakers were already transforming the global car industry, thanks to their innovative, yet affordable, electric vehicles. According to estimates by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Beijing has invested over $230 billion into its EV industry since 2009, including into infrastructure subsidies, sales tax exemptions and R&D. This has sparked fierce domestic competition among manufacturers like BYD, Xpeng, and Nio. 

Intense competition has “accelerated innovation, lowered battery costs and pushed prices down, making EVs more accessible and boosting exports,” said Chan Siew Hwa, the co-director of the Energy Research Institute at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. (A BYD car can cost as much as $20,000 less than a Tesla.)

Chinese EV makers are investing in the driver experience to stay afloat in their home market, building in features like assisted driving and LLM-powered assistants. Chinese carmakers are also starting to bring these features to global markets: Earlier this month, BYD extended its partnership with U.S. software firm Cerence AI to roll out an in-car conversational LLM assistant powered by the latter’s platform.

“Asian EV makers appeal to consumers by offering more features at the same price,” said Kim Jeong Won, a senior fellow at NUS’s Energy Studies Institute. 

Firms are making inroads into Southeast Asia by partnering with local conglomerates and automotive groups. Sime Darby, No. 22 on the Southeast Asia 500, is BYD’s official distributor in both Malaysia and Singapore, while Ayala subsidiary ACMobility manages sales in the Philippines. 

Local EV manufacturers are benefiting as well. VinFast sold just over 175,000 EVs in its home market last year, doubling its 2024 figure. EVs now make up almost 40% of Vietnam’s car sales, overtaking the EU average, according to energy think tank Ember. 

In Singapore, government policy is propelling EV adoption. In 2025, the country extended subsidies for EVs, while removing those for hybrid cars. Singapore has also mandated that all new cars registered from 2030 will have to use cleaner energy models, e.g. electric, hybrid or hydrogen, and promised a fast-charging EV hub in every housing estate by 2027.

Despite EV optimism in Southeast Asia, parts of East Asia have been slower to adopt the technology. “While EVs have already become mainstream in China, consumers in Japan and South Korea have been more cautious about fully electric EVs and prefer hybrid cars,” Kim explains. 

Not a panacea

Experts cautioned that EVs won’t fully solve problems around the green transition and energy security. “The overall climate benefit of EVs depends on how clean a country’s electricity grid is,” said Chan of NTU. “Otherwise, emissions are simply shifted upstream.” (Southeast Asia still relies heavily on fossil fuels like coal for power generation).

Li Shengxiao, an urban planning expert from NUS, points out that EVs have hidden environmental and economic costs over their lifecycle. For example, their lithium-ion batteries can’t simply be thrown into landfills due to their propensity to overheat and catch fire. It’s also difficult to maintain and recycle EVs. 

“When you think about the life cycle costs—which consider all the factors from the time you purchase a car to when you give it up, such as insurance and longevity—EVs might ultimately cost more per mile than gasoline vehicles,” said Li.

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 The U.S.-Iran ceasefire will not expire on Wednesday afternoon after all. 

In a Truth Social post Tuesday afternoon that came minutes after stocks settled, President Trump said he was extending the truce—citing “the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so” and a request from Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.” The naval blockade of Iranian ports stays on.The after-the-bell post closed out a day of ceasefire whiplash that had started before the opening one.

Trump began the morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” telling viewers the U.S. was “going to end up with a great deal,” adding “I think they have no choice,” and said he did not plan to extend the ceasefire. Stock futures rose on diplomatic optimism as the Dow opened up 0.52% and the S&P 500 up 0.11%.

What followed next turned markets upside down. Vance was scheduled to leave for Islamabad Tuesday morning to lead the second round of peace talks—joined by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the same team that ran the unsuccessful first round on April 11. But Vance’s plane never took off, and soon the New York Times reported that the trip was on hold, awaiting Iran’s demands. Iranian representatives had insisted all weekend that they did not and would not agree to a second round of talks while they were being blockaded.

Stocks fell on the New York Times report. Trump, in the Squawk Box interview from the morning, had ruled that out: “We’re not going to open the strait until we have a final deal.”

By the end of the day, he was singing a different tune, saying hewill therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded,” Trump wrote, “one way or the other.”

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In the 1950s, a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin led an intense anti-communist line of questioning of fellow Congressmembers, well-known celebrities, immigrants, and labor unions. The “second Red Scare” led to the blacklisting of prominent members of society for their alleged associations with communism, anarchy, and radical left ideology, with some being arrested and even deported.  

When Rep. Chip Roy introduced the MAMDANI Act this week, he may not have been thinking of McCarthyism, but he was making a direct reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists (MAMDANI) Act is an immigration proposal that would make noncitizens deportable and ineligible for naturalization, and even potentially subject to denaturalization over ties to or advocacy for socialism, communism, Marxism, Chinese communism, or “Islamic fundamentalism.” 

“Why do we continue to import people who hate us?” the Texas representative said in a press release. “Not just for the last six years, but for the last 60 years, our immigration system has been cynically used to disadvantage American workers’ competitiveness in favor of mass-importing the third world.”

“By targeting the Red-Green Alliance, this legislation deploys new tools to fight back against the Marxist and Islamist advance that has devastated Europe and has now arrived on our doorstep, especially in my home state of Texas,” the statement continued.

The acronym references Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist who was sworn in as New York City’s mayor on Jan. 1 and became the city’s first Muslim mayor, first mayor of South Asian descent, and first mayor born in Africa. Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, became a U.S. citizen in 2018, and campaigned on affordability proposals including free childcare, free bus service, and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants.

The act would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to add new deportability grounds for noncitizens who engage in advocacy, write or distribute written or electronic material supporting those ideologies, act on behalf of listed parties, or belong to affiliated organizations. Among the ideologies are the Socialist Party of the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America, foreign or state-level socialist parties, successors or predecessors, and any “socialist-action” or “socialist-front” organization. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, though he said he campaigns on his own platform and does not endorse all of the group’s goals.

Part of his proposal is already law. Current immigration law already makes immigrants inadmissible if they are or have been members of or affiliated with the Communist Party or another totalitarian party.

Roy framed the proposal as a response to what he called the “Red-Green Alliance,” a term used by some conservatives to describe perceived cooperation between left-wing and Islamist movements. 

In March, Roy posted on X: “No more Muslims. No more criminals. No more Marxists. No more corporatists. #SaveTexas,” a message that drew backlash from critics who called it Islamophobic and anti-constitutional.

In October, Roy introduced the Preserving A Sharia-Free America Act, which would prevent naturalized Americans “who observe Sharia from entering the U.S. or from remaining in the country.” 

“America is facing an existential threat—the spread of Sharia Law. From Texas to every state in the union, instances of Sharia Law adherents have threatened the American way of life, seeking to replace our legal system and Constitution with an incompatible ideology that diminishes the rights of women, children, and individuals of different faiths,” the representative wrote in a press release at the time.

In November, he introduced the PAUSE Act, which would freeze nearly all immigration to the United States. “The problem isn’t just illegal immigration; it’s also legal immigration,” Roy wrote at that time.

Roy has had it out for the New York City mayor, describing Mamdani as “a self-proclaimed socialist, pro-Islamist, and naturalized U.S. citizen from Uganda,” in an op-ed. 

Neither Roy’s nor Mamdani’s office responded to Fortune’s request for comment.

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The U.S. oil sector has entered the “early innings” of a rebound with more growth to come, Halliburton chairman and CEO Jeff Miller said Tuesday, explaining that the Iran war is forcing countries to prioritize energy security by capturing more barrels both domestically and from other regions outside the Middle East.

Amid the pain of higher prices at the pump and in supply chains, there are bright spots for oilfield services companies like Halliburton, which conducts drilling and fracking work (hydraulic fracturing), as oil production ramps up around the world to make up for disruptions caused by the war and the stand-off over the pivotal Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global energy supplies flow.

Miller kicked off the first earnings season for the industry since the war began by arguing that the sector has fundamentally shifted—at least for a “few solid years”—with elevated prices and a push to rely less on the Middle East. This is the case even if a deal is reached soon to re-open the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, Miller said.

“In North America, we already see the early signs of recovery. Outside of the Middle East, we expect our international business to grow,” Miller said, specifically citing growth in South America and Africa. “Equally important is the view that that energy security is no longer [just] a talking point. That’s going to drive activity, and I think that change is not temporal.”

Indications that a ramp up of the U.S. oil supply is ahead

U.S. oil production hit a record high of more than 13.8 million barrels last year, but the volumes plateaued and even decreased slightly amid a global glut of crude oil before the Iran war.

Commodity prices are expected to remain higher—even if they come down from their current levels—into 2027 and maybe beyond because of the supply chain shocks, logistical problems, heightened geopolitical and insurance risks, and the prolonged timelines for Middle Eastern nations to repair infrastructure and restart their oil and gas supplies.

While drilling activity and production volumes have not yet ramped up in the U.S., there’s an early indicator that they will: Smaller oil producers—the typical first movers—already are hiring more fracking fleets and keeping drilling rigs contracted for longer.

“We’re in the early innings, and big public companies typically would come later in that cycle,” Miller said. “The early movers are the smaller companies, but that’s an important move because that early move by small operators is what takes [fleet] capacity out of the market and creates [equipment] tightness.”

As the world entered 2026 expecting an oversupply of oil, more companies were expected to cut back on their contracted drilling rigs and fracking fleets. Instead, they’ve largely held steady. And Halliburton, which feared less work—more “white space” on the calendar—is now virtually fully booked through the second quarter, and the back half of the year is quickly filling up, said Halliburton chief operating officer Shannon Slocum.

“I am excited about North America. We see a recovery in progress,” Slocum said. “There are just really constructive conversations about getting back to work and grabbing the value that’s out there, not only now but for the future.”

The global impact of the Iran war

Since the beginning of the war, the world has cumulatively lost more than 600 million barrels of oil and is “trending towards 1 billion,” Miller said.

“This represents several years of meaningful, incremental demand to replace strategic reserves on top of what I believe will be continued structural demand growth,” Miller argued.

Halliburton specifically highlighted major growth prospects in South America in Argentina, Brazil, Suriname, and Guyana, as well as in Africa, including Namibia and Nigeria. Miller expressed bullishness on a rebound in Venezuela as well, which is in the process of opening back up to more international investment again after the U.S. arrest of former leader Nicolás Maduro.

“We’re making progress in Venezuela. I spent some time there,” Miller said. “We’re having great discussions with customers. We’re talking about commercial terms. Our facilities there are in better shape than I expected. Clearly, that is an opportunity. There’s work to do without question. I think some of that work comes faster than others, but we’re really, really pleased to be back in Venezuela and have Venezuela back in business.”

Halliburton reported first-quarter net income of $461 million, up from $204 million year-over-year. The company touted that it’s growth outpaced losses from Middle East disruptions in March.

Halliburton’s operations were hit the hardest in Iraq and Qatar, although operations also were impacted in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, Slocum said.

“Halliburton’s operational footprint is intact. Most of our business is working today,” Slocum said of the Middle East. “We’re in constant contact with our customers and there to support them when they’re ready and able to go back to work.

“The thing you’ll start seeing first moving is probably just turning back on wells,” Slocum said. “That would be a well-by-well situation of how they produce and how they flow. The longer they get shut in, the more complex that gets. But we’re ready, and it will just take time to figure that out.”

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Almost a dozen scientists related to nuclear and space defense programs tied to NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin are dead or missing in cases that span as far back as 2022, and they’ve gone largely unnoticed by authorities and the public—until now.

The House Oversight Committee formally demanded answers from four federal agencies Monday on the deaths and disappearances of at least 11 American scientists and researchers with ties to NASA, nuclear research, and classified defense programs—several of them directly connected to the space defense technologies now being commercialized by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), the chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, requesting staff-level briefings no later than April 27.

“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets,” the letters read.

Later on Monday, Comer said the string of deaths was unlikely to be a coincidence.”Once you see the facts, it would suggest that something sinister could be happening and it would be a national security concern,” Comer said, adding he and Burlinson were looking to “see if we can put it together and find any missing links to try to solve what’s going on here. Because it’s very unlikely that this is a coincidence. Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat.”

White House responds

The White House formally acknowledged the pattern on April 15, when Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked directly about it at a briefing. “If true, of course, that’s definitely something I think this government and administration would deem worth looking into,” she responded.

Later that day, President Trump told reporters, “I don’t know. Hopefully, coincidence, whatever you want to call it. But some of them were very important people,” adding he would have answers within “the next week and a half.” 

“I just left a meeting on that subject, so pretty serious stuff.”

In a post on X two days later, Leavitt confirmed the administration “is actively working with all relevant agencies and the FBI to holistically review all of the cases together and identify any potential commonalities that may exist,” adding “no stone will be unturned.” 

On Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the bureau is formally investigating.“We’re going to look for connections,” he told Fox News, “on whether there are connections to classified access, access to classified information, and or foreign actors.”

“If there’s any connections that lead to nefarious conduct or conspiracy, this FBI will make the appropriate arrest.”

“The FBI is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists. We are working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state and state and local law enforcement partners to find answers,” the bureau told Fortune in a statement.

When asked for comment, NASA directed Fortune to its first official statement on the matter in an X post. “NASA is coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists. At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat. The agency is committed to transparency and will provide more information as able.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin, and the scientists involved

The committee’s letters focus on NASA and nuclear research connections, but the broader context is the commercial space-defense industry that these scientists helped build. The planetary defense and nuclear research fields are notably insular: there are only a couple of hundred scientists who specialize in asteroid characterization, deflection modeling, and space-based detection.

Blue Origin unveiled its NEO Hunter planetary defense concept in March 2026, developed in partnership with California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech and built on its Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The ion-beam deflection and kinetic impact capabilities it proposes share core technology with missile-defense detection and interception systems. 

Both companies have received substantial federal contracts under the Trump administration. Space Force awarded SpaceX nearly $6 billion and Blue Origin approximately $2.3 billion in national security launch contracts in April 2025. SpaceX is separately under contract for the Golden Dome missile defense satellite constellation; Blue Origin has been added to the $151 billion SHIELD contract through the Missile Defense Agency and hired its first-ever President of National Security in December 2025. 

NASA Administrator Isaacman, one of the four letter recipients, has championed the expansion of the privatization of missions previously managed by government agencies. Neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin responded to Fortune’s requests for comment.

The letters flag a close professional tie between two of the missing: Aerojet Rocketdyne  and JPL engineer Monica Reza and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, both of whom vanished in 2025 and 2026, respectively. The letters note that the two worked together on “an Air Force-funded research program in the early 2000s pertaining to advanced materials needed for reusable space vehicles and weapons,” which Comer and Burlison say has not been explained.

Deaths and disappearances

The cases date back to 2022 and span JPL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, Caltech, and the Kansas City National Security Campus. Reza, 60, was director of JPL’s Materials Processing Group and had patented a nickel super-alloy used in both space travel and weaponry when she vanished during a hike on Angeles Crest Highway in June 2025 and was never found. She patented nickel super-alloy for rocket manufacturing, research that went into reusable rocket programs like New Glenn and Starship. McCasland, 68, disappeared from his Albuquerque home on Feb. 27 of this year, leaving on foot with only a .38 caliber revolver.

JPL principal scientist Frank Maiwald, 61, died on July 4, 2024, with no cause of death released and no statement from NASA. Government contractor Steven Garcia, who oversaw nuclear weapons assets at the Kansas City National Security Campus, disappeared from Albuquerque in August 2025, last seen on surveillance footage leaving on foot with a handgun.

Michael Hicks, who worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022, passed away in July 2023 at age 59. He worked on asteroid characterization research which was used in NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, and was the same methodology that Blue Origin’s NEO Hunter was modeled on and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 originally launched in 2021. Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was found shot dead on his front porch in rural Llano, Cal. earlier this year. The 67-year-old worked on NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor telescopes that are the detection backbone used by NEO Hunter. SpaceX is contracted to carry NEO Surveyor to orbit on a Falcon 9 in 2027.

Two Los Alamos National Laboratory employees, Anthony Chavez and Melissa Casias, vanished weeks apart in 2025 under nearly identical circumstances, each leaving behind their car, keys, wallet, and phone. Jason Thomas, an assistant director at Novartis with active DOD contracts, disappeared in Dec. 2025 and was found dead in a Massachusetts lake three months later.

A former colleague of one of the deceased spoke to Newsweek, describing the concentration of deaths and disappearances within such a small, specialized field as defying ordinary probability. Dr. Joe Masiero, a lead scientist at the California Institute of Technology, told the publication: “It’s really unfortunate to see a tragedy played out over and over again.”

Former FBI official Chris Swecker recently speculated to the Daily Mail that the pattern is consistent with how “several foreign powers” operate, by  “abducting, blackmailing, torturing and even killing” scientists to gain intel.

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Meta is installing tracking software on U.S. employees’ work computers that will capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes, along with some screenshots to feed the data into its AI training pipeline, according to Reuters. 

The tool, disclosed to staff this week in a channel belonging to the company’s Meta Superintelligence Labs team, which Reuters saw, will run on a designated list of work apps and websites.

Per Reuters, the memo framed the effort as a way for rank-and-file employees to improve their models in areas where they struggle to emulate basic computer-use behaviors, such as navigating dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts. The memo told Meta staffers that they can do their part to help by just doing their daily work. 

The broader goal seems to be to build AI agents capable of performing white-collar tasks on their own, the exact software Meta is racing to ship out amid competition from OpenAI and Anthropic. Those agents have a lot of data, but little footage of how to actually use it. 

“If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them,” a Meta spokesperson wrote in an email to Fortune, adding that the models were using “things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus.”

The company added that safeguards are in place to protect sensitive content and that the data will not be used for any other purpose.

Industry hunts for data

The move comes as the industry hunts for training data to use in the workplace itself.

In January, OpenAI was reported to be asking third-party contractors, via training data firm Handshake AI, to upload samples of real work products from previous jobs—actual PowerPoints, spreadsheets, and the like—with instructions to scrub confidential material before submission.

Meta acquired a 49% stake in data-labeling firm Scale AI last year for more than $14 billion, and Scale’s former CEO Alexandr Wang now leads Meta Superintelligence Labs. Meta has rapidly accelerated its AI spending, with Zuckerberg committing up to $135 billion in capital expenditure for 2026.

At the same time, the company is preparing to cut as much as 20% of its workforce, with the first layoffs reportedly set to begin in May.

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Data centers carry a hidden cost that dwarfs their price tags, according to new research. It’s not money. It’s the health of Americans living near them.

In North America, the sprawling server farms used to train and run artificial intelligence models received a $47 billion investment surge last year, building out everything from cooling equipment to plumbing. The tech companies at the center of the data center craze, such as Meta and Google, took out $182 billion in loans last year to fund their splurge, double what they borrowed in 2024.

One of the primary criticisms of the data center construction craze has been its environmental trade-offs, including the facilities’ impacts on water, land, and electricity use. But that cost might also directly affect local residents and their health, according to findings from a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published earlier this month.

The analysis of around 2,800 operational data centers was authored by Nicholas Muller, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. Muller tracked data centers’ electricity needs last year and found how much air pollution and additional planet-warming greenhouse gases local grids generated to supply that demand. The author derived indicators, such as the risk of premature mortality associated with data centers’ electricity needs, and converted those measurements into dollar amounts using standard estimates, such as the social cost of carbon, which measures the economic damage of each additional ton of carbon released into the atmosphere.

The result is that data centers’ environmental damage last year cost the economy at large $25 billion, of which $3.7 billion is directly tied to AI activities in data centers. This price tag represents an externality—an indirect consequence of economic activity that imposes costs on third parties not directly involved in the original activity. Rather than reflecting an increase in day-to-day medical expenses or higher taxes to subsidize a greater need for care, Muller’s analysis boils down the cost of premature deaths tied to the environmental impact of data centers, assigning an economic value to the resulting shortened life expectancy.

“In the context of data center power consumption, the external costs from power generation are borne by consumers exposed to PM2.5,” Muller wrote, referring to inhalable particulate matter that can carry severe health risks for local communities, including lung disease, heart conditions, and in some cases higher rates of premature mortality. 

The impact of additional greenhouse gases, meanwhile, “manifest many years following emission, and hence, reflect an externality borne by future generations,” he added.

Data center winners and losers

Data centers aren’t delivering the widespread economic benefits that were promised to the communities hosting them. 

In the U.S., towns and counties have locked horns over the past few years, looking to attract data center-shaped investment to their municipalities. In addition to the immediate employment boost for tradespeople—including construction workers, electricians, and plumbers—local governments have been enticed by the impressive tax revenues on offer. Between taxes paid on property and equipment, data centers are increasingly the single largest local taxpayer. Last year, a PwC report found that the data center industry’s total contribution to government revenues—including federal, state, and local taxes—rose from $66.2 billion in 2017 to $162.7 billion in 2023.

But those receipts have been at least somewhat minimized by the lavish tax breaks local governments have granted to data center developers. That’s in spite of the fact that data center construction rarely leads to a permanent rise in local employment. The race to offer data center operators the most appealing tax incentive may end up being a race to the bottom, as the strategy might already be losing local and state governments large sums of money. 

At least 10 states are losing more than $100 million a year in revenue due to data center tax breaks, according to an analysis published earlier this month by Good Jobs First, a progressive advocacy and economic research group. The report noted that of the dozens of states currently offer tax incentives to data centers, of which 14 do not disclose revenue losses. 

Local governments are also contending with declining public opinion regarding data centers, which many Americans blame for the billions of dollars in price hikes electrical utilities requested last year. There are many reasons for higher utility prices—including the costs of maintaining an aging grid, which started rising long before the AI infrastructure boom—but data centers have emerged as a lightning rod in the country’s widespread affordability crisis. 

Muller’s analysis isn’t the only recent one attempting to uncover the hidden costs of data centers. Emissions generated from a single data center in northern Virginia that uses on-site power generation might be costing anywhere between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, according to a February study commissioned by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a regional non-profit.

That Virginia facility is located in what has been termed “data center alley,” a dense agglomeration of some 200 facilities in a highly populated corner of the state. Local residents have voiced concern over the massive buildout, citing excessive noise pollution and electricity bills that have gone up more than 250% in neighborhoods close to data centers, according to Bloomberg.

The geographic concentration of data centers means that indicators such as public or environmental health costs tend to vary widely by state. Muller’s study, in fact, found that Virginia and Texas, another data center hotspot, together account for around 30% of the $25 billion in health costs stemming from the buildout, meaning that the large data center buildup in those states is responsible for a significant share of the shared cost to public health.

Muller argued that the public health costs tied to data centers might prove minimal if AI does indeed transform the economy. If AI sparks in a 1% rise in GDP, he calculated, data centers’ environmental cost would represent only 1% of that increased output. Even if AI only leads to a 0.1% GDP boost, the externality would be worth around 12% of the extra productivity.

But AI has yet to deliver on its promises of economic transformation, and public opinion towards the technology and data centers is starting to sour. Until AI leads to a productivity boom that lifts the economy with it, tech companies will reckon with the fact that the most visible impact of data centers so far has been their physical presence and an environmental toll that might grow even larger. Muller calculated that, in the near term, the environmental externalities associated with data centers could rise a further 85%.

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American farmers entered the spring planting season knowing fertilizer would be more expensive, fuel would be costly, and labor would be short. With the growing season now in full swing, they can add a record-setting drought and scarce water supplies to that list of headaches.

An overlapping series of headwinds—ranging from climate to economics and geopolitics—have made farming in the U.S. an exceptionally brutal profession in recent months. The headaches started last year when the Trump administration’s sweeping tariff regime warped the country’s trade policy, raising input costs for farmers and crowding out international buyers. This year, the war in the Middle East has caused the global fuel and fertilizer trade to sputter, further squeezing farmers’ margins.

And as spring continues, 61% of the continental U.S. is under moderate to exceptional drought conditions, according to NOAA, including 97% of the Southeast and two thirds of the western U.S. For farmers, the upshot is reduced yields and potentially failed harvests. For everyone else, the towering pile of crises likely means higher food prices for the rest of the year.

“What’s unique about the current moment is that you have this perfect storm of factors,” David Ortega, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University, told Fortune.

An unseasonable hit

What makes the current drought stand out more than anything is its timing. Farmers are accustomed to dealing with sweltering temperatures and dry conditions in the summer, but not this early in the year. Last month was the warmest March on record.

The drought has spread over huge portions of the country’s agricultural land. 

“It’s unusually dry in various parts of the country,” Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, a resource economist at Cornell University, told Fortune. “It’s been hitting hard in the Central Plains and in parts of the South, all along the Cotton Belt.”

Huge swathes of staple crops in the South and the Midwest are under drought conditions, according to NOAA, including nearly 70% of all U.S. winter wheat production, 29% of soybeans, and 26% of corn. 

Drought conditions can be lethal to farming as they sap moisture out of the air and soil. Crops are most vulnerable around this time of year, Ortiz-Bobea said, and a lack of moisture this early in the season can stunt their growth, prevent pollination, and lower yields later on. And because of an unusually warm winter in the West, farms are also facing low levels of snowpack, the seasonal accumulation of slow-melting snow and ice that acts as a natural freshwater reservoir to help farmers weather the naturally dry summer seasons. 

And this summer might end up even warmer than usual in some parts of the country. There is a high likelihood the U.S. will be blanketed by an El Niño later this year, a cyclical climate phenomenon that can shift temperature and rainfall patterns across the country. These events typically bring warmer temperatures to the northern U.S. and cooler days to the South, potentially—but not always—accompanied by wetter conditions. A strong El Niño would mean warmer temperatures across parts of the U.S., which might suck even more moisture out of the air, Ortiz-Bobea said.

Cascading effects

Challenging weather conditions add on to what was already a troubled year in the U.S. agricultural sector. 

For months, farmers have dealt with steadily rising input costs—required expenses including fertilizer, livestock feed, labor, and fuel. President Donald Trump’s tariffs were an early disruptor, as fertilizers were quickly drawn into the trade war between the U.S. and Canada, saddling farmers with higher costs. 

Those conditions have persisted this year as shipping ground to a halt in the Strait of Hormuz, the critical Middle Eastern waterway Iran has exerted control over during its war with the U.S. and Israel, and a chokepoint for one-third of global fertilizer shipments. A survey of 5,700 farmers published last week by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that around 70% of farmers cannot afford the fertilizer they need for the season.

The other pressure point has been fuel, prices for which have soared in the U.S. as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply is locked up in the Persian Gulf as long as the Strait remains closed to most shipping traffic. The closure has been particularly painful for diesel users, including farmers operating heavy machinery.

The extent to which the drought impacts crop yields will most likely depend on how long conditions last, but farmers are already reeling from the consequences of these higher input costs.

“What I think we’re going to see is a one-two punch of higher energy prices and higher fertilizer costs,” Richard Volpe, an agricultural economist at California Polytechnic State University, and a former researcher at the USDA’s Economic Research Service, told Fortune. 

“We’re feeling energy now,” he said. “Then as we get into late summer and into the fall, that’s where we’re really going to start seeing the impact of the higher fertilizer costs.”

The multitude of overlapping challenges is already causing food prices to rise. While tariff pain was partially contained to specific categories of food, rising fuel and fertilizer prices promise across-the-board increases, Volpe said. The USDA’s latest price forecast, published in March, projected food prices will rise 3.6% in 2026, up from 3.1% predicted in February. 

And if drought conditions persist to the point that crops start failing, reduced yields could lead to higher prices for livestock feed, snowballing into more expensive meat and dairy products for years. Today, beef inflation rapidly outpaces regular food inflation due, in part, to severe drought conditions starting in 2022 that raised feed prices and discouraged farmers from breeding cattle.

Michigan State’s Ortega said longer, unseasonable, and more severe droughts are becoming more frequent partly because of human-induced climate change. Farmers have some protection from adverse weather in the form of crop insurance, when the government compensates for failed harvests and lost revenue. But if fuel or fertilizer become too expensive, farmers are often on their own. Higher input costs and food prices can follow, and the whole country ends up on the hook.

“You can ensure yields, you can ensure revenue. But you’re not insuring against these costs,” Ortiz-Bobea said. “It’s kind of an unprecedented confluence of things. Some naturally occurring, some geopolitical and then some domestic policy that is all kind of converging.”

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President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was caught off guard—pleasantly—by how well the U.S. economy held up during his war with Iran. Wall Street’s top analysts say he’s got part of the story right, and the rest dangerously wrong.

“Even when it was down more a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised,” Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box Tuesday morning. “I thought it would be down much more, and I thought the oil would be much higher, and I’m very happy to say that it wasn’t.”

Trump spat out specific numbers, suggesting oil could or should actually be twice as expensive as it currently is: “If you would have told me that oil is at 90 as opposed to 200 [dollars per barrel] I would be frankly, surprised.”

The remarks came as Iran-U.S. ceasefire negotiations entered a critical 24-hour window, with Trump warning he expected to resume bombing if a deal framework wasn’t in place by Wednesday. With one eye on the ticker—Trump also noted during the interview the Dow was approaching 50,000—the president cast the conflict as an economic near-miss that validated his judgment. The recovery in markets, of course, is entirely self-inflicted, and Trump acknowledged as much with a trademark moment of levity when he described how he broke the news of the war to his cabinet.

“So, I said to the people, I said to my people, they’re all gathered, all these wonderful guys, Scott Bessent, the whole—the whole group … I said, ‘Fellas, I got a little bad news for you. I’m going to put a little wrinkle in your numbers.’” His assembled cabinet asked what he was talking about, and Trump described his explanation: “We’re going down to a place called Iran” and that, come what may, the damage in the stock market would be “peanuts” compared to a nuclear confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Goldman: The rally is real, but it’s a bet on resolution

On the equity market, Trump has a point—and Goldman Sachs backs him up, to a degree. The S&P 500 has staged a powerful rebound from its late-March lows, rising more than 10% to hit fresh record highs last week as fears of a prolonged conflict faded.

Goldman’s senior research advisor Dominic Wilson argued on the bank’s Exchanges podcast the market has made a calculated judgment to look past the “spot reality” of surging oil prices,” much like the Covid-era rally that preceded the actual economic recovery.

“What you tend to see is the market worry a lot, and then the first stage of relief comes mostly from removing the weight that people put on the very bad tails that are out there,” Wilson said.

But Goldman is careful to note what that rally is and isn’t. It’s a bet on a negotiated resolution—not a verdict the economic damage has been contained. Bobby Molavi, Goldman’s head of European Execution Services, argued on the Markets podcast “there is a risk that if this lasts longer, and this oil shock turned from being a supply shock dynamic to a demand shock dynamic, that we’d begin to increase our recession probability.” F

irst-quarter earnings, now beginning to roll in, will be the first real stress test of whether corporate America’s supply chains and consumer spending have absorbed the blow—or are still absorbing it.

Where Trump’s math falls apart: inflation and GDP

The stock market recovery is the headline. The rates market, Goldman warns, is telling a more sobering story: bond traders are pricing in hawkish central banks bracing for an inflation surge. Goldman’s economists have already raised their December 2026 headline PCE inflation forecast by a full percentage point to 3.1%, and trimmed their 2026 GDP growth forecast by half a point to 2%—a direct consequence of higher oil prices erasing much of the expected boost from last year’s fiscal bill.

This is the math that Trump glossed over on CNBC. Oil at $90 may be below the catastrophic $150-$200 scenarios some analysts feared, but Goldman’s baseline forecast for Brent crude is $80 per barrel by Q4, meaning prices are still running hot relative to their own projections. In a severely adverse scenario, in which the Strait reopening is delayed and Gulf production losses persist, Goldman sees Brent hitting $115. The IMF, for its part, has already revised global 2026 growth down to 3.1%, naming the Iran conflict as the primary driver.

Citadel: The president is the volatility

There’s a second, more structural problem with Trump’s reassuring tone. Sebastian Barrack, head of commodities at Citadel and one of the world’s most influential energy traders, told the FT Commodities Global Summit this week Trump’s Truth Social posts have fundamentally transformed oil market behavior, with oil and gas volatility surging roughly 300% in the conflict’s opening weeks. Barrack said he maintains a dedicated screen solely to monitor the president’s feed.

The record bears that out: crude plunged on March 23 after Trump posted about “productive” talks with Iran, and fell again weeks earlier when he declared the war “very complete.” Every optimistic comment Trump makes—including Tuesday’s—is now a potential price signal. Barrack also said the White House had been “under-thought” in its confidence that releasing Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil and offering Hormuz naval escorts would be enough to calm energy markets.

The bill hasn’t come due yet

What Goldman and Citadel together suggest is Trump is celebrating a halftime score in a game that isn’t over. The stock market rally is real, but it reflects hope for a deal—the same deal Trump is now threatening to blow up if negotiations stall by Wednesday. The inflation impact of $90 oil is still feeding through to consumers, with U.S. pump prices up roughly 35% from pre-war levels. And Goldman explicitly warns its inflation forecasts carry upside risk.

“Most people believe that consumers and corporates are going to be able to withstand this pressure, as they have at previous points,” Goldman’s Molavi said, a cautiously optimistic view that is a long way from Trump’s breezy assertion that the whole thing went better than expected.

Trump knew he was going to put a little wrinkle in everyone’s numbers and Wall Street is still smoothing it out. Every message from Trump risks a further wrinkle in the time of the Iran war.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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During the pandemic, the housing markets in Florida and Texas enjoyed a surge in popularity. Unencumbered by office attendance, remote workers headed south to cash in on the Sun Belt’s warm temperatures, low tax rates, and new construction. 

But that story is being rewritten now. Homebuyers are now prioritizing affordability and steady employment, meaning Rust Belt cities are now stronger than their Sun Belt counterparts. Ohio, in particular, is a quiet champion of the American housing market, thanks to the allure of the Cleveland Clinic, and a $20 billion Intel plant. Oh, and homes that are about 30% cheaper than the coasts.

Redfin data released Monday shows the U.S. is firmly a buyer’s market, with sellers outnumbering buyers by 43% in March—just shy of the largest gap on record dating back to 2013. But the pain is not evenly distributed. 

In the lopsided market, Ohio holds steady

The five most lopsided buyer’s markets in the country are all in the Sun Belt: Miami (where sellers outnumber buyers by 148%), Nashville (119%), Austin (112%), San Antonio (109%), and Las Vegas (101%). Every major Florida and Texas metro Redfin tracks is now a buyer’s market, with Houston sellers outnumbering buyers by 97% and Dallas by 87%.

“High property taxes, rising insurance costs, and fears about job security are making homebuyers very selective,” Barb Cooper, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Austin, said in a statement. “The buyers who are in the market want turnkey homes in every sense, and they can afford to wait without compromising because we have tons of inventory.”

Meanwhile, Ohio is holding the line. Cincinnati and Columbus are modest buyer’s markets (30.7% and 22.8%, respectively), and Cleveland is one of the rare balanced markets in America. 

Gen Z buyers and remote workers, especially, are abandoning higher-cost Sun Belt metros for the Midwest, where median home prices often hover between $200,000 and $275,000—well below the national figure, which has surpassed $400,000. Cleveland’s median home price sits around $150,000, Realtor.com data shows, less than one-third of Miami’s $625,000.

“Perched on the southern shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland mixes Rust Belt grit with a genuine comeback story—from the world-class Cleveland Clinic to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to revitalized neighborhoods like Ohio City and Tremont where century-old homes sit next to buzzy breweries and restaurants,” according to Realtor.com. “It’s a city that punches well above its weight, and its real estate market is starting to prove it.”

The Sun Belt’s home price problem

The shift in leverage is showing up in prices, and that’s where Texas and Florida are taking the biggest losses. 

Data analysis from Lance Lambert, founder of ResiClub, shows that home prices in the Austin metro now sit 27.8% below their 2022 peak, while home prices in Hartford, Connecticut, are 22.5% above their 2022 peak. 

“Some of that ‘bifurcation’ boils down to mean reversion, with many of the outright home price declines occurring in markets that overheated further during the pandemic housing boom,” Lambert wrote.

Nationally, home prices rose just 0.8% year-over-year between March 2025 and March 2026, per Lambert’s analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, and 89 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets posted year-over-year price declines in March. In Texas, Florida, and Colorado, active inventory solidly exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levels, Lambert wrote, because the Sun Belt overbuilt. That means home prices decrease or remain flat, he added. 

The Midwest is having the opposite problem. Redfin data shows Columbus home prices are up nearly 4% year-over-year, with a median sale price of $290,000. And in the Cleveland metro, the three fastest-growing cities are Hunting Valley (+8.6%), Bentleyville (+7.8%), and Moreland Hills (+9.0%), per Zillow data compiled by Stacker.

Toledo was also ranked the fourth-hottest housing market in the country by Realtor.com for 2026, with projected price growth of 13.1%. While Sun Belt sellers are slashing prices to clear inventory, Ohio sellers are watching their equity grow.

Climate, insurance, and the Florida exit

This change is also amplified by forces buyers can’t negotiate their way out of: climate risk, property insurance premiums, and rising HOA fees.

Florida has been grappling with intensifying natural disasters, soaring insurance premiums, and rising condo HOA fees, which have prompted some homeowners to leave, according to Redfin. In fact, data from Insurify, cited by Insurance Business, show that the average annual premium in the Sunshine State is $8,292, about 181% higher than the national average.

Miami is also regarded as one of the weakest markets because it has a glut of condos, and owners across South Florida have been hit with hefty special assessments stemming from post-Surfside structural inspection laws. Texas has its own version of the problem: property taxes and insurance costs driven by hailstorms, tornadoes, and Gulf hurricane risk have eroded the affordability math that drew millions of people there.

Why Ohio is winning

Ohio isn’t on many coastal buyers’ radar for lifestyle reasons, but it can make more sense on paper from an affordability standpoint.

Columbus has an average home price around $250,000, Zillow data shows, and Cleveland offers ownership costs that are actually lower than rent—a rare feat in today’s market. 

Cincinnati’s corporate base includes six Fortune 500 companies, from Kroger to Procter & Gamble. Meanwhile, Intel’s roughly $20 billion semiconductor project just outside Columbus is drawing talent, capital, and housing demand.

Danielle Andrews, a realtor with Realty One Group Next Generation, previously told Fortune recently she has worked with several Gen Z buyers—especially remote workers and young professionals—who are leaving higher-cost areas like Florida for more affordable housing.

“For many, it’s not just about cheaper homes, but about being able to build wealth earlier without drowning in overhead,” Andrews said. She also cited a StorageCafe statistic showing that Gen Z and millennials each accounted for nearly 30% of all interstate movers, with states like Indiana and Wisconsin seeing some of the biggest gains. 

The popularity of Florida and Texas isn’t going away entirely, but the pandemic premium that let Sun Belt sellers name their price is gone. In its place is a market where buyers, armed with inventory and leverage, are finally calling the shots.

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Google’s rapid AI improvements have lifted its once-beleaguered cloud division, with startups and enterprises now clamoring to build on top of the newly competitive Gemini. And this week, the company is set for its next big moment, as it brings together its stakeholders at the fast-growing Google Cloud Next event in Las Vegas.

Though Google Cloud Platform still trails its rivals in terms of market share, the business is growing fast, with Q4 cloud revenue increasing 48% to $17.7 billion. Meanwhile, Google’s cloud revenue backlog more than doubled in 2025, growing to $240 billion by the end of last year. Google’s also said AI customers on average use 1.8x as many Google products as non-AI customers.

Cloud Next, which has long outgrown San Francisco’s Moscone Center, will be a moment for the company to mark its progress in the cloud wars, a competition where it was once left for dead.

Given the AI race’s speed, it won’t be safe for Google to take a breath, though. With the rise of Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, the company’s now under pressure to bolster its own agentic coding play. Google’s reportedly created a “strike team” to improve its AI coding models. And in the meantime, it will focus on helping its customers build agents of their own, a focus of its Vegas event.

Unlike some of the more messianic-style messaging you’d hear from Google’s competitors, the company is taking a more grounded approach this year. Bottlenecks, for instance, will be a key theme at Cloud Next, with more than a dozen sessions citing the topic. One session, “The human bottleneck: Why great tech fails and how to drive value in AI,” features World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li.

The bottleneck theme is pertinent given the ‘capability overhang’ that so many AI labs talk about. By this, they essentially mean that AI’s abilities have outpaced humans’ capability to implement them. If Google is betting that further growth will come from helping customers solve these problems, the payoff could be further gains against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure.

Here’s a sample of this year’s Cloud Next talks:

• NVIDIA Omniverse For Physical AI: From Simulation to Reality
• The journey to agentic applications at Spotify
• Securing global innovation: How industry leaders scale defense across complex environments
• From algorithms to agents: How Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and AI are rewiring commerce
• Inside the race to build AI factories (Alex is participating)

The Intelligence Report

• The National Security Agency is reportedly using Anthropic’s new Mythos model despite the government blacklist.
• Google added new AI features for Chrome, including new search tools and “skills” powered by Gemini.
• Meta is expected to lay off around 10% of staff next month. Meanwhile, it’s also reportedly building an AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg to attend meetings and talk with staff.
• OpenAI had several major departures, including Kevin Weil (former chief product officer), Srinivas Narayanan (CTO of B2B Applications) and Bill Peebles (head of Sora).
• Publisher efforts to block AI scraping are creating serious worries for the Internet Archive, which operates the Wayback Machine.
• Amazon debuted a new agentic AI tool for drug discovery via AWS.
• Microsoft is reportedly testing a new always-on agent for Copilot similar to OpenClaw.
• A humanoid robot won a half marathon race in Beijing, beating the human race record by several minutes. (It was one of 300 robots that competed in Sunday’s race.)
• Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering at the Pentagon, joined the Big Technology podcast to talk about how AI is shaping modern warfare, his decision to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk, and what he thinks about the Pentagon Pizza Index.

Super Apps Vision Come Into Focus

Last week, OpenAI debuted a new Codex super app for desktops, with coding tools and other features for computer control and an in-app browser. The updates for Codex also include more than 90 extra plugins that combine skills, app integrations and MCP servers. OpenAI also released a new reasoning model called GPT-Rosalind to support life sciences research including biology, drug discovery and translational medicine.

Other AI model updates announced:

• Anthropic released a new AI tool called Claude Design that lets users create prototypes from text prompts. It’s powered by Claude Opus 4.7, which was also released last week.
• Perplexity released a new “Personal Computer” AI assistant for Mac users, with multi-model orchestration through new computer agents for working with files, apps, websites and other connectors.
• Google debuted a new Gemini desktop app for macOS, featuring a way to analyze content in any shared window. Google also released a new Gemini desktop app for Windows desktops.

7 Stats From Stanford’s 2026 AI Index

Stanford’s 2026 AI Index provides yet another annual deep-dive into AI’s technical progress, economic influence and societal impact. With more than 400 pages, the annual report from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI features far more than we can fit into this section. But here are a few quick stats and other insights that stood out.

• AI is getting better at performing in professional domains like tax evaluations, mortgage processing, corporate finance and legal reasoning. (Accuracy for the top 15 models ranged between 60% and 90%.)
• The performance gap between U.S. and Chinese AI models is closer than ever, with the top U.S. models now only ahead by 2.7%
• Video models like DeepMind Veo 3 are getting better at generating content with realistic object behaviors without being trained on them. Two examples: simulating buoyancy and solving mazes.
• The number of AI researchers moving to the U.S. has slowed drastically, falling by 80% in just the last year.
• The number of AI safety incidents jumped to 362 in 2025, up from 233 in 2024.
• Open-source AI projects continue scaling, with 5.6 million projects on GitHub and Hugging Face uploading tripling in three years.

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Two sides of Kevin Warsh were presented to the world at his Senate Banking Committee hearing this morning. From the Republicans, a “battle-tested” economist, ready to step into the role of Federal Reserve chairman in his “finest hour” at a turning point for the economy. 

From the Democrats, Warsh is a “sock puppet”—both for Donald Trump in the White House and for Wall Street CEOs. To confirm him, Senator Elizabeth Warren said, was to vote for catastrophe, leading the central bank down a path to erosion of its independence. 

Markets and investors care little for the stories spun by politicians. They wanted to hear from the man himself, who just revealed a personal fortune of more than $100 million, making him one of, if not the, wealthiest candidates to ever seek the top central banker’s chair.

A former Fed Governor himself, for Warsh landing the role of leading the central bank would be the summit. He said he’d “lived the American Dream,” telling the committee: “I’ve been the luckiest, most blessed, fortunate person with the greatest teachers. I was a kid from upstate New York in public schools, and I had an opportunity to serve after 9/11.

“I was walking with a friend of mine … away from a building near the site of the tragedy, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, and I thought to myself: ‘What am I doing?’ So I committed myself to public service then.”

The why for Warsh is clear, but investors are more concerned about the how. The chairman-nominee’s take is clear: Monetary policy must be independent of politics (Wall Street, DC, and investors breathe a sigh of relief), but the central bank must earn that autonomy. And the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hasn’t helped itself in that matter.

Warsh’s opening remarks, shared with Fortune ahead of the hearing, focused on his commitment to Federal Reserve independence, which he declared “essential.” Inflation is a choice made by the Fed, he added, a decision which it must bear stoically and without complaint—despite criticism.

Still on the outside of the central bank, Warsh wasted no time in critiquing the work of the current incumbents. During and after the pandemic, the Fed “missed its mark,” Warsh said, and the U.S. economy is “still dealing with the legacy of policy errors.” 

“Once you let inflation take hold, it’s harder and more expensive to bring down,” Warsh added. “Fundamental policy reforms are needed to fix it.” 

Some of that reform comes down to using tools “differently,” he said, be it with interest rates or the balance sheet. New communications are also needed, he added, a notion of no surprise (albeit a little unpopular) to analysts. 

Warsh has long been a critic of the Fed’s overcommunication (advocating for a chairman who would “stay in his lane”) and believes that forecasting tools such as the dot plot serve only as a stick to beat the FOMC with if it changes its mind. It’s a mantle more recently adopted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been calling for a “back seat” Fed. 

Forward guidance is “part of the reason why, after making mistakes, [those mistakes] were compounded,” Warsh said, “If the Fed were to wait until it gets into a meeting to make a decision, [it] can stop compounding errors.” 

Some economists are inclined to agree. As Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie Group, told Fortune this week: “The Fed operated well before the dot plot was invented,” he said, referring to the chart published by the Fed four times a year that shows where each of its top policymakers expect short-term interest rates to head. One of the most closely watched tools in central banking communications, Wizman argued that nevertheless, “before each individual was asked to put their own dots and [put] their own projections into the summary of economic projections. No one really can say that the Fed was not operating well before then. In fact, it’s hard to make a case that it was operating better or worse.” 

Wizman added: “It’s very possible that with less communication or more coherent communication … you might get a more transparent, clearer, Fed, a more transparent and clearer outlook on the economy and what the Fed is thinking.” 

The rates question

The leading question for many, both on the committee and on Wall Street, is what, if anything, Warsh has promised the Oval Office in order to land the chairman nomination. 

Trump made it clear only a dovish individual would land the nomination, leading many to speculate that Warsh had committed to easing in order to garner the president’s support. 

On any promises made to the White House, Warsh was clear: “The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period. Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had, but he never did.

“I was honored he nominated me. Like everyone else in the committee, in the world, I’ve heard his view on interest rates. It sounded very similar to me to every other president in economic history that I’ve studied.”

When asked not about how he would vote in his first FOMC meetings, but on how he rationalizes a dovish stance in an environment of sticky inflation, Warsh pointed to both the potential of AI and the tools more widely available to the Fed: both rates and the balance sheet. These two factors should be working in “constant cross purposes,” he argued. 

As Fortune previously reported, Warsh wants to reduce the balance sheet, currently standing at $6.7 trillion, and conveniently delivers a neat argument for rate cuts. As professor Yiming Ma, of Columbia University’s Business School explained in a conversation with Fortune in February: “People often think: ‘Oh, economic conditions, inflation expectations, and unemployment are determining interest rates,’ and the size of the balance sheet is like, whatever.

“But in practice, hiking interest rates is [economic] tightening, and reducing the size of the central bank’s balance sheet is also a form of tightening [because it also raises rates]. And it’s hard to estimate the extent of that interaction, but you can think broadly that if the size of the Fed’s balance sheet is smaller, there is less liquidity in the system, and that is going to reduce inflationary pressure. So in a way, one can afford a lower interest rate with a smaller balance sheet.”

The millionaire snag

Warsh’s opening speech focused on the titans of his professional and personal journey: Billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller, who gave him a “seat at the table” over 15 years of working together, of former Secretary of State and Treasury George Shultz, a “friend and mentor” he first met while studying at Stanford. 

A joking apology was also issued to his wife, heiress and businesswoman Jane Lauder, who, two decades after Warsh’s committee hearing as governor, once again sat behind her husband in his quest for a role at the Fed. Therein lies the problem: Warsh told Senators on the committee that he would sell “virtually” all of the assets from his considerable personal fortune if he were confirmed. 

Senator Warren asked if Warsh would share how these are sold and where the funds would be stored, explaining: “I’m sure you understand that the public might question your motives if, for example, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, who you honoured in your opening statement, and who makes a living guessing what the Fed will do next, cuts you a massive check for $100 million.” 

Warsh responded: “It sounds like your fight might not be with me, but the Office of Government Ethics. I’ve come to full agreement with them and have agreed to divest all of those assets.” 

Senator John Kennedy returned to the topic: “If you don’t sell them, we’ll know, and the ethics folks will know, right?” 

“Yes, I’d be in violation of the ethics agreement if I refuse to sell them,” Warsh added. 

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A thing gripped the internet in 2025: nostalgia for the supposedly golden era of 2016, coincidentally the last year before Donald Trump ever became president of the United States, either in his first or second term. “Millennial optimism” gripped TikTok, harking back to a supposedly more carefree time. But something else marked that era: leaks from Trump’s orbit about how he was screwing up his campaign for president, then his first year as president, then his first term; meanwhile the Trump era moved forward relentlessly. Now 2026 is having a 2016 moment.

As Wednesday’s deadline looms for the fragile U.S.-Israel and Iran ceasefire, Trump officials said the president is hampering efforts to make a deal through his social media posts. In The Wall Street Journal and CNN, Trump officials are blasting the president’s conduct, making a very 2016-style argument that they can only do so much to limit the damage of a president who just won’t listen to their advice.

For instance, the president discussed details of the negotiations in phone calls with reporters on Friday. As reported by Bloomberg, Trump said Iran had agreed to an “unlimited” suspension of their nuclear program, but Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei quickly refuted the claim in a statement to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

On Monday, Trump followed up with several posts on Truth Social totaling more than 900 words, spanning comparisons of the Iran conflict to previous U.S. wars, the blockade’s economic toll on Iran, and Operation Midnight Hammer’s impact on the country’s nuclear capabilities. Trump officials responded by telling CNN that these posts were detrimental to ongoing talks, particularly due to the sensitivity of the negotiations and Iranian mistrust of the U.S. 

Since the start of the Iran war, Trump has issued a barrage of social media statements that critics say have undermined diplomacy and potentially crossed legal lines. Prior to agreeing to the current two-week ceasefire, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges, a threat that experts say could constitute a violation of international law. United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric stated the obvious: “Even if specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective, international humanitarian law would still prohibit attacks against them.”

One political scientist sees a 2016 nostalgia theme playing out here.

Trump says he’s ‘under no pressure whatsoever’ as deadline approaches

Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner has been a longtime political blogger and currently runs a Substack called Drezner’s World. He wrote over the weekend in a Substack post that he was feeling those 2016 vibes himself. Drezner cited yet a third article featuring background sources from inside the White House, this time a Wall Street Journal report outlining a general view of the president’s “leadership and decision-making pathologies” in his dealings with Iran but also wider patterns across other conflicts, such as Venezuela. Drezner argued the piece exposed the president’s short attention span and poor impulse control, flaws that have meaningfully shaped his approach to Iran.

In one post on Monday, for instance, the president said he wasn’t feeling pressure to reach a deal after claiming media reports had portrayed him as such. “I am under no pressure whatsoever, although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!” he wrote on Truth Social. 

Despite concerns that public commentary may have disrupted ceasefire negotiations, the White House defended Trump’s approach.

“The United States has never been closer to a good deal with Iran, unlike the horrible deal made by the Obama Administration, thanks to President Trump’s negotiating ability,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Anyone who cannot see President Trump’s tactics to play the long game are either stupid or willfully ignorant.”

Drezner has been noting for years in his blogging and Substacking that Trump’s staff talked about him to reporters as if he was a toddler who acted with no impulse control. On Sunday, he said he thought Trump’s second-term staff would refrain from this out of loyalty, although this showed signs of cracking over Trump’s bizarre pursuit of Greenland. But in this case, “the fact that even these toadies are leaking about him now indicates that they know that the boat is starting to take on water and they need to find their lifeboat.”

Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf took to X Monday evening, accusing Trump of forcing Iran to the negotiating table. “We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” the post read as translated from Persian.

But the impact extends beyond Iran negotiations. The president’s tone has also reshaped oil market behavior, according to Sebastian Barrack, head of Commodities at Citadel. At the FT Commodities Global Summit this week, Barrack attributed the roughly 300% surge in oil and gas volatility during the conflict’s opening weeks in part to the president’s Truth Social posts and said he now keeps a screen dedicated solely to monitoring the president’s social media feed.

For example, Trump made a Truth Social post on March 23 saying the U.S. had “productive” talks with Iran, causing crude prices to plunge. In the beginning of March, the same thing happened after the president posted on Truth Social that the war was “very complete.”

The war has grown increasingly unpopular among the American public. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted during the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran found just 36% of Americans approve of U.S. military strikes against Iran. The poll found just 26% consider Trump “even-tempered.” That includes some Republicans. Fifty-one percent of Americans, including 14% of Republicans, said the president’s mental sharpness had gotten “worse” over the past year.

The president told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday morning he believes the U.S. will reach a “great deal” with Iran. When asked if the president would extend a ceasefire to allow time for peace talks, he said “Well, I don’t want to do that.”

The president added, “I expect to be bombing because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with” should the parties fail to reach a peace deal.

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The United States and Iran have signaled they will hold a new round of ceasefire talks in Pakistan, two regional officials said Tuesday, as leaders on both sides warned they were prepared for more fighting if a fragile two-week truce expires without a deal.

Neither the U.S. nor Iran has publicly confirmed the timing of the talks in Islamabad, with Iranian state television denying any official was already in Pakistan’s capital.

Pakistan-led mediators received confirmation that the top negotiators, U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, will arrive in Islamabad early Wednesday to lead their teams in the talks, the regional officials told The Associated Press.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

A ceasefire that began April 8 was set to expire Wednesday.

Trump says he doesn’t favor extending ceasefire

Both sides remain dug in rhetorically. U.S. President Donald Trump has warned that “lots of bombs” will “start going off” if there’s no agreement before the ceasefire deadline, and Iran’s chief negotiator said that Tehran has “new cards on the battlefield” that haven’t yet been revealed.

The ceasefire could be extended if talks resume, though Trump said in an interview Tuesday with CNBC: “Well, I don’t want to do that.”

“We don’t have that much time,” Trump said, adding that Iran “had a choice” and “they have to negotiate.”

White House officials have said that Vance would lead the American delegation, but Iran hasn’t said who it might send. Iranian state television on Tuesday broadcast a message saying that “no delegation from Iran has visited Islamabad … so far.”

Iranian state TV long has been controlled by hard-liners within Iran’s theocracy. The on-screen alert likely reflects the ongoing internal debate within Iran’s theocracy as it weighs how to respond to the U.S. Navy’s seizure of an Iranian container ship over the weekend.

US says its forces board sanctioned oil tanker

On Tuesday, the U.S. said its forces boarded an oil tanker previously sanctioned for smuggling Iranian crude oil in Asia. The Pentagon said in a social media post that U.S. forces boarded the M/T Tifani “without incident.”

The U.S. military did not say where the vessel had been boarded, though ship-tracking data showed the Tifani in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia on Tuesday.

The statement added that “international waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

The U.S. military on Sunday seized an Iranian cargo vessel, the first interception under blockade of Iranian ports. Iran’s joint military command called the armed boarding an act of piracy and a violation of the ceasefire.

Strait of Hormuz control key to negotiations

The U.S. imposed the blockade to pressure Tehran into ending its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane through which 20% of the world’s natural gas and crude oil transits in peacetime.

Iran’s grip on the strait has sent oil prices soaring. Brent crude, the international standard, was trading at close to $95 per barrel on Tuesday, up more than 30% from Feb. 28, the day that Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran to start the war.

Before the war began, the Strait of Hormuz had been fully open to international shipping. Trump has demanded that vessels again be allowed to transit unimpeded through the waterway.

Trump confirmed to CNBC interview that the U.S. is considering a currency swap with the United Arab Emirates, whose oil-rich economy has been rattled by the Iran conflict.

In a possible swap, the UAE would use its currency, the dirham, as collateral to borrow U.S. dollars. The UAE relies on dollar-denominated transactions as part of its global commerce, which has been disrupted by the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

European Union transportation ministers were meeting Tuesday in Brussels to discuss how to protect consumers after the head of the International Energy Agency warned that Europe has “ maybe six weeks ” of jet fuel supplies remaining.

Over the weekend, Iran said that it had received new proposals from Washington, but also suggested that a wide gap remains between the sides. Issues that derailed the last round of negotiations included Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, its regional proxies and the strait.

Qalibaf on Tuesday accused the United States of wanting Iran to surrender.

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats,” he wrote in an X post.

Pakistan hopeful talks will proceed

Pakistani officials have expressed confidence that Iran will also send a delegation to resume talks that mark the highest-level negotiations between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The first round April 11 and 12 ended without an agreement.

Pakistan said Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Tuesday with the acting U.S. ambassador in Islamabad to urge a ceasefire extension. Dar also met with the ambassador from China, a key trading partner with Iran.

Security has been tightened across Pakistan’s capital, where authorities have deployed thousands of personnel and increased patrols along routes leading to the airport.

Israel jails soldiers for defacing Jesus statue in Lebanon

Israel’s military said Tuesday it has sentenced two soldiers to 30 days in jail and removed them from combat duty for smashing a statue of Jesus Christ in Lebanon. Images of an Israeli soldier with a sledgehammer smashing the statue’s head emerged over the weekend, bringing widespread condemnation.

Israel said one of the soldiers being punished hammered the statue to the ground. The other filmed the destruction.

Meanwhile, historic diplomatic talks between Israel and Lebanon were set to resume on Thursday in Washington, an Israeli, a Lebanese and a U.S. official said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met last week for the first direct diplomatic talks in decades. Israel says the talks are aimed at disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement with Lebanon.

A 10-day ceasefire began on Friday in Lebanon, where fighting between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants broke out two days after the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran to start the war. Fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 2,290 people.

Since the war started, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, according to authorities. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. David Rising and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok; Sam McNeil in Brussels and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this story.

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Leading up to Monday, when the Trump administration launched its online tariff refund portal, Lynlee Brown, EY partner of global trade, said she had importers texting her, somewhat incredulous the refunds were actually happening.

Back in March, following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Court of International Trade Judge Richard K. Eaton ordered the Trump administration to refund all tariffs collected illegally, not just for companies that sued over the tariffs. To the shock of legal and logistics experts alike, the administration has not appealed the ruling.

“Everybody’s wondering that,” Brown told Fortune.

“It’s genuinely surprising that the government hasn’t appealed the universal refund order already,” Matthew Seligman, a federal litigator of constitutional law and principal of Grayhawk Law, told Fortune. “The government has opposed universal injunctions in every single context since President Trump retook office. If the government appealed the universal refund order, it would win.”

The decision by the administration not to appeal drew renewed skepticism in the leadup to Monday, when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), opening the door for U.S. importers to apply for tariff refunds totalling $166 billion. The administration has until May to petition the order. 

According to Seligman, an eventual appeal on the universal refund order would jeopardize the refund application process, which CBP estimated would take 60 to 90 days after entries were processed.

“The government can reverse course again,” Seligman said. “That would be jarring, but it’s something they could do. And so then submitting CAPE would have ended up being sort of a waste of time.”

But the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s lack of appeal, though unclear, may give insight into the White House’s priorities as it navigates midterms, the ongoing war in Iran, and investigations into its other tariffs, experts said.

CBP and the White House did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment. 

The Trump administration has left experts scratching their heads

To Seligman, among the most surprising reasons for a lack of appeal was that tariffs under IEEPA were a fundamental part of President Donald Trump’s “signature economic policy.” Trump announced tariffs on the first day of his second term, expanding those import taxes on “Liberation Day” in April 2025.

Trump also has a track record of winning appeals against court orders universal in scope, with a universal refund order fitting into a similar category of past successful appeals, Seligman noted. In June 2025, the Trump administration successfully argued against nationwide injunctions that blocked his executive order to limit birthright citizenship: The Supreme Court narrowed injunctions, with future court orders on birthright citizenship applying to only a specific plaintiff. 

By accepting the judge’s order on tariff refunds without appeal, the Trump administration would break from its own pattern of refusing similar universal court orders, a hallmark of not just his White House, but of the executive branch across administrations, Seligman said.

“This is a procedural issue about which the government cares very deeply that would be true across administrations, not just this administration, the federal government,” he said. “The executive branch always seeks to retain as much freedom of action and flexibility as it can, and so acquiescing to universal injunction is just extraordinarily difficult to imagine end up being the case.”

Why universal tariff refunds have not yet been appealed

EY partner Brown said there are still key reasons why the administration would not pursue an appeal. For one, CBP has already rolled out the first phase of CAPE, and the White House may not want to interfere with weeks of work to launch the portal and the hundreds of thousands of importers trying to recoup costs from the tariffs—a move that could prove to be wildly unpopular.

“A lot of it is politics, right?” Brown said. “It’s a midterm election year. This would not be the favorable thing to do, to say, ‘Hey, we’re not going to give you your money back.’”

Brown speculated the administration may also have its hands full navigating the ongoing war in Iran, which has entered its eighth week, as well as laying the groundwork for other tariffs. The United States Trade Representative is currently investigating Section 301 tariffs, which would address “unfair” foreign trade or labor practices. Section 301 tariffs could replace the temporary Section 122 tariffs Trump imposed following the Supreme Court striking down the IEEPA levies. Trade experts have warned tariffs under Section 301 would similarly be an overreach.

Court of International Trade Judge Eaton has also signalled he was the only judge willing to hear tariff refund cases and would rule in diametrically the same way each time. That means that even if the Trump administration could get rid of the universal refund order, the courts would simply approve tariff refunds for each company individually, a more arduous process leading to the same result, Brown noted.

These reasons don’t mean the Trump administration may not still seek to appeal. Seligman argued the White House has made unpredictable moves in the past and could do so again. For example, in March, Trump decided to abandon an effort to enforce executive orders targeting law firms who previously investigated him, only to reignite a legal battle days later. 

“They have reversed course in rather jarring ways in court on multiple occasions, and so I can’t rule that out,” he said.

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The satirical news outlet The Onion is back with a new plan to take over the Infowars platforms of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as his company faces liquidation over more than $1 billion in defamation judgments owed to relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Under a proposal submitted Monday to a state judge in Texas, The Onion would be granted an exclusive, temporary license to the intellectual property of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, allowing the outlet to put its own content on the Infowars website and social media accounts.

Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion, said the deal could be in place around April 30, if approved by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin. He said The Onion has already hired people to run Infowars as a parody site including Tim Heidecker, one half of the comedy duo Tim and Eric known for their work on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” shows.

“We’ll build this into a bigger comedy network,” Collins said in phone interview Monday, adding the Sandy Hook families would receive profits from the new operations.

“A big part of it for us is that the way people consume news now is they see somebody who has no idea what the (expletive) they’re talking about staring into their camera and just like coming up with conspiracy theories or telling you health hacks that will actually get you poisoned, things like that,” he said. “We’re going to create a bunch of characters and worlds around those kinds of things.”

After the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones called it a hoax staged by “crisis actors” in an effort to increase gun control. Many relatives of the victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his company for defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

On his show Monday, Jones vowed to fight the licensing proposal in court but acknowledged he and his crew could be kicked out of the building at the end of the month. He said he would continue his shows in another studio he is preparing, and they would air on his personal X account and other new social media accounts and websites, as well as dozens of radio stations. He also has set up new websites for the merchandise he sells, including dietary supplements and clothing that bring in millions of dollars a year.

“I’m going to continue the exact same show,” he said. “It’ll just be called the ‘Alex Jones Show.’ So, it’s the same satellite, same system. It’s a different news site and news studio. So I’m not going anywhere.”

The licensing deal with The Onion would be for six months, with the right to renew it for another six months as a court-appointed receiver works to eventually sell the assets of Infowars’ parent company, Austin-based Free Speech Systems, and give proceeds to the Sandy Hook families. The receiver is supporting the plan, which calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to cover the rent for the building housing Infowars’ studios, along with utilities and other costs.

During a trial of the defamation suit in Connecticut in 2022, victims’ relatives testified that people whom they called followers of Jones subjected them to death and rape threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media over the hoax claims. Jones argued there was never any proof that linked him to the actions of others.

A jury and judge awarded the families and the FBI agent more than $1.4 billion in damages. In a similar lawsuit in Texas, the parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook were awarded nearly $50 million. Jones appealed both awards. He lost his challenges to the Connecticut judgment, while his appeal of the Texas award is still pending.

Jones filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. In those proceedings, an auction was held in November 2024 to liquidate Infowars’ assets to help pay the defamation judgments, and The Onion was named the winning bidder. But the bankruptcy judge threw out the auction results, citing problems with the process and The Onion’s bid.

The attempt to sell off Infowars’ assets later moved to the state court in Texas, where Guerra Gamble appointed a receiver to liquidate the assets of Jones’ company. Jones is also appealing that ruling, which has put a hold on the liquidation.

A lawyer for the Sandy Hook families who sued Jones in Connecticut said they support The Onion’s plan.

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Apple’s next CEO John Ternus is a company veteran who rose through the iPhone maker’s hardware engineering ranks but until now has maintained a low profile.

Ternus will take over as chief executive in September for Tim Cook, who turned Apple into a $4 trillion tech colossus during his 15-year run after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.

Ternus faces challenges that will force him to step out of his comfort zone in hardware engineering. Beyond finding ways to keep Apple competitive in the artificial intelligence race, he will need to navigate supply chain questions and relationships with figures like President Donald Trump, who offered public praise for his predecessor on Tuesday.

Ternus, 50, has spent almost his entire career with Apple. He joined the company 25 years ago and has spent the past five years overseeing the engineering that underlies the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

It made him the prime contender to succeed Cook who on Monday, when Apple announced the change in leadership, hailed Ternus as “without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”

Ternus worked on some of Apple’s signature products under Cook, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro. He was also involved in the MacBook Neo, “arguably one of the most disruptive products” that Apple has released in a while, said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.

“This mentorship will undoubtedly ensure a smooth transition, and initially, I expect very few changes to the company’s strategy,” Wood said.

The appointment appeared to be carefully timed, following Apple’s 50th anniversary celebrations and ahead of its annual WWDC developers conference in June.

The change also arrives at a pivotal time for the Cupertino, California, company. While Cook led Apple through an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity, Apple has fallen behind in the AI race. Apple has stumbled in its efforts to deliver new features built on AI, as was promised nearly two years ago.

“The challenge for the new CEO is really to make sure Apple is able to crack AI as the new user interface and reinvent human machine interaction,” Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson said.

Wood says attention at WWDC will be on the new CEO’s AI strategy, and what the company will do next after turning earlier this year to Google — an early leader in the AI race — to help make the iPhone’s virtual assistant Siri more conversational and versatile.

“A big strategic question is how far Apple will invest in building its own AI platform versus relying on other companies’ models and platforms,” Wood said.

Apple also faces a turbulent market amid geopolitical uncertainty, Wood said.

“The consumer electronics industry faces a perfect storm, with memory chip shortages and the war in the Middle East having widespread implications for consumer confidence. Apple will also need to decide how much it wants to continue its deep reliance on China for manufacturing,” he said.

Being Apple CEO will also require soft skills including developing relationships with important figures. Cook cultivated ties with Trump as he navigated the company through business challenges including Trump’s trade and tariff war targeting countries in Asia, where Apple has extensive manufacturing supply chains.

Trump noted his relationship with Cook in a social media post on Tuesday morning, writing that “it began with a phone call” at the beginning of his first term, when Cook asked for help with “a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix.”

“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship,” Trump said.

Ternus is not well known outside of the Apple universe. He joined the company in July 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile, which does not have any posts.

Before joining Apple, he spent four years as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He graduated in 1997 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the swim team and for his senior project developed a mechanical feeding arm for quadriplegics controlled by head movements.

In a 2024 commencement speech to the university’s engineering school, Ternus said he was intimidated when he first started working at Apple and wasn’t sure he belonged. He learned to “always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room but never assume you know as much as they do.”

“There will always be new skills to master and new people to learn from,” he said.

Ternus said in Apple’s announcement that he was “humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

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Apple’s entering a new era. The company announced on Monday that CEO Tim Cook will be stepping down and John Ternus, Apple’s current senior vice president of hardware engineering, will succeed him. 

Cook has led the company for almost 15 years, assuming the role shortly before founder Steve Jobs’ death in 2011. Under his leadership, Apple’s market capitalization has grown from $350 billion to $4 trillion and launched products such as iCloud, Apple Pay, Airpods, and Apple Watch, redefining the brand as more than just a phone and computer company. 

Cook will step down as CEO on Sept. 1, but will remain as Apple’s executive chairman. The 65-year-old boasts one of the longest tenures in Big Tech as a non-founding CEO. He navigated geopolitical conflicts, shielding Apple from tariffs, and landed huge partnerships with other Big Tech companies, and his legacy earned him praise from fellow business leaders following the announcement. 

“Tim Cook is a legend,” OpenAI CEO Altman wrote on X. “I am very thankful for everything he has done, and I am very thankful for Apple.” In 2024, Apple agreed to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad and Mac products, ushering the chatbot to the company’s more than 1 billion users. 

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, told CNBC, “Apple would not be the Apple of today without Tim Cook.”

“What he has done with Apple could not be done by anybody I’ve known,” he said. “Covering the world and getting along with countries with all kinds of histories and doing right by the customer, people who worked for him, certainly the shareholders, which we were lucky enough to be one of… he’s one of a kind,” Buffett said. Apple is Berkshire Hathaway’s largest shareholding, and Buffett has long praised Cook for his consumer-forward approach and bringing large returns for shareholders

Palmer Lucky, founder of the defense company Anduril, wrote in an X post, “RIP Tim Apple,” a reference to President Donald Trump mistakenly calling the CEO “Tim Apple” in 2019. Since then, the president has used it as a pet name for Cook. Luckey previously praised Apple’s Vision Pro virtual reality headset, a product hardware chief Ternus was deeply involved in. 

A shoutout from the president

The president once again evoked his pet name for the CEO in a social media post congratulating Cook on Tuesday morning and recalled a phone call he had with Cook during his first term.

“When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass’…That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could.” 

“I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim,” the president added.

Big Tech took a reversal during Trump’s second term, and began courting the White House, with Apple chief among them, earning Cook his position as “Trump whisperer.” In line with Trump’s “America First” manufacturing agenda, Apple committed to accelerating domestic manufacturing by spending $100 billion, bringing the company’s total investment in domestic production to $600 billion over the next four years.. At a ceremony announcing the commitment in August, Cook gifted Trump a customized glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold stand.

“Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!!,” Trump wrote. 

Cook’s schmoozing with the Republican president is not without consequence. He came under fire with Apple employees in January after he attended a White House screening of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, hours after a Border Patrol agent killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and American citizen in Minneapolis. Days later, he told employees that he spoke with Trump about deescalating ICE operations in the city. 

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Rideshare giant Uber is liable for the behavior of a driver who grabbed the inner thigh of a passenger as she was leaving the front seat of his car and asked if he could “keep her” with him, a jury in North Carolina found Monday.

The federal jury in Charlotte awarded the plaintiff $5,000 in damages, said Ellyn Hurd, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers.

The so-called bellwether case is part of a broader group of sexual assault lawsuits filed against Uber in multiple jurisdictions around the country and is the third to go to trial. In February, a federal jury in Arizona ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said one of its drivers raped her during a trip using the platform. Last year, a California jury found Uber not liable for the alleged assault of a rider.

Uber, in an emailed statement, took note of the relatively small financial judgment in the North Carolina case and that the jury found that battery had occurred and not sexual assault.

“The jury’s award here should further bring these cases back to reality, as it represents a tiny fraction of previous demands,” the Uber statement said, adding that the company has strong grounds for appeal because it believes the jury was incorrectly instructed on the question of liability.

The AP does not typically name people who have said they were sexually abused unless they have given consent through their attorneys or come forward publicly.

Hurd said the verdict bodes well for other plaintiffs, saying that Uber, not the plaintiffs, selected the North Carolina case as a test case for the broader group of pending lawsuits.

“This was a case that they thought going in that they were going to win,” Hurd said. “They picked all the criteria — this is the case that they picked, that they wanted to try. And the jury believed the plaintiff and they lost.”

The lawsuits follow years of criticism of Uber’s safety record, including thousands of incidents of sexual assault reported by both passengers and drivers. Because Uber drivers are categorized as gig workers — working as contractors, rather than company employees — the platform has long maintained it’s not liable for their misconduct.

The judge presiding over the group of lawsuits, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer, ruled that Uber was a “common carrier” under North Carolina law and was thus liable for the driver’s action. Breyer said Uber holds itself out to the public as a transportation provider through its advertising and the control it exerts over Uber rides and the safety of its passengers. North Carolina could have explicitly exempted Uber and other rideshare providers from its common carrier liability, as Florida and Texas have, but did not, he said.

Hurd said that means the North Carolina jury only had to decide whether the attack happened.

The driver denied touching the plaintiff, Uber said. The company said the plaintiff never reported the incident to law enforcement and it only learned of it when the lawsuit was filed three years later.

Hurd said just because the plaintiff didn’t report it to law enforcement doesn’t mean it’s not true. During the trial, which started Wednesday and wrapped up Monday, the jury heard testimony from the driver, the plaintiff and friends of the plaintiff who corroborated her story, Hurd said.

Breyer, who is based in San Francisco in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is due to hear two more sexual assault test case trials against Uber. The next is scheduled for mid-September in San Francisco.

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The promise was simple and seductive: pass the One Big Beautiful Bill, flood American wallets with historic tax refunds, and watch the consumer economy roar. For a few weeks this winter, it looked like it might actually work. Then the bombs started falling on Iran.

Now Wall Street has delivered its verdict. Two of the most closely watched economic research teams on the Street—Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—reviewed the numbers and reached the same sobering conclusion: the Iran war’s knock-on effect on oil prices has almost entirely canceled out the biggest consumer tax windfall in years. For lower-income Americans, the ledger may be in the red.

The setup

When Congress passed the OBBBA last year, economists were genuinely bullish. The legislation—retroactive to the 2025 tax year—included no taxes on tips and overtime, a higher child tax credit, a higher standard deduction, an expanded SALT deduction, and a new senior deduction. Even the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the nonpartisan think tank that generally opposes deficit-increasing legislation and has gotten into a war of words with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on account of its criticism, acknowledged that it would lead to a “sugar high” for the economy, boosting growth in the short term.

In late 2025 and early 2026, Trump and the White House ran an aggressive promotional campaign around the refund season. On Truth Social in February, Trump wrote that refunds would be “substantially greater than ever before,” claiming “in some cases, estimates are that over 20% will be returned to the taxpayer.” He urged Americans: “Don’t spend all of this money in one place!”

The White House formally declared in January that Trump was delivering “the largest tax refund season in U.S. history,” projecting that average refunds would rise by $1,000 or more compared to 2025. The House Ways and Means Committee amplified that figure, citing a Piper Sandler analysis projecting $91 billion in total refund growth. Early estimates pegged total consumer tax relief at $135 billion to $150 billion, with Bank of America Research projecting refunds alone running 18% higher than 2025. The theory was straightforward: put cash in Americans’ hands in the first half of the year, and they spend it.

The refunds are real. Through April 10, federal tax refunds totaled $265 billion—up 16% year-over-year—and the average check clocked in at $3,462, an 11.2% bump. Goldman Sachs estimates total refunds will end the season roughly $50 billion above last year, with additional OBBBA benefits flowing through lower tax payments, for combined relief of $75 billion to $90 billion. Not nothing. But it also isn’t enough, or what was promised.

The wipeout

On February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran. Within days, Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel as Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz—through which flows roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply—triggering what the International Energy Agency called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” American gas prices, which stood at roughly $3.54 a gallon in early March, climbed to $4.11 by mid-April.

Goldman Sachs put a dollar figure on the damage: higher gasoline prices now represent a roughly $140 billion annualized headwind to household incomes. Morgan Stanley’s math is even blunter at the individual level—a sustained 15% rise in gas prices is all it takes to fully offset the average bump in tax refunds. Prices have risen nearly 40%.

“Rising gasoline prices on the heels of the conflict in the Middle East are likely to neutralize most, if not all, of the anticipated fiscal impulse to household spending,” was the verdict from the Morgan Stanley U.S. economics team, led by Michael Gapen, something reiterated by Heather Berger, another economist on the Morgan Stanley U.S. team.

Who gets crushed

The pain is not distributed equally—and the skew is punishing. Higher-income households captured the largest OBBBA benefits through SALT deductions and bracket changes, while the gas price shock hits hardest at the bottom. Goldman Sachs finds that households in the lowest income quintile spend roughly four times as much on gasoline as a share of after-tax income compared to those at the top. Combined with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, Goldman now projects real income growth for the bottom quintile of just 0.7% this year.

Meanwhile, the ceasefire announced April 7 hasn’t fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz, and a U.S. seizure of an Iranian cargo ship last week has kept tensions—and prices—elevated. Several analysts are beginning to wonder if the Strait of Hormuz will ever look the way it used to, before the war.

Wall Street downgrades the American consumer

Both banks have revised their outlooks lower. Goldman now forecasts real consumption growth of just 1.2% for 2026 on a Q4/Q4 basis—well below the 1.8% Wall Street consensus—with the second quarter expected to absorb the worst of the oil price hit. Morgan Stanley, which already cut its GDP forecast in March and attributed 0.3 percentage points of that downgrade directly to weaker private consumption, projects personal consumption growth of 1.7%.

In a worst-case scenario where Brent averages $115 a barrel through year-end, Goldman warns overall consumption growth would fall another half-point below its already-lowered baseline—with the biggest cuts concentrated, again, among the lowest earners.

The Big Beautiful Bill was supposed to be the economic counterweight to tariff uncertainty and a tightening labor market. Instead, a war the U.S. helped start in Iran may have turned Trump’s marquee tax cut into a wash—or worse, a loss—for the very voters it was designed to reward.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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Apple just named its next CEO, who will be taking the reins from Tim Cook this fall: longtime insider John Ternus. He inherits the $4 trillion company that became a global icon under late cofounder Steve Jobs, and Cook says he’d offer his successor the same advice Jobs gave him when he stepped into the top role: Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing.

“I would probably say the same thing,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal just weeks before the succession announcement. “Because you can get in paralysis if you start trying to port yourself into somebody else’s thinking.”

Ternus, who currently serves as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will take the helm on September 1. Meanwhile, Cook’s 15-year stint as CEO of the tech giant will come to an end as he transitions to executive chairman of the board. Although the tech industry looked a whole lot different when Cook stepped into the top job in 2011— AirPods were still years away from hitting the market—he has never wavered from Jobs’ leadership lesson. And now, he’s passing down the same wisdom in welcoming the next face of Apple. 

“I would say: Be yourself, keep a firm North Star on the values of the company,” Cook continued. “Because if you get the values right, if you keep the North Star in clear view, you may be blown off course a little bit, but eventually you will come back to the right path. I have always found that to be true.”

Fortune reached out to Apple for comment. 

The advice Jobs once gave to Cook when becoming Apple’s CEO

Apple will forever be intertwined with Jobs’ legacy—but the late cofounder didn’t want that to stand in the way of others forging their own paths. Just months before his passing, he shared advice with Cook that is now being passed down to Ternus. 

“[Jobs’] advice to me was ‘Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing,’” Cook told CBS Sunday Morning last month.

It was a lesson that Jobs had learned while working with Disney—the Apple cofounder was also one of the three founding fathers of Pixar Animation Studios, purchasing the group from LucasFilm in 1986. Entertainment behemoth Disney later acquired Pixar in 2006, and during his time working at the business, he picked up on a worrying trend. 

“[Jobs] had watched Disney go through this paralysis of sitting around and talking about what Walt [Disney] would do,” Cook explained. “And he did not want that for Apple.”

Over the 15 years since, the outgoing CEO has never lived that lesson down, and Apple has catapulted to trillion-dollar success. Now, Ternus is tasked with embodying that same philosophy in charting the company’s next era.

“I’ll never forget that and it was such a gift for me, because he took off of my shoulder this question of, ‘What would Steve do?’” Cook continued. “I just put my head down and thought, ‘I’m going to be the best version of myself.’”

Meet Ternus: the 51-year-old taking the reins of Apple

After months of speculation, Apple has plucked its successor from its own ranks. 

Ternus has devoted nearly his entire professional career to working at Apple. After a brief stint as an engineer at Virtual Research Systems, he first joined Apple’s product design team in 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile. He arrived at a pivotal moment for the company when new innovative products were on the horizon. 

By 2013, Ternus was promoted to vice president of hardware engineering, and later climbed to the senior level, joining Apple’s executive team in 2021. 

Over his 25-year run, the mechanical engineer has led hardware engineering across Apple’s vast portfolio of current products—including AirPods, all generations of iPads, and the latest iPhone release. But Ternus’ technical chops were only part of the appeal; Cook said that he has the “mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and honor.”

“[Ternus] is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future,” Cook said in a statement.

In reaction to the announcement of his appointment as CEO, Ternus said that he is lucky to have worked under Jobs and had Cook as his mentor. Looking ahead, he is “filled with optimism” about what the company can accomplish, and will always stay true to the principles set forth by former Apple leaders. 

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said in a statement. “I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

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You know all the tricks. Search for flights on a Tuesday only. Switch your VPN to a different country. Open incognito mode and clear your browser.

Apparently, so does JetBlue. 

In a since deleted tweet, the company told a customer who tagged the company over a $230 increase in just one day to clear their “cache and cookies.” 

“I love flying @JetBlue but a $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy,” wrote the user on X. “I’m just trying to make it to a funeral.”

In response, the company told the user, who goes by Nugg, to “try clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window. We’re sorry for your loss.”

The user’s post got a little over 100,000 views before JetBlue deleted it, but of the two comments, one is missing (the deleted JetBlue response) and the other was, conveniently, a screenshot of JetBlue’s response by another user who told Nugg “this post will be removed soon. Take a screenshot of it if you think you’ll need it.”

In a statement to Fortune, the company said it does not determine fares via personal browsing information.

“The reply from our JetBlue crewmember on social media was incorrect, and we apologize for the error. JetBlue fares on JetBlue.com and our mobile app are not determined by cached data or other personal information,” the company statement read. 

“Pricing is based on real-time availability and is managed through our reservation system. Fares can change at any moment as seats are purchased or as inventory is adjusted based on demand, and are not guaranteed until a purchase is completed,” the statement continued.

JetBlue is hardly the first airline to fall into the limelight for potentially changing its prices based on a user’s browser history. 

The Federal Trade Commission has studied surveillance pricing methods since 2024, and found retailers often used people’s personal information to set individualized pricing information. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he “directed staff to start examining” if new disclosure rules are needed by companies during a Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month. 

It might not make a big difference

Experts say opting out of cookies really doesn’t make a difference. 

“Opting out of cookies doesn’t make you anonymous online,” said Kate Quinlan, a senior editor at All About Cookies, an informational website about online safety. “True privacy requires browser-level tools like VPNs and ad blockers, which block a wider range of trackers that follow you across the web beyond just cookies.”

According to a California audit last month which analyzed open network traffic across more than 7,600 popular websites scanned from California, over half (55%) of sites set advertising cookies even after users explicitly rejected them. More than three-quarters (78%) of consent banners failed to enforce the user’s choice at all, while Google ignored 86% of opt-out requests.

However, when it comes to airline fares, Quinlan told Fortune that it may help after all.

“Clearing your cookies before searching for flights is still worth doing. Websites can use your browsing history to adjust what prices you see, and wiping that data resets what they think they know about you, making it more likely a lower fare will show up if one exists. Just keep in mind that flight prices also shift constantly based on demand and timing, so there’s no guarantee a clean browser alone will land you a deal.”

There are already two states with laws on the books about this. Maryland is set to become the first state to ban surveillance pricing in retail grocery stores after the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act passed through the legislature last week. Then, California proposed a bill that would prohibit retailers from setting customized prices based on personally identifiable information. Similar legislation has been introduced in New York, New Jersey, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

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Tim Cook is handing Apple to its hardware chief, John Ternus. Wall Street is fine with it; Main Street, less so.

The stock fell nearly 1% to around $270 after Tuesday’s open on news Ternus would succeed Cook on Sept. 1, with Cook transitioning to executive chairman after 15 years as CEO. 

Wedbush, Evercore, Citi, and BofA all kept buy ratings with price targets between $315 and $350. Some of the wariness tracked with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana’s read the move signaled “continuity rather than strategic change,” an awkward message at a moment when Apple needs to make a real pivot into AI.

Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives called the transition a “shocker,” noting investors had expected more clarity on a forward outlook before any handoff. 

“This will put even more pressure on Apple to produce success and its product roadmap at WWDC with AI front and center,” he wrote, referring to the Worldwide Developers Conference Apple hosts in June. Still, Ives kept his outperform rating and $350 target. 

Wall Street has been here before. When Steve Jobs handed the company to Cook in August 2011, Apple stock dragged for months before ripping 57% over the following year, according to a Morgan Stanley note from analyst Erik Woodring. Woodring, who rates Apple overweight with a $315 target, argues it’s a similar setup now. 

“Apple’s CEO change is unlikely to alter Apple’s core strategy/vision across hardware, software, capital returns, or vertical integration,” he wrote, but a CEO transition can unlock renewed optimism and a potential shift in the overarching Apple narrative.

Cook’s run is generational. When he took over, Apple was valued at around $350 billion; he’s handing it off at $4.01 trillion. Annual revenue has quadrupled from $108 billion to $416 billion, according to Janus Henderson technology analyst Shaon Baqui.

But Baqui argues the innovation engine at Apple has stalled: Vision Pro flopped, the car program burned billions in cash, and Apple ceded the home assistant market to Google and Amazon.

Wall Street’s bull case, then, rests on Ternus, 51, being the right mix of traditional hardware guru and decisive innovator. He oversaw the recent development of the M-series silicon chip, widely successful, and championed the MacBook Neo—the colorful, smaller, $599 laptop aimed at a younger crowd that has sold out and become nearly impossible to find since launching last month.

And in a moment when many say Apple is behind on AI, some on Wall Street see a sharper angle. BofA’s Wamsi Mohan, who has a $325 price target on the stock, argues Apple’s M5 silicon, launched last October, is the foundation for “edge AI”—where inference runs locally on the device rather than in a cloud data center. That could mean better response times, privacy, and lower infrastructure costs. Ternus, who ran the M-series, could be the best CEO to pitch that story to investors.

Ternus will be Apple’s third CEO since 1997. Both of the prior transitions worked out well for shareholders. The third is a similar bet for Wall Street, that Apple is building for the AI era, not chasing it.

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U.S. forces have boarded an oil tanker previously sanctioned for smuggling Iranian crude oil in Asia, the Department of Defense said Tuesday.

In a social media post, the Pentagon said U.S. forces “conducted a right-of-visit maritime interdiction” and boarded the M/T Tifani “without incident.”

It’s the latest move in the U.S. war on Iran to stop any ship tied to Tehran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government, from weapons and oil to metals and electronics. The announcement comes hours ahead of the expiration of an already tenuous ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, and as Pakistan attempts to broker talks between Washington and Tehran.

Ship-tracking data showed the Tifani was carrying oil in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday between Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Pentagon described the Tifani as “stateless” despite it being a Botswana-flagged vessel. The announcement did not say precisely where or what time Tuesday the ship was boarded.

“As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran —anywhere they operate,” the Pentagon announcement said, echoing previous statements from Trump administration officials. “International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the U.S. blockade would extend beyond Iranian waters and the war theater under control of U.S. Central Command.

U.S. forces in other areas of responsibility, he told reporters at the Pentagon, “will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.” He specifically pointed to operations in the Pacific and explained that the U.S. would target vessels that left before the blockade began outside the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for energy and other shipments.

The military also detailed an expansive list of goods that it considers contraband, declaring that it will board, search and seize them from merchant vessels “regardless of location.” A notice published Thursday says any “goods that are destined for an enemy and that may be susceptible to use in armed conflict” are “subject to capture at any place beyond neutral territory.”

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It took less than three minutes for wind-whipped flames to go from licking the side of the house to shattering a window and working under the eaves to burn everything inside. Weeks later, another house in the exact same spot was burning — again in the name of science.

That home went up in flames slower because it was fortified with better materials. Add moving vegetation, mulch, wood fences and hot tubs with their highly flammable insultation several feet away and experts said you can protect houses from the increasing danger of wildfires on a warming planet.

The research is being done by workers at a remote site in South Carolina. They have set fire to 13 houses because scientists need to burn to learn.

Inside the carefully crafted home were sensors and a few cameras the site’s manager said will “give their life for science.” Outside are nearly $1 million of other cameras and instruments in a fireproof building nearby and scattered around.

The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety is a nonprofit created by insurers to make houses and other buildings more resilient. The institute’s 100-acre (40-hectare) site in Richburg, South Carolina, started to study hurricanes and heavy wind and rain.

As wildfire danger increased in recent years, they sometimes turn the six-story tall wall of 105 fans stacked on top of each other to blow out of the wind tunnel’s massive doors and spread fire.

“We crash test houses,” said Roy Wright, the president of the institute.

Wildfires are worsening, costing more damage

From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States on average burned an area the size of Massachusetts each year, slightly more than 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers). That’s 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Canada’s land burned on average for the last 10 years is 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

In the United States, wildfires have caused an average of $17.7 billion a year in damage since 2020, according to statistics kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the nonprofit Climate Central.

Climate change is intensifying and extending fire seasons across the U.S. and a growing population puts densely packed neighborhoods into fire-threatened areas. In the past three years, massive and devastating wildfires hit California, Maui in Hawaii and the North and South Carolina mountains.

Drought across much of the United States — especially in the West and Southeast — is at record severe levels for this time of year. Add to that record heat and unheard of levels of low moisture in the West for the first three months of 2026 and it looks like this upcoming fire season will be extraordinarily bad, unless late spring or early summer rain somehow bails out the country, said UCLA climate and fire scientist Park Williams.

Test fires lead to building changes

The institute’s research has already led to some conclusions that strengthened California’s fire code. New homes must have ignition-resistant walls, tempered or double paned windows and mesh over vents to prevent fire embers from getting inside.

As important is taking care of the outside. Creating a 5-foot (1.5-meter) buffer where any material that burns easy like pine straw, a hot tub, a wooden fence or overhanging branches is an important line of defense.

The fire testing makes that clear. Researchers at the test site set fire to wooden blocks that look like Jenga towers within the buffer zone. The simulated winds, which in a recent test purposefully fluctuated between 30 and 55 mph (50 to 90 kph), continually pushed the flames toward the home.

Once the windows and walls are breached, all the combustible things inside like couches, furniture, clothes and plastics quickly erupt and begin sending large showers of dangerous burning embers lofted by heavy wind, setting new fires a block or two away.

But fire standards can only help so much. “Under really severe fire conditions, especially those involving very high winds, they probably are of more limited value,” Syracuse University fire researcher Jacob Bendix said.

Home fire prevention becomes a business

Fire prevention tools and techniques are becoming a big business.

After the 2018 Woolsey fire near his home in Ventura County, California, Nicholai Allen watched firefighters use fire retardants and wondered if homeowners could do the same. He became a wildland firefighter and learned that preventing embers from getting into homes’ attics and garages are the key.

Allen now makes and sells Safe Soss (pronounced like sauce), which include carbon filters or guards for attics and vents, fiberglass heat-resistant ember-stopping tape and a spray fire retardant that can work from a garden hose, all of which recently became available at a major hardware chain.

Allen compares it to how people up north get ready for winter.

“It’s kind of like if you live in the snow, you have a snow shovel, you have scrapers, and you know that you have to take certain preventative steps in order to live in an environment that, hey, sometimes snows,” Allen said.

Trial by fire

The test fires by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety are carefully controlled. The homes are made to be as similar to regular houses as possible without electricity or plumbing.

The attention to detail and safety is exacting. The institute likes spring fire testing at its site about halfway between Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina, because while summer temperatures in the South can nearly match those in the fire-prone West, the swampy humidity in July is a bad approximation to a mountain canyon.

High winds delayed last week’s fire for more than six hours with anxious workers worried they couldn’t wait for the next day because an outdoor burning ban was starting after an unusually dry and hot spring.

Tarps and machines heat the houses to summer levels just before the fires are set on a huge concrete pad just outside the giant hanger where the fans line one wall and the hurricane testing takes place.

Elsewhere at the site, researches have started looking into hail and how it can damage homes. Another part of the campus has dozens of roofs just sticking above the ground as the shingles freeze and bake and are soaked by Mother Nature sometimes for more than a decade for more testing.

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Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press journalist Erik Verduzco contributed from Richburg, South Carolina.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Japan has long gone its own way on technology, even inspiring its own term, “Galapagos syndrome,” for products and services that thrive at home yet go nowhere abroad.  Now, the country’s corporate giants are worried they’re about to miss another technology wave, and are writing big checks to make sure they don’t.

On Tuesday, Pegasus Tech Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based investor, said it will quadruple the corporate venture fund it manages for Japanet, one of Japan’s largest mail-order and television shopping networks, to $200 million. That follows an earlier decision by auto supplier Aisin to double its Pegasus-managed fund to $100 million. 

It’s the latest sign that legacy Japanese companies, long stereotyped as laggards in digital transformation, are racing to tap the AI boom. “They’re sweating,” Anis Uzzaman, the founder and CEO of Pegasus, tells Fortune. “They know the AI revolution is happening. They’re behind the U.S. and the Europeans when it comes to adoption.”

Pegasus offers what it calls “venture-capital-as-a-service,” administering corporate venture capital for large companies, primarily in Asia, and connecting them to startups its clients would struggle to reach on their own. 

“Companies are getting slowed down by their current R&D, and they’re looking for ways they can innovate faster to keep up with the rest of the world,” Uzzaman says. “One way to do that is to partner with good startups, but they don’t know how to get hold of them.” Then there’s the language barrier: Most Japanese companies operate in the local language, which can isolate them from English-based materials in Silicon Valley.

Japan’s AI infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $5.5 billion this year, according to a forecast from the International Data Corporation. And more investments are coming: Microsoft on April 3 pledged to spend another $10 billion on Japan’s AI infrastructure over the next four years.

From a Nagasaki stadium to OpenAI

Japanet, founded in 1986, is one of Japan’s largest mail-order shopping networks, similar to QVC in the U.S. The company has also recently embarked on an ambitious diversification program, adding a travel and cruise business, as well as professional sports teams. 

Initially, Japanet was looking for technology to bring back to its home base of Nagasaki, to be used in the city’s new soccer stadium.

“When they said, ‘we need a security system for the stadium,’ we looked at every relevant security‑system startup and found the ones that would fit their stadium,” Uzzaman says. “They were able to have good faith in this company, made some investments, and then integrated the technology into the stadium.”

That initial success pushed Japanet to consider more frontier ventures, toward companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. “These companies are growing at a speed we have never experienced in the venture capital industry,” Uzzaman says. 

“We are excited to continue leveraging this fund to seek out the world’s latest technologies and create new value that brings more joy and enrichment to our customers’ everyday lives,” Akito Takata, president of Japanet Group, said in a statement announcing the expansion of the fund. 

CVCs on the rise in Japan

Corporate venture capital is now a key part of the startup economy, with company funds participating in a large share of global funding rounds. 

Pegasus, founded in 2011, has invested in nearly 300 startups with 76 exits, including 25 IPOs. It manages about $2 billion in assets. Its client roster spans video-game publishers Sega and Bandai Namco; Taiwanese PC maker Asus; Japanese trading house Sojitz; U.S. refiner Marathon Petroleum; and snack maker Calbee. Companies provide most of the capital; Pegasus contributes a nominal share for compliance reasons and manages the investments. 

Japan’s outsized footprint among Pegasus’s customer base is partly due to Uzzaman’s own background in the country, having grown up and gone to school there. 

But there’s structural reasons too, like Japan’s demographic decline and a shrinking working-age population.  “A lot of Japanese corporations come to us and say they don’t have enough people working in manufacturing or in factories. So they’re asking for physical AI, robotics, automation solutions,” Uzzaman explains. 

Still, much of the interesting innovation, at least according to Pegasus, is happening in the U.S. Uzzaman says roughly 70% of Pegasus’s investment goes to U.S. and European startups.

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As of 8:45 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil is trading at $96.32 per barrel, based on the Brent benchmark we’ll explain in a bit. That’s 6 cents above yesterday morning’s level and about $29.70 higher than where it stood a year ago.

Will oil prices go up?

No one can say for sure where oil prices will go next. Many forces shape the market—but at the core, it’s still about supply and demand. When risks like a potential recession or war ramp up, oil prices can change direction quickly.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

When you buy gas at the pump, you’re covering more than the cost of crude oil. You’re also paying for every step in the process, including refineries, wholesalers, taxes, and the markup your local gas station adds.

Even so, crude oil has the biggest influence on what you pay, often making up more than half the cost per gallon. When oil prices jump, gas prices usually climb right along with them. But when oil falls, gas prices often slip much more slowly—a pattern sometimes called “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

If an emergency hits, the U.S. keeps a backup supply of crude oil called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s mainly there to protect energy security during crises, such as sanctions, catastrophic storm damage, even war. It can also help cushion the blow when supply shocks send prices soaring.

It’s not meant to solve long-term problems. Instead, it provides quick relief for consumers and helps keep vital parts of the economy moving, like essential industries, emergency services, and public transit.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Oil and natural gas are two of the world’s primary energy sources. A big change in oil prices can affect natural gas by extension. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, which which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

When looking at how oil performs, two main benchmarks stand out:

• Brent crude oil is the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the main benchmark of North America.

Of the two, Brent gives a better picture of global oil performance because it prices a large share of the world’s traded crude. It’s also the go-to for tracking oil’s historical trends. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now relies on Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

If you look at the Brent benchmark over several decades, oil has been far from stable. It has experienced sharp rises tied to wars and supply cuts, along with steep drops linked to global recessions and oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s delivered the first major oil shock when the Middle East slashed exports and placed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices fell in the mid-1980s due to lower demand and an influx of non-OPEC oil producers joining the market.
• Prices surged again in 2008 as global demand grew, but then crashed alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand plummeted like never before—pushing prices below $20 per barrel.

To sum up, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s heavily influenced by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, shifting energy policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• The $100 oil shock is hitting the middle class like a margin call
• U.S. Energy Sec says gas prices have likely peaked, but won’t go below $3 until 2027
• White House–backed USA Rare Earth makes $3 billion acquisition in South America

Frequently asked questions

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The workers who keep America’s buildings running are disappearing—and the U.S. isn’t replacing them fast enough to keep the lights on, the servers cool, or the labs sterile.

By 2030, an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled, with potential economic losses reaching $1 trillion annually, according to U.S. Department of Education estimates cited in a new report from JLL shared exclusively with Fortune. 

The commercial real estate giant calls the electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, pipefitters, and maintenance workers who maintain the country’s built environment a “silent army”—a workforce that is aging out of the industry faster than it can be replaced.

“The silent army, as we normally call them, because they are hidden, invariably, behind the scenes, has been getting harder and harder not only to find, but retain in the industry,” Paul Morgan, JLL’s global COO of real estate management services, told Fortune. Plus, “you’ve got this impending retirement wave that has really been driving the industry a long period of time, and a lack of new entrants.”

Morgan is referring to the fact that millions of tradespeople in the U.S. are nearing or at retirement age. More than 1 in 5 construction workers are currently older than 55, according to Associated Builders and Contractors; as of May 2023, about 39% of electricians were 45 years old or older, a Consumer Affairs report shows; and there’s a 5:2 retirement-to-replacement ratio in manufacturing, construction, and other skilled trades, an Education Department report shows.

The supply-demand imbalance has hit crisis territory. Last year alone, nearly 600,000 jobs were posted for major skilled trades positions in the U.S., while only about 150,000 new workers entered the labor pool through apprenticeship programs, according to JLL. 

The problem is particularly acute in facilities management. Some 39% of U.S. facilities managers are above the age of 55 and nearing retirement, compared with 28% across all occupations, according to another report from JLL in 2025. Meanwhile, electrician positions are projected to grow 9.5% through 2034—more than triple the 3.1% average for all occupations—while HVAC technician roles are expected to grow 8.1% over the same period, per JLL.

A hidden workforce behind the AI boom

The shortage has caught the attention of some of the country’s most prominent executives, who argue that the U.S. cannot build the infrastructure for AI it’s betting its economic future on without the people to wire, cool, and maintain it.

Ford CEO Jim Farley has consistently warned about the gap, arguing America’s AI ambitions are running headfirst into a labor wall. 

“I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” Farley told Axios last fall. “How can we reshore all this stuff if we don’t have people to work there?”

Hadrian CEO Chris Power, whose company automates defense manufacturing, has gone further, predicting a wage shock in the trades.

“All the white-collar jobs are going to get automated,” Power said in a recent interview with tech publication Sourcery at the Hill and Valley Forum. “I think we’re going to see massive hyperinflation in blue-collar salaries.” Power added that even with robotic welding on his own factory floor, he still can’t hire enough welders to meet demand from the U.S. Navy.

“Everyone, go tell your kids to quit college and university and go get a welding certification,” Power added. “The country needs you.”

Getty Images

Morgan argues the skilled trades are foundational to nearly every high-growth sector of the economy—a story he says the industry has failed to tell. But one problem is the lingering perception that blue-collar work isn’t as elite or prestigious as white-collar work. 

And that’s a perception that needs to change, Morgan said, because, really, skilled tradespeople are the ones who will literally be powering AI’s future.

“As powerful as AI will become, AI can’t climb a ladder to change the batteries in your smoke detector,” Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison told Fortune earlier this month. “It can’t change your furnace filter; it can’t clean your dryer vent; it can’t repair a hole on your roof.”

Morgan also questioned: “Why wouldn’t somebody want to be an HVAC tech or an electrician or refrigeration specialist in the data center industry?”

“You can’t have AI without data centers supporting them,” he added.

The trades are not what they used to be

As 53% of U.S. commercial building stock was built before 1990, it’s just about time for those structures to be modernized, right as the workforce is running out, according to JLL.

But the jobs necessary to build and power data centers and other commercial spaces aren’t what one would think of as a traditional blue-collar or trades job.

Getty Images—Noah Berger

Today’s skilled trades, Morgan said, bear little resemblance to the jobs of a generation ago. The electrician wiring a data center is building the backbone of the AI boom, where a single error can cost millions in downtime. The pipefitter at a pharmaceutical plant is installing the ultra-pure water systems that drugmakers need to make medicine safe.

“It’s about the hidden army behind the buildings that enables us to develop” the next biggest advancements in tech, pharmaceuticals, and more, Morgan said. They’re the “ones enabling AI to accelerate and develop.”

A generational shift—but not enough of one

There are signs that attitudes toward skilled trades jobs are changing. The share of teenagers considering vocational or trade school has more than doubled, from 12% in 2018 to 30% in 2024, according to JLL. Community college enrollment has also risen 12% during the past five years, with construction trades, engineering technologies, and mechanical and repair technologies among the fastest-growing majors from 2024 to 2025.

Gen Z, in particular, appears to be reconsidering the four-year degree. Nearly 1 in 4 Gen Zers have seriously considered or are actively pursuing a career in the trades, and 75% associate desk jobs with burnout and instability, recent survey data from SupplyHouse shows. 

“Maybe the economics of people doing a four-year degree, being saddled with all this debt, has now started to realize actually there are different paths to earn a good salary and have a good quality of life without saddling myself with a significant amount of debt,” Morgan said.

And there’s reason to believe some skilled trades jobs or blue-collar work can be just as lucrative as some historically prestigious white-collar jobs. Many of the highest-paid, most in-demand trade jobs make well over six figures, according to a recent SoFi report.

Getty Images

But even that surge in interest isn’t enough to close the gap, Morgan said, and the shortage is poised to hit globally, from the U.K. and Australia to Saudi Arabia.

“We’ve got to find different pools of talent that may either be affected in different ways, that we could attract into our industry and fill part of that gap,” he said, pointing to workers in facility management coordinators whose roles are being reshaped by AI.

Corporate America opens its wallet

Employers are taking the issue head-on. BlackRock announced a $100 million Future Builders initiative earlier this year, and Lowe’s Foundation committed $250 million over the next decade to train 250,000 skilled trades workers in plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work. 

Google also invested $15 million in partnership with the Electrical Training Alliance, and Caterpillar and Stanley Black & Decker are running their own pipeline programs. State-level commitments in California, Maryland, and Massachusetts, along with federal apprenticeship grants, are also flowing into trades training, per JLL.

JLL itself recently piloted a 26-week skilled trades internship within its industrial division, partnering with trade schools across multiple U.S. markets—and 90% of eligible graduates received a full-time offer from the company, Morgan said.

The company’s approach has a three-part “build, grow, retain” strategy: build talent pipelines through school partnerships, grow capabilities with continuous upskilling on smart-building systems, and retain workers through structured career pathways, performance-based pay, and flexible scheduling. 

AI and robotics, Morgan said, will eventually help by automating some of the “dull, dirty and dangerous” work, though humanoid robots capable of, say, changing a belt in a plant room are still a long way off. And that’s why skilled tradespeople are an absolute necessity.

“It all comes down to perception that we’re actually the enablers of the industries at large, we’re the enablers of the economy,” Morgan said. “Because without buildings, you don’t really necessarily have an economy, and without an economy, then obviously [we’d be] doing something different.”

“We have to change the story,” he continued. “This is a really compelling industry to be part of. These roles are foundational to how the world works.”

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Tempo, the new blockchain backed by payments company Stripe and VC firm Paradigm, has launched a “stablecoin advisory” to help businesses and financial institutions adopt stablecoins. The advisory operation pledges Tempo support in identifying relevant use cases and offers “forward-deployed” engineers who can work within clients to successfully integrate stablecoins.

Tempo has been closely watched in the crypto space since Fortune first reported on its existence in mid-2025. After disclosing a $500 million funding round that valued the company at $5 billion in October, Tempo formally launched in March. Now, the payments-focused blockchain is betting that businesses will turn to stablecoins for their payment flows if given adequate know-how and technical support. 

Circle’s successful initial public offering as well as renewed interest in stablecoins from major firms like Meta, X, and Google underscore how bullish much of the tech and business world is on blockchain payments. With the backing of payments giant Stripe, Tempo is attempting to become a central player in making stablecoins mainstream. The company is already working with DoorDash on an option that it will let its delivery employees get paid in stablecoins. 

Stripe, Coastal Community Bank and the financial services platform ARQ are all building stablecoin infrastructure with Tempo. Visa, OnePay, Felix, Fifth Third Bank, and Howard Hughes Holdings are all also bringing payments operations onto Tempo, the blockchain project said in a note shared with Fortune. 

Tempo’s stablecoin advisory will comprise a “handful of dedicated folks” within the company, but it will rely on the broader expertise of the team as well, a person familiar with Tempo’s internal operations told Fortune. 

The decision to design stablecoin products for external partners follows on earlier work Tempo did with its “design partners” for the blockchain itself, which included OpenAI, Shopify, and Visa. Tempo’s ascendence and corporate partnerships are indicative of a larger trend where well-heeled, corporate firms—from Robinhood to Stripe—are making their way into blockchain, traditionally the territory of anti-establishmentarians and iconoclasts.

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Good morning. In October, Fortune reported that former U.S. energy secretary and Texas governor Rick Perry’s AI power startup Fermi “went from nonexistent to an October IPO with a mammoth $16 billion market cap in less than a year without any announced customers or construction—or even a single dollar of revenue.” Now they are without a CEO or CFO as well.

Fermi, a Texas-based AI startup, is developing an AI campus in Amarillo, Texas, powered by nuclear reactors. The company said Monday that its “Fermi 2.0” strategy includes leadership changes. Toby Neugebauer stepped down as CEO on April 17 but remains on the board, according to an SEC filing.

The company’s IPO last year was quickly followed by a steep decline in the stock market as it lost its first planned hyperscaler customer, Fortune’s Jordan Blum reports. An unnamed Fermi tenant canceled a $150 million deal for the data center campus in December. Fermi had planned to secure an anchor tenant by March, which has yet to happen, according to Blum.

Fermi’s market cap has fallen from nearly $20 billion in October down to $3.4 billion as of Monday, including a nearly 18% dip on the news of the leadership changes. The board created an Interim Office of the CEO, including COO Jacobo Ortiz and board observer Anna Bofa, and launched a formal CEO search with Heidrick & Struggles. Some analysts think Neugebauer’s “surprising” departure could prove to be a positive for the company. You can read more here.

Meanwhile, Miles Everson resigned as CFO and secretary on April 19 without “good reason,” according to an SEC filing, but was elected to the board with a term expiring in 2028.

Everson’s CFO agreement took effect upon Fermi’s IPO in October, after being signed on Sept. 30, 2025. Before Fermi, he spent more than six years as CEO of MBO Partners and about 30 years at PwC in senior roles including global advisory and consulting leader.

Fermi said it’s currently in negotiations to secure an interim CFO. In the age of AI, a new barometer has emerged for CFO recruiting, said Shawn Cole, president and founding partner of executive search firm Cowen Partners. “Everything from AI curiosity to proven AI expertise” is in demand, he told me.

As part of “Fermi 2.0,” the company aims to attract strategic investors, including sovereign funds and client-tenants. Cole said firms typically want either the CEO or CFO to bring those relationships. “But that absolutely could be a part of the CFO mandate,” he added. This means that strong contacts could outweigh an AI aptitude barometer.

As boards reshape teams around AI-driven strategies, they may increasingly want CFOs who can both lead AI transformation and engage sophisticated investors—but those skills don’t always come together.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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In a matter of hours, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh will appear before the Senate Banking Committee in his first real test as a would-be central bank chairman.

Warsh, with the backing of President Trump, seeks to return to the U.S. Federal Reserve where he formerly served as a governor—something like a chief of staff—to Ben Bernanke between 2006 and 2011.

In his opening statement to the committee today, Warsh will lay out his commitment to the Federal Reserve: Independence is essential, as is reform of the Fed. Inflation is also a choice, he will say, a choice which the Federal Reserve must be accountable for. (The full text of his statement is below.)

Warsh could hardly stand before the committee without addressing the obvious concerns of the day: Whether he will prove to be, as critics fear, a puppet for the White House in the federally mandated independent central bank.

The New Yorker may ruffle feathers in his early remarks by thanking the president for his support (though one could argue not to do so would be a snub, and further contention the Fed could well do without). However, Warsh goes on to outline his commitment to independent monetary policy, saying it is “essential” in order for the central bank to work in the best interests of the nation as a whole.

Interestingly, Warsh also frames pressure from policymakers as a test of independence rather than a threat. Thus far, critics of the Oval Office have (with some justification) argued that President Trump’s campaign of pressure on current Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell goes beyond the bounds of expected requests for a lower base rate.

Markets have reacted negatively to Trump’s threats to fire Powell, seeing it as a direct attack on the critical independence of the Fed, and have watched warily as Trump has launched campaigns against governors such as Lisa Cook, and a criminal investigation into Powell over testimony related to renovations of the central bank buildings.

Warsh may soon be positioned in this very building in D.C., trading the Central Park views from the lofty office he occupied beside legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller for 15 years in favor of the widespread renovations on Capitol Hill at present.

While Warsh will steer well clear of the current court debate, he will make his stance clear that if policymakers wished to share opinions on monetary policy, they should: “I do not believe the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials state their views on interest rates. Central bankers must be strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight, and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely,” Warsh will say.

The Stanford graduate, who has been a critical friend to both the current central bank leadership and those before it, is also making a rod for his own back: “Inflation is a choice,” Warsh will state, “and the Fed must take responsibility for it.”

With affordability a buzzword in the U.S. at the moment, Warsh’s stance is bold in asserting that price rises are a decision or a compromise made by the Fed. Any criticism of prices being too high or above target (at present, inflation stands at 3.3%, comfortably ahead of the 2% target) is to be endured, Warsh will say: “Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish.”

Warsh’s statement is also a keyhole into how his friends and mentors have helped shape his career. Warsh, 56, credits teachers and his fellow students in America’s public school system for “good influences in learning and in character.”

He also references his “mentor and friend” George Shultz, the former Secretary of State and Treasury, whom he met at Stanford, and Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary investor worth some $12.5 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

“Like Secretary Shultz, Stan never once sat me down to give a lecture. Instead, he offered me something better: a seat at the table by his side,” Warsh will say.

Honorable mentions also go to Warsh’s current boss at the Hoover Institution, his “close friend,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Also mentioned by Warsh is his wife, Jane Lauder, granddaughter of cosmetics entrepreneur Estée Lauder. The investor, and former executive vice president of her family’s business, is one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women.

Warsh’s opening statement in full:

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you. It’s an honor to be with you, Ranking Member Warren, and the entire committee. I appreciate your time and consideration today, and your many courtesies, before and since my nomination.

I am deeply grateful to President Trump for asking me to take on this public trust. He believes that US economic growth and real take-home pay will accelerate. I share the President’s confidence in our country and its people. America’s economic growth potential is rising.

With me today are a few of my dearest and oldest friends. I’m especially happy that my wife, Jane, is here as well. And at important moments in life, I think of my late Mom and Dad. I’m proud of them and I hope they would be proud of me today.

We start today on a note of broad agreement: this is a time of great consequence for the nation’s economy, perhaps the most significant hinge point in a couple of generations. If policymakers across our government meet this signal moment with wisdom and clarity, then the American economy will thrive.

As a former Fed governor—and friend or colleague of the last five Fed chiefs—I am particularly alert to the challenges and opportunities confronting the institution I cherish, the Federal Reserve.

To the President, Congress, and the nation, I owe my best judgment and most faithful efforts in serving the mission Congress assigned to the Fed, including price stability and full employment. The American people are counting on the Fed to deliver on its commitments.

Members of the committee might be familiar with my formal education and work history. The real high points, however, are more personal. They include the individuals with whom I worked and from whom I learned.

I graduated from high school in upstate New York. I had some exceptional teachers there, and many brilliant classmates I remember well. We’re lucky in life if we start out with good influences in learning and in character. A public-school education gave me those, and I’m grateful.

I made my way to Stanford University, and as a student and researcher found myself in the company of some highly accomplished economists and policymakers. Many of my teachers served in and around government during the prior hinge point in American history, the malaise of the 1970s and the comeback years of the 1980s and 1990s. George Shultz, the former secretary of state and treasury, was among the great patriots at the Hoover Institution who I came to know as mentor and friend.

I could not have imagined a better formative experience: a chance to observe disciplined thinking . . . to learn rigorous statistical and economic methods . . . to appreciate geopolitical and economic history . . . to exercise independence of mind . . . to resist fads and groupthink . . . to witness humility among the most expert . . . and, perhaps most important, to be around people completely devoted to the ideas and ideals of our country.

Silicon Valley in the early 1990s was a fitting backdrop to all of this. The United States was entering a new era of technological leadership, and a new cadre of business builders was emerging. Many of them were classmates, and they would become life-long friends.

I don’t know whether to chalk any of it up to serendipity. Whatever the source, I was in the right place at the right time. Those early influences set a standard I have always tried to meet, in public service and private enterprise.

That goes for colleagues and mentors later in life, too. In the last 15 years, I’ve gained deep, hands-on experience in macroeconomics and financial markets, most notably working with Stan Druckenmiller, one of the most successful investors of our time.

Stan never held a position in government but is no less a patriot. He never got a Ph.D., but I know of no better, nor a more open-minded economic thinker. He has never flaunted his philanthropy but has helped many thousands of young Americans to get a first-rate education and a real chance to rise.

Like Secretary Shultz, Stan never once sat me down to give a lecture. Instead, he offered me something better: a seat at the table by his side.

Without their guidance—and that of a few other great mentors including my current boss and close friend at the Hoover Institution, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice—I doubt I would be sitting before you today as the President’s Fed chairman-nominee. But I am certain of one thing: I would not be as prepared for the urgent, mission-critical task at hand.

In between these book-end experiences, I served for more than a decade in government, first on the White House economic staff, and then as a member of the Fed’s board of governors. In fact, it was twenty years ago, almost to the day, when I sat before this committee as a Fed governor-nominee.

Little did any of us—myself included—know that it would be a time like no other. During the great financial crisis—when shocks hit our economy, unemployment spiked, our economic system faced collapse, and America’s standing in the world was scrutinized—our central bank played an indispensable role. My colleagues and I leveraged the tools and powers that the Fed, and only the Fed, had to deploy. We benefitted enormously from the credibility that our predecessors had built up and passed down to us.

In unusual and exigent circumstances, I saw the Fed and its people at their best. I served with scores of first-rate, dedicated professionals in Washington and at the reserve banks who rallied around a common mission and a wise and resolute Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. We worked closely with the Treasury Department, the Administration, and Congress to mitigate the risks of systemic failure–no sure thing at the time.

In the period after the crisis, I also witnessed an institution that was tempted to play a larger role in the economy and society . . . to extend its reach and stretch its hard-earned credibility, often with the best intentions, to the very edge of, if not beyond, the Fed’s statutory responsibilities.

The question of a central bank’s role and responsibility in our republic dates to America’s founding. There is an equally long history of fierce debates about the central bank’s independence.

So let me be clear: monetary policy independence is essential. Monetary policymakers must act in the nation’s interest . . . their decisions the product of analytic rigor, meaningful deliberation, and unclouded decision-making.

I do not believe the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials—presidents, senators, or members of the House—state their views on interest rates. Central bankers must be strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners . . . humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments . . . wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight . . . and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.

Simply stated, Fed independence is largely up to the Fed. That has three important implications worth highlighting.

First, Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish. Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it.

Low inflation is the Fed’s plot armor, its vital protection again slings and arrows. So, when inflation surges—as it has done in recent years—grievous harm is done to our citizens, especially to the least well-off. They lose purchasing power. Their standard of living falls.4

They may also lose faith in our system of economic governance, raising doubts whether monetary policy independence is all it’s cracked up to be.

Second, Fed independence is at its peak in the operational conduct of monetary policy. That degree of independence does not extend to the full range of its congressionally mandated functions. Fed officials are not entitled to the same special deference in their stewardship of public monies . . . or in bank regulatory and supervisory policy . . . or in areas affecting international finance, among other matters.

And third, the Fed must stay in its lane. Fed independence is placed at greatest risk when it strays into fiscal and social policies where it has neither authority nor expertise. The Fed should not act as some general-purpose agency of the US government or as an appellate court for matters that are rightly debated and decided elsewhere.

No doubt there are times when a Fed chief might wish that he or she had the last word, but our republic doesn’t work that way. I favor a clearer, cleaner match between the Fed’s powers and responsibilities.

During my prior tour of duty at the Fed, I said: “Central bankers must demonstrate that we are worthy of this moment and will be steadfast protectors of our institutions’ credibility. That means respecting our important but circumscribed role in the conduct of policy and performing our mission with competence and consistency.”

That’s still true today.

In sum, I believe that monetary policy independence is earned—and better policy decisions crafted—by steering clear of distractions. I am committed to ensuring that the conduct of monetary policy remains strictly independent. I am equally committed to working with the

Administration and Congress on non-monetary matters that are part of the Fed’s remit. And I commit to accountability in all the Fed’s functions.

In my student days, Milton Friedman had a phrase that’s always stayed with me: “the tyranny of the status quo.” Anyone who has worked at large, complex institutions know what that means—the pull of inertia . . . the tacit acceptance of old ways of working . . . the unwillingness to revisit long-held assumptions . . . the use of old models that are no longer fit for purpose . . . the tendency to kick the can down the road.

Status quo practices and policies are especially harmful when the world is changing fast. If confirmed as chairman, I will seek to bring the experience of a one-time insider and the questioning spirit of an outsider. I will keep the Fed mindful of its limits, focused on its mission, and delivering on its mandate. I will be faithful to the Constitution, to the Federal Reserve Act, and to the best of the Fed’s traditions.

I know the terrain, and I would be proud to serve again on the Board of Governors. In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

In and out of government, I’ve always tried to look for common objectives, and to pursue them cordially and cooperatively with my colleagues. If confirmed, I will seek to create an environment in which the best people can do their life’s best work.

Candor and goodwill can go a long way in pursuing objectives that we all share, and I suspect this hearing will put us to the test. It’s a real privilege to be here before this committee. My thanks to each of you, and I welcome your questions.

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Wall Street sees an oil shock and asks what it means for inflation, the Fed, and energy stocks. Households see an oil shock and ask a very different question: How do we make this month’s math work?

That is the analytic failure at the center of this moment.

The geopolitical conflict in the Middle East is actively draining the American wallet. With crude surging back above $100 a barrel and the national average for gasoline recently topping $4 per gallon, the International Monetary Fund issued a clear-eyed assessment at its spring meetings. The IMF noted that the energy shock has interrupted the steady growth trajectory, downgrading U.S. output projections and pointing out that the crisis will measurably erode consumer purchasing power.

Despite this, official commentary often describes the period of elevated prices as “temporary.” But “temporary” is a sovereign word. It is not a household word.

Governments can issue debt. Corporations can pass on costs, buy time, or cut labor. Middle-class families can do none of those things. They do not absorb shocks through bond issuance. They absorb them through cash flow, credit cards, and depleted savings.

That is why this is not just an oil story. It is a middle-class margin call.

Consumer spending makes up nearly 70% of U.S. GDP. That means the American economy is overwhelmingly powered by households. And if you look at the historical data, the solvency of those households has been overwhelmingly powered by women. Between 1979 and 2018, the vast majority of all income growth for the American middle class was driven primarily by women’s earnings and their increased hours worked. Take women out of the equation, and middle-class income essentially flatlines for four decades.

At the same time, the national debt is already above $39 trillion, leaving Washington deeply dependent on sustained labor force participation and tax receipts to keep the fiscal picture from worsening.

So when oil spikes, the real question is not only whether headline CPI ticks up (which it just did, March 2026 CPI was 3.3%). The real question is what happens when the country’s primary growth engine is already financially stretched, and you add a new tax on mobility, logistics, food, utilities, and care.

Because that is what a sustained oil shock is: a regressive tax on the households least able to hedge it.

The Math of the Transmission Cascade

An oil shock does not hit households once. It hits them repeatedly, in a five-phase cascade.

First, gasoline hits workers directly on the commute. Second, spiking diesel costs move through freight and agriculture, ensuring a secondary margin call on grocery expenditures months later, a reality reflected in the sharp spike in natural gas prices and surging fertilizer costs. Third, petrochemical costs rise, repricing everyday household goods. Fourth, service providers are forced to pass elevated utility and transport costs directly to consumers. Finally, constrained by these non-discretionary costs, households pull back on all other spending, which directly impacts aggregate GDP.

We know exactly how this math plays out because we just lived it. During the 2022 energy shock, oil spiked past $120. Within months, grocery inflation hit a 40-year high of 13.5%, real average hourly earnings fell by 3.1%, and consumer credit card debt surged by a record 15.2% just to cover the gap.

The Structural Fragility of the Barbell Economy

That historical reality underscores the structural risk of this current shock. We are operating within a Barbell Economy.

The top of the barbell is fine. High-asset households can absorb a few hundred dollars more a month in fuel and groceries without changing behavior. The bottom of the barbell is financially strained, but at least partially visible to policymakers because that is where safety-net eligibility lives.

The demographic bearing the brunt of this pressure is in the middle: teachers, nurses, project managers, and dual-income families who earn too much for help and too little for insulation. Prior to this energy shock, cumulative inflation had already forced the average Colorado household to spend nearly $41,000 more since 2020 just to maintain the same standard of living — an inflation tax that has effectively outstripped the average worker’s wage growth and left them with zero margin for a new oil spike.

This middle class operates at a zero-margin state. Every dollar is already spoken for.

It is only once we understand this baseline fragility that we can see how an energy shock creates a systemic solvency risk. When the macroeconomic math breaks, it falls on the household to absorb the deficit. And in America, the ultimate shock absorbers are women.

The Myth of “Opting Out”

There is a frequent assumption in economic commentary that when the cost of working rises too high, women simply choose to leave the labor force. But this framing ignores the modern household balance sheet. Millions of women do not have the luxury of opting out.

Moms are the breadwinners in 40% of U.S. households with children under the age of 18. Furthermore, in over 70% of households with children under 18, a mother’s income contributes to household solvency.

Her paycheck is not supplemental; it is the structural wall between her family and financial insolvency.

When an oil shock drops onto that reality, these women cannot just leave the labor force. They are financially constrained. They are caught in a structural bind where they must continue working to survive, but the act of working has suddenly become vastly more expensive.

To bridge the gap, they absorb the shock internally. They rely on revolving credit at 22% APR to cover the inflated costs of diesel-driven supply chains. They drain the emergency savings they spent years building.

Furthermore, this margin call does not distribute itself evenly. If we look at the handle of the barbell, the inelastic demand of our economy, we see exactly who is carrying the heaviest weight of this inflation.

For Native American women, who face the deepest wage gap in the nation at 53 to 58 cents on the dollar, a $4.11 gallon of gas hits functionally twice as hard. For Black women, who are currently seeing unemployment rates surge, or Latinas struggling with high business interest rates, the margin call is not a theoretical economic concept. It is an immediate liquidity crisis. We are asking the most under-capitalized demographics in the nation to finance a geopolitical energy shock out of their own pockets.

Rebuilding the Margin

This is why the “temporary” framing from policymakers misses the mark. The IMF’s latest models project that sustained energy disruptions could drag global growth down to 2% and send inflation back up to 6%.

A structural commodity shock of that magnitude leaves a lasting mark on household balance sheets. Debt compounded at 22% does not vanish when the price of Brent crude eventually stabilizes. The official economy may move on, but the household balance sheet does not.

This is a national productivity issue. Every time a middle-class family is forced to drain its wealth or pull back on discretionary spending just to absorb the logistical cost of a geopolitical crisis, the entire economy weakens. Future wage growth slows. Federal tax receipts fall. And Washington gets a weaker labor base precisely when it needs a stronger one to service its $39 trillion debt.

If the United States wants to build genuine economic resilience, policymakers and business leaders need to stop treating household infrastructure as a side conversation. Energy policy is labor policy. Women’s labor force participation — and their ability to actually build wealth from that participation — is a core input to GDP growth.

When institutions model barrels, spreads, and benchmarks, they often miss the actual economy. The White House is projecting 3.5% GDP growth for 2026, but the IMF has already downgraded U.S. growth to 2.3%, recognizing the reality of an energy commodity spike. An oil shock above $100 is a test of whether the American economy has rebuilt enough middle-class margin to withstand volatility. Currently, we have not.

But by shifting our perspective, we can rewrite the equation. We can build a system where the middle class serves as a foundation for growth rather than a shock absorber, paving the way for a more resilient, higher-functioning economy.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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The autonomous vehicle wave has its newest entrant.

Humble, a San Francisco-based startup, emerged from stealth today with a $24 million seed round and a fully electric autonomous freight vehicle called the Humble Hauler, Fortune learned exclusively. Eclipse led the round, with Energy Impact Partners also participating.

The Hauler has no cab (essentially a self-driving platform) and is designed for 40-foot and 53-foot shipping containers and runs dock-to-dock—unloading at the destination rather than dropping a trailer and leaving. This isn’t always the case: Fellow AV trucking company Aurora operates a hub-to-hub model that hands off to local human drivers at drop yards near city limits, while Kodiak’s commercial operations rely on fixed launch-and-landing zones with no autonomous last-mile delivery. 

“Trucks were never designed to be autonomous,” Eyal Cohen, Humble’s CEO and founder, told Fortune. “Removing the cab allows us to rethink the whole vehicle for an autonomous future.”

Eliminating the cab opens up 360-degree sensor coverage across cameras, LiDAR, and radar, and frees payload capacity. The autonomy stack runs on vision-language-action models—a newer paradigm than rule-based systems.

Humble built its first prototype in roughly six months. Cohen’s background lends credibility to that timeline: He helped build Otto, the company that completed the first autonomous freight delivery by semi-truck in 2016, sold SparkAI to John Deere in 2023, and ran hardware at Waabi. His team spans Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, Apple, and Uber.

Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and a Humble board member, joined the firm in January 2024. He previously served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Growth Officer at Rivian, where he helped close Amazon’s order for 100,000 electric delivery vans—the largest EV delivery vehicle purchase on record—and led more than $10 billion in financing, including Rivian’s IPO. 

He frames Humble’s pitch to logistics operators simply. “When you go to them and say there is a possibility of 30 to 50% more efficiency in your business, you’re obligated to take it to your management team,” Behl told Fortune.

The market they are chasing is hard to ignore. U.S. truck freight is a $906 billion industry. The autonomous freight segment sits at an estimated $575.7 million in 2026 and is projected to reach $3.25 billion by 2035. Federal tailwinds are arriving in parallel. The Self Drive Act of 2026 was formally introduced in February, proposing a unified federal framework for autonomous trucking. Cohen was in Washington last week meeting with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been engaged with Humble since early in its development.

Behl puts the capital requirements of scaling and developing the product, and deploying a pilot program for the Hauler, in perspective: “This is not going to take a billion dollars. It’s going to take an order of magnitude less than that.” 

See you tomorrow,

Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: lily.lazarus@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

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Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Tim Cook’s critics always underestimated him.
• Markets: So far, so good.
• Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh’s $7 trillion plan for the bond markets.
• Trump hints Iran war could last longer than estimated.
• Quantum computing might be further away than you think.
• Countries of the world ranked by “hopefulness.”

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Social Security is not going bankrupt, but it is approaching a major funding shortfall that could affect millions of Americans if Congress does not act. For most retirees, Social Security is a foundational source of monthly income. More than 70 million people rely on those checks today, and the consequences of inaction would be significant not only for beneficiaries, but for the broader U.S. economy, too.

Social Security operates primarily as a pay-as-you-go program. Payroll taxes collected from current workers, along with taxes on benefits and other income, are used to pay benefits to current recipients. In 1983, bipartisan reforms signed into law by President Ronald Reagan were designed to strengthen the program for decades. Those changes created reserves in the Social Security trust funds, which have helped make up the difference since payroll taxes alone stopped covering full program costs around 2010.

Those reserves are now projected to be depleted by early 2032, if no legislative changes are made. Under current law, Social Security would then only be able to pay benefits from incoming revenue, triggering across-the-board reductions. Estimates vary somewhat depending on the assumptions used, but projected reductions generally range from about 23% to 28%. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cut could begin at about 7% in 2032 and deepen to an average of roughly 28% annually from 2033 through 2036.

Impacts on Beneficiaries

A reduction of this size would have an immediate and painful effect on retiree households. Using current 2026 benefit levels, a 28% cut would reduce the average retired worker’s monthly benefit from about $2,071 to $1,491, a loss of roughly $6,960 per year. An average retired couple receiving $3,208 per month would see that amount fall to about $2,310, losing more than $10,700 annually. Those with higher benefits would face proportionally larger dollar losses.

For many Americans, Social Security is not just supplemental income – it is their primary source. A cut of nearly one-third would force many households to make difficult decisions about housing, food, transportation, and medical care. The effect would be especially severe for older retirees, widows, lower-income households, and those with little or no savings.

Poverty among older Americans would almost certainly rise. Benefit cuts of this magnitude could increase the number of beneficiaries living in poverty by more than 50%, with more than 16 million Americans over age 65 potentially falling below the poverty line. That would represent a dramatic reversal in one of Social Security’s most important achievements: dramatically reducing elderly poverty.

Healthcare would also become a greater concern. Social Security’s financing problems do not directly reduce Medicare Part A hospital payments because the two programs are funded through separate trust funds. However, both are pressured by similar forces, including population aging and rising costs. If Social Security benefits are reduced while Medicare Part A also faces financial strain, retirees could experience the double burden of lower income and tighter healthcare access. For people already living on fixed incomes, that combination could be especially destabilizing.

Impacts on the U.S. Economy

The effects would not stop with retirees. Social Security benefits are spent quickly and locally, supporting household consumption and economic activity in communities across the country. A broad benefit cut would remove a substantial amount of purchasing power from the economy almost immediately.

The projected economic consequences are serious. A 28% cut beginning in 2032 could reduce real U.S. GDP by about 0.7% soon after trust fund depletion[1] — a meaningful drag concentrated in the near term.

The ripple effects could include slower business activity, fewer jobs supported by consumer demand, and reduced labor income tied to those jobs. Lower spending could also dampen inflation, prompting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates in an effort to support growth.

Some workers may choose to delay retirement or re-enter the workforce to offset benefit losses, which could eventually add some economic output back into the system. But that adjustment would not eliminate the near-term shock caused by a sudden drop in spending among older households.

The Outlook

Warnings about Social Security’s funding shortfall are not new. Analysts have been projecting trust fund depletion for over a decade. What has changed is the timeline. The window for Congressional action is shrinking, and the closer the nation gets to the projected depletion date, the more difficult it may become to implement gradual, less disruptive solutions.

Still, this would not be the first time Congress has addressed a serious Social Security financing challenge. In the early 1980s, the program faced a similar crisis. The bipartisan National Commission studied the problem and recommended reforms that were ultimately enacted in 1983. Those changes restored stability and extended solvency for decades.

That history matters. It reminds us that Social Security’s challenges are serious, but not unsolvable. The real risk is not that solutions do not exist — the risk is delay. If nothing is done, the law requires benefits to be limited to available revenue, and the resulting reductions would affect retirees, families, and the broader economy all at once. The sooner policymakers act, the more options they will have to protect beneficiaries and strengthen the program for future generations.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady explains how Apple’s handoff fits into this year’s extraordinary CEO turnover.
• The big leadership story: Kevin Warsh on the hot seat.
• The markets: Up globally amid optimism for U.S.-Iran peace talks.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. 2026 is turning out to be one of the most seismic years for CEO transitions: Greg Abel replaced Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Josh D’Amaro replaced Bob Iger at Disney, John Furner replaced Doug McMillon at Walmart, and now John Ternus is replacing Tim Cook at Apple. We did spotlight Ternus as a potential successor back in October. And Cook is 65, an age at which many people retire. (Buffett, Iger and McMillon were 95, 75 and 59, respectively.) But Apple’s announcement comes amid a slew of other CEO transitions at Adobe, Coca-Cola, Dow, BP and elsewhere. What’s going on?  

The Speed of AI: McMillon cited the urgency around AI as a major catalyst in stepping down, saying he didn’t think he couldn’t finish the transformation he started in time. James Quincey at Coca-Cola essentially said the same thing in handing the reins to COO Henrique Braun. This is a sprint, not a marathon, and requires an athlete at the top of their game. As leadership consultant Stephen Miles told me: “Every company has to run a faster 800 each year and you need someone fit for the 800 who has the longevity to see this through to the other side.”

Keep your legacy intact: Nothing destroys a CEO’s legacy like lingering too long in the job. That may be why Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen felt compelled to announce he was stepping down after 18 years, before a successor has been found. Tim Cook will leave behind a staggering legacy at Apple, growing a company worth about $300 billion when Steve Jobs died in 2011 to one that’s worth $4 trillion today. But Apple has also lagged on AI, raising questions about whether Cook should lead from here. (It no doubt helps that Ternus is an engineer.)

Transformation is not a turnaround: For all of the tumult in the top ranks, it’s interesting to note that the reins are largely being handed to COOs who understand the company. In a turnaround, boards often go outside to find a new leader who will change the culture, the team, and pretty much whatever else it takes to get results. In a transformation, you want to accelerate change without destroying the house. For the most part, these are leaders who know where they want to go. They might even have strong ideas on how to get there. But they recognize the old paradigms of business, from how they organize talent to how they reach customers, is changing at a speed that requires a new leader at the helm.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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After U.S. gas prices soared to over $4 a gallon this month, Americans are cautiously exhaling a long-held breath that they’ve been holding for weeks since the Iran war began.  

But Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it may be quite some time before Americans see any price reduction at the gas pump.

“That could happen later this year. That might not happen until next week, but prices have likely peaked,” Wright said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“Certainly, with a resolution of this conflict, you will see prices go down. Prices across the board on energy prices will go down.”

President Donald Trump, however, disagrees with Wright’s timeline. 

“No, I think he’s wrong on that,” President Trump told The Hill on Monday. “Totally wrong.” He said gas prices will drop “as soon as this ends,” referring to the war, now entering its seventh week. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where usually 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas supplies would pass through, has virtually come to a standstill since the war began.

Trump’s comments on Monday seem to completely contradict his previous claims just over a week ago, in which he warned gas prices could stay the same or even increase by the midterm elections come November.

Wright says the war’s end is in sight 

Since the war began, average gas prices have increased by more than $1 per gallon. They reached a peak average of $4.17 per gallon on April 9, the highest since the war began on Feb. 28 when Israeli and U.S. launched coordinated attacks on Iran. On Monday, when Trump made those comments, the average price for a gallon of regular gas was $4.04, compared to $3.15 a year ago, according to ⁠AAA. 

About half of American adults say that gas prices are a “financial hardship” or “difficult,” according to a recent CBS News/YouGov Poll released on April 12 that surveyed 2,387 adults across the country.

Although Wright said either this or next week would be “a reasonable timeframe” for the war to end, it would require “a defanged and de-armed Iran.” He said that prices under $3 a gallon would be “pretty tremendous in inflation-adjusted terms,” but added, “we’ll get back there for sure.” 

The war appeared to reach a tipping point on April 7, when Trump said if Iran did not capitulate, a “whole civilization will die tonight.” That evening, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire and began peace talks. 

The ceasefire—which has been mired by a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports—is set to end on Wednesday, Trump said. Vice President JD Vance is expected to return to Islamabad, Pakistan on Tuesday to meet with Iranian officials after the most recent peace talks stalled without a deal. 

Energy crisis around the world

Although gas prices remain high for American consumers, Asian and European nations are fairing far worse, with depleting oil reserves forcing some life-altering measures. 

During a recent G20 meeting on April 16, Wright told CNN that bankers from around the world were “basically making pleas” to avoid reimposing sanctions on Russia after lifting them in March. “It’s to lower the price of energy in Asia and Europe.”  

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russia oil since March 2022, after the country invaded Ukraine in February of that year. Although many countries feared secondary sanctions from the U.S. for buying oil from Russia, which produces about 11% of the world’s supply, Russian oil has become a necessary import for countries such as Brazil, Singapore, and those in the European Union, following the conflict in Iran.

On Friday, the U.S. extended the waiver

Once the war ends, the U.S. will be quick to reimpose sanctions on Russian oil, Wright said.

Europe has “maybe six weeks or so (of) jet fuel left,” the head of the International Energy Agency said last week. As a result, the European Commission has called on people to drive and fly less, as well as work from home. 

Many Asian countries are making even larger sacrifices. Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a year-long state of emergency on March 24, as the country only had enough fuel to last about 45 days. The country has since received shipments of Russian crude oil and has a gasoline supply to last 54 days as of Monday.

Thailand has ordered civil servants to work from home and take the stairs over elevators until the crisis is over. Many countries have instituted a four-day week for schools and government workers. 

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It is nine degrees on a Sunday in January, and while most New Yorkers are hunkered down during New York City’s largest snowfall in years, Blackstone’s president and chief operating officer is jogging through several inches of fresh snow in Central Park.

Jonathan Gray sounds a little out of breath as the snow falls around him. “This is a tough environment,” he says in the 42-second video, looking directly into the camera phone carried by a friend trudging alongside him. “It reminds me of the motto: Stay calm, stay positive, never give up. It also reminds me of investing. Conditions are not always perfect. There’s noise, but you stay the course—you don’t lose sight of what’s important.”

The clip will rack up 2.7 million views for Gray, the 56-year-old heir apparent to the top job at the world’s largest alternative asset manager, which oversees about $1 trillion and ranks No. 321 on the Fortune 500.

Gray is not yet a CEO. But he is already doing a version of the job in social media feeds, and offering a preview of what the modern corner office now demands: a chief executive who doubles as a creator‑in‑chief.

The accidental influencer

Across the Fortune 500, the C-suite now comes with an unwritten rule: Show up on social media, or at the very least, on LinkedIn. In 2025, over two-thirds of Fortune 100 CEOs had at least one social media account, and of those, 71% posted at least once per month, a 37% increase in activity from the year prior, according to a report from communications advisory firm H/Advisors Abernathy.

Few executives embody this “always‑on” expectation as naturally as Gray. His jogging dispatches, including nearly 50 videos filmed in the past year, have become a fixture on LinkedIn. Gray’s LinkedIn posts regularly generate nearly 440,000 impressions and average more than 100,000 views per video. One travel montage spanning several European cities drew 5.9 million views alone, according to Blackstone. Between flights and investor meetings, the executive carves out time to explain economic swings, market volatility, and tech trends, all while touting Blackstone’s global reach.

Since his appointment to COO in 2018, the firm’s assets under management have roughly doubled, while its client base has expanded across new geographies. Gray, who joined the firm fresh out of college in 1992, insists his jogging videos are not part of any master plan. “I’m the accidental influencer here,” he tells Fortune. Indeed, he says, when Christine Anderson, Blackstone’s global head of corporate affairs, first suggested he start posting videos, Gray says he was “resistant for an extended period of time.”

When he finally gave in, Gray started by following the formula many executives rely on: what he now describes as dull, “corporatist posts”—formal updates tied to speeches and events, which were met with muted engagement. But then, while on a 2025 business trip to Sydney, Australia, Gray experimented with a new format, one he had used on his family’s group chat. To stay connected with his wife and four daughters, Gray often records quick travel videos of famous landmarks “so they’d remember I exist,” as he later joked in an interview with fitness influencer Kate Mackz.

This time, standing in front of the Sydney Opera House in running gear and AirPods, he pointed the camera at himself for 25 seconds. “I try to go for a jog to clear my head and pump myself up for the day when traveling internationally,” Gray wrote in the post. The reaction was immediate. Users flooded the comments with their own Sydney recommendations and running tips, and praised Gray for “keeping it real.”

“I was like, oh wow, that worked,” he says. “I go to Japan, I go to Paris, I go to Bentonville, Arkansas. I can keep doing this.”

Communicating Blackstone’s reach

The format stuck: Gray’s relentless travel schedule has effectively become a content engine for Blackstone. Now, between meetings, he pulls out his phone to talk about long‑term investing in Amsterdam, the rise of AI in Paris, and  the importance of “Gross Domestic Happiness” in Bhutan.

The videos are a conversation-starter in meetings, and they have even earned Gray a nickname—the Forrest Gump of LinkedIn. When he travels for conferences or business trips, he says, “most of the time, the first thing people bring up to me” are the jogging clips, not the deals. “I was just meeting with some clients from Canada, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, will you run when you come?’” Like other social media influencers, he has done collaborations, including one with Lazard CEO Peter Orszag during a trip to South Florida.

Gray’s posts are usually unpolished, slightly breathless—he is running, after all—and highly effective. His Blackstone team tells Fortune the operation is relatively low-lift: no coaching, no prep calls, no talking points laid out before he hits record. “It’s really just all him,” Blackstone’s Anderson tells Fortune.

Gray usually films in selfie mode, holding his phone at arm’s length. Occasionally, his wife, friends, or colleagues lend a hand. “People really like the authenticity of it and the fact that they know it’s really coming from Jon,” Anderson adds, at Blackstone’s Manhattan office. “That was a little bit of the unlock in the beginning too,” she observes, turning to Gray, “because you look like you’d be coming off a long flight. You’re a little disheveled, you’re sweating. It was just so real.”

It’s an effective communications strategy for Blackstone—and for Gray’s own profile as an executive—that also happens to be very cheap. “Obviously, the cost is not very high to go like this,” Gray says, holding up his phone. “And it works.”

While compliance rules for the financial firm’s external communications still apply, the legal inspection and greenlighting process generally takes just a few hours. Besides, “most of the time, I’d be jogging anyway,” Gray says. “It’s probably motivated me a little more honestly.”

Gray’s “dorky dad” social media style

Part of Gray’s appeal is that he leans into his quirks. “There is a little bit of what I describe as my dorky dad vibes,” he says. “That’s maybe the way my girls would say it. But that’s sort of who I am, a little bit overly optimistic.”

His daughters are also some of his toughest critics. Gray often sends draft videos to both his family’s and Blackstone team’s group chats for review. “They have insights,” Gray says of his children. “They’ll say to me, ‘Hey, the background wasn’t so good, or the lighting wasn’t so good, or you should hold the camera better. You’re holding it down, you’re getting too much extra chin there.’ They’re much better at this stuff.”

Sometimes, his success has surprised his daughters. “When I told my girls that Kate Mackz had asked me to run, they’re like, ‘why would she want to run with you?’” he says. “Meanwhile, if you go on Instagram, it has like two and a half million views.”

Anderson says the magic lies in Gray’s willingness to poke fun at himself. “He’s uniquely good at this,” she says. “If you have a CEO who this doesn’t come naturally to, it’s very hard.” Gray’s lack of self-consciousness is an asset, he says. “If I stumble on some words, if I’m out jogging, sweating—the more authentic, the better,” he says.

For executives hoping to copy Gray’s success, he offers a simple formula: “Good background, a bit of humor, self-deprecation is very good. And then if you can have a nugget of information, advice, or insights, and you wrap that together and try to keep it to 90 seconds or less, that’s what you’re trying to do, but it does have to be authentic.”

Gray has become the go-to for video, often serving as an on-camera host for more polished explainers of Blackstone’s quarterly earnings. “He’ll do a maximum of three takes, and usually, he gets it in the first take,” Anderson says. “It’s pretty quick, the whole filming takes us about seven to ten minutes.” He also helps to produce the firm’s elaborate holiday video, now an annual viral tradition.

But he and Anderson have found that heavily produced studio content routinely underperforms in comparison to the spontaneous running clips. “If we do something highly produced and we spend a lot of time in the studio, we reach fewer people,” Gray says. “Some of these [running videos] may reach more people than when we go on TV.”

Gray is not the only Blackstone executive tapped to star on social media. His boss, the 79-year-old billionaire, Blackstone cofounder, and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, also creates social-first videos with his team, offering leadership and business advice for nearly six years on LinkedIn to his more than 400,000 followers. The chief executive even recently collaborated with TikToker Max Klymenko, the creator behind the viral “Career Ladder” series, for a video now topping 4 million views.

Jon Gray’s LinkedIn playbook

While most of Gray’s videos appear to be spontaneous, there’s a genuine business strategy behind them, and it’s a playbook more Fortune 500 executives are scrambling to replicate.

“At the end of the day in our business, when you’re investing capital on behalf of others, you’re a steward of capital, you’re really in the trust business,” Gray says. “Being able to communicate with your clients directly, your shareholders, and show them who you are and what matters to you in a direct way, that’s very helpful, and that’s what this has become.”

LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Daniel Roth says Gray’s approach has become a model for other leaders. “There is a ton of demand for these executive voices because they’re authentic,” he says. “Executives trying to figure out how to be heard in a very noisy market, see that other executives are having success doing it, and so they start doing it themselves.”

Timothy Pollock, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, isn’t surprised that Gray’s videos draw such massive audiences. He argues that executives are now effectively celebrities, like movie stars and athletes.

“Why does what time they wake up or when they do their workout matter to them doing their job?” he asks. “But that’s what people love, because we live vicariously through our heroes. Business executives increasingly, for better or worse, play that role in society.”

Blackstone’s social media model

Given the positive reception on LinkedIn, it’s no surprise that other executives—and their communications teams—have taken notice, reaching out to Anderson, Gray says: “A lot of other firms [ask], ‘How did you get Jon to do this?’”

Ted Merz, a former journalist and now the founder of digital-first storytelling firm Principals Media, specializes in ghostwriting services for CEOs and executives, and says Gray has become a “very important figure” in the executive communications world. “He’s now super famous among corporates for what he does with the running videos,” Merz tells Fortune. The videos, Merz says, have also raised the bar for other executives. “If Jon Gray can do it, and he’s pretty busy, what is your excuse?”

Gray says he has no plans to slow down anytime soon: “At some point, when I’ve jogged in enough places and people are like ‘enough already,’ we’ll find something else to do.”

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Ascentium, an Asia-based business services platform backed by Hillhouse Investment, is acquiring Dezan Shira & Associates, a 33-year-old advisory firm best known for its Asia Briefing intelligence platform. The deal is Ascentium’s most recent in more than a dozen acquisitions, plugging a gap in the company’s mainland China coverage while deepening its footprint in hot Southeast Asian growth markets. 

“We did not have a meaningful capability to service multinational corporations that wanted to go into mainland China,” Lennard Yong, Ascentium’s co-founder and CEO, tells Fortune. The acquisition adds new offices in mainland Chinese cities like Guangzhou and Tianjin, and pairs Ascentium’s outbound expertise with Dezan Shira’s inbound knowledge.

Chinese outward investment reached $174 billion last year, a 7% increase. A 2025 report from McKinsey notes that China is now a net investor overseas, partly due to decreased inward flows from the U.S. and Europe, but also because Chinese firms are racing to diversify supply chains and chase consumers in emerging markets. “Ascentium has the capability to bring Chinese companies out globally,” Yong explains.

China’s exports to ASEAN jumped 13.4% last year; exports to Vietnam alone surged more than 22%. Exports to the U.S., by contrast, plunged 20%, due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff regime.

Alberto Vettoretti, a managing partner at Dezan Shira who joined the firm in the late 1990s, has noticed the shift in where his customers are coming from. Five years ago, most of his customers were American or European. “Now, one-third of our customers in Vietnam are Chinese,” he says. “The switch in nationalities has been quite large.” 

Vietnam in particular is benefiting from greater inward investment from China and other economies. The Southeast Asian country grew by 8.0% last year, with manufacturing expanding by almost 10%; the country’s stock market is set for a FTSE upgrade to emerging market status later this year. The Dezan Shira deal will double Ascentium’s capacity in the country.

“When you talk to people in Vietnam, they’re all very hungry,” Vettoretti says. “You see a lot of young entrepreneurs coming up through the ranks.”

The roll-up logic

Yong, a chartered accountant who previously spent five years as group CEO of Tricor, founded Ascentium in 2024 with his cofounder Wendy Wang. The platform now provides finance and accounting, payroll, HR, and cross-border services (among others) across 46 cities in 27 markets, in a footprint stitched together from several acquisitions across the region, including InCorp Global and Links International. (Ascentium is a clear example of a roll-up strategy, popular among private equity, where a company will acquire other firms to rapidly build capability and scale.)

Dezan Shira & Associates, founded in Hong Kong in 1992, spans 27 offices across the region. “We coveted the business they built with sweat and tears over three decades, and they’ve mastered the art of knowing how to set up businesses onshore in China.”

Yong notes that, eventually, the Dezan Shira brand will be folded into Ascentium, though he says the migration will be “controlled.” 

“We are not in the fast-moving consumer goods space,” Yong says. “It makes more sense for our clients to have a singular brand.”

Broadly, Yong hopes that Ascentium, as an Asia-focused company, will be well placed to capture Asian growth. “The world has evolved from a unipolar world to a multipolar world,” he says. “There are companies in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Shanghai that are no longer reliant on North American and European trade flows.”

“We choose to be anchored in Asia because we want our CEOs to be very close to the Fortune 500 firms of tomorrow,” Yong adds.

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Apple stock traded slightly down after-hours following the announcement that CEO Tim Cook will be stepping down, to be replaced by his hand-picked protégé, John Ternus. There is no question that Cook is one of the most legendary and accomplished CEOs of our time, but this short-sighted market reaction is entirely misguided. Here are three reasons why Apple’s CEO handoff from Cook to Ternus reflects a model succession process, with the company’s best days still ahead.

Cook Is Leaving on His Terms — and Apple Has Never Been Stronger

As Wedbush analyst Dan Ives commented on CNBC immediately after Apple’s announcement, Cook would not be leaving unless he felt confident about the hand he is passing to his successor—and what a hand it is.

Despite some analyst handwringing that misguidedly portrays Apple as a laggard in adopting AI based on a few well-documented false starts, Apple retains the pole position in distributing AI to its approximately 2 billion consumers worldwide, as we presciently said in Fortune last year. When it comes to the consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, all roads still run through Apple as the singular gatekeeper to an unparalleled user base.

This playbook has been a winning recipe for Apple time and time again, as Apple is never the first, but it is always the best. The fallacy of first is demonstrated by the Netscape, Napster, Sony’s Betamax, GM’s EV1 electric vehicle, Kodak’s first digital camera in 1975, and UPS’ launch of an overnight delivery service in 1929 as potent reminders that being first is not the winning formula; being the best is. Just as Apple never had the first personal computer or the first smartphone, but they ended up having the best; similarly, although Apple has long been criticized for not spending enough on AI; Apple is now perfectly positioned to pick AI winners and losers given their control of physical hardware.

This year is already poised to be transformational for Apple’s AI ecosystem. The pipeline ranges from the launch of an enhanced Siri powered by Gemini AI, to exciting developments in proprietary infrastructure—including in-house AI servers and custom silicon chips—alongside the highly anticipated launch of a foldable iPhone this fall.

Ternus Built the Hardware That Will Win the AI Era

Cook has chosen to leave at the top of his game as the culmination of a planned, deliberate succession process. The company has clearly signaled this transition over the last few months as John Ternus emerged publicly as the designated heir apparent.

A proven product architect and an engineer to his core, John Ternus is the right person at the right time. His fingerprints are on almost every major Apple hardware success over the past two decades. Ternus has been a driving force behind the transition from Intel processors to Apple’s proprietary custom silicon chips—the foundation of Apple’s AI efforts. Furthermore, he has been instrumental in the development of virtually every core product line, including AirPods and iPads, while revitalizing the entire Mac lineup.

Ternus’s hardware prowess is vital to Apple’s AI future. While AI models provide raw intelligence, Apple’s hardware acts as the ultimate gatekeeper to consumer/user adoption of AI. By elevating a master product architect, Apple is betting that the ultimate victor of the AI age will be the company that owns the final, most valuable mile of the consumer experience. Ternus has the clear mandate to leverage Apple’s unparalleled hardware footprint—controlling over 2 billion physical devices—to build the indispensable chassis for the consumer AI era.

Apple Has Always Been Bigger Than Any One CEO

Thirty-eight years ago, the first author’s bestseller The Hero’s Farewell (Oxford) broke new ground describing the challenges of following founders given the shadows of legendary entrepreneurs. Years later, Steve Jobs drew on this book when he personally complained to the first author about his own failed successors, Gil Amelio and John Sculley, insisting that they lacked commercial mastery over the technology that Jobs had advanced. When it came to Tim Cook, however, Jobs twice gave him the functioning CEO position without eagerly or formally surrendering the title, trusting Cook to never undermine him—even in his own moments of weakness amidst frail health and unclear corporate messaging.

After Jobs passed, many analysts were skeptical about Cook’s prospects of succeeding a larger-than-life legendary founder. One board member even suggested that the first author sell his Apple stock. Yet Cook immediately assumed the reins with a rare blend of energy and humility. He inspired others to innovate without any personal grandiosity, curtailed some of Jobs’s excesses, and transformed Apple into the world’s most valuable company along the way.

Jobs fully trusted Tim Cook to reengineer Apple’s global production process and supply chain. Consequently, Cook became the ideal leader to revisit that very process when geopolitics necessitated repatriating some businesses and friendshoring others. As the architect of this operational machine, Cook possessed the unique authority and insight required to overhaul it.

But Cook’s legacy extends far beyond his supply chain accomplishments. While Steve Jobs is rightly celebrated as the visionary behind Apple’s original success, it was early pioneers like Lee Felsenstein who engineered the first personal computers; Jobs simply possessed the genius to commercialize them. A similar dynamic defines Tim Cook’s legacy. He may have inherited the iPhone from Jobs, but it was Cook who scaled it into the most indispensable device on earth, transforming it into the singular hardware hub around which billions of people organize their daily lives. It is easy to forget that when Cook assumed the CEO role, the iPhone had less than a quarter of the US smartphone market, facing potent competitors like BlackBerry, Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia. That was a far cry from the iPhone’s dominant position today, capturing a third of the global market and nearly two-thirds of the US, which is a testament to Tim Cook’s commercial genius.

In a 1983 internal speech, Steve Jobs, the notorious perfectionist, complained about the speed of the Macintosh’s completion, quipping: “Real artists don’t hang on to their creations. Real artists ship. Matisse shipped. Picasso shipped.”

Jobs never got to see the full arc of Cook’s tenure, but the record speaks for itself: Tim Cook shipped. Cook moved past the navel-gazing of perfectionist designers to get the product out the door, scaling with unprecedented success. Creative ideas are only useful when they are implemented. Too often in technology, great products remain trapped in unfinished states—pitfalls Cook avoided with aplomb. His legacy as a visionary tech leader with unsurpassed skills in execution is indisputable, with his model succession handoff to his hand-picked protégé, John Ternus, reflecting the fact that Apple’s best days are still ahead.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, the White House said Monday, after multiple allegations of abusing her position’s power, including having an affair with a subordinate and drinking alcohol on the job.

Chavez-DeRemer is the third Trump Cabinet member to leave her post after Trump fired his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this month.

In a statement posted on social media, Chavez-DeRemer praised Trump and wrote, “I am proud that we made significant progress in advancing President Trump’s mission to bridge the gap between business and labor and always put the American worker first.”

Unlike other recent Cabinet departures, Chavez-DeRemer’s exit was announced by a White House aide, not by the president on his social media account.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on the social media site X. “She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”

He said Keith Sonderling, the current deputy labor secretary, would become acting labor secretary in her place. The news outlet NOTUS was the first to report Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation.

Labor chief, family members faced multiple allegations

Chavez-DeRamer’s departure follows reports that began surfacing in January that she was under a series of investigations.

A New York Times report last Wednesday revealed that the Labor Department’s inspector general was reviewing material showing Chavez-DeRemer and her top aides and family members routinely sent personal messages and requests to young staff members.

Chavez-DeRemer’s husband and father exchanged text messages with young female staff members, according to the newspaper. Some of the staffers were instructed by the secretary and her former deputy chief of staff to “pay attention” to her family, people familiar with the investigation told the Times.

Those messages were uncovered as part of a broader investigation of Chavez-DeRamer’s leadership that began after the New York Post reported in January that a complaint filed with the Labor Department’s inspector general accused Chavez-DeRemer of a relationship with the subordinate.

She also faced allegations that she drank alcohol on the job, and that she tasked aides to plan official trips for primarily personal reasons.

Both the White House and the Labor Department initially said the reports of wrongdoing were baseless. But the official denials got less full-throated as more allegations emerged — and when Chavez-DeRemer might be out of a job became something of an open question in Washington.

At least four Labor Department officials have already been forced from their jobs as the investigation progressed, including Chavez-DeRemer’s former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, as well as a member of her security detail, with whom she was accused of having the affair, the New York Times reported.

“I think the secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Monday after her departure was made public.

She enjoyed union support — rare for a Republican

Confirmed to Trump’s Cabinet on a 67-32 vote in March 2025, Chavez-DeRemer is a former House GOP lawmaker who had represented a swing district in Oregon. She enjoyed unusual support from unions as a Republican but lost reelection in November 2024.

In her single term in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer backed legislation that would make it easier to unionize on a federal level, as well as a separate bill aimed at protecting Social Security benefits for public-sector employees.

Some prominent labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, backed Chavez-DeRemer, who is a daughter of a Teamster, for Labor Secretary. Trump’s decision to pick her was viewed by some political observers as a way to appeal to voters who are members of or affiliated with labor organizations.

But other powerful labor leaders were skeptical when she was tapped for the job, unconvinced that Chavez-DeRemer would pursue a union-friendly agenda as a part of the incoming GOP administration. In her Senate confirmation hearing, some senators questioned whether she would be able to uphold that reputation in an administration that fired thousands of federal employees.

She was a key figure in Trump’s deregulatory push

Aside from reports of wrongdoing in recent months, Chavez-DeRemer had been one of Trump’s more lower-profile Cabinet picks, but took key steps to advance the administration’s deregulatory agenda during her tenure.

For instance, the Labor Department last year moved to rewrite or repealmore than 60 workplace regulations it saw as obsolete. The rollbacks included minimum wage requirements for home health care workers and people with disabilities, and rules governing exposure to harmful substances and safety procedures at mines. The effort drew condemnation from union leaders and workplace safety experts.

The proposed changes also included eliminating a requirement that employers provide adequate lighting for construction sites and seat belts for agriculture workers in most employer-provided transportation.

During Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure, the Trump administration canceled millions of dollars in international grants that a Labor Department division administered to combat child labor and slave labor around the world, ending their work that had helped reduce the number of child laborers worldwide by 78 million over the last two decades.

In her statement Monday, Chavez-DeRemer said, “While my time serving in the Administration comes to a conclusion, it doesn’t mean I will stop fighting for American workers.”

The Labor Department has a broad mandate as it relates to the U.S. workforce, including reporting the U.S. unemployment rate, regulating workplace health and safety standards, investigating minimum wage, child labor and overtime pay disputes, and applying laws on union organizing and unlawful terminations.

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Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, blamed a bad engine Monday for a failed weekend launch that left a satellite in the wrong orbit, dooming it.

Launches of the huge New Glenn rocket are grounded until Blue Origin and the Federal Aviation Administration complete their investigation.

The rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday. The recycled first-stage booster performed well, landing on an ocean barge several minutes into the flight. But the upper stage was unable to put the satellite into a high enough orbit to begin operations.

Preliminary data indicate that one of the upper stage engines failed to produce enough thrust, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said.

The satellite was supposed to join AST SpaceMobile’s orbiting network of satellites designed to provide direct space-to-smart phone service.

The rocket’s upper stage and satellite reentered the atmosphere Monday, according to the U.S. Space Force. No additional detail was available.

It was only the third flight for New Glenn, Blue Origin’s hulking rocket for delivering spacecraft to orbit. NASA is counting on New Glenn to launch Blue Moon lunar landers for the Artemis moon program. SpaceX’s Starship is also in the running to land astronauts on the moon as early as 2028.

Towering more than 320 feet (98 meters), the rocket is named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.

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The struggling AI power startup Fermi is losing both its CEO and chief financial officer as it launches a “2.0” reset to attract customers for the largest data center campus project in the world in the rural Texas Panhandle.

Fermi, which is backed by former U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, saw a massively successful IPO last year—before generating any revenue—that was quickly followed by a steep decline on the stock market as it lost its first planned hyperscaler customer and then saw its cofounder and CEO, Toby Neugebauer, reportedly engage in a public confrontation with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Fermi’s market cap has fallen from nearly $20 billon in October down to $3.4 billion as of April 20, including a nearly 18% dip on the news of the leadership changes.

Neugebauer, the son of retired Texas congressman Randy Neugebauer, will remain a board member and Fermi’s largest shareholder, but he’ll no longer have an executive position. Likewise, CFO Miles Everson has resigned but will sit on the board, the company said.

Fermi chairman Marius Haas said a new “office of the CEO” will lead the company while the search firm Heidrick & Struggles helps identify a new CEO. The firm will work closely with Haas and two other board members—excluding Perry, Neugebauer, and Everson—to pick a CEO.

The interim office of the CEO will be led by Fermi chief operating officer Jacobo Ortiz and Anna Bofa, who is an observer on the board, and has industry experience with Google and Meta.

Fermi also will move its headquarters from Amarillo, Texas to Dallas.

Fermi’s “Project Matador” plans are to build 11 gigawatts—enough to power 8 million homes—of nuclear, solar, and natural-gas fired power for a “HyperGrid” to support massive data center complexes on over 5,000 acres of land owned mostly by the Texas Tech University System. Much of the land is leased to the U.S. Department of Energy, which has publicly supported Fermi’s development.

Fermi even plans to name the campus the Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in West Texas.

Fermi said the leadership changes are part of the company’s “evolution as it continues to progress along its path to becoming a mature, established entity, well positioned for long-term, sustainable growth.”

The company declined further comment on Neugebauer’s and Everson’s departures from their executive roles. Neugebauer did not reply to messages seeking comment.

The potential upside

In a note, Stifel analyst Stephen Gengaro said Neugebauer’s “surprising” departure could prove to be a positive for the company.

Based on management’s comments touting “an acceleration in customer conversations” during the last few days, “it appears there was friction between potential customers and the outgoing CEO. It is possible that negotiations with customers could be smoother going forward,” Gengaro stated.

“While shares likely weaken on the headline, we believe this could be a plus for [Fermi],” Gengaro added.

In December, an unnamed Fermi tenant canceled a $150 million deal for the data center campus. Fermi had planned to secure an anchor tenant by March, which has yet to occur.

The news also follows the reporting by Politico in March that Neugebauer and Commerce Secretary Lutnick publicly clashed at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, California.

Neugebauer reportedly complained to Lutnick about plans for U.S. trade deals with South Korea and the blocking—or slow-playing—of direct Korean investments in Fermi’s project. Fermi already is partnered with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility and Hyundai Engineering & Construction on the development of its nuclear reactors.

At the time, Neugebauer denied being “loud and belligerent” and admitted only to having a “direct conversation” with Lutnick about perceived interference in Fermi’s progress, according to Politico.

Unrelated to Fermi, Neugebauer also has an ongoing legal feud with prominent billionaires Peter Thiel and Ken Griffin over his failed “anti-woke” banking business, GloriFi. Citadel’s Griffin, Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and other prominent names were significant financial backers of GloriFi.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that GloriFi suffered from a chaotic work environment, highlighted by allegedly erratic behavior by Neugebauer.

Neugebauer, who is best known for cofounding the energy-focused private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, now Quantum Capital Group, shut GloriFi down in 2022 when it ran out of money. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in early 2023.

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Nike got a brisk reminder last week of how edgy marketing can easily blow up in a brand’s face.

The sneaker and apparel giant’s ad, at its store on Boston’s Newbury Street ahead of the city’s iconic marathon today, declared: “Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated.” It was a striking misreading of the culture of runners, and it came at a moment when Nike is trying to win serious runners back.

Nike had clearly wanted to tap into participants’ sense of pride for making it into a marathon notoriously difficult to qualify for, but the swipe at walkers or slower runners was panned online as mean-spirited at best. The language came off as at odds with the sport’s inclusive spirit, and for the vast majority of runners who don’t run fast enough to qualify for Boston or those who have reason to walk part of the 26.2-mile road race, it felt like a gratuitous slap in the face.

One runner participating in the “adaptive” division of the Boston Marathon, Robyn Michaud, took to Instagram to express dismay: “Due to a spinal cord injury I HAVE to take walk breaks. Even with a cyst in my spinal cord, I still regularly break 5 hours in Boston and plan to again this weekend. Thank you for TOLERATING me, @nike.”

And as any runner knows, there’s no shame in walking when necessary: Indeed, as a serious marathon runner myself, I can attest that I have walked parts of many of my marathons to take a short break, slowed down by fatigue or nausea, or hobbled by a tight hamstring.

Image from Instagram

Nike took down the ad and apologized on Friday. “We want more people to feel welcome in running—no matter their pace, experience, or the distance,” the company told Runner’s World. “During race week in Boston, we put up a series of signs to encourage runners. One of them missed the mark.” The sign was later replaced by a “Boston will always remind you, movement is what matters” sign, according to Boston.com. Nike did not immediately respond to a request from Fortune for further comment.

Even as Nike came in for criticism in Boston and beyond, some dismissed the brouhaha as silly, given how exclusive the race is. The Boston Marathon, first held in 1897, is the world’s oldest annual marathon. For many marathoners, the race is the holy grail, and it’s a cherished event in the city. The 2013 bombing near the finish line on Boylston Street, which killed three spectators and injured hundreds, only deepened that bond—galvanizing residents around the defiant rallying cry “Boston Strong.”

Demand for the race, capped at about 30,000 runners, has grown, and the marathon has become ever harder to get into, with qualifying times getting tighter. For instance, a man in his 20’s now needs to be able to run a marathon in 2 hours and 55 minutes to get into Boston, or 40 minutes faster than average for that gender and age group. A decade ago, a man that age would have gotten in at 10 minutes slower. (I have run 84 marathons and never qualified for Boston, though in my best race, I only missed it by two minutes. I did, however, once participate via a charity entry, as do about 10% of each year’s Boston participants.)

Nike’s crack about walking the race rubbed many runners the wrong way, even speedsters who have run Boston. Heartbreak Hill, the very difficult part of the course at Mile 20, has dashed many a runner’s hopes for a personal best. What’s more, many runners, fast ones included, favor the Galloway Run Walk Run method of mixing walking and running to stave off fatigue and stay strong longer—something Nike’s running experts undoubtedly are aware of, even if its marketing department is not.

The fumble highlights a deeper problem for Nike: It may still be the No.1 sneaker brand in the world and among casual runners, but it is not the preferred brand of runners, fast or not, who buy their shoes at specialty running stores. Indeed, among that cohort, Nike trails behind Brooks—the leader with 21% of the specialty running shoe market—as well as Hoka, New Balance, Asics, and Saucony, according to 2025 data from research group Circana. (Following the flap this week over Nike’s ad, Asics quickly put up a billboard in Boston declaring, “Runners. Walkers. All Welcome.”)

A few years ago, by its own admission, Nike had taken its eye off the critical running specialty market in favor of limited edition sneakers, allowing the likes of Hoka and On to swoop in, and Brooks to cement its lead. Since Elliott Hill, a long-time Nike executive, returned 18 months ago from retirement to become CEO, the company has re-prioritized running and begun to win back market share.

Last autumn, several Nike executives told Bloomberg that “Running is the heart of Nike.” It can ill-afford to risk insulting the athletes it needs to win back.

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Apple has officially announced its most significant leadership transition in more than a decade.

John Ternus, the company’s 51-year-old senior vice president of hardware engineering, has been named as CEO Tim Cook’s successor, effective Sept. 1. Cook will become executive chairman of the board, and he will remain CEO through the summer working on the transition.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. “I love Apple with all of my being,” adding Ternus has the “mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and honor.”

Industry observers and Apple insiders had long viewed Ternus as the most likely candidate to inherit the reins of one of the world’s most valuable technology companies, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has reported accurately on Apple for years thanks to sources deep within the company.

The speculation intensified after Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, once considered Cook’s natural successor, stepped down from operational responsibilities in July 2025. With Williams out of contention, Gurman said Ternus emerged as “the most likely heir apparent.”

Who is John Ternus?

Ternus brings a combination of technical expertise and institutional knowledge to the succession conversation. According to his LinkedIn profile, the mechanical engineer joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and has overseen hardware engineering for virtually every major product in the company’s current portfolio. His fingerprints are on every generation of iPad, the latest iPhone lineup, and AirPods. He played a crucial role in the Mac’s transition to Apple silicon. He also had a prominent role during Apple’s most recent keynotes, introducing products like the new iPhone Air.

“He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future,” Cook said in a statement.

Apple’s public relations teams had also begun “putting the spotlight on Ternus,” according to Gurman, signaling the company may be preparing for a gradual transition of power. Beyond product launches, Ternus had taken on responsibilities that extend well beyond traditional hardware engineering, influencing product road maps, features, and strategic decisions typically reserved for more senior executives.

At 51, Ternus mirrors Cook’s age when he became CEO in 2011, positioning him for potentially a decade or more of leadership. This longevity factor likely appealed to Apple’s board of directors, who prefer stability in leadership transitions. His engineering background also matches where Apple is going as a company, exploring emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and mixed reality.

Ternus’s path to Cupertino

Ternus’s journey to the top of Apple began at the University of Pennsylvania, where he distinguished himself both academically and athletically. He graduated in 1997 with a bachelor of science in engineering, majoring in mechanical engineering. But Ternus wasn’t just focused on his studies—he was a competitive swimmer who made his mark in the pool.

A 1994 report in the Daily Pennsylvanian revealed Ternus’s athletic prowess when he won both the 50-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley at a university swimming competition. More remarkably, Ternus is an “all-time letter winner” for the UPenn men’s swimming team, representing the varsity swim team a record number of times.

The early years: from VR to Apple

After graduation, Ternus joined Virtual Research Systems as a mechanical engineer. Virtual Research Systems, while not widely known today, was part of the early virtual reality wave of the 1980s and 1990s, working on VR headsets and immersive technologies. This four-year stint exposed Ternus to cutting-edge display technology and human-computer interfaces—experience that would prove invaluable during his later work on products like the Apple Vision Pro.

Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001, at a pivotal moment in the company’s history. Steve Jobs had returned, the iMac had revitalized the company, and Apple was preparing to launch products that would redefine entire industries. Starting as a relatively junior member of the product design team, Ternus initially worked on external Mac monitors.

By 2013, Ternus had been promoted to vice president of hardware engineering, overseeing AirPods, Mac, and iPad development. His portfolio expanded in 2020 when he took charge of iPhone hardware engineering, previously overseen directly by Dan Riccio. When Riccio stepped down in January 2021 to focus on the Apple Vision Pro project, Ternus was promoted to senior vice president of hardware engineering, making him a member of Apple’s executive team.

Ternus also earned increased visibility at product launches and industry events, becoming a regular presenter at Apple’s keynote events, revealing refreshes of the iMac and MacBook Pro, introducing the 2018 iPad Pros, unveiling the iMac Pro, and presenting the completely redesigned 2019 Mac Pro. Crucially, Ternus was also responsible for unveiling Apple silicon to the world, as well as the new iPhone Air.

“Ternus stands out,” Gurman wrote. “He’s charismatic and well-regarded by Apple loyalists and trusted by Cook, who has granted Ternus more responsibilities. The executive emerged as a key decision-maker on product road maps, features, and strategies, extending his influence beyond the traditional scope of a hardware engineering chief.

“When Apple began selling the iPhone 17 lineup [in September 2025], it was Ternus who ushered in customers to the company’s Regent Street store in London (a role Cook served at Apple’s Fifth Avenue location),” Gurman continued.

The choice of Ternus represents Apple’s preference for promoting from within rather than seeking external leadership. It also signals a shift toward prioritizing technical innovation over purely operational excellence, as the company seeks to reinvigorate product categories beyond the iPhone that generates the majority of its revenue. The company’s struggles with the Apple Vision Pro and its efforts to compete in artificial intelligence suggest technical leadership may be exactly what Apple needs for its next chapter.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on Oct. 7, 2025.

More on Apple:

• Apple smart glasses are coming into view
• Fortune Archives: The folks who brought you Apple
• Tim Cook says late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs gave him this unforgettable advice before handing over the reins as CEO: ‘Never ask what I would do’

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After months of waiting, U.S. importers will finally have access to the $166 billion collected from tariffs that were ruled unconstitutional. But as American small businesses battered by the import taxes look to recoup the cost of the levies, they may find it’s more difficult for them than it is for larger, wealthier firms.

On Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rolled out the first phase of its electronic tariff refund system, also known as the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), allowing importers to apply for refunds on tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court.

Justices ruled in February that the duties imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were illegal, but gave no recommendations on how to provide refunds for companies which paid for the brunt of the import taxes, leaving the process to the Court of International Trade and CBP.

Of more than 330,000 U.S. importers, about 56,497 have applied for refunds, according to recent filings from CBP. Claims from those importers total about $127 billion. CBP said refunds are to be distributed 60 to 90 days after they are processed.

Small businesses were hit particularly hard by the levies. A Federal Reserve survey published last month found 42% of small firms called rising costs due to tariffs a primary financial concern. These smaller businesses, which operate on tiny margins, have a harder time stockpiling inventories or eating tariff costs to avoid passing down higher prices to consumers. A March report from the Center for American Progress found small businesses paid $306,000 in tariffs on average last year.

But unlike larger firms—such as Costco and FedEx, which have already sued the Trump administration to ensure eligibility for refunds—smaller businesses often lack key resources in navigating the legal intricacies and uncertainties to secure the refunds, jeopardizing their ability to recoup the hundreds of thousands of dollars they lost in the last year.

“Especially given the uncertain legal environment that we’re operating in right now, I am deeply worried that small- and medium-sized importers are going to end up losing their refund rights because they haven’t had access to trade counsel to help back them through it,” Matthew Seligman, founder and principal of Grayhawk Law, a federal litigator focusing on constitutional law, told Fortune.

Small businesses’ unique tariff challenges

For small businesses, the refunds have been just part of the headaches surrounding tariffs. In many cases, owners lack the personnel and bandwidth to closely track legal and compliance issues, said Dan Anthony, executive director of We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of small businesses opposing the administration’s tariff policies. For many of these companies, looking into tariff refunds means diverting resources away from new products and growth.

“What you end up with is small business owners or someone who does product development, who is now expected to be a tariff expert,” he told Fortune.

Small businesses also are navigating tight cash flows and lack of liquidity, Anthony explained. When importers bought products from overseas, they may have made advanced payments to vendors to lock in lower prices before tariffs went into effect. But the stockpiling may have meant an inventory surplus that took months to recoup costs for, he said.

Anthony added he spoke with small business owners who have increased lines of credit and even taken out a second mortgage on their house, so promises of refunds have become a lifeline.

Some companies with larger risk appetites have opted to use refund claims as collateral for loans or to sell the rights to claims outright in exchange for immediate cash.

But according to Anthony, small businesses are more likely to take a “wait-and-see” approach to the tariff refund process to figure out which strategy will get them the largest chunk of change.

“That’s money that they need to come back so they can climb out of that debt,” he said.

Tariff refund headaches

The many legal question marks hanging over the tariff refund process make it even harder for small businesses without resources to parse through the ins and outs of the refund system, Grayhawk principle Seligman said. 

Among the challenges is the tight time frame for applying to CAPE. At this time, refunds are available to “unliquidated” entries—meaning CBP hasn’t made a final determination on how much is owed—or on entries “liquidated” in the last 80 days where CBP has determined what’s owed. Businesses with those already liquidated entries have to file immediately or risk being ineligible for refunds if they time out of the 80-day window.

Ineligible companies will likely either have to file a formal protest with CBP or sue in the Court of International Trade for refunds, though the government hasn’t made the necessary processes clear, Seligman said. He indicated that smaller businesses without legal counsel may not be aware of or prepared to take these next steps should they be ineligible for CAPE.

Seligman noted there is still plenty of uncertainty around whether the refunds will even reach importers. The Trump administration may choose to appeal the Court of International Trade’s order that the government must dole out universal refunds, which Seligman said would render applying to CAPE “sort of a waste of time.” He added that some of his clients have experienced technical difficulties with the portal and have received error messages on attempted submissions.

CBP did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

“These types of glitches, again, are not just delays,” Seligman said. “They are delays that can lead to ineligibility, and potentially—if importers don’t have appropriate counsel—can result in permanent loss of refund rights.”

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Sometime on Tuesday, two New York real estate developers will walk into a hotel in Islamabad to try to end a war they helped start.

Trump administration special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—the President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close friend, respectively—are arriving with Vice President JD Vance for a second round of talks with an Iranian delegation that insists it is not coming to the table. Less than 48 hours remain before the ceasefire they brokered two weeks ago runs out, and Trump has said there will be no extension this time.

Fortune spoke with three of the most experienced American negotiators alive—former Ambassador Dennis Ross, former State Department advisor Aaron David Miller, and Harvard Law’s Robert Mnookin—about whether the three men can actually do this. They are, collectively, not very confident.

Miller, who served six secretaries of state over more than two decades at the State Department and helped shape American positions at Oslo and Camp David, described the administration’s process as “tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not to the realities back here on planet Earth.” 

“If they were succeeding in these negotiations, my view would be much more charitable,” he hedged. 

The three experts described a situation in which two undoubtedly smart dealmakers may still be in over their heads on a deal unlike any they have handled before. Iran sees Witkoff and Kushner as unserious and too close to Israel, Miller said.

Instead, Tehran has repeatedly asked that Vance lead the talks, a request rooted in reporting that the vice president opposed the decision to go to war in the first place. Vance, Miller said, is “the adult in the room.”

“But even that reflects, to me, a dysfunctional system,” he added.

Not much is known about the team’s negotiating style, or even what offers are on the table. But the stakes are clear. A fifth of the world’s seaborne oil is still being held hostage in the Strait of Hormuz while the world suffers from an energy crunch. Iran retains roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade, plus another 184 kilograms at 20%, buried somewhere after the American and Israeli strikes that began Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28. Together, Ross said, that’s enough material for roughly 15 nuclear bombs.

If no deal is reached, Trump has threatened everything from bombing Iranian power plants and bridges to wiping out Iranian “civilization” itself.

What a win would actually look like

Ross, who served as the U.S. point man on Iran under both Clinton and Obama, told Fortune that a genuine strategic win requires two things: the highly enriched uranium has to leave Iran, and an enrichment halt has to hold for at least a decade.

“Let’s say 12 years; with the enriched material shipped out and no enrichment, you can really say they don’t have a nuclear weapons option,” he said. 

Vance reportedly offered a 20-year moratorium during the April 11 round—though Trump was reportedly unhappy with it—and Iran countered with five.

A 12-year halt paired with a full ship-out, Ross said, is the compromise that could credibly be called a victory, though he is dubious Iran will ever agree to it. The more likely outcome is partial downblending, which dilutes the stockpile without removing it from Iranian soil. 

“They’re retaining it,” Ross said. “They still have that potential option.”

Anything short of that, he said, is not a win, even if the administration tries to sell it as one. 

The cleanest thing Witkoff and Kushner can plausibly bring home is a reopened Strait of Hormuz. Trump already declared the waterway “COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS” on Friday.

That didn’t last long: Iran fired on French and British vessels Saturday, then the U.S. disabled an Iranian cargo ship Sunday, sending the price of oil back up.

“It was open before the war,” Ross said. “You just got it back to status quo ante.”

But now Iran has learned that shutting down global shipping did not require a formal closure: all it had to do was hit one ship and let shipping insurers do the rest by hiking premiums. That discovery is permanent. 

Even if Witkoff and Kushner negotiate some kind of international transit regime, including one in which Iran is nominally part of administering the waterway with Oman, it will not hold more than a few months before Tehran begins “to play games” to get more control over which ships pass through, according to Ross.

The method

What makes all of this harder to read is that almost nobody outside the room actually knows how Witkoff and Kushner negotiate.

“What’s really remarkable is how little detail we have about what they’ve done in their prior negotiations,” said Mnookin, the Harvard Law negotiation theorist and author of Bargaining with the Devil. 

He said Witkoff and Kushner’s real estate backgrounds are not, on their own, a disqualifier, because successful developers tend to be competent problem solvers. But the Iran negotiation, he said, requires something real estate doesn’t by itself provide. 

“Negotiation skills are very important, but having a mastery of the details, or having access to the necessary deal details, is also indispensable. In a negotiation this complex, you need both.” 

The Trump administration’s Iran team does not include a nuclear technical expert in the negotiating delegation. And according to Iranian sources cited by the U.K. outlet Amwaj, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had to explain the difference between an enrichment facility and a reactor to Witkoff on multiple occasions during talks. 

Ross, who overlapped briefly with Kushner during the first Trump term, was more generous than Miller about the two men. 

“I think Kushner was pretty good at identifying fundamental issues pretty quickly,” he said and praised the instinct of not being in a rush. 

But he offered a warning. “When you have an agreement at a high level of generality, there’s a lot of potential for those honest misunderstandings,” Ross said. “Or sometimes, dishonest misunderstandings.”

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In a 1777 letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson warned that although the Revolutionary War was looking dire for the colonists, having a national draft would be “the most unpopular and impracticable thing that could be attempted.”

“Our people, even under the monarchical government, had learnt to consider [military conscription] as the last of all oppressions,” he wrote.

(As a refresher, the Royal Navy used “press gangs” to seize American colonial ships and sailors. Automatic conscription of men ages 16 to 60 was so opposed by the colonists, it made it into the Declaration of Independence as one of the 27 grievances against King George III.)

It may come as a surprise then that nearly 250 years later, a major company valued at roughly $350 billion—while paying $0 in federal taxes and holding a $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army—is now backing the draft.

Palantir Technologies, a defense and data analytics company, published a 22-point manifesto on its X account on Sunday that summed up what cofounder and CEO Alex Karp wrote in 2025 book The Technological Republic, coauthored with Nicholas W. Zamiska. Among the 22 points was a call for universal national service. 

“National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost,” the post summing up the manifesto read. 

Among other points in the manifesto include a “moral debt to the country” owed by Silicon Valley and for the remilitarization of Germany and Japan, former Axis powers in World War II. 

On an earnings call last year, Karp said Palantir’s mission was to “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” The contract the company holds with the U.S. Army is to better its software and data analytics. Additionally, Palantir’s platforms power Project Maven, the Pentagon’s AI-driven targeting and surveillance program, which was reportedly used to help generate targeting lists for the Israeli military in Gaza.

More than half of the company’s revenue is attributable to government sales, with total 2026 revenue expected to jump 70% to $7.18 billion to $7.2 billion. And despite reporting $1.5 billion in U.S. income in 2025, the company paid zero in federal income taxes, using a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that allowed for a deduction of research expenses. 

Push for a draft

The first military draft in U.S. history was implemented during the Civil War. It was used again for World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

The last draft call was issued on Dec. 7, 1972, just as U.S. ground participation in Vietnam came to an end. It wasn’t until July 2, 1980, that President Jimmy Carter required all men to register with the Selective Service System, which maintains a list of eligible names in case the draft is ever revived.

Palantir’s manifesto arrived during the seventh week of U.S. military involvement in Iran, days after the Selective Service System moved toward automatic registration.

The National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump has a provision that would shift Selective Service from voluntary to automatic registration of all eligible men ages 18 to 26. 

The Selective Service System will be required to identify and register all eligible men beginning on Dec. 18, 2026, marking the most significant change since self-registration began in 1980.

Palantir has not responded to Fortune’s request for comment. 

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USA Rare Earth, a Trump administration–backed miner and manufacturer, is expanding into a larger global player through a nearly $3 billion acquisition of the Serra Verde Group, owner of Brazil’s Pela Ema rare earths mine and processing plant.

The April 20 deal—for more than $2.5 billion in stock and $300 million in cash—helps turn USA Rare Earth (USAR) from an American mining and magnet manufacturing startup with little revenue to count thus far, into a key rare earths player with even bigger ambitions.

The White House has repeatedly invested in critical minerals companies—including rare earth firms—since the April 2025 tariff wars began and China pushed back on Trump’s tariff plans by exerting its dominance over global rare earths mining, refining, and magnets manufacturing.

“USA Rare Earth is now the global champion in rare earths,” said USAR CEO Barbara Humpton on an April 20 call with analysts. “The world needs what we are building, and we’re moving with purpose and urgency to deliver it.

“We’re going to be a major supplier to all the other players in the industry … helping the whole industry scale,” she added.

The deal comes with the Pela Ema mine having already secured minimum floor pricing—to prevent exposure to Chinese price dumping—and a $565 million financing package from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to help fund expansion initiatives. The mine has a 15-year, 100% offtake agreement with various U.S. government agencies and private capital sources for the magnetic rare earths that are required to make the high-performance, neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets that are critical in most modern electronics from electric vehicles to the aerospace and defense sectors.

The magnets are used in virtually anything that moves. The “core four” rare earths for magnets, motors, turbines, and more are neodymium and praseodymium, as well as the heavier and rarer dysprosium and terbium, which make the magnets more heat resistant. The Pela Ema mine, which opened in 2024, is touted as the first large-scale operating mine outside Asia to produce all four of the key magnetic rare earths, as well as the heavy rare earth yttrium.

The USAR growth story

USAR only started generating revenues in the fourth quarter of 2025, bringing in $1.6 million in revenues for the year. USAR recorded a nearly $300 million net loss last year.

USAR’s main project is its Round Top rare earths mining and processing project in West Texas, which is slated to open by the end of 2028—two years earlier than prior projections.

However, USAR has been on a tear since the beginning of the year.

The company’s high-powered magnet manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Okla., opened at the end of March, and will continue to ramp up through 2027.

But the big news came earlier in January when the Trump administration—through the Department of Commerce—invested $1.6 billion in USAR, giving the government an equity stake that could exceed 15% as the White House continued its spree of investments in publicly traded companies.

USAR’s market cap rose 12% on April 20, up to nearly $5 billion, and it’s up almost 90% year to date.

Serra Verde’s Brazilian production is expected to represent over 50% of total non-China, heavy rare earths supply by 2027, with further growth potential through a planned second phase of expansion.

Serra Verde CEO Thras Moraitis will become USAR’s president under Humpton. And Serra Verde chairman Mick Davis will join the USAR board. Davis and Moraitis previously helped build up the Xstrata mining giant that was taken over by Glencore in 2014.

“It’s not just a corporate transaction; it’s the creation of a rare earths powerhouse with the scale, the assets, and the strategic positioning to become the defining Western player in one of the most critical industries of our time,” Moraitis said on the call.

But USAR isn’t only in the U.S. and Brazil.

Last year, USAR bought U.K.-based Less Common Metals, giving the company a processing and metal-making hub in the U.K. with a new refining and metallizing facility beginning construction soon in France.

The U.K. facility in April just started producing commercial-grade yttrium metal. And earlier in April, USAR announced a partnership with French rare earths processor Carester.

“Combined with our planned yttrium extraction at Round Top and our oxide-processing capabilities, this positions USA Rare Earth to serve the aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing customers who can no longer rely solely on Chinese supply,” Humpton said earlier in April.

As for the Brazilian mine, the second phase of construction is expected to be completed by mid-2027. As part of the new deal, legacy Serra Verde investors would own 34% of the combined USAR.

The new USAR will represent an integrated mine-to-magnet platform spanning three continents with federal backing, Humpton said.

“Our goal is to continue to scale across all these operations,” she said. “Every link in this chain has the potential to serve multiple markets, customers. Every single link has its own business case and can thrive on its own two feet.”

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Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s Chief Executive after 15 years leading the iconic company, with longtime Apple hardware executive John Ternus taking the reins as new CEO, the company announced on Monday.

“Over the coming months I will be transitioning into a new role, leaving the CEO job behind in September and becoming Apple’s executive chairman,” Cook said in a letter to shareholders.

“John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity,” Cook said.

This is a developing story…

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Two Southwest Airlines planes had to take evasive action to avoid colliding Saturday in Nashville after an air traffic controller directed one pilot to turn into the path of the other plane.

Last year, an American Airlines jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Washington D.C. killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft. That crash on Jan. 29, 2025 put the spotlight on midair collisions, which are rare in commercial flights where the planes are equipped with systems to alert pilots about a potential collision.

Most of the close calls that happen every year involve small planes that don’t have those systems, but the Fedearl Aviation Administration couldn’t immediately provide a number for how many happen annually. There are typically several collisions involving small planes every year like the one that happened in February 2025 in Arizona that killed two people.

Both of the Southwest pilots involved in this incident over the weekend told the air traffic controller that they received alarms from their collision avoidance systems that directed them to take action with one plane climbing while the other dove to avoid the potential midair collision, according to audio posted by www.LiveATC.net.

Location data from these two planes show their flight paths converging after one pilot decided to abort landing and circle around to try again. The controller directed that plane to turn into the path of the other Southwest plane that had just taken off. By the time the controller recognized the threat and tried to direct the plane that had just taken off to stay below 2,000 feet, the pilot reported that he was already above that level.

That location data appears to show these planes getting as close as 500 feet apart with one of them flying just over the top of the other plane, according to FlightRadar24, so that would fit the official definition of a near midair collision. But it may not be clear exactly how close they planes got until after the incident is reviewed.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating. The agency said the pilot of Southwest flight 507 “received instructions from air traffic control that put the flight in the path of another airplane that was departing from a parallel runway. Both flight crews responded to onboard alerts.”

But the FAA did not say how close the planes got during the incident that happened around 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

Southwest Airlines spokesperson Lynn Lunsford said gusty winds at the Nashville International Airport prompted the first pilot to perform a go around. He said both pilots followed the directions from the air traffic controller and their onboard collision avoidance systems to avoid running into each other.

“Southwest appreciates the professionalism of its pilots and flight crews in responding to the event. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees,” Lunsford said in a statement.

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The U.S. just had one of its most energy-hungry years in recent memory, and the largest single driver of demand happens to be a lightning rod. 

Energy demand in the U.S. grew 2% in 2025, according to a report on the global state of energy published Monday by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a watchdog outfit.

While that’s slower than 2024’s 2.8% increase, last year’s growth was the second-highest rate since 2000 excluding years that followed recessionary lulls.

Tremendous energy demand in the U.S. was largely fueled by a huge increase in electricity needs across the country. Economic growth and a cold winter that required ample heating usage powered some of that rise, but the single largest contributor to the nation’s additional power appetite last year was the rapid buildout of data centers, the critical server infrastructure tech companies are rolling out to train artificial intelligence models. 

Data centers accounted for around 50% of all electricity demand growth in the U.S. last year, according to the IEA, far surpassing the rise in electricity usage in the residential, industrial, and transport sectors. IEA also sees data centers continuing to account for half of U.S. electricity demand growth to 2030.

The concentration of this growth in the U.S. highlights the country’s role as the epicenter of the AI-driven construction boom, but also comes at a moment of friction. Just as the tech industry’s hunger for power generation soars, the physical infrastructure required to satisfy it is meeting resistance. 

Data centers have become one of the flashpoints that underlie Americans’ growing resentment towards AI and the industry developing the technology. Globally, the data center construction frenzy saw more than $61 billion invested last year, according to a December report by S&P Global, with the U.S. and Canada together responsible for more than $47 billion of that sum.

That investment has contributed to a booming stock market, supported bottom lines at many companies, and even led to a hiring surge in fields such as construction and plumbing. But as the mood towards AI starts to sour, the tides have started turning against data centers as well. 

Citing their excessive power demands, water usage, and effect on property values, communities across the country have swelled in opposition against data center construction. A Pew survey last month found that while Americans are likely to have positive views on the potential local employment and tax revenue upsides of data centers, they are even more likely to have negative views regarding the infrastructure’s environmental cost and its energy usage. 

The backlash has even become a political issue. Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 16 data centers last year, worth a combined total $64 billion. Last week, Maine lawmakers approved a proposal to implement a statewide moratorium on new data centers. If Governor Janet Mills allows it to become law, it might pave the way for a handful of other states to push forward their own legislation that would delay or halt construction, or otherwise give states more authority to weigh in on when and where data centers can be built. Last month, lawmakers in Congress proposed a regulatory tightening of data center construction nationwide as well.

Frustrations over data centers could also play electoral spoiler as midterms loom later this year. Higher power bills are central to voters’ rising affordability concerns. Electric and gas utilities requested more than $30 billion in rate increases last year, according to a January analysis by PowerLines, a consultancy, affecting 81 million Americans. Overall, power bills have risen 40% from 2021, the analysis found. 

A number of factors contribute to high utilities, including the costs of upgrading and managing outdated grid infrastructure, expenditures that were rising long before the AI boom kicked off. But data centers’ ravenous energy needs have nonetheless received the brunt of the blame, with polling suggesting most households connect data center expansion with rising electricity costs. Lawmakers have acted accordingly, with bipartisan calls to monitor data center construction often packaged around affordability concerns.

Declining sentiment towards data centers matches AI’s similar fall from grace in the public sphere. Despite high excitement in the years following ChatGPT’s release, opinion has turned on the technology as online misinformation and fears of job losses mount. Americans are more likely to be concerned than excited about AI, and more than half say they expect the technology to do more harm than good in the long run. Some are even redirecting anxieties towards the masters of the AI universe, highlighted by a Molotov cocktail lobbed at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week.

The energy frenzy is global, but particularly in the U.S. Data centers accounted for 17% of electricity demand growth worldwide last year, according to the IEA report, compared to around 50% in the U.S. 

The country’s tech giants have gone full-steam ahead on data center construction in recent years, but with the public mood souring, the industry might soon struggle to find space to plug in its grand ambitions.

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Matthew McConaughey has built a career on a chilled type of confidence: “Alright, alright, alright.”

But when a University of Texas student asked him during a CNN town hall about the future of artificial intelligence replacing actors, there was nothing breezy about his response.

His face grew grave. He stared at the camera. “It’s not coming. It’s here.”

“Don’t deny it,” McConaughey said in a recent conversation alongside actor Timothée Chalamet. “It’s not enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea that this is wrong. That’s not going to last.”

In light of that inevitability, his advice to creators was to “own yourself. Your voice, your likeness, whatever you’ve got—own yourself. So when it comes—not if it comes—no one can steal you.”

The Oscar winner has already acted on that philosophy. As The Wall Street Journal first reported, McConaughey has secured a series of trademarks covering his image and signature expressions—including his famous “alright, alright, alright”—in an effort to create a legal perimeter around his voice and likeness. The goal: make it harder for AI companies or bad actors to simulate him without permission.

“My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it’s because I approved and signed off on it,” he said in an earlier statement.

For McConaughey, it’s not as simple as just making a quick buck by protecting a catchphrase. He sees the writing on the wall: Tthe movie industry is racing towards automation, with AI-generated replicas of public figures proliferating online. Some celebrities, like TikTok star Khaby Lame, have secured nearly billion dollar deals to protect their likeness.

The film industry is already at a tipping point in which the digital and the physical are becoming indistinguishable. From de-aging legendary stars (such as the Jurassic Park stars in Xfinity’s superbowl ad) to creating entirely synthetic voices that can speak any language with perfect emotion, the technology has moved out of the lab and directly onto the big screen. To try to create some barriers, platforms like YouTube are rolling out likeness-detection tools to help creators combat deepfakes. But legal frameworks remain murky and difficult to parse, especially when AI-generated content isn’t explicitly selling something.

McConaughey says he believes artists can’t rely on moral outrage or future legislation alone.

“When it starts to trespass, you’ll at least have your own agency,” he said. “They’re going to have to come to you and ask, ‘Can I?’Or they’re going to breach, and then you’ll have the chance to say yes for this amount… or no.”

He’s also realistic about how pervasive the technology will become. In five or 10 years, he speculated, awards shows could even feature “Best AI Actor,” believing they could make a separate category for just AI actors.

Chalamet struck a similar but more abstract note, calling it a “dual responsibility” between established stars and younger artists. Those in power today must help keep the door open for human performers, he said, but it will ultimately fall to the younger generation to determine how AI is integrated into creative industries.

“The dreamer in me wants to enable a 19-year-old to produce something they couldn’t otherwise,” Chalamet said. But he also emphasized being “fiercely protective of actors and artisans.”

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When Ford CEO Jim Farley wanted to test out the competition, he looked not at Tesla but at China. Now he’s looking for ways the legacy carmaker can mimic its Chinese counterparts.

In 2024, Farley spent six months driving the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7, the first electric vehicle made by the Chinese tech company known mostly for its smart phones. By the time the six months were up, Farley said “I don’t want to give it up.”

In an interview on the Rapid Response podcast on Friday, Farley explained why he chose to drive a Xiaomi SU7 rather than a vehicle from an American company like a Tesla.

“Nothing against Tesla. They’ve been doing great, but you know, they really don’t have an updated vehicle,” Farley told host Bob Safian. 

Tesla has pushed some redesigns and updates for its vehicles to meet growing Chinese competition. The company’s 2026 version of the Model Y included a futuristic looking exterior and an upgraded interior that includes a redesigned dashboard. The 2023 version of Tesla’s Model 3 also got an overhaul that added ventilated front seats and ambient lighting. Some critics have argued these updates are incremental compared to improvements made by Chinese car companies.

Tesla did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

If Ford wants to be the best in the world, argued Farley, the company needs to focus on its competition abroad, not only Xiaomi but also the Chinese EV leader BYD, which the Ford CEO called “the best in the business” when it comes to cost, supply chain, manufacturing, and intellectual property. 

Chinese EVs are not sold in the U.S. because of an escalated 100% tariff imposed by President Joe Biden and kept in place by President Donald Trump. Still Chinese vehicles, especially BYD’s lineup of low-cost EVs, have started to catch on in other markets. Despite a tariff of up to 38.1% imposed on Chinese vehicles by the EU in 2024, BYD increased its European sales by nearly three times at the start of the year, with new BYD registrations skyrocketing to 18,242 in January, up from 6,884 in the same month a year prior, the Wall Street Journal reported.

BYD was founded in 1995 as a battery maker but moved into car manufacturing in 2003 when founder Wang Chuanfu bought struggling state-owned carmaker Xi’an Qinchuan Automobile. BYD later scaled up its EV production by focusing on selling in China, which quickly became the world’s biggest EV market in part because the government offered subsidies to both consumers buying EVs as well as the companies making them. It also built up charging infrastructure in the country and set aggressive fuel economy standards for gas-powered vehicles. 

In 2022, BYD became the first car manufacturer in the world to stop producing cars powered exclusively by gas, focusing instead on EVs and hybrids. By 2025, the company had surpassed Tesla in terms of revenue and had dethroned Elon Musk’s company as the world’s biggest EV maker. Tesla still has a much higher valuation at $1.22 trillion, compared to BYD’s $138 billion.

Farley said during the interview that he wants Ford to emulate BYD and do what Americans are great at: “Use innovation to compete against the best in the world.” 

Chinese EVs are notably cheap but also advanced. Critics have argued that the $231 billion or so in subsidies the Chinese government has granted its domestic EV industry has allowed players like BYD to sell their cars below cost to outcompete other industry players.

Still, even Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted in 2024 that Chinese industry players are “the most competitive car companies in the world.”

Farley said Ford should take a page from BYD and build cars to meet the needs of the “next cycle” of American car buyers who want a wide choice of different body styles but at $30,000, not $50,000.

“If we’re smart, we’ll take the cost competitiveness of BYD and then we’ll compete with that platform in parts of the market where we know our customers really well,” he said.

Ford’s cheapest vehicle, the hybrid Maverick XL pickup, starts at about $28,000, while Tesla’s cheapest vehicle, the Model 3 sedan, starts at just under $37,000. Both entry-level vehicles are much more expensive than BYD’s compact EV hatchback the BYD Seagull, which goes for $9,500 but only in China. It is sold at a higher price point abroad, including in Latin American and Europe.

Ford is already reinventing itself to compete and took a $19.5 billion charge, one of the biggest hits ever taken by a company, in December as it revamped its EV strategy due in part to weaker-than-expected demand after Trump ended the EV credit. 

The company is now focusing on hybrids and so-called extended-range electric vehicles (EREV), which have a small internal combustion engine primarily as a generator to charge the car’s electric battery and offer longer driving range. Ford’s F-150 Lightning, once billed as the future of its EV business, will be retooled as an EREV.

But it’s not backing away from EVs entirely. By 2027, Ford is still planning to produce a $30,000 electric pickup truck that will be the first in a new class of low-cost EVs. The Ford F-150 Lightning, for comparison, starts at $54,780.

Farley has been among the loudest voices calling for U.S. automakers to take notes from the Chinese, and has previously said the company sees Chinese automakers, not GM or Toyota, as its biggest competitors.

Therefore, Ford is changing the way it does business to emulate its Chinese competition as it works to become a better company, according to Farley.

“That is the gift that China gave us,” he said, “to be fearful and respectful enough of their progress that we could not organically just phone it in.”

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There’s angst in the air on college campuses and in offices across the country. Successive warnings on AI’s looming threat to automate swaths of entry-level white-collar work have put workers in a precarious position. And several large-scale layoffs this year have brought home  the reality of those warnings. 

But not everyone is buying into the doom-and-gloom about the labor market, particularly in the white-collar world. Carrie Charles is the CEO of staffing and recruiting firm Broadstaff, which works with Fortune 500 companies like Verizon and Oracle. She said her company has seen a surge in demand for skilled electricians and technicians as part of the AI infrastructure buildout. These are jobs that combine elements of the corporate world with the hands-on day-to-day of a trade role: viable roles for which laid-off tech workers can make a career pivot, according to Charles.

“It’s almost like a white-collar trade job,” she told Business Insider, speaking of technician roles. “It’s a technical role, but you’re not sitting all day long,” she said, saying the role combines elements of a traditional desk job with the skillset required of a trade role.

The nearly $700 billion data center buildout is turning the gears of the U.S. economic engine, with some economists estimating it’s the main driver of GDP today. The construction and maintenance of this infrastructure, some four times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park, require fleets of workers, including skilled electricians. 

Advanced technicians can make up to $95,000, with a median salary of $71,000, according to a Glassdoor estimate. And senior skilled electricians can easily earn over six figures, with an estimated maximum salary of $110,000. Though Charles said that number can rise to $300,000 for skilled electricians with specialized knowledge of data center technology, such as liquid cooling and fiber cabling, a salary in line with some junior-level roles in specialized medicine or finance. 

Demand for skilled trade roles is strong across the board, thanks largely to the data center buildout. Demand for robotics technicians has more than doubled. HVAC engineer demand increased 67%, and construction roles grew by 30% since late 2022, around the time ChatGPT was launched, according to an analysis of more than 50 million job listings by recruiting firm Randstad. Demand for some trades is growing three times faster than professional roles, many of which are threatened by AI automation, according to the report. That demand is strong from electricians, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 81,000 job openings annually for the role through 2034, a “much faster than average” job growth.

AI layoffs push tech workers toward skilled trade jobs as data center demand soars

The rising demand comes as many tech firms have executed mass layoffs, placing the blame on efficiencies from AI. While some economists suspect these firms may in reality be “AI-washing,” the big layoffs have become a painful reality for many in the tech world. And it’s not just tech; AI threatens to automate roles in law, business, finance, and management, according to a recent analysis from Anthropic. But those layoffs have yet to appear in the macro data, with employers posting a better-than-expected 178,000 roles in March, and unemployment edging down to 4.3%. 

Still, a growing number of white-collar workers are willing to switch to trade jobs. A 2025 report from job site FlexJobs found 62% of white-collar workers would leave the office for a trade role if it meant better stability and pay. And about 1 in 4 Gen Zers are seriously considering, or actively pursuing a career in the trades instead of a white-collar job, according to research from SupplyHouse.

Now, companies are helping to fill in that talent gap through training pipelines. Meta and real estate firm CBRE announced LevelUp on Monday, a program to recruit and train technicians to help build Meta’s data centers. Meta joins a roster of other firms investing in the trades. BlackRock is spending $100 million to train plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians. Lowe’s is investing $250 million to do the same. And TV host Mike Rowe is offering $10 million in scholarships to people interested in pursuing trade roles.

All of that is meant to relieve the dire shortages that remain a major roadblock to the data center buildout. “Talent shortages are already affecting construction schedules, commissioning timelines, and long-term operational reliability,” a Broadstaff report found earlier this year. Those findings match what other staffing and recruiting firms are observing.

Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of the world’s largest recruitment firm Randstad, told CNBC the talent shortage is the obvious bottleneck in the AI industry. 

“Ultimately, the real constraint on global tech growth isn’t solely related to a shortage of microchips, energy, or capital,” he said. “It is the severe scarcity of the specialized talent required to build it.”

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The United Arab Emirates apparently dropped a hint the dollar’s dominance isn’t assured in the global oil trade if fallout from the Iran war gets worse.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the UAE’s central bank chief raised the idea of a currency-swap line with Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials during meetings in Washington, D.C., last week.

To be sure, the UAE has plenty of money, including $270 billion in foreign-exchange reserves and trillions of dollars across its sovereign wealth funds.

But while the UAE isn’t in a crisis, Iran has damaged its energy infrastructure and has blocked oil exports by closing off the Strait of Hormuz, weighing on dollar-denominated revenue.

If the Iran war triggers a deeper economic downturn, a swap line with the U.S. would provide the UAE’s central bank with a cheap supply of dollars that could back the dirham, which is pegged to the greenback, or beef up foreign-exchange reserves in the event liquidity runs low, the report said.

UAE officials also pointed out the U.S. started the Iran war and said they may be forced to use China’s yuan or other currencies for oil transactions if the availability of dollars gets tight, sources told the Journal.

The UAE’s central bank didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any pivot away from the dollar by a top oil producer would represent a major threat to the currency’s supremacy. Saudi Arabia’s decision in 1974 to price its exports in dollars helped establish the dollar as the standard across the global oil trade.

And because oil is a core input to manufacturing and transport, supply chains elsewhere dollarized, reinforcing the greenback’s dominance in payments.

But the Iran war could worsen some cracks that had already been forming in the so-called petrodollar regime, analysts at Deutsche Bank warned last month.

“Damage to Gulf economies could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings,” they said. “In this context, reports that the passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz may be granted in exchange for oil payments in yuan should be closely followed. The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan.”

Any loss of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” would also ripple through other areas of global finance, including the bond market. Thanks to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the federal government has long been able to issue debt at rates lower than investors would otherwise allow.

But Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, isn’t buying predictions about a U.S. decline. In a note earlier this month, he acknowledged if Iran’s regime is left standing while retaining some control over the strait, it would represent a “strategic setback” for the U.S. and humiliation for President Donald Trump.

But the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has even more reason now to maintain close ties with the U.S., given China’s links with Iran, Alamariu added.

“The idea of a petroyuan or petroeuro replacement remains far-fetched,” he said.

Even if the petrodollar weakens, dollar dominance still rests on other factors that other currencies can’t match, according to Paul Blustein, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those include the depth, breadth, and liquidity of U.S. financial markets as well as the freedom to move money across U.S. borders virtually unimpeded, he wrote in a Fortune op-ed last month.

“It accounts for well over half of foreign currency reserves held by central banks, and a similar share of export invoices for cross-border trade, as well as international bank loans and bond issuance,” Blustein explained. “Network effects entrench its status; everybody has an incentive to use the dollar because so many others do.”

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After an exceptionally tough year for public media, Connie Ballmer, billionaire philanthropist and wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, donated $80 million to support NPR’s future. 

“We need fact-based journalism, and we need local journalism,” Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Saturday. Ballmer is an avid NPR listener and said she listens to shows such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered while she walks, drives, and works. 

The donation comes at a critical moment for public broadcasting after the Trump administration pressured Congress to slash about $1.1 billion in already approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes funding for public radio and television. 

The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

The gift makes Ballmer the largest living donor ever to NPR. An anonymous donor also gifted the organization $33 million to strengthen NPR’s network of more than 240 local member stations, many of whom were affected by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said that together the gifts “provide catalytic support” to the network and its stations and set them up for the next 50 years, NPR reported. 

“I support NPR because an informed public is the bedrock of our society, and democracy requires strong, independent journalism,” Ballmer said in a statement. “My hope is that this commitment provides the stability and the spark NPR needs to innovate boldly and strengthen its national network.”

Her commitment to journalism spans decades. She earned a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon before entering a career in public relations and marketing in the tech sector. She currently serves on the board of the Obama Foundation and previously sat on the NPR Foundation board.

In 2015, Ballmer and her husband, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, founded the Ballmer Group, a foundation dedicated to improving economic mobility for children and families. Steve Ballmer, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has an estimated net worth of $149 billion. The couple has donated at least $8 billion through 2025, a Ballmer spokesperson told WSJ. They also founded Rainier Climate, a nonprofit aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, with their son Sam in 2024. 

Coming back from cuts

Last May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order demanding CPB cut all federal funding to NPR and PBS because of “biased and partisan news coverage.” In July, Congress rescinded more than $1 billion in funding for public broadcasting. 

Only about 1% of NPR’s budget came directly from CPB, but the average public radio station lost about 10% of its annual budget. For some local stations, especially in rural areas, more than half of their budget came from CPB. 

On Jan. 5, nearly 60 years after CPB was founded by Congress, the nonprofit formally dissolved. In late March, a U.S. district judge ruled Trump’s executive order was illegal and violated the First Amendment, but that does not mean public broadcasters will get their funding back. 

While Ballmer’s gift won’t replace all the lost funding, it is a major step toward strengthening NPR’s financial future. The donation is specifically dedicated to helping NPR’s digital transformation across platforms to meet the needs and serve the interests of public media audiences. 

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FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic magazine for $250 million on Monday, claiming an article that talked about his alleged excessive drinking was false and a “malicious hit piece.”

The Atlantic, in response, said it stood by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the “meritless lawsuit.”

In the article, posted on the magazine’s website on Friday, author Sarah Fitzpatrick said Patel is deeply concerned about losing his job and that “he has good reasons to think so — including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking.”

His behavior, including “both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences,” has alarmed officials at the FBI and Department of Justice, The Atlantic said. Fitzpatrick was named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Patel, in the lawsuit filed in district court in Washington, denied the allegations of his behavior and criticized the magazine for relying on anonymous sources. Fitzpatrick wrote that she interviewed more than two dozen people and granted them anonymity to “discuss sensitive information and private conversations.”

“Defendants cannot evade responsibility for their malicious lies by hiding behind sham sources,” the lawsuit said.

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Subscribers of streaming services certainly are sick and tired of price hikes, yet users often have little recourse other than simply canceling their accounts. But for users in Italy, they may soon receive some monetary compensation for nearly a decade’s worth of price jumps.

A court in Rome has ruled that Netflix’s subscription price increases in Italy over the past seven years were illegal, declaring them void under the country’s consumer protection code and ordering the company to reimburse affected subscribers.

There are roughly 5.4 million Netflix subscribers in Italy, or about 2% of its 325 million global total, according to Italy’s communications authority.

The ruling, brought forward by consumer advocacy group Movimento Consumatori, found that Netflix violated Italian law by raising fees between 2017 and January 2024 without providing valid justification to subscribers. Under the decision, Netflix must reduce current subscription fees to pre-hike levels, reimburse overpaid amounts, and publish notice of the April 1 ruling on Netflix Italia’s website as well as in major national newspapers.

According to lawyers representing the consumers, unlawful increases on the Premium plan across 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2024 total roughly €8 ($9.22) per month, while Standard plan overcharges amount to €4 per month. A Premium subscriber who has paid continuously since 2017 could be entitled to approximately €500 ($577) in refunds, with Standard subscribers eligible for around €250 ($288). Netflix has been given 90 days to comply, facing a daily fine of roughly €700 ($800) for delays, though the company’s planned appeal could postpone enforcement.

A Netflix spokesperson told Fortune: “We will file an appeal against the decision. At Netflix, our members come first. We take consumer rights very seriously, and we believe our terms have always been in line with Italian law and practices.”

According to Italian consumer law, companies cannot unilaterally alter subscription prices without stating a legitimate justification in the contract. Netflix’s terms, the court found, included only generic price-change clauses that gave subscribers the option to cancel but never articulated specific reasons for increases. Under Italian and broader EU law, the freedom to cancel is not the same as consent to new terms.

Movimento Consumatori president Alessandro Mostaccio said more than 25,000 Netflix subscribers had filed complaints with the organization over the years about the price increases. He warned that if Netflix fails to promptly lower prices and issue refunds, the group would initiate a class action lawsuit to reclaim the funds.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands has recently started a similar class action suit against the company. Germany and Spain have already filed legal challenges invoking the same 1993 EU Directive on unfair contract terms. Courts in Berlin and Cologne have previously ruled that generic price-change clauses are void.

Netflix announced a global price hike across its three subscription tiers on March 26, just six days before the Italian ruling dropped.

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Elon Musk has been summoned to Paris on Monday, where investigators are looking into allegations of misconduct related to the social media platform X, including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content.

The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino — the former CEO of X — have been summoned for “voluntary interviews,” while other employees of the platform are scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

It remains unclear whether Musk and Yaccarino will travel to Paris. A spokesperson for X did not respond to questions from The Associated Press and Yaccarino’s current company, eMed, did not answer a request sent to the press email.

French prosecutors also suspect that controversy around the platform’s AI system Grok’s deepfakes was concocted to boost the value of Musk-owned companies ahead of a key market listing, and alerted U.S. authorities. Musk welcomed a report that U.S. justice officials refused to help French investigators, posting on X, “This needs to stop.”

The reason for summoning Musk

Musk was summoned after a search took place in February at the French premises of X as part of an investigation opened in January 2025 by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office. Musk and Yaccarino have been invited in their capacities as managers of X at the time of the events investigated. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.

“These voluntary interviews with the executives are intended to allow them to present their position regarding the facts and, where appropriate, the compliance measures they plan to implement,” prosecutors said. “At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the ultimate objective of ensuring that platform X complies with French law, insofar as it operates within the national territory.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Musk and Yaccarino’s potential no-show on Monday “is not an obstacle for investigations to continue.”

What is being investigated

French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after the AI system, Grok, generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.

It’s looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.

Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage this year after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users.

Grok also wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.

In later posts on X, the chatbot reversed itself and acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, saying it had been deleted, and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people in Auschwitz gas chambers.

French prosecutors alert U.S. authorities

In March, the Paris prosecutor’s office alerted the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — the U.S. federal agency responsible for regulating and overseeing financial markets — suggesting “that the controversy surrounding sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok may have been deliberately orchestrated to artificially boost the value of the companies X and xAI — potentially constituting criminal offenses,” prosecutors said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said this could have been done “ahead of the planned June 2026 stock market listing of the new entity formed by the merger of Space X and xAI, at a time when company X was clearly losing momentum.”

Justice Department brushes off French call

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department told French law enforcement authorities it wouldn’t facilitate their efforts to investigate Musk’s X. The newspaper reported that the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, in a two-page letter last week, accused the French of inappropriately using its justice system to interfere with an American business.

The letter also said France’s requests for U.S. assistance “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

French judicial authorities didn’t respond to requests for comments.

Investigations launched into several internet platforms

The cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office has launched in recent years a series of investigations focusing on internet platforms’ suspected illegal activities.

French-language website Coco, which was cited in the landmark trial that turned Gisèle Pelicot into a global icon against sexual violence, closed in 2024 as its manager is accused of complicity in spreading child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes, among other things.

Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app, was handed preliminary charges and placed under judicial supervision for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the platform, including child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened last year an investigation into TikTok over allegations that the platform allows content promoting suicide and that its algorithms may encourage vulnerable young people to take their own lives.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it has lodged a new complaint against X with the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office targeting “the platform’s policies that allow disinformation to flourish.”

___

Associated Press reporter Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this story.

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Tech leaders are split on how AI will shake up the world of work. While some CEOs are staunch believers that a white-collar jobs armageddon is imminent, others say it’ll supercharge humans in their professional lives. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of $4.8 trillion giant Nvidia, believes AI agents will act more like overbearing managers rather than job destroyers. 

“Your [AI] agents are harassing you, micromanaging you, and you’re busier than ever,” Huang recently said during a recent panel at Stanford University’s graduate school of business. “We’re doing things faster, we’re doing it at a larger scale, we’re thinking about doing things that we never imagined.”

Huang has been outspoken against the narrative that AI will trigger a jobs wipeout and hurt America. And the 63-year-old entrepreneur worth $167 billion has been at the forefront of the shift; his GPU-accelerated computing business has rode the tech revolution to become one of the biggest companies in the world. 

But while Nvidia and other tech empires reap the success of the AI boom, the everyday worker is hand-wringing over the fate of their careers. Chatbots and AI agents can already write code, manage schedules, and crunch numbers—but Huang maintains that the tech opens a window for greater human work, not less of it. 

“The fact that we now have AI assistants [to] help us, we could explore more space, do better work, do things at a greater scale, do things more cost-effectively, do things better,” the Nvidia CEO continued. 

The tech pioneer condeeded that some jobs will be rendered redundant in the tech revolution, but is overall optimistic that humans will make it out the other side with better prospects. 

“My belief is we’re gonna create more jobs in the end,” Huang said. “There’ll be more people working at the end of this industrial revolution than at the beginning of it.”

Huang’s advice to AI-wary workers: don’t confuse your job with the tools 

Workers are understandably on edge, watching new job opportunities come to a screeching halt and companies drastically downsize in the name of AI. 

The U.S.’s shaky labor market left many feeling helpless; only one in five workers felt their jobs were safe from elimination in 2025, according to a recent report from ADP Research. And some are actively rebelling against the technology shift altogether in hopes of changing the tide. Around 29% of employees admitted to sabotaging their company’s AI agenda—largely out of fear of becoming obsolete—according to a recent report from AI agent firm Writer and research business Workplace Intelligence. 

And they may have picked up on an impending dilemma; about 44% of CFOs at U.S. companies say they plan on some AI-related job cuts in 2026, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research published earlier this year. The authors of the analysis found that 0.4% of jobs, or about 502,000 roles, are expected to be cut by year’s end—a 9x increase from the 55,000 AI-related layoffs reported in 2025. 

Despite doomsday predictions and climbing job cuts attributed to AI, Huang offers some words of reassurance to AI-anxious people. The Nvidia leader believes that this tech transformation will be like any other—including the industrial revolution—and humans will actually be better off in the long-run. Workers just need to understand that AI agents and chatbots are simply instruments to help get their jobs done. After all, no tool has been able to replace him throughout his four-decade career in tech. 

“[What] I want to make sure we all do, is to recognize that people are really worried about their jobs,” Huang said on the Lex Fridman Podcast last month. “I just want to remind them that the purpose of your job, and the tasks and tools that you use to do your job, are related, not the same.”

“I’m the longest-running tech CEO in the world: 34 years,” he continued. “The tools that I’ve used to do my job have changed continuously in the last 34 years, and sometimes quite dramatically.”

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Former President Barack Obama met with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a child care center where they read to preschoolers and led a singalong.

The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th day in office just over a week ago, is also trying to build a working relationship with Republican President Donald Trump.

Obama and Mamdani did not take questions after reading the book “Alone and Together” to the children and leading a singalong of “The Wheels on the Bus.”

The former two-term president and standard-bearer for the Democratic Party has offered to be a sounding board for Mamdani, 34, whose star power, youth and progressive agenda has made him stand out in Democratic politics.

Mamdani took office in January after a campaign centered on making New York City a more affordable place to live, centering his agenda on refocusing the vast power of government toward helping the city’s struggling working class.

Mamdani has met twice with Trump at the White House in November and February to discuss issues affecting New York.

Despite those friendly meetings, their relationship has shown signs of strain recently, with Trump posting on social media Thursday that Mamdani was “DESTROYING New York” with his taxing policies and threatened to pull federal funding for the city.

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Spirit Airlines’ emergence out of its second bankruptcy in as many years is under pressure as jet fuel prices soar. 

On Feb. 24, just days before the war in Iran began, Spirit announced that it expected to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late spring or early summer, after striking a deal with its lenders and secured creditors. Since then, the war has severely limited tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, spiking oil and jet fuel prices, which has reverberated through the airline industry and, rumor has it, jeopardizing Spirit’s tenuous finances.

The situation has gotten so dire that the airline has asked the Trump administration for hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency funding, The Air Current reported.

A Spirit spokesperson told Fortune the company does not comment on market rumors and speculation and that operations were continuing as normal. 

Spirit’s restructuring plan hinged on much lower fuel prices. The airline is planning to spend $2.24 per gallon in 2026 and $2.14 in 2027, according to a March filing to the Securities and Exchanges Commission. As of April 16, jet fuel cost $4.32 per gallon, almost double the estimate.  

Earlier this month, J.P. Morgan estimated that if fuel stayed at $4.60 a gallon this year—its price in late March—Spirit’s forecast operating margin for fiscal year 2026 could deteriorate to about negative 20% from the 0.5% margin proposed in the company’s restructuring plan. This could add $360 million to the company’s expenses for the fiscal year, which is more than its cash balance at the end of FY 2025, according to the bank.

There are reports that the airline was at risk of liquidation, though the company is not expected to liquidate this week and is “shaking all the trees” to raise cash, Reuters reported. 

Spirit is working its way out of its second bankruptcy since November 2024. In the restructuring  agreement announced in late February, the company said they will reduce off-peak flying and  adjust seasonal demand. The company expected to reduce its debt and lease obligations from $7.4 billion pre-bankruptcy to approximately $2.1 billion post-emergence.

Spirit is far from the only airline feeling the pinch of the war in Iran. In mid-March, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the conflict has increased the airline’s operating costs by about $400 million. United CEO said if jet fuel prices stayed at twice their pre-war costs, it would cost the airline an additional $11 billion in annual costs. Nearly all major U.S. airlines, including American, United, Delta, Southwest, and JetBlue, have raised checked bag fees to try to offset increased costs. 

It will take months for jet fuel prices to return to pre-war levels, the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) representing global airlines warned earlier this month. 

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At 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, Kevin Warsh’s public campaign to lead the Federal Reserve begins. So far, markets, policymakers, and economists have only been able to speculate as to Warsh’s outlook and approach. But this week, for the first time since President Trump confirmed his nomination, his ideas will be laid out in the open for the Senate Banking Committee to pick through.

Chief among the concerns will be what—if anything—Warsh has promised the White House. Amid concerns over the independence of the central bank (a notion Warsh has repeatedly stated he believes is of the utmost importance), officials will be keen to understand how the would-be chairman will balance his dovish rate sympathies with today’s inflationary economic outlook.

Trump has made it clear that only an individual willing to lower rates faster than current chairman Jerome Powell would secure his support. However, data is stacking up against the argument for lowering, with inflation increasing in the latest CPI reports as a result of supply strains on oil and gas. Inflation now sits above 3%, well ahead of the Fed’s mandated target of 2%.

So how might Warsh justify a dovish stance on the base rate without seeming to disregard the Fed’s priorities in favor of appeasing the White House? One potential argument is, you zoom out. You remember the Fed doesn’t have a dual but a triple mandate, and you look at economic conditions in totality.

In theory, the short-term interest rate set by the Federal Open Market Committee informs borrowing rates: To lower it is to stoke economic activity by making loans cheaper—be it for business investment, consumer spending or mortgages.

In reality, the short-term rate has become unhitched from the interest offered in the real economy. As Morgan Stanley observed in October, despite a cutting cycle, “the spread between mortgage rates outstanding and new mortgage rates is over 2%, the highest in 40 years, indicating that more cuts may be necessary to spur housing activity.”

Longer-term yields (and thus, rates), by contrast, are relatively elevated in 2026. These rates are set by markets, reflecting investors’ expectations on inflation, growth, and the supply of government debt. Recently, both 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields have moved higher (though not above historical norms), representing a quiet tightening of financial conditions in the real economy across mortgages, corporate borrowing, and equity valuations.

If Warsh were to argue that tightening on the long end of the curve could be offset by reductions on the shorter end, he could cite a recent example: The tightening has become more pronounced in recent months following the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran. The 10-year Treasury was sitting at around 4% in early February, and spiked to 4.44% by the end of March. The 30-year has been similarly elevated: From 4.63% in early February to 4.9% at the time of writing.

Given those longer-dated rates feed directly into the real economy, a dovish central banker may advocate for a cut to the base rate—not to stimulate demand outright, but to prevent an unintended squeeze driven by the bond market itself, even if cuts at the short end cannot fully counteract tightening further along the curve.

Neatly, the argument also ties in with the Fed’s oft-forgotten third aspect of the mandate. FOMC member Stephen Miran, during his confirmation with the Senate Banking Committee last year, recalled the Federal Reserve Act of the 1970s: “Congress wisely tasked the Fed with pursuing price stability, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates.” If market-driven rises at the long end tighten conditions, that presents a policy problem in itself, with an argument for cuts on the short-end offsetting any squeeze, to keep borrowing costs broadly stable.

The balance sheet argument

A further economic exercise in mental acrobatics comes from Warsh’s outlook on the balance sheet. Warsh wants to reduce the balance sheet, currently standing at $6.7 trillion, and conveniently delivers another neat argument for rate cuts without raising alarm bells over questions of Fed independence.

As Professor Yiming Ma, of Columbia University’s Business School explained in a conversation with Fortune in February: “People often think: ‘Oh, economic conditions, inflation expectations, and unemployment are determining interest rates,’ and the size of the balance sheet is like whatever.

“But in practice, hiking interest rates is [economic] tightening, and reducing the size of the central bank’s balance sheet is also a form of tightening [because it also raises rates]. And it’s hard to estimate the extent of that interaction, but you can think broadly that if the size of the Fed’s balance sheet is smaller, there is less liquidity in the system, and that is going to reduce inflationary pressure. So in a way, one can afford a lower interest rate with a smaller balance sheet.”

This potential stance isn’t an argument that can be brought into play immediately, despite pressure from the White House to cut rates sooner rather than later. But Warsh’s tenure at the Fed would, if confirmed, last beyond the current administration: His dovish leanings may go beyond the current outlook, remaining a feature of the next Fed era.

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Good morning. A closely watched valuation gauge championed by Warren Buffett is signaling potential trouble in today’s market.

In a new Fortune article, my colleague Shawn Tully discusses the metric—the Buffett Indicator. It is the ratio of total U.S. stock market capitalization to GDP. It has become one of the most closely watched valuation gauges on Wall Street since Buffett explained its logic in a landmark 2001 Fortune article, according to Tully. Buffett was writing at a time when the dot-com bubble was deflating. The premise is straightforward: when the ratio climbs too high, stocks are expensive relative to the underlying economy; when it falls, opportunity often follows.

Buffett laid out the stakes plainly in that original piece: “If the relationship [between the total value of equities and GDP] drops to 70% or 80%, buying stocks is likely to work out very well for you,” he wrote. “If it approaches 200% as it did in 1999 and 2000, you are playing with fire.” By the time the article was published, the S&P 500 had already dropped more than 20%. It would eventually retreat nearly 50% from its peak before the indicator fell back below 80%, setting up one of the great buying opportunities of the era.

“The concepts Buffett presented a quarter-century ago are timeless, and they’re especially relevant today because the yardstick he tagged as pointing to danger then looks even more ominous now,” Tully writes.

The question now is where the indicator stands—and what it signals for CFOs managing corporate treasury and investment decisions in a volatile macro environment.

Tully’s analysis breaks down the current reading, how the metric has evolved since Buffett first introduced it, and why it still matters—even as Buffett himself has grown more cautious about endorsing any single measure as definitive. Read the full article here.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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Carvana was one of the pandemic era’s biggest corporate winners. As consumers embraced online car buying and used-car prices surged, the company became a market darling and a symbol of digital disruption. By 2022, it had hit a wall.

Interest rates were rising, used-car demand was weakening, and financing was getting more expensive. Carvana, which had been expanding rapidly for years and had prepared for another big growth year, suddenly found itself under severe pressure. Its stock collapsed 99% from its peak, and analysts questioned whether it would survive.

For Christina Keiser, Carvana’s executive vice president of strategy, the period tested whether the company could block out the noise and focus on the work at hand. The lesson she draws from that stretch is ruthless focus, she tells Fortune.

As she describes it, Carvana had been on an upward climb and reached a point where it believed it could add resources across the organization, take on more initiatives, and push on many fronts at once. The pressures of 2022 forced a different discipline. Leadership had to define the few priorities that mattered most, assign resources accordingly, and put other ambitions aside.

Carvana grounded itself first in the customer. Even as the market narrative deteriorated, customers continued to respond positively to the buying experience the company had built. That gave the leadership team confidence that the core service still had real value.

From there, the work became intensely operational. Carvana organized its recovery around a three-step plan: return to positive adjusted EBITDA, demonstrate significantly positive unit economics, and grow again. Leadership broke a large profitability gap into a few dozen specific operating targets, assigned an owner to each one, and tracked them weekly.

Carvana also secured a pivotal 2023 debt exchange that reduced total debt by more than $1.3 billion, extended maturities, and lowered near-term cash interest expense, buying the company more time to execute its operating plan.

That framework made progress visible inside the company. Teams could see underlying metrics improving in real time, from lower transport distances to better logistics efficiency and other operational gains that would later translate into profitability. Investors would not see those changes until quarterly results, but inside Carvana, those early wins helped sustain confidence that the turnaround was taking hold.

Keiser says internal communication mattered, too. Leaders reminded employees that sharp drawdowns and intense skepticism are often part of building something ambitious. The moment also tapped into a much older instinct inside the company. “We were back in that position of being the underdog, of being questioned,” she says.

The moment also raised the bar for what counted as a priority. Projects with long-term promise but no compelling immediate rationale were pushed aside. Keiser points to efforts that might have created value down the road, including ideas around repeat customers or broader brand benefits, but did not address the company’s immediate needs. The emphasis shifted to the work most closely tied to profitability, operational stability, and the core customer experience.

On the 2025 Fortune 500, Carvana ranked No. 314, a 169-spot jump from its 2021 debut, and it reported record revenue of $20.3 billion for fiscal year 2025. For Keiser, who joined Carvana in 2016, coming through on the other side affirms the company’s resilience. “We don’t need validation day to day,” she says. “We’re very comfortable being the underdog and sort of saying, ‘We’ve got something to prove.’”

Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com

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Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Markets: Optimism fading.
• Analysis: U.S. Supreme Court may be asked to rule whether Kalshi is an illegal bookmaker.
• Peace talks on ice as Iran declines to come to the table.
• AI is finally, actually, taking jobs, data shows.
• Exclusive: CBO chief thinks the $39 trillion debt doomsayers are wrong. Here’s why.
• Delivery robots to guide blind people around sidewalk hazards.

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The Middle East conflict, and Iran’s shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz, has thrown the world into its worst energy crisis in decades. Southeast Asia, which relies on the region for over half of its oil and LNG imports, has been particularly hard hit, with governments frantically looking for alternate sources of oil and gas.

The answer is coming from Russia, a one-time pariah that’s now receiving a steady flow of interest from Southeast Asian leaders desperate for crude oil that’s not stuck behind the blocked Strait of Hormuz.

On April 18, Malaysia joined a growing number of Southeast Asian nations hoping to tap Russia’s stocks of crude oil. Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company, is set to negotiate for sufficient supplies of oil for domestic use. The move marks the region’s most significant return to Russian oil since 2022, when the U.S. and Europe imposed sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“Fortunately, our relations with Russia remain good,” Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s prime minister, told local publication Sinar Harian. “Therefore, the Petronas team can negotiate with them.”

A regional pivot

Other Southeast Asian countries are also pivoting to Russian crude oil. On April 13, Indonesia President Prabowo Subianto flew to Moscow for a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, where the two explored priority areas for cooperation, including the “economic and energy sectors.”

The country’s energy minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, later signaled that Jakarta could expect inflows of Russian oil by the end of the month, with state energy firm Pertamina involved in the deal. “The sooner, the better,” Bahlil told reporters.

Vietnam, too, is embracing Russian energy. On March 30, Vietnamese refinery Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical said it was in talks with Russian partners to buy crude oil. 

Russia is also offering more than just fossil fuels: Russian state corporation Rosatom will build two reactors for Vietnam’s first nuclear energy plant, the Ninh Thuan 1 Nuclear Power Plant, which is set to go online by 2035.

Pragmatism over principle

As the U.S.-Iran war drags on, many countries have loosened their limits on Russian energy, as pragmatism takes precedence in a time of tight energy supply. 

Last Friday, Washington renewed a waiver allowing U.S. firms to purchase sanctioned Russian oil, replacing an agreement set to expire on April 11. In March, Chinese oil majors Sinopec and PetroChina also returned to seeking Russian crude cargoes following a four-month hiatus, Reuters reported.

Southeast Asian officials have cited “national interests” as a reason to pivot to Russian crude.

“Global circumstances have prompted the government to identify alternative sources of oil, reaching out to more than one country,” said Bahlil, on April 16. “We require around 300 million barrels of crude oil annually. Therefore, we will seize every opportunity because it is important to pursue all options that serve national interests.”

This has led to an unexpected windfall for Russia. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, Russia’s March crude ​oil exports rose by 270,000 barrels per day, while its oil product revenues nearly doubled from $9.75 billion in February to $19 billion in March.

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady interviews John Chambers, who knows bubbles, about the AI boom.
• The big leadership story: Kalshi and the SCOTUS case that could determine the future of gambling.
• The markets: Down in Europe as tanker attacks threaten a fragile ceasefire.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Are we in a stock market bubble? If you go by the so-called Buffett Indicator, as my colleague Shawn Tully reminded readers in this piece yesterday, the answer is yes. The ratio of total stock market capitalization to GDP now stands at 232%, exceeding 1999 levels and the 200% threshold where Buffett said investors were “playing with fire.”

But is today’s bubble comparable to what we saw during the dot-com boom from 1995 to 2000? For insight on that, I spoke yesterday with John Chambers, who was CEO of Cisco from 1995 to 2015. Under his watch, it became the most valuable company on earth, with a market cap of $576 billion in March 2000, dropping to a low of around $60 billion by October 2002. Today, it’s around $340 billion. For almost a decade, Chambers has bet big on AI through JC2 Ventures and continues to advise founders, government leaders, and CEOs on market trends. (I co-wrote a book with him and find his annual tech predictions prescient.) His take:

What’s similar: “The driving force was the internet, and growth was almost completely out of control. The limiting factor was supply chain: lead times stretched out and nobody wanted to cancel orders, which can disguise a lot of problems. The most valuable companies were the technology companies, and there was a 50% increase in (annual) productivity gains. I do see parallels there. AI will change the way we work, live, learn and play, just like the internet did, and it will drive productivity for the next decade and the decade after that. There will be bubbles, with dramatic winners and spectacular train wrecks.”

What’s different: “We’re in the very early innings of an endurance baseball game with 100 innings that’s moving at tremendous speed. We snuck up on IBM (which tried to control enterprise architecture as Cisco built an open network for different systems to work together). The Magnificent Seven are all investing big time in AI and investing fast. Nobody is sneaking up on anybody. Microsoft led early on, then Google, now Anthropic probably has the most momentum. Any company could go any way. These CEOs get that. The bell-shaped curve where 50% of companies are in the middle is flattening. Companies to the right will have tremendous valuations but a lot more companies are going to get destroyed than will move to the right.”

Net Net: “I think a portfolio approach makes sense. AI affects everything. If you try to bet on one or two companies, that’s a high-risk approach. I would bet on the U.S. and, more than ever, I’m also bullish on India. Europe is way behind. The Middle East was one area where I was optimistic, but events have slowed down opportunities there. China should have led in AI, but you cannot do it with a five-year plan or top-down control. You need personalities to drive innovation. AI is moving at five times the speed with three times the impact. For leaders, it’s going to make Andy Grove’s paranoia look conservative.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket claim to be truth machines that offer insights into everything from elections to interest rates. But they are also something else: Massive sports betting platforms. Recent reports have found that sports wagers accounted for over 85% of all bets on Kalshi and that, during one four-day stretch, the platform made $25 million in fee revenue from March Madness alone. Prediction markets may have all sorts of promising applications but, for now, sports are clearly the young industry’s golden goose—a goose that faces the very real possibility of being killed.

The threat comes from state governments and Native American tribes, which have filed a flood of legal challenges to claim Kalshi is running an unlicensed gambling operation. Judges in at least three states have agreed with this argument, but others have sided with Kalshi and held instead that its sports wagers are a unique type of contract allowed by federal law.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled on the issue for the first time, siding with Kalshi over the state of New Jersey. But this week, a different set of judges heard arguments in an appeal out of Nevada, and made comments that suggested they will come to a different conclusion. If that occurs, or if another appeals court rules against Kalshi, the issue will be teed up for the Supreme Court by next year, according to gaming industry lawyers, who believe this is a likely outcome.

So how might the Supreme Court rule on a sports prediction market industry expected to grow to around $200 billion in volume this year? For now, observers regard the outcome—which turns on state versus federal power as well as how to apply a law created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis—as a true jump ball. Meanwhile, the legal scuffles have also prompted members of Congress to take sides in a fight that will decide not just the fate of the upstart prediction market industry, but the future of gambling in America.

When is gambling not gambling?

“Basic abductive reasoning tells us that if it looks like gambling, talks like gambling, and calls itself
gambling, it’s gambling,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Roth, siding in dissent with the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement in this month’s ruling by the Third Circuit.

Unfortunately for the New Jersey regulators, Roth was outvoted by two other appeals court judges, who pointed out that while the wagers on Kalshi might look like gambling, they are technically “events contracts” which are classified as swaps under federal law.

The idea of a swap is familiar enough but the word took on a very specific meaning following the financial crisis of 2008. That’s when a huge stack of credit default swaps—insurance deals between giant financial firms invisible to the broader market—imploded, triggering a meltdown across Wall Street. In response, Congress passed a series of reforms known as Dodd-Frank, which included a rule that made swaps a new form of derivative under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In the eyes of the Third Circuit majority, Kalshi had obtained a so-called Designated Contracts Market license fair and square, which means it has the right to operate a swaps forum where users enter wagers with each other on nearly anything, including sports.

The other big question for the Third Circuit, and over a dozen other courts in the country, is whether Kalshi’s status as a swap operator, which is a subset of futures trading, means it can blow off state gambling authorities. Those agencies enjoy so-called police powers reserved to the states by the Constitution, and have long used that authority to oversee or ban gambling.

The problem for New Jersey and other states is the concept of pre-emption, a doctrine that says the federal government, when lawfully exercising its powers, takes precedence over state agencies operating in the same field. Common examples are fields like immigration or pharma regulation, which have seen the feds totally pre-empt state authorities.

The case of Kalshi is less cut-and-dry, but the Third Circuit at least concluded that the platform’s status as a swap operator means New Jersey gambling authorities are pre-empted from regulating it too. The dissenting judge, however, didn’t buy this premise and accused her colleagues of buying into “acts of alchemy” that transformed old-fashioned sports betting into futures trading.

The game score so far

“Right now it IS the industry,” says Dustin Gouker, describing how much sports betting contributes to the prediction markets industry. Gouker, who publishes a newsletter devoted to the sector, believes that other categories, including wagers related to politics and crypto prices, will make up a greater share of prediction market bets over time. But for now, sports is the only game in town, pun intended, and has helped Kalshi and Polymarket justify eye-popping valuations of $22 billion and $20 billion respectively.

Needless to say, those valuations would be punctured badly if courts ultimately rule Kalshi’s status as a swap operator doesn’t shield it from state authorities. And there is a distinct possibility that could happen.

At a hearing before the Ninth Circuit this week, reports say judges appeared to favor the arguments of the state of Nevada over those of Kalshi, as well as Robinhood and Crypto.com, which have launched prediction markets of their own. (Kalshi’s main rival, Polymarket, is not part of the litigation since for now it is not operating in the U.S.).

A ruling from that appeals court is expected in coming weeks and, if it goes against the prediction market companies, it will create the sort of circuit split that makes a case ripe for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, though, it is likely the top court may wait for further appeals rulings to bubble up in other courts.

“If you are the prediction markets, the goal is to create litigation in as many circuits as possible to expand the runway”, said gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach, explaining that a prolonged legal battle will buy Kalshi and others time to keep offering sports bets.

Meanwhile, the prospect of sprawling litigation on another prediction-markets front is already a reality. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, long a relatively small and obscure agency, has taken the unusual step of seeking court rulings to stave off Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois (all of which are home to significant gaming interests) from issuing injunctions against Kalshi.

What matters most, of course, is how the Supreme Court might rule and, for now, lawyers say any outcome appears genuinely uncertain.

“This is a classic case of old tools being applied to cutting edge technologies, and it’s too soon to say how courts will come out on those questions,” said Austin Evers, a partner at Freshfields in Washington, D.C.

That echoes the view of other attorneys, including Kayvan Sadeghi, partner at Jenner & Block in New York. He notes that, while the Trump administration and some Republicans support the prediction markets, conservative judges are frequently sympathetic to states’ rights arguments—an inclination that could be at play on the heavily conservative Supreme Court.

Lawyers note that Kalshi and its allies will also have to contend with a pair of relatively recent rulings by the top court that are unlikely to help their cause. The first is the 2018 ruling known as Murphy v. NCAA that struck down the federal government’s exclusive authority over sports betting, which could undermine the CFTC’s claim that its authority over sports-related swaps freezes out the states. The other is a case known as Loper Bright from 2024 where the justices ruled that courts owe no deference to the expertise of agencies, which could again undercut the CFTC’s position.

Even if the Supreme Court were to rule against Kalshi—not a sure thing by any means—that is hardly the end of the matter. Even as the litigation train barrels towards the top court, another branch of government is taking an interest in prediction markets.

Unusual coalitions

“Pervasive gambling is not good for society. It turns life into a casino, traps people in addiction & debt, surges domestic violence, and fosters manipulation,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on X in response to news from Polymarket that it has secured a partnership with Major League Baseball.

The remark is hardly a surprise given Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive reputation. What is surprising is that numerous conservatives piped up to agree with her, including Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, who wrote, “This is sad: I agree with @AOC.”

While Republicans in Congress typically march in lock-step with President Trump, several members have already sought to corral prediction markets, including Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) who is co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill with Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) titled the Prediction Markets are Gambling Act. The bill proposes to close what the legislators deem a CFTC “loophole.”

Evers, the Freshfields lawyer, says that prediction markets are still new enough that overall public opinion has not yet coalesced around how to regulate them and that, even if Democrats take back control of Congress in the mid-terms, it is not automatic that legislation will follow.

“It’s always easy placing a bet on Congress being unable to pass legislation,” notes Evers. But he adds that prediction markets amount to an important new public policy debate, so lawmakers are likely to be engaged.

Meanwhile, in a sign of the fluidity of opinion around prediction markets, Blanche Lincoln, a senator from Arkansas at the time, warned during the debate over Dodd-Frank in 2010 that regulated swaps should not be extended to cover wagers on the Masters or the Super Bowl. Today, she is a registered lobbyist for Kalshi, arguing the opposite.

As the fate of sports-related prediction markets remain up in the air, there is one tool that could supply valuable insight for whether they will remain legal. Alas, there are currently no events contracts on Kalshi that let users bet on the company’s own fate in Congress or in court.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Dr Phillip Swagel is an optimist, both by nature and when he looks at the U.S. economy.

This fact is perhaps at odds with what one might assume: Swagel is the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the nonpartisan agency that offers independent budgetary and economic analysis to Congress.

Very often—an inevitable occupational hazard—the subject of national debt and the interest the U.S. Treasury pays to maintain is its central focus. The numbers are eye-watering: Public debt stands at more than $39 trillion. The interest expense on that borrowing now exceeds $1 trillion a year. Indeed, the latest budget update from the CBO highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out nearly $530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.

The CBO’s figures are routinely cited by policymakers, think tanks, and lobbyists as alarming evidence that the U.S. needs to find a more sustainable fiscal path or risk dire straits.

Swagel doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the U.S. will face a crisis of its own making. His justification is simple: He was at the Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis, and joined the CBO months before the COVID pandemic began. He has watched as the U.S. economy, seemingly against all odds, has clawed its way out of economic crises before.

That’s not to say Swagel isn’t a staunch advocate of setting the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path—rather, he trusts the people in power to do so when the time comes.

Why the optimism?

Among those concerned about national debt are notable names: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also worried about federal spending and has endorsed a plan floated by Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett that would render members of Congress ineligible for reelection if they allow deficits to exceed 3% of GDP.

On the other hand, optimistic economists suggest that, despite the value of the debt, it’s not actually an issue: the bond market is holding steady, indicating a reliable market of buyers. Likewise, the U.S.’s own central bank buys huge swaths of the debt, meaning, in the simplest of layman’s terms, the economy can essentially print its own money. There are holes in this argument, not least the fact that Fed chairman nominee Kevin Warsh has suggested he would like to reduce the Fed’s balance sheet and may therefore be less inclined to finance borrowing.

Swagel’s positive outlook doesn’t rely on the argument that a crisis hasn’t happened yet, so therefore it never will: “[My optimism] is rooted in my experience,” Swagel tells Fortune in an exclusive interview in Washington D.C. “First being at Treasury during the financial crisis and seeing very difficult times and the country coming together with an effective response—not saying it’s perfect, lots of controversy—but it was effective.”

“The second thing is policymakers are smart, they’re thoughtful. Interacting with members of Congress makes me optimistic. I know you read about all the squabbles … I’m completely aware of this, but the policymakers that are thinking about these things are thoughtful and effective. Not necessarily always effective at passing legislation, but that’s part of our political system, it was set up to make it difficult ot pass legislation.”

Decisions on the horizon

Swagel’s optimism that Congress will be pushed into action will be tested sooner rather than later, likely at some point in the next six years, he told Fortune. This is partly due to the fact that, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) both Social Security and Medicare will become insolvent within that time period.

“Making progress to address the fiscal trajectory would be a positive for the U.S. economy,” Swagel said. “Credible steps would lead to lower interest rates that would make the subsequent adjustment easier, there is a reward to virtue. It’s a positive thing, we can’t go on [with] the scolding narrative. My sense is that members of Congress understand the fiscal situation, it’s not that everyone single one has looked at our one-pager of numbers and understands the debt to the third decimal point, but they understand something needs to be done.”

“It doesn’t have to be done immediately, but at some point reasonably soon.”

Swagel is of the opinion that bond investors haven’t increased risk premiums not because they’re not worried about a fiscal crisis, but because they have priced in preventative action from Congress—in his mind “a vote of confidence that my optimism is not misplaced.”

“As a country, we face up to these problems. It’s not happening now, I’m not sure it’s going to happen in the rest of this year or even the next year, or the next two years. But we will face up to it, and the market in some sense expects us to, because otherwise interest rates would be higher,” he explained.

The Cheesecake Factory

The role of the CBO, to some extent, is to provide policymakers with their options if and when they do choose to take action on federal deficits. It’s a menu not unlike the Cheesecake Factory, Swagel says: Large, inclusive of a range of modifications and options, and delivered without judgement.

“Right now it’s maybe a pick three, and you’re looking at a six or seven course menu,” joked Caleb Quakenbush, director of fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in an interview with Fortune. “The longer you delay, the more you’re gonna have to add to your tab, and those options become more expensive.”

Indeed, economists and analysts aren’t necessarily worried about the absolute level of government debt, rather the debt-to-GDP ratio. Depending on whom you ask, the debt-to-GDP ratio stands at around 122% of GDP at present. This measure demonstrates an economy’s spending versus its growth, and the risk associated with lending to a nation that isn’t growing fast enough to handle its spending. To rebalance that ratio, an economy could either cut spending or increase growth—the latter being by far the less painful option.

The growth option is becoming less feasible, Michael Peterson, CEO of fiscal think tank the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “I think it requires government action because we’ve waited so long. We’ve added so many trillions, and the current deficit is so big at 6% that the level of growth you would need really exceeds what is feasible. 

“Growth needs to be a part of it, but it’s sort of a vicious cycle. The longer we delay, the more debt we have, the slower growth is going to be. The more we get this under control, I think the greater optimism there is, interest rates go down, more growth comes from that. It’s sort of a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on your policy response.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The delivery robots rolling down your sidewalk have cameras, sensors, and a constant need to dodge whatever is in their path. Think fallen e-scooters, construction zones, and tricky curbs. That data gets stored so that other robots know what lies ahead of them—and it’s now going to the world’s most widely used GPS app for the blind so they can better navigate city streets.

Coco Robotics, the Los Angeles-based startup operating roughly 10,000 delivery bots across the United States and Europe, is partnering with BlindSquare to remit real-time sidewalk hazard data directly to visually impaired pedestrians. The partnership, announced today, will go live across all six of Coco’s operating markets: Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Jersey City in the U.S. and Helsinki and Turku in Finland.

As Coco’s robots make food deliveries for local restaurants, they continuously log every obstacle they encounter. That data feeds into Coco’s sidewalk map, updated to the minute, and under the new partnership, it will also flow to BlindSquare. The self-voicing app converts the information into spoken alerts delivered in 26 languages, warning users roughly 10 meters before they reach a hazard. In effect, thousands of delivery robots become on-the-ground eyes for people who cannot see what’s ahead.

Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Boots on the ground, with wheels

The partnership grew out of a European Union grant funding Coco’s operations in Helsinki, where the city’s innovation arm, Forum Virium Helsinki, connected the two companies. Ilkka Pirttimaa, the Finnish developer who built BlindSquare 14 years ago and has watched it grow to roughly 90,000 downloads across 190 countries, was already part of the Helsinki grant consortium alongside Swarco, the traffic-signal manufacturer.

He told Fortune “I didn’t even know any blind persons” when he built BlindSquare. Instead, as someone who loved open data and looking at city maps, he followed blind users on Twitter and read their blog posts about daily obstacles, from wrong trams and unmarked intersections to missing audio cues and downright broken sidewalks. From there, he began assembling an app that could describe a surrounding environment entirely through sound.

The Coco partnership addresses a problem Pirttimaa said has worsened. “Sidewalks, they are a space where blind people sometimes are afraid to go because of e-scooters,” the founder said, adding both Bolt and Voi operate in Finland where he lives. “They are silent. They can go really fast. They can be parked incorrectly.”

But rather than calling for bans on them, Pirttimaa sees a technological fix: “If blind people would know about those e-scooters that are incorrectly parked, it would be beneficial. Robots, they are sharing the same space, and they encounter the same problems. But if that is shared to BlindSquare, then I can notify a blind user that, hey, there is an e-scooter on your way.”

A living map no city has built

The core value proposition is data that municipalities simply do not collect. Carl Hansen, Coco’s vice president of government relations, said the company has discovered that even cities with existing sidewalk data are working off stale information.

“Often when we first go to cities, we ask, what mapping data do you have?” he told Fortune. “Maps that haven’t been updated in a long, long time.”

The data points collected by Coco robots differ from that. “This is fresh to the day, to the hour, to the minute.”

The mapping system works on tiered persistence. When a robot encounters an obstacle, the system categorizes it and assigns a duration. A toppled e-scooter might stay in the map for six hours; active construction could remain for a week.

“The next Coco that comes along checks if it’s there again, and if it’s still there, maybe it gets added for another longer period,” Hansen explained, while structural issues get logged permanently, until the city fixes them.

The companies are also building a two-way exchange. BlindSquare users who pass a previously flagged location can report that an obstacle has been cleared, which in turn updates Coco’s internal routing maps. “There’s a kind of feedback loop making this better for all users,” Hansen said.

Coco CEO Zach Rash framed the partnership as the natural extension of infrastructure the company built for its own survival. “One of the first things we had to build as a company was turn-by-turn directions that are distinct for a robot, and that’s different than car directions. That’s also different than walking directions,” Rash said. “As a byproduct of that, that’s probably the best way for most people to walk through the city. But particularly if you’re blind or in a wheelchair, you’re just rolling the dice if you try to take the straightest path in some of these cities.”

Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Robots as eyes, not obstacles

Rash pointed to the Abbot Kinney neighborhood in Venice Beach, California (Coco’s most operationally difficult market) as an early proof of concept. The area’s old sidewalks are riddled with 14-inch curbs and missing curb cuts—ramps that ease the transition between sidewalk and road—effectively creating “islands” inaccessible to anyone in a wheelchair or navigating without sight.

Using its mapping data, Coco ran an accessibility analysis and identified just three locations where, if the city installed curb cuts, it would unlock connectivity across the entire neighborhood. “You don’t need to fix everything,” Rash said. “There’s a very small number of choke points that, if you fix that, the city gets super accessible.”

Los Angeles installed the cuts, but Rash said the BlindSquare partnership is what makes the improvement legible to the people who need it most. “Fixing it is cool, but now people need to know to go that way and know how much more accessible it is.”

The partnership also hints at both BlindSquare and Coco’s broader ambitions for its sidewalk data. In Helsinki, they’re working with Swarco on a system where a robot waiting at an intersection could detect a crowd of pedestrians and dynamically extend the crossing time by communicating with smart traffic lights. Pirttimaa noted that Swarco already implemented a feature allowing robots to virtually “press” crosswalk buttons, a capability that was subsequently extended to BlindSquare users.

“Robots were kind of opening roads to the blind user side,” he said. “It’s not always something we need to build for the blind people. We can build services in a city that benefit everyone.”

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Federal prosecutors said a 44-year-old Los Angeles woman was arrested Saturday night at Los Angeles International Airport on suspicion of helping Iran traffic weapons to Sudan, which is in its fourth year of a bloody civil war.

Shamim Mafi will face charges that she brokered the sale of “drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition” between Iran and the Sudanese Armed Forces, First U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Sunday on social media.

A phone number for Mafi could not be located and it wasn’t known Sunday if she has an attorney who could speak on her behalf.

Essayli posted a photo of someone in an FBI jacket escorting a woman into the back of a sedan outside a terminal at LAX.

Mafi is an Iranian national who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2016, Essayli said.

A criminal complaint dated March 12 alleges that Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator operated a company in Oman called Atlas International Business through which weapons and ammunition were trafficked. The company received over $7 million in payments in 2025.

Separately, Mafi and the co-conspirator brokered the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese Ministry of Defense, according to the court documents.

“In connection with the transaction, Mafi submitted a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (‘IRGC’) to purchase the bomb fuses for Sudan,” the complaint said.

Mafi is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Monday. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.

The Sudanese civil war has created a humanitarian crisis in the North African country where food supplies are dwindling and millions of people have fled their homes.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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A refund system for businesses that paid tariffs which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled President Donald Trump imposed without the constitutional authority to do so is scheduled to launch Monday.

Importers and their brokers will be able to begin claiming refunds through an online portal beginning at 8 a.m., according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency administering the system.

It’s the first step in a complicated process that also might eventually lead to refunds for consumers who were billed for some or all of the tariffs on products shipped to them from outside the United States.

Companies must submit declarations listing the goods on which they collectively put billions of dollars toward the import taxes the court subsequently struck down. If CBP approves a claim, it will take 60-90 days for a refund to be issued, the agency said.

The government expects to process refunds in phases, however, focusing first on more recent tariff payments. Any number of technical factors and procedural issues could delay an importer’s application, so any reimbursements businesses plan to make to customers likely would trickled down slowly.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court on Feb. 20 found that Trump usurped Congress’ tax-setting role last April when he set new import tax rates on products from almost every other country, citing the U.S. trade deficit as a national emergency that warranted his invoking of a 1977 emergency powers law.

Although the court majority did not address refunds in its ruling, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade determined last month that companies subjected to IEEPA tariffs were entitled to money back.

Not all taxed imports immediately eligible